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I ken I`m risking being seen as a crazy mad wifie posting equally crazy stories, so will likely mak` this one the last for a guid long while ye`ll be pleased tae hear.
I hae a great fondness for Celtic lore, as well as one for traditional ghost stories. This is kind o` a combination o` the two. Probably best read after a dram or two....

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The old man watched his grandson playing the games console...quick nimble fingers pressed buttons and on screen, the hero fought a dragon and won. With an exultant punch in the air, the lad turned off the console and got up, went into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of coke.

With the noise of the game over, it was quiet in the crofthouse. The lad settled himself on the old, oversprung couch, soft with cushions his granny had made before she had died. Soft with memories.

In the hearth the fire burned, glowing in the encroaching twilight. The heady scent of burning peat always made the lad happy to be here. Of course, when he`d been a wee bairn, visiting for the summer holidays, the croft had been a larger, more exciting place, with grandad always out at the kye or tending the runrigs and granny concocting treats and hearty fare over the range fire in the scullery.

But now he was older, wiser, and the croft, well, it was just a wee house in the hills, nothing special was it? Miles from anywhere and empty seeming now that granny was gone...and truth be told, he wouldn`t be here at all if mam and dad hadn`t put the pressure on him to visit grandad, emphasising how alone he was now, how he needed to see family every now and again, how the croft was becoming too much hard work for him, the few cows a burden, the strips of barley and oats more cumbersome each year.

So this then, was his `good deed`....

In the gathering twilight they sat in comfortable silence in front of the peat fire. With a sigh, the old man got up and went to the dresser, once a well loved and waxed and shining creature his wife had polished and dressed with best china and the ugly but cherished wee ornaments the children had brought home for gifts...now it was not so shined, and the debris of an old mans life littered the shelves among the dusty china. Opening a drawer he took out his small bottle of whisky, and poured himself a dram in an old Jacobite glass.

About to put the bottle back, he paused...turning to the boy, he said "Well, I suppose you`re auld enough now, chust, for the one?"

The lad, startled, but proud to think his grandad realised he was a man grown now, said "Aye, I`ll have one if you`re offering", with a shy grin.

Taking the glasses to the fireside, the auld man sat and raised his to the lad...."slainte mhath, laddie"...

the boy raised his in like salute, and knocked the ancient whisky back...the auld man winced a little to see such a fine, golden liquid barely touch the boys throat...but said nothing.

The old clock on the mantelpiece ticked the evening away and the boy grew drowsy. He would never have said, but that had been his first taste of the whisky...and oh, but he liked it fine, even if it did burn his throat on the way down...now a warm, drowsy feeling filled him and he relaxed into it, pleased, after all, that he had humoured his old folks and came to see grandad. He missed granny fiercely, and supposed the auld man did, though he never spoke of it if he did, and truth to tell, the lad would be uncomfortable should he do so.



"Did you ever see the Quiet Folks, when you were wee, in the hollow behind the byres?"

The lad, startled out of comfortable thoughts, blinked..."Quiet Folks? You mean the wee poeple?" he answered, with a faint snort of laughter.
"Aye, I suppose I do, though, they`re not so wee, know you..."

The lad shook his head..."No, I never did Grandad. Why do you ask?"

The auld man looked at his grandson, and the laddie was startled to see tears in his eyes, and a little uncomfortable....

"Because for this past winter, I have seen them with my own eyes, and I have seen your Grandmother with them too!" and at this he slapped his knee for emphasis.

The lad was aghast...didn`t know quite what to say.

"Grandad, are ye sure? I...I mean...ye havenae been having too much of this stuff have ye? Mebbe made a wee mistake, or a trick of the light! Aye, that`ll be it, a trick of the light!"

The auld man snorted in derision.

"Do you not think I know my own eyes? And since when did a drop of whisky make me stupid?"

"But there`s no such thing! The Quiet Folks are only fairy tales Grandad, we all know that!"

