As the fairies looked on, the stones of the Green Rath began, impossibly, to move, as though an unseen hand was rebuilding the fort from the ground up. Within moments, the broken-down walls were already waist-high and a pair of weathered hawthorn bushes that flanked the entrance began to curve and twist until their branches formed an archway. The older fairies smiled. They remembered the Green Rath in its glory days when it was the finest fort in all of Ireland. It was good to be back.

So entranced were the fairies, they failed to notice the creature who watched them from the shadows at the edge of the clearing. He was tall and thin with long, twig-like fingers, a too-wide mouth, and eyes of rusty red. His lower half was covered in a dark, matted fur tangled with leaves and twigs, and in place of feet were a pair of shiny black hooves. He was a wild thing, a creature of forest and stream, and he had been asleep almost as long as the Green Rath had. An unfriendly being at the best of times, his temper was not improved upon discovering it was the Sídhe – the Trooping Fairies – who disturbed his decades-long slumber.

‘Foolish things,’ he muttered, curling a lip in disgust. ‘I thought I had seen the last of their kind decades ago.’

He was about to slip away and find some dark place to sleep undisturbed when the breeze that had carried the scent of the fairies up the hill and into his lair rose again. This time he caught a taste of something else on the air. Sea brine and brimstone. He sniffed. It seemed he was not the only one the Sídhe had awoken this night. There were other beings, more fearsome than he, who walked the roads around Clonbridge again.

The creature paused to consider this information and a new plan began to form. If there was one thing he valued more than his solitude, it was the opportunity to sow a little chaos. He would need to set a few things in motion, but if all worked out, perhaps the fairy Revels might prove to be of interest to him after all. He made a decision.

Soundlessly, he stepped into the clearing, startling a group of fairies who had been relaxing against the walls of the Green Rath. One of them, a youth with long, sleek hair the colour of spun gold, jumped to his feet and bowed.

‘M-master Pooka,’ he stammered. ‘It has been a long time since we’ve seen you at court.’

The creature called the Pooka grinned. It was not a friendly smile.

‘Too long,’ he replied. ‘It’s high time I paid your queen a visit, wouldn’t you say? Tell me, lad, when do she and her retinue arrive?’

‘She and the king are due to arrive after sundown on Samhain, two nights hence,’ said the youth, recoiling slightly from the musty, damp-earth smell of the Pooka.