This story contains some discriminatory language and offensive comments. These reflect the beliefs and attitudes held at that time and location and are included to help the reader understand just how things were back then….

It’s about how I dreamed it should have been…

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Raths, the circular Fairy Forts that dot the Irish landscape, have lain untouched for centuries, even millennia, secured by the knowledge of the terrible fate that would befall any who damaged these domains of the little folk. In recent years, archaeologists have asserted that these are the remains ancient human settlements, and have secured Laws to prevent their despoilation. Neither the Laws, nor the scientific explanations were required or useful. The Raths remained protected by the respect of the landowners for old traditions, and fear of the opprobrium of neighbours should the ancient taboos be broken.

We had one on our land. It wasn’t big, maybe 30 meters, about 100 feet, across. The raised circular mound was covered with oak trees, the saucer-like centre was clear, except for the odd bush. Not being concerned about the wrath of the little folk, our cows sometimes invaded this sanctuary to trim the grass, though mostly they left it alone. Being indolent beasts, they preferred to refrain from climbing the steep embankment, which would have required an excess expenditure of energy.

Some of the oaks were old, gnarled and pitted with holes, probably once the abode of birds, but now abandoned. One oak tree in particular was my friend. A deep cavity in its trunk concealed, wrapped in three plastic shopping bags, my stash. Not cigarettes, booze or drugs; just the clothes which Society deemed inappropriate for me to wear. This stash consisted of skirts, dresses and other female attire discarded by my sister, one year older than me, and retrieved by me before being collected by the monthly refuse collection truck.

When time permitted, which wasn’t often as farming is a busy family enterprise, I would escape there and for a short time, become who I really was. By the time I was fifteen, this had become a “fix” which I needed to protect my sanity.

One Friday evening in Summer, during the long school holidays and with the milking finished, I collected the family shotgun and a pocketful of cartridges and announced that I was walking back the farm to see if any feral goats had broken into our land. These were as damaging as deer to our fences and broken fences would mean our cattle being free to roam onto the open upland scrub. There they were in danger of injury from bad ground or being lost. Even at 15, it was not unusual for me to take the shotgun for a walk in this manner; I had been using it from around age 12. My brother decided to take our rowboat out onto the lake adjoining the other side of our farm and check on a line laid to catch trout and eel. This type of fishing was illegal, but the fish tasted none the worse for that.

With the cows turned out, there was nothing else to do that evening. We would be busier tomorrow as my mother and sister did not help with the milking on a Saturday evening or a Sunday morning. They instead got ready for Church on Sunday, both a religious and social occasion. The “townies” never understood how isolated each individual farm was and how standing around chatting after Church was an opportunity to meet one’s friends and acquaintances from around the area. Us younger folk had the Saturday dance, and our parents would go to a pub in town where traditional music was played. Both were accomplished fiddle players and all with the competence and an instrument was welcome to join in.

I wandered along the fence adjacent to the scrub land, on rising ground, towards the Rath, the Fairy Fort. It was not unreasonable for me to lay up there for a while and try to observe the activities of our bearded, hairy interlopers. Perfect cover! I reached the Rath and carefully checked the surrounding land for any sign of other people; of course there were none. Nobody ever came here… except me… I left the opened shotgun in its usual place, retrieved my stash, and quickly changed into a button up summer minidress and a pair of low “school shoes”, sometimes known as Mary Janes.

I went to the edge of the Rath, being careful to keep my body just below the raised parapet, and looked at the lake. I could see its full expanse, no more than a mile in length and shaped rather like a kidney. I could see my brother rowing slowly across the lake, about halfway between the shore where we kept the boat and a small island. He was looking for “ducks”, or rather a board, held vertical in the water due to some iron bolted to one edge, with the upper part cut into the shape of two ducks. It was called an Otter Board. We had found it in a barn during the course of a re-roofing job and our father explained how it was once used to pull a line across the lake with a series of baited hooks. Floating upright, it tended to move into the small waves which might be generated on the lake and could only be deployed into the wind. Naturally we immediately put it to use and both trout and eel soon became a staple of our diet.

I stood looking at this scene, idyllic in many ways, enjoying the feel of the slight breeze wafting around my legs and up under my dress. Everything was peaceful, birds were singing, grasshoppers chirping, the sun was still warm even at this late hour. I stood there taking it all in, conscious that it was only for a short time, then I would have to leave, go back to being someone that I didn’t want to be… but for now, just take it in… enjoy the moment…

“Beannachtaí Dé leat”

The Irish greeting, softly spoken, had come from behind me. In English, it means “God bless You” or “The blessings of God on you”. Someone was there; I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. Regardless, I was discovered. My life would be ruined. Everybody would call me a “Queer”; the “Fairy of the Fairy Fort”. My parents and family would be mortified. I would have to be sent away to a boarding school somewhere I was not known.

