#and it makes me sad to see thousands of young folks who could be throwing their weight behind this existing fight

[b-a-n-d-e-r]

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[st-clements-steps]

“Sail the wrong way west lad, and you’ll sail into the folk’s waters.” Granda had told Fionn.

Once there had been a young man on the beach after Fionn had left Granda’s house, a young man watching the sea. Fionn had been kicking the pebbles of the beach as he walked and one had skittered into this young man. He had kicked it back to Fionn and returned to gazing at the sea.

“What are you looking at?” Fionn had asked in English.

When the young man did not reply Fionn asked again in his Granda’s tongue.

“Home,” the young man had said but there was nothing to see.

He was there again, months later, when Fionn had to hurry for the nights were fair drawing in, and the rain fell in cold fine sheets that burnt your skin.

“Are you still looking for home?” Fionn had asked.

The young man had laughed, his grin was almost wicked and Fionn might have ran from him but he didn’t.

“What’s your name?” He asked.

“I’ll not give you that,” the young man said and he smirked again. “And don’t go giving your name to people like me.” His eyes were a sharp warning.

The next week Fionn had told Granda about him, and Granda had said, “that lad is folk, sure as anything.”

He didn’t see the young man for months and months, and when he did the young man grinned and looked no different than before.

“Are you folk?” Fionn had asked.

“Now he gets it.”

“Can you not sail the wrong way west?”

“Do I look as if I have a boat?” The young man held his arms wide.

Fionn shook his head. “Can you not make a home elsewhere?”

“I’ve had many but none of them have quite fit, not even that one, out there,” the young man nodded. He looked at Fionn then, Fionn saw the sharpness again. “How do you know of the sea-Realm?” he asked.

But Fionn did not understand the last word, not in Granda’s tongue, so he shrugged.

“The sea-Realm is the wildest of all the seven realms.”

“What about the others?”

“What about them?” The young man’s brows knit for a moment. “You know the folk have seven lands and they all lie on top of one another, not side by side as your lands do, but overtop and underneath?”

Fionn nodded as if he did know this.

“Tell me their names then?” Said the young man, there was snideness to his tone, like the boys at school with the latest trainers. “You do not know.” He shook his head before he began “The folk have seven realms, Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Beasts, Birds and Sea. And I know the Queens of each them, those that have Queens at least.”

“How?”

“Well the Queen of Winter, the Steel Queen, they call her, I grew up with her; and the Queen of Beasts, the Dragon Queen, they call her, my sister is her consort; the Queen of Spring, the River Queen, I was her hostage for a time, though she’s dead; there is no Queen in Autumn just now, nor in Summer, and the Birds are ruled by a boy, well I know him, though he’s no Queen.”

“What about the Queen in the sea?”

“The sea-Realm has no Queen, that’s why it’s wild. No Queen, but a thousand captains who each think themselves a king. A king as they whip men’s waves around them and drag them from their boats. A king as they tear men’s flesh from them, or thrall them to dance a thousand ceilidh, or gift them a thousand poems.” The young man smiled.

“Why would you want your home to be a place like that?

“Who says I would?” The young man asked, his grin wickeder than ever. “My uncle is there stirring up trouble anyhow.”

Fionn frowned.

“He’s definitely whipping up waves.” The young man said.

“Can you do that?

“No I’m air, I can still ships by swallowing the wind; I can tip ships, and throw them against the rocks well enough. I can pull up trees, and push on fires. But I’ve no power with the waves.” The young man looked sad.

“Do you wish you could?”

“I wonder if they’d have liked me better if I were water,” the young man said, “but we’ll not know now. My father’s dead anyhow.”

“Dead dead or not dead but still a captain like the Queen in,” Fionn faltered, “spring?”

“Dead dead and gone gone, thank every drop in the ocean."

“How can the spring-Queen still be Queen if she’s dead?”

“Well she can still walk and command things, and glare, she’s always had a good glare.”

“If you’ve no home why don’t you live with one of the Queens?” Fionn asked. “Why don’t you go and live in Winter with that Queen?”

“It’s cold there and I needs must remember terrible things I would rather forget.”

“Why don’t you live with your sister?”

“They must always be breaking the wheel and getting into fights.”

“Why don’t you live with the bird boy?”

“I tried to kill him once and saved him another time, I think we’re neck and neck now, but I wouldn’t like to check, in case I lost mine.”

“What about the other ones?"

“They’re rather chaotic, and I might lose my head, that happened once to a friend of mine, he has a wolf’s head now, and it’s really not the same, as heads go.”

“What happened to his head?”

“The river-ghasts have it, I suspect they are making fair enough use of it.”

“Would you like to come and live in my shed?” Fionn asked, “you could come watch the sea then, whenever.”

Fionn was fairly sure his mother wouldn’t notice, not if the young man really were folk.

And Fionn was right, she did not notice, not through that whole winter for through the spring that followed. At midsummer the young man went out in the morning with Fionn, and he never came back. Not once.

The time came that Fionn had gone away to uni and Granda had died and Fionn lived in one big city after another. And though these cities sat on the sea there was no sense you might sail west the wrong way from any of them. Fionn could only remember a few words of Granda’s tongue by then.

Still when Fionn had a daughter who asked for stories to lull her to sleep it was of the folk that he spoke.

“There was once a sea-Prince,” the story began.

“What’s a sea-Prince?” Fionn’s daughter would ask each time, a little private joke, “is he like a mermaid?”

“No,” Fionn would say, “he’s nothing like a mermaid.”

@theonsource