The Otherworld may be the closest non-mortal realm to our own, though concepts like ‘close’ or ‘distant’ don’t mean a lot in the non-Euclidian nightmare that are the Spirit Realms.
I stepped out of the gate into a shadowy world beneath a starlit sky. A very starlit sky. I stared upwards into a night sky replete with more stars than I believed could fit between one horizon and another.
I turned a full circle trying to spot a constellation I could recognise, but it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Wide bands of light criss-crossed the sky in bewildering patterns, looping and curving around each other like brush strokes on canvas. One horizon was bright with what seemed to be the Northern Lights, glowing purple and blue and green and other colours I wasn’t sure I could name.
“It’s beautiful,” said Donnelly, behind me.
“It is,” I said.
“Do you remember it now?” he asked. “Did your memories of this place come back when you stepped through?”
I hadn’t even considered this possibility. I was not the first person to have gone through more than once, but I was the first troll in recorded history to make two visits, so there was always a chance whatever enchantment they cast on me before I left the last time would fail to hold once I returned. But try as I might, I couldn’t remember anything beyond stepping into the gate and then stepping out again three days later. I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Well, worth a try,” said Donnelly, hefting his basket and looking around. “I expected some sort of welcome party.”
“So did I,” I said, checking the gate behind us to find it had vanished. That wasn’t good.
“Are those trees or sculptures?” asked Donnelly.
I took in the forest around us for the first time. The ground beneath our feet was a deep dark green, like a bed of soft moss. Punching through were the trunks of what, at first glance, appeared to be trees, but on closer inspection seemed too smooth to be natural. They were pale as marble and rose to towering heights before dividing into branches. The end of each branch had a cluster of shimmering lights Instead of leaves. I approached one ‘tree’ and rested my palm on it. It was warm and pulsed slightly in time with my own heartbeat. I watched as the lights on the branches above me dimmed and glowed in the same slow rhythm.
“I think I know what they took from Simon,” said Donnelly after a moment.
I took my hand off the tree. “What?”
“This memory of this place… It’s more than just a place. It’s like… Like if you’d seen art for the first time and then had it taken away. They can erase the memories, but you’re going to have a piece of your soul taken away too.”
“There’s an old World War One song I can’t remember…”
“How ya gonna keep them down on the farm,” he said and whistled a few bars.
Instantly, the ‘trees’ around us sprang to life, branches waving as if in a strong gale, and leaf-lights brightening so much, they drowned out the sky above them.
Jamie stopped whistling. “Wow,” he said.
The furore in treetops around us settled down somewhat.
“Maybe, keep your whistle in your pants until we meet Queen Mab,” I said.
The trees reacted again. What movement they still exhibited died away and the lights blinked out of existence.
“OK,” said Jamie. “That was creepy. Did you kick a power cable loose?”
“No,” I said. “I think they just reacted to what I said. Queen Mab!”
The lights reappeared briefly, in a pulse centred on us, spreading outwards like ripples from a dropped rock in a pond.
“So they know her.” He placed the basket on the forest floor again and turned a full circle, speaking to the forest. “We are peaceful emissaries from a faraway land. We come to pay homage to the court of Queen Mab, at her invitation, and by ancient pact.”
The trees did not move and the lights did not appear again.
“I don’t think it worked,” I said.
“I think it did,” said Donnelly, pointing behind me.
I turned to see a path leading off through the woods that had definitely not been there before. “Did the trees move?” was the best I could manage.
“Nope,” said Donnelly. “But the path appeared anyway. This place is weird.”
We followed the path for two hours or so. As we had walked, the stars above us wheeled and changed in kaleidoscopic patterns that made navigation difficult, but though the path took a long and curving route, it didn’t branch or fork so we were never in danger of losing our way.
Every so often, Jamie would whistle a short piece from some old jazz standard to see how the trees would react. Their leaves would light up briefly, only to dim and disappear again. “They don’t want to dance while the boss may be watching,” he said after the fourth or fifth time it happened.
