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Authors: Ekaterina Sedia
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sound like a tea kettle crawled up your sinuses,” I retort. Loman’s a leprechaun, but you wouldn’t know it unless you had the Sight. Otherwise he’s just another short man with a prim mustache and poor taste in off-the-rack suits.
“And your so very pleasant disposition, also unchanged,” he sniffs. “Don’t drip on the carpet.”
The office resembles a tiny accounting firm stranded in time, with typewriters and carbon paper and a rotary phone. The faded newspapers on the table still talk about the Troubles. But it’s not as if someone’s likely to stumble by and notice; you have to have fey blood in you just to find the front door. Maeve’s inner office is barely big enough for a desk, a filing cabinet, and a window that overlooks the Liffey River.
And for Maeve herself, six feet and six inches tall, with fiery red hair and bright white teeth. She looks my age, but she’s looked that way since I was a little girl squirming on my mother’s knee. I ignore women’s fashion as much as possible but let’s just say that A-line skirt doesn’t flatter her hips at all.
“Colleen,” she says, and invites me into a hug.
Keep in mind that she’s not human, our Maeve. Hugging her is like trying to wrap your arms around an enormous oak, something rough and ancient and thrumming with life. You have to be careful not to scrape your skin on the bark. When we sit down, divided by her messy desk, I feel like she squeezed a year or two out of my life.
But she wouldn’t do that without a warning. Usually.
“How’s Air Killarney these days?” she asks. “Still serving the cheap whiskey?”
“Surely you’ve never been on a plane in your life, móraí,” I reply, using the Gaelic word for grandmother.
Her eyes twinkle even though her mouth frowns. “But I hear stories, child. In particular, I hear a story that someone was singing a lament for the House O’Neill on Air Killarney flight 112 just a week ago.”
“I don’t know how you could possibly hear such a thing,” I reply.
She pushes a piece of paper across the desk. It’s a printout from Craigslist Dublin, in the “Missed Connections” section:
AK112 November 14 I heard a banshee sing. When we landed I found out my father had died. I know what I heard. Must talk to you. Please contact.
Beneath it was a phone number and email address for someone named John O’Neill.
“No one believes in banshees these days,” I say, pushing the paper back. “He’s just going to get crank calls and nasty messages.”
Maeve folds her hands primly. “You sang. You know you’re not supposed to and you did it anyway.”
It’s too hot in this little office, and too quiet. The loudest sound is the hissing of the steam radiator. Loman’s probably pressed up to the door, eavesdropping on every word. I don’t fidget, though, and I don’t flinch. No matter how much I want to.
“No one can deny Sorrow, and you’d never ask me to,” I tell her. “Turn your back on the wind and you’re turning your back on shamrocks and potatoes and turf fires.”
“Could you possibly be more cliché?” she chides.
“But it’s the truth! Sorrow calls and we answer.”
“Officially licensed banshees answer,” Maeve says, her face gone steely. “In specific places and times. Don’t you remember anything from your studies? ‘Banshees may answer the call of Sorrow in forests, vales, crossroads, fields, bogs, marshes, and winding roads.’ Not in a Boeing 747 zooming over the Atlantic Ocean!”
To be accurate, Air Killarney’s long haul planes are all Airbus 330s. I don’t think she cares.
Maeve sits back. “You’ve put us in a very awkward position.”
“What position? We just ignore him.”
“No banshee can ignore a summoning by an O’Neill,” she replies. “It’s in the oldest codes.”
The phone rings in the outer office. The Great War of 1839 severely diminished the fairy race but their descendants, now bound by bureaucracy and regulations, still
“And your so very pleasant disposition, also unchanged,” he sniffs. “Don’t drip on the carpet.”
The office resembles a tiny accounting firm stranded in time, with typewriters and carbon paper and a rotary phone. The faded newspapers on the table still talk about the Troubles. But it’s not as if someone’s likely to stumble by and notice; you have to have fey blood in you just to find the front door. Maeve’s inner office is barely big enough for a desk, a filing cabinet, and a window that overlooks the Liffey River.
And for Maeve herself, six feet and six inches tall, with fiery red hair and bright white teeth. She looks my age, but she’s looked that way since I was a little girl squirming on my mother’s knee. I ignore women’s fashion as much as possible but let’s just say that A-line skirt doesn’t flatter her hips at all.
“Colleen,” she says, and invites me into a hug.
Keep in mind that she’s not human, our Maeve. Hugging her is like trying to wrap your arms around an enormous oak, something rough and ancient and thrumming with life. You have to be careful not to scrape your skin on the bark. When we sit down, divided by her messy desk, I feel like she squeezed a year or two out of my life.
But she wouldn’t do that without a warning. Usually.
“How’s Air Killarney these days?” she asks. “Still serving the cheap whiskey?”
“Surely you’ve never been on a plane in your life, móraí,” I reply, using the Gaelic word for grandmother.
Her eyes twinkle even though her mouth frowns. “But I hear stories, child. In particular, I hear a story that someone was singing a lament for the House O’Neill on Air Killarney flight 112 just a week ago.”
“I don’t know how you could possibly hear such a thing,” I reply.
She pushes a piece of paper across the desk. It’s a printout from Craigslist Dublin, in the “Missed Connections” section:
AK112 November 14 I heard a banshee sing. When we landed I found out my father had died. I know what I heard. Must talk to you. Please contact.
Beneath it was a phone number and email address for someone named John O’Neill.
“No one believes in banshees these days,” I say, pushing the paper back. “He’s just going to get crank calls and nasty messages.”
Maeve folds her hands primly. “You sang. You know you’re not supposed to and you did it anyway.”
It’s too hot in this little office, and too quiet. The loudest sound is the hissing of the steam radiator. Loman’s probably pressed up to the door, eavesdropping on every word. I don’t fidget, though, and I don’t flinch. No matter how much I want to.
“No one can deny Sorrow, and you’d never ask me to,” I tell her. “Turn your back on the wind and you’re turning your back on shamrocks and potatoes and turf fires.”
“Could you possibly be more cliché?” she chides.
“But it’s the truth! Sorrow calls and we answer.”
“Officially licensed banshees answer,” Maeve says, her face gone steely. “In specific places and times. Don’t you remember anything from your studies? ‘Banshees may answer the call of Sorrow in forests, vales, crossroads, fields, bogs, marshes, and winding roads.’ Not in a Boeing 747 zooming over the Atlantic Ocean!”
To be accurate, Air Killarney’s long haul planes are all Airbus 330s. I don’t think she cares.
Maeve sits back. “You’ve put us in a very awkward position.”
“What position? We just ignore him.”
“No banshee can ignore a summoning by an O’Neill,” she replies. “It’s in the oldest codes.”
The phone rings in the outer office. The Great War of 1839 severely diminished the fairy race but their descendants, now bound by bureaucracy and regulations, still
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