The Blindboy Podcast - I've a ferocious dose of chickenpox and look like a type of sandwich meat

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

I've a ferocious dose of chickenpox and look like a type of sandwich meat Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spread jam on your toast upon the hangman's balcony, you scandalous Anthony's. Welcome to the Blind Buy podcast. I am hilariously, comically sick this week. I have adult chicken pox, which is not enjoyable. Not enjoyable at all. I'm over the worst of it. if you only get the chicken box once

right if you got it as a child your grand you know the crack if like me you couldn't remember whether you got it as a child or your ma couldn't remember

if you got it as a fucking child if you don't know just get vaccinated against the chicken box because it has a lot of crack with your body when you're a full grown adult. It's

very plaguy. I have a lot of solidarity with medieval peasants this week. It's a very 12th century type of fucking disease. My nude body looks like something you'd purchase at a deli counter and pebble dashed with red spots.

And when you get it as an adult, the old spots are quite fond of the genitals. the greedy chicken pox has no qualms partaking in both gooch and glands I've got blisters in my eyelids inside my mouth

which makes it I've been saving up this bit of talking for this podcast I have them inside my mouth and even it's difficult to wear my headphones right now because they're all over my head and in the past two days

I had a fever a fever that could bring about fucking visions, bedridden and then a constant humming itch everywhere. I needed leeches. So I'm midpoint now and hopefully I should start getting better

from about tomorrow and it'll take about five days before I'm completely clear. And then I have to worry about shingles so when you get the chicken packs it can return

at any point, especially if you're stressed in the form of shingles, which is like a localised rash and a fever too, I believe. So I'd be looking forward to that. So it's been a rough few days. And also I had to cancel my gig in Galway. And I just want to say sorry to anyone who had tickets and who was coming along to my gig in Galway last Sunday. I was going to be chatting to Tommy Tiernan. I was looking forward to it so much. So to everyone, who was coming to that gig. I'm so unbelievably sorry. That's the first gig

that I've cancelled. The last gig I fucking cancelled. Not including COVID, COVID doesn't count because that's outside of my control. The last gig I cancelled before that because the sickness would have been 2011. I hate having to pull a gig

because there was like 900 people coming to Galway. So that's 900 people who had made a decision to come to a gig. And then it's fucking with all their plans and it's disappointing so many people so I want all you to know I would never ever cancel a gig unless I absolutely had to on Sunday I was fully bedridden there was no way to do the gig so I had to I had to cancel it unfortunately but that gig will be rescheduled as soon as I possibly can so if you bought a ticket you'll get an email to know

when the gig is on again and you can come along to that and I'll come along to that and I If that doesn't suit you, you're fully entitled to a refund too. So thank you for that patience and understanding. Something I want to bring up to in the context of this. So over the past couple of years, I've spoken more and more about experience and burnout or being under stress to complete work. And in general, just getting more coughs and calls and flows here on this podcast and it being difficult to record as a result of that.

And then this week, people going, how the fuck do you get chicken pox? Who gets chicken pox? What the fuck is that about? I got the chicken pox off my children. I have two little children. I've got a four-year-old and a two-year-old who are all so sick with the chicken pox right now. I've never mentioned that before. The reason I'm mentioning it now is, I'll just cancel a gig.

I'm turning up with a lot of excuses. and I want to provide context for things like that or context for, if you've ever listened to this podcast over the past four years and I'm clearly recording at six in the morning or clearly haven't slept and then I get concerned males from people. So I'm actually a da to two toddlers who I love very much and I love being a da

but putting their needs first and being physically and emotionally present for them means that this podcast and touring and gigs will take a hit. Like I can't stop getting sick. Like there's nothing I can do about it. Little toddlers pick up every single cough and cold that's going

and they bring it back to you. One of the benefits of being artistic is you don't get as many coughs and calls because you simply don't do enough socialising to get them. And that was really fucking working for me. And then I had kids and it's like, fuck's sake. I've got a sore throat or a black nose every two weeks. And that's difficult because my job means speaking into a fucking microphone.

I haven't really slept in four years. That's just normal if you're a parent. You know the crack. Jeez, if I do a gig and I don't get home to three in the morning because gigs finish at one or two, I'm still up at six. So I can say good morning to my little babies. And it's also the reason I'm not touring as much internationally.

I'm doing Germany and the UK this year. That's it. I have a little family. And when I say on this podcast, I like the privacy, the privacy of just me and spending time with my family. And my family, that's who I'm speaking about, my own family. the reason I've chosen not to mention this at all up to this point is because of privacy, ethics and safety.

Tiny children are human beings, toddlers are human beings and I don't feel comfortable turning the lives of a human being into content. So my goal was to try and keep it completely private. But the thing is you can't because it just gets out. Like this year a journalist mentioned it to me They're like oh I heard you have two kids And then I went oh fuck Well if they know that Then that person knows that

And then that person knows that And it's only a matter of time before Someone says it Not mentioning it on this podcast It's been very difficult because We're talking about very emotionally significant moments In my life And there's been so many

Opportunities What I've wanted to tell you stories And it's like no that's not appropriate. These tiny little humans have not consented and cannot consent to me discussing anything about them to a million people. So I'd found other ways to be emotionally congruent, but I have to maintain privacy. And also, tiny little toddlers are human beings who will one day grow up. To want to try and listen to their dad's podcast, I don't think it's. it would be healthy for them to have

an archive, a public archive, of me passing opinions even positive ones, on various stages of their development for them to then be able to listen back to, as adults, we don't know what the

roles are. And this shit is new, and I'd rather err on the side of caution. We've seen fucking lifestyle influencers, lads. We've seen this. There's adults now, 1920, speaking out about their parents because back in 2010 when they were children, their parents made them lifestyle influencers on fucking YouTube.

