A Year and a Day
A world by Ari Weaver
A Year and a Day
On Hallowe'en night, a few pints in, you took the hill road home from the pub and stepped into a fairy ring on the Burren. Now you serve the Lady of the hill for a year and a day. The Good Folk are beautiful and terribly literal. Don't eat their food, don't thank them, don't give your name, and never promise what you don't mean. Back in Ballyvaughan, something wearing your face is eating your mother's dinners, and she likes it better than she liked you.
Playing as Traveler·
Mattie Hehir has his foot against the pub door to hold it against the wind, and he's pushing a horseshoe nail into your coat pocket. “Main road home,” he says. “Not the hill road. I'm not codding you, it's Hallowe'en. Humour an old man.”
It's ten to one. You've had five pints of stout and a hot whiskey someone else paid for. The hill road is twenty minutes shorter.
Halfway along, under Knockanore, there's music in the field where there's never been anything but cattle. A fiddle, and under it a lot of people laughing. A door stands open in the side of the hill, and gold light comes out across the wet grass to a ring of pale mushrooms by the wall. You're standing in the middle of the ring. You don't remember climbing the wall.
A tall man in a waxed coat steps out of the doorway. His face is long and brown, his beard is clipped grey, and his eyes are yellow with flat black pupils. He looks at your coat pocket and wrinkles his nose.
“You'll want to leave that nail on the wall, young one,” he says. “Nobody inside can stand the smell of it, and herself has dinner waiting. Are you coming in out of the wind, or are you going to stand there in the ring until it decides for you?”
The ring1 of 3