Many of the comments I get about The Faerie Circle describe it as “magical.” But, they don’t mean magical in the sense of faerie magic or leprechaun magic; it is magical because of the relationship between the 65 year old storyteller Moria McCarthy and 12 year old prodigy Margaret McNeill Mahoney. Both of them are bound up in their own ways: Margaret by the expectations imposed upon her that have pretty much made her feel invisible, Moira by the grief of incredible loss and longing. In the relationship that develops between them they are able to unburden each other through mutual sympathy and love which is the highest form of magic. The story is an adventure, to be sure, and there is faerie magic enough; Margaret’s father is taken by Finvarra, King of the Faeries, because he foolishly stepped into a Faerie Circle of mushrooms and, like Rip Van Winkle, he is whisked away to faerie never to be seen again. The adventure consists in getting him back. But, along the way a very special relationship develops between the girl in the dawning of womanhood and the woman in the twilight of her years. It is this relationship that is the main action of the story, for without it no other action would be possible. What follows in an excerpt: She breathed a deep sigh and wiped her forehead with a large handkerchief, deciding at that moment to go inside to see how Margaret was. It had been, after all, the entire morning since she had seen any sign of her. When she had taken her wellies off and entered the back door, she saw Margaret looking at a small photograph she had taken from a shelf in the corner-hutch, Liam’s shelf, upon which were a few personal items that belonged to him: a watch, his straight-razor (Liam refused to buy things that were meant to be thrown away), glasses, and his pocket watch. Above the shelf was Liam’s fisherman’s cap. “I see you’ve found my Liam,” Moira said. Margaret jumped and almost dropped the picture. “Oh, it’s all right, girl. I’m glad you found him. That’s the shrine I made to him in the corner between the western and the northern wall.” “Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have moved it. I am such a...” “Not at all. He often gets lost back there in that corner.” She looked over Margaret’s shoulder at the picture. “Yes, indeed, that’s Liam, the cocky scoundrel. Would you look at that smirk? Could you see a look like that and doubt that some devilment was behind those eyes? I built this shrine just after he died, but I haven’t spent a lot of time here lately. They say time heals all wounds, but I don’t believe that. Sure, the loss of him does get easier over time, but every time I think of him the longing returns just as strong as it was the first days after he died. Time only makes me think about him less often.” “He must have been a good man.” “I adored him. D’you know, we never had an argument, Liam and I?” “Never?” “Never. Oh, we tried. We said that on St. Valentine’s Day, when all the others were making up for a year of misery, we would take that opportunity to abuse each other.” “Ha! That’s silly.” “I agree. It never worked.” Moira cradled the picture in her hand. “We always ended up laughing, which is the surest cure for a bad temper. No, we never had aught to fight about, so matched a set we were from the very beginning.” “That is so hard to believe.” “So much is hard for you to believe, darlin’, but the secret for finding such a match is in the choosing. I was seventeen when he proposed, a wispy girl with flaxen hair and freckles. He upped and said, ‘Little Moira Donnelly, come your nineteenth birthday I will have you for my wife.’ There he was with his crooked smile, looking for all the world like a broken puppet, but I was his from that day.” She patted Margaret on the shoulder. “And, you say there is no magic in the world.” “That’s beautiful.” “Indeed it is. Oh, they say people your age get all caught up in the romance of it all, but I tell you, old as I am I still feel the fever when I think of him. Lord knows what he saw in me, but I’m so glad he did. Why, do your parents fight?” “Of course. Mom says studies show a couple who doesn’t fight can’t have a healthy marriage.” Moira laughed heartily. When she could speak again she was only able to say, “Rubbish.” “But, all the experts say,” Margaret said. “It’s the most absurd thing…” Moira waved at the hearth. “Take all the words of all the experts in all the world and the truth of them wouldn’t fill that teakettle over there.” Moira turned away to wash her hands at the stand by the back door. “What do your parents find to fight about, anyway?” “Him,” Margaret said a little too quickly and then caught herself. Family business was family business, Mom said, and it was ill manners to publicize it. “Him?” Moira said, drying her hands. Margaret remembered another saying Mom liked: In for a nickel, in for a dime. “My dad. They fight mostly about him.” Moira took a jug of milk and a box of cheese out of the cold cupboard. “You don’t have to tell me, you know,” “I know.” Margaret thought a moment, wondering how much she should say. “But, I can’t talk to my friends, they think he’s cool. I can’t talk to Mom because, well… I don’t know,” Margaret shrugged. “You don’t want to take sides.” “I can’t talk to any of my teachers because, well, everybody at school thinks so highly of them and … I don’t want to do anything that would hurt their careers and … I can’t even talk to Grandma Dellie because she moved all the way across the country … to California!” “Well, if you want to talk to Granny Moira, I don’t have any stake in the outcome, that’s for sure.” Moira uncovered the bread and began slicing it. There was a lot troubling the girl, but she didn’t want to press her. “But, it’s up to you.” Margaret thought about it for a second and then the words fell from her lips like a flood that had been dammed up too long. “Mom says he’s just going around in circles, you know, not really getting on with it. With her, you know, it’s all ‘see things clearly and do what’s needed,’ and I’m a lot like her, but with him it’s … I don’t know. He teaches classes and all, but he’s not a teacher really. He writes stuff no one will ever read, and he thinks about things that aren’t very important. He just can’t seem to do anything. He doesn’t really know what he wants to do.” She paused to see how Moira was taking it. She really didn’t want to criticize her father, but after all, Moira did ask and she’d wanted to talk about it for a very long time. No matter what parents do, no matter what face they put on, children always know when something isn’t right. They may not be able to say what it is, but they know and it confuses them. Now, she was telling her secrets to this virtual stranger who believed in faeries. How whacked was that? “Sad,” Moira said, sitting down and pouring tea from a distinctly less attractive but serviceable white clay pot. “And, that’s what they fight about.” “Well, I wish I could help, but…” “I know. What can you do?” Margaret picked up a piece of bread and slapped a slice of cheese on it. “Nothing,” Moira said. “It’s not your burden.” “What?” Margaret asked, while biting down on her sandwich. “It’s not your burden. It’s theirs, and they will have to figure it out. He will have to figure it out. You can’t do anything about it; you have too much growing of your own to do.” “But, why do they do it? It just seems stupid.” “Darlin’ girl, people fight because they have not chosen well, and that’s the end of it. Your father is not a whole person, there’s something missing in him, a hunger that can’t be satisfied, and it’s a mistake to think that anything outside of himself will do it; neither his wife nor his son nor his daughter can … or should. Let it alone.” “But, he’s my dad.” “Let it alone,” Moira emphasized her words by jabbing her finger into the table top. Margaret fell into thought as she chewed her sandwich, then looking up at Moira she said, “I think that’s why he came to Ireland.” Moira sat back in her chair and shook her head. “I can’t do it either. I won’t.”
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 17:47:48 +0000
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