Family channels, unboxing channels, where little children had cameras pushed in front of their faces to make content for hours a day. And this content was generating a lot of money and the kids were like, I didn't know, was I actually playing with my parents, or was this a performance of play for the camera because it made good content? And now in 2026, you hear those adults talking about their childhoods and you look back and you go, yeah, that should have been illegal. That was really fucked up there. Back in 2010, when people were seeing these kids doing unboxing videos or fucking parent content on YouTube, some people were saying this is wrong

but a lot of people were going I don't know it seems pretty normal to me what are the rules we don't know yet so I'm being I'm choosing to disclose this about myself now because I feel I need to give ye context I've just missed a gig because I'm sick

and now I'm effectively showing up with no podcast on a Wednesday and I'd like you to understand that there's this other huge thing in my life caring for too little time I write two kids under the age of four. And if I'm being incredibly vague with my language around all of this,

and leaving out details, that's deliberate. I'm trying to give the least amount of details possible. And I hope that ye can... You know where children come from, don't she? So I have a family. I have a full family. All right? I just don't want to say anything in this podcast that... The newspapers can quote and tidily put into a fucking headline

and then it's clickbait on Facebook to be savaged and talked shit about by Das. The business of media doesn't like it when public figures maintain boundaries around privacy so I'm being as vague as possible while also holding myself accountable to ye for missing a gig and not turn it up and I'm too sick to do a fucking podcast this week.

I just want you to go, oh fuck, this whole time, this whole time he. He's actually been looking after two tiny toddlers as well. Or that explains why he's all was sick. Or that explains why he didn't gig in Canada this year. Or that explains why he sometimes sounds really fucking tired or is recording at six in the morning.

And just because I know you're going to have fucking parenting questions. Like I just go over Carr Roger's stuff. I make sure that my love is like the sunshine. Unconditional love. and the sun tells you all you need to know about being a parent. The sun's always there. The sun's rays are always there. Sometimes it's overcast.

Other times it's windy, it's rainy, but the sun's light is always there. That's love. I tried to put the effort in with my two little monkeys that no aspect of their behaviour can influence how much I love them in any way. that my love is just, it's stable and enduring, like the sunshine. And it doesn't, it's not contingent on their performance, their temperament, achievements, or whether they even give that love back to me.

There's no conditions for my love, it just simply is. And if I can put in the effort and practice at doing that, Then as they get older, there's a stronger chance that they'll feel that way about themselves. That they will, they'll have an intrinsic sense of self-worth. I'm trying to build intrinsic self-worth through unconditional love. I write them both brand new bedtime story every single night. Anyway, they think my job is to read bedtime stories to adults. which it is

and also what I do is one of the reasons I don't do Twitch streaming anymore because I used to Twitch stream three times a week and to write songs on Twitch and make music I don't do that anymore instead I do that with my two little kids

I have him playing instruments banging drums keyboards singing we record it make songs now this isn't about making good songs, making bad songs, or anything being right or wrong. This is playfulness, no rules. Playing instruments generating sounds recording it, hearing it back for the aesthetic joy of sculpting with vibrations of air. Because I'm autistic and I'm not going to switch off the part of me that's

wants to write stories, wants to make music, the curiosity. I incorporated it all into my, into my parenting via play That's what I do, so that I can make as much time for them as humanly possible. And that end up... One of the fucking saddest stories. There's so many musicians and artists that I used to look up to, and now I don't look up to them as much anymore when I see that. They weren't present for their kids, that they placed their work, their art, ahead of their little fucking kids.

someone I used to really look up to was a musician called Frank Zappa and I used to adore Frank Zappa's work ethic because he would just work, work, work he was obsessed with his output. He had a studio in his house and he would spend 12, 13 hours there a day just focused on his work

and I used to admire that because I'll focus on work for 16, 17 hours longer if that's what needs to happen. But he never saw his fucking kids even though they were in the same house and the kids were told, stay away from your father if he's working. If he's in his studio, stay the fuck away.

You're not welcome down there. The thing is Frank Zappa never had a big hit. He'd loads of albums of very brilliant, complex, jazz rock fusion, but never had like a mainstream hit that got on the radio or that would pay in a huge, royalties. He used just make this obscure music that was like by a niche audience. And then one day

in 1982, I think it was, his daughter, Moon Unit. I know that's a mad name. Her name was Moon Unit. His daughter, Moon Unit. She went down to his studio door, in their house, in their home. And she slid a note, she slid a note underneath his door. And the note, she was, like, I think, 13 at this point, 14. And the note said, Hi Dad, my name is Moon Unit. We live in the same house but we don't see each other very much. I know you don't know me very well. Can I come into the studio just to hang out the day? Can we break the rule? And Frank saw the note coming underneath the door and read it and obviously thought, fuck it, why not? I let her in today. I let my daughter in today. Why not? This is a funny note.

