Blood

I drop another hay bale from the loft into the empty pen and then watch one of the less intelligent cows try to walk through the fence.

I jump off the loft, which may seem slightly suicidal if I wasn’t me but I’m kind of good at doing stuff and not dying, and land beside the cow. She barely glances at me as I land from a 15 foot drop.

“Don’t do that,” says Justin from the corner where he’s untying the twine on one of the bales. “It is fucking creepy when you do that.”

“Sorry,” I say with a shrug and a bit of a smirk.

I reach over the fence and grab the bale I’d just dropped by the twine, and then let it fall apart at my feet. The cow drops her head to start eating.

I shake my head and say, “You know, there’s lots of grass outside you could be eating instead.”

The cow glances up at me and then lumbers towards the sunlit pasture.

“How the hell do you do that?”

I shrug.

Justin takes the bale he’d been struggling to unwrap and lifts it into the feeder. “There, that’s it, right? I’m done?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say with a sigh.

“Don’t do that either,” whines my brother.

“Do what?” I ask as I climb over the rail.

“Act like Dad and make me feel guilty for being a lazy ass.”

I smile slightly and say, “You know, I think there’s a solution for that called “working””

Justin grins and hits the back of my head as I walk past. “Smart ass.”

I grab the door and ask my brother if he’s leaving.

“It’s not like I don’t do anything,” he says as he walks through the open door, “right?”

“Oh, of course not.”

“You’re mean when you’re sarcastic. Why are you being sarcastic? Can’t you just be all robotic, like normal?” Justin says as I close the door behind him.

The truth is I may have drunk a little, little, little bit of something I found in the back of the cupboard. It’s not like it could have killed me, it didn’t even have a skull on it, that’s something, right?

Most poisons don’t even hurt, so I’ve been known to try almost anything. I think I even tried the stuff for cleaning the sink when I was little.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure the little bottle I found earlier today was for cooking. Either that or it was meant to knock out someone after they broke a leg before there were needles and stuff. The only thing I really know about whatever I drank, is that it was fucking strong. Like, kill a dog strong. I almost spit it out, but I’m not dead yet. Maybe I’ll die later, but right now I’m feeling pretty damn good, so fuck it, if I die it’s my time.

Since Justin isn’t here, I use my arm to lever myself over the gate instead of climbing it, because jumping is faster and way more fun, and then shove the gate against the wall so the barn is all one room.

The chill November air bites at my bare arms as it leeches through the gaps in the timber but the sun is beaming through the sunlight and the open barn doors, and it warms me more than the wind chills.

Whatever I drank helps, too.

Even though the sun is warming, it’s rather dull so I dare to step outside, and am rewarded by the beauty of a whole herd of brown-and-white shorty-horns roaming the golden grass covered fields. The Wood looms over it all, forbidding to most but welcome and calling to me.

I realize I’ve been singing one of the many island songs I hear in the air, and the islanders begin to sing in the spring. It’s fine that I’m singing, since there are only cattle to hear me, but I normally try to avoid singing all together, even though it comes about as naturally as running.

Then I turn and see Cynthia Quigley walking very slowly towards me with a look as blank as the one on most of the cows’ faces.

I make a bit of a face and then stop singing.

Cynthia blinks around and then her liquid blue eyes focus on me. “Mallory! How in hell are you not freezing?”

Now, normal Mallory would have just shrugged and looked away, current Mallory says, “Well, you see, as you say, I am currently in Hell. And let me tell you, it’s much warmer there.”

Cynthia laughs, but she looks troubled because her eyes are weird and reddish.

I’m about to announce my incredible deduction to her as well, but thankfully I stop myself before I say anything at all.

“You ain’t seen you’re brother about, have you?”

I sigh and cover it with a cough, “I think he’s in the house. Just…maybe knock…before you go in.”

Cynthia laughs again and asks, “Another girl at this hour?”