The auld man said nothing for a moment, but looked at the empty Jacobite glass in his hand...it was a rare and precious thing that glass, and had been in his family for generations.

As if coming to a decision, he stood and beckoned to the lad. "Follow me then. I`ll let you see something for your own self" and without a backward glance, still holding the glass, he opened the croft door onto the night and strode out, leaving his coat and bonnet hanging still on the peg behind the door.

The laddie followed his grandad, shaking his head, wondering if the auld man was losing it finally, getting a wee bit saft in the head maybe.....

Around the side of the crofthouse the auld man strode, the laddie at his heels, and they were joined by a collie come out of the byre, a shadowy streak in the gloom, bright eyes on his master as he ran to heel.

Beyond the house was a rising slope, a hillock perfumed with heather and bracken and the soft, springy grass of the Highlands. And atop the hill was a hollow, like a giant had fashioned a great basin out of the ground for to house his porridge.

The auld man motioned the lad to sit and put a finger to his lips, for to be quiet. Shrugging, the laddie sat beside him on the lip of the hollow, and the collie lay flat and still beside them both, eyes on the space beneath them.

Some twenty yards across this hollow was, and in it grew rare wild flowers and a fairy ring, dark against the grass. Boulders were scattered across it, some growing moss, and the whole place was like something caught in time, so quiet it was, so secret seeming. The wind never seemed to scour this place, and snow never touched it but skimmed the rim of the hill and let it be.

The auld man knew the magic of this place, for his own wife had known it before him, she had always had the way of the Fey about her, and to him, this place was hers.

In scant moments the lad was hushed with fear...ahead of them a soft light began to grow, and as if from a great distance music was heard, quiet and low at first but growing in sound, the music of pipe and tambour and stamping feet and thumping hands, the music of a wild dance that belonged rightly in the far past.

And out of the misted light forms took shape and the boy and man watched in silence as the people came into being, and both gasped for such people they had never seen, not in the books the auld man had nor the films the young lad favoured. Bright creatures these were, garbed in fashions that had never walked the earth in their memories. With fluid and fantastic grace they moved in a secret dance of their own about the hollow, and the music grew apace with each step. And laughter was heard there, and speech that could not be understood by the boy or the man.

And in the dancing group the laddie saw a familiar figure...and a choked cry broke from his throat...there within them was his granny, not the grandmother he knew most of his life, a frail and couthy wee figure of a woman, grey haired for most of that life and with a wrinkled but bright face, this was his granny as she would have been in the prime of her life, afore she was married maybe, and he looked to his grandad and was about to say something, but the words died in his throat.

For grandad was weeping, quietly, tears of longing and loss. He saw her too, and naked need and want was so plain upon his face it hurt the lad to see it there.

So he lowered his pointing hand and sat speech less, and just looked.

For what seemed like an age they were caught up in the dance, those Quiet Folks, a dance so beautiful to see but frightening too, for was there not a faint desperation upon their faces, and a look of old weariness in their eyes?



And so they sat, and they watched, and the lad watched his granny as she stepped lightly like a young lass and wove a dance among the fair Sidhe folks.



Neither of them remembered walking back around the byre and into the crofthouse. But they sat beside the fire and let the burning peat warm their cold bones and let the scent of it bring them back, all the way back, to now.

"What was that, Grandad? Did I just dream it? Was it something in the whisky you gave me?"...the last said almost with accusation....

"I`ll tell you something my lad...all winter have I been out there, watching your Grandmother dance with the Sidhe...and if she truly wants to be dancing there, I do not know. There are few enough place the Old Folks gather in this land now, so hostile to them it has become. But when I was young, your age even, they were not such strangers to us that we did not know them when we saw them."

His eyes had not quite lost their pain, the pain of loss..." At first it was a good thing, to see her there...so young again, like to when we first met and I fell in love with her, it was. But now...." he looked into the peats and his eyes grew guarded..."now, I think it`s almost a living hel. And I`ll be telling you for why."

