10. The Faoladh

Andrew and Liath were outside for most of the day, returning only to the cabin on the hill for meals and to thaw their red fingers and toes. When he had finished cleaning their dishes from a modest dinner of cold turkey, vegetables, and fresh bread, he left his mum rummaging through her herbs and dialed Micah's number on the red phone. It rang a few times again, making his heart hammer.

"Andrew?"

Andrew smiled at the sound of Micah's bright meadow voice. "Hey. Is this a good time?"

"I don't have the best reception. I'm in Lilydale."

"Actually?"

"Yeah. No reason not to be. Like you said, I haven't d…" His voice faded. But Andrew had heard the bitterness. "…about being Fae."

"Right." Andrew grimaced.

"Just gonna get drunk…" Faded. "Since you…and I might…" Static, half-formed words. "I wish you…" Silence.

"Micah?"

"Hello? I ca…"

"Hey, I can't hear you. I'll let you go. Have a good time, but be safe." Andrew paused. "I'm sorry, and I love you."

"Hello? You…" Faded. "…Like I…just…home." Static. "I love you." Micah paused. "You know I do." The line fell silent and then turned to the urgent beeping that told him there was no more connection.

Andrew frowned and put the phone on the cradle. Micah was drunk again. It was almost certainly because of Andrew that he was drinking at all. He'd consumed alcohol maybe twice since Andrew met him, and then it had been champagne on Christmas or one beer at a brewery. Knowing his own selfish cowardice affected Micah this way sparked the impulse to leave now and go fix things. But he didn't know how he could fix things if he was still mending himself.

"Andrew," said Liath after a moment, her back to him, "if you're ready to polish that agate, I've got everything set up." She pulled a stool out from under the kitchen bar, which looked more like a science lab now with several sanding tools, a tub of water, and protective gear.

He stood up, hugging his elbows, trying to focus on Liath rather than worrying about how he ruined his boyfriend. "This must not be the first agate you've polished."

"Oh, no. I love hunting for agates." As she sat on a second stool, she nodded to a shelf on the wall with a small army of the iron-rich stones looming over them. "Sometimes I sell them to tourists at the park station in the summers, but only when the time feels right."

Andrew sat on the stool she indicated and rolled the rough agate between his fingers, grinding his teeth in silence. He felt Liath watching him—she always did that, always scrutinized him till he caved and told her everything. But he was older now, and felt fiercely protective of Micah. Just because Micah was angry at him didn't mean he wouldn't fight anyone who said a bad word about him.

Since he was refusing to look at her, Liath set a hand on his shoulder. "You know that you can love someone and give yourself to them whether or not you deem yourself perfect. That's vulnerability."

Andrew blinked. "Are you telepathic?"

"No. Your expressions just have not changed at all since you were a lad," said Liath, nudging his chin. "You grind your teeth when you feel guilty. But there's pining in your forehead. This long little crease over your eyebrows showed up when you were eleven."

"Mum," muttered Andrew, because she was exactly right.

Smiling with satisfaction, Liath added, "And we have established your self-worth is nonexistent."

With a disgruntled hum, Andrew leaned their shoulders together.

Liath prepared the workspace in silence for a bit. Then she said, "Believe it or not, I also don't think you were in the wrong to come and find me by yourself."

Andrew shook his head, dubious. "Even Sam was mad at me on the phone last night."

"About what, do you think?" she asked. "Is it how you went about it?"

"Oh, yes. I was very insistent that I wasn't good enough for Micah. Before this depression episode, I at least trusted myself to be loving, and attentive, and, I don't know…I could make him laugh. But I became some kind of shell of a man, made up of my deficits. My addict parents and half-empty teacups left everywhere, and a lazy work ethic." Realization made his heart drop. He had never said this aloud, but it seemed like the time and his mum seemed like the person to tell. "I don't even really like my business, mum. Sam's much better at it than me. All I wanna do is read history books."

"Are you so old and set in your ways that you can't make a change?" She raised an eyebrow.

Andrew frowned. "No, I suppose not."

"And is Micah so supernatural he has no flaws as well?"

"Oh, no." He offered her a humorless laugh. "He always pees on the toilet seat. And he bickers with his dad all the time. And he always leaves his dirty clothes all over."

"Sounds like he's allowed to be imperfect, but you aren't."

