Some more flash fiction for the Daily Prompt.

A Walk On All Hallows’ Eve.

In the small town by the sea All Hallows’ Eve was a serious time. If you went out at all it was warmly dressed from head to toe. The old folk didn’t go at all, they’d seen it all before. There were some things best not seen, unless you wanted woe. The children were kept in that night, which just bred curious minds. Forbidden was too strong a word, discouraged seemed to be more apt. Then again there was a vague sense that this was a night to experience, when you were ready to see it. The folks you’d see out at that time were the curious, in all senses of the term. The mad, the strange and people who like to stare.

The year I was there they told me all this, as if it was something I’d need to know. I was an outsider after all, so I was bound to be that way inclined. A foreigner, a stranger, the word meant both things. I was not from so distant a place that I didn’t understand. Halloween was a custom in my town too. We had our own stories, but these were mostly history now. We had not seen witches for centuries. We remembered our dead at Armistice or Christmas.

The pubs were full of stories here and every bar had its own historian. History, stories, it’s the same thing really. History is just the tales you can believe. In this town the night was called  Samhain, a word from before the saints. The island was full of saints, their churches were everywhere. Still, they hadn’t banished this ancient name, maybe they’d given it power. I could never find out if the nineteenth century mystics had exhumed it, or if it had sat quietly there for centuries like the ancient stone rings, just waiting to be explained. I think that the night has always been known, but the old name may have been lost for a time.

They said it was the night when the Other World comes closest to our own. The barrier between them becomes opaque. The Dead, they said, leave this way, passing finally into the realm of the spirits. It does not mean that the living can stop grieving for them, but it’s the day the Dead stop grieving for themselves. What passes back that night is not explained, the living do not need to know. All we can understand is that the saints are out in force the next day. That is the day to visit our dead, but not the night before.

It was a strange still night when I went out with the young men from the pub. I knew it would be a cold night before I stepped out the door. I could sees a high clear moon through the smoky window. Outside I could see stars, more than I’d seen before from there. Even in the summer there’s nearly always a mist comes up from the sea at night.

It was supposed to be a walk home, back to my boarding house. It was a night for a stroll though, a fine night after a few pints. ‘We’ll go up here’ one of the young lads said ‘you’ll get a better view.’ Someone laughed. One said ‘No fear!’ but he came along with us anyway. It was up the side of the pub, heading to the crest of the hill.

I knew the place on the map, ‘Roidin an Phuca’ they call it. It’s almost certainly haunted, if you listen to any of the tales. The Pooka is there, but he is an old presence, much older than all of the saints. He was there before the men arrived, this night means nothing to him. His road is always open.  There was a fort up there once, but it’s just a name now. Only drunks and young men need to go that way at night. But up we went to see the view, to watch the moon light up the stones. Here and there, across the crags, there were odd reflections, rocks made shiny by wind and rain.

We turned to look back. Below us the town was just a glow, the presence of light without a light being seen. Out at sea there was the moon. It was a flat sea, rare enough round here. A line of light lay across the water, coming exactly our way. ‘There’s the path’ someone said. That was clear enough, I could see the road that the Dead went down, across the sea and off the edge of the world.

There was a wind coming up and it was getting sharper. Best be off home now, we all agreed. Down we stumbled past the pub, it was still lit up but quiet. There was no singing that night, no shouting either. All of us remembering in our own quiet thoughts, the ones we’d known who’d gone down that road before us.

Ancient field walls, Aran Islands, Ireland.

More fiction….

Mr Faraday’s Cage & Other Tales of Obscure Science. 

Mostly Frank

 Copyright notice.

The weekly writing challenge. 

In the Butterfly Effect, initial conditions that exist all play a part in happenings that progress around us. To describe its namesake example, the flap of a butterfly’s wings, one scientist proposed, could affect the course of a hurricane……             Scrawled as I warmed my pizza………………….

The Butterfly Keeper.

