“You did this! You put a curse upon us all!” The woman I called mother hurled the basket to the ground, sending the potatoes I’d collected bumping and rolling around the scarred wood floor of our cottage. They were lumpy with dark, rotten spots, cursed with the blight.
“No, Mamaí! This is how I found them.”
She raised a hand to slap me but thought better of it. Her superstition spared me physical abuse, if nothing else. But she stuck her face in mine and hissed, “Only a changeling would curse the family that suckled it.”
She picked up the basket and shoved it back towards me. “Don’t come back until you have enough food to feed the family.”
I nodded, took the basket, and headed out, even though I’d already scrounged through the entire root cellar, looking for potatoes that were unaffected. There was no use arguing, no hope of reasoning with her. Mamaí had made up her mind about me a long time ago, and nothing was likely to change it.
When I was born, Mamaí passed out before she got a look at me. When she woke up and saw me for the first time—no bigger than a potato, with strange, white blond hair, an insatiable appetite, and a bad case of colic—she was convinced the fairies had stolen her baby and replaced it with a changeling. All the family’s troubles had been blamed on me ever since.
I shoved the basket under my arm and left in search of food, resigned to thievery if necessary, but all the nearby farms were afflicted, as well, their leaves spotted and withering. I walked for miles, till I neared the fairy hill, marked with a lone hawthorn tree.
Like always, the peaceful sight of the grassy mound, rising out of the land, and the Hawthorn tree lush with white flowers tempted me as the sun dipped below the hill and the moon rose above it. No one would go near the place, for fear of the fairies who were thought to live there. A ring of plump, white mushrooms, glowing brightly in the moonlight, offered more proof that the land was enchanted. I wanted to sit beneath the flowery branches of the tree and doze away my problems.
“He’s too scared to step into a fairy ring, even though he is one,” a mocking voice called out behind me. Other voices laughed.
A groan escaped my lips. I knew who it was. Sure enough, when I turned I saw Seán and his gang of cohorts strutting up the path in their new breeches, like they thought they were grown men. We were all twelve years of age, but the shortest of them stood a foot taller than me. They were always on the lookout for trouble, and I was a favorite target of theirs.
“Well, go on with ya, fairy boy. What are you waiting for?” Seán stepped forward and poked at my shoulder, his expression menacing in the pale moonlight.
I eyed the ring, contemplating the potential outcomes. If I refused, they’d bully me even more. With no one around to witness, they might even take out their aggression with their fists. But the dangers of fairy rings had been impressed upon all young Irish children, even suspected changelings like me.
If I wasn’t one of them, I ran the risk of being lost to the fairy world forever or driven mad. But what if I was a fairy? I’d been accused often enough, I’d begun to suspect it myself. It would explain why I felt so out of place in my own village, with my own family. Why else would I feel so drawn to this place and others like it?
If I was a fairy, what would happen if I stepped in the circle? Would I find myself in the fairy realm? Would I return to the place where I came? Maybe the fairies would welcome me with open arms instead of the clenched fists my own people shook at me.
If fairies weren’t real, no harm would befall me at all. Of course, that would only give the others more reason to believe I was a fairy myself. Maybe they’d quit tormenting me if they thought the rumors were true. Fairies could wreak havoc on humans, after all.
“Go on, Finn. Prove you’re not what they say you are,” Seán jeered, shoving me.
My actions wouldn’t prove anything, no matter the outcome, but I wanted to do it to satisfy my own curiosity. I turned and headed towards the fairy ring.
Folklore said, if I circled the ring nine times, I would be safe to enter. I started the first loop, not hesitating as I drew closer to the tree. My feet sped up with each pass, and my heart raced faster and faster, like the beat of a fairy’s wings. My footsteps pounded in rhythm as the others cheered louder and louder.
When I made the ninth loop, I stopped and stared into the circle. Seán and the others chanted encouragements. But I didn’t step over the ring of mushrooms. Instead, I took off again, daring to make one more loop around it—the fated tenth circle that promised certain doom.
The other boys gasped and silenced their cheers as I rounded the ring for the tenth time, but I didn’t stop. I leap over the border, straight into the center of the fairy ring.
As soon as I entered, the world around me disappeared.
I was surrounded by winged creatures, frolicking to flute music so high and trilling I wasn’t sure if it was real or just a ringing in my ears. They looked like tiny humans, only with glimmering, translucent wings that fluttered so fast they blurred. They wore short tunics or long dresses made of a thin, gauzy material. Some wore pointed hats while others wore a ring of flowers on their heads. The moonlight illuminated them, but they cast no shadows on the ground.
Suddenly, without deciding to do so, I was dancing with them, my body as light as air, my feet barely touching the ground with each step. The music flowed through me like waves of energy, making me dance faster and faster. But I only grew more energetic. I never wanted the dance to stop.
But the next thing I knew, the sun was up, and the fairies were gone. I was left lying in the middle of the fairy ring, like it had all been a dream.
