6. Family

One afternoon, while a red sun was slipping lazily to the spot where it liked to set, Michael and his two pupils were sitting on a garden bench discussing English names for family members.

Just as the sun dropped with a bounce, Michael gave a sigh and a shiver. Don Alonso thought something seemed to be worrying him that day. He asked Michael if it was.     

“Is it because of your shoes?”

“Tonight it’s because of my family,” said Michael, reminding his glowworms to light up. “It´s not just my father. It´s everyone else too.”

“Who is everyone else?” asked Don Alonso as he shook some yellow and orange fallen leaves off his own lantern and lit it too.

“A tribe of odd and combative creatures.”

“My wife is combative,” said Sancho. “Wife,” he repeated, pleased to have learned the English word for his esposa. “Wife!”

“I don’t have a wife, so I needn’t fight every day. But there is one day in the year I always fear will be my last.”

Michael said that day was the thirty-first of October. He explained that for him, All Hallows’ Eve was not about the dead returning to visit their living relatives. Nor like the living honoring the dead by visiting cemeteries and clearing gravestones and laying flowers on tombs. It was more like partying on New Year’s Eve. This was because the thirty-first of October is the last day of the year for the fairies. The first of November is the first day of a new Fay year.  

The reason why Michael feared Halloween was that on this night all his friends and family expected him to give a party. He had once unwittingly done so, thinking it would be a good idea, and when this first party had ended everyone but he thought it had been a brilliant idea.

The next Halloween he was persuaded – it was more like bullied really– into giving it again. And in fairyland once you have given such a party more than once, it becomes a tradition.And traditions are sacred there. Especially if they involve partying.

“Are your friends really that boisterous?” asked Don Alonso.

“Not so much my friends. One can choose one’s friends. Mostly, the troublemakers are members of my family. You’ve already heard what my father is like. Well, he’s not the worst of the lot.

And Michael began to tell his pupils about his more difficult relatives.

           

There is his sister-in-law, Lira Anadyomene Ronan. She is a merrow, one of those mermaids of the icier seas. They wear a sealskin coat to protect themselves from the cold and a magical cap made with red feathers that keeps them afloat and allows them to swim better than any other  creature. Many sailors and fishermen would love to have a merrow for a wife.They are often handsome females. But all are rich to some degree or another, being able to dispose of the treasures of the sea.

They are not very friendly, however. If you want to marry one, you have to trap her first. The way to do this is to steal her coat or cap, since merrows cannot swim well without them. It is a risky business and the chances of suitors drowning are high.

This was not the lot of Michael’s brother Finbar. Finbar is a fabulously creative elf who works as toymaker for St. Nicholas and the Magi. On one of his trips to the North Pole he met Lira, who fell so madly in love with him that he had no choice but to marry her.

Madly is the exact word to describe her way of appreciating him. She is jealous to the point of being paranoid. People call him a saint for putting up so patiently with her jealous fits.

The young girls at Michael’s Halloween parties always find it amusing to bait Lira pretending to flirt with her husband. They laugh when she becomes so easily enraged. But they stop laughing when she sinks her sharp, sharkllike teeth into the flesh of these young ladies. Unfortunately there is always another fool or two willing to draw the jealous merrow out another time.

Finbar is only a problem because of his wife. But Michael has another brother who  looks like a fool but is, at least in my opinion, more wicked than clever. 

Kevin is the Amadan Dubh, the royal jester at the fairy court. Many people find him hilarious but I avoid him all I can. He has a mean and conniving streak. It amuses him to make trouble and see what comes of it. He can be callously cruel, and once he has hurt you, he pretends it was only a joke and you end up looking like you have no sense of humour and are overly sensitive.

                         

        

Great Uncle Niall, whose name means cloud, is a fuzzy and confused old man who always wears a grey cloak. It is what makes him himself. When he opens it, it expands to varying proportions, able to cloud up miles with a dense grey fog. He isn’t bad himself. But bad things often happen when he has darkened his surroundings. As he himself says, he was just born a natural disaster.

Cousin Garth is the local Pookah, and therefore physically dangerous. Pookahs are shapeshifters who frequent lonely spots where they sit under bridges or hide in hedges and assault passersby.They spring out of their hiding places  in the form of a runaway horse, a wild pig or a stampeding cow. It is difficult to escape from a meeting with them without suffering a broken limb or worse harm. Bitter and resentful, they are always in a bad mood and spoiling for a fight. To have Garth gallop along your dinner table is not something you want to happen at one of your parties. 

 It is not clear what Michael’s relationship with Groggy, the Grogoch is.

This is because nobody wants to own him for a relative, though everyone knows and has to admit he is one.

Poor Groggy is a sociable being. Gentle and helpful and very hardworking. He even works for humans, doing the toughest and lowest chores on farms gladly. All he asks for in exchange is a bowl of cream and a little friendly conversation, for he is as lonely as he is garrulous.

The reason why he is so lonely has to do with his utter lack of personal hygiene.

Need I say more?

Well, yes. But in the next chapter.