My legs turned to jelly; I held onto a branch and turned around. I could see nobody.

Had I imagined it? I’ll respond and see…

“Agus leat fein” (“and you also”)

I continued to look around; I still saw nothing, nobody. It was my imagination after all…

“I’m over here…”

The soft voice was coming from the tree where my stash was normally kept. My eyes now focussed on an exquisite creature sitting on a limb of the tree, a young adult human in form, kindly eyes looking at me, androgenous, dressed in what looked like tights and a short tunic. And only about 3 feet tall…

Strangely, my first feeling was of relief; I hadn’t been discovered, I was hallucinating. So this is where my perverted habit was leading me to… madness! I hung onto my branch and closed my eyes; it’ll go away if I give it a minute.

“I am really here Jim; you’re not dreaming”.

This hallucination was not going away; maybe better play along…

I opened my eyes.

“What… I mean Who are you?”

“You’ve heard of me. Your people have known of me down through thousands of human years. You call me different names; often because you believe that to use my real name would bring bad luck”

“What is your real name?”

“Are you not afraid of bad luck?”

“No, I don’t believe in bad luck. Only old folk believe in that.”

“I’m known to you as a Síóg (pr. Sheeeoog) or Sí (pr. Shee). You also call us “Little People” or “Fairies”.”

Even at that tender age I wasn’t a stranger to alcoholic drink. In the summer, bringing in the hay was often a village affair with men from other farms coming to help and us in turn going to help them. No pay was expected, but after every load had been offloaded into the hayshed, each man, including the tractor driver, got a bottle of beer. Once I was strong enough to work alongside the men, I was included. Brandy was administered to cure minor indispositions, and a hot whiskey was not unknown at Christmas or after a particularly inclement day of outside work.

I knew I wasn’t drunk. Not a drop had passed my lips since the hay was brought in two weeks ago! Play this along…

“What will I call you? Why are you here? What have I done to you? What are you going to do to me?”

“As you’re not afraid to say my name, call me Síóg.”

“I can’t; that’s what my mother used to call me when I was bold when I was small.”

Síóg means young or little fairy. And my mother did use this word in the negative manner as I had described. I immediately regretted my statement; had I annoyed this apparition? What wrath might ensue?

The creature smiled…

“Call me Sí. And you’ve done nothing to me and I’m only here to talk to you.”

Talk to me? These creatures only cause harm… wait… wait… wait…. what am I thinking… they don’t exist!

“What do you want to talk about?”

“What do you think?” Sí responded.

“How would I know?”

“What’s unusual about you now?”

“Nothing”. I had forgotten that I was wearing a dress.

Sí smiled.

“Nothing?”

I remembered.

“Why is what I wear important to you? Are you a man or woman?”

“I’m neither male of female as you understand it”, Sí responded. “Can I ask you the same question?”

“I’m a male; you must know that or you wouldn’t have asked!”

Sí smiled. It was a disarming smile, an understanding smile.

“Are you sure?”

I thought. In our world and at that time, there were only two types, normal and queer. I had no reference point; as a male, I was repulsed by the idea of sexual intimacy with a man. I didn’t want that; I wanted to be like a woman. I hadn’t got as far as figuring out what that would involve doing with a man.

“You’re not sure, are you?” Sí had noticed my hesitation.

“I wish I was born a girl; I think that I would have preferred that”.

That was the first time that I had ever said that out loud. I had thought it many times, of late almost constantly. I wasn’t comfortable with the thought of growing up as a man. The only advantage that I could see was that young men got to play with young women. And I liked girls; I had not got around to figuring out what I would do if I myself was a girl.

“Why do you only think this? Don’t you know?”

Sí’s soft voice brought me back to reality, or maybe back into my hallucination!

“Because I was born male, I’ll never be able to know for sure, will I?”

It wasn’t a question, more a somewhat bitter reflection. This feeling had been coming to me more and more of late; people were beginning to both notice and react to my increasingly grumpy self. My mother put it down to an exaggerated case of teenage truculence and more than once urged me to snap out of it.

“Do you grant wishes? Can you turn me into a girl? Is that why you’re here?”

I was trying to steer my hallucination to a positive outcome.

Sí smiled again.

