Wishing everyone the joys of a safe and bountiful holiday.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
THE LEGEND OF M'RITH
Here is a free read for you--Chapter One of my work-in-progress, "The Legend of M'Rith." This is the story of a faerie who falls in love with a mortal man in 19th century Ireland. Comments are always welcomed, of course, but above all I hope you might enjoy this short read. If you would like to see my published works, they are all available on my website, www.miriamnewman.com.
Brighid was gone, a fact so indisputable no amount of desire or memory could ever change it.
There were touches of her everywhere, like ghostly fingerprints: jellies and jams neatly put by in the larder, sheets and clothes smelling of her scented soap, pine floors scrubbed nearly white by her hands, simple furniture made rich with a polish of bees’ wax and fragrant oils. In his house, Kieran had every comfort but her presence. Eventually, he had to leave.
His feet took him by rote to the pub. The only other choice was his forge, where there was not another cobweb to sweep or a thing to put away. Like his house, it was in perfect order. But without his wife to broaden the focus of his life, rapidly narrowing to a thin tunnel of possibilities, Kieran saw no other choices. House, pub or forge. Forge. Pub. House. It all came down to the same thing in the end. She wasn’t there.
Silas, the owner, was behind his sturdy oak bar and looked up at his now-frequent patron. “Ale?”
“If you please.” It was all Kieran drank, even in his grief. Silas came round the bar to one of the simple trestle tables where Kieran had taken a bench. It was quiet that day. Most people were at tea.
“I cannot believe the weather has held fair an entire fortnight,” the older man remarked, putting down a mug of rich, creamy ale. It was a thing to remark in Ireland, where it always rained.
“Aye.” No one had gotten much more than that out of Kieran in two weeks, but Silas had enough steam for the both of them.
“’Tis the work of the Fair Folk, I am sure.”
Kieran smiled sourly. “Don’t let Father hear that from you.”
Silas only lay one finger alongside his nose, his grin conspiratorial. “He won’t from me if he doesn’t from you.”
“No chance of that.” No, no chance at all. His wife had believed in the faeries, even if he did not. Kieran stared moodily into his drink, remembering.
Raised in their village, never more than ten miles from it, Brighid had not been a grand woman. She had believed in the Fair Folk, even going so far as to allege they were responsible for her conceiving their long awaited child--the child that had killed her. Kieran knew that was nonsense. It was only that such things had been important to her, so in her honor he put out food from her funeral feast. Everyone did. Surely it was no business of the priest’s if an extra bit of milk was set down for the cat that day or a couple of cakes were behind the privy. And although Kieran was sure it only resulted in a few fat dogs, it was true that the days had stretched cloudless and balmy since that morning. He was beginning to feel lonely for a spot of rain.
“Surely I think we have their protection,” Silas went on. “D’you know how many trees came down on houses in Loughderry during that last storm? And here nothing more than branches. They’ll be weeks cleaning muddy mess from their flood. We’re no farther from the river than they are, but we weren’t touched. I tell you, it’s uncanny. They lost most of their sheep to the bloat and we weren’t out a single one. Good Lord, even our vegetables are twice the size of theirs! They say you could club a man with our carrots.”
“Or take his head off with a cabbage.” Kieran nodded. “I’ve heard it, too. The truth is we work harder.”
“Speak for yourself.” Silas had a relaxed attitude that suited his customers, but no one could deny Kieran was a demon of industry. Then again, he had little else to do but tend his forge. His mother and sister, nesting together in the family cottage since his father’s death, had ceased running to him with their usual complaints and requests to fix things. No one took up his time. They were, he knew, only observing a period of mourning and would be after him again as soon as decency permitted, but he thought now that he wouldn’t mind. Brighid, always the soul of charity, hadn’t minded. He sighed heavily.
“You might work a little less,” Silas counseled gently.
Kieran gave him a startled look. “And do what?”
“Go and fish, man! The days are getting longer. The boys and I are about to set up some bowls on the green of an evening, then take it out on the road with those Loughderry lads—see if they can keep up with their blarney, free ale to the winners. Which will be us.” His thoughts turning to ale as they were never far from it, Silas took Kieran’s mug to refill. “You can be our score keeper if you’re not of a mind to bowl.” Rounding the bar, he put it back on the table. “Don’t stay in your cottage with her ghost.”
“Their ghosts.”
Silas blanched. “Aye. ‘Tis what I meant to say, Kieran. Sorry.”
Kieran waved a dismissive hand. The villagers had not known the babe nine months in his wife’s womb. She had been a stranger to them, but not to him though she had never drawn a breath. Fair as a rose she would have been, if she had breathed. But how could she, when her mother could not? And so his baby daughter rested now in her mother’s arms. In the ground. Silently, he put down two coins and stood.
“Don’t you want the rest of your ale?”
