Hello! I'm back! Now, just to warn you: this is just a taster of the story I've currently got bubbling in the back of my mind, but I can't make promises as to when and how often I'll update. I just wanted to make sure people knew I hadn't given up, and there was a new story in the works. I'll update as soon as I know more about the plot of this one.

It's based on - or perhaps inspired by would be a better choice of words - Irish folk and fairytales, but it's mainly my own ideas, so if I wildly diverge from Irish tradition it's because I'm not following it.

Please let me know what you think of this beginning!

EmLuRo xxx

Rest thee, babe! I love thee dearly,

And as thy mortal mother nearly.

-The Fairy Nurse, Edward Walsh

Grace

My daughter is a fool.

She wasn't always a fool, but she became one when she grew up, despite my best efforts, and the mess we're in now is due to her foolishness.

I became a mother very late in life. My husband and I were childless for many years, and though every day we prayed for a son or daughter, our prayers remained unanswered until I was almost past child-bearing age. We were overjoyed, and my most cherished memory is of my husband's face when he held his daughter, Bridget, in his arms for the very first time. I remember how his eyes lit up and the awe-filled smile with which he regarded her tiny form. She was a beautiful babe, with golden curls and blue eyes. We loved her dearly.

That was before I knew she would grow up to be a fool.

My husband died when Bridget was only three. She does not remember him, but I have never forgotten him. She grew up to be a good, obedient child, and we were happy despite our loss. We always had good fortune on our farm; our cows grew fat and gave rich milk, our chickens laid daily, our sheep produced fine wool that we sold for good money at the market. I knew why we had such good luck. My own mother had taught me the ways of the Good People. I knew to leave milk on the doorstep for them, and not to curse their name; I knew to shout before I threw any water away, and I knew that the cold iron is the only thing that the fairies cannot touch. The Little People and I lived in harmony, and as a result they did not harm us. Some people in the village called me a witch. They said that I knew too much. But that was not true. I only knew what any other good housewife should know.

I used to tell Bridget stories about the Good People, so that she would know what they were like and learn what my mother had taught me. I told her about the man who had sneezed three times without anyone calling a blessing on him, and how the fairies had taken him away. I told her how at certain nights of the year the fairies grow even wilder than before, and their strange, untamed revels can ensnare unwary travellers. I told her of those who had eaten of the food of the Good People, and woken as if from a dream the following morning – only they had been asleep for a hundred years. I told her all the stories and more, and she listened carefully. We had a good life, Bridget and I. We were content.

But then she grew up and went to school. I did not want her to go. I had never gone to school, and I did not think she needed to go. But there were less and less people who agreed with me in the village, and the schoolteacher told me that it was compulsory for Bridget to attend lessons. I let her go, begrudgingly. I knew what they would teach her, and I was right.

She stopped believing in my tales. She thought of them as nothing but words, stories for a child. Her mind was occupied with science, with the material plane of the world. Her generation was a rational one, who believed in neither God nor the fairies. And she grew up to be a fool. My word was no longer law to her. She saw me as weak-minded, simple. She humoured me by pretending to agree with me, but disobeyed me constantly. As a result, despite my best efforts, the farm began to fail. Bridget was twenty now and I was near sixty. My sight was failing and though I still performed hard labour every day on the farm along with the handful of workers we had, my memory was not perfect. Sometimes I would forget to put the milk out, and Bridget would not do it. I remembered all the charms that would shield me from harm, but Bridget thought them only nonsense and did not say them. She would ignore me when I told her that the cows were sick because the Good People were offended.

Our happy life degenerated. We became poor, and things were difficult. It was then that the boy turned up.

He was a soldier. David? Daniel? Yes, that was it, Daniel. His regiment had come to the village for a few days only, I cannot remember why. But I remember him well enough. He was handsome, that one, that was for sure. Bonny grey eyes and a winning smile, with black locks and a way about him that charmed the heart right out of my poor foolish Bridget. She fell in love with him so deeply that I was afraid. I did not trust him. He was slippery, vague. But Bridget did not see it. She only saw the handsome façade and heard his empty promises. He swore to marry her when he next came with the regiment. "Wait a year," he told her. "I will be back within a year."

Then he left, and it seemed as if her heart would break, my poor darling daughter. I was angry with him for hurting her, and I was angrier still when I discovered that she was with child.

"How can we support a babe?" I shouted at her. "We have no money! You are truly a foolish girl. You have thrown your life away."

She did not care, as long as he came back. But a year passed with no sign of him. Bridget's babe was born on a May morning, and as soon as I saw her my heart was enslaved. She was the most beautiful child I had ever seen, far more beautiful than her mother had been. She had blonde hair and ivory skin like Bridget, but her father's grey eyes looking out of that sweet little face. She would smile up at us even when she was only a few weeks old, as if she knew how much we loved her. We named her Mara.

