The Contract

A short story about exploitation, guilt and vanity, the Old Country and the Otherworld

O'Leary's Extraordinary Unenchanted Travelling Circus

Authentic Acrobatics Performed by Real Mortals with No Magical Safety Net

The fae lord who calls himself Finnian O'Leary looks fondly at the stack of flyers under his right hand. Business is booming. It seems the folk can't get enough of the first mortal circus in Faerie.

He places his left hand on another pile of paper - a stack of magical contracts. Illegally binding, as the fae like to say. He sighs. He needs another aerial artist after that unfortunate accident with the American girl. Perhaps it was his fault - he pushes them too hard, but that’s where the attraction lies: in that sweet spot where what is only just humanly possible overlaps with that which is impossible without magic. No, she can't! She won't! And then - boom - she does. Except that American. She hadn't. Got trussed up in her own silks and snapped her neck. Well, at least the punters know he isn’t lying about there being no magical safety net now. In fact, ticket sales had risen after word of The Incident got around. The public love it when the stakes are high - especially when they don't have to pay the price.

But Finnian still needs a replacement aerial artist. The set doesn't look as impressive with just two of them. He'd sent out scouts, and they'd come back with some promising prospects. But Finnian is looking for more than class talent, more than dedication to the craft - he needs someone so desperate that they will sign on the dotted line without thinking it through, and certainly without reading the fine print.
He flips through the candidate profiles and, suddenly, there she is. Ríoghnach 'Ruby' Aisling Lynch, 24 years old, 164 cm, etc. and what a tragic tale: dead father, mother with a whole list of mental health issues, sister in intensive care after a motorbike accident. And Ruby herself so young and healthy and beautiful - with a huge dose of survivor's guilt.

Jackpot.

Photo credit: Rūdolfs Klintsons on pexels.com

---

Finnian finds her in a pub in the Old Country after dark. She's with a few friends, so he waits till she goes up to the bar alone to place an order then slots himself in beside her. This part is always awkward; mortals vary so enormously. The same line can get you a smile or a slap in the face.

Finnian takes a deep breath. “Do you believe in fairy tales?” he asks.

Stupid. But to his surprise, she laughs. “Go on!” she says. “You're old enough to be me dad.”

“I'm far older than that.”

“Well, you're wearing well, then.” She turns to the barman. “Three more, please,” she tells him, holding up three fingers, but then she turns back to look at Finnian with an enquiring look.

“I have a business proposition for you,” he says.

“You're not gonna tell me you're a photographer?”

“No,” he replies, bemused. “I am referring to your exceptional talent at your job.”

She seems amused. “Which one? The one where I temp for pregnant admin assistants all week, or the so-called 'exotic' dancing?”

“I am speaking of your aerial skills.”

“You've got a circus gig?” Her eyes light up.

“I own a circus.”

“Get out! Where are you based?”

“We travel around.”

Her face falls. “I can't do that,” she says. “I have to stay local. I've got me sister to think of, and me mam.”

“If you agree to work for me, that won't be a problem anymore.”

She looks at him askance, like he's crazy, which, he thinks in retrospect, is the only human response to the statement he's just made. But he feels it - somewhere deep down in her soul, there is a tiny spark. Hope. That's good. He can work with that.

“This guy giving you trouble, Ruby?” A broad-shouldered, bottle-blonde shoves her way in between them.

Ruby shrugs. “Nah - we're just talking. Here.” She hands the blonde two of the pints. “I'll be along in a minute.”

The girl gives Ruby a piercing look, then shrugs. “Suit yourself. There's no accounting for taste.”

She hustles off with the drinks, and Finnian smiles at Ruby. She raises her pint slightly, tipping her head in his direction.

“So, what've you got?” she asks. “Top-notch medical care that covers relations? Sounds a bit too good to be true, for a travelling circus. Me sister’s in a coma, you know, and me mam’s …” Her voice trails off.

“We're prestigious,” he says.

“Oh, yeah? So prestigious you headhunt in bars? What's the name of your set-up anyways?”

He produces one of the flyers and hands it to her. She scans it. For a long time.

“And you're O'Leary?”

“I call myself Finnian O'Leary.”

“But that's not your name?”

“Is your name Ruby?”

“Touché,” she says. “But you know my real name, don't you? What's yours?”

“Does it matter?”

“Names have power,” she says.

Finnian stares at her, suddenly realising the truth of the matter: she knows what he is. She's a believer. He hasn't met one for centuries.

“Do you understand what I'm offering you, then?” he asks.

