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Date Posted: 13:11:06 06/04/08 Wed
Author: celtgirl
Subject: Here the man is>>>
In reply to: celtgirl 's message, "For those of you who have missed Mr. Riordan, here's a wee bit of what the man has been up to- I'll put it inside the first reply." on 12:56:30 06/04/08 Wed

(Casey has been trapped in a building with five wee Protestant lasses during a bombing in Belfast- he's managed to calm them down enough to have four fall asleep, but the most cantankerous of them, one Pippa by name, is still awake and in need of a bit of reassurance. )

copyright 2008 Cindy Brandner

“Will we get out of here?” she asked, and the voice was no longer so abrasive, but rather held a tremor beneath that reminded him that she was just a wee girl that should have been home hours ago and ought to be tucked up safe in her bed, dreaming about dissecting Catholic boys.

“Aye, we’ll be just fine, there’s a solid beam right above us that’s made of fir- that’ll not crack even with ten times this weight on it. So maybe then ye’ll go to sleep for a bit an’ I’ll wake ye should our rescue show up.” Casey had no idea if the beam would hold, but he knew the child needed comfort far more than she needed truth.

“Alright,” she said. She rustled about like a mouse in straw for several minutes and then he heard a very large sigh. Being no stranger to female sighs and the enormous variety of things they communicated, he asked, “Are ye not comfortable then, lass? Ye can lay yer head on my coat here, I’ve rolled it up.”

“I’m cold,” she said, “an’ I wondered if I could hold yer hand, while I sleep?”

He was a little startled by the request, after all she had offered to eviscerate him with a rusty spoon not an hour ago. “Of course ye can.”

He put his hand out and she grasped it as though it were a life preserver, he had to bite his tongue to stop from exclaiming in pain. She had a fearsome grip on her, to be sure.

“Do ye maybe know a story or two? I don’t like the dark so much.”

“Well of course I do, a man can hardly lay claim to Irish blood if he doesn’t have a story or two in his pipe.”

“Ye smoke a pipe?” she said in a disapproving tone.

“No,” he said, though he thought were one to present itself, he’d happily smoke it at the present. He thought longingly of the packet of cigarettes he kept out in the shed, he hadn’t smoked much of late, but it was a comfort to know the cigarettes were there in an emergency. Much good it did him now. He sighed and settled himself against the pile of rubble and thought carefully about what story he might tell her that would provide distraction for both her and himself.

A month or two back he’d started telling Conor stories about a wee lad named Liam Lackland, whose adventures had gotten increasingly mad and fantastical. Pamela had taken to sitting in on the storytelling each night, and demanded that he finish each tale even though Conor had drifted off to sleep most nights, before the end of the telling. She had also suggested that he write them down, to which he’d responded with an abbreviated snort. “Now, who would ever be desperate enough to read my wee crackpot tales?”

“Myself,” she said, “and your children might like to have them written down as well.”

He had merely raised a dark brow at this statement, she knew the mention of children always put him directly over the barrel. He'd go back to the first tale, always a sensible place to start and embroider it suitably to his audience of one.

“There once was a hollow in the county of Nelligan-” he began.

“There is no County Nelligan,” Pippa said indignantly.

“There is in this story,” Casey said firmly. “Now this hollow looked just like the hollow that might be left if a giant had lain down with his nightcap on and slept there for many a year. ‘Twas so quiet that you could hear the wind whispering through the grass to the flowers an’ the wee spirits that lived in each of them.

Near this hollow lived a young man whose music was so sweet it lured fair maidens from all corners of the country. But once they came and saw poor Liam Lackland (that was his name, for he’d no more to his name than his harp and the clothes he stood up in) they turned up their fair noses at him. For Liam had a clubfoot and a crick in one shoulder, and he was also blind in one eye.”

Pippa snorted. “Hardly surprising that the maidens didn’t like him, then, is it?”

“Oh on the surface of things mayhap, but there ways of seein’ that have naught to do with the eyes in yer head.”

“In this hollow also lived the good folk, and their chief one Breenan a Bhu- a fierce wee thing with ginger hair that was plaited so tight it stuck straight out over her ears. She had eyes the colour of an arctic wind and little snow-white feet. She also had a wee parrotlet, named Grumpus, that sat upon her shoulder an’ swore somethin’ awful. She was terribly strong and a bit foul-tempered, truth be told, and the other fairies walked on bumblebee hummingbird eggshells around her.”

“There’s no such thing as a bumblebee hummingbird,” Pippa said with the lofty arrogance of the fourth grader.

“Aye, there is to be sure, ‘tis striped in black an’ yellow an’ it buzzes instead of whirrin’ like most hummingbirds,” Casey said.

Pippa graced this statement with a slight clearing of the throat, a noise that had been perfected through several generations of skeptical and God fearing Protestants. Casey merely continued on.

(um, I haven't quite finished the tale of Liam Lackland...so this is all for now. :)

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