blairie


They came to woodsy Rand gardens and a small, sunken Snotrian henge in a grove of red berried rowan ash trees. Gormglaith ran ahead and eagerly warded the banshees inside to look at Swanilde Raine's Pulling moon, a cast of it two yards across, laser cut with deep heed on a hollow ball of blue-grey corundum. Nearby they took shallow stairs down to a chalky barrow lit by bounced sunlight and were soon bunched in an airily crowded tram making busy stops in a thickly leafed neighbourhood. Gormglaith and the banshees were by themselves again when the tram streaked through shallow mead hills. The low, waferish houses of Kin Dails faded into mist whilst puffy, cloudlike sheep grazed on a sloping green, drawing the wonted oohs and ahs along with dazed, whist glomming. Gliding into dark pine woods the tram's speed was nigh uncanny given all the tight sways and skirts between high hedgerows nearly sweeping its sides. After strobing tree trunks with glimpses of a dark blue-green loch the tram slid into a shady stop called Blairie.

Bairrfhionn, Gwenhwyfer and Gormglaith walked abreast down a hazy, treesome and cobblestoned lane by many houses. They came upon a beech grove where popinjays, magpies and finches fussed and twittered overhead as three girls, stark but for the bulky, webbed gloves on their left hands, played a rundling robin game of blinding catch with a small red hardball. A black tabby cat with grey tigerish stripes and leopardy black spots stopped to gaze up and puzzle with striking green-gold eyes and a pink nose, greet them with a speechy miaow, get coos, pats and scratches on the head from Gwenhwyfer and slink into a hedge.

Beyond lurked Glas knoll, a tangled and knotty weave of smooth, mossy green granite. Under a wan sky crackled with blue they climbed wafered, leaf strewn metal and slushstone steps in a cool breeze wafting whiffs of beech, pine and hints of yew. A door crafted in sundry woods opened and the banshees warded Gormglaith to go first.

Inside were white granite walls of many shades and roughnesses holding old tapestries in the slyly lean, early Frisian style. High above the black spinel stone floors was deeply boxed wood craft set with birch, elm, cherry and ash. The gather lair had a big, snug looking, black bolstered settle on a cannily embroidered rug before a wide ghost deck backed with dark inlaid schorl. On either side tall windows brought sweeping sights of the loch, its wooded eastern shore about a furlong away.

South of the gather lair was a supper cove with a weftishly paned, corner wrapping window and black hornblende board set on a slanted leg of lasered pink quartz lit from within between matching benches. Off to the side was an open, sleek kitchen.

"How cozy," said Gormglaith.

"I like coming here," put Gwenhwyfer. "It's a bright haunt with an eggy tale."

At the kitchen taps for drinks, Bairrfhionn took bogberry and Gormglaith had ginger crush in a heavy tumbler. Gwenhwyfer drew the same.

"Gwenhwyfer slashes ginger crush!" said Bairrfhionn.

A nest off the supper cove looked on thick green woods and a sliver of loch Blairie. The deeply overhanging eaves of a yellow tiled, ivy clad house hovered startlingly close by. A low black granite staddle stacked with thick, fluffy layers of dark indigo cotton hemmed wide windows and a glowing strip of backlit runes cut from blue zoisite ice ran above head level along smooth black hornblende walls. The three of them walked to Glas knoll's crosswise end and into a nest with a rune strip of colourful quartzes and a floor striped in blond hardwoods. Like the supper cove it had a big corner wrap window beyond which a fleet of swans swam near the grassy shore.

"Th'art in thy shenn's croft!" said Bairrfhionn. "Take either nest, we'll have the other."

"The settle's dreamy too!" Gwenhwyfer put with a nod. "So how 'bout a wee walk to Blairie?"

In a bath walled and floored with wide black spinel stone tiles they stood at a looking glass squeezing a silvery pouch of bluish purple mush, spreading it on faces and hands as girls are wont to do late fall afternoons on the West meads.

A sharp breeze flipped Gormglaith's thatch as they stood on the loch bank behind Glas knoll.

"Are there fish in it?"

"Big docking ones, gold mostly," said Bairrfhionn. "Some'll eat from thy hand, mallards too!"

"I like the swans," said Gormglaith, warding a forefinger with arm straight.

The swans swam up quickly as the three bent over and scrunched to stroke the birds and talk to them, then strolled along the windswept path hugging a peaty, lappy shore with thick stands of trees hiding a few crofts on the left. Gormglaith yawed her head as a ruddy golden splash broke through the rippling dark water.

They walked onto a lochside mead and saw maybe twenty girls kicking and running after a black and orange swatched football. Some were maegden but most were maedchen or moppets and all wore handy looking white longstockings, many grass stained and mud streaked. A dozen came tearing down the hill to flock about them.