Kieran just shook his head. “Put it out for the faeries. We could use some rain.”
Brighid was gone, a fact so indisputable no amount of desire or memory could ever change it.
There were touches of her everywhere, like ghostly fingerprints: jellies and jams neatly put by in the larder, sheets and clothes smelling of her scented soap, pine floors scrubbed nearly white by her hands, simple furniture made rich with a polish of bees’ wax and fragrant oils. In his house, Kieran had every comfort but her presence. Eventually, he had to leave.
His feet took him by rote to the pub. The only other choice was his forge, where there was not another cobweb to sweep or a thing to put away. Like his house, it was in perfect order. But without his wife to broaden the focus of his life, rapidly narrowing to a thin tunnel of possibilities, Kieran saw no other choices. House, pub or forge. Forge. Pub. House. It all came down to the same thing in the end. She wasn’t there.
Silas, the owner, was behind his sturdy oak bar and looked up at his now-frequent patron. “Ale?”
“If you please.” It was all Kieran drank, even in his grief. Silas came round the bar to one of the simple trestle tables where Kieran had taken a bench. It was quiet that day. Most people were at tea.
“I cannot believe the weather has held fair an entire fortnight,” the older man remarked, putting down a mug of rich, creamy ale. It was a thing to remark in Ireland, where it always rained.
“Aye.” No one had gotten much more than that out of Kieran in two weeks, but Silas had enough steam for the both of them.
“’Tis the work of the Fair Folk, I am sure.”
Kieran smiled sourly. “Don’t let Father hear that from you.”
Silas only lay one finger alongside his nose, his grin conspiratorial. “He won’t from me if he doesn’t from you.”
“No chance of that.” No, no chance at all. His wife had believed in the faeries, even if he did not. Kieran stared moodily into his drink, remembering.
Raised in their village, never more than ten miles from it, Brighid had not been a grand woman. She had believed in the Fair Folk, even going so far as to allege they were responsible for her conceiving their long awaited child--the child that had killed her. Kieran knew that was nonsense. It was only that such things had been important to her, so in her honor he put out food from her funeral feast. Everyone did. Surely it was no business of the priest’s if an extra bit of milk was set down for the cat that day or a couple of cakes were behind the privy. And although Kieran was sure it only resulted in a few fat dogs, it was true that the days had stretched cloudless and balmy since that morning. He was beginning to feel lonely for a spot of rain.
“Surely I think we have their protection,” Silas went on. “D’you know how many trees came down on houses in Loughderry during that last storm? And here nothing more than branches. They’ll be weeks cleaning muddy mess from their flood. We’re no farther from the river than they are, but we weren’t touched. I tell you, it’s uncanny. They lost most of their sheep to the bloat and we weren’t out a single one. Good Lord, even our vegetables are twice the size of theirs! They say you could club a man with our carrots.”
“Or take his head off with a cabbage.” Kieran nodded. “I’ve heard it, too. The truth is we work harder.”
“Speak for yourself.” Silas had a relaxed attitude that suited his customers, but no one could deny Kieran was a demon of industry. Then again, he had little else to do but tend his forge. His mother and sister, nesting together in the family cottage since his father’s death, had ceased running to him with their usual complaints and requests to fix things. No one took up his time. They were, he knew, only observing a period of mourning and would be after him again as soon as decency permitted, but he thought now that he wouldn’t mind. Brighid, always the soul of charity, hadn’t minded. He sighed heavily.
“You might work a little less,” Silas counseled gently.
Kieran gave him a startled look. “And do what?”
“Go and fish, man! The days are getting longer. The boys and I are about to set up some bowls on the green of an evening, then take it out on the road with those Loughderry lads—see if they can keep up with their blarney, free ale to the winners. Which will be us.” His thoughts turning to ale as they were never far from it, Silas took Kieran’s mug to refill. “You can be our score keeper if you’re not of a mind to bowl.” Rounding the bar, he put it back on the table. “Don’t stay in your cottage with her ghost.”
“Their ghosts.”
Silas blanched. “Aye. ‘Tis what I meant to say, Kieran. Sorry.”
Kieran waved a dismissive hand. The villagers had not known the babe nine months in his wife’s womb. She had been a stranger to them, but not to him though she had never drawn a breath. Fair as a rose she would have been, if she had breathed. But how could she, when her mother could not? And so his baby daughter rested now in her mother’s arms. In the ground. Silently, he put down two coins and stood.
“Don’t you want the rest of your ale?”
Kieran just shook his head. “Put it out for the faeries. We could use some rain.”