“I’m sorry, I’m not like the genie popping out of a bottle. That’s just a fable. And I can’t turn you into a girl: You have lived 15 human years as a boy, and for humans, time is linear. If I were to turn you into a girl, that would interfere with the past of every human who has ever interacted with you”.

“Why do you refer to humans as if we were another species? You must be like us! Fairies don’t exist! Where are your wings? Why are you not flying about with a wand?”

My response was staccato and bitter. I had let my hopes be raised just a little, but the response had dashed them again. This was truculent teenager on steroids.

Sí, for the first time, looked annoyed.

“You know that that stupid Disney fairy is only in the movies, and that neither your body nor mine has the structure to support wings. And for that matter, we don’t spit in milk to sour it, maim cattle, or turn into Hares as your superstition suggests!”

Sí sounded hurt, I felt sorry for my outburst. I looked away, towards the lake; my brother’s boat had hardly moved… what was he up to? I looked back at Sí.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to offend you. All I can do is dream about the impossible. It gets me down…”

Sí’s face softened again…

“What do you dream about?”

“Being a girl, a real girl. Beautiful, soft, fragrant, desirable. But I’ll never be one, never know what it’s like to be one, maybe never be happy?”

It was a question for me, not Sí. I held onto the branch, feeling low. That was the way I felt each time when I had changed out of my illicit female clothes and walked back to the farm.

Sí looked thoughtful…

“Desirable by whom? You? Another man? A woman?”

“I don’t know; I’ve never thought about that.”

“Then why do you dream about being a girl. In your world, girls most often like men. If you were a girl, would you like men?”

“I don’t know; I guess I never will…”

“I’ve explained why I can’t change what you are now… we can’t interfere in a manner which could impact your human timeline. If you became a girl now, what would happen to the myriad interactions with other people that you have had already as a boy?”

Why was Sí reinforcing this point? It was perfectly clear when first made. I nodded, crestfallen.

“But I can let you know what it would be like to be female; would you like that?”

“Do you mean imagine it? I’ve tried to do that already.”

“Not quite”, Sí replied. “This to you would be real.”

“You mean like a hallucination or trance? I thought that that is what’s happening now.”

Shakespear’s play Hamlet is famous for having a play within the play; am I to have a hallucination within my hallucination?

“You’re not imagining this.” Sí’s voice was quiet, reassuring. “Our conversation is real. I’m offering you something that will seem real to you when it’s happening, and you’ll remember how you felt when it’s over.”

“Why will I remember if it’s not real?”

“It will seem real to you, and there’s no point in your experiencing this if you are oblivious to it afterwards. Do you want to know what you would feel like as a female?”

“I’m afraid that it would make me even worse.” I meant unhappy. “If it’s as good as I imagine, the pain of loss, of never being able to be a woman again, might be simply unbearable.”

Sí smiled again, head tilted a little to one side, a quizzical smile.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to do it?” It being to let me experience being a woman. How come Sí knew my thoughts and longings better than I did myself?

“No, I’m not sure… actually I am sure: I want to do it!”

I was desperate to know, even with the probable consequence of greater pain afterwards.

Sí just nodded, then looked over my shoulder.

“Is that a robin?”

The question seemed absurd, and surely Sí would know what a robin looked like. I turned around to look. As I did so, I was suddenly aware of a slight pull on my chest. I looked down at two neat breasts pushing against the fabric of my dress. I wasn’t wearing a bra and could see the nipples clearly pushing through, and a little bit of cleavage as I looked down the front of my dress. I lifted my hands and cupped them; they were soft, and liked being held. As my back was towards Sí, I felt able to rub my nipples slightly and immediately stopped as I knew that I would not have been able to control my reactions had I continued.

I noticed that my hands were soft, longish nails varnished in a delicate shade of pink. The slight, unfamiliar weight on my ears suggested earrings. I put my hands to both earlobes to find danglers, more properly pendant earrings. I looked down at my legs; they were as long as ever, just smooth as opposed to the slightly muscled legs which I was developing from farm work.

I wrapped my arms around myself, still facing away from Sí, feeling the softness and curves of my new body. I moved my hands down to feel my waist, now much narrower than heretofore, and the outward curve of my hips. Now I was sure, this is what I wanted to be. I closed my eyes to feel my body more intently.

I was aware of hands caressing my shoulders and running down the outside of my arms, then encircling my waist and drawing me back against their owner’s body. Was this Sí? The person, or whatever, now holding me was much too tall. Lips brushed against my ear and a soft voice, definitely Sí, asked:

“Is this how you thought it would be? Is it as good as you imagined?”