"Hey Bairrfhionn!" yelled a tall scollagyn, long blond braids flying as she leapt down the brecky slope.

"Hey!"

"Blaanid told me!" the scollagyn said breathlessly, dripping wet from the game.

"So how 'bout it?" asked Bairrfhionn, hands on her hips.

"Ok!"

The maegden stood beaming and fresh faced as Bairrfhionn nudged her crinkling nose with a forefinger. Leveling deft hazel eyes she held out a hand to Gormglaith.

"I'm Feegan."

"I'm Gormglaith... from Elmthorpe."

"Art thou pledging the Wrath?!"

"Maybe!"

A wispy moppet with keen holly green eyes and long white hair in a stranded tumbling tangle tugged at Gwenhwyfer's leg.

"Gwenhwyfer! Kick a few!"

"This is Beiwe," she said, smirking.

Beiwe hid shyly behind Gwenhwyfer's leg, peering up at Gormglaith.

"Hi Beiwe," said Gormglaith, leaning down to grasp her hand. "I have a little sister who's rather like thee!"

The moppet kept her mouth tightly sealed.

"Beiwe," said Gwenhwyfer, "I can't play football now... but how 'bout walking us to the teach?"

"Ok. The game was leeg anyway."

"Beiwe!" said Feegan, hands on hips. "Take it back! Even if it was leeg, the game was for fun and there's no want of scathing polls even if tha canst kick a few like a brat. Save it for thy match next week with Thrush Kin Dails since we both know what little thrushikins would say, don't we?"

Beiwe looked at the ground, biting her lip with knitted brow.

"Sorry," she mumbled, throwing out her arms and letting them flop back to her sides.

The stroll carried on as Gormglaith glommed at Bairrfhionn and Feegan walking ahead, the scollagyn's bottom something like two small footballs squished together and rubbing inside her rimpled white longstockings whilst the banshee's made like sway in black. Gormglaith heard the words beech, gasping... splits. Chatting with Beiwe, Gwenhwyfer watched Gormglaith from the corner of an eye.

"Beiwe says she likes thy thatch, Gormglaith!"

Gormglaith smiled down at the tangle haired moppet.

"Thanks Beiwe, I like thine, too!"

"I'm an e53l39bn4."

"Th'art Beiwe," said Gwenhwyfer, smiling.

"Yeah, I'm Beiwe. I'm five..." she sighed wearily, holding out a splayed hand, then looked up sharply at Gormglaith.

"Who art thou, anyway?"

So they rambled, Gormglaith and Beiwe gabbing about the Loch faerie and pillywiggin book then Tales of the knotty kindel as they reached a thorpe of alcoved, limestone buildings with brightly coloured windows, pitched roofs of dark green tile and garden showers of flowers, herbs and tall grass halting against misty stands of soaring pines.

"My kynn Flann was brought in here," said Gormglaith as hundreds of shimmering orange and black butterflies fluttered between them, swirled like a cloud, then sailed on.

"I've heard she's sly!" Bairrfhionn answered at last with her lopsided grin.

They came to a leafy cluster of shops, one with glowing argon blue runes spelling Fjorgyn's fizz, a maedchen haunt like the Soohead in Elmthorpe. At the Klutch, runed as such in ruddy neon orange, scollagyn and shees sipped coffee under pine blue green umbrellas flapping in the wind. Nigh was a lifelike (and sized) hard white clunch carving of a scollagyn with a swatch of short hair by shaved sides, holding a bundle of flax sheaves and looking wistfully over the water at a gathering haze. The linens and klompen looked like what Blairies still wore and by the runes on its staddle below, had been put there 857 years before.

"Who is she?" asked Gormglaith.

"Glynnis Hafgan Banning," said Gwenhwyfer, "Blairie witch, went on to Fen Glioon pailtfylgjic, then Snotra and afterwards taught here for her last fifty years."

"I should have known... by the hair."

"Hafgan..." sighed Gwenhwyfer, glancing from carving to clannin girl.

"Not shenn," said Gormglaith, "but kin..."

"Lucky girl, Beiwe!" Feegan put with a snicker. "I'm gonna help thee swot before supper. It was spooks meeting thee Gormglaith. I hope I see thee again!"

"I hope so too!"

"How thrilling," said Beiwe. "...'bye Gormglaith. Thanks for talking to me about Tales of the knotty kindel."

Feegan's right arm was pulled taut as the moppet towed her off.

So they lingered near Glynnis. Four scollagyn sat on a bench close to shore, swotting with goblins as a knot of maedchen slunk from Fjorgyn's, staring hard at Gormglaith and the Sparkenbanes who themselves gazed after three scollagyn playfully tripping along the foggy bank path, arms swinging hand in hand.

