The Sidhe Princess Read online

  THE SIDHE PRINCESS

  By

  Loucinda McGary

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2011 by Loucinda McGary Munoz

  All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction and all characters, names, places and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or used in a fictitious manner. Any similarities to real persons living or dead, actual locales or events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  This story is dedicated with love and appreciation to my readers everywhere, most especially Helen in Sydney and Jen in Oakland.

  Readers are what make this writing gig worthwhile.

  Chapter 1

  “No, Fee! Please don’t leave me. You can’t!” Her own anguished cry echoed inside Moira Mullins’ head as she climbed the steep stairs into the loft that served as her bedroom. The bedroom she’d shared for her whole life with her older sister Fiona, but now was Moira’s alone.

  She stood in the center, the only place where the sloping beams of the ceiling were tall enough for her to stand completely upright, and looked at the neatly made twin beds on opposite sides of the room. While the place looked the same, Moira felt the subtle difference, like the chill in the wind signaled the approaching winter. Fee was gone, and taken what small essence of goodness and warmth the old cottage and Moira’s life contained.

  ‘Twas not as if her sister had spent more than a few days here over the past year, since she’d taken the job as a live-in nanny for the Richardsons in Belfast. And a fortnight ago, those same Richardsons had packed up and moved back to America and taken their nineteen-year-old nanny with them. Not that Fee didn’t want to go. She’d been over the moon when she’d told Moira the news.

  However, Moira couldn’t share in her sister’s happiness. ‘Twas hard enough to spend the summer and your sixteenth birthday locked away in a loony bin, but the idea of losing the one person who trusted and understood her was too much to bear.

  This hadn’t been Moira’s first stay in the sanitarium. No, that had happened over three years ago, the spring before she’d turned thirteen, and that time had been far worse. The visions or hallucinations or whatever they were had never happened to her before. At least not with such intensity, and telling the truth was never going to set her free of the horrid place.

  Fee had been the one to tell her that revelation, and advise her to hide pills under her tongue and spit them out later. Just as Fee had been the only one who believed the creatures Moira saw and heard were real, not some sickness in her mind.

  This go round, Moira had been far wiser to the doctors and nurses and their ways, and she’d only been forced to stay three months. The fact that her sister had visited almost every Sunday afternoon, her day off, helped too.

  But Fee was gone now, far away across the pond in the city of Philadelphia, and Moira was back in County Armagh on the old homestead – the place of her torment. As she emptied her battered old satchel and put her few things away in the single bureau, she gazed out the only small window in the attic room.

  Outside beyond the ragged edge of the back yard and the weed choked meadow lay the misty expanse of the fens. The thickly overgrown brush and gnarled trees that obscured the shores of Lough Neagh seemed to beckon to her, at the same time enticing and sinister. People in the village whispered tales about the fens, of strange goings on and how some folks who went in never came out.

  How many times had Mum told her and Fee that the fens were dangerous? That they shouldn’t play there? But of course they did anyway. And when she was thirteen, Moira discovered the creatures from another realm lived there. Strange, beautiful and wild beings that appeared for her alone. Her mistake had been talking about them.

  She knew it would only be a matter of time before she succumbed to their siren call, and the madness that awaited her within them would send her back to the hated, sterile confines of the sanitarium.

  Nine days later. she first saw the new apparition. Mum and Da went off on their usual Saturday shopping expedition, and Moira elected to stay home alone.

  Though Mum looked worried, Da actually took Moira’s side. “She’s not a wee lass any more, Mary,” he scolded. “You don’t need her right by your side every waking moment.”

  He’d given Moira a wink behind her mother’s back when they climbed into the ancient farm truck that was their only means of transportation. With hearty calls of “Be home for tea!” they rumbled off in a cloud of dust.

  The day was far too fine to stay inside ironing, so a couple of hours later, Moira slipped her little yellow transistor radio into her apron pocket and went outside to simply enjoy the sweet autumn sunshine. Even if she felt relief at coming and going as she pleased, she did feel oddly alone after the constant voices and presence of the staff and patients in the sanitarium. Not that she missed the place, far from it!

  She missed her sister.

  On the radio, the Beatles crooned about “…please me like I please you…” and she sang along. But by the end of the song, the signal was fading. She turned the radio off and wished she’d asked Mum to pick up new batteries while she and Da were out.

  As she slid the radio back into her pocket, her fingers brushed over Fiona’s letter. Moira had already read it more than once. In fact, she’d given Mum her reply to mail in the village today. But she walked over to the stump at the edge of the yard to read the letter yet another time.

  Something about the letter wasn’t right. It wasn’t so much the things Fee wrote, but more like what she hadn’t. Moira couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling that not all was well. However, she also knew Fee wouldn’t say anything for fear of worrying Mum and Da.

