Reluctantly Charmed (8 page)

Years after, my grandfather died and the farm was sold. A small housing estate was built, and, despite local protests, the whitethorn bush was cut down. The fairy lost his home.

In the very spot where the whitethorn bush once grew, a man from Dublin opened a shop, and in a town with next to no crime that shop was robbed, its windows smashed. After eighteen months in business, the owner was declared bankrupt. Now the shop stands vacant. The locals say the fairy has a new home.

In my column I write about a New Ireland, a progressive, successful country where people drive shiny new cars and buy homes that their parents would never have dreamed of owning. It’s a country that nurtures talented young people and artists before projecting them onto a global commercial stage. This New Ireland doesn’t look back, because we’ve been led to believe that there’s nothing there worth looking back
for
. Look back and you’ll find hundreds of years of oppression and misery, the famine, poverty, and emigration. Why should we dwell on our past?

Recent events have made me think that perhaps it
is
time to look back. Have we been wise to ignore our rich heritage of Celtic mysticism and spirituality?

A few days ago, I was preparing to interview Jim Johns, the lead singer of Dublin band Red Horizon. As I always do before an interview, I researched my subject online. On Red Horizon’s website, I found something that caused me to think again about our old Celtic beliefs.

Jim’s girlfriend, Kate McDaid, has recently inherited a series of letters apparently given to her deceased ancestor, also called Kate McDaid, by the fairies.

Not a lot is known about the earlier Kate McDaid, other than that she lived in Clare in the 1870s and was a self-proclaimed witch. She also claimed to have the gift of healing and spell making, and knowledge of another world, a world inhabited by fairies. She believed that fairies and humans needed to interact, for the good of nature, our planet, and ourselves.

In her will, Kate McDaid bequeathed the Seven Steps, as they are referred to, to her descendant, Kate McDaid. The earlier Kate hoped her young descendant would inherit her powers, and asked her to share the Steps.

The living Kate McDaid published the first of the Steps on Red Horizon’s site last week. The other six Steps, which are to be published in sequence, hint at a fairy awakening that would benefit us.

For some reason the older Kate McDaid could not fulfill these Steps within her lifetime. In her first letter, she states that many Celtic souls need to take part, so perhaps she was never able to get the requisite number of helpers. Maybe, because she was believed to be a witch, no one would listen to her.

Reading that first Step has, for me, opened a door to the past, to an old Ireland. There was a time when witches, druids, and fairies walked among us; when mothers dressed their baby boys as girls for fear that a fairy would steal them; and when people heard warnings of imminent death from the cry of the banshee. To my grandfather, fairies and banshees were as real as his grandchildren. Now I wonder where they’ve gone. Why did we close our eyes and stop listening? Is it possible that they’re still here, right beside us but in another realm, knocking on our door? Is it possible there might be a modern witch among us?

The first Step asks us to acknowledge nature and the fairy spirit within it, to whistle to the flowers and to pause and admire the beauty of the natural world. What harm is there in taking half a minute out of our busy lives to stop, to pause and appreciate, to know that we are all of the same earth, that we work together? Do it. You’ll be happier for it.

Red Horizon play Whelan’s on Wexford Street, Dublin, Friday, 10 May, 8 p.m. Tickets at door.

6

I
’ll be honest with you. It’s not ideal to be outed as a modern witch in a national newspaper. But I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. “Jim’s girlfriend, Kate McDaid.” Me. Jim’s girlfriend. Being called a witch paled into insignificance compared to the dizzy heights my imagination could go to now. And, anyway, Maura Ni Ghaora didn’t directly point the finger at me in terms of being a witch. It was implied—I got that bit—but there was no direct accusation. Whereas “Jim’s girlfriend” was pretty much stated as a fact. So I took the whole witch thing very well.

The article was hidden on page seven of
The Irish Times
, a small column on the left-hand side in the bit of a newspaper nobody reads. Or so I thought. I laughed down the phone when Pauline Glynn rang me. Our mothers had played hockey together for years, and I was regularly updated on Pauline’s successes, marriage, child, major career in RTÉ—Ireland’s national radio broadcaster—and her big house in Killiney, one of Dublin’s most affluent suburbs. I took great comfort in the fact that she had a really big bum. Slim everywhere else, but a ginormous bum. It was good to know that you couldn’t have it all.

