Magic--The Gathering

Magic—The Gathering

Innistrad was weary, he’d travelled—first he went to the Devil’s Causeway and played his pipes across the water. He played the ‘Gathering Enchantment’ to bring forth the water sprites and water nymphs. They came to his bidding, excited to be called, frolicking in the water and jumping like dolphin, graceful and skittish. Grounded, they flopped up the stones made by the devil’s footprints until the sun dried their scales and feet grew from their flippers.  They alighted the causeway on foot.

 

He went to the forest, played his enchantment and called to the trolls, imps and sioga—the faeries living in the woods. The goblins came too, and while the tree spirit woke, he was too tired to uproot.

 

Ciar, the cleverest sioga, said that she’d take minutes and type them up for him on her tablet but she was just showing off. Shadows and wisps came and a few animals felt they had right of attendance, given that they appear in folklore and faerie stories. There were three deer, a donkey, the obligatory owl, a couple of rabbits and a mother field mouse with her young. An airborne toad came too—though the toad was only airborne because Riddock and Hoyt, two of the goblins, were playing catch with it.

 

The leprechauns were difficult to track down. Leprechauns were always troublesome, it was in their DNA.  Innistrad flew the four compass points of Ire in search of them on the back of a pure white swan, but he had his IPad and listened to T-Rex to pass the time. He found the leprechauns in the most unlikely place, a town in the South called, Wheretheleprechaunshangout. They came with Finnegan, who fancied a jollie.

 

The glade was cacophonous. Aghna, a Sioga, and Eocho, an imp, were arguing. Aghna called him a gombeen, which roughly translates to ‘tosser’. Eocho got her in a headlock, so she battered him, to the amusement of the goblins who sneered at him with their pointy little faces all wrinkled up.

 

Innistrad called order and the glade fell silent.

 

‘Right I sent a memo, so you all know why I’ve called this meeting and why you’re here.’

 

‘Ours got wet and the ink ran,’ called out Neara, the bravest of the water nymphs.

 

‘Well get Ciar to fill you in. Now then, any other business?’

 

Jittery was an elder, but very few of the faerie folk knew his name because it changed to suit. He was born Baby, then Toddler, he soon outgrew the names Child, Bedwetter and Youth— you get the picture. He fell once and was known for a while as Broken Knee. And his wife calls him—well, never mind, today he was called jittery owing to his palpitations.  Jittery cleared his throat. ‘Innistrad, any other business comes at the end of the meeting, you haven’t started yet.’

 

‘I haven’t?’

 

‘No,’

 

‘Order. Order,’ Innistrad cried as the airborne toad crossed his line of vision and landed with a plop, squashing one of the field mouse litter. ‘With the exception of the water nymphs, you all know why you’re here. One of our own has been away too long and needs to come home, so he does. He’s been gone two score and two years, and even talks like one of that lot from Sasana.’

 

‘What’s Sasana?’ asked the owl who had a nice twit-twoo but wasn’t very wise, given that he’d spent most of his life in an English owl sanctuary and only came to Ireland after he escaped and the wind blew him over the Irish Sea. He landed exhausted, ruffled and missing his twoo for a few days.  His settling in Ireland was hampered until he stopped calling everybody a twit-twit. One twit insult they could just about tolerate, but two from the twooless owl was asking for trouble.

‘Sasana is the Irish word for England.’ Ciar told him. Our boy’s been out there with the heathens for too long. He needs to come home before it’s too late and he takes to eating saveloys.’

 

‘Quite, quite,’ said Innistrad, ‘so what are we going to do about it?’

 

‘We could take a boat, break into his house, bash him over the head and sail him back,’ Suggested Lugh, who was known for being an angry goblin. ‘We’ll tie him up with fishing line and carry him to the boat on the back of a wild boar.’

 

‘I suppose that’s one way of doing it. But it would take too long, and would the boar stand still long enough to get him on, that’s the question? Our boy’s parents aren’t getting any younger, his mother had a fall, you know. We could leave him there, but he belongs home, we need to get him back. The Sasana’s have taken too many of our road builders as it is—what more do they want? Don’t they know how to lay Tarmac? To be sure, to be sure, it has to be done tonight, before it’s too late. ‘

 

‘We could use magic.’  Finola the wisp whispered in a tiny little voice.

 

‘What’s that you say?’

 

‘Magic, Sir, we could use magic to bring him back.’ Finola’s cheeks would have burned crimson if she’d had any.

 

‘Well, I’ll be. Now, there’s an idea I never thought of,’ said Innistrad, then he forgot about the meeting and rushed off for his tea.

 

‘Any other business?’  Called out Doddery—who had been called Jittery but that phase had passed. He used his best authoritative tone, which he’d been saving for best—but they’d lost interest and dispersed, disappeared and vanished. Faerie folk are like that—now you see them, now you don’t.

 

That night Peter went to bed in England and woke up in his old room, in his childhood bed with his toes poking out of the bottom because he’d grown big.

 

Now how did that happen? He wondered as a large bird flew past his window. And from a long way distant, he heard a whispering old voice singing Ride a White Swan.