What had happened to Seán and the other boys? What had they seen from outside the circle? Had I disappeared completely? Was I invisible still? A glance down told me I looked the same, at least to my own eyes.
I managed to push myself upright then climb to my feet, but my body felt stiff, sore, and heavy; my limbs were dangling weights. I stepped out of the circle and headed back towards home, too distracted to pay much attention to my surroundings. If I had, I might’ve noticed the subtle changes.
As I neared my home, I realized I’d forgotten my mother’s basket. I hadn’t noticed it lying near me when I woke. Had my tormentors taken it? It was one more thing I’d be chastised for, as if being gone all night and coming home empty-handed wasn’t bad enough.
In the bright sunlight, I noticed the peeling, red paint on the windows and front door. Hadn’t we painted that last year? I sighed, dreading the laborious job that was sure to fall to me.
When I stepped through the cottage door, my gaze fixated on my mother, standing near the fire like usual, stirring a watery stew. Only, she looked different somehow. Older, her hair grayer and her eyes sunken with shadows, as if fretting about my absence had somehow aged her. Had she been up all night worrying? No one else was in the house. Had she sent my father and siblings to look for me?
She gasped at the sight of me, and her dreary eyes widened. Was her relief greater than her anger? I stood silently in the doorway, waiting for her to chastise me, but all she did was stare, as if she’d seen a ghost.
When she came back to life, she made the sign of the cross then grabbed the straw broom in the corner and raised it like a weapon. “God save us all! You are a fairy, for sure!”
I wanted to tell her what I’d seen, how I stepped into the fairy ring and saw them dancing, just like the legends say, but I didn’t want to give any more credence to her belief that I was one of them. I wasn’t so sure myself, anymore. Had Seán and the others told her what I’d done?
“I’m sorry, Mamaí. I stopped to rest and must’ve fallen asleep. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
She held the broom out in front of her to keep me at a distance. It wobbled in her shaking hands. “I know what you did. You stepped into a fairy ring and disappeared. You’ve been gone seven years and haven’t aged a day!”
I was the one stunned silent at that. Could it be possible? I stared at her, noticing again the signs of aging in her face and hands. A quick glance around the room revealed a similar pattern. Most everything was the same, but looked older, more worn—the paint chipped, the curtains faded.
Before I could fully process the truth, a voice behind me turned my head, and a vaguely familiar face perched on a body twice the size I expected filled the doorway. My brother Néall. Only he wasn’t a boy of eight anymore, he was a teenager, much larger than me.
“Finn? Is that you?”
He grabbed me and hugged me, lifting my small body off the ground. “We thought you were lost to the fairies! How did you escape?”
“I don’t know. I just woke up and I was back here.”
“He can pass between the worlds unharmed because he’s one of them!” Mamaí insisted, brandishing her broom at me.
“I’m not, Mamaí. I’m nothing like them.”
“Did you see them? What were they like?” Néall asked, pulling out a chair and gesturing for me to sit and talk with him.
I hesitantly made my way to the table, despite my mother’s terrified stare. Maybe telling her about the fairies would convince her I was human. “They’re tiny, with see-through wings. Their voices are like bells. They danced and sang and played the most beautiful music.”
Néall stared at me in awe, his eyes sparking like he was seeing into another world. “How many of them were there?”
“Dozens. Maybe a hundred. They moved so fast I couldn’t count them.”
Néall asked me several more questions before turning to our mother. “I can’t wait to tell everyone about this. Mamaí, can Finn and I go to the village center so I can show everyone?”
“You’ll do no such thing! If Finn is human, he won’t survive for long. If he does, we’ll know for sure he’s a changeling.”
Néall and I went silent as her unspoken threat hung heavy in the air. If I didn’t die from my exposure to the fairy realm, she would send me away for good. It was only my father who had prevented her from doing so long ago.
“Where is Dadaí?” I asked.
She scowled at me. “He’s gone. Five years now. He can’t stop me from casting you out like I should’ve done when you were born.”
I shivered as fear and dread washed over me like cold water. There was no point waiting to see what would happen. My father wasn’t there to protect me, and my mother would never accept me as her own. I didn’t belong there any more than I did in the fairy world.
I wanted to leave right then, return to the fairies and live out the rest of my days with them, whether I belonged or not. Maybe I could bounce back and forth between them, spending one day in the human world for every seven years in the fairy realm.
I stood up and headed for the door. Néall jumped up and followed me. “Finn, where are you going?”
I patted his shoulder like I did when he was a boy, only now I had to lift my arm to reach it. “Take care of Mamaí, Néall.”
I looked to her one last time, clinging to hope that maybe she would have a change of heart, but there was no compassion in her eyes, only fear and distrust. I walked out the door and headed back to the fairy hill. I would spend the day under the blooming hawthorn tree, enjoying the beauty of the flowers. When night fell, I would enter the fairy ring again.