When the faery Brighid is tasked with stealing wealth from afar—and without using faery magick—new strategies emerge from her prolific and poetic mind. Ultimately, she settles on the formation of a central bank and the real magick of monetary inflation: a policy that would steal wealth from unsuspecting shirefolk for centuries to come.
But before she can implement her banking plans, she must set an elaborate stage, an elaborate theater, for war. Brighid speaks to the minds of the more contentious clan leaders and arranges for an influx of Scottish gallowglass, a group that comes complete with a Scottish spouse for the lucky laird housing them. From her central position between the Scottish gallowglass and Ireland’s Prince Balor, Brighid can now fund both sides of an expensive and consumptive skirmish with what amounts to nothing more than the leaves of trees: pay-per currency stamped with ink.
And yet, for all her planning, Brighid encounters a series of problems from her own ally in the matter: her mother, Babda. A thousand years before borderline personality disorder is defined, Babda does her best to articulate its features. Acting as a reliable wedge between her loved ones, she pits faery against wizard, all while confusing reptile with amphibian.
The Scottish spouse, Saoirse, whose gallowglass will now defend the Irish shire of Aduaine, finds faeries and imps to be deceptive and disgusting creatures. Her weakness? She’s enthralled and entranced by the shine of metal monies. Ignoring the fact that her own presence facilitates war and theft and what really amounts to a personal land grab, she wonders why her newly wedded husband ignores her… at which point, we meet the first wife, a woman with impossibly long hair.
For a story in which there is to be no faery magick, this one might seem in violation. But does magick really count when its wielder, Mother Babda, continually screws it up? And how exactly is a war to be fought when a major warring proponent, the Ugly Mouth of Mealladh, has been infected with the emotions of a lovesick, unrequited Scottish bride? This is a question Brighid must, at some point, ask herself.
Fortunately for Ireland, Brighid has a more reasonable sister named Abeyance. In her conversations with trees, Abey is able to suss out the problems her own immediate family members are causing. Working with the handsome Scottish Knight, Sir Gavenleigh, Abeyance is able to alert the right people with the right information. But can she save her third marriage to a small wizard and his companion mouse? Surely wars are easier to thwart than meddling mothers.
It’s likely that all the machinations of Abeyance would come to naught without the literal perspective of the castle cook, Nádúrtha. Incapable of metaphoric reasoning, the cook is the only member of the shire not taken in by the inflation of representational currency. A rare skill, indeed!
Near the end of the story, Saoirse has been completely won over by the diminutive wordfall of faery propaganda. What is to become of her? Meanwhile, the hero of the story is a man we never meet: Heronimus Brickhauser, whose ability to split a problematic personality in two might have averted his own untimely divorce, had he only tried it sooner.
Still, between Heronimus, Abeyance, and Nádúrtha, hope remains for the medieval shire of Aduaine and its foray into central banking.
(a synopsis of my book, Inflationary Faeries)