The Elf Widow

Threshold

David nodded and sank into the garden chair opposite Ian. Two bottles of lager sat on the table. He opened the second one and handed it over. David wished he had something stronger, but he was grateful the old man had thought to prepare.

"Aubrey," Ian began. "How is she? I remember—"

David waggled his hand to interrupt him. "First you need to tell me what she is."

"Everybody knows her story. Somebody must have told you."

"The only thing I've heard is... she's a... glaistig... That she... haunts the farmhouse."

Ian took a swig from his own bottle and rolled it around his mouth. At last he swallowed and said, "If she haunts anything, it's that little valley over the hill. What she does in the farmhouse is more like help people out."

"But... but why?"

"She lost her family so she's compelled to help other families. That's what people say."

That's what she said herself. David nodded and took a sip of the cold, tart beer. "Her husband and her children. What happened to them?"

Ian shrugged. "Maybe lost them is the wrong word. More like she lost track of them."

David leaned forward. "What do you mean?"

"She went out one morning to do whatever it is country wives used to do—pluck greens, dig for roots, pick berries. She wasn't seen again for nigh sixty years. Then one evening, she walked in through the front door, a basket of pickings in her hand, and called out that she's home and she's going to make black currant scones for breakfast. Only nobody's there—nobody but her youngest daughter, and now she's a withered old woman, sitting by the fire, looking after Aubrey's great-great-grand-daughter who's a-rocking in her cradle."

The story was fantastical, yet David knew it was true. "What a shock that must have been."

"For both of them. In the tale I heard, when her daughter asked her where she'd been, Aubrey broke down and wept. She'd heard singing and went to see. The elves were gracious to her and showed her the best places to find what she had come to gather. What they didn't tell her was that when she joined them, she had stepped from our world to theirs, and that while she was filling her basket, time outside was a-passing."

And she returned already a widow. David passed a hand over his forehead. "How long ago was this?"

"Late seventeen hundreds, so they say. After my mum made me send Aubrey away, I kept asking for the story. Finally, my dad's dad told me. As it turned out, that wee babe in the cradle—she grew up and married a Ferguson. That's how the farmhouse came to our family."

Complete with glaistig. "Have you heard other stories about her?"

"Dribs and drabs and snippets. I don't know which to believe." Ian picked up his bottle, but when he saw that it was empty, he set it back down. "Spending time among the elves changes a person. In the time I spent with her, I don't remember her showing off her strength—though I heard tell of her lifting a fallen tree off a farmer's child two centuries back. Some say she could make the crops grow. Others that she can fly. The tales my mother had heard, well, they were darker. According to my dad's mum the only thing Aubrey did was crack the crockery, sour the milk and pamper the mice."

Mischievous at worst, David thought. Not the uncontrollable rage she'd vented at him.

"But that wasn't the Aubrey I knew. All I remember is she sang me songs and played cat's cradle with me."

David drew a deep breath and released it in a sigh. Though he was a grown man, that's the Aubrey he'd known as well. And like Ian Ferguson, he'd sent her away. "So, does she come to every new tenant?"