Leaves Falling in a Quiet Place

by R J Darby

  “My goodness!” laughed her husband. “You look like a leprechaun, but you drink like a clurichaun!"

  “I think that you will find a match closer to a banshee,” she whispered with a light in her gaze, which was brighter than the glow-worms. He returns her a wry smile, knowing of her family's rumored history. He had often considered, but maybe she was something more than a leprechaun, but in the end, he has put it down to love. After all, there was no other woman in the world that could make him feel this way; not even the highly revered banshee of the Phantom Forest.

  Rowan took his wife by the arm and swung her clumsily around the dance space.

  "Husband! You are quite drunk!” She entered into a jig with him with her bottle still gripped between those tight fingers that had made easy work of taking it from Rowan.

  “I am drunk on the love of you, as I am every day.” He made to bow, and found himself almost falling over.

  “I could not have raised the family with a better leprechaun.” She smiled. “I want to raise a cheer to the gods and goddesses in equal part for the blessings they have placed on our family and all families. Cheers!”

  “Cheers!” The rest of the families (or at least those who had not slept away to make love behind the hillock) raise their drinks in support of this toast; not that they knew what they were toasting to, but a toast was always a toast. And that meant another wonderful excuse to drink as if I didn't have enough already.

  “I say cheers to that as well, and perhaps to increasing our family?” Rowan raised his eyebrow in a way but could only ever result in trouble.

  His wife smiled coyly, “I suppose it is our duty to keep the lines running. There are only so many leprechauns in the world.”

  “We had better start immediately then.” With that, the two finished their jig, and began to head away from the festival. Eager for love, they found themselves a Bushey area which was nestled in the far reaches of the Quiet Place and set to beginning their carnal duties without a single complaint.

  What none of the leprechauns knew at the time is that, as the cry of their lovemaking filled the air with a sensual note, another kind of cry was staring in the great hall by their homes, one that was anything but pleasurable.

  Tendril like fingers wrapped their way around the entrance of the great hall where the children had been left to sleep, dragging a chill into the cozy space as they slipped inside with a fluid yet mechanical movements like an arachnid. The cold which they brought with them was one which was dragged from the depths of the earth, the kind that lingers in resting places and makes cold spots appear in places where family members have died. The cold was not the only part of them to leak in, though, far from it. Their stench of rotting flesh would have been enough to draw the attention of the other leprechauns if they weren’t so overwhelmed by joy and the sugary scent of their drink.

  Each child knew that something was wrong even before they awoke. They did not need any kind of magic left to them from the lands of Ireland to know that a disturbance had ruptured the air. Even a human, which is incredibly slow and stupid in comparison, would have felt the hairs on their forearms raise. Regardless of this knowledge, the majority of the children did not stir. The fear gortas were far too devious and too sadistic allow them such a short scare. Instead, the dark specters loomed about the room and drank in the nightmares that weave their way into the minds of the innocent children. How cruel it was that the Instincts that told them they needed to flee were held captive to their slumber - producing only nightmares.

  Whimpers traveled across the room, and from the younger children sniffling began. Gorta did not need their ability to grant wishes. They only hungered for the vulnerable cries of pained children, followed by the agonizing aftertaste of the leprechaun adults that would forever be stained with guilt.

  The gorta could have kept up this cruel caress of dreams for many hours and gotten away with it. They knew that habits of the leprechauns well, yet all the leprechauns had to defend them with were bedtime stories told by their parents and grandparents about this mystical and mellifluous race. With their spring equinox to keep them busy, the leprechaun would know nothing until blood filtered into their waters.

  The gorta were stripped of their feast as three children stirred from their nightmare. This was unheard of! Yet instead of confusion, the gorta responded with rage.

  Something within these leprechauns were different, but at the end of the day, it didn't matter. The gorta swooped down and clasped hands around the children's mouths just as their cries began to crack the air with the instantaneous nature of a plant pot being dropped on concrete slabs.

  The scream was over as quickly as it started.

  It sends a blood-curdling ripple through the hall as the other leprechauns woke up to meet the dead eyes of the fear gorta; swiftly followed by the tearing of their skin. The very hungry gorta feasted until they were drenched in blood from their ravenous hunger. Chunks of children were only an appetizer to the meal they could smell just over the hill.

  The once-celebrated hall became a pool of crimson with bodies floating like lily pads on a silent lake. The massacred children were in parts, and the blood that ran was so thick and plentiful that it trickled out like molasses through the doors. It only separated when it reached the spring, where it tainted the life source with death so deeply that it muddied the waters as far as Ríochtaí de Péarlaí (the great Kingdom of Pearls) where the townsfolk remarked on the pinkish hue of the water the next morning and stupidly believed it to be rose water despite its vaguely metallic tang.

  One unfortunate leprechaun, a singleton named Arfar (single because of his inability to keep his pranks to the humans alone), was the first to note that something was incredibly wrong.

