Isle of the Faeries

Prologue

Kean

      There are still some places in this world where magic exists. It clings to the remote parts of the world that Time has left behind and forgotten, where life is simpler and nature is powerful. An example is Teelin, an island off the coast of Ireland, in Teelin you are either a farmer or a fisherman unless you work in Rell the largest town on Teelin. There are few cars and fewer well paved roads, the summers are often cloudy and the winters bitter but there is a wild powerful magic in every leaf and every wave that crashes on the cliffs. It is not the magic of movies with pretty sparks and silly words, it is the raw elements, deep and dark, complex and dangerous. It is addicting, and to the residents of Teelin it is a part of life. Something to watch out for, something to beware of but in the end no different than the wild dog packs that roam the moors, dangerous but avoidable. For it is not humans who wield the magic, it is the Sidhe, the Fey who wander the island, who live in the forests and lurk under the waves.

      As a child in Teelin the first things you are taught are; don't step in the faerie rings and don't be caught out alone after dark once September first rolls around. Though faerie rings are few and far between on Teelin and most are not powerful enough to keep you, there are some that are tied to powerful Sidhe, and you don't want to happen to step into that. Through the spring and summer most of the Fey are content to tend to the earth – the plants and streams and mountains that are their charges – they usually have no real interest in humans and are rarely seen. But when autumn arrives they get restless and fierce, their magic grows and that is when they stray from their homes into ours. While most of the Fey are indifferent to the humans of the island as long as they keep their distance, there are some who work closely with humans and others who actively seek to cause harm and mischief. Regardless of how helpful, they are not friends or pets, they are wild and fickle; as unpredictable as the February weather and as powerful as a storm.

      It is on the first day of September that the winds change, you can feel it on the ground and taste it in the air. It makes me feel alive, so alive; Magic sings to me on the wind in a language I don't entirely understand and the atmosphere crackles with the change. It is the start of the Tráth of the Fey, the Sidhe grow restless, before the season is out someone will die.

A note on use of the word Sidhe: Sídh, also spelled síthe, is a hill or mound under which fairies live. The phrase aos sídhe or the plural sídhe on its own can denote fairy folk collectively. In this particular story Sidhe is used collectively as a term for faeries,