More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
I would advise you not to accept any ring offered to you by Mr. Desmond. Or Mr. Land, for that matter.” “Gerry Land is dead.” “I am sure he told you so. Regardless, never forget that he is your enemy.”
I thought we were special. I thought we were the only ones this has happened to. But it went on for decades.
“Never have children, Ashling. That was my mistake. Never have something that you can’t afford to lose.”
It should have been her. It still can be, she told herself. You’ve danced around the edge of the box long enough. Time to fall.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” she said. He remembered the look on her face as she had pulled away from him in the beer garden. Loathing and disgust and hatred and fear and just a little, tiny flake of pity to top it all. Perhaps she couldn’t stop thinking about him. But he doubted it was in the way her tone suggested.
The scissors were so sharp he didn’t even feel them until they struck something thick and meaty inside him, and then the pain burned him alive.
she gave a scream that sounded like it came from a thousand throats and the scissors fell from heaven like a red thunderbolt into his heart. He died at once. Ten minutes later, she stopped plunging the scissors into his chest.
Dang that was brutal
The first tip of the horn she was almost prepared for. She did not scream. It rose, it rose. Dimly, she recognized that she was looking at the head of a goat. Black, and dead.
Your mind is no longer constrained by your senses in the world it creates. You have no senses anymore. Your eyes, your ears, your little fingers. They have all been eaten up.” “By the goat,” Ashling said numbly.
“You have left flesh behind. If you stay like this too long, you will become her. Her memories will start to fill your mind. You will hear her voice in your thoughts. You will cease to be you.
It was this part that I didn't get... why was she transforming into her GF?
In the split second between their veils being lifted and her mind assigning faces to them she saw them for what they were, or something close. But when she had regained consciousness she found herself looking at two very familiar faces.
Three women. Mother. Maiden. Crone. I know them. Names began to surface in her mind. Neimhann. Badbh. Macha. Three as one.
You are in the otherworld, Betty’s thoughts told her. DON’T EAT. DON’T DRINK. OR YOU’LL NEVER LEAVE.
“We send our children down into the world. To keep things running,” Etain said. “Changelings?” Ashling asked. “No. Real flesh. Flesh bred with flesh. A union of your world and ours.”
“Your name was given to Gerry Land. You were to be put in the box. But…” “Fucking Gerry fucking Land…” the false Ashling hissed. “We didn’t realize, you see. That he had turned on us. And he put Niamh in the box instead. So he finally got his wish. His successor was gone forever.”
“A terrible thing, to have discovered you have eaten your own child,” Mairéad mused. “We were quite distraught.”
“We placed him in the box, permanently. He still served us, crafting the changelings. Poor sad creatures, they never last long, but they serve their purpose. But now he was denied the pleasures of the flesh that he had enjoyed for so long.”
She remembered the eyes of Gerry Land staring at her across the kitchen table, from either side of a shotgun wound. She remembered the eyes of the goat. Brown. The color of old money. I’m just the zookeeper, love. You fucking liar. You were the beast. All along.
She looked down at what she was wearing, a bloodied Pierrot costume with a large square hole cut out of the crotch. She would probably have to change. Dublin Bus could be prickly about that kind of thing.
LMAO I'd imagine most buses would be about that kind of thing.
tomorrow night, I want you to come in here with a can of petrol. I want you to lock the Puckeen set, douse the box with the petrol, set it on fire, and burn with it. Okay?” “Okay,” he said. “Good man,” she said, patting him on the shoulder.
Well compared to his actual death, that one may actually be less traumatic lol
Betty Fitzpatrick. Remember that name, Ashling thought. There will be so many names to remember.
Oh no who is wearing Ashling's skin? Gerry? Nooo
She hadn’t known. Betty loved her. Betty had truly loved her. She had never really allowed herself to believe it. She had never believed it could be possible. But Etain had been wrong about her. She had come from love. She had been made to be loved. She had been loved. And she had left it all behind.
“He’s walking around in your skin,” the other Ashling mocked her. “Touching with your hands. Smiling with your teeth.”
Betty returned the kiss and wondered why joy felt so much like disgust. She didn’t want to admit to herself that something felt wrong, when all her worst fears had just melted away to nothing.
He turned and glanced at Etain. She stared back at him, and did not blink. The knife was gone. “Did you drop your knife, Ma?” he asked. He had to credit her, she moved so fast the knife was only an inch from his eye before he caught her wrist and forced her back.
“I love you, Ma,” she said. Etain looked at her and it was like she was seeing her for the very first time. “Aw fuck, I’m sorry, love,” she wept, and threw the towel around her daughter and held her close and they cried until everything but love was washed away.
Awww at last
“When are you going to find someone and get out from under me feet?” Kate laughed. “Bit late for that.” “What are you talking about. You could be a, what do they call them? A puma?” “A cougar?” “Get yourself a toy boy, Kate.
Lmao not a puma with a "toy boy"
Looking back, I’ve started to realize that there was only ever one man for me.” Etain took a sip of her tea. “Ah. And what was the problem?” Kate looked up at her sister. “I wasn’t the woman for him,” she said. And shrugged.
Aww was she in love with Barry that whole time?
On one finger there was the engagement ring Betty had given her. On another, she wore her mother’s engagement ring, the silver ring of Badbh that she had kept on her every day since her return. “There is a pleasing symmetry to it. You went to the other side because you believed you were a changeling when you were not. And it was only by becoming a changeling that you were able to return here and live as a human being,” the priest mused.
Time is not stone. Days can be years if lived wisely. Years can be lifetimes. Find your joy where you can. Live now. Live well.
Honestly this is a pretty solid philosophy to live by.