I didn’t answer immediately, just lay back into the embrace.

“Mmmmm”.

In the context, my soft moan clearly indicated assent both to the question, and maybe more.

Sí’s hands left my waist and moved up to massage my breasts and nipples. This drew some more involuntary soft moans from me. Then, I could feel something beginning to grow as it pressed up against my rear… and the illusion shattered.

There was no doubt in my mind now that Sí was, for the time being at least, male, and the hard evidence of this was clearly pressing against me. My body instantly tensed; this was wrong; this wasn’t natural. Years of indoctrination, strong enough to break through the illusion that Sí had created, had convinced me that this was unnatural, a sin!

Two males don’t do this!

I’m not a f***ng queer!

“But you’re a girl now, remember?”

The words, softly spoken in my ear, showed that Sí was reading my mind, either through my body or in some other way peculiar to the supernatural world. The embrace became more comforting than erotic, one arm around my waist, the other around my chest, just above my breasts. Sí rocked me slightly to side to side, and my panic subsided. I pushed back against the years of indoctrination and felt my body relax. Sí was nibbling my earlobe and opening the front of my sundress down to about my waist. The dress was gently pushed off my shoulders down to my elbows as Sí again started to play with my breasts and nipples. The dress pinned my arms and I realised that I was really enjoying this position of apparent helplessness. The rest of my sundress buttons undone, Sí slowly moved a hand down to massage between my legs, at first over my underwear. I had become aware of a different sensation from normal and the massage confirmed that the appropriate anatomical changes had happened in this area also.

My knees were both nudged simultaneously from behind causing them to bend forwards and Sí tipped me off balance and deposited me gently on the ground on my back…….

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I was standing, half leaning against the branch of a tree, looking at the lake. The boat had rounded the island and was about half-way back to the mooring point. I was still wearing my sundress, but my body was no longer that of a girl. I turned around; Sí was sitting on a tree branch in the same place as for our initial encounter.

“I must get back; I’ve been here for ages and they’ll come looking for me.”

Sí smiled.

“You’ve only been here for the time it took the boat to cross the lake and back.”

“But the boat was very slow this time; I don’t know what my brother was up to.”

“No; only about 30 minutes of your time has elapsed. You were in my time.”

This didn’t seem any more preposterous than any of the other things that had happened since I arrived in the Rath.

“But I do need to get back…”

Strangely, considering what had just happened, I was reluctant to change back into my male clothes in front of Sí.

“Has this evening helped? Do you know now if you want to be a girl?”

Sí wasn’t ready to go just yet.

“Yes; now I’m sure. I still don’t know how I’ll do it, but now I know that I will be one, sometime, somehow.”

“Good, so I have helped. Earlier, you weren’t sure; now you are. I felt your unhappiness when you arrived which is why I visited your world. Now I’ll go back to mine.”

“Before you go, you said that you can’t change the fact that I was born male as that would disrupt human linear time… “

Sí nodded…

“Can you change things in my present, my future?”

Sí raised an eyebrow quizzically.

“Like what? You can’t suddenly appear as a girl….”

“I know”, I interrupted. “I have to do this myself. Can you influence people’s reactions to me?”

“There’s a huge number of people. I can’t influence them all.”

“Not everyone, if only my family support me, I can do this.”

Sí shrugged.

“I can only plant a seed… it’s up to the people themselves whether the seed grows. Look, the boat has landed.”

Without thinking, I glanced around. The boat had landed and my brother was walking towards the house with a bucket… fish for dinner tomorrow. I looked back: Sí was gone.

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I changed back into my male clothes and carefully wrapped and stashed my sundress and shoes. I must have fallen asleep; what a strange dream.

I picked up the shotgun and turned for home, scanning the open moorland. Some movement caught my eye; a small group of feral goats were grazing about 50 meters away from our fence. They must have been moving in “dead ground” along a gully and had now come into view. They hadn’t seen me, but if I moved they would. I slipped two slugs into the shotgun, closed it and rested my hand on a branch. The leader was closest, a fine specimen, long curved horns, a great beard and a shaggy coat. I aimed just above his head to allow for the slug to drop at that range… and stopped. I didn’t want to kill him now; for some reason it didn’t seem right. I shifted my aim to a rock just beside him and fired. The slug hit the rock and whined off into the air; the goats took off as if rocket fuelled.

I opened the shotgun, extracted the empty and live cartridges and headed for home. When I reached the house, my father and brother were gutting and cleaning trout in buckets.

