trigger


The eight of them were waiting in the underground stop below Cluain house when five shees got wanton with freckled Bairrfhionn who seemed more than skittishly aware of the sharp looks this sparked from Gormglaith whilst they shrieked and beamed to meet her. On the tram she settled in next to Raoghnailt. Creiddyladl scrunched up against a window, left hand buried deep in her lap, Feegan clutching her right. The others took seats crosswise with many hips and knees rubbing as the tram glid through north Fen Glioon at breathtaking speed.

"We should reach Albans Firth, anyway," said Gwenhwyfer, "in little more than an hour."

The Sparkenbanes were soon within a sparsely lit flight barn, walking across its wide lobby where twirling beams of light played on a smooth floor of sleekened pink Iceland spar chips. The life sized ghost of a soaring, red billed Frisian white stork with black-edged wings spread to a span of more than six feet (and flapping now and then) hovered beside yellow runes spelling Albans Firth. Here they mingled at a gate with about twenty other girls, a few of whom nudged and nodded towards Gormglaith. Meanwhile under these gazes the seven other Sparkenbanes behaved more or less like they'd all been clannin with her for years, even as she and Bairrfhionn plied their start as plighted sisters through fitful glances.

On a bench beneath three strips of blue argon light sat a clanniner with her twin daughter. Both wore thick, wan longstockings, grey cutty sarks and glittery green wooden klompen, their skeinishly embroidered hairbands holding heedlessly combed and greasy fair hair. Big crinkly eyes looked out from faces startlingly alike even for twins. As the clanniner cuddled and nursed a swaddled bairn with bright red hair, the moppet lifted her chin, glommed dish-eyed at Gormglaith and starkly mouthed with thin, ruddy and wordish lips,

Forever Findabair

"The word is out," said Bairrfhionn as they walked briskly through the boarding sleeve.

Gormglaith held her onward stare from behind a lock of straw thatch.

The flyer's wide riding lair glowed in narrow beams and light strips with forty blue grey seats, two to a side. The forward tangle lair was lit dimly red beyond a glassy bulkhead.

"Dost tha want the window?" asked Raoghnailt.

"Dost thou?"

"Uhm..."

"Take it!" said Gormglaith, warding a straight arm.

Raoghnailt flashed a grin and scooted onto the window seat as Gormglaith slipped in beside her. Whilst Creiddyladl and Feegan yoked together across the way, Raoghnailt eagerly peered out high over the tarmac, then back at Gormglaith.

"Hi everybody," came the slick and even, softly boosted greeting of a flight witch, "Leaving Fen Glioon for Albans Firth, we'll be pulling back in a tick so see to it thy seatmate's buckled in, 'k?"

Raoghnailt and Gormglaith fastened wide straps across their hips.

With a soft flump the hatch shut which brought yawning and blinking at the pulling of eardrums. The flyer tugged back then taxied at some speed. With the high rises of Fen Glioon sparkling nearby, the lair beams dimmed and all were shoved hard against their backs. Blue lights rushed by and the flyer rose flush for a dozen yards before tilting skyward. The ground fell away and the nose pitched ever higher with everyone thrown fast in their seats as the flyer punched through the clouds. Through breaks in them, thorpes were clumps of gleam spanned by dotted threads of light.

Forward, a witch in the tangle lair's left seat made shallow waves with her hands, then reeled her fingers. The windscreens were black as hornblende and the lights below slipped by ever faster as Feegan and Creiddyladl pogged in lowing beams.

"Ok everyone," said the other witch, "we should be landing at Albans Firth... in something under an hour."

Without a hint the flyer quickened beyond the speed of sound and on the earth's rumpled floor below what glimmers there were slid by in glimpses.

Raoghnailt waved her hand, ghosts popped up before them and they flicked their eyes to show each other snips. Among these was a truly early Tales of the knotty kindel showing four stealthy maegden with bloody upraised palms handfasting behind a crumbling and mossy green henge, a moodily lit, thrashsome lass reel which they lingered on, then a fylgjical one, then some of the bamfish casts Geileis liked. Raoghnailt brought up Muirin Figan in a blue glass-walled kitchen on foggy chalk cliffs, telling in her ever so clipped, Frisian way how one might fix glion groudle pye from scratch with nary a blip from any robot or pink.

"Why do I think this is happening now?" asked Gormglaith.

"It is," said Raoghnailt, staring slack jawed. "She's doing it. Didst tha hear that? She so too awed the ah of connaghyn. What a snot!"

The scollagyn curled her upper lip as Muirin smoothly sliced three connaghyn onions into wafers thin as linen.

"I could never do that," sighed Gormglaith, shaking her head. "I'm all thumbs in a kitchen."

Raoghnailt nodded wistfully, blinking into a toon with edgily fetching pillywiggins, throbbing beats and takes on notched string spells for moppets.