So he broke his own rule And Moon Unit came into the studio with him that day And then for the first time ever He's like, why don't we write a song for crack for the fun? And they did Complete fucking around No Rules

Father and Daughter Frank just did out a drumbeat and pulled out a bass guitar And Moon Unit just didn't even start singing Started talking over The bass and the drum no rules just fun for the sake of fun playfulness and that then turned into a song

called Valley Girl which Frank Zappa released and it became his only number one song with his daughter singing on it and I remember vowing to myself when I heard that story because it broke my fucking heart I remember vowing to myself if I ever have children

I'll never ever allow my passions or my interests my curiosity my art my creativity none of these things I will never allow them to be more important than my kids no tour or

fucking writing a book or podcast or anything is worth more than their time so I'll work around their fucking time so that's what I do that's why I work deep into the night sometimes when they're asleep

and I'm very careful with my tours because just trying not to have more than two big ones a year. I'm going to Germany this year just for a weekend and then England for like two weeks. But they miss me when I'm gone. All of the emotions I wanted to discuss around parenting and what it feels like to become a parent and the love and terror that exists alongside each other,

I channeled it into my last book. Stories like Pistols of the Dandelions or the Pugene Maker or even the catpast astronaut. Sorry if I'm slurring my words, I'm sick and I've blisters in my mouth. Blisters in my mouth from Chicken Box. I explored all the emotions of becoming a parent in these stories.

Because I can't really deliver a podcast this week, because I haven't, I've been too sick to prepare. I'm going to play for you again a story that I would have read out about two or three years ago when I wrote it. The story is called the Puccine Maker. And it's about... It's a man in his little daughter.

It was about nine months old. And it's... It's about his internal world, his internal world of... ...looking after his little baby. That in order to feel the intense love that's necessary to keep a little creature alive. You have to also confront the terror and fear of losing that little creature.

And also with the story, sometimes when I write stories, because it's a fun thing that you can do with the written word and also in dreams. I like something to be in two different timelines at once, for something to be, for a story to be occurring in the past and the future at the same time. And in this story, this character, the Poogeen maker, he believes that he's been hunted by fairies. He truly believes that the fairies are common to try and take his little baby. And in the beliefs of Irish folklore, fairies take the form of animals, they shape shift into animals. So this father is at the same time marvelling at his tiny,

little baby who gets excited when she sees butterflies or dears or otters. But he then is terrified of nature because they could be fairies. But also what that's exploring now is the terror that every parent feels when your tiny little child has a sense of wonder about the world and nature, insects, birds. I mean, this is what little toddlers love. And you have to get down there and see that curiosity from their level and explain to them what these things are, what insects are, but then knowing that everything's in a state of collapse, these things are also dying.

and you don't know what life is going to be like for that little child in 30, 40 years. If you're long-term listening to this podcast now and you're taking aback by my sudden announcement this week, just pretend that a cat that you've been feeding has felt safe enough to show up but it's kittens. Look, I'm fit to fucking collapse.

I have my ocarina this week. I was actually given a Protestant whistle up in Belfast, a big long, Protestant bass flute up in Belfast. Some people were suggesting that that's where I got the chicken box from. It's not like a Protestant curse. I don't have the Protestant flute with me. Thank you to the person who gave it to me.

I'm going to play it next week when I have it, but I've got my ocarina now. I'm going to play the fucking ocarina. You're going to hear some adverts, all right? Sounds like a mournful kestrel. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patrion.com, forward slash. The Blind by Podcast. If this podcast brings you

Merth, Merrimand Entertainment, whatever the fuck has you listen to this podcast, please consider supporting this podcast directly. It's my full-time job. It's how I pay my bills. It's how I earn my living.

All right. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. If you can't afford it, don't worry about it. Listen for free.

Okay? Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. directly funding this podcast keeps it independent. Offcoming gigs so Galway last Sunday had to cancel it

I'm sorry that will be rescheduled when I have the date I'll let you know if you bought a ticket you're going to get an email about the rescheduling and you can get a refund

if you like if that doesn't suit you. Then Saturday the 28th of this month so I have two weeks off I'm up in Calarney Kerry there in the

eye neck come along to that and suggest some guests to me on Instagram please March, I mean Carlo that's sold out yeah that's pretty much sold out 26th of March

Cork Opera House couple of tickets left for that at the Cork Podcast Festival come along to that April Castle Blaney there on the 4th of April that's nearly sold out

Limerick City Limerick City there on the The 9th of April In Newark City University Concert Hall Come down to that The homecoming gig

Then up in Dublin 23rd of April In Ficker Street June just announced Right tickets literally went on sale A couple of days ago And selling quickly Berlin

And the 19th I'm in the Babylon Theatre In Berlin Really looking forward to that July Nice quiet it's summer, let's keep it that way. July and the

5th, Sheffield, that's I'm at Sheffield at the Crossed Wires Festival. Another very interesting thing I found out about Sheffield. I'm quite excited about this. There's a place called Eccleson Road in Sheffield

and there's a co-op shop there and at the back of this co-op, the fridges, the fridges at the back in the freezers they all hummed together. and they make a perfect card of C-sharp and apparently walking into

the fridges of this fucking co-op in Sheffield is an almost spiritual experience to hear this perfect hum of fridges in C-Sharp and I hope that I get to see that or to listen to it in July

and then October the tour of England's Scotland and Wales Brighton Cardiff Coventry, Bristol, Guildford, London, Glasgow, Gateshead, Nottingham. You'll get those tickets at Fane.co.co.ukay forward slash blindby. And then the Irish tickets, you'll get them on my website, the blindby podcast.com.e. assuming it's working. Now, I'm going to leave you with a short story. It's not really short. It's an hour long. I'm going to leave you with this story called the Puccine maker.

If you don't want to listen to it, you don't have to. All right. It's there because I'm conscious of the fact that I'm showing up with no podcast this week effectively. So I don't want to fuck up anyone's Wednesday. All right? So here is a full short story to listen to if that's what you want, if you just need the company. And if not, I'll be back next week with something, okay? God bless.

