Darcy and O'Mara (a short story)

   Darcy heard about a river where the fish could whistle, and if you put your head into the water you could hear the beautiful harmonies they created. Darcy was too refined to put his head into anything. He set out for the river one morning with his fishing rod. O'Mara stayed behind. He had fallen in love with a beautiful woman who used to walk through the woodland and meadows, talking to the wild flowers and birds. He was going to spend the day following her, waiting for a chance to meet her.

   After she left the woods she came to a hole in the ground. She couldn't see the bottom of it, so she knelt at the edge of the hole to look down into it. As soon as she peered over the edge, her head felt weightless. She put her hands over it, and they felt as light as feathers. She dived into the hole, but instead of going down, she went up, floating away, heading for the sky.

   It was a beautiful feeling at first, but then the thought crossed her mind that she wouldn't stop, that she'd disappear into the sky, just like the earth that had once filled the hole. She longed for gravity, and she tried swimming through the air to get out of the glare of the hole with its anti-gravitational force. She was exhausted by the time she returned to the safe arms of gravity, but she was happy. This feeling lasted until she realised that she was falling at an alarming speed.

   O'Mara saw her falling, and he knew he had to act quickly. There was a French man on the road nearby. He was leading a pony who was pulling a cart, and on the back of the cart there was a mattress. The mattress had been specially made for a woman who could throw her own hands away. Her arms would always follow the hands and then retract to return the hands to her side, like a dog fetching a stick. She spoke in extravagant gestures, unwittingly throwing her hands away. She was always accidentally hitting people who stood too near. She used to talk in her sleep, and her hands would be thrown all around the room. She had often hurt them when they hit the wall or the floor, so she started sleeping in the centre of a huge room with a soft carpet. This protected her hands, but she thought there was something living in the carpet and in the mattress. Whatever it was, it used to steal the rings from her fingers. She demanded that the carpet and the mattress be destroyed, and her French servant was taking the mattress to a cliff to throw it into the sea.

   When O'Mara asked him if he could use the mattress to save a woman's life, the French servant said he'd have to get his mistress's permission. He took a small cage from the back of the cart, and from the cage he took a pigeon. He said to the bird, "I need you to go back to the castle. This is very, very important. You need to ask if I can give the mattress to a young man who desires to save a lady's life. Do not laugh. You must try to remember this. Do you understand me?" The pigeon stared back at him. "Good. You must try to express this using the system of blinks I taught you."

   The pigeon left for the castle. O'Mara and the French servant sat by the side of the road as they awaited its return. They smoked pipes and spoke about strange growths they'd seen on people's heads.

   It was nearly dark when the bird returned with a note. The servant unfolded the paper. "It says 'The pigeon said something about camels'." He turned to the pigeon and said, "You stupid bird!" He read the rest of the note. "'The mistress agrees to your request'. Ah! I knew you would not let me down." He kissed the pigeon.

   O'Mara and the servant took the mattress from the cart and ran to the edge of the hole. They put the mattress on the ground just before the woman landed on that spot, but she just bounced back over the hole and started floating away again. O'Mara reached out and caught her foot, but he floated away with her. The servant caught O'Mara's foot, and he was four feet in the air before he realised he was floating away with them.

   It was at this point that Darcy returned from his fishing trip. He saw the three of them rising to the sky. He cast his fishing line into the air and the hook caught the boot of the servant. He reeled them in, and the three of them landed on the mattress. Something in the mattress said 'ow!'. When they got to their feet, the woman went straight to Darcy and kissed him on the cheek. O'Mara wasn't happy with the way she was giving him all the credit for her rescue. The pigeon didn't like it either.