"Hey... look fast!" said Raoghnailt, nodding out the window as Kin Dails swept by far below them, shining bluish white by the Running river's narrow black ribbon.

Back to ghost blinking Raoghnailt brought up the long yellow blond hair and heavy eyelids of a skeeal reader named Grizel Brynk, her steady tongue rundling in the trundled lilt of Fen Glioon.

"...whist, but word was spread through the more than three hundred who saw it. By some tellings, thousands greeted the banshee as she came out of Loch henge."

Meanwhile a cast of Gormglaith popped in beside Grizel, shown thighs up and wearing glowsome, bane white longstockings with a Snotrian wrap pulled snug under bare chest, sunken eyes blue lake and canny, nose ring throwing off its gleam, shoulders back, right hand thrust steadfastly behind her, palm up and flattened as if thrown by a hard fylgjic reeler, much like any sly and dashing maegden who might happen to ward and pull scaanishly from the Eachdraidh under storm clouds and a beaming harvest moon.

"Bloody flurt..." said Gormglaith, brow knit, slackjawed.

"...it looks more like me than I do."

"Gasping!" said Raoghnailt.

"That's my frickin' Slinn's gauge!"

"Thou art such a brat!"

"It's trigger! Look at my hand!"

Eryn Mynter's trigger

"...The cast beside me was crafted this evening by Eryn Mynter. If you're only now flicking in, she's Gormglaith Grendel Hafgan Halsen, from a thrallish clannin at Elmthorpe, that's in the West meads. Two of her kynn are Grendels of Kin Dails and another's Blairie. We hear she didn't do an oardagh with Morigan, puzzling instead, 'Is it to teach?' When told how Findabair, a friend in Elmthorpe, ate a daisy after hearing she was at Loch henge, Gormglaith gave a fylgjic talk..."

"Fuck!" said Gormglaith, blinking hard and staunching the ghost.

Raoghnailt gaped as others whispered, casting glances.

"Thou mustest not listen to what they say about thee..." put Gormglaith, holding out her hands and shaking her head.

"...or thou mightst start believing it."

"I think it's spooks!" said Raoghnailt, shivering and bright eyed.

"Too spooks," said Gormglaith. "I mean what do they know about me, anyway? Besides, what's with all the gab and gush? I'm meant to be a bloody banshee, never mind the faerie tale nose ring which I don't even have yet! What'll Geileis think?"

Raoghnailt nodded quickly as Gormglaith plopped back in her seat, blowing up a lock of thatch with her breath.

"...and another thing! I was there and I didn't see thousands of girls when they snuck me out that frickin' side gate!"

"Uhm, truth be told, I think they thought I was..."

Raoghnailt waggled a finger back and forth between them. Gormglaith gave her a sidelong look. Neither could quash a grin so they burst into giggles as only maegden can.

The flyer's steady wooshing had dwindled to low pink noise and they rode on a sturdy glide, now and then with barely felt, stiff bounces.

"So we're back beyond Elmthorpe I guess," said Gormglaith, leaning by Raoghnailt to see out the window.

Few lights sparkled below.

"...Way," put Raoghnailt with eyebrows raised.

"Ok everybody," said a flight witch, "we're over the Rank, a bit faster than five snaps, up about six leagues and nearly at the top of our bow."

"Come on!" said Raoghnailt, tossing her head. "Let's have a peek!"

Reaching and opening the glassy hatch of the tangle lair they gazed through its windscreens at a moonlit and cloud smeared, bent earth streaming below them. Neither witch had a hand on the orange goblin in front of her although they watched heedfully whilst talking.

"Hey y'all," said a tall, lightly freckled witch with short tousled hair and a slight gap between her front teeth.

"How's the ride?" asked the other, her hip length black hair shivering as she looked Gormglaith up and down.

"Like storks!" she answered, nodding.

Next they headed aft down the flyer's length towards its galley, glancing at Morigan and Gwenhwyfer who were deeply entwined in a game of put and heed. With ginger crushes in nearly weightless sheer tumblers they slid back into their seats as Bairrfhionn knelt beside them and tried to start a gab by saying sun time upon landing would be about the same as when they'd left Fen Glioon.

"We saw a bit of Grizel Brynk..." said Gormglaith.

"Yeah, Tegan and me too."

"...along with Eryn Mynter's dreamy fad bait."

"Is it so blatant?" Bairrfhionn asked with a toothy smirk.

"As if anyone gives a luzz what I think! It's trigger is all, like when Cathryn Kirk threw the same bleeding throe by Moon henge in Lundin 1400 years ago."

"I hear that rather spun," said Bairrfhionn.

"Whatever. If I must be shown wavin' stern under a pulling moon I guess y'all have a grip even if I don't."