He took a deep breath and looked straight at the lad.

" I think, in their own way, the Quiet Folks are as trapped in that place as we are on this earth. I think there are older, stranger things that live here. And they play with us all for their own amusement. And I think that hollow is a space tainted by old and wild magic."

Getting up and going to the dresser, he poured himself another dram, and brought the bottle over to the fireside. Offering it to the lad, he let him pour the amber liquid into the small glass. It was needed, tonight. For all that he was raised on a diet of television with its special effects computor imaging, that out there...that had been REAL and he was scared of it.

"What are we going to do?" the lad whispered.

His grandad thought for a while, and passed a hand over his tired eyes.

"You`re going back home tomorrow"..."But ...." "No buts!", he said. "There`s nothing to be done about it, do you not see that? Think you to be telling other folks about that out there?" he pointed to the door.

"And who do you think you`d be getting to believe you? And if they did, do you think I am wanting strangers all over this place? No! I will not have that, do you hear?"

The boy hung his head.



In the morning, the lad waved goodbye to his grandad at the croft door. It was strange, acting as if nothing had happened, but then, after a nights sleep the whole thing had the air of a dream...for sure, he had no idea there was anything he could do, after all...so he walked to the nearest bus stop and caught the coach back to the town, and told no-one, and when his mam and dad asked how his grandad was, he said, "Oh, he is fine, just fine" and they did not notice his downcast eyes or worried face.



Two weeks later he got off the coach. The year was brightening now with coming summer, and the evening was stretching out before him in golden shadows upon the hills with their grazing sheep and kye, in the softness of the highland air and the blue of each burn and runnel which tumbled down the hills and into the glens.

There was no smoke above the croft lum, and that had him worried, though in his heart he knew it was more. Breaking into a run, he crashed through the croft door. The grate was cold and as he walked toward it he knew, instinctively, that those cold peaty ashes were from the fire that night, two weeks ago. The glass he had used to drink his whisky was there, on the wee table beside the old couch and its soft cushions. But there was no sign of the Jacobite glass.

He looked through the byres, of course...the kye and the few sheep had all been turned out onto the hill to graze and he saw them there in the long twilight. Content enough, they were.

But nowhere did he find Grandad, nor the collie, and with his heart thumping in his chest he took blankets off his grandads bed and wrapped them around himself and took the bottle of whisky from out of the dresser drawer and sat himself upon the rim of the hollow and waited for dark.

And he drank,

And in the darkness the mist came again, and with it came the music, and the Fine Dancers, and among them, yes, there was his Granny, the young woman twining herself around the figure of a young man seen only from the back, with a shock of thick black hair and a straight back and he watched his Grannys eyes as she looked into the mans face and saw the love there...and he knew, oh he knew, now, where his Grandad had gone.

And so it was no surprise to watch the dance unfold and see the dancers twirl and find his Grandad, a young, straight man again, within the dance.

He watched until his eyes ached with the pain of it, watched the dance unfold and saw the faces grow familiar through the watching, such beautiful, unearthly faces, but upon them all, the faint taint of desperation and terror.

He watched until the dawn chased the mist and music away and the dancers began to fade and knew that he could walk among them unnoticed and never be able to touch them....unknown, tears of loss and pain ran down his cheeks.

Drunk, weary, miserable, he stumbled into the hollow as the dancers began to fade, reaching out to the unheeding figures of his grandparents, sobbing.

As the sun breached the rim with light he collapsed to his knees, and watched light chase the Shades away...and the breath caught in his chest as at the last, his grandparents turned and he saw their eyes see him, and cast a look of great pity upon him, and turn away, arms around one another. And as they walked into the fading mist, he watched his Grandad raise his Jacobite glass and sip the honey gold liquor within.



And behind them the shadow of a Border collie trotted to heel. "