Upon the Solstice

by Cathryn Ramsay

  The story is a brutal one; I read it and cringe. I weep for the time I wasted; for the times I bullied my sister; for the life I created for myself. But most of all, I wonder. I wonder what happened during that Beltane celebration and that is the section I keep returning to.

  I must have believed it at the time – I must have witnessed the dagger and the demon blood; the Unseelie Court; the dancing and the laughter and the music. It is not something I could imagine, surely?

  Is it something my Uncle could have imagined? I had discovered that people witnessed him talking to imaginary people at the castle. He had been found, gaunt and pale, dead at the bottom of a mountain.

  Were we more alike than even I knew?

  Yesterday, the letter arrived from my servants at Hampstead. It was no surprise to me, really, that the answer they came back with was no; they had never seen a dark-haired woman with me at Howard House. Perhaps, then, Ceit was all in my imagination. Perhaps she was my imagination – my muse, my inspiration.

  Perhaps she was a Leannán Sídhe. Perhaps she will haunt me for the rest of my life and beyond. Death is, they say, no escape. She needs to find another soul to latch onto – but until then, I will be hers.

  I am in a position I cannot return from. I see myself in the mirror, and I look like Ruairí. My eyes are dark and shadowed and my cheeks hollow. I can barely stand up and every part of me aches. I cannot eat, I cannot sleep. I can do nothing but write.

  Today, it is the Saturday the 20th of June. It is Midsummer. Today I will be finishing off this account of the last six months of my life, and I will be packaging it up and taking it to Mrs Mackie. The package will be addressed to my publisher and along with it will be the Yeats book and a private note to my publisher.

  There will also be a confession, of sorts, within the package. I will specify that I cannot remember the exact details of Beltane but I will instead let the reader make up their own minds of what happened that night on the cliffs at Tarbert Castle. I will let them judge me on the death of my sister and make of it what they will.

  I may be found innocent. They may throw the paperwork away in disgust and write it off to the imaginings of a madman. Or they may not. It is in the hands of Fate.

  All I know is that my affairs are now in order and whatever happens will happen. My life will travel its own inexorable route and I know that tonight I will end up at Tarbert Castle. I shall take no protection with me, no iron, no salt. I shall simply wait and see.

  Tonight I may discover whether Ceit is real or whether she is imagined. I hope she will speak to me one last time – perhaps explain to me what has happened since the Winter Solstice. For six months, she has ruled my life and I find I cannot take any more. I cannot live like this.

  And I recall that she told me we had until Midsummer before we must part.

  I went into the drawing room earlier. The room was scattered with my things. My artwork, my papers, my books. I looked at the mirror and it was clear. As I stared at it, a fog began to form in the corner and the letters appeared, drawn in carefully by invisible fingers. C. E. I. T.

  I looked down at the iron poker I still held. Then I raised it up and smashed the mirror into to a thousand shards which sparkled in the light of the Midsummer dawn.

  There is nothing else I can do, and as I finish these lines and prepare to seal the package there are only three words left for me to write:

  I am done.

  ***

  The End