  Arfar swung his tankard, or at least somebody’s tankers – he was unsure of whose, through the stream as it chased by the festival. It seemed an unusual pace to him, as though the water itself was trying to hurry away from something awful. But he supposed that this was a matter of his mind's eye, being as he had so very much to drink. That was why he had come for water in the first place. Not to prevent his hangover. It was much too late for that. It was more of a pallet cleanser as so many of his kin had left half-filled drinks in their eagerness to get at it like rabbits. Being much of a hoarder, as many leprechauns are, Arfar was not about to let such fine drink go to waste.

  He nearly tripped into the water, and perhaps that would have been preferable, but the next he knew he was tasting the tangiest water he had ever drunk. His tongue scoured the inside of his mouth. It was a taste that he could not quite place. It was not silt or dirt, sand or grit. He did remember it though...

  With another glug and a frown on his face, he searched his memory, which was fairly hard to do consider how much alcohol was swirling around his rotund belly.

  “Fishing!” He snapped his fingers. It was when he was hunting for trout, and he had caught his finger on the hook. How pale he had turned pulling it out. Then he had to suck the wound to hold the bleed.

  His chest plummeted, heart bashing on his stomach with the weight of a crumbling rock face. Before he had the opportunity to be sick, he saw a sight that had him running for his life, screeching so loudly in Gaelic that the old gods stirred in their slumber within the hollows of ancient trees and from caves which wriggled their ways through the mountains like earthworms.

  Rowan, who had just put on his green jacket as his wife lies in the grass, perked his head up. The hoard of gorta moved like a dark cloak encapsulating the night. Leprechauns bolted in all directions, scrambling and screaming away. Rowan and Naimh’s children were the first thing on their minds, so they pushed against the flow – pushing against it as though it was a tide dragging them out to sea and if they didn’t fight back then death was a certainty. Except this was worse because as parents, a child in peril hurts more than anything that could be inflicted on the physical body. Threats against their children will be carved into their soul s
o deeply that even beheading would seem like no more than a scratch from a holly bush on their waking vessels.

  They burst through the crowd with such force that they fell, grazing their palms and knees. It didn’t matter, though. All that mattered was the safety of their children.

  Naimh’s blood turned to ice. Gorta - gorta! She knew. She knew! Her blood ran so cold that her tears were frozen before they could streak her cheeks, and each breath was like the cut of a knife as icy fractals splintered at her lungs. The only hope, the flicker of light on the onyx horizon, was that they weren’t at Margaretta's. To her mind, that meant that the vision couldn’t be true... could it?

  No matter how many steps they took, the hall seemed to be moving further and further away. The nimble creatures hurtled inwards at a speed mankind would struggle to see, but to them, it felt like wading through champ.

  Finally, as they felt like their limbs might shatter if they went any faster, they reached the hall.

  At the doorway they stopped, so statuesque that if the gorta returned, they might have passed right by them. They were faintly aware of noises, yet an overwhelming silence struck them – one so deep that it made a graveyard joyful. At least any other graveyard than this, because that was all it was. An immeasurable amount of time passed as Naimh dropped to her knees.

  Rowan moved in, shaking his children with blood soaking his hands. Their dead eyes looked up as the glass of dolls as he shook more and more. Their heads rocked limply, the way they had when they were babes in their first days before they could hold weight on their necks. He cradled Ivy first, seeing in her the baby he had once held. Then in a flood of tears so strong that it could have washed the room clean, he got on the floor. Seeing her husband, the last piece of love in her barely beating heart, Naimh moved to him.

  “We must go.” She took his arm. He stayed, as weighted down as the corpses around him.

  “Let me die with them.” It was hardly even a whisper, more of a plea to the gods from a formally proud man, now broken.

  “You must come. There are others.”

  “But not ours!” His head curled into the gap between his lost daughter’s neck and shoulder, and his voice dropped again. “But not ours...”

  “We need to save the others. The gorta.”

  “Gortas are not real.”

  “They are here, and I must... I must... I must save somebody.” She tugged at him, turning so that his face was revealed, split in two by a smattering of blood against freckled porcelain.

  Rowan could not move. There was no energy left in him. It felt as if it had been plucked from him and was on it’s way to the astral plane where he hoped his children danced with his ancestors. He seemed like a rock, until Naimh found a way to crumble the restraint.

  “What if I am with child?” was her desperate attempt. It was a long shot, but the need to get him out of there was strong. A hole inside her had grown, and it would only be filled by repentance. How could she repent for this? She had allowed her babies to be slain because she thought herself too wise to believe in fantasy tales. A lifetime of making up for her ignorance did not seem like enough time, but she wondered if maybe with the length of a leprechaun’s life, she might have a moment of peace.

  The potential to be a father rattled him. He may have a responsibility still. With the speed that a weeping willow grows, he rose to his feet and took one last look at the three children amongst the others.

  Ivy. The firstborn with the fire and passion that only grew through Irish roots.

  Basil. The middle child, with a keen eye for the glint of gold that would put a flock of magpies to shame.

  And Hawthorn. The youngest. Even still, he had the hands and talent that would one day rival his father’s talents as a cobbler. If only he had the chance. How cruel the fatal hands of fate could be to fae, woman, or man.

