Niall woke up in a blind panic. He was drenched in sweat and was struggling to breathe. He clutched his chest, it felt tight and was getting tighter. No matter what he did, he couldn’t catch his breath. In a flash, he sat bolt upright. He could feel Brigid’s soft hand stroking his hair in an effort to calm him. As much as she tried, it didn’t feel like it was working. He was shaking all over, his chest was pounding, he thought he might die. He still couldn’t hear anything around him, but it didn’t look like anyone was trying to speak to him anymore. Brigid just kept stroking his hair and gently stopping his shaking. She was like a loving older sister or young mother, he thought. She really cared about him, even though she hardly knew him. Her touch was soft and warm but there was no sense of weakness around her, she didn’t seem fragile. It almost made him feel safe in this weird world. A world which felt like it was trying to kill him at every opportunity. Brigid was still talking away to him; completely in vain, he thought. She would keep trying to get through to him, she wasn’t one to give up on these things.
Niall noticed that Lugh had been whizzing around in the background the entire time. He had seemingly gathered materials and food from nowhere, almost as if he could create these things. While Niall had slumbered, Brigid and Lugh had kept themselves busy. They had set up a proper, and surprisingly comfortable camp they had built around the fire. Amongst the lavender forest, with the fire burning and the camp set up; their situation almost seemed cosy. It almost took Niall away from the fact that he couldn’t hear or speak. But it didn’t. He had started to calm down though, his thoughts beginning to clear from the whirling dervish in his head. It wasn’t quite relief, but it was definitely an improvement. He stood up unsteadily from the spacious log that Brigid had nursed him on, his legs shaking. Tentatively, he took a moment to steady himself, proceeding to place one foot in front of the other. Expelling HUGE effort to remain stable, he felt himself beginning to fall. Flinging his body against a tree, he wildly wrapped his arms around it. Lugh and Brigid lunged over to him, telling him to lie down and not to make himself any worse. Choosing to ignore this advice, Niall pressed on, trying his hardest to stay upright. Fumbling his way into the darkness of the woods; he was sure that he had to find that strange little faerie man that he had made homeless. Clambering from tree trunk to tree trunk, he scanned the ground as he went, making sure not to make the same mistake twice. The last thing he needed was to have two of these faeries on his back.
The clearing, where the faerie incident had occurred, materialised into view. It was empty, vapid, devoid of any signs of the mischievous little man who, Niall now believed, had cursed him. Brigid and Lugh caught up. Their protests to him running off were animated but meant little without any sound. Dropping to his knees, he began searching the undergrowth to find any sign of the tiny trickster. The other two watched him, perplexed for a second. “What in the name of all that’s holy is he doing?”, Lugh whispered to Brigid. She couldn’t answer him due to their preoccupation with trying to figure out exactly that; what was he doing? They kept watching him, mainly out of confusion. Niall paused from his frantic searching to look back at them. Their faces illustrated their pure bewildered befuddlement at what they were seeing. He leapt up to them, dragging them to the spot he was exploring and fervently pointing at the ground. Clearly not understanding what he was trying to convey, the boy proceeded to put on a performance that wouldn’t be lost in charades, miming what he could to get the two godly figures to understand. Amazingly, Niall thought, Lugh eventually managed to decipher the message he was trying to get across. The fire-bearded god’s face twisted into a visage of worriment. Turning to Brigid, he simply said, “this isn’t good; it’s a faerie.”
“Bollocks”, she sighed, looking at the ground. The two boys gawped at her, surprised more than anything, to hear such a word come from such a pleasant, caring person. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to hear from the Celtic goddess of children. “Well don’t stand there looking at me like a pair of lúdramáns, what does this faerie want from you? Why did it put a hex on you?”, she asked. Niall started to act out the unfortunate sequence of events that led him to this point. She stopped him. Turning to Lugh, she asked, “d’you have a parchment and something to write with?” He duly obliged, reaching into his pouch to pull out the most magnificent looking sheet of paper. It glimmered gold, even in the darkness of the deep forest. It would’ve been a shame to use it for anything other than the appreciation of its beauty. Brigid seemed less bothered by this, as she was handed a pointed quill that had the most gloriously deep blue ink on its end. Proceeding to dab all over it, as if it was a common piece of A4, she handed them to Niall. He looked practically disappointed to be ruining such exquisite stationery. “Go on then”, she said hurriedly, “we don’t have time to wait around! Write out exactly what happened, and we’ll see what we can do!” She was right, but it was still a shame, he thought. He took the quill in his hand and felt it reshape and mould itself to the curvature of his own hand, sitting more comfortably than any pen he’d used before.
By Owen Coyne
Taken to the Corner 