Isle of the Faeries

Paths to the Sea

Sidhe mentioned in this chapter:

Brownies: They are very small, stout faeries who always appear as males with black eyes. They wear little suits of green, blue, or brown, and small caps made of felt. Their ears are slightly pointed and they have long, nimble fingers. They love to adopt homes and take care of them for the payment of a warm room and their favorite foods, which are milk, honey, ale, and pastries.

Aughisky: They are similar to Pooka and Kelpies in that they are equine Sidhe, however they are easier to manage than the Pooka and more aggressive than the Kelpies. They come from the sea and large lakes but can be trained to carry a rider. 

Kean

      I drip a teaspoon of milk into a little saucer and put it behind the grain bins along with half the ginger cookie Marta Burke baked. Hopefully it will appease the Brownie that has taken up shop in the main barn, the new hand had forgotten my instructions to put out some bread and butter and apparently that angered the little Sidhe. I'd walked into the grain room this morning to find feed and supplements everywhere.

      I walk out to survey the yard, the air is brisk and cool – charged with Magic – it is the first day of fall, the beginning of the Tráth of the Fey. It is also the beginning of the tourist season, September through November we have a flood of tourists from all over the world hoping to catch a glimpse of the Sidhe, of Magic, despite the danger. It is not uncommon for several tourists to disappear within the three months along with a few locals. It is not uncommon for me to get called upon late at night to try to diffuse a stray Sidhe or unweave a spell.

      It is the Pooka that roam hungry and wild eyed that one must watch for most. Though starry-eyed tourists come believing that they are always coal black horses with yellow eyes, they are wrong. They come in every color regular horses come in only there is a darkness about them, an absence of light and if you look fast black is all you see. Usually all you see is the black before you die. And their eyes are not yellow, in the night that is the color they glow, but in the day they are usually a striking green.

      The Pookas' distant relatives the Aughisky are another Sidhe that is fearsome and dangerous. Horses of the water with blue eyes and coats the color of every grain of sand; blacks, browns, and grey. In some way's the Aughisky are more dangerous than the Pooka, fresh from the sea or lake they are still water mad and hungry but if you manage to capture and train one it will make the finest mount imaginable; a Pooka will just kill you. Very few have such a horse they are temperamental and difficult to handle. Cinis paces his stall, he feels the September wind calling in his ears, he is an Aughisky, one of the Sidhe, he is my best friend.

      But there are other horses to be ridden first and to keep my friend I must keep my job. When I was ten I was orphaned, which in itself is unremarkable on this island but unlike most I did not flee to the mainland, Teelin is my home – my responsibility, I will not leave it, not then, not ever. I was forced to take up my father's thankless unpaid work and find myself a real job.

      Marvin Allard is a rich horse trainer from France; he came to the island in his teens to see the Magic for himself and later decided it would be the perfect place to set up a training facility for his horses. He has a constant rotation of horses coming in for breeding and training and horses going out to show and sell, I manage it. As a child he hired me to clean stalls and groom horses for the professionals and as I aged I worked my way up the ranks.

      The other horses feel the change in the air but rather than singing to them it hisses, they dance with fear not excitement but they must be worked regardless, they'll settle by the end of the week. Walking down the barn aisle the warm smell of horse and hay fills my nose, almost all of the horses are out but the last stall on the right side is still locked and dark and the feed bucket is still outside the door. During the rest of the year the other employees of Allard stable are wary of Cinis but a few will handle him if the need arises. But today none of them even dared to dump his fish into him let alone turn him out.