"So Feegan's pledging the Wrath?" Gormglaith asked Bairrfhionn.

"She's carrying over!"

"She's chilling."

"We met her at a Lughnasadh feish at Woolf house in Fen Glioon, where she's done four summers. She flew away more than once," Bairrfhionn said, smirking, "but that's Feegan."

"Yes it is," came a crackling answer.

Gormglaith wheeled to see a skinny girl with chiseled cheekbones, alit purple eyes and wide pushed up nose bearing a gleaming platinum ring, white and orange freaked hair floating in static about a trim straight waist loosely sheathed in Blairie's handy longstockings.

"Thou'rt Gormglaith!" she said, putting forth a skeletal hand which peeked from open white armgloves. "I've met thy kin Gweneth, my bat. A sly maegden! Perhaps we can loom a bit of heed into her too! Hi. I'm Blaanid Raine-Blairie."

"Th'art Blaanid?!" answered Gormglaith, flummoxed. "I've heard so much about thee! I'm thrilled... I mean..."

"Codswallop!" said Blaanid, waving an arm. "We've never met so how could thou knowst a thing about me but I'm flattered anyway. Hi Gwenhwyfer Bloor... Bairrfhionn Sparkenbane! My 272nd birthday eve is Winterfyllith 30th, the night before Samhain and thou and I are twined for one flurt in the midnight dreary at Fleet's in Albans Firth, with all the trimmings! As it happens, I'll be in town."

"Ok, Blaanid!"

"See thee then! Later, y'all!"

The witch walked briskly down the bank path where a flock of scollagyn overwhelmed her, giggling and gabbing.

"Blaanid taught my Flann," said Gormglaith. "Her sway."

"I had her ten moons," Bairrfhionn answered, nodding, "for scrud freayll, before I went to the Wrath. I still haunt her, like when I need a quick, trusty hit of root!"

They were strolling beneath low, broken clouds when Gwenhwyfer took many steps ahead, twirled and skipped backwards with a grin and glimmering, deeply sunken eyes. She spun once, hair flying, then held her wan right hand straight armed to Gormglaith.

"Oh Gormglaith please hold hands," she beseeched. "I've had so much fun today, let's hold hands so the three of us can walk back in crushes and not forget."

Gormglaith smiled shyly, giving her open hands to the banshees as the three of them walked along the lochside path into a patch of fog billowing off the water.

The western sky was a ruddy pumpkin orange when they reached Glas knoll. A wailing wind came up as pines and birches answered in surging rustles and rushes. Gwenhwyfer stared at the lapping loch, smirked, dropped her cutty sark on the grass, stepped out of raw wooden klompen and still in black longstockings, waded into the dark water. Thigh deep she rundled about to face them, threw herself backwards and shouted from within a sparkling splash,

"Way! Why are y'all so parchy?"

"No way am I going in," said Bairrfhionn, watching with head tilted, "unless thou dost."

Glancing at Bairrfhionn with a wide grin, Gormglaith peeled off her cutty sark, stepped out of the still sawdusty klompen and lankily bounded in. The three were soon dunking and splashing in the crisp water. Six fat goldfish swam floppily between them, orange dusk light playing off fluorescing scales.

"They do that," said Bairrfhionn, steeped to chalken shoulders, "since girls here feed them, which some say they shouldn't do..."

"Looky," said Gwenhwyfer, sunken eyes so bright, nose ring glittering, holding out her hands as a plump red one with white and black dapples swam into them. Meanwhile a grey loon hooted pleas nearby. With a caspery glance Gwenhwyfer spun in the water and so they all floated, wafting on their backs, hair wet and limp, to watch stars come out amid streaks of fast flowing clouds. Howling wind raked the trees as cackles of thunder brought a quick chill to the air and the swans hovered nigh in a saffron light.

"Wraithen," sighed Gormglaith.

They ran into Glas knoll shivering and giggling. Rinsed and in dry linen, damp locks combed and lank, drinks from the kitchen in hand, they plopped down on the big settle. Gwenhwyfer folded up with legs drawn to chest and closed her eyes. Bairrfhionn lifted an eyebrow and gazed at Gormglaith.

"I happen to know Grendels don't wontedly do Ben chee inns, never mind you Hafgan-Halsens. Was it merry? ...Or so too?"

"A kick. I like the ben chee... Brighde. She's lekker."

"Brighde and I fuck," said Bairrfhionn, glancing out at the loch now in a blue grey light.

"Thought so! Didst tha meet her there?"