“Is it you, Kate? In the paper? The fairy stuff?”

“Hi, Pauline. Yeah, it is, yeah.”

“It’s fascinating.”

“Well, I don’t think I’d call it fascinating . . .”

“Hmmm, look, I recently got a big promotion. I’m now head of production on the
Tom Byrne Show
. It’s a huge position.”

“Congratulations.”

“This is exactly the kind of thing our listeners would love, this step into another world, this mystery. Will you come onto the show? Talk to Tom?”

“What?” If I’d been standing, I would have fallen over. “No way. I’d sound like a lunatic. I’m not going on national radio to talk about fairies. I don’t know anything about fairies.”

“Well, you must know something? It’s in your blood.”

“No, no, honest to God. This very distant relative was a bit mad. I’m not going to embarrass myself on the radio talking about her and fairies. No way.”

She was quiet for a moment. Thinking. “Well, if I can’t persuade you . . .” She sighed heavily.

“No, you can’t.”

“How are your parents?”

“The same. Yours?”

“Same. I see you have a new boyfriend.”

And I couldn’t help myself. The immature twelve-year-old came bursting out of me, the one who always heard about Pauline’s excellent exam results and tennis trophies. “He’s in a band, you know, very successful, very, very handsome.” And the minute I said it I felt stupid and petty.

“Right. Okay, look, if you change your mind, you know where I am.”

And that should have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. Forty minutes later, Mam was hollering down the phone to me. She couldn’t believe I’d said no to Pauline, and her mother was such
a good friend to her, and this was no way to treat your friends. I furrowed my brow at that one—they were more rivals than friends. The conversation went downhill from there.

I told Mam there was no way I’d hang myself out to dry on radio.

“Well, that’s just fine,” she said. “Your father and I will. Pauline says they’d rather have you, but they’ll take us.”

I tried to talk her out of it. I really did, but she was adamant. Mam was, if nothing else, a good friend.

My parents’ media debut was on a gray shivery Irish spring Monday with winds howling and rains spitting. Maybe it was because it was cold and I needed to hibernate, but I slept in that morning. I leapt out of bed half an hour late, ran to the kitchen, and turned on the radio.

Not only had I missed most of their interview, I was going to be late for work.

“. . . so tell me, was there ever an inkling that she was different?” Tom’s familiar morning voice caused me to cock an ear in his direction, busying myself around the kitchen. Surely I had time for a quick coffee?

And there it was, a quick breath—no sound, just a sharp intake of breath that I recognized immediately. Mam.

“Ah,
different
isn’t the right word, Tom. She was always special. She’s a very special girl. They said I couldn’t have children, you know, so for us she was special, a miracle. And when she was born, didn’t the doctors say, ‘It’s a redhead’? Not a boy or a girl. A redhead!”

I stopped. I felt my grip tighten around my coffee mug as I tried to breathe, my feet anchored to the kitchen floor.
Stop talking about me
, I thought.
Stop it.

“And of course, red hair has always been associated with mysticism in Ireland.”

“Very interesting, Teresa.” Tom Byrne did sound interested.

“Tell him about her imaginary friends.” It was Dad.

“She did, Tom, she had imaginary friends as a girl. We thought it was just because she was an only child, Tom, but I suppose you never know.”

“Do you think she could have been communing with the fairies, even then, as a young girl?”

“You never know.”

I dropped my coffee mug. It shattered into smithereens, and a dark pool that looked like blood slowly crept around the soles of my shoes. Edging in closer and closer to me. I turned and ran shoulder first into the bedroom and, falling on the bed, reached for my phone. I scrolled down until I found “M” for Mam. The call went straight to a chirpy voice-mail message. “D” for Dad was the same. They had their phones turned off.

Stunned, I walked into the kitchen and wiped my sweaty damp hair off my forehead.

