FAIRY WORDS
The moment Janet discovered that Huamstane, her birthplace, meant stone of the moaning summer owl, words possessed her.
She collected names as a botanist presses rare flowers between book pages. The labelling of root, moss and rock hinted at mysteries she hadn’t noticed before.
The claggy peat-names—boglach, breunloch, bruach—conferred ancient dignity upon the wasteland at the edge of town. From the horsieman she learned of glanders and gaffer a’ churrain, the chief of the carrots. She even had súlukongur, a taboo bird-kenning from the skinners and seal-folk.
Her personal glossary thrummed with moor-words, wind-words and wood-words. And yet these words signified something a deeper, an unnameable thing she couldn’t grasp.
One day the horsieman told her of a nameless, unmapped place nearby Huamstane.
“How do you know a place exists if it isn’t on the map?” she asked.
“Because I have words from that place.”
Janet’s heart flochtered. “You’re making this up.”
“Cataichean, lunkiewid, peerie-shell,” he said.
Oh, the pearls he’d placed in her hands. These were special words, without doubt, different to anything she’d collected before.
She steadied her breath. “If you’re so clever, what do they mean, then?”
His eyes twinkled, egg-wrack green. He had the look of a ghost, with his withered skin and last century’s bonnet.
“They don’t mean anything. They belong to the fairies, whose lands once bordered our own,” said the horsieman. “I’ve held onto them long enough. They’re yours now, lass.”
“Do you have more?” she asked.
The horsieman pulled out his cuttie pipe, shaking his head. He put the pipe stem between his lips and from that second to this, never spoke another word.
Janet took her fairy words to the scholars. All names came from somewhere and meant something.
“Redundant pleonasms,” said Professor Stoorcrust, with a shuffle of his papers. “What use are words from a world we can’t see or touch?”
“What if it’s seen and touched us?” said Janet.
Professor Stoorcrust steered Janet from the lecture theatre, against a tide of students. “Fairies disappeared long ago and took their kingdoms with them. Their dead language is hardly worth troubling over.”
Janet traipsed to the ruined hillfort that overlooked Huamstane to ponder her strange, new words. How long had the horsieman waited to pass these words on? And why her?
“Cataichean, lunkiewid, peerie-shell.” She canted the names to earth, air and stone.
Magic lay somewhere between land and speech, stone linked to tongue. Professor Stoorcrust was wrong; a lost place might return were its true name to be spoken. Words were keys, and she wanted to find the door these fairy-words unlocked.
Gloaming settled on the barley field below, its stalks troubled by the movement of a silent predator. Legend said a battle had taken place in the field between two rival clansmen. Their names were long lost but the victor’s crest, depicting a wildcat, rusted in one the professors’ dusty cabinets.
“Cataichean…”
Janet bent over her glossary and scratched a new entry, a warm wind from the lunkiewid ruffling her hair. Her fingers tried to keep up with her brain as it made wild, salmon-like leaps towards understanding.
The wind pulled, snatching the page from its binding. Janet tried to catch the loose sheaf, but it whirled away. The breeze dropped, leaving spots of cold on her cheeks. An owl hooed in the wood below. The wood?
Janet turned. A castle stood where the road home had been. Ivy snaked around the brooding stone. The uppermost windows were tall and thin as fingers. A portion of the tower had crumbled away, revealing a richly carpeted staircase. Folk tramped up and down the staircase. Strange folk, impervious to the elements that buffeted their beautiful but stained dinner attire.
“Ballygloom,” said Janet.
A dusk-place. It had lain atop Huamstane all along. The glossary fell from her hands. She walked towards the castle, a place alive with names no map or book could contain.
* * *
The horsieman clattered down the road, his entire livelihood strapped across the back of a shaggy pony. He stooped, pots clinking, and lifted a damp sheaf of paper from the grass. He pressed the paper against his sleeve to remove the worst of the damp, then folded it in half and tucked it into his waistband. He’d use it later, for kindling. Had the horsieman been able to read he would have discovered what the paper said:
GLOSSARY
Boglach [Scottish Gaelic] – a boggy area.
Breunloch [Scottish Gaelic] – dangerous, sinking bog.
Bruach [Scottish Gaelic] – natural peat bank.
Súlukongur [Faroese] – female albatross known as ‘the gannet king’ seen flying with the gannets of Mykineshólmur, Faroe Islands, in the 1860s.
Glanders [Old French] – bacterial infection fatal to horses.
Flochter [Scots] – the sound of a bird’s flapping wings.
Lastly, three fairy words, scribbled hastily:
Cataichean – the field of cats. Possibly after the clan battle. Maybe attests to presence of wild cats? Link to otherworld?
Lunkiewid – wood with unusual, close atmosphere. A lukewarm place at the edge of thunder. Most likely a geographical feature only found in Fairy.
Peerie-shell – a mouse’s ear.