Daoine Sidhe

Art by D.M. Anderson

When I was a little girl, I heard someone talking to me from the pile of dirt next to my grandmother’s house. They (who, I don’t know) had torn the house next to hers down, and instead of a building full of history, there was a border of shrubs, and a tall pile of extra dirt after they had filled the gaping hole where the basement had once been. I was still somewhere in the single digits of age, and experiencing just about everything for the first time. Of course I’d never seen a house just disappear before, and I spent a lot of time when we visited grandma just climbing up to the top of the curved mound of rocky soil, seeing the world from a different perspective.

This little hill in the middle of a suburban street lined with old houses gave me a strange feeling. It seemed a little dangerous, even, to my seven or eight-year-old mind. Things felt different when I was up there. It felt like I had traveled to a different space, a separate reality. I didn’t have words for it then, but I do now: it felt magical.

Over time, the dirt sprouted with grass, and the mound became sturdier and easier to climb. And as I visited, I felt a presence there. Voices whispering to me, indiscernible but filling me with strange desires. "Come away, oh human child." I may never have heard the words, but the message was the same.

As an adult who loves the faeries, I do wonder now. Do the Daoine Sidhe stay only in their land, or do they move wherever the hills are? I live in Ohio, where people joke is flat and full of cornfields. But my wanderings in the forest include many a hill and mounded bit of earth. Sometimes when I’m there I wonder: has anyone moved in? Might someone be calling me still, and my grown-up ears don’t hear the call?

The empty space is still there today

This blog post was inspired by the Faebruary art challenge presented by Brett Manning. Daoine Sidhe is the prompt for day one. My hope was to write something for all the days, but time got away from me. I still wanted to share this one. Follow the hashtag #brettsfaebruaryartchallenge2023 on Insta to see more.