Oh, and just one small little detail about this story, which is not an answer. because it was pointed out to me before. The girl in this story her name is Koch, which is an Irish name Kach, but it's pronounced a cat in this story. The reason I did that is to blur the line between human and animal, which then in itself is a callback to another story in the collection called the Pistols of the Dandelions because all of the stories in that collection are connected. It's an ecosystem of stories.

The Puccine Maker. The ochre carnales of barley sifted through his callous fingers, scarred from seasonal blisters. The grains had been soaking in the bloated bags for two days and two nights, woken by the silver water of the river. The sturdy order of cereal hung in the earth of the hut. Tiny translucent hairs were sprouting from the base of each kernel. They looked like worms, the way they pushed off the slimy husk of the sea. There must have been 10,000 of them in his four sacks.

He picked one kernel and held it between his index finger and thumb in a pincer. As he squeezed it, he fixed a squint on the white paste that emerged from the bran. It stuck to his skin. He rubbed it between the tips of his fingers and pinched at the gummy resistance of it. There was a chalkiness that he felt in his back teeth. It was the malt, pure starch. He thought about semen. His head flew off to an endless yellow field of barley

with tall fronds, tickling a low sun. The sadness and the fear entered him again because each one of these little sprouting barley's was a young life that he was cutting short. He wiped his palms clean on the front of his trousers and stepped back from the sack of malting grains. The tightness was in his chest and travelled up to his forehead

and furrowed a frown that was painful it had the bones of a headache in it and cat was bent over on the back floor of the hut her little chubby hands were playing in the dirt she was forming balls of mud and squeezing them through her fingers she smiled when she squeezed and then the smile faded into the soft blankness of a daydream

as her eyes focused on the strings of mud that pushed through the gaps in her fist It was a wonder and a curiosity, as if she was only now realizing that she had that power in her hands. He stooped down in a squat and put both his hands under cat's oxters, then stood up and brought her chest close to his chest. She produced a gentle whisper of a gasp, and whenever he'd hear it, he'd think about how small her lungs must be.

He repositioned her so that her bum rested on the crook of his left forearm. His right palms supported her spine and her head was nestled perfectly under his nose. As he bent low to walk out of the hut, he took deep breaths in through his nostrils, revelling in the smell of her hair and her scalp. It was like gorse flour or fresh milk or strawberry, and it trickled down into the pit of his belly and flowed around his lungs. It tingled to the edges of his toes. It shone on any bit of anxiety in his body and cleansed the

the feeling with terrifying love. The sad pain in his forehead subsided and moved behind his eyes in a soothing balm. Tears formed, the healing tears that he'd searched for whenever he smelled his daughter's hair. Kat's left hand reached up towards the curls of his beard, just under his chin. She fondled and pulled like she'd find something in there. She was wiping off the mud from her Pam. It hurt him a little. He pressed his neck closer to her fingers. She could clean her hands on his beard all day if she liked. The air cooled the tear on his cheek and they both gazed at the rolling bubbles of the stream. It was more of a river, but still a stream, somewhere in between. The ripples slushed over pebbles into deeper pools of dark water. The surface reflected the sky.

He watched slender brown trout repositioned themselves in unison. blending into clouds of sand. They darted with the current so that he could only see them when he focused intently. He blinked and he lost them. He found them again. Blue mountains rose in the distance, watching him through the hazel trees on the other side of the stream. The mud hut was to his back, like the den of an animal. He had built it in this spot three autumns ago by piling dense grey sods of riverbed clay between layers of willow branches,

eventually forming a wall. The exact spot was chosen with incredible care, a small leafy ravine that looked like the earth had been split open with a hatchet long ago, hidden away from eyes. The water too shallow for any person to pass by on an oar boat. The hut leaned into the crevice of a limestone rock face that was just taught enough to dissipate the white smoke from his still. The roof had a chimney hole and was attached with fresh lumps of grass

and ferns as green as the natural tickets that grew around them. If any passing person was ever to look down into that ravine, they'd have to focus intently to see the hut, but no person would ever find him. He knew that. A dusk breeze came down the water, and Cat did her gasp again. The creeping chill of late autumn.

He hoisted her up closer to his elbow, so that her chest was near the warmth of his body, steadying her again with his palm. Her middle was sturdy and she could support her neck. She was almost as heavy as a bag of dry barley but nowhere near as heavy as a bag of wet barley. The sun hid over the limestone ravine

and cast a shadow. Everything became dull as the air cooled. A cormorant landed on a rock a slight distance upstream. It was a silhouette in the fading light. It spread its tooth. black velvety wings wide, shaking them in a slow dance, its serpent neck tapering up into a sharp beak. Cat jolted in his arms with excitement and pointed at the bird. Gack, Gack, she said.

Her eyebrows raised as if they were ready to jump off her forehead. A look of new surprise and amazement took over her face, Gack, Gack, Gack, pointing more at the cormorant, like she could reach over and touch it. The terror and tightness returned to his chest. He felt that they were being monitored. He quickly turned his shoulders to the water, retreating inside the hut with cat firmly in his arms. She squirmed to look back at the bird.

The Puccine hut was smaller than their stone cottage over the hill, but there was enough space for him to stand upright in the centre. The mud walls made the whole place smell like being buried alive. It was very dark. A turf fire pit in the centre gave off a faint orange glow about as bright as two candles. He sat cat on a bed of straw and fed her a gloomy meal of barley porridge and smoked dried trout in a wooden bowl. The ball rested in between her thighs. She ate with her hands and her little face took on a studious look when she savoured the food.