It was a few months later that I began to suspect that Bridget was not looking after Mara as well as she should be. She looked thin and pale, and would not speak unless she had to. I knew that she was waiting for her soldier to return, and I knew that we would hear nothing of him. Sure enough, the days passed, and though Mara grew more beautiful every week, her mother lapsed into despondency. One day I found that she had left the cradle unguarded, without even an iron knife or a pair of scissors for protection, while she wandered down to the river to pick flowers. I confronted her when she came home, holding the babe safe in my arms.

"Don't you know better than to leave the child alone out there? The fairies will be having her if you are not more careful. I taught you better than this."

"Fairies do not exist, mother," she says in that dreamy voice of hers. I wanted to shake her, to make her see.

"Do not say that! They will hear you!" But she would not listen. I vowed to watch the child more carefully, and for a while I succeeded. But one day, I came home from the market, where I had been trying to sell the inferior wool that was all we had, to an empty house.

"Bridget!" I called, trying to quell the fear that rose in my heart and strangled me. "Bridget?" She was nowhere to be found. I ran out into the garden, and sure enough the baby's cradle was there, beneath the cherry tree. I ran to it, praying desperately that I was not too late.

But Mara was not in the cradle.

The babe that lay there resembled her a little, tis true. But it was scrawny, and red, and ugly, and its eyes were greener than the grass beneath my feet. It squalled when it saw me, and it would not stop its crying until it was fed. I knew that the fairies had taken my beautiful Mara away, and left a changeling in her place.

The Good People do not have children the way we do. Their brethren are born out of moonshine and clover, or conceived when the first frost gently touches the leaves on the trees; and they are born fully adult, fully formed. The fairies have a fascination with human children. They yearn for someone to love, and so whenever they can they steal the most beautiful babies they can find, and take them for themselves.

I knew that it would be a miracle if I ever saw Mara again.

We play all day long, and then at night we dance. We dance for so long that our shoes become nothing but tatters. But our feet are never harmed.

My guardians watch me, but they smile when they see the way I toss my long hair and singing with my sweetest voice. For I can sing beautifully. Out of all the fairies my voice is the one that can hush all those who are chattering and laughing.

My skin is white, and my hair is ash-grey, like the colour of my eyes. That is why they call me Liath. I have other names: I am daughter-of-gossamer, sister-of-cobweb, moonbeam-on-the-water, lighter-than-thistledown, daughter-of-twilight, shadow-sister. With my sisters I flit in and out of the shadows, half-seen; we own the trees and fields and rivers.

Sometimes we see them, the heavy-steppers, the cobweb-breakers. They hear our laughter and their skin turns pale. Sometimes we like to mock them, for they cannot catch us, they cannot follow where we lead.

They would like to be one of us. Sometimes they will stumble into one of our dances, and we shout and laugh: their dancing is not like ours. And yet, every once in a while – they can play music that rivals even ours, even our lilting fairy strains. And then we welcome them, but they do not often stay.

I want for nothing. I have the sweet morning dew to drink, and the honey-nectar from the flowers; nuts and berries feed me, and the enchanted food of the fairies. We bathe together in the secret pools in the heart of the forest; we dance under the waterfalls. My bed is a cradle of soft, sweet-smelling ferns, and the tree boughs overhead whisper me to sleep – though I do not sleep very much. My sisters sleep rarely, if at all, and they tease me for my need to close my eyes and slumber. But then I sing for them, and they forget their laughter and listen.

We roam far, my sisters and I. They are fleet of foot: calling echoes to each other, we fly through the trees, chasing sun-dappled streams or listening to the birds. We know all the mysteries of the forest. We know what the mother deer whispers to her child when he is born. We know the language of the buttercups. We know how to make the hedgehog uncurl. We know how to listen to the wind and learn its secrets.

Then night falls and we fly home again to dance and make merry: for we are a merry folk.

My guardians do not like me to fly too far. I am daughter to the Queen of fairies, and she yearns for my company. But I am too airy to be contained. My mother is displeased, but she forgets when I sing.

Everyone forgets when I sing.

I sit on the Queen's lap, and she cradles me to sleep. Sometimes I dream, though fairies do not dream. The dreams hurt. In them, I am very small: much smaller than I am now. My fingers above me are like pink stars, clenching and unclenching. There is whiteness around me, and then a face bends over me. She is a heavy-stepper, but she looks at me the way my mother looks at me.

When I wake from the dreams, there is a pain within me, and sometimes it is so bad that it blinds me and all I can see is shadows. Then my mother sings to me until the brightness returns and I can see her face.

The sun rises and sets without meaning. Time does not exist for us daughters of air. The leaves in the forest grow and fall and grow again, but we do not change.