  The thin onion-skin paper rattled like the waxy stuff wrapped around the fancy scones that came from the village bakery. Moira smoothed the folded sheets across her lap and read Fee’s sprawling script, heard her voice in the written words as she described the crazy city traffic all going in the wrong direction. The Richardsons had a brand new Lincoln Town Car and Mrs. Richardson intended to buy herself a car too, as soon as she found one to her liking.

  Moira closed her eyes and imagined what it must be like to be so rich you owned two new cars and a fine house so big that your three children each had a bedroom and the nanny had one too. While she pictured the lovely wall-papered room Fee had described, the sound of childish laughter invaded Moira’s daydream. Her eyes popped open and she scanned the brushy border of the fens, catching a glimpse of a white figure.

  “Who’s there?” Moira cried, shoving the letter back into her pocket and jumping to her feet.

  The fens could be a dangerous place for a child, full of boggy spots and stickery piles of brambles, as Mum had never failed to tell her. But as Moira crossed the over-grown expanse of the meadow and drew closer to the fens, she heard the giggling again. A scrap of doubt tugged at her mind, making her hesitate. Something about the sound wasn’t childish. Or even human.

  While she paused, the being came into view. Small as a child of nine or ten and clad in a long gown of gauzy white, the girl’s golden hair streamed behind her, strands of it braided ar
ound bird feathers or woven into bits of metal or bright colored beads. Her skin was almost the same shade as her hair, like rich honey, and when she stopped to regard Moira, her dark eyes shone with the same flecks of gold.

  One of the fae, Moira guessed, and the most exquisite wee thing she’d ever seen.

  “You can see me as well as hear me, can you not?” asked the small woman. The proud way she stood and the commanding tone she used were not the least bit childlike.

  Moira nodded mutely and twisted her hands into her apron. ‘Twas not the first time she’d seen and even spoken to other-worldly creatures, though never before had one been so bold in approaching her. Nor so beautiful.

  “Who -- who are you?” she finally managed to whisper.

  “So you’ve a tongue after all?” The woman’s voice tinkled like bells, but had a passing strange accent. “My father named me Oonagh, though those who do speak of me call me by my title, The Maid of Ulster.” She placed her fist upon her hip and regarded Moira with an imperious stare. “Who might you be, great gangly giantess? And what year do you call this?”

  Moira hunched her shoulders at the reference to her height. She’d grown taller than Mum and Fee the summer she’d turned fourteen and stood only a wee bit below Da by that winter. This golden maid would scarcely reach her shoulder.

  “I’m Moira,” she replied meekly. “And ‘tis nineteen sixty-four.”

  The Maid tilted her head, sunlight glittering on the beads in her hair. “Well then, ‘tis nigh on fifty years since I’ve spoken to one such as yourself. So tell me, Tall Moira, is the world still full of war and woe, with pain and suffering all ‘round like ‘twas then?”

  Still hunched, Moira gave a half-shrug. “The world is right enough, I reckon.”

  The Maid’s golden flecked eyes moved from Moira’s head to her toes and back again. “Then why, Tall Moira, are you so melancholy? And on such a fine day as this, so near to Samhain Eve?”

  Moira started to protest, but the Maid’s cunning gaze probed into her, demanding the truth. Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, Moira inhaled deeply before she blurted, “I’m sad because I miss my sister.”

  “Ah, well,” the wee lass sighed with apparent sympathy. “Has she gone away then, into another realm where you can’t follow?”

  “Not exactly.” Moira chewed her lip for a moment, the empty feel of loneliness bringing an unwanted clog of tears to her throat. At length she said, “She’s gone far away over the sea to a place called America. I don’t know when or even if I shall ever see her again.”

  To her mortification, the Maid laughed at her plight. The merry sound made Moira want to clutch at her head and wail. But The Maid spoke first. “Fine day, indeed, Tall Moira. And very well met, for I have the means to show you your sister and even divine when next you will see her.”

  Joy leapt into Moira’s heart at the pretty lass’s generous offer. “You would do that for me?”

  “I do have the means,” the Maid answered, a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “But there’s a cost must be paid, even by a human as gifted as you.”

  Happiness plummeting, Moira hung her head in dejection. “I’ve no money.”

  “I’ve no use for coin.” The Maid tossed her golden hair, beads rattling. “But herbs and spice, and mayhap a trinket or two would please me very well. If you serve me in such a way, I shall use my scryying mirror for a look into your future. Would that bring gladness into your great human breast, Tall Moira?”

  No longer allowing herself to hope, Moira gave a small nod as she stared at her own feet, pulse thudding loud in her ears.

  “Then meet me here again. Not tonight but the night after. Bring your gifts at the rising of the moon, and I’ll decide whether or not to look into your future.” The Maid finished speaking as a swirl of breeze stirred the dried grasses and made the fabric of her skirt rustle softly.

  When Moira looked up, the golden maiden was gone and the fine crisp day had suddenly grown dank and chilled. She trudged across the yard, thinking of Fee and wondering if the bold apparition could indeed foretell her future.

