THE CURIOUS BARGAIN OF MORCANT MOON

“Ah, Jaysus. Where in the name of all wee folk am I?”

Morcant shoved against something soft, then something hard. Darkness pressed in on every side, so thick he had to spark the glimmer residue on his fingertips to see. Then the dreadful truth struck him.

He was still inside the manling’s suitcase.

“Oh, me lord. Sorcha is not going to like this. Not one bit.”

It hadn’t seemed a terrible idea at the time. Morcant had only meant to creep closer to the manling and frighten him properly for disrespecting ground older than his bloodline. Then there had been the open suitcase, the soft sweater, and one deeply unfortunate nap in a country house on Knockma Hill in Tuan, Ireland.

Morcant had been minding his own sacred business, mending a tiny stone marker, when footsteps sounded on the path. His path. He crouched in the brush and watched a manling and a mortal lass wander along the trail.

Then the manling touched one of his trees, and Morcant went deathly still.

“Touch me trees again, and I’ll show ya they’ve a temper worse than mine,” he whispered—just as the lass swatted the manling’s hand away.

Morcant grinned despite himself, though the lass unsettled him. Round deep-blue eyes, pale skin, and a fall of shiny yellow hair—hideous, naturally, though soft-looking enough to sleep in.

Sadly, Morcant knew firsthand that mortal lasses were quick with their hands. They always slapped him before fleeing in screams, as if a fairy could not nap wherever he pleased after four thousand years in his own forest.

Still, this lass seemed to understand the sanctity of his home. She hushed the manling when he spoke too loudly and slapped his strange little fingers away whenever they strayed toward things no mortal had any business touching. In Morcant’s mind, that included nearly everything, possibly even the air.

“Mind yourself, lad,” Morcant muttered from the brush.

Morcant’s eyes narrowed as the manling settled on one of the sacred boulders encircling his home, then propped his feet on another as if the whole place had been arranged for his comfort. And then—the horror—he reached for the lone white thorn tree and snapped off a branch.

Murderous!

Morcant’s crooked smile vanished. One black eye twitched, as it always did when anger took hold, and he began pacing in tight, furious circles.

“You daft human,” he hissed. “Get your grubby hands off me earth before I introduce them to a consequence with teeth.”

Naturally, this was the moment Morcant decided justice required closer inspection.

At first, he considered the traditional punishments: stealing the manling’s milk and butter, or even his child, had the fool been competent enough to have one. Many mortals have had great success joining fairy families. A rotten acorn would have made a fair exchange. But the lass had honored his home, and fairy justice had standards. So Morcant chose a better exchange just for her: a hag stone, worn hollow by water and time, that could show its bearer when someone lied.

She needed it. Morcant knew because, as a fairy, he could hear mortal thoughts—and the manling’s were a disgraceful racket.

He closed his eyes as Leena’s silent worry reached him.

Dad doesn’t have much time.

A memory followed: the manling’s voice, sharp and dismissive. Leena, stop being so insecure.

Morcant knew her name then. Leena.

Why can’t he see how unhappy I am?

Morcant’s expression softened. Because he only cares about himself, lass.

Leena looked around, unsettled by the sudden feeling that someone had answered her.

Morcant learned that she and the manling had come to Ireland for something called a honeymoon, which struck him as a custom of rare human sense. Honey was his favorite treat, Moon was his own proud name, and any ceremony involving both sounded nearly civilized. His opinion soured only when he discovered the journey contained neither honey nor moonlight—just Leena growing quieter with every passing day. He could feel her sadness.

When Leena called the manling an asshole, Morcant naturally assumed she had finally revealed the man’s proper name.

Money. Promotion. More money. Asshole’s mind clattered with schemes to take over something owned by the lass’s father known as Rathmore Industries, as if greed were a noble calling and the elder manling an inconvenient piece of furniture.

“Who, I ask ye, builds a life around wanting such things?” Morcant thought. “If gold is what fills your heart, marry a dragon and spare the rest of us your courtship. You’ve planned the death rites, counted the spoils, and the poor lass’s father is still drawing breath.”

Then Morcant’s expression went cold. Beneath the greed lay another dishonor: Marla, a mortal lass tucked into Asshole’s thoughts with whispers and touches meant only for a mate.

Morcant was offended to the marrow. A union, in any world, was meant to be sacred.

“So that’s the bargain you make with love?” he thought. “A vow on your tongue, betrayal in your bones, and wandering thoughts with the manners of a thief. You leave a good lass to wonder why she isn’t enough, as if her heart were a hearth you let go cold.”

He could have ended Blake in the forest—and wanted to—but frightening Leena would have made justice cruel.

By the time he woke, the forest was gone, and Morcant was trapped in a lavish Manhattan apartment.

“That goddamned airport,” Blake snapped, glaring at the jagged tear in his luggage. “Look at this. Hey, honey, call them and tell them they owe me four thousand dollars, would you? And where the hell are my keys?”

Leena kept unpacking her own suitcase, but one thought slipped free before she could stop it.

Call them yourself.

Morcant snorted softly.

