The Leprechaun's Charms

It was then I heard her flute. I was sure I was imagining things at first - I'd often heard it in those long hours trying to get to sleep - but this time it wasn't a product of my tortured imagination. The fluting grew louder and I leaped to my feet and raced into the living room just in time to see a little shower of gold dust fade away.

I'd just missed her. I stumbled up to the table and found a postcard on it.

"Greetings from County Cork," read the greeting underneath a picture of a quaint Irish coastal town.

I eagerly turned it over. There was a shamrock taped on the back and Cait had written a message in curly, childish writing there.

My dear sweet love,

I'm sorry I could not come to see you. Though it's St. Patrick's Day and all us wee folk are given the day off by King Oberon, our comings and goings are still closely watched by those busybodies I told you about. Sending this card was risky enough. My heart aches for you, but you must forget me. We must forget each other, else the sorrow become too much to bear.

The shamrock will bring you good luck. Keep it close to your heart, as I keep all the memories of our short time together close to mine.

Cait.

Hot tears burning my eyes, I peeled the precious shamrock from the back of the card and put it in my pocket.

Four hours later I'd submitted my resignation and was on the next flight to Ireland.

-------------

After landing in Cork I rented a car and travelled along the wild and rocky coast through endless rolling green fields and town after charming town of little mossy stone buildings. I had no plan beyond trying to find the place pictured on the postcard and as I drove into the little coastal town of Clonakilty I wondered if I hadn't taken complete leave of my senses.

I stopped the car at the side of the road and pushed my head against the steering wheel. So stupid, so utterly stupid. Why was I tormenting myself like this?

As if in a mirror to my thoughts the storm that had been chasing me the past hour finally caught up with me and the heavens opened overhead. I lay there, listening to the rain drumming on the roof of the car, the thunder taking on the keening wail of the banshee in my imagination.

Soon the flashes of lightning ceased. The rumbling grew further and further away as the storm drifted off towards the Atlantic. I sat there, my heart grown numb in my suffering, and then I started the car up again.

I'd decided to go back home.

I made a U-turn and started to drive back north. The world after the rain was a gorgeous shimmering green, like I was passing through the inside of an emerald and I wound down the window. The air was fresh and sweet and the sun set everything sparkling as though bedewed with a million fairy baubles.

Then I turned a corner and the great arch of a rainbow appeared. It was the hugest rainbow I'd ever seen. So bright and clear was it that I thought I could almost reach out and touch it.

A rainbow...

My heart felt lighter. I decided to follow the rainbow, to chase it. I hadn't done something so frivolous or whimsical since I'd been a kid, but somehow an innocent part of me had awakened at the sight. I pursued it, chasing the great hovering arch through tiny villages and winding lanes and amid low, rolling hills and farms and fields of lowing cattle.

I was passing through a dairy farm when I realised the rainbow had stopped moving away from me. Somehow I'd caught up with it. In the field to my right, not far from a copse of trees, I saw the end of it touching the earth. The air about it sparkled with every colour of the spectrum.

I stopped the car at the side of the road. I knew the rainbow was an optical illusion created by the scattering of light through a prism of water droplets, and yet...

I got out of the car and half-climbed, half-slid down the little causeway to the fence that surrounded the field. The fence was a barbwire one and after a few desperate moments climbing over it without puncturing my groin I finally cleared it and went jogging through the rain-moist grass beyond. Cows were startled by my appearance and trotted away, lowing in alarm.

My jog slowed to a trot. The rainbow stood there glowing, as though nailed to the earth. How was that even possible? As I got closer I caught sight of the glorious sparkling of golden dust.

I broke into a run. I was almost flying when I reached the end of the rainbow. Every part of me felt light, like I was floating, most of all my heart, so long weighed down by Cait's loss.

And there it was, as clear as you might find in any picture book: a huge cauldron of black iron with a rounded lip, filled to overflowing with a great heap of glittering gold coins.

The fabled pot of gold.

A little green figure stepped out from behind it. But it wasn't wearing brogues or buckled trousers or a vest or a comical cone-shaped hat: just a shimmering green robe, so pure it might have been woven from emerald. Bare-foot, its pale skin glowed with the light of fairyland and its wild red hair flowed free like soft, liquid fire.

She was beyond beautiful.

As Cait stepped forward her mouth widened into a grin, her dark eyes glistening like wet emerald.

"It took ye long enough," she said, then burst into tears.

Laughing and crying in turns I caught the little leprechaun as she leaped up into my arms and twirling her round and round, I kissed her sweet, cherry-red mouth until her tears turned to joyful laughter.

The End