He tipped water against her lips from his tin cup and her fingers stained the sides with gruel. He basked in her delight. A pride filled his belly when he recognised that something he had prepared could bring her such pleasure and vitality. She paused between bites and looked at him with an urgency. Gack, Gack, she'd say, in an excited pitch. He smiled back at her, saying yes, yes, not understanding what she was trying to say,

but truly believing that it was very important to her, whatever it was. He didn't eat. Pitch darkness came outside and he knew she'd be getting tired and cranky soon. He set to work on the soaked barley. He had crocheted a robust drying rack, woven in a T.P. shape from bendy branches of blackened willow that had been smoke-hardened over the years. It could hold significant weight, despite its spindly appearance. It was taller than him and was situated over the glowing embers of peat turf.

It reached up so that the top. was just under the chimney hole in the roof. He settled a barley sack on the bottom tier of the rack which was interlaced in a hatched pattern. Using his knife he cut a careful slit down the centre of the coarse bag. He pulled the hessian apart. All the barley swished in a triangle pile on the splayed sack. The white spouts of each grain caught the glowing light in the dark and stared up at him like red eyes in a forest. This made him pause for a bit. Cat was playing with her empty wooden ball behind him and making little groans of frustration. A few kernels rolled towards her.

She crawled forward with a curious hand unfurled. He swept them away with his palm before she could put them in her mouth. He quickly got back to work, spreading the barley out evenly on the fabric with his palms. He repeated this four times on each shelf of the drying rack, so the gentle heat of the peat fire could rise up through the striating layers of grain and draw the moisture out. This would stop the seeds from germinating

and complete the malting process. It would take all night to do this. He arranged straw on the bare mud floor beside the rack. On a strip of Hessian, he placed a smoked trout on a small tin cup of water. Next to this were several sods of fresh tarf and a set of iron tongs. The tarf was well dried. He dug it himself from the bog of skulls at the feet of the blue mountains.

It would produce hardly any smoke, nor would it impart too strong a peat taste on the barley malt. He sat down with his shoulders against the natural limestone wall at the back of the hut. It was cold, but his feet reached the rim of the fire. He rehearsed picking up a piece of tarf with the tongs and dropping it in the fire, making sure his arm had enough of a spruce. band to do this without needing to get up from where he lay. When he was satisfied that everything was in its place, he called to cat. She was rubbing her eye with her fist. He said, Night, night, and she understood this and crawled towards him as best she could. He reached out and laid her whole body on his chest. He relished the warmth of her back. She slumped into him,

her head under his chin, and her feet reaching down to the top of his thighs. He wrapped cat in her red blanket made from wool, tight and cozy, up to the top of her belly so that she could still move her arms. She looked up towards the chimney hole, with a smoke escaped. His lips pressed against the back of her head and he noticed the warming fog of his own breath. He admired the perfect softness of the left side of her face. His two hands secured her in place. She began to wail. She reached behind her head and tugged at the curls that finished on the back of her neck. She pulled at the hairs of his beard. He knew this meant that she was very tired and needed help falling asleep. When Cat would cry in the hut, a great panic would consume him.

He worried that she might feel his heart pounding against her back and then bawled through the night. He told himself that the thick mud sods in the walls would dampen the sound of her cries. He told himself that the rushing of the stream outside would overpower the noise she made. He could deal with a human hearing her, but dusk was when the fairies listened out for babies. He inhaled the perfume of her scalp through his nostrils. His heart lulled in his chest. He rocked his torso and sang a whispered lullaby until her wailing became a quieter, rhythmic groan that matched the tempo of his movement.

When she drifted off, he placed the warm iron tongues between his hand and her chest to protect from the fairy's magic and to help transport Cat into a deep sleep. He listened to the pace of her breath, scrunching the muscles around his eyes to hone in on the sound. There was always a ringing in his ears

like distant bells. He couldn't remember how long he'd live with the bells in his head. He'd only noticed them when Cat was a few weeks old and a tiny breath was something he needed to hear. As the air from her nose flowed heavy and slow. He cautiously took the iron tongs from her chest and placed a fresh salt of turf on the embers. He watched the orange glow creep and singed the fibers.

Clean heat wobbled the air like worn glass and distorted the yellow barley. He wondered if she was old enough to have dreams yet. The sound of water rippled outside. When Kat slept, he had the misfortune of being alone with his thoughts. How the fairies had taken her brother in the night and replaced him with a changeling. They come for the baby buys. Intrusive images nailed themselves to his head. The month-old baby stiff in the straw caught on that morning. A frozen face like a little apple made out a candle wax. No priest would bless the dead child. You can't bury a changeling in a graveyard. two hands touching his son's body into the roof of the cottage with an iron horseshoe

for protection. Was it his son in the ceiling or the fairy child they left in his place? The fairies had taken Cat's mother too, in a fever the week after Cat was born. In the daytime he kept his hands busy to stop himself from thinking about his wife and son. He couldn't even say their names and he knew with utter certainty that it was all his fault. He had been targeted by the fairies because of what he did with the barley and the still. Every drop of spirit, stolen from a grain, belongs to the other world. They'll take their reparations. He was haunted by the sound of them coming for Cat in the tiny bells they put in his head. Cat was born a boy, but he's raising her as a girl. He'll grow her hair out long and put her in dresses

when she's older, all to trick the fairies. And that stayed locked in his mind with the visions of her dead mother and brother. She was Cat. She was nothing other than Cat. But he knew that Carmerant had its eye on her when it did the dance on the stream. That was no carmerant. His heart got loud again and the chilled sweat bloomed out of the pores on his forehead. He felt the powerful urge to get up and walk it off. Cat blubbered and irritated groaned.

