My grandmother was a witch. We did not see eye to eye.

While my peers were raking leaves and scrubbing stoves for their pocket money, I was picking gypsy-flower, collecting slow worms, and chasing crows from rafters. It was tedious, traditional. The way I viewed my grandmother. And every night while she cooked, over-salted potatoes mostly, with a root vegetable of some kind that had been boiled beyond recognition, she would place a small plate of food on the kitchen windowsill, cluttered and unnecessary, messing up an already messy kitchen. An already messy mind.

“Offerings for the Faerie folk,” she called it.

“How you get ants,” I would mutter.

She made sure I knew the stories, filling any silence with tales of sprites and tricksters, of leprechauns and gold. There was a lot of silence in those days, stretched between us like a river I didn’t know how to cross. I pretended not to listen.

One night, I caught myself alone in her cramped and creaky house, about to drop a spoonful of my dinner on that sad little saucer. Why was I following an old woman’s inane practice? This wasn’t my land, with its bizarre folklore and crumbling tradition. This wasn’t my history. I was from a new place. A place that looked forward instead of back. A people concerned with where they were going, not where they were from. Who didn’t sing to the trees or think mystical creatures were hiding at the end of rainbows.

So I sat and ate, looking all the while at the small white dish lying empty on the windowsill. Empty. Clean. Forgotten.

It wasn’t the knock at the door that startled me but the silence that followed. You only notice the sound of a clock, a highway, a heartbeat, when it’s gone. These days, I’ve learnt to listen to the things that go unsaid. To the space in between. But back then, I was a headstrong kid too proud to admit he was afraid of the dark.

A second knock. Inviting, almost whimsical.

“Can I help you?”

The figure on the porch smiled. He smelled of woodsmoke and moonlight. “I don’t think we’ve met.” He didn’t reach out his hand. I didn’t offer mine.

“I’m Kieran.”

“Ciarán? A strong name, boy. A powerful name. Can do a lot in these parts with a name like that.” The man looked comfortable, casual, like he was exactly where he needed to be. Exactly who he needed to be.

“And you are?” I tried to match his confidence, but it felt clumsy and forced, the same way I felt for most of my youth.

“As I said, boy, a name’s a powerful thing. You should be careful who you give it to.” His voice was like walking through spiderwebs. A soft, quiet presence that whispered at the edge of my mind.

“What do you want?”

He laughed, and fire flashed in his eyes. He looked so completely Fae it was absurd to think him anything less.

“It’s not about what I want, young Ciarán. It’s about what you want. You know the tales. Riches beyond measure. Power. Adventure. Love. Or, for a more modern audience, fame, money, and a hot piece on the side? I’m offering you your heart’s desire, boy. Your wildest dreams. Plucked from the world of the dreaming and gift-wrapped just for you. Only minimal strings attached.”

His eyes were oceans, enticing and endless, promising a warm embrace, a peaceful end, if I didn’t mind drowning in the dark.

“No… I… I think I’m ok, thanks.”

There was that smile again, feline and playful. A joke I didn’t yet understand.

“How sweet. But you misunderstand me, boy. This isn’t a yes-no situation. You don’t get to opt out.” He didn’t need to promise violence. The physical was beneath him. He simply stopped pretending, and the thin facade of humanity that wrapped around him was gone. A predator enjoying the age-old game, waiting for the taste of blood.

“We were here before your people, kid. Before this land, before your laws. We exist in your world as you do in ours. And there are certain rules to be followed. Certain pacts made long before your time that will exist long after you’re gone.” His eyes flicked to the little white saucer sitting abandoned on the windowsill. Empty. Inviting.

“So, Kieran. Boy from the West. Who’s travelled so far he’s forgotten his blood comes from travelling folk. What will it be?”

I considered asking for money. For talent, for love. To never grow old. To fly. I thought of asking to bring them back, for my life back the way it was. The way it should have been. I thought of my mum’s smile. My dad’s laugh. The smell of Thanksgiving dinner. The way my sister sang when she thought I wasn’t listening. The sound of screeching brakes. Blue lights glinting off broken glass. The hole in my chest the size of the world. The size of a family.

“I want to be happy.” The man stared, raising a perfectly manicured eyebrow as his fire-bright eyes bore into my soul.

“Happy. That’s it? I’m offering you your darkest dreams, boy. Your every desire. And all you want is to be happy?”

I thought of my mum’s favourite song. How she would hum it while she worked. How my grandmother’s hand shook when she’d placed a rose on the casket. A casket that was too small to hold the world inside.

“Yeah.” My voice was steady, no hint of the stuttering self-doubt that was my constant companion in those first few years alone. “What else is there?”

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I never spoke to my grandmother of that night. She never mentioned the smell of woodsmoke. We got on with our lives, our disagreements, our differences. The quiet moments that make up a life. But never again did that little saucer lie empty; its sad cows and faded shamrocks always partially obscured by whatever meal we were sharing that night. In the house I later grew to think of as home.

And when I started a life of my own, a family of my own, my grandmother’s plate found its way to my own kitchen, looking untidy, out of place, and always respectfully adorned with last night’s dinner. An offering for the Faerie folk.

My husband accepts this absurd ritual as he does my many other flaws – with grace and occasional mockery. Only when the moon is full, and he’s caught off guard by a joke or our daughter’s unexpected laugh, do I catch a glimpse of the fire in his eyes.

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This story was inspired by The Significant Objects Project – a writing experiment from the early 2000’s when authors were given mundane object at random and asked to tell a story with that object at the center of the narrative. The idea of the project was to “test the effect of narrative on an object’s subjective value”. In short, can telling a story about a thing increase its value in the eyes of the consumer. An interesting premise, and a fun writing prompt. Perfect for a little fairytale inspiration…