There is still one old women that remembers to leave out a saucer of porridge and honey each night. She is a tottering gray thing, the meanest shadow of the star that crossed the Atlantic packed into the third class deck of a steam ship.
She was fourteen when she made the voyage, clean of limb, with striking green eyes and hair of rich hazelnut. She made the journey alone, her ticket clutched all the while in one tight fist, leaving behind her mother who was too sick to travel and the elder brother on whose shoulders the running of their tiny farm had fallen when her father left to make his fortune in the new world.
Aside from the ticket all she had, when she left the ship at last, was a single crust of bread, the ratty dress that she wore like a second skin, the address of her fathers single room, and a circle of dull metal on a simple cord tied around her neck. She was followed off the boat by a mother and two children with consumption, and us; the little people, the fair folk, brownies, and memories.
With her father working sixteen hours a day in the factory, and insisting that it was too dangerous for her to work with him, she spent her days exploring largely unimpeded by the predations of adults. She found the artificial wonders of New York City to be every bit as wondrous as the hills and vales of her native Ireland, and even more dangerous.
Here she did not worry about meddlesome trolls, or the Bean Sidhe, these were replaced by deamons of internal combustion and the frightful third rail. Greater too were the temptations fate placed before her, and indeed for a time she made money on that avenue open to any women of a certain character and figure, but always she looked to the future.
She learned the rules by which these new Fey operated, the arcane secrets of the investment banks, and the maneuverings of the great political machine. It was this last court that most fascinated her; she had grown up on tales of the strange doings of the Seely and Unseely, and found the Democratic party different only in that it was run by men, and was distinctly less dangerous.
She started small, running errands and doing favors, but she had a knack for finding the people who held real power and putting them in her pocket. Or at least that's what the few humans who observed her said, we knew better, we helped.
Potent memories we were then, in the Burroughs held by good Irish-Catholics we flitted through windows and doorways with the ease of the old country, feeding contentedly on the sweet offerings of those who would befriend us. She was always our favorite though, young Rosie, and it was for her we did our best work, we built her high in the societies of men, and she saw to it that we were well kept.
Even after she retired from politics, a women well enough off to live comfortably without a man to trouble her, she maintained the traditions. What is more she maintained them not out of habit or homesickness, but out of a genuine belief that we would come and drink. It gave us some measure of power, even in these mundane time, and we paid her back in full.
She has slowed even more in the past year or so, and a nurse was placed in her home by a concerned friend. Lately the nurse has taken to surreptitiously scraping our saucer after it has been put out and is telling Miss McCann that she's only attracting vermin.
We are growing hungry, if we are not fed tonight we'll show that nurse the power of memories. Memories with teeth.
No comments:
Post a Comment