and exhaled, as if her body sensed his intentions. She was a ball of heat on his chest. He moved his left hand up slightly so that it rested under hers. Her hot palm gripped his finger from the depths of her sleep, and he was frightened by how much he loved her. The barley made crackling noises. He dipped his other hand in the tin cup and flicked water on the burning turf. It hissed, and white smoke swirled up and out the roof. he hoped that it wasn't seen in the sky. The song of a thrush brightened the ravine. Perfect beams of blue light penetrated every fault in the mud

and shunned through the smoke of the hut. Cat awoke with a groggy cry. She had relieved herself in her sleep. He cleaned her off and quickly washed his soiled shirt in the stream. Beside him, she swept that grass with her hands and tried to place some in her mouth. Whips of dawn fog curled over the surface of the water. He focused on them from his knees,

and in that small moment he was not consumed by worry or guilt. He moved her to his lap. They ate porridge and buttermilk warmed in the ash of the sods. The barley kernels were bone dry from the night. The malt was complete. He sniffed them in his palm. The sweetness of cereal climbed up the hairs of his nostrils and finished with the smoggy violence of Pete. His thoughts could taste their

spirits in the arse of his throat. They would make a fine poachine. Cat's blanket was stretched over the grass by the edge of the stream. She had only learned to crawl a month ago, but stayed within the warmth of the woollen surface. He settled two oak barrels in front of the hut, aged and coopered with rusted iron bands. They'd been buried nearby when he did this last year. All his equipment was hidden and buried near the ravine, with the exception of the copper worm. He arranged the barrels so that he could see Cat while he was working.

Their rims reached his thighs. He emptied the malted barley into both of the barrels. White powder kicked up from the starch of the grain and chalked his beard. Squatting with a stable back, He lugged milk churn onto a three-legged grate and set it there. He lowered the tan ceramic jug into the stream with both hands and slushed it into the churn until it was full of water. A fire of tarf and sticks was lit under the base.

Flames blackened the bottom. The stream carried a breeze that flumed the smoke into the hazel trees. The leaves ate the plumes. They didn't slither above the ravine. Cat played with her ball. and paused when damp wood popped in the fire. It's okay, he said to her. As he waited for the water to boil,

a white butterfly jittered over the grass. It landed on the red fabric of cat's woolen blanket, confusing it for a flower. Slow movements, fanning its wings with a delicate grace that caught the sunlight and glinted. Cat reached for the butterfly, Gak! she said. She planted.

her palm down on its body and pressed it against the wool. Her face with the daydream gaze. He looked up from the bubbles of the heating churn and screamed at her. No! She recoiled and began to cry. He had never shouted at her like that before. It was the same guttural cry she made the time she accidentally burned her hand on a kettle. He rushed to her side and picked her up, rocking her and kissing her forehead. Her face was pink and swollen with tears. as she wailed through the ravine. Birds flew from a hazel, spit dripped from her mouth,

and her few small teeth were visible. I'm sorry, sh, shh, he said. I'm so sorry. Her crying faded into staggered anxious gasps, which were somehow more painful to him than balls. He rubbed his cheek against her tears and wished that he could put them back into her eyes. They were diamonds to him.

The morning had been peaceful, and now he had ruined it. He hated this world where she experienced heart and terror. He despised himself for being the source of it. The butterfly was still alive. He peered down and watched it unfolded snowy wings against the scarlet blanket. Cat's hand on the soft wool had not been powerful enough to injure it. After a few seconds it flooded off again over the stream.

He had cat close in his two arms. He told himself that it was just a white butterfly, even though he knew what they say about white butterflies, but it was definitely just a harmless butterfly. He tried desperately not to entertain the fear that the butterfly was the soul of her dead brother who would come back from the fairy world to warn them. Steam puffed from the boiling water of the churn. He wanted to hold her to his body all day, but the job wouldn't wait. He took a baton to the malted grains that rested in the wooden barrels and crushed them under the cudgel, beating the wood like a drum. He sung the song his mother sang when he'd watched her do the same.

The chaff separated under the battering until a coarse raggedy yellow meal remained. He poured boiling water from the churn and scalded it. He did this until the barrels were almost full and the oak was warm to the touch. The kernels floated up and frotted it. at the surface, releasing the stodge from their endosperms. With two fists around the long wooden batten, he stirred the mixture anticlockwise in a gentle vortex. The swirling grains were hypnotic, and they released him from his ever-present sensation of panic. Plumes of steam sweated up the hairs of his forearms and condensed in dripping beads on his face. The mixture resembled the grey

porridge that they ate. The barley bloomed in the scald, and the dead grains diffused their full bouquet. His seasoned nose took in hazelnuts rolled in burning sugar, goats cream about to sour, a new turned sod of earth on bruised grass, stained with the dungy viscera of a lamb's berth, the stolen nectar of a foxglove, toasted bread, the screams of a widow after a battle, A thousand yards of peat bog under thunder and the sharp zest of vomit. Every seed was a unique life with a story and an ancestry. And he had no business, translating these ghosts into a bottle for a human to comprehend with their lips. He released heavy black treacle from a ceramic pot and it folded on the meniscus and sunk below the liquid to the bottom of the barrels.