Tom was still talking. “. . . I know my gran swore by it. She’d never have thirteen people at a table. Noel and Teresa McDaid, thank you for coming in. You’ve given us all food for thought. And please, visit us on rte.ie for a link to the Step, so you can see for yourselves what we’re talking about.”

“Thanks, Tom.”

That was me off-balance. My parents were on national radio talking to Tom Byrne about me and my imaginary friends who may or may not have been fairies. Nobody read a page-seven column in
The Irish Times
, but
everybody
listened to Tom Byrne.

My heart flip-flopped the whole way to work. Once there, I fixed my stare on the floor, only looking at coworkers from the knees down. If I couldn’t see their faces then they couldn’t see mine and they couldn’t ask me about fairies. I almost slid under my desk and waited for someone to say something, to throw a pointy hat in
my direction or shuffle by on a broomstick. But nothing happened. Phones rang, keyboards clicked, and my coworkers moved around as usual, the scent of toner trailing behind them. Nobody had been listening, or, if they had, they hadn’t put the pieces together. Kate McDaid is a common name, after all. It could have been anyone. I let out a deep breath, felt my shoulders fall and relax and my stomach slowly unravel. It was just a normal day in the office.

Then Marjorie flew toward me at torpedo speed, her face a lopsided mix of bubbling excitement and sadness.

Oh God, she knows.

“Did you hear?” she whispered into my ear, overenunciating her words.

“I heard,” I said, immediately feeling depressed.

She twirled behind her and grabbed my guests-only chair. Wheeling it almost on top of me, she sat down with a heavy sigh. Now we looked like Siamese twins.

“It’s just so sad.”

“Sad? Well, if you mean pathetic sad, yeah, I guess.”

She let out a little squeak and, even though it seemed impossible, leaned closer. “They say drugs might have been involved.”

“What?” I nearly fell off my seat. “Drugs?”

“I know.” She sucked in her cheeks. “What a tragedy. He was only twenty-eight.”

“No, my dad is at least fifty-eight.”

“What? Drake Chandler. I’m talking about Drake Chandler. What’s your dad got to do with him?”

“Drake Chandler, the lead singer of Burning Cradle? The emo guy? What about him?”

Her whole body erupted. “You mean you don’t know? You haven’t heard?”

“Well, like, I know who he is, obviously, who doesn’t know
about Drake Chandler? Didn’t he start off that whole emo movement? He’s responsible for all those teenagers wearing black eyeliner and all that hard rock music.”

“He’s a god.” Marjorie hung her head dramatically. “He
was
a god.” She cocked her eyebrow to see if the change of tense had registered with me.

I nodded, encouraging her to spill the gossip that was moments from gushing out anyway.

“He’s dead. He was found dead a few hours ago in his mansion in Seattle. It was suicide. Such a tragedy. And the saddest part is, he’d been dead for a few days, swinging from a chandelier. It’s so horrible.”

I nodded in agreement, picturing his handsome face, which I always knew would have been even more handsome if he’d wiped off some of the makeup. But that’s just me—I’m not into makeup on guys.

“It’s all over the Internet. Everyone’s saying that the signs were there. The lyrics in his songs were so dark—he was crying out for help.” Marjorie furrowed her brow, as if she could have—maybe even should have—been the one to help him. For a moment I thought about celebrities and how they become so familiar you think you know them and could be the one to connect with them.

“That’s really sad,” I said. “All his fans are going to be so lost without him.”

“Look.” She pointed to a large-screen TV in the corner of the office. A small group of guys from the art department were huddled around it shaking their heads in disbelief. The TV was flashing images of Drake Chandler and his house, his band, Burning Cradle, and a depressing shot of a stretcher with a body covered in a white sheet.

I shivered. “Terrible.”

“I’ll let you know if I hear anything else,” Marjorie said, standing up from my desk and quickly moving over to the more informed group at the TV.

It was definitely sad—a sad way to end a life.

I waved to Matthew. He picked up his phone and nodded toward mine. This was pure laziness—he sat a few feet away.