Andrew glared at her. Liath's chestnut-colored eyes danced merrily as she propped her chin on her fist.

His eyes drifting up to the shelf of agates, Andrew said thoughtfully, "The cliff, though. That…that was restorative. I can feel myself climbing out of the dark."

She nodded. "I spent many a winter days on that ledge. Meditating for hours. Wishing not just once or twice that I would freeze to death out there."

He flinched, but understood—it was perhaps a more poetic dream of death than when he'd wanted to crash through a guard rail on his way up here.

She stroked his hair and said softly, "It gets better. Keep climbing."

Andrew leaned into her long hand, his throat tightening as he managed a silent nod.

Liath studied his face for several long moments before finally sighing and turning toward the workstation. The air between them shifted, focused. Andrew straightened, attentive. She demonstrated how to use the sanding tools, stressed the importance of keeping the agate wet as you sanded, and explained when to know to switch to a finer grit. Then she handed him the goggles and a dust mask.

Fixing his goggles as Liath turned on the motor for the dremel sander they were using, Andrew said, "So, this wolf. Is she just a wolf?"

"I'm sure you know she's not." The ends of her fire-and-ice hair brushed his cheek as she stood and hovered over him.

He just barely touched the metal to the agate, testing the effects, the water chilling his fingertips as he began to polish off the coarse buildup over the stone's banding. "You told me stories of Nan and the wolves when I was little. Can you tell me another?"

Liath nodded, speaking into his ear as if she were cradling him as a child. "Your nan Natalie lived on a sheep farm three generations old in the hills in Leinster, which is a lengthy drive in from the city center."

"Ah. Hence ‘culchie.'"

"Aye. She didn't want me to live in the fast-paced city, either. Why do you think I got out of there as fast as I did?" Liath shook her head. "If only I hadn't. Imagine, Andrew. No Liverpool for either of us. Just Irish hills."

Andrew contemplated the thought as he watched the iron-rich dust settle on his fingers as he wore it off the agate. It had a certain wild and magical appeal, it was true. But no Liverpool would have meant they'd never needed to immigrate to Minnesota. Which would have meant that he'd never met Micah. He slowly shook his head. "It's been a lot of pain, true, but I can no longer wish my life went differently than it did."

"Look at you, accepting the hand fate has dealt you," said Liath, her lips quirking.

With a dismissive snort, Andrew nudged her arm and said, "You let me get you side-tracked."

"Ah, right." She gazed at the blood ward dangling at Andrew's throat, silent for a moment. "Anyway. Natalie grew up during an age where magic was everywhere, and the faoladh, the Folk, and the humans lived in open relation with one another. It wasn't necessarily peaceful, but it was collaborative. In the countryside, this relationship lasted much longer than in large cities like Dublin or London, where the Industrial Revolution turned to iron and pushed out the Folk. But for her, living in the Irish hills on what could remain a fairly primitive farm, she had just as many mates who were Fae or faoladh as she knew ordinary girls. When I was a girl, the faoladh were scarce—moving farther away from civilization, or else falling in numbers to poachers or disease."

"Wouldn't the faoladh protect themselves from poaching?" he asked. "Couldn't they reason with humans?"

"Ah. Time to switch to the next grit." She turned off the dremel and held out the next metal tip. Andrew lowered the agate into the water bowl, dried his fingers on his shirt, and pulled out the dremel tip to replace it with the one indicated. When he was back to polishing, Liath answered, "At times, like with the Ryans, yes. Humans and faoladh can reason with one another. But sometimes, the faoladh were sought because they were extraordinary, to be exploited, imprisoned, or controlled, as rare things often are. Not bound by the phases of the moon, they are able to put on their wolfskins at will. They neither prefer to be bipedal or to be beasts, as they felt kinship to both forms, neither wholly beast nor wholly man."

That was a sentiment Micah expressed on many occasions, thought Andrew. A foot in each world, and a stranger to both.

Liath had something burbling in her potion bottle, which played like a bass track behind her storytelling while the sanding held the rhythm. When she spoke of her family and her childhood, her brogue got heavier, making Andrew strain to understand her through it. "When your nan was in her courtship with granddad Phalen, they were walking home to her farm at twilight when they saw an odd woman leaning over a bush, chattering seemingly to herself, prodding the bush with a long broomstick. Your granddad was intuitive and brash—" Here, she paused, an eyebrow raising, eyes roaming over Andrew.

