Brad Ricca - Olive the Lionheart: Lost Love, Imperial Spies, and One Womans Journey into the Heart of Africa

1893: A Girl Tells a Magical Story to Her Younger Sister

The fire crackled quietly inside the stone room. Olive, who was thirteen, had her knees pulled up under her chin. Her long red hair curled all the way down to the floor. She was shaking. Not because of the cold, but because she was certain that a fairy princess from another world, in all her bright and terrible glory, was going to appear before her. The walls flickered in the firelight.

Olive drew up a tartan wool blanket. Her older sister, Flora, was seated across from her in a rocking chair. Floras young face, squared by brown shoulder-length hair, became nearly wicked in the smallness of the room, filled with trembling shadows. Flora began to tell her sister, in quiet tones, a story that happened a long time ago.

This was the story of the MacLeod family of Scotland, said Flora, more or less. One summers day, the clan chieftain, a wise and handsome warrior, walked onto his green lands on the lonely Isle of Skye. After getting just slightly lost, he came upon a small stone bridge with an arch cut through the middle. Though he did not completely know how, the good and lost chief felt that the bridge had a strange feeling about it, like the air before a storm. Overcome by curiosity, he put his hand on his sword and walked across the little bridge. Olive listened as her sister, who was fifteen, took her time to enunciate the next part very carefully. By crossing the bridge, the chief disappeared from the world and entered another. He had found the way to the magical realm of the Sith Sidhe: the Still Folk, the Other Ones.

The Faerie world.

The chief was brave, so he did not fear this glittering, beautiful place. At least thats what he told himself. In truth, the chief could never fully recall the time he spent there. Except for one detail. During his time in the magical kingdom, the handsome young chieftain did the unthinkable: He fell in love. She was a fairy princess, a Bean Sith. She was beautiful, with long red hair and a shimmering green dress that shone like an emerald. Flowers that never wilted were neatly set into her hair. But her father, the grim and powerful Fairy King, forbade them to be married. When she begged him to reconsider, the king proposed a hand-fasting, a trial marriage, on the promise that it would last only for one year and a day. When their time was up, his daughter would have to return to the fairy kingdomalone, and never to leave it again. The couple agreed, and their almost-wedding was held on the chiefs birthday. Their hands entwined, they passed back over the bridge to the proper world. There, on the Isle of Skye, they enjoyed a full year of married life in the family castle of Dunvegan. The couple were happy beyond all other measures of worth.