“I see you got one.” My brother had heard the shot.

“No, I missed.”

“You missed?”

My father was incredulous. I never missed!

“Yeah, too long a shot. Need a hand with the fish?”

“No, we’re OK. You go shower and we’ll be in later”.

On a farm, much like a building site, it’s normally better to shower after the day’s work. I headed in, wiped through the barrel of the shotgun and took a quick shower and shave. Most of the time was spent on washing my hair, which I wore long as was the fashion at the time. I pulled on a dressing gown and sat down at a small table in a nook just beside the bathroom door and started to use the hairdryer left there.

As I was about to start, my sister emerged from her room having just dressed after her own shower. When not working on the farm or in school uniform she tended towards short or knee-length flared dresses and tonight was no exception.

“Let me help you with that.” She took the dryer and brush from my hands.

This wasn’t unusual; we often dried each other’s hair if we were around and not otherwise occupied. She started to dry my hair, then stopped.

“I need another brush.”

She hopped off into her own bedroom and returned with a cylindrical brush and proceeded to twirl my hair about it and dry it with the blowdryer.

“You’ve done a nice job on yours.”

I was looking at her in the mirror. She had her hair in soft curls framing her face, not her usual style. Her face was also fully made up. Although only a year older than me, she looked like a young woman, not the teenager she really was.

“Thanks, I was practising for tomorrow night. Same with the makeup…”

“I was wondering about that”, I interrupted.

“Mind if I practice on your hair?”

She had already started, a bit late to be asking.

“I suppose not… can you put it back to normal afterwards?”

I really didn’t want it “put back to normal”, but I had to, at least, pretend.

“I suppose so…”

She continued working away and in about 10 minutes my hair was a passing resemblance to hers, albeit not as long.

“Nice job”.

My mother was just passing by coming from her own room on her way to the kitchen.

“I was just practicing the style for tomorrow night’s dance.”

My sister sounded slightly defensive.

“Good idea. Seeing as you have a willing model, why don’t you practice the make up as well? I think you need to do more on the eyeliner”.

My mother was scrutinizing my sister’s make-up.

“OK”, my sister responded, a bit too quickly and before I could butt in.

“Don’t I get a say in this?”

I had to sound at least a bit reluctant, although I was thrilled by the prospect of wearing make-up like a girl.

“Pleease, I need to practice… and I can wipe it all off afterwards…”

“OK so”, I was relieved that she had persisted.

The make-up took longer, at least half an hour. While she was busy, both my father and brother passed by, each going for their showers.

“Just practising my makeup for tomorrow…” she said to both as they each in turn looked quizzically at the scene.

Eventually everything was completed to her satisfaction. Unlike when she was drying my hair, I had been facing away from the mirror as she worked. She gestured for me to turn towards the mirror. I turned and looked at my face and couldn’t suppress the gasp of astonishment and delight as I looked at the young woman looking back at me.

“Hi Ma, can you take a look?”

My sister wanted a critique of her handiwork. My mother came to look, and her gasp of astonishment almost matched my own. She recovered quickly; the eyeliner was apparently OK but the eyeshadow wouldn’t match the blue dress that she was planning to wear. Only one way to find out… I was given the dress and ordered to go change in my room and return. Pretending to be exasperated, I headed off and quickly changed. The dress was a short, mid-blue skater dress with a halter top. I had just about caught up with her in height and easily managed to slip into it, glad that a skater dress would help conceal my excitement. Back out, sitting on the chair, my sister tried two shades of eye shadow before she and my mother were satisfied.

My sister disappeared into her room again and returned with another blue dress, more a day than a party dress and handed it to me. It was a short blue summer dress, V-necked and sleeveless, zipped up the back.

“You can’t sit around in my party dress; you might crease it or get it stained.”

This time I didn’t even pretend to object, just went to my room, changed dresses, and returned her party dress to her.

“Come on, we’re waiting for you two to start the game.”

We mostly played a card game called “One Hundred and Ten” on Friday nights after all the work and showering had been completed: My brother wanted to get started. He looked, but didn’t comment on my appearance. I was confident now, I didn’t feel the need to pretend to be reluctant, and followed my sister to the kitchen and sat opposite my father at the kitchen table as he shuffled and dealt the cards. He looked up briefly, then finished dealing. The bidding started and, as my sister, who had won the bid, was sorting her cards, he looked at my brother and said.

“We’ll start the milking half-an-hour early tomorrow night. There’ll just be the two of us as the three girls will be getting ready.”