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
The Faeries Who Started It All
BLURB: Stowed away in the trunk of a pharmaceutical representative from Killarney, a band of feisty Irish faeries is released in the outlying suburbs of Philadelphia, where Malachi McCurdy sets up bachelor housekeeping. In need of a housekeeper, he is introduced to Shawna Egan, unaware that “his” faeries have taken up residence in her oak tree. Shawna, who was raised with tales of the Fair Folk but never realized she can see them, learns it the hard way when she cuts down the tree in which they made a home. She gives them another and faeries always repay their debts. But Shawna has secrets, and although she knows Mal is what she is seeking, will he want her after he has heard the confessions of the cleaning lady? If so, he will need help from the Fae, for the dragons he must slay for his lady live in her mind.
EXCERPT: On Thursday, the faeries went on strike and Shawna should have seen it coming. Then again, seeing was part of the problem. Great-granddaughter of a couple who had fled starving Ireland, Shawna could See faeries. It was not a visual seeing, but something that happened in the ancestral recesses of the mind: a subliminal perception of the fast flit of a wing or the shimmer of a gossamer body or the mosquito-like hum of a tiny voice not heard with the ear. But Shawna found herself living not in Ireland, as her genes supposed, but forty-five miles northwest of Philadelphia where Seeing faeries usually resulted in the administration of medication. She had made up her rational twenty-first century mind never to See anything.
It almost worked.
The day before, her friend Dorothy’s significant other, Tom, had brought the Mexican laborers he supervised for a landscaper to moonlight in the pasture behind Shawna’s ramshackle barn. The men had agreed to take down a lightning-struck oak for fifty dollars each and all the beer they could drink, which made it a concern that she and they were uninsured. Her homeowners’ insurance had lapsed—a fact she was trying to keep from the mortgage company—and those men were not working on company time, with workman’s comp.
When they got the tree on the ground and sawed into firewood without anyone being maimed, Shawna thought the worst danger had been averted.
That didn’t work.
On Thursday morning, she was pleased to see the oak in a pile on the leeward side of her barn. It would not do for firewood that winter, but she hoped to need it the following year, when it should be aged enough to feed the basement woodstove. It would have to heat the house if she couldn’t pay her electric bill. If she still had the house, she had the wood. If she didn’t have the house…well, she wouldn’t permit her mind to travel in that direction any more than she would let it See faeries. Apparently, though, they saw her.
She was sure that the shimmer at the base of her wood pile was the sun, poking rays through a canopy of oaks starting to rain their cacophony of September
acorns onto the metal roof of the barn. But the shimmer grew and seemed to be moving. Curious, she squelched through muck and shoots of grass nurtured by droppings from the days when she had not yet fenced in the chicken run, before the Zoning Officer had informed her in less than polite language that she needed one. The hens were behind bars now, metaphorically speaking, and she acquired less white and smelly stuff on her shoes than she might have done as she walked to the barn, but she was conscious of their beady-eyed looks. She knew they burned for the freedom to scratch for crickets and other tasty treats.
Burning, that was it…something must be burning. Yet that glow wasn’t smoke, and it wasn’t fire. It wasn’t anything she had ever seen. That was when Shawna Egan
realized that there was seeing and Seeing. She Saw them: swirling, tumbling, agitated-looking little creatures dipping and darting at such speed that the dappled sunlight glinting on their pulsating wings gave off a glow. She thought at first that the high-pitched whispery sounds she half-heard were the beat-beat-beat of those tiny wings, but they weren’t.
They were shouting at her.
4 CUPS AT COFFEE TIME ROMANCE: http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/BookReviews/Confessionsofacleaninglady.html
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kiPVxGocYY
BUY LINK: www.thedarkcastlelords.com/confessions-of-the-cleaning-lady.htm
Friday, October 1, 2010
HOW THE BLOG GOT ITS NAME
On one of my many jaunts to Ireland, I was staying in Killarney at the Killarney Princess, where the lobby and bar look like one solid hunk of polished mahoghany and a sumptuous Irish tea will be brought to you and your guests in the lobby any afternoon, upon request. A wonderful way to sit out a Force 10 gale, by the way, which I did after having been nearly been blown off a walkway the previous morning at Kylemore Abbey. It almost made up for the fact that there was zero soundproofing in my otherwise very nice room and it sounded that night like someone was rolling huge laundry carts over my head all night long. Bleary-eyed, I stumbled downstairs looking for the other ladies going to the Waterford Crystal Factory to shed our American dollars for their beautiful things. I was early because I hadn't slept, one thing led to another and I ended up sharing Guinness Stout (before noon--yes, Mother) with a gentleman who regaled me with typical Irish stories including an allusion to being surprised at a disturbance in the hotel the night before. Barely awake and feeling my liquor, I fell for it hook, line and sinker.
Ah, yes, he said. It was surprising in such a high-class hotel where even the desk clerk called me "Madam," but Bobbie told me there had indeed been a screaming and banging at his locked door in the middle of the night. But he told me he had taken pity on the lady, got up and let her out.