Leena turned toward the sound as he ducked beneath an enormous palm. In Ireland, Asshole had spent endless hours murmuring into his thin black box to Marla while Leena wandered the countryside alone, unaware Morcant followed close enough to hear every wounded thought.

Now he hurled the name into her mind: Marla. Marla. Marla.

“I know, sweetheart,” Morcant heard Asshole say into the black box that morning. “No, baby, nothing’s changed. Be patient. Once the old man makes me partner before he croaks, it’ll all be ours. It can’t be much longer.”

“Croaks?” Morcant thought. He had not sensed any bullfrog blood in Leena’s father.

“What can’t be much longer?” Leena asked, stepping into the kitchen.

Blake didn’t flinch. He had the calm of a man practiced at cheating and lying.

“The Zimmerman merger,” he said smoothly. “Hey, honey, why the hell are my socks wet?”

“Even a fairy must answer nature’s call,” Morcant muttered. “Your betrayal is ugly enough without dressing it in lies.”

Back in his forest, Morcant would never have lied to Sorcha, his mate of three thousand years. She was as spirited as he was and quicker to fury when loyalty, respect, or fairy customs were slighted—though most often she scolded him for stepping into quarrels she meant to settle herself.

But nothing made Sorcha spit fire faster than Morcant vanishing without a word.

“You’ve been gone three days,” Sorcha said once.

Morcant shrugged. “Two.”

She plucked dried flowers from her hair and gave him a look sharp enough to fell a tree.

“Three.”

He glanced toward the forest. “Hmm…It felt like two.”

His day worsened considerably, and he never tried it again.

That was when Morcant grasped the full extent of his predicament: Asshole had stranded him across the sea, betrayed Leena and her father, and left him without a clear path back to his mate. Given Sorcha’s temper, he needed to find a way home soon.

Morcant found Manhattan bewildering and deeply offensive: too loud, too crowded, and far too much stone where trees belonged. Even the honking taxis seemed like obnoxious human magic.

One evening in Times Square, he glared at the towering signs and muttered, “Ah, begorrah. Humans have done the impossible—they’ve taken perfectly good darkness and made a bloody nuisance of it.”

At first, Morcant devoted himself to making Blake’s life properly miserable. He hid the man’s office keys, tied his shoelaces together while he sat, and scraped his toothbrush under the toilet seat.

“A man who soils his vows can hardly complain when consequences find him,” Morcant said. “There. Now your toothbrush has more integrity than you do.”

But the more Morcant watched Leena drift through the apartment in silence, the less his mischief felt like justice. Petty torments would not free her. So one day, he followed her to Central Park, where the trees, birds, and patches of earth reminded him painfully of home.

As one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the ancient magical folk of Ireland, Morcant could take whatever shape suited him.

“This city is a forest of stone,” Morcant said, “full of humans who have forgotten how to whisper.”

Leena turned toward the stranger on the bench. “Do I know you? I feel as if we’ve met before.”

Beside her sat Morcant in the shape of a man in his early fifties, with dark hair silvered at the temples, bright gray-green eyes, and an old-fashioned pocket watch tucked into his wool coat. Now and then, his reflection lagged by a heartbeat and briefly showed the fairy beneath, but his crooked half-smile was warm enough to hold her there.

Their conversations came easily, and Leena soon found herself looking forward to each chance meeting in the park. She told him about her father, her disastrous honeymoon, and her longing to return to Ireland. When she asked about ancient folklore and listened to his fairy tales without laughing, Morcant’s Irish heart warmed considerably.

One day beneath the elms, Morcant slipped a hand into his pocket and closed his fingers around the hag stone.

“Tell me something,” he said lightly. “Are you happy with your husband?”

Leena glanced over, startled. “That’s rather personal.”

Morcant shrugged. “Is it? I’ve always thought happiness a perfectly ordinary thing to ask about. You seem tired, lass.”

“I am,” she said.

But that morning beneath the apartment palm, Morcant had heard her and Blake arguing about Marla.

“Marla, Marla, Marla,” Leena had said, her voice thin with hurt. “Lately, that’s all that comes out of your mouth. Why didn’t you marry her instead?”

Leena was beginning to suspect the truth, and Morcant meant to help her name it.

They walked a few quiet steps before Morcant asked, “Does your husband notice when you’re unhappy?”

Leena looked away. “Sometimes.”

“That’s an interesting answer.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that the heart is a clever liar when it wants to keep the peace.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “A lass usually recognizes the truth long before she names it. Ah, never mind me. I’m just an old fool who notices things.”

Despite herself, she softened. “Morcant, you can’t be a day over fifty.”

“And yet I'm tragically ancient in all the ways that matter.” His smile faded. “Tell me, does he treat you kindly?”

Her smile thinned. “He treats me well enough.”

“Another interesting answer,” Morcant said.

Leena went still. The question sounded harmless, but the way he asked it made her stomach drop. She lowered her eyes, mindlessly adjusting the edge of her sleeve, then she looked up at him.

“Why are you suddenly so interested in my marriage?”

Morcant’s expression grew grave as he leaned in.

“Because some people can make betrayal look like ordinary life,” he said softly. “Never trust a man who smiles the sweetest when his wife isn’t looking. Ah, never mind me, lass. I’m just an old fool.”