He agitated the grey wash and the sweeteners stained its sienna. From his waistcoat pocket, he produced the yeast wrapped in butter paper, a live culture that might be 300 years old and passed down from distiller to distiller, yellow and doughy, with a sickly essence. It would devour the barley starch and treacle to excrete them as heady alcohol. He scraped the yeast into the barrels and covered them with their lids, leaving enough space at the top for the bubbles of the wash-the-burp. He draped the wood in an olive-drab-waxed tarp that could stand a bit of rain if it came. He would leave it now for a week until it awoke for the still.

He wrapped cat to his chest with their few important belongings in a sack on his back, performing the necessary precautions of sun. subterfuge around the hut before they left. The olive tarp of the barrels was staggered with some ferns to break up their shape. The milk churn and any other instruments were placed back in the hut with the opening shut. From her bundle on his midriff, Kat reached out helpful hands at every object he grabbed and said gack and squealed. Any trace of a fire pit near the stream was dug up with the heel of his boot and covered in grass. They exited the ravine by the end of the stream where it tapered off into a wider river,

up the slant of a mossy hill and through the heather of the moor until they found the grey-shaled boarine. The blue mountains stood watch like impartial deities. He began the trek back to their cottage. It was midday, and Cat was stirring in the bundle under his chin. There was nothing strange about a man and his daughter travelling home on the moor.

He stood taller on the path than he had done in the ravine. One arm swung and the other supported cats back. The odd bit of sun warmed the top of his head. They passed a raggedy tent on wooden poles with the look of the fabric of the barley sack about it. He couldn't tell if the people inside had no belongings or if they were transient. A man lay at the entrance in a cell. stupor with his face pointing up at the sky, drunk as drunk could be. His body had sunk into

the mud like the earth had no teeth and was slowly sucking him down with sloppy brown gums. A bare-chested child of about five wore a lion cloth and was playing with a grey dog who bounced and barked. The child barked back at the dog and was indifferent to its father in the mud. He slowed his step until he wasn't moving. He showed his step until he wasn't moving. He shoulder, pointed towards the tent with a tension of intent in his tilted neck, like he would stop the check on the man and the child. The ground off the path was marshy. He kept walking on and wondered if he had distilled the bottle that caused all of this. Cat Ava slept easy when his silent body produced heat and rocked her with the predictable rhythm of his pace. It was clear

heather moors for acres on either side of the crumbling path. The shadow of a cloud dragged across the side of a mountain in the distance and disappeared. The rock face lit it up bright purple with the flowers of the heather. A fox emerged from a trail ahead of him, bushy-tailed. It stopped in the centre of the road, looked at him and cat, then moved to the other side and was gone. It was definitely just a fox. The animals didn't frighten him. him out here in the open. Cat was waking in the bundle when he came up the hill to his cottage. She did cranky little groans that shook off her sleep. He moved closer to the cottage and noticed a single white sheet hanging on his washing line. A worry came over him. He had not put it there.

It was a message from the Gadger Mull Queen. One white sheet on the line meant the gadger would need the stock of Puccine in one week. There must have been a wedding suddenly announced down in the village, or maybe some person was at the door of death, and there would be need of spirits at their wake, whatever it was. The gadger had a sudden demand for drink, and it was none of his business who bought it, and why? Sure he didn't sell it.

He just made it for the gadger to sell, but a week was too soon. The malt was only put to ferment that morning. he'd have to rush to distillation and risk producing a spirit that could blind a person or worse kill them stone dead

if he refused he'd be in debt to the Gadger and his men a rotten shower of thugs there was nothing special about their cottage but it wasn't a tent on the side of the road either

walls of stone with a lime wash and a strong roof of thatch it always stayed dry inside The wood of the door was heavy And it could tell you stories About battles it had won with February winds There was a pine table by the fire

Two chairs and a cotton mattress full of straw A dresser that was taller than him Cat had her own cot With high sides that enveloped her And he could afford the rent of it No fear of a bailiff around here They had been away for a week and the stones in the wall had sucked in the cold.

There were piles of wood adjacent the heart of the fire. He lit them and the room filled up with warmth. Cat was wide-eyed and sat up on her blanket. She reached out her hand and pointed at the objects around the room like they were all friends. The wooden butter churn in the corner, the oil lamp on the table, and Cat's doll that sat on the top shelf of the wooden dresser.

She was excited, and he was glad that she was home in comfort, and not in the cold of the mud hut. The sky outside grew mauve. Cat fell asleep in his arms and he lay her down in her cot. He had prepared a quick dough for bread earlier. It rested in a blackened pot that was smothered in ashy coals. A smell of baking stuck to the air. The embers of the hearth glowed just enough that he could save the bit of oil in the lamp for another time. Cat's slumber was all consuming.

She was surrounded by the familiar smell of her home. He placed an iron poker that had warmed near the fire across her chest to protect her from fairy magic in the night. Quietly, he removed a bottle of whiskey from the dresser and sat down at the wooden table. He wiped away flour and dough with the edge of his palm. The crown's stamp was torn under the cork. The stamp let him know that the necessary taxes had been paid

and that this was a regulated and legal bottle of alcohol. He'd spent a fair bit on this bottle last year. He poured a small measure into a cup and topped it up a quarter away with water. The bottle went back into the dresser. The whiskey was the color of strong tea He lifted it under his nose And marveled at the aroma of butter and bubbling sugar

