Part I

 

I hated nights like this.

No sane person would come outside. It was after ten, chilly, and raining just enough to make me really, thoroughly miserable. Me and the half dozen people I could see going about their business, whatever that might be. At least they probably had business outside that night.

I guess that meant I was the crazy one.

I dug my hands deeper in my coat pockets and started another lap around the shopping centre. I must have looked like a mugger, hunched into my coat, walking along the same patch of road for the ninth time that night.

Well, fine.

I didn’t really fancy dealing with people just then. It was almost time for me to turn in for the night, anyway. I was wet, I was cold, and I was starting to think that anyone out in that shite much longer was better off outside of the gene pool.

They should know better. Anyone out so late should know they stood a fair chance of running into somebody like me, except it actually would be a mugger. Losing a wallet was the least of their worries, and even that should be enough reason to get the hell back home.

Goodness knew I wanted to get the hell back home. I had a day job too, after all.

My shoes made soggy noises on the pavement. Thanks to a particularly deep puddle an hour before, my feet were completely soaked.

I’ll just stay until these last three people bugger off, I told myself. Can’t be much longer. That one was locking up his store, and one of the others looked like he was heading for one of the two remaining cars. Damned if I knew what he was doing here. Damned if I cared. Just go home, I willed them silently, just go home so that I can go home and everybody will end up warm and safe in their beds.

Yes, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Not going to happen.

In a way, I should have been grateful. It’s why I was out there in the first place. Because without fail, every night, there was at least one of those bloody suckers.

I could see him on the other end of the parking lot, just coming out of the trees. I made a mental note to tell Sari—could be a nest back there. She liked to know about those sorts of things.

The sucker paused for a moment, trying to decide which one to take. The shopkeeper and that other guy were taking off. No way he’d catch either of them in a car. That left me, and some idiot who was smoking a cigarette on the corner. The sucker started walking toward the nicotine addict.

I sighed. Just once, I wished that one of them would try to take me.

Well, at least I had time. The two of them were practically at opposite ends of the shopping centre, and there I was in the middle. I altered course to cross the sucker’s path at a convenient alley between two of the shops. Neither one seemed to notice. I was just a dirty-looking bum, and maybe I would go away if they ignored me long enough.

I faked a wretched-sounding coughing fit, just to be safe. Yeah, that’s right. Ignore the smelly old homeless man; he probably has some disease, if not a knife hidden up his sleeve.

Dark alleys. My best friends. I passed the sucker. At the last moment, I snatched his collar and dragged him into the alley with me.

I slammed him against the brick wall and gave him a grin. He gave me a growl.

Sorry, sucker, no blood for you tonight. A second later he was a cloud of dust floating gently into a puddle.

I walked back into the parking lot, brushing off my hands and whistling cheerfully. The idiot with the cigarette was still standing there. I caught his eye and glanced back at the alley.

He got the message. He left in a hurry.

And I could go home. Thank heaven. 

 

 

Gabriel Kavanagh was a good lad. He respected his parents and always did what he was told until he was old enough to not need the telling. Always the friendly sort, he was well liked by just about everybody in his little town, and he helped out even without being asked.

I suppose if things had gone a bit differently, he would have lived a peaceful, happy life.

He certainly never would have left that little town.

It was more of a village than anything, although they did have their own carpenter to do very fine woodwork, if I do say so myself. That was the lad’s Da.

Fearghas Kavanagh trained up his son from the time he was hardly more than a tot, so that one day he could take over the family business when his Da was too old to work. The lad took to it well, without much incident. There was one close call when he was eleven years old and just learning to use the heavy saws, but that is another story.

The truth of the matter is that there is not much to tell about Gabriel’s youth. He lived a peaceful life in a peaceful town, learning to be a good carpenter and a good man from his Da.

When Gabriel turned twenty years old, his Da decided that there was nothing more he could teach his son. After that, he still worked for his father, but he also got some money in his pocket. For five years they worked together, father and son. They did good business, too. There were other villages that did not have their own carpenter, being mostly farmers, so they came to Fearghas and his son for woodwork.

Then came the fateful day in 1896 when a man from the next town came to ask Fearghas to make him a fine bed frame. Well, that was a bit too big to carry from Fearghas’s shop, so he sent his son with some tools to the other town to make it. Gabriel, now grown to a man, carved the prettiest bed frame he had ever done.

He had some motivation, you see.

It turned out that the man had a daughter. It was she that needed a new bed frame, as she had been sleeping in the one she had since she was a child. Now the lass was seventeen and her da had decided to buy her a new one, as might actually fit her.

Gabriel stayed in that town for two weeks, working on making that bed frame just as pretty as he could make it. Truth be told, he may have lingered a bit on some of the designs, taking his time and making them as perfect as he could. That man certainly got more than he paid for. Gabriel was a good lad, though, and flat refused to accept any more money for the job.

Instead, he asked the man permission to court his daughter.

The man decided that he would be glad for his daughter to marry a skilled tradesman and so he gave the younger man his blessing. He had, in fact, noticed the two of them smiling at each other many times over the past two weeks. It was as fine a match as he could hope for.

Over the next several months young Gabriel Kavanagh travelled to visit his lass as often as he could, and wrote her letters when he couldn’t. Aoife was her name, and Gabriel was sure that she was the prettiest thing he had ever laid eyes on, with golden curls and eyes as green as the hills.

He visited her many times that spring. They would walk through the fields between the two towns, her telling him all sorts of stories about the Tuatha Dé Danann and the fair folk, and him mostly trying not to make a fool of himself.

That spring and summer were the happiest days of Gabriel’s life.