The Fire

   Darcy and O'Mara were stuck at a wedding. The groom was the most boring man in the country. This had been scientifically proven in an experiment conducted by a man with no eyebrows. He was conducting tests on the bride to see what she was. She must have been the ___est woman in the country if she agreed to marry such a bore, and the man with no eyebrows was determined to fill in the blank. The other option was that she wasn't really a woman.
   The wedding ceremony took place in a woodland clearing. It was conducted by a druid who hid in the trees. The reception took place in a field next to the river. Just as the groom began his speech, a huge ball of fire emerged from the river in a deafening noise, the sort of sound you'd expect a living being to make as it breaks free from its antithesis. Relief gripped the wedding guests when the groom's speech was cut short, but they soon began to wonder if they were facing a greater danger.
   The ball of flame flew over their heads and landed in a tree. The tree exploded in flames, and within seconds it fell over, scattering the wedding guests in the field. When it landed on the ground a cloud of smoke and ashes rose from it. A man emerged from the cloud. He was coughing and his clothes were singed. The man with no eyebrows would have regarded him as the luckiest man in Ireland for emerging from such an ordeal with both of his eyebrows still intact.
   Most of the guests considered him to be lucky too, because they thought he must have been in the tree when the fire struck it. But he told them that he had been in the river, and they started to wonder if he was the fire. This interpretation seemed to be confirmed when a mouse caught fire (the mouse emitted a sound of relief when its fire came into contact with water). But he insisted that he had nothing to do with the mouse's misfortune. "I'd never hurt a living creature," he said.
   "Well then why are you holding a stick and creeping up behind that rabbit?" O'Mara said.
   He suddenly realised what he was doing. He dropped the stick and backed away from it.
   "It seems to me as if you're possessed by something that has an aversion to animals," Darcy said. The man threw an apple at the bride. "And to all forms of life," Darcy added.
   The man's name was Thomas. After he had apologised to the bride, Darcy and O'Mara led him away. They said they knew someone who could help him, and they were glad to get away before the groom recommenced his speech.
   Thomas killed two birds and a squirrel on the way. He cried after killing the squirrel. They reached their destination before sunset that evening. The man they wanted to meet was called Peter. He was smoking his pipe in front of his cottage when they arrived. Darcy said, "We have another patient for you. He's having trouble with animals. Or they're having trouble with him. He's developed a knack for killing them."
   "What's the problem with that?" Peter said. "He'll never go hungry."
   "He doesn't want to kill them at all. There was a squirrel..."
   Thomas started crying again. The tears began to dry up as he choked a magpie, until he realised what he was doing.
   "I think I see the problem," Peter said.
   "And do you see a solution?" O'Mara said.
   "I see something. We'll try something, and whether or not it's a solution, we'll just have to wait and see."
   Peter's idea was to tempt whatever was possessing him back outside, and if he was full of fire, they'd need something highly flammable to tempt it out. "The spirit seems to have an antagonism towards animals," O'Mara said. "What's the most highly flammable animal?"
   "We'll need something much bigger than an animal," Peter said. "The library in the monastery would be just the thing to tempt an evil spirit."
   Darcy, O'Mara and Peter went to see the monks. Before they left, they locked Thomas in a room in Peter's cottage. He wanted to be locked up so he wouldn't harm anything, but when they returned a few hours later he was cooking a pig on a spit and crying. "I'm so sorry," he said to the pig as he turned it around.
   "You can dry your tears," Peter said. "Soon you'll be rid of the thing that's taken up residency inside you. We're taking you to the library in the monastery."
   "What happens if it burns all the books?"
   "Obviously the monks weren't too keen on that. That's why we'll have to break in there at night."
   "I can't burn down a library in a monastery."
   "It's the only way. Do you want to be hurting animals for the rest of your life?"
   Thomas reluctantly agreed. They took him to the monastery after midnight, and they broke a window in the library to get in. As soon as Thomas stepped inside, the fire emerged and covered all of the shelves in flames. The monks arrived shortly afterwards. They doused the flames in holy water, and they could hear the spirit dying a painful death. It started as a deafening noise that faded to silence. The fire was gone, but all of the books had been burned, and for Thomas it felt worse than what he had done to the squirrel, but they explained to him that it was just a fake library. The real library was underground. Invaders would arrive every few years with a need to burn books, and the fake library satisfied that need.
   Thomas was delighted to be free of the spirit. He felt at one with nature after this, and he became a monk. He helped the other monks re-build the fake library for the next attack.