Stomping as he walked into the pub, the workman cursed, none too silently. “Bloody machines! Ginna send tha’ whole o’ em back!”  Mud tracked onto the gleaming wood floors and he leaned over the bar and ordered a drink.  Tara looked up at the clock, and pushed back a stray strand of her thick black hair.  It was two pm what was he doing there?  Moments later there were more voices, the sounds of heavy steel toed boots entering the Oaken Tub.<br/><br/>Standing up she moved to the doorway to listen in on what was happening.  She still had to get used to village life, but it had been several months now, so she was no longer quite so new at it, though she’d probably always be labeled as new, even when she’d been living here fifty years.  That’s just the kind of place, Sheetrim, was; a moderate sized village in County Antrim.  Tara’s Aunt Mary Lin owned the Oaken Tub, a pub and inn there for many years, but with her husband dying off and no children, she’d asked for help from her own family.  Tara had spent occasional summers there visiting from the U.S., and had been more than willing to volunteer to come and help out.<br/><br/>The construction crew settled into the common room and was grumbling as they ordered drinks around.  She could hear them complaining, another piece of heavy equipment, this time a bulldozer was inexplicably broken.  This time its engine had died as they were pushing into the forest.  “It’was workin’ fine earlier I tell ye. I checked it maself earlier today.”  This time at least no one had been hurt. Last time, it had been a broken leg when a backhoe had found a sink hole and sunk in, tipping over in the process.  They’d just been lucky it was only Sean’s leg that had gotten broken and not his head, when he jumped from the cab and landed badly.<br/><br/>The whole mess had begun several weeks ago.  The government folk had decided there needed to be a bigger, more modern road through the county.  The village folk were fine with the windy road that wove around the outskirts of the old forest of Uragh.  They all voted against it, and even gone to speak against it, but this was all before Tara had gotten there.  After some unusual delays in paperwork getting lost, they’d finally arrived some two months ago, and since then there’d been nothing but problems.<br/><br/>Behind her there was a low tsking sound, Tara turned and smiled to see her aunt.  “Mark me words Tara, I told ye there’d be nothin’ but trouble for them disturbing the wood.”  The older woman shook her graying head. “We all spoke agin it.  The Lord only knows what their rilin’ up by being there, destroyin’ them places that’s been here longer than any a’ us.”<br/><br/>Turning her back to the workmen, Tara faced her aunt, her expression clearly doubting but she’d spent enough time here, that she knew there’d always been something odd about those woods.  She remembered just being on the edge of them when she was still a child, the odd feeling of weight to the trees there. The sense that you were being watched, and not just by any wild animal looking for lunch, but something… older, more intelligent.  “Aye, you might be right, but there’s no stopping progress in the long run is there?”  She shrugged slightly, her own sapphire eyes dark with thoughts unspoken.<br/><br/>Mary Lin laughed shortly, “Ah you’ll see soon enough gel.  Sheetrim will feel it a’fore anyone else, perhaps more than anyone else.  And if’n we do succeed, mayhap the reason Sheetrim is still thrivin’ is cause we’ve had the blessings of the folk in there that were watchin’ o’er us.”  Her still handsome face tightened and she looked away as if recalling something. “Now go and help Maeve there, she’s a fool child when there be so many men around with nothin’ to do but tease a village gel.”<br/><br/>Tara nodded and leaned over to kiss her aunt’s cheek, then headed back into the common room.  Easily she slipped into the role of waitress rather than the accountant that she usually was in the Inn.  She deliberately disrupted one exchange before Maeve got in any deeper with these city boys than she already was, being here as they had been for several months.  Tara was different than most of the village girls, having the veneer of being American. It didn’t take long before she was fending them politely off, just as she had been doing.  Maeve took it in stride; she hadn’t a harsh word in her.  More was the pity sometimes, it would be better if she’d just say no more often.<br/><br/>**Two days later**<br/><br/>“Aunt Mary Lin?”  Tara called from the cold room at the back of the pub’s kitchen.  “The milk’s turned!  Didn’t Mr. Cameron just deliver this, this morning’?”  She shivered in the chill of the room.  The cold bring her to wrap the sweater closer around her curvy frame.  Today her hair hung in loose curls, with only a band to hold it in place.<br/><br/>“Ach, no…”  Aunt Mary Lin came into the room and looked around as if looking for something else out of place.  Hurrying outside the door to the outside she found a small bowl overturned with the contents of its milk spilled all over the ground.  Almost immediately Mary Lin looked nervously around and took off her sweater, switching it inside out and slipped it back on.<br/><br/>Tara looked on curiously, “Why ever did you do that?”<br/><br/>“Ah Tara, yer a sweet gel, and I forget sometimes that yer haven’t heard some of the stories, but when the folk aren’t happy wit’ ya, then no amount of offerins’ is gonna help ya. So a little protection is what's a' needin'.”  At Tara’s somewhat bewildered look, she led her to a corner of the building where a small ring of mushrooms were.  They looked old and wilted as if they’d been poisoned.  “Aye… they’re not happy with us I kin see that.”  Kneeling down by circle she looked up at her niece.  “They’re not coming to dance here anymore.”  Sighing she brushed her hand almost longingly over the ring and stood up, dusting off her hands on her skirt.<br/><br/>“You can’t really mean fairies, Aunt Mary Lin?”  Though she had her concerns over what lay in the woods, in truth making the jump to small winged people that could turn milk was a large leap of faith.  Her aunt smiled sadly and led them back into the inn, and to her sitting room.  She gestured for Tara to sit down and she pulled an additional shawl around her shoulders as if she was somehow colder and older than she was earlier.<br/><br/>“Though you might discount it as whims or whimsy of a child, I saw those fairies there.  Dancin’ in the moonlight they did, from toadstool top to top.  Many nights I snuck out to watch them.”  Her own still dark brows knitted for a moment and she shivered.  “One night a little princess waved ta me as they flew off toward the wood.” She hesitated for a moment, “Well bein’ the willful child I was, I ran off after them, having to chase after them, they flew so fast.  A’fore I knew it I was in among the trees.  I saw the glimmer of the wee one’s dress and I went on…” She hesitated again, her long fingers tapping an unconscious rhythm on the arm of the chair.  “It’were six months a’fore I returned, though I don’t remember a single moment passing.”  Mary Lin fell silent then and looked out her window where the dark green of the forest could be seen in the distance.<br/><br/>Unsure of what else to do, Tara sat and just listened, not sure what to believe.  Aunt Mary Lin was always a practical woman, even if she had a romantic irish soul as well.  Her own mother had never mentioned anything about her sister running away when they were younger.  Still something must've happened, but fairies?  Tara would have an easier time believing the gypsies had taken her.