“You’re remarkably unfazed by this whole experience,” I said.
“You sign up for foreign service, you have to expect strange cultures and foreign lands.”
“This is a few steps beyond ‘strange and foreign’.”
“True, but if you’re not prepared for anything and everything, you’re not prepared enough.”
“Were you a boy scout?”
“Ha! They’re amateurs!” he said with a theatrical flourish. Then he held the basket towards me. “Could you carry this for a while? I’d like to make some notes.”
“Sure,” I said, taking the basket. It was heavier than I expected. “Though you have to take it back before we meet the Queen.”
“No problem, yeah,” he said, pulling out a small notepad with several short pencils stuck through the plastic spirals.
“Also,” I began, then stopped.
“Hm?”
“When you are done with the offering and the questions, we’re going to go a little…” I sought a diplomatic word to describe my plans, “...off-script. It shouldn’t cause any problems, but maybe don’t make any notes until I’m sure everything has gone according to the plan.”
He stowed away his notepad. “Whoa, I’m not sure that’s OK. I had a month of protocol briefings leading up to this morning. We can’t go making things up now.”
“It’s fine,” I lied. “You’ll be done with the official business. The protocols will be fulfilled. If what I try doesn’t work, we’ll be able to just apologise and bow and exit without consequence.”
“This is very unorthodox,” he said. But he hesitated, which told me he was considering it.
Ahead of us, the path widened into a clearing about three hundred yards across. At the centre of it stood the largest of the ‘trees’ we had seen so far.
The colossal tree in the centre of the clearing was the first one we’d seen with its leaves fully illuminated since our last mention of Queen Mab. Its branches hung low and stretched almost as far as the circle of forest surrounding it.
We walked clockwise around the clearing until we could see what appeared to be a stone circle near the base of the tree. I’ve visited Newgrange, Nowth, Dowth, and Stonehenge, but this seemed both more ancient and more recently-used at the same time.
There was no path leading away from the clearing, and the one we had entered from had disappeared the moment we stepped out of it.
“I guess this is her court?” said Jamie, gesturing towards the stone circle.
“Best guess I can make,” I said and handed back the basket. “Go go, use your diplomacy powers.”
He took it and walked towards the circle. I followed.
At the centre of the circle was a low flat stone altar. Donnelly approached it and reverently set down the basket.
It seems the shadows around us grew, causing the stone monoliths to loom taller. Directly ahead of us, where the trunk of the massive tree intersected the circle, the bark dimmed and I could feel a presence within the shadow peering out at us.
Donnelly began his rehearsed speech. “I visit from the Mortal Realm and from the land of Ireland. On this, the first day of the Summer, its leaders pay you homage with the traditional gifts. We request to renew our ancient peace and humbly beg for your continued protection and guidance.” He bowed after saying that, and I followed suit.
In truth, ‘protection and guidance’ was simply code for them not taking children and swapping in their own offspring; a practice that continued until shockingly recently. But this sounded better.
I risked a glance sideways and could see that the tall standing stones were moving slightly. Somehow, without changing shape or appearance, they had become figures wrapped in cloaks. Clearly they were always figures wrapped in cloaks, my brain told me, as they took a step closer in unison.
I did not rise from my bow, but I could sense that someone else had stepped out of the deep shadow of the tree before us. Even with my eyes fixated back onto my shoes, I could sense their - no, her - presence. They stepped delicately over the moss with bare feet, making no sound at all, which made the fact that I could tell exactly where she was and what she was doing even more inexplicable. She reached the basket and I could feel her hand wave through the air over it and then make a gesture indicating we could rise.
I did so and beheld Queen Mab.
I am not sure what I expected, but she wasn’t it. She was about five foot two. Elfin, obviously, but long-limbed with thin and delicate fingers. She had short but tousled dark red hair with leaves and bits of moss buried in it like she had just climbed through a hedge instead of stepping through a tree. The dress she wore was made of that same moss-stuff. She had a spray of freckles over a nose that barely existed. Her ears were pointed, but not as pointed as the teeth on display when she smiled.