"Yeah, I've known her since I was a maedchen! My kynn still hang out at that one rather a lot. Brighde must be in her early hundreds now but I've never asked... she nests with a bunch of other shees, ben chees, over by Coo rood. She's a flirt but has a spooky heart... and reads me like a book by the bye."

"Is she wanton?"

"Not much. She likes being amidst enthralling girls, is all. Lots of enthralling girls," Bairrfhionn put with a smirk, waving her hand.

Gwenhwyfer stirred dreamily.

"What are we talking about?"

"Brighde."

"Oh," Gwenhwyfer sighed sleepily, eyes still closed, "Brighde likes ben cheein', Gormglaith..."

Gormglaith watched Bairrfhionn's hair shimmer maple red with freaks of crimson and pumpkin in the twilight.

"I should haunt my kynn and put a heart on the blip," she said.

"There's something I think I should tell thee first."

"What?"

"My name. Bairrfhionn Pane Aghadreen of the Greens Sparkenbane."

Bairrfhionn nodded as Gormglaith gaped back with wide eyes.

"Findabair Pane and I... are twain."

"...Bloody flurt."

"Thou see'st, we both carry all the tides of our afliae shenn, Aghadreen of the Greens. We've got her thread, but twained with sundry bundlings from the shy and hooky braids so neither of us is quite alike to her, nor to each other. I've never met Findabair, there're three dozen of us flitting about the world and I don't think she's heard one's a banshee... yet."

Bairrfhionn splayed her hands with an open, grabsome stare.

"I knew Findabair was twain to Aghadreen," Gormglaith said at last.

"Anyone want popcorn?" Gwenhwyfer asked, stirring beneath lank damp hair.

She got up without waiting for an answer and headed for the kitchen. Gormglaith watched her walk on sturdy toes in black, footed longstockings.

"I have to slash..." said Bairrfhionn, leaping up and dashing off the other way, glancing back to flash a toothy grin.

Gormglaith looked forward and frowned at the now moonlit loch of Blairie wood.

Gwenhwyfer called up a song braid, the kind that throbs and weaves without end. Hidden blue and green spots came on, lighting the walls as she made all the noises of popping parched corn kernels by hand. When the banshee came back with a brimming stainless steel bowl, Gormglaith was folded up fast asleep.

She awoke sprawled on the settle in a hush of scattered blue green light. Bairrfhionn and Gwenhwyfer were littered on each other nearby. Gwenhwyfer's face had a sharp look half hidden by yellow hair, starkly dreaming. Bairrfhionn's head was thrown back on her clannin sister's shoulder, long red locks flowing in flat plaits upon them both. Her mouth was open in a loopy, nearly thrilled smile, breathing evenly and with a little wooshing.

Gormglaith stood, got her bearings and headed for the bath, walking on her toes. Tight light beams came on within cool black spinel stone walls as she faced the looking glass. Her hair was a tangle, the longstockings rumpled. She looked down at her legs in snuggish white linen, bones and thews of shins, knees, thighs, pelvis and the upended gore shaped mound between, the dimple of her navel and beetling slats of her ribs. She shook her straw thatch. She went to the sinks, found a tooth scrubber, let it wander and foam in her mouth with the wonted taste of natron and myrrh, then splashed her face. She had another look, arms loose at her sides. Tossing her head she walked off.

Back in the gather lair she found Gwenhwyfer and Bairrfhionn as she'd left them, limbs and bodies fallen together like knackered wraiths. Gormglaith stared at Bairrfhionn then loped, glid and skipped across slippery black spinel stone to the scrubbed titanium kitchen which lit up with baffled white light. She tickled a few brightly hued goblins, idly flicked through the help tales, then knit her brow and glanced about, sniffing.

With a low beep and taut cathlunc an oversized chalken dish slid out bearing hollow elbow noodyls smothered in thick orange cheese along with a big blue cornflower. Next a frothy tumbler of black dewberry glid forth. Taking these to the board she settled whist onto the hard but snug pink quartz bench to snack. After smelling and eyeing the dewberry, she drank, then pulled Eachdraidh from satchel, set it on the board with a thump and began to read. She got up once to pull a ginger crush from the tap.

The harvest moon waxed nearly full upon the elder gleam of a trillion stars as Gormglaith stood at the weftishly paned window in a kindling light, head tilted, gazing across the flustered loch whilst birches swayed and pines bowed in a ripping wind. She reeled about to see Gwenhwyfer still swathed in sleep by the blue green glow and Bairrfhionn's wisp of a freckled, lopsided smile, her left hand beckoning from a moonbeam as Gormglaith slid into a sleepy tangle with black linen longstockings, flat locks of red hair and the sundry smells of girls, settles, tapestries and heedfully kept crofts.