Read Online Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce - Free Book Online

she said, and not to Richie but to her mother.
    “Then play three chords,” he said. “Come on, give it a go.”
    “I’m not in the mood,” Zoe said.
    “I am, though,” he said, and he held out the guitar for her. Zoe looked up and caught something in his eye that made her a little afraid to say no again. Reluctantly, she took the guitar from his hands, sat down, and started to strum. The television set was still running a DVD, so Richie turned it off. Amber made a gasp of pretended outrage. “Give it a go, mi’duck.”
    Zoe played her three chords, varying the strum pattern, trying to smuggle a little enthusiasm into her playing. Richie listened attentively, and the younger girls watched him listening. When Zoe stopped, Richie held out a hand to relieve her of the instrument. “Give it here.”
    He sat down on the sofa next to Amber and he played the guitar, expertly, very fast. Throughout his playing he looked full-on at Zoe. Her cheeks flamed as he gazed at her. She looked away; she looked at her smiling mother; she looked back at Richie.
    He stopped playing suddenly.
    “Wow,” said Genevieve.
    He stood up and handed the guitar back to Zoe. He suddenly seemed in a desperate hurry to leave. “I’ll come back later when he’s in.”
    Genevieve raised her eyebrows at his sudden haste. Then she got off her knees to follow him, for he was already moving toward the door.
    “I’ll tell him you called round.”
    “Right. Thanks for the tea.”
    “Come back anytime.” She opened the door for him. “Before you go, Richie.”
    “Yes.”
    “You should know it’s been hurting him. All these years of not speaking. He’s never told me what happened between you, or what was said. But whatever it was, he’s been hurting. Whatever it was.”
    “Right,” said Richie. Then he set off down the path. “Right.”

CHAPTER EIGHT
    In the spring of 1895 seamstress Bridget Boland Cleary was living with her husband Michael Cleary and her father Patrick Boland in a small cottage in Ballyvadlea, Tipperary, Ireland. They’d been married about eight years, but were childless; Bridget was twenty-six, and Michael was thirty-five. Bridget, a good-looking woman, owned her own Singer sewing machine and was said to have an eye for the fashions of the day.
    Michael Cleary claimed his wife Bridget had been taken away by the fairies, and that they had left a changeling in her place. On the fifteenth of March, Michael Cleary, having spent three days in various rituals intended to force the changeling to leave and bring his wife back, set fire to her.
    He and nine others of Bridget Cleary’s relatives and neighbors were tried for her death.
    SUMMARY OF COURT TRANSCRIPTS
    I’ll give you a story if it’s a story you want. I almost wrote a song about it, but it didn’t come out right. It was supposed to be a love song and it ended up sounding like a protest song. Though most love songs are protest songs, when you think about it.
    There was me and Peter and Tara and a couple of other boys in the band and all was well with the world, and then one day everything changed. I wasn’t yet eighteen and it was like someone slammed the door shut on my life the way it was then. Everything was right and the world was full of prospect and possibility; and then it was all wrong.
    It was always going to be Tara. Always was. She was just Peter’s kid sister and I was only fifteen years old and I was at her house on her thirteenth birthday. One day she was a skinny kid and the next day there was this glow about her. And I would catch her looking at me. When me and Peter were talking she would be listening and I could sense her listening like someone stroking you and I could feel her eyes on me. She looked up to me in those days.
    And I knew she was a cut above. From that day on I couldn’t stop thinking about her, though I couldn’t tell Peter. For one thing it wasn’t cool to go chasing after girls who were younger than we were. The object of