"I wouldn't know anything about that," remarked Andrew, intensely staring at his work.

Her eyes danced. " —And must have sensed something was amiss. He tossed a stone at her feet and drew her attention, and when he did, a wolf shot from beneath the bush and bit off three of her fingers."

"Cripes," said Andrew with a laugh.

"Raving, the woman mounted her broomstick and flew away. Ah. Pause. See how you went a bit too hard here? And keep the stone wetter. Leave that edge be now, it's done. Let's switch grits."

"Wait, are witches real?"

Once he was sanding again, she said without answering his question, "The faoladh cast off his wolfskin and was but a boy, wiping blood from his lips and crying, clasping Phalen's hands with gratitude. The boy followed them back to the farm and, feeling for the boy who was seemingly alone, Natalie fed him a warm dinner of sheep's milk and bread, telling him he could stay the night if only he left the sheep alone.

"For three days, the faoladh boy wore his wolfskin and stared at the southern hills all day, howling mournfully all through the night. Natalie kept feeding him, though her parents bid her not to. On the fourth morning, a man and woman came to the farm. The faoladh threw off his wolfskin and embraced the man and woman, who spoke to him with yips and growls as the wolves do. They all left together without so much as sniffing the air near the sheep pastures. On the fifth day, the faoladh family had left an offering on the doorstep of the farmstead—an enormous buck and an impressive doe, and five hares strung on a line, as well as a bloody broomstick with a snapped handle.

"After this encounter, Phalen and Natalie were regarded as having a touch of magic themselves, and the farmstead flourished under them. Your nan swears she saw the faoladh boy every year when she went with the family to the Litha market in Dublin, and every year he sent her family home with pelts, lard, and jerky of the finest quality." Liath stuck her foot behind her and patted the deerskin rug. "This was hers, a gift from the faoladh boy she saved."

Satisfied with the smooth yet unrefined shape of his agate, Andrew stopped sanding, placing it carefully in the water bowl. "Is there a family of faoladh here with the wolf I saw?"

Liath looked out the windows, sadly shaking her head. "Not to my knowledge. Who knows? I tried to ask around, when she first appeared—it was maybe five years back? Time slides oddly up here. Anyway, nothing came of it, and the DNR denied any movement near here from the local packs, so whatever pack she was with must have been small and avoided detection."

"Is she grown?"

"As a wolf, yes, now she is. She was an awkward gangly thing when I met her, barely capable of hunting. But last I saw, she doesn't look older than…seven or eight as a girl."

"What's your relationship with her?"

Liath shrugged, shaking her head slowly. "It's been a challenge, knowing what to do or not to do with her. I don't want her to treat me as family. I'd rather her be like the faoladh boy my ma met, crying for his family until they returned for him. But the longer it goes, the more she breaks my heart, being all alone up here."

Andrew nodded, leaning his cheek on his fist, his eyelids growing heavy. She sensed this at once, patting his leg, standing up from the couch. "The day draws on." She lifted the bottle from the flame using a pair of tongs and tipped it into a transparent teacup. "I brewed you a tea that's helped my mood lift during spells like yours over the years. Drink, and then feel free to rest. I know things are a bit dull up here, without a television or your fancy smartphones, but—"

Andrew shook his head vigorously enough that Liath trailed off. Accepting the cup, he said, "I enjoy the change of pace."

"I have collected some books," offered Liath. She went to her nature altar and stooped down, pulling out a number of thin volumes and returning to him. "Druid folktales, as well as Minnesota natural histories, and books by Anshinabe locals. This one is on the formation of Gichigumi. This is about Laurentia, the old North American continent. The notebooks on the bottom are notes I took after talking to Anshinabe locals about the land."

Taking the stack, Andrew said eagerly, "Ah, this will easily occupy me for the rest of the day. Thank you." He set the books on his knees and flipped through the Minnesota history book, pausing on diagrams and old maps from the time that the state was settled.

When Liath remained silent and motionless, Andrew glanced up at her. Her dark eyes were glassy with tears. She swiped them away and said with a tremulous smile, "I'm just so proud of you." Awkward, she hurried back to the bunsen burner and left him to his books and his flaming cheeks.