Leena stared at him when Morcant tipped his face toward the trees.

“Fine day for pretending otherwise, isn’t it?”

That evening, Morcant dozed on the window ledge with one hand pressed to moonlit glass until Leena’s raised voice snapped him awake.

He sat upright, every small bone going still.

Blake surged toward her.

“That’s far enough!” Morcant thundered.

The room froze. Leena knew that voice. Blake did not.

Morcant blinked, suddenly aware he had spoken aloud as Blake slowly turned toward the window.

“Who the hell said that?” Blake demanded.

The lights flickered. Morcant slipped behind the curtain just as the wedding photograph cracked, slid off a desk, and shattered across the floor.

The curtains stirred as Morcant paced in furious circles. Then Blake’s thin black box—the little liar’s altar to Marla—shot from the table and slammed into the wall.

Blake backed toward the door while Morcant’s eye twitched in the dark.

“Go on, lad,” Morcant called. “Tell them the fairies chased ya off.”

The doorknob twisted by itself, and the door swung wide.

“This damn place is haunted!” Blake screamed, bolting into the hall. “I’m out of here!”

“Run, then!” Morcant called after him. “A fine pair of legs ya got there. Shame about the backbone.”

Leena slowly turned toward the window and found a sight no Manhattan high-rise had any business containing. Morcant perched on the ledge, no longer wearing his human shape. His dark eyes glowed with otherworldly light, one still faintly twitching; his ears tapered to unmistakable points, and his black hair stirred though the room was still. Barely eighteen inches tall, he looked ancient, dangerous, and oddly dear.

“Morcant…” Leena took one careful step closer. “You’re…”

“A fairy,” he said quietly, his familiar crooked smile returning. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me. I’d be grateful if ya didn’t scream. Your neighbors are terribly nosey.”

“So all those stories were true?” she whispered. “And you’re a…a real fairy?”

Morcant shrugged. “I suppose me ears ruined the mystery. And before ya ask, no wings.”

“I wasn’t going to ask that.”

“Aye, but you were thinking it.” He hopped down from the ledge and landed without a sound. Leena stepped back before she could stop herself, and the flinch struck him harder than he expected. “Ah, lass,” he said softly. “I’d never harm ya.”

For the first time, every oddity she had noticed in him clicked into place: the strange grace of his movements, the things he heard before anyone else, the way the trees seemed to know him.

He reached into his coat and drew out a tiny glass vial. Inside, something brighter than glitter drifted upward in slow, impossible spirals.

Leena stared, unable to look away.

“What is it?”

Morcant’s smile faded. “A bargain,” he said. “I need you to take me home.”

“To Ireland?”

He nodded. When he set the vial in her palm, light bled from his fingertips into the glass. Warmth passed between them, and his pointed ears drooped.

“Don’t look at me like that, lass. We fairies are dramatic by nature.” His crooked smile returned, though it was weaker now. “I have been away from my mate too long. Sorcha is either worried sick or plotting my murder, and I’m not sure which is worse. This glimmer may help heal your father. Take me back to Ireland, and it is yours.”

“That’s your bargain?”

He nodded. “A journey for a cure. But choose carefully. Human vows snap like twigs. Fairy bargains do not.”

Morcant moved to the window and looked past the city lights to the stars, where his father’s spirit watched from beyond the world. The old grief flickered across his face before he tucked it away.

“Your manling means to end your union, seize what your father built, and run to Marla.” He tilted his head. “I’ll grant him this: the fool commits fully to being a fool.”

Leena nearly laughed despite herself.

Morcant’s crooked smile returned, gentler now.

“There’s your silver lining, lass. You’re married to a fool—and fools are easier to leave than villains.”

Leena walked the narrow Irish path beside her father, the forest hushed around them except for birdsong and wind combing through the leaves. He moved easily now, almost as if the land itself steadied his steps.

She glanced at him and smiled. “I’m sorry I brought that idiot into your life. I can’t believe I ever thought I loved him.”

Her father chuckled, but when they passed a broken twig, his gaze lingered, as if some faint ache in the wood answered him.

“Honey, men like that only love themselves. And did you hear? Those two are already on dating websites—both listed as unemployed.” His mouth twitched. “Tragic, really.”

“They broke up?” Leena laughed softly. “Color me shocked,” she said, her fingers curling around the hag stone in her pocket.

 Morcant’s father once warned him that giving away so much glimmer would dull his gift for a time; he wouldn't hear mortal thoughts again until his magic mended.

But for now, Leena could hear his.

She’s free. That’s enough.

High on the hill, Morcant stood with Sorcha tucked beneath his arm. Sorcha watched Leena and her father with a knowing smile.

Leena met Morcant’s eyes. He gave her a small nod. No words needed.

Morcant and Sorcha turned into the green shadows of Ireland. As the trees began to swallow them, Sorcha leaned close, grinning.

“You’re pleased with yourself.”

“Aye,” he said, glancing back once.

“You’re becoming sentimental, Morcant Moon.”

Morcant gave her a deeply offended look.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, taking her hand.