  With a last look at the three which would forever be worth more than any amount of treasure he could smuggle under an unlimited amount of rainbows, Rowan turned to the door. He took only a moment to look back as his heart urged him to close the doors of the hall. This hall would become not a place of pleasure but a crypt that was built of wood instead of stones.

  As the doors closed, his mind remained on his dearly departed children, but his body took on a mission of its own. He and Naimh marched towards the fleeing leprechauns. They didn’t care about the gorta then. They faced them without fear, something that only those who have nothing left to live for can do. The other leprechauns, in this village and the others, would one day call them heroes. The problem with being a hero is that it means something terrible has already happened in order for one to rise. They grow like the best roses in manure. Their beauty comes from filth and no matter how long and lovely they might grow, what holds them up will always be made of thorns.

  Chapter Three

  Escape

  Rounding up fae and other leprechauns was harder than they had expected. Being such a limited race, they were used to running – just not from the vile gorta. As they panicked and scattered in all directions, the earth became so well-trodden that it turned to mud, clumping underfoot and making many trip over. Some were picked off by the gorta as they scrambled to get up with their fingers scooping channels in the ground. Others were just too slow. A few stragglers slipped through the grasps by pure luck, because no amount of talent could have saved them. With dwindling numbers and fear wrapping its savage hands around them, hope seeped away like an injured dog going into the forest to die.

  The elderly were taken after the children, followed by those who had tried to help, only to be bogged down by the weight of wrinkled hides who had failed to cling onto their lives. Between them, hundreds of years of memories were swept away, and many family lines abolished in a single spark of time. The gorta treated others lives like a speck on the earthly plane, nothing more than a crumb of burnt toast on a breakfast table that was flicked off with a twang of finger and thumb, and not given another thought.

  Rowan grasped a leprechaun with an already torn jacket from a near miss by the arm to straighten him up. Then he realized that he had no idea where to go.

  “Naimh!” He looked at her with wide eyes. Surely she would have answers! She always had answers.

  Naimh looked about the fields. In every direction was death and destruction. Still pushed on by the memory of her vision, Naimh knew there were other people to save. But where could you take them? To the east, the enemy circled above. They tore limbs and cut through vital organs as if they were butter. That was not going to work.

  She turned and looked north. That seemed even more hopeless. That was so many of them swarming that they appeared like a tidal wave made of shadow.

  West was where they had come after running from the hall. Knowing what was inside their had her heart as cold and solid as crystal. She said that if she took her husband back that way, or any of the other survivors for that matter, their fragile grasp on the earthly realm would be snapped as easily as cobwebs. Or indeed, the bodies of their children rest there.

  That left only south. Frantically she turned towards the many burial mounds and cairns laid in the wake of that direction.

  “We cannot go that way. It would be an atrocity to walk among the dead." Rowan said.

  “But more so, to end up lying with them." Shuddered the survivor that he had pulled up by his wrist. Several more joined them, directed by Rowan as he left Naimh to work out their escape. When he returned, she was staring blankly.

  “Do they have her in some sort of spell?” A leprechaun who held his shoulder cried out. In any other circumstance drawing attention to themselves with such loud musings would have been disastrous, yet volume was a necessity to break through the howl of an injured gorta.

  A small group of leprechaun had managed to inflict an injury on the side of one of the fear gorta. It was brave but ultimately a noble last act. Hearing the cry of their fellow beasts, they swarmed together; everyone boiling with rage
so hot, but it was to be cooled only by gallons of blood. If the leprechaun had thought that the gortas were a thing of nightmares before this, they now realized that they were closer to a night terror.

  Rowan and his following had to move fast.

  As the pressure mounted, Naimh could only stare and remain in her rigid state. To the petrified survivors, it must have looked like she had already given in and accepted rigamortis - which certainly seem to be their inevitable fate. Rowan knew better though.

  He had heard the rumors and in facthad mentioned them to his wife several times. On none of these occasions did he think that there might be some truth within his words.

  “What are you smiling for?” Another survivor, half-clad from being interrupted during her first festival coitus, screamed at Rowan.

  “He's a lunatic.” Said the one with the ripped coat.

  “No,” one of a few more elderly members of the Quiet Place cut in, “I know this man. I know him to be one of the best cobblers in all of the land. He even manages to make favorable bargains with the Merrow. I trust him. What say you, Rowan?”

  “Just wait. She will have your answer.” Even though he said it with clarity, he wondered how his wife's banshee blood might do such a thing. It was hardly a secret that the banshee forewarned of death. Telling his comrades, this seemed most counterproductive. If they were willing enough to give in to what their ancestral souls knew to be true except what seems like a tale of fae (which should not have been difficult considering the other beasts of 'myth' that were before their very eyes), then they may have been safe.

  Rowan did not know what might be the vision of his wife, or indeed how a vision that had to revolve around death would be anything but a sight of slaughter, but he knew that she would have the way...

  “I'm not staying around here to die.” One of the party made to run.