Anyway, on to Waterford where I had heard there was a replica of a Viking longship. I never did find it, but that gives me a reason to go again (as if I needed one). I climbed aboard the bus hoping to God I wasn't going to be car sick--or bus sick--and away we went, rolling up a newly constructed highway of which everyone was very proud. It took so many twists and turns I thought I was back at the Ring of Kerry. a tourist trap so circuitous that only the strong of stomach survive. As we took one especially dramatic loop-de-loop, our guide pointed to the left where a scarecrow tree stood in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by an eight-foot chain link fence which, if I recall correctly, was taller than the tree.
"You may have noticed," he said, "that this road takes an unexpected twist."
I was about to ask him which one, but I was afraid to open my mouth, which was OK since he never closed his; he was supposed to entertain us, after all, and in fact made a good job of it.
"Well, our roads department had to do that," he explained, "because the original plan would have required destruction of the faerie tree."
The what? The faerie tree, of course. The construction crew would have had to lop down my spindly little friend over to the left. Which no one would do, because everyone knows it's bad luck to cut down a faerie tree. And so an entire highway was re-routed, an understandable precaution in Ireland. The fence had been erected, he went on to say, because a delusional mental patient had attempted to burn down the tree and the Garda (police) had to protect him from irate locals, who then decided they should fence off the tree.
Wouldn't that inconvenience the faeries, I asked, but the guide looked at me as if I was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. "Oh, no," he reassured me. "They have wings, y'know."
Duh.
That gave me one of many fond memories of the trip and a lasting affection for faerie trees. And, oh yes, I do prefer the Irish spelling of "fairy." It's just more satisfying somehow. Almost as good as that early-morning Guinness.
Ah, yes, he said. It was surprising in such a high-class hotel where even the desk clerk called me "Madam," but Bobbie told me there had indeed been a screaming and banging at his locked door in the middle of the night. But he told me he had taken pity on the lady, got up and let her out.
Anyway, on to Waterford where I had heard there was a replica of a Viking longship. I never did find it, but that gives me a reason to go again (as if I needed one). I climbed aboard the bus hoping to God I wasn't going to be car sick--or bus sick--and away we went, rolling up a newly constructed highway of which everyone was very proud. It took so many twists and turns I thought I was back at the Ring of Kerry. a tourist trap so circuitous that only the strong of stomach survive. As we took one especially dramatic loop-de-loop, our guide pointed to the left where a scarecrow tree stood in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by an eight-foot chain link fence which, if I recall correctly, was taller than the tree.
"You may have noticed," he said, "that this road takes an unexpected twist."
I was about to ask him which one, but I was afraid to open my mouth, which was OK since he never closed his; he was supposed to entertain us, after all, and in fact made a good job of it.
"Well, our roads department had to do that," he explained, "because the original plan would have required destruction of the faerie tree."
The what? The faerie tree, of course. The construction crew would have had to lop down my spindly little friend over to the left. Which no one would do, because everyone knows it's bad luck to cut down a faerie tree. And so an entire highway was re-routed, an understandable precaution in Ireland. The fence had been erected, he went on to say, because a delusional mental patient had attempted to burn down the tree and the Garda (police) had to protect him from irate locals, who then decided they should fence off the tree.
Wouldn't that inconvenience the faeries, I asked, but the guide looked at me as if I was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. "Oh, no," he reassured me. "They have wings, y'know."
Duh.
That gave me one of many fond memories of the trip and a lasting affection for faerie trees. And, oh yes, I do prefer the Irish spelling of "fairy." It's just more satisfying somehow. Almost as good as that early-morning Guinness.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
WELCOME!
A welcome to The Faerie Tree Blog is in order. If you are reading this, chances are you are also a lover of all things Fae: elves, faeries, sprites--the ethereal, magical and fantastical. Please, feel free to enjoy and also to contribute. If you have tales of the supernatural (real or imagined), poetry, lore, photos...whatever thrills you and fills you with delight...please consider sharing. Email me at mrmireland@aol.com.
I am Miriam Newman, multi-published author of poetry, romance, fantasy and science fiction. Occasionally I may highlight a new release here, if it has to do with the Fae. If you are an author, you are free to do the same. Again, just contact me by email at mrmireland@aol.com. As you might gather from my addy, I have a special love and affinity for Ireland. But all the Fae are welcome, no matter which portion of our Earth they may be sharing with us.
I am Miriam Newman, multi-published author of poetry, romance, fantasy and science fiction. Occasionally I may highlight a new release here, if it has to do with the Fae. If you are an author, you are free to do the same. Again, just contact me by email at mrmireland@aol.com. As you might gather from my addy, I have a special love and affinity for Ireland. But all the Fae are welcome, no matter which portion of our Earth they may be sharing with us.
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