They say that every storm has its butterfly, something has to kick if off. Does everything that sweeps the air smash down a forest somewhere? There’s someone I can ask, not far from here. There are storms that never came, I’ve seen them in his room. He looks a lot younger than me, quite annoying really. Then again lots of people are like that these days. I don’t know where my days went.  He’s called a collector, but you must add keeper and killer to that. I’m not sure I really approve. He does it well though, impossible wings pinned in a glass case. It doesn’t look right to me. They’re not meant to be seen like this surely, nailed up that way.
‘What would happen if I opened the lid, pulled out the pin?’ I asked, pointing to a pair of airy illusions. His mood got darker, there was a storm within his eyes. Then he was fine. I must be careful with him, changeable weather this. His voice is flat, like he’s reciting something he’s known for a very long time.
‘Not that one, a tree in Walden Wood will crash, falling across the pond. It’s January frozen hard, it will stay that way till March. A man will come with a rope to take it before the thaw. Alas it will take him. He swims well enough, but the chill will only leave two day’s breath left in his lungs. He’ll be found on a Friday, his journal not complete.’
I was surprised. ‘Even now? If it ever gets free?’ I see he takes it seriously. ‘Most certainly, all my work would be undone That there next to it is the Great Fire of York, a lantern falls. Not the first fire, not the last, but it will kill a King. He must go on to Bosworth Field.’
Through his window I can see his garden, in the English style, rows of blooms and herbs. ‘The others,’ I said ‘do they get away? You cannot trap them all!’
‘No, that is the way of it. Some trees must fall to allow life to others.’ He intones this like a priest.
Who decides? I wonder to myself. But which of these creatures can bring death upon a harrowing wind? If I got a net myself, could I save a city or a hero? Maybe I’d pardon a tyrant to stay on his bloody path.
‘Not for us to judge’ he says, reading my thoughts, ‘I take what I can. Whatever is left must do its work.’

I leave him making labels, history that will not be. I hear the bees in the garden, watch the cabbage whites on their peaceful flights. Which of them, I wonder, is a whirlwind maker?

Botantical Gardens, Amsterdam.

More fiction….

Mr Faraday’s Cage & Other Tales of Obscure Science. 

Mostly Frank

 Copyright notice.

It’s a Sunday, so time for a bit more fiction. Written yesterday. Naseby’s diaries are full of the stuff.

On Inishmore beyond the Black Fort I followed the coast, walking as close to the cliff edge as I dared. Today the sky seemed more fierce than the sea, it was an unrelenting blue. That water was an unexpected mirror, only moving gently as you looked closer at it. I passed a couple making love, lost in themselves on a ledge down below me. I’d seen these kids in Kilronan. Only the young could be so obliviously comfortable in that precarious space, Diarmuid and Gráinne on their flinty bed. They did not not see me and I did not stare.

Presently I heard a repetitive thud, it seemed to come through my feet. It was a muffled single drum or a far off cannon. I felt, but did not see, the cave of the blown spray. Poll an tSeideain, I found its name later and copied it down in my notebook. I knew it was there but dare not go closer. It is a great square hole chopped right through the cliff to the sea. Even on this quiet day, the water kept kicking away, a bored boy booting at the wall.

I met a man who sat at the edge of the cliff. He was not so close as to ever slip, but there was still a grand view. I sat with him for a while. He was not a man you’d notice much, old but not ancient, dressed plainly like many around here. You might have passed him in the street, not thinking to stop and talk. Out here though, almost alone, it seemed the thing to do. We both had our pipes so it seemed companionable to smoke. He told me he was listening to the ocean. It was,  more or less.  his life’s work.

He told me he could hear the long music of the waves, the slow measure as it crossed the sea. It was a myth, that seventh wave, the pattern was more complex. It was woven like a shawl and then draped around the rocks. ‘How long have you been here?’ I asked him. ‘Very long’ he said, ‘I saw them build the tower there, heard them heaving the stones for that great circle of walls.’

He said he had to ignore the voices of the birds, shallow and grasping things that rarely stopped to sing. I thought of the inland blackbirds, who seemed to broadcast joy. He told me he was hearing a storm off Newfoundland, the angle of waves hitting the coast told him where it was from.

There are great storms beneath the sea, behind this clean mirror a storm might rage. You’d never see it. Your boat could be taken with barely a ripple. He said he heard the old ships scrape as they were shoved and dragged by the deep tides. He could hear them slide inexorably down the slopes of the mountain that no man would ever climb. He’d heard the bell, St Gregory’s bell.

We parted with a wave and I set off overland, back across the fields to Cill Einne. I promised him a pint if our paths should cross in town. That night in the bar, I knew better than to ask if anyone knew of him, or indeed what his name was. I had not caught that. It was neither asked nor proffered. The tower that he pointed to is just a name in a field.

Later, as I came down the hill to my B&B I could see the sea, still peaceful in the evening light. Every now and then it shrugged, like a man might in a dream. I felt I knew a little more about it now, at least I could hear it breathe.

Near the cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland. 

More fiction….

Mr Faraday’s Cage & Other Tales of Obscure Science. 

Mostly Frank

 Copyright notice.