She points to the flyer, to the word 'unenchanted', and then the word 'mortal' and, finally, the word 'magical'. “How long?” she asks. “For me mam's mind and me sister's life?”

“A hundred years.”

She doesn't even argue, doesn't try to wear him down. She has been waiting for this. Not exactly this, of course, but a chance to make it up to them - to offset her good fortune against their bad luck; to assuage her guilt at being healthy and functional and effortlessly alive.

It is so easy, Finnian almost feels guilty himself as he hands her the quill to sign the contract.

“Your real name,” he reminds her, unscrewing the cap of a bottle of ink.

She nods, dipping the quill into the ink, which is the colour of lost souls. Then she pauses, the nib inches from the paper.

“Can you give me 24 hours after I sign? I want to say goodbye.”

He shrugs magnanimously. 24 hours makes no difference to him, not when she's just agreed to a century of servitude.

Ruby signs with a flourish: Ríoghnach Aisling Lynch.

Finnian takes the contract and folds it carefully.

“That it?” she asks. “You don't need a drop of blood? A lock of hair?” She isn't joking.

“No, your true name will do,” he tells her. “You have until next midnight to say your farewells.”

“And then - I disappear?”

“Without a trace.”

She doesn’t bat an eyelid.

“Where shall I meet you?”

He waves the folded contract. “It doesn't matter. Wherever you go, I'll find you.”

Ruby takes her pint over to the table in the corner, back to Jen and Abby.

“What’re you doing, Ruby?” Abby asks. “You didn't give him your number? He's gotta be 60 years old!”

She shakes her head. “Just finalising a work contract.”

“What? For a real job, like?”

“Circus work,” she replies vaguely. “I'll be doing a lot of travelling round. I'll be in touch, though.” Unlike the fae, Ruby can lie with ease.

“But what about Siobhan? Your mam?”

“They'll be fine. I've made arrangements.”

Jen takes her hand and gives it a squeeze. “I'm happy for you, Ruby. I know that's what you've always wanted to do, and you're dead talented at it. Town won't be the same without you, though. For sure, we'll miss you.”

No, thinks Ruby, you won't.

---

A hundred years to the day, Finnian leaves Ruby on the pavement outside the pub - except it isn’t a pub anymore. It’s an NFT art dealership, whatever that is. She walks down the street. She is staring at people; she can’t get over the clothes - what happened to fashion? But then, she is wearing what is probably best described as a ball gown made of cobwebs, and carrying a dragon-skin pack on her back. She doesn’t really look at faces - she doesn’t expect to see anyone she knows. Ruby has long ago resigned herself to the fact that she’ll never see her friends again, or her mother, or her little sister. Dead and buried, all of them. Gone.

She wonders what kind of life they had after she left - Jen and Abby, her mam, and especially Siobhan. She knows the fae can’t lie, but still, she wants to see for herself, so she heads to the church. She wanders among the gravestones for a long time until she finds the one she’s looking for. She kneels down on the damp ground in her faerie dress and reads:

Siobhan Aoife Lynch

4th March 2005 - 18th February 2098

Physicist, mother, grandmother, friend

Ruby smiles. It had worked. 

She gets to her feet, brushing off her dress, and shoulders her pack. It’s heavy - full of enough faerie gold to buy her whatever she needs, whatever she wants. But Ruby realises in an instant that she doesn’t want anything gold can buy. She wants what she’s always wanted: to perform slack drops under the lights of the big top, to feel the rush of adrenaline and hear the gasps of the crowd. She wants her 24-year-old body sleek and lithe, her skin smooth and untouched by time. Forever.

No matter the cost.

She blows a kiss towards her sister’s grave - a last goodbye - then whispers into the wind. 

---

The fae lord who calls himself Finnian O’Leary hears her voice, carried to him across the divide on the wind. He stands from his desk and reaches for his coat. To be honest, he was waiting for this. Most of them can’t wait to leave - they can’t assimilate into the alien world of Faerie, can’t get their heads around the beauty and the brutality, even if they stay for a century. But Ruby was different. She accepted her fate from the start, let Faerie get under her skin, let it bewitch her. Her heart grew hard, like the diamond heart of a fae child, until she understood the cruel beauty of the folk, and coveted it, too. Now, of course, she can’t return to her world - she doesn’t fit. So Finnian goes to find her. He knows where she is. This time, he doesn’t even bother to take a contract.

As Finnian steps into the Old Country, he thinks of all the other performers in O’Leary’s Extraordinary Unenchanted Travelling Circus, forced or fooled into loaning him their souls in exchange for a promise. But not Ruby, not this time; she is one of those rare ones who will hand it over for free.