Okay, so we all know about fairies, right? Tiny, twinkly things that can be found flitting from flower to flower like humanoid pollinators with gossamer wings and pointy ears. Tinkerbell. Merryweather. Peaseblossom. Puck.
Yeah. That works for Hollywood and Shakespeare. Not for Ireland. Irish fairies are different.
To illustrate that, let me paint a picture. Tucked into the center of my front garden is a paving stone decorated with a painted daisy and the admonition Don’t Piss Off The Fairies. In Ireland, that was never a joke. Irish fairies can be as whimsical and mischievous as any other fairy. There are certainly pixies in the garden, leprechauns in the shoe shop and merpeople in the sea. But there are also those who can also be terrible and fearsome.
Think of the Elves in Lord of the Rings. Regal, powerful, sensual. Serious about certain things. The Irish fairies are protectors of the earth, and they don’t take to anybody abusing their turf. The Irish people have so respected that belief, that until recently they rerouted roads and moved buildings to prevent cutting down fairy bushes or destroying fairy forts. Gifts were left on doorsteps to appease fairies, and fences built and trees planted to keep them from lingering.
Don’t get me wrong. These fairies are magnificent. They love good food and music and a beautiful gray horse. But you don’t want to run afoul of them. The Pookah in Jimmy Stewart’s Harvey might be whimsical and sweet. The real Pookah, be it rabbit or horse, can be terrifying. The Dullahan, who is the original Headless Horseman. And if you really want terrifying, there’s the banshee. Trust me when I say you don’t want to hear her wailing outside your window.
These fairies are where I started my Daughters of Myth series. I took the lore I grew up with, the stories my cousins in Ireland tell, and the otherworldly feeling you get in Ireland when you step into a circle of whitethorn trees, and I asked the age-old writers’ question I was taught by Mary Higgins Clark. “What if?”
What if the queen of fairies needs to retire? Every fairy knows that when their time here is finished they will cross the sea to the Land of the West, the land of eternal youth. What if it’s the queen’s time?
Out beyond the city of Sligo at the edge of the sea rises a mountain, Knocknarea. On top of the bare-headed heights sits a huge burial cairn, a pile of rocks 32 feet high and 180 feet around, which reflects the status of the inhabitant. It is called Maeve’s Cairn. Maeve—also known as Mabh, Queen of Fairies.
I’ve made the difficult climb to pay obeisance to the old girl to find that her grave up on that mountain watches out over the west coast of island and much of the sea. And standing up there at the edge of the world, I decided to take that cairn as inspiration and make Mabh the center of my series.
In my world, the cairn is the grave of the very first queen. Every queen since has taken the name Mabh as a title in honor of her. This Mabh knows that her time has come to name a successor. The question is, who should she choose? She has three daughters: Nuala, Sorcha, and Orla. It is assumed that Nuala will inherit the role. But the queen wants to make sure. She know dangerous times are coming, and the Tuatha need a queen to meet them. So she tests each of her daughters to find their strengths, their weaknesses, their desires, and their capability to lead one of the two great fairy clans on earth, the Tuatha de Dannan, the matriarchal fairies who once balanced out the darker male Dubhlain Sidhe(whom I created out of whole cloth). The Fairies of the Dark Sword.
The lovely thing about writing books is that if you decide to write about fairies, as long as you don’t spin too far out of control, you can make their world look like anything you want. I had a wonderful time constructing my fairy society upon the bones of known mythology and then dropping humans into it.
The first book, Daughter of Lore, about Nuala, begins with the line, “Zeke Kendall did not believe in fairies.” So naturally the first thing he does is fall down a fairy fort and into the arms of a fairy. And Nuala, raised to be the next queen, has loved Zeke since she first saw him in scrying water when they were both children. Will Mabh let him go? Will she keep him for herself? Or will Nuala save him only to have to give him back to his world, since the last place this anthropologist who spends most of his time in the deserts of the American Southwest belongs, is the twilight world of faerie.
And of course Nuala isn’t the only daughter so tested. In Daughter of Light, Sorcha, teacher of children is set into a harsh mortal world on an impossible task. And in Daughter of Destiny, Orla, the legendary leannan sidhe, the seducer of mortal men, is stripped of her powers and sent into the land of the enemy.
I was even able to transform several places like Carrowmore Neolithic Cemetery and the McGillicudy’s Reeks into fairy sites central to their purpose and include a human I knew, young Kieran O’Driscoll and his home Castle Matrix into the mix. And while I think I’ve closed all of the questions I asked in this trilogy, there are lots more fairies to follow, especially Faolain, a handsome redheaded warrior. Who knows? I just know I love this world my fairies inhabit.
Oh, and one other thing you might not know? Fairies have green eyes. Just like mine. The relationship is pure speculation.
DAUGHTER OF LORE by Eileen Dreyer
Daughters of Myth #1
He doesn’t believe…
Zeke Kendall doesn’t believe in fairies. He’s a scientist; an anthropologist who has spent the last ten years digging in the harsh deserts of the American Southwest. But things look a lot different in the soft green shadows of Ireland. There it is easier to believe that magic exists, especially when Zeke tumbles off a fairy mound and ends up in the arms of the beautiful Nuala, who seems to know everything about him. When she tells him she is a fairy, he actually wants to believe it, even as he knows better.
She can’t believe…
Nuala is daughter of Mab, Queen of Fairies. She has grown up in the twilight land of the fae, fiercely loyal and loving to her people. But she has also been in love with Zeke Kendall ever since she first saw him in her scrying water as a child. To now have him so close is both joy and torture.
For she is the heir to the great crown of the Tuatha de Danann fairy clan. She has no place in Zeke’s world. And he, a man drawn in the sharp edges of his deserts, has no place in hers. Even as passion rises and the love she’d only dreamed of blossoms into reality, Orla knows that a future for them is impossible. And yet, she can’t find a way to send him back to his own world.
Note: This title was previously published as Dark Seduction
Romance Fantasy [Oliver-Heber Books, On Sale: April 5, 2022, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781648391972 / ]
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About Eileen Dreyer
New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Eileen Dreyer, known as Kathleen Korbel to her Silhouette readers, has published 31 romance novels in most of the sub-genres, 8 medical-forensic suspenses, and 7 short stories.
2015 sees Eileen enjoying critical acclaim for her foray into historical romance, the Drake’s Rakes series, which follow the lives of a group of Regency aristocrats who are willing to sacrifice everything to keep their country safe. Eileen calls them Regency Romantic Adventure. Eileen spent time not only in England and Italy, but India to research the series (it’s a filthy job, but somebody has to do it).
A retired trauma nurse, Eileen lives in her native St. Louis with her husband, children, and large and noisy Irish family, of which she is the reluctant matriarch. She has animals but refuses to subject them to the limelight.
Dreyer won her first publishing award in 1987, being named the best new Contemporary Romance Author by RT Bookclub. Since that time she has also garnered not only five other writing awards from RT, but five RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America, which secures her only the fourth place in the Romance Writers of America prestigious Hall of Fame. Since extending her reach to suspense, she has also garnered a coveted Anthony Award nomination.
A frequent speaker at conferences, Eileen is also an addicted traveler, having sung in some of the best Irish pubs in the world, and admits she sees research as a handy way to salve her insatiable curiosity. She counts film producers, police detectives and Olympic athletes as some of her sources and friends. She’s also trained in forensic nursing and death investigation, which she figures could come in handy if this writing thing doesn’t pan out.
Drake’s Rakes | Korbel Classics | Wounded Heroes
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