I push my hair out of my eyes and say, “No, I’m sorry. I…fell off the hay loft.”

“Into a pool of liquor?” asks Cynthia with a wry smile.

“Uh, something like that.”

“Thanks. And really, Mal, get a jacket.”

I shrug as Cynthia heads up towards the house.

Of all the girls that Justin sleeps with on a regular basis, I’d say Cynthia is the only one he genuinely cares about and the only one that actually regards me as a human, which technically I guess I’m not. Justin and Cynthia actually do things together. Justin and every-other-girl-his-age-and-some-that-aren’t…don’t…would be the least crude way to put it.

I look up at the sky and laugh for no reason I can think of except that it’s saying something that my brother does anything other than have sex with a girl.

Which is not to say Justin isn’t a decent guy, because he’s a good guy and a good brother, he’s just an idiot when it comes to girls, he can’t seem to make up his mind. Others envy him for being able to get so many “ladies” in his bed. I always just took him for a fool. What’s the fun in lying by choice? Fuck, I don’t have the choice to not lie, and it is not fun. If he can’t be with just one or two or eleven girls in his whole life, then he should just dump one before moving on.

I laugh again because I sound insane, even to myself, and I look insane, and the whole island is insane, possibly the whole world.

I hear Justin yell something and then a woman who I assume is Cynthia yell back.

I sigh and turn away from the house and the world of humans and watch the winds attack the Wood.

Everything is wild today, including myself. The winds tear through the grass and the summer calves chase after it; the leaves off trees belonging to a different world soar through the fall sky; the timber walls of the barn creak and crack, trying to rid itself of the imprisonment of iron and salt.

I start walking and then running away into the paddock where my whore-brother and my anti-drunkard father can’t find me and I don’t have to pretend to be completely human.

The wind for once in my life runs with me, instead of against me, and calves prance at my side, partially because they like me and mostly because I’m singing, so they’re transfixed.

Everything somehow seems balanced in my world: right, somehow. Almost like I’m not the biggest abomination to walk the earth…

…until I trip and fall on my face, that is.

“Shit!” I yell louder than I can remember yelling ever before as I spit what I really hope is dirt out of my mouth.

I hear the grass in front of me rustle, and I start to look up. Remember, my friends, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean there isn’t some satanic force about to eat your face.

Up and up and up the Wood grows, only feet away. I could almost reach out and touch it. Almost.

And then the enchantment is broken. Likely because something stands in front of me.

I smile because I’m not sure if I’m really seeing what I think I am or if whatever I drank had some hallucinogenic effects that didn’t kick in ’til now. If so, then I really want to find out whatever it was, because I kind of want more.

In front of me stands the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She’s as pale as a sheet with eyes as white as diamonds and flecked with the night sky. Her hair brushes the tall autumn grasses and matches the grey tree trunks in colour. Braided into her hair is a crown of vines and blue lilies: a crown for the queen of the Wood Dwellers.

“Hiya, Mal,” says the sidhe with a giggle.

I smile back. “Are you a hallucination?”

The faerie giggles again, “No, sweetheart,” she shakes her head of long hair and offers me her hand.

I laugh, “Well, shit then. Hey, mum.”

I reach for the iron knife in my back pocket and my mother laughs.

“You won’t need that, darling. Come, walk with your mother.”

I stop reaching for the knife and extend my hand with a sigh. “My dad’s gonna kill me.”

My mother helps me up and asks, “Ah, Timothy Fionn. Beautiful man, how is he now? It’s a shame about that little bitch he had for himself, but where would we be today without you?”

I swallow the urge to stab her because she expects it and she would use my own hand to carve the mark of Lucifer into my arm or my eye, which would take a lot of explaining. “Tim is doing well. Though I must say I don’t think I was really a favour to him.”

She laughs.

“Uh, what’s your name, anyway?” I ask as we step forward.

“Maeve.”

And then I step hand in hand with its ruler into the domain of the faeries.