Chương 6: Fionn

To her surprise, Solas tromped downstairs with a sizable backpack on, much like one her explorer grandson might wear for a short excursion. It was mottled leather, hung together by threaded shoestring and rope. Hanging from one side was a large canteen which clanked against his belt as he shuffled down each stair.

"Are you going somewhere?" Miriam asked cautiously. Would he leave her alone? The possibility of finding more ways to escape unseen was thrilling, but the danger of being abandoned in a prison cell without food or water was far less so. Solas grinned so broadly she could count all his missing teeth.

"My machine needs the sun. So, little excursions, we will do. Picnics! Such a good host am I!" Miriam clenched her fists, ready to pounce on the Wisp as soon as he entered the ward, but at his mental command the silver chain whipped forward and bound itself to her bracelet. She could no more conceive of escaping as she could flying out her tiny window. Solas bustled her up the stairs, clucking and grunting at her to hurry up.

When Miriam emerged from the cottage she was surprised to find the outside no wetter than any dewy morning at home, despite the ocean that had covered her window the previous night.

"The Night Shoals," Solas growled, as she looked around, bewildered.

"The shores of the Swamp get perforated by fórsa coming in from the Realms Above, so it don't settle right. Can't decide what it wants to be, so sometimes it's a beach, sometimes… ehhh." That made no sense to Miriam, but she just walked silently as the wisp led her like an obedient dog in the opposite direction they had come, away from the threadbare canoe that was presumably still tied to the riverbank tree, and away from the crash of the ocean against the beach.

Miriam could feel the glory of the sun on her skin, but it was no more than a hint of what she knew she would feel if she could break free of the cloud cover, out over the open water. Also… again, that faint pull, coaxing her to cross the sea. That something was waiting for her there. Solas led her through what seemed like a perfectly normal field, except for the fact that it sat surrounded by swamp.

Neatly tied hay bales sat fresh in cubed pyramids periodically dotting the pale green grass, though nowhere did she see any grazing animals. In fact, the hay had not a spot of mildew on it, even though grass had threaded its way into the bottommost bales. There were also no animal trails or hoof prints that would lead her to believe a cow or anything similar had been here recently. Solas grunted his way to a seat on one of the closer bales, and he motioned for her to sit.

"You don't understand the Tír yet," he growled.

"This… all feels strange to you. The ocean last night, too, yes?"

"Yes," Miriam whispered, as always struggling to speak when the bracelet was activated.

"Mmm," Solas said. To her further surprise he pulled a bundle of objects from his pack. Some were shockingly ordinary, and might have even seemed charming under different circumstances. A long, thin blanket which he spread on the ground. An overly perforated wicker basket, from which he pulled smoked ham and fruit that almost looked like grapes, had they not been yellow. A wine bottle, old and cloudy, wrapped in musty twine. Two glasses. The last item set Miriam's teeth on edge.

It was a purple crystal, which seemed weighty in Solas's hand but might not have seemed very substantial in hers. Not that she would ever want to touch it. It reminded her of something her middle child Calina had brought home once from the creek bed half a mile from the Willow House. It had once been some sort of bulky insect - a monstrous stag beetle or hulking June bug. It had been the size of Calina's entire eight-year-old hand.

Something was very wrong with this insect however, which is what had driven the child to pick it up and examine it so closely. Its thorax had been bloated to bursting, and indeed rough furrows had cracked their way down its exoskeleton, from which a mustard paste seemed to extrude in globby little tendrils. Its eyes had exploded from its head, replaced by more fungal tentacles, wavering like a blind man's walking stick at a road crossing.

Every second or so the little beast would pulse, its entire body shuddering and convulsing. Miriam had slapped the infected insect into the fire and doused Calina's hand in kerosene. Only an hour later she had led a group of men into the forest with firestarters and accelerants and that entire section of the creek had curled into flame, carefully tended by her posse to stay in control. When it was done, no trace of the fungus remained and she counted her village lucky. This crystal didn't move.

No fungus escaped its form, no seizure pulse of unnatural growth stirred its facets. Still, in observing it, she felt the same wrongness she had sensed in Calina's insect. Were she not in Solas's control she would have smashed it as hard as she could into the nearest hard surface. Solas seemed unbothered by the crystal. In fact, he regarded it lovingly, running his hand along each surface, nestling it gently into the grass between them.

"This is my Reel," he explained.

"You don't need to pay it any mind. We will sit, Solas and Miriam will talk, and it will do its job with no more work from me." He uncorked the wine and poured them both a glass. From the ham he sliced thin strips, arranging them on the blanket beside the fruit.

"First - I give you wine, give you meat and fruit. This does not help me or my machine. It does not harm you. I wish only for this time we spend - and it will be spent either way - to be as pleasant as possible." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. What do you do to distract the children you lure?

Miriam thought to herself, but her hands moved mechanically, sipping the wine, which was old and smokey, and nibbling the ham, which was salty to the point of intolerance. Solas moved unhurriedly, chewing his own lunch as if he had nothing better to do in the world than sit under the clouds and relax.

"The Reel needs connection," he said abruptly.

"It's not enough to touch your fórsa - we must prime the pump to start the flow, much like the big gem on the cottage uses the ocean. You must know Solas, empathize with him - wish to help him."

"Not… likely…" Miriam managed to spit out between clenched teeth. Solas shrugged.

"I will tell you a story of this very spot. Such a sad, tragic life, has Solas had. You only must listen." As much as Miriam wanted to clasp her palms over her ears, they were stuck carving ham and sipping wine, under no control of her own. So, sitting there, warm and comfortable among the hay bales, under a clouded sky and a hot breeze, she was forced to listen as Solas began his tale. ✧✧✧ Wisp families are not as dryads. Not as High Sidhe, not as cats or horses.