"I like it," said Raoghnailt, "even if it is trig."

"I'll tell Eryn!" Bairrfhionn said, standing. "She had less than an hour to do it, tha knowst!" the banshee called over her shoulder.

Gormglaith sighed. Outside the window, thorpen clusters of light shone on the trundling hills of Northumberland.

Throughout the steep and slackening, ear popping drop they were thrown forward against the straps for five minutes, then watched the moon peek by scattered clouds as the flyer skimmed over the hilltops of Argyll giving way to shimmering coastal Albans Firth. After a long, bending glide over white-topped waves, blowing grasses came up under the glow of landing lights and the flyer's wide tyres seamlessly gripped hard slushstone as its nose dipped deeply then lifted smoothly back. The craft crept up to a glassy gate and ears popped again when the hatch pulled in and slid open.

In brisk night air the eight girls stood on a high stoep, their faces lit geal blue by the gleam of a frosted wall. Hair flew in a howling, salty wind as the Keayn sheear's mighty surf crashed ashore below them. Tegan gazed through an opening in scooting clouds at three glittering stars against the colourful spray and shadow of the Milky way.

"Hmph," she said, "look. There's Wega like bells... do you see? It's the bright white one on top of the Clarsach, farthest right of the fall gore. It'll be the north star again, in nine thousand years. The Farlanes were two light years out, twenty-three to go when they were last heard from more than five thousand years ago. We're likely looking at whatever's left of them," Tegan sighed.

"Wouldst thou guess there is something?" Gormglaith asked, staring into starry space. "...Or someone?"

"Not with any luck," said Morigan, who drifted off as the wind blew ranting honey blond hair across her face.

They flocked through a spindled lobby. As in Fen Glioon some stared, a few even smiled and waved. Later a skate streaked north through the thoroughly lit high rises of inner Albans Firth, wending at whist high speed into dark Muir downs along the deep firths and lochs of the western Scottish coast.

Inside, sitting near them were three maegdenish twins, their heads shaved bald but for short tufts of ash blond hair tied off with ragged fluorescing bands. They wore black linen cutty sarks over harshly washed dark grey longstockings and heavy black klompen inlaid with silver stars.

To the wonder of all Gormglaith rose, spun up a sparkly smile and walked over to the lasses. Morigan leaned forward with a start but was stopped by Gwenhwyfer's quickly outstretched arm.

"Hi!"

They stared up at Gormglaith in gaping, cold blue-lipped amazement.

"Hi," said one of the twins.

"So! Do I like, crush out for Gale in the Dales or what!"

The twin looked her over with a puzzled smirk, then sneered, shaking her head.

"Celt slut," sang the other twin in an edgy whisper, brooding out the darkened window.

The third, with thighs spread, klompen set flat and hard on the deck, flicked a tilted middle finger.

The first nodded at Gormglaith, splaying her hands.

"Little goblin, thou canst mist off... anytime."

"I like Gale! Cherry pye with like, big scoops of vanilla ice cream on top. Th'ever try it?"

It was reedy Creiddyladl, staring down the first twin, nose ring gleaming.

"So what if it means golloping the odd pit now and then, eh? Everybody knows Gummies like, spin the kin. Nila nah ydnah! ...but whatev," she said, taking Gormglaith by the arm. "Hey! This is my new sister Gormglaith, 'k? Truth be told she's rather clever... when she's not having a fit!"

The scollagyn breezily pulled a hapless Gormglaith away. She sank to her seat in a stitch as Raoghnailt, now standing, stuck her tongue out at the lasses.

"I was about to tell thee," put Raoghnailt, warding her hands and plopping back down.

"I'm sorry Gormglaith," said Gwenhwyfer. "It's my botch, I thought thou knewst..."

"Gumm Bats were first with the gear..." whispered Creiddyladl, "gear for tears 'n it's true Gale nicks but... Gummies only ever yodel in the flesh which is maybe why you never heard about it in Elmthorpe. Meanwhile they've feished at those lekker little thrash haunts in Albans Firth for years 'n their tales can be cool even if the shee baiting does wear a bit thin after awhile. Anyway these're grindcore northern clannin lassies and here comes the clueless raw wood-shod Celt scolly from the sticks, flingin' gooseberries!"

Tears slid down Gormglaith's cheeks. She buried face in hands as the skate skied through the moonlit hills of the northwestern coast.

The lasses got off at Skipthorpe, barrowishly nestled on a gale swept firth of the treeless Haeth. The one who'd given the finger stopped to cast the Sparkenbanes a wanton smile, arms held at wild pitches echoing a kind of fylgjic reel as she thrust her flat, scammeled chest at them.

"Forever Findabair," she whispered, letting her head drop loose and askew before being pulled out by a stern hand, short hair and long limbs flying.