She lay one hand on the basket and splayed her fingers. “You bring gifts?!” She sounded excited by the idea, though this must have been something she’d gone through a hundred times before.
Donnelly stepped to the other side of the basket. “The traditional offerings. May I?”
She pulled her hand back from the basket and nodded eagerly.
He opened the basket lid and reached inside to pull out a bundle wrapped in cloth and a glass jar. “Bread and salt, as a token of hospitality.”
She nodded solemnly and accepted the tokens, then handed them off to one side. A Figure of shadow appeared to accept them and vanished again just as suddenly.
I looked at the stone circle around us again. Twelve faces peered down at us impassively. Each face was vastly different, some looking like old men or women and some like animals and some like something else in between. Some of them seemed to sense my gaze and their heads slowly rotated to meet my stare. I quickly turned my attention back to the ceremony.
Jamie reached into the basket and took out the second pair of gifts. A corked bottle and a small but beautifully-made harp, inlaid with silver. “Wine and song,” he said, “to celebrate our friendship.”
She took the wine and passed it away to another shadowy being, but kept the harp and played a few sad notes on it. The music echoed around the clearing and the lights on the great tree dimmed briefly in response.
The last pair of gifts emerged from the basket. “Seed and stone,” said Donnelly, "A remnant of the past and a promise of the future yet to come." The seed was a mix of barley and wheat, from what I had gathered, and the stone was a marble carving that represented the goddess Ériu.
Mab tucked the harp under her arm and accepted the new offerings. She peered intently at the stone figure before her eyes widened in surprise. She turned it and raised it to one of the stone figures that surrounded us. The figure - part woman and part bird - bowed to Mab in response, then bowed again to Donnelly.
Mab strummed another few notes on her new harp, happier ones this time, and smiled again. “Your words are most welcome, Mortals, and your gifts even more so. I will deign to answer three questions for you today.”
“Your generosity is most appreciated,” said Donnelly, still following the script. “The first question is, how long will the winter be?”
This was always the first question asked. We don’t know if it is ancient tradition or the practicality of an early 20th-century government that hadn’t yet discovered the Jet Stream, but the information was still very useful. Our government would use it to forecast for the year ahead.
Mab played out a sad little song on her harp again. “I am sad to say it will be a winter without cease. You may see us before you see the sun again.”
“My second question is about the price of gold,” he said. “Will mortals value it more or less when next our people visit your realm?”
She giggled and plucked out a happy little song. “You men and your shiny metals. Don’t you want to know if you will find love and happiness?” Then she sighed and answered, “The price will fall and rise and fall again, but it will be back to where it is now when we meet again.”
“Thank you, my- your majesty,” said Donnelly. “The third question I will ask is about the Cabinet, the band of men and women who rule our country. Will any of them die in the coming year?”
“Oh ho ho, you tread on dangerous ground, my little envoy. For a mortal to know his own destiny is to walk the very line that makes him mortal.”
“You may be… vague… on the details,” said Donnelly.
“Then I can tell you that each of the fat and happy lords and ladies on your council will still be fat and happy one year from now.” Then she added with a grin, “Provided they remain ignorant of this fact.”
Donnelly bowed again and said, “Thank you for your answers and for your hospitality, my Queen.”
She returned his bow with a curtsy and said, “Your offerings are most welcome. You must be our guests now for three nights of feasting, to celebrate and consummate this understanding.”
At the mention of ‘consummation’, Donnelly’s eyes swivelled wildly in his head.
I drew a deep breath and stepped forward. This was it: The moment I’d been planning for weeks. I was about to either solve all my problems or cause many many new ones.
“I also- I also bring gifts,” I said. My voice cracked but I carried on. “And I also have three questions.”
The cloaked figures around us stepped inwards once more, and Mab tilted her head and looked at me. She played a few notes on her harp that were the saddest song I’ve ever heard, and said, “Oh, Victor. My friend. I really hoped that you would not do this,” she said as shadowy figures surrounded us.
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