Prologue
Diary Entry 1: 11/11/2007
The Rules, according to Gran:
If you see one, don’t let it know.
If it speaks to you, don’t speak back.
Never give it your name.
Never take food or gifts, no matter how pretty they look.
If you hear something in the trees, no you didn’t.
Iron in your pocket. Salt in your shoe. A prayer on your tongue.
If you ever feel like something’s watching you… you’re right.
If you’re offered a deal— run.
~●●■■●●~
I saw my first Faerie when I was six years old.
It stood at the edge of our garden, right at the back by the hawthorn tree. It was tall, too tall. It stood unnaturally still, just watching me with eyes like shattered mirrors— unblinking. Its face was too perfect to seem real, as if it was a renaissance painting, somehow come to life. I remember thinking how odd it was, a face without breath behind it. The Faerie’s chest did not rise and fall, no air filled its lungs, as if it was not bound by the laws of life and death as we were.
I didn’t wave to it. I turned away, and walked back inside.
I didn’t tell my parents, either. They would never believe me.
But I told Gran.
She was from Galway, full of prayers in Old Gaelic and superstitions older than the mountains outside our ranch. People called her senile, and then crazy once her memory started going. My parents said it was dementia, but I don’t think that was all it was. Even at the end, she still recited her rules as she rubbed her rosary until her fingertips were stained pink.
“Never thank a faerie, Rose. Never hang a mirror facing a window, you’ll see things you can’t unsee. Never go near the river on a blood moon, or they’ll take you.”
The nurses laughed at her, nodding away to validate her ‘sundowners’.
I knew better. I listened, and I wrote.
They weren’t always frightening, at least not at first. I caught glimpses, reflections not my own in the bathwater, in puddles while walking to school, sometimes I’d wake up and know I hadn’t been dreaming. Things would move around the house, shoes turned backwards, the salt I threw over my left shoulder would be swept into a perfect circle.
I never told anyone except Gran. They called her crazy, I worried to think what they might call me.
When Gran died, no one covered the mirrors. She wouldn’t have liked that. I was the only one to mourn her. Mum said she’d been gone for years, she’d done her mourning long ago. They threw away her old iron key she always wore around her neck, and I fished her rosary out of the trash myself, even if it was worn, I didn’t want to let go of a small part of her, the part they couldn’t take.
That was when I started writing down everything in this diary. It’s filled with glued bits of napkin with writing Gran left, and everything I remember of her stories, and everything I’ve seen myself. I hope, one day, it can help someone else.
Because I think they’ve started to notice me again.
Rose Eithne Reid