Each member of a Wisp family is distinct from the other - were you to meet a father and son out on the road you would think them new friends for how little a resemblance there was. Solas had a large family, each unique to the point of comedy, genetics spun on a wheel and selected at random. The story he told that day was about his cousin, Fionn. The only son of Solas's aunt, Fionn was an irregularity among his kind.

Tall and thin, with ashy skin and delicate ears, some whispered he was no pure Wisp at all, that perhaps Solas's aunt had been visited by some High Sidhe with low tastes. This heresy dogged Fionn his whole life and despite his fair visage he grew into a cruel, nasty bastard with a temper set off by as little as an ill-timed drop of morning dew. Fionn may not have inherited his father's stooped walk or pocked face, but he did take over the family farm when his father met his end ten cups deep at the local tavern.

Each day Fionn felt the ghost of his father, whose cruelty was itself legendary, looking over his shoulder and screeching "I would have done it better!" At that time Solas worked summers at Fionn's farm, needing extra scratch for tobacco weed or honeyed wine during his days of study at the fancy university he went to - first Wisp to ever be granted admission! - he would often boast to the girls whom he'd ply with the wine Fionn's coin provided.

Being a farmhand on those hottest days of the year, Solas got a firsthand view of the events that befell his fair cousin. The farmstead bordered the Golden Swamp on two sides, the tiny village road on another. The real thorn in Fionn's side was the fourth border, which was the Merchant Way, known as Log Road, for the timber trade that used to dominate the region, before the Swamp encroached too far inland and trees began to have feelings about being cut from their stumps.

That wasn't the problem - living in the Tír is to live with constant, unsettling change. The problem was that Log Road remained a popular thoroughfare for trade through the region, and inevitably every season some ne'er-do-wells decided that the best way to get to the village through the Swamp was to shave half a day's travel by cutting through Fionn's fields. The season in question had just ended, and the roadside field was fallow, scattered grains and ox droppings the only remnant of the harvest.

So the four men and one woman who leaped Fionn's fence weren't really causing any damage - but it was on principle that Fionn confronted the group about half a mile inside his property line. Get your dog-licking arses back up the Log Road, Fionn had snapped, his thumb ready on the threshing scythe he carried for both wheat and trespassers the likes of these. This is my property, not some game path you can tromp down.

Easy on, puffer, the lead man had said, puffer being the word for a fancy lad kept by a wealthy widow. Usually meaning feckless, weak and womanly. We're halfway through now. No sense in legging it back when we could tromp on ahead just as well. Fionn's hand tightened on the scythe and Solas could see the rage building in his cousin's face. I'll count thirteen, and if I don't see the tail of you by then you'll find yourself a part of my harvest. This is my land, and my da's before.

I won't be thumbed at on ground toiled with family blood. Solas never even thought of readying a weapon of his own. He was small, even for a Wisp, and his talents were of the mind, and as yet not well developed. He saw the trespassers calling water and earth fórsa. Indeed, the ground under Fionn was also whipping around his boots as he called up his own nature. He thought his cousin foolish, to risk life and limb to defend the honor of a patch of dirt.

When the lead man's head was on the ground, his body asunder six feet away, joined soon after by Fionn, still intact but perforated by ballistic stones called from the ground by the woman and another man, Solas had sighed deeply. It wasn't the ground his cousin had been fighting for, he realized, but the pressures that had built his entire life.

To be seen as less than a true Wisp, to be called a bastard, to be forever hung under his father's unforgiving shadow - these were all wheels that tightened the noose Fionn was inevitably marching towards. Fionn had been trapped by the expectations of a society who demanded he be more Wisp than Wisp and a father who suffered no excuses to fall on his ears. Fionn had been marked for death before he'd even been born, and as far as Solas was concerned there'd been no help for it.

✧✧✧"What do you reckon the lesson is there, my girl?" Solas said, savoring the last slice of ham.

"What should old Fionn have done to avoid his doom?" Miriam scowled at the little man. As he talked, a small pain had begun to blossom in her head. Now, at the end of his story, it was a thumping cacophony in her skull.

"Don't sell your life for false pride?" Solas laughed, a reedy, wheezing sound that reminded Miriam of a leaky bellows.

"Not even close! If not for false pride we swampfolk would have no pride at all! The real lesson?" He leaned in closer, his teeth chattering into a wretched grin.

"He hoped naught but a fence and threat would keep the riff-raff out of where they weren't wanted. I'd have let the travelers on through, then crept to the village inn later that night and opened their throats." Miriam grimaced.

"I suppose those travelers were lucky it wasn't your farm then." Solas's grin widened.

"Oh yes, very lucky. Except Fionn met his end without heir and I found myself the recipient of his last will. By nightfall this was my land, and by the next morning there were five new scarecrows lining the Log Road." He leaned in, his breath sweet from wine over an acrid rot.

"And wouldn't you believe it? I never had a single fence jumper in all my years." Miriam only looked at him in horror and he laughed again, snatching his crystal up from the ground.

"Ehh, not so full as I wanted, but it's early days yet," he said, shaking the stone gently. Inside she could see a luminescent fluid, little more than a millimeter deep, sloshing around like the last bit of oil in a lantern. Solas frowned as he ran his hand along the bottom, and Miriam noticed a small crack that had not been there before. Solas looked at her suspiciously and grunted.

"Pack up the basket," he ordered.

"The ocean will be here before long."