Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce

Author:Graham Joyce [Joyce, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Adult, Mystery, Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780385535786
Amazon: 0385535783
Barnesnoble: 0385535783
Goodreads: 12941033
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2012-07-10T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Some time afterwards she was lifted out of the bed by the men, and carried to the kitchen fire by John Dunne, Patrick, William, and James Kennedy. Simpson saw red marks on her forehead, and someone present said they had to use the red poker on her to make her take the medicine. The four men named held poor Bridget Cleary, in her night-dress, over the fire; and Simpson could see her body resting on the bars of the grate where the fire was burning. Fire, particularly applied to iron, is a traditional method of warding off a fairy, or frightening a changeling into leaving so that the real person can return. The certain liquid was urine, traditionally believed to force the changeling to flee; Bridget was repeatedly doused with human urine.

SUMMARY OF TRIAL TRANSCRIPT (1895)

Where are you?” Peter was just finishing up shoeing a mare that wouldn’t stand still, a nervous gray with a walleye that had tried to bite him and then kick him. He’d insisted its owner, the wife of an estate agent, take the reins and hold the creature while he did the job, and it had bitten her on the back of the hand instead of him.

Being kicked, bitten, and burned came with the farrier’s job, like having a strained back. But when the horses bit or kicked their owners he couldn’t help feeling an unnecessary fizz of satisfaction.

“I’m at the hospital. I called your house and Gen gave me your mobile number.”

Peter looked at his watch. “I’ve got another appointment over that way. I’ll pick you up and you’ll have to sit in the car while I do the job, or I’ll be late.”

“Appreciate it, Peter. There was no one else I could ask.”

Peter put away his mobile phone. “Friend of mine,” he explained to the estate agent’s wife as she nursed her bitten hand. “He got mugged on the way home from the pub last night.”

He ran his hand down the leg of the mare so that he could gently lift its hoof, and the creature tried to kick him again.

RICHIE WAS WAITING AT the hospital with a black eye and a bandaged head. He climbed into the cab of the truck and Peter drove off. Richie told Peter that he’d woken up freezing on the Badger Track. He’d staggered to the road and tried to hail passing cars but, seeing his bloodied condition, no one wanted to help. Then a minibus full of nuns had stopped and had driven him the hospital.

“Nuns?”

“Yeh, nuns. Six of ’em.”

“Really, nuns?”

“Yeh, nuns. No one else would stop.”

Peter wanted to know what Richie had been doing up on the Badger Track at that time of night, and Richie told him he’d walked Tara home from the pub. Peter had blinked at that but kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t even know Tara had been out. They talked about the assailant. It hadn’t been a mugger, Richie explained, because when he came to check his pockets he still had his wallet with his credit cards and cash, and his mobile phone.

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