  Back inside the house she busied herself with chores like scouring the kettle and moving the rag rugs to scrub the grey slate floors. The fact that the otherworldly specters were back frightened Moira. That road would eventually lead her to the sanitarium, the place where she most decidedly did not want to go. But the unbidden thoughts slipped into her mind, and she couldn’t stop fretting over Fee and wondering how she could find out the truth.

  The Mullins’ farm was too far out in the country to have a telephone. Only half the houses in the village could afford such a luxury. And even if Moira could find a telephone, it wasn’t like the lines went all the way across the ocean. Except for letters, her sister might as well be living on the moon.

  The unfairness of being separated from the only person who truly understood her caused waves of hopeless despair to wash over Moira. No matter how much she wished, she couldn’t follow Fee to America, and at the moment, her sister had no way to return home.

  She couldn’t fathom being apart from Fee forever, like so many other people whose family members emigrated. Her sister had promised ‘twould not be the case with her, but being alone with no friends but Mum and Da made Moira doubt.

  Her pills would dull the frustration and sadness, but she hated the foggy stupor they also caused in her mind. Instead, she caught herself wondering what kind of gifts would please the Maid of Ulster.

  In anticipation of Mum and Da’s return, Moira rekindled the fire in the fireplace and filled the kettle with water to be ready for tea. She rummaged in the cupboard and discovered the tea tin was almost empty and only six sugar cubes remained in the box.

  What would the Maid think of those glittering white cubes? Had she ever tasted anything so sweet? Moira doubted she had. And in that instant, her decision was made.

  She emptied, rinsed and dried the tea tin before she put the six sugar cubes inside it. A quick look though the other spices resulted in her adding four sticks of cinnamon and a handful of whole cloves to the tin.

  She remembered the small sachet of dried lavender she kept in the drawer with her knickers, and hastily climbed the steep stairs into her room in the loft to add it to her collection. Rummaging through the drawer in search of the pink tulle bundle, she also found a broken bracelet she’d worn as a child, red and blue beads strung on wire. The three largest beads, one red and two blue, she pulled off the broken wire and added to the contents of the tin.

  Finally finding the sachet and adding it as well, she closed up the tin and carried it over to the window. Placing her fingers just so on the single plank of the sill, Moira pulled it loose, exposing a hole between the wall studs. She and Fee discovered this secret hiding spot ten years ago when they’d painted and moved into the loft. They’d used it as a place to store their treasures ever since. The memories of the silly things they’d hidden over the years brought a rueful smile to Moira’s lips.

  The only thing in there now was a round box that had once held Fee’s face powder. The box held some of Moira’s discarded pills. Since she’d returned from the sanitarium, she’d become adept at hiding the pills between her fingers and not even putting them into her mouth. Usually, she flushed them down the loo, but if she couldn’t or forgot, she put them in the hiding spot.

  Carefully, she laid Fee’s letter between the tea tin and the powder box, then replaced the board. Through the window, she could see shadows growing in the fens and within those shadows, deeper ones moved.

  Could anyone besides her see the deeper darkness?

  The idea of wandering into the fens in the night erased the smile and made a shiver run down her spine. Still, a dark walk in the fens and a few spices and beads seemed a small enough price to pay for the knowledge of when she would be reunited with her sister. The passing time wouldn’t seem so intolerably long, if she knew for certain when Fee was coming home.

  The distant rattle of th
e old truck negotiating the rutted dirt road snapped Moira’s thoughts back to the here and now. She rushed down the stairs and outside to greet her parents when they pulled into the yard. With groceries and other supplies to be unloaded and put away, and tea to be served, she had no time for contemplating the Maid and her promised divination.

  After tea, she went outside to lock the chickens in their coop, and found two perfect silky white feathers. Hiding them in her apron pocket, she added them to the contents of the tin as she readied herself for bed later that night. For a long time, she lay awake staring at the ceiling and thinking about her fortuitous meeting with Oonagh, the Maid of Ulster.

  Chapter 2

  The next morning, Sunday dawned grey and wet. Since her release from the sanitarium, Moira had begged off attending regular Mass, and this time neither of her parents stayed home with her, though she knew Da would just as soon miss church for any reason. After Mum helped him with his tie, the two of them climbed into the truck and went off in the drizzly rain.

  As she’d promised Mum, Moira listened to a radio broadcast of the Mass in the cathedral in Belfast. And even though some might consider it a sin, she fixed the hem on one of her skirts while she listened. Both her skirt and the rain were finished by the time the broadcast was over.

  Before her parents arrived home, Moira hurried outside to Da’s tool cupboard built onto the wall of the cottage. She pulled his aluminum torch from the top shelf, and checked to make sure the batteries still worked. She would need light to find her way to her meeting with the Maid tonight. Satisfied that the torch was in working order, she took it to her room and hid it in the bottom drawer of her bureau, safe in the knowledge that Da wouldn’t use it on a Sunday.