The alcohol order was pure With no fruity trace of the dreaded methanol The sip he took was miserly Just enough to dance around his mouth and burn his throat He could make a spirit as good as this if he had the equipment And the time to age it in the barrels Without fear of them being dug out of the bog by the revenue men, and it wasn't his fault either, that the safe stuff was beyond the means

of the ordinary people of the countryside. He was only meeting a demand. If he didn't do it, someone else would. He inserted his index finger in a remnant of itinerant bread dough that rested on the wooden table. It was puffy and raw from the yeast. The dough sucked the tip of his finger down and smothered it in its beige sludge. The harsh lick of winter was almost in the air. He watched cats sleep and gulped the last of the cup of whiskey. He clenched his jaw in anger, grinding so hard that he felt the sugar in the drink between his back teeth. He thought about the money he'd earned from the gadger for a full delivery of Puccine, and he inventoried the next eight months in his head. The rent paid to the landlord, six bags of flour, charns of milk,

plenty of oats, call, the few spuds in the ground outside the door. He could buy a young pig and fatten it come November, and himself and cat would have salted bacon hung from the rafters until May. His eyes moved up to the rafter, where he envisioned the hanging pig. To the right was the spot where he'd patched his baby son's body into the straw of the roof. Tiny porcelain bones now, he supposed, encircled by the iron protection of the horseshoe. Or maybe he was still there the way he found him that morning because changlings don't rot.

Little fles made as a joke in the other world from materials he can't even fathom. And what was the point of even thinking about it anyway? because he'd never dare check to find out. He saw the sour head on the priest who refused to bless the stiff little body in the cot. Did the priest refuse to bless the dead boy because it was a fairy child?

Or was it a cruel human punishment for how the boy's father paid the rent? At least the fairies would never look down at you. If you took from them, they took something back and that was that. He moved his left foot to his heel and slid off the boat on the other, foot. The leather made a squeaking sound against his skin. He reached down and took off the right

boot with his hand. He got up from the wooden chair with his two hands on the table so that it didn't scrape against the stone floor. He crept over to Cat as she lay in the cot, negotiating with the smack of his bare souls on the stone. Cartilage of bone cracked in his knees and betrayed his attempt at silence. He bent and kissed her forehead. reassured by the heat of her skin on his lips. She had the look of her mother from this angle. He listened for the breath from her nose. But the bells in his head were too loud from thinking about the priest.

When she gets old enough, maybe five or six. She'll start asking questions about whether she's a boy or a girl. He will deal with it then. It'll be up to hard then. The fairies will have moved on if they can just keep it going till then. He let five days pass in the warmth and dryness of their cottage. His head was away in the rising bubbles of the barrels in the ravine. On the sixth day, the fizz of the ferment sang to him across the moors

and called out for his intervention. From the rafter, he took down the worm of the still and held it aloft in his fists like a curly sword. The worm was a winding-brushed copper tube. A rose-orange tangle of metal that glimmered like the inside of an oyster shell around the bends of its coils. The open ends crusted turk ice in a verdigree rust. It had been hammered out by a rare craftsman of the ditch and then blessed by a fairy doctor in a holy well. The worm was the tunnel through which he saw a life in the other world and stole it.

It was a pink-eyed, all-white badger and the collarbone of his same. saint. Not a hope would he risk stowing it in the mud-potcheon hut with the rest of his instruments. He circled the worm at his feet and stood back admiring it. Kat entertained herself on the floor with a strand of yellow straw, chewing it and relieving the soreness of her teething gums. On the stone slabs, he rested the worm on a yard of cloth and wrapped the coils tenderly. In that brief moment, there was something in front of his eyes that he worshipped as much as his daughter. Cat watched him coddle the copper worm with about as much patience as an infant could muster. He packed it with the straw and twine so that it looked like a square bale on his back.

He then took Cat in his arms and secured her in the bundle under his chin. There was no space on his back so he hung a compact lamb's leather pouch from Cat's waist. placing in this some bread, stewed apples and cheese, but not so much that it would burden her. From the threshold, his eyes scanned back over the room. He tapped an iron key off the wood of the door and said to himself in a whisper, You've put out the fire.

He repeated this four times and turned back in the threshold twice to make sure that he had put out the fire and packed everything. Cat began to whimper and struggle in the bundle. She reached up towards her doll on the dresser. The doll was wooden and had a polished ceramic face. Its timber ribs were covered in a bright blue dress

with a head of hair that had curled like hanging sausages. He was reluctant to bring it with them to the Puccine hut in case it got damaged or dirty. He wasn't made a new doll's. But now the cat had pointed at it. he couldn't risk her crying all the way back to the ravine and drawing attention to them. He handed her the doll and she said ah

and hissed out smiles tugging at the doll's hair and soothing herself. He locked the door of their home. They exited the cottage at dusk and cut across the field to the route that led to the ravine. He fed cat marshal's from his fingers as they moved. She ate lumps of cheese.

and stewed apple and fell asleep in the bundle with her legs dangling and wrapping off his thighs. He retrieved the doll from the clutch of her sleeping hands and tucked it inside the leather pouch around her waist. An accusatory moon saucered up in the stars and it lit the wild path with a paleness that turned shapes into faces. It wasn't great for his imagination. The terror returned in the sweat under his arms. Slumbering cat dragged down his chest. Crossing the moor, he stooped from the weight of the warm and the moonlight cut him a beastly side profile. The mountains and their heather were only a rumour in the blackness.

He thought he saw a fairy light, flicker up over the bogs and disappear again. He heard the crunch of the shale boarine under his feet. He listened to bats swoop over the midges that bit at the grease of his scalp. The tent with the drunk man and the barking child was gone or swallowed by mud Catching sight of cat's white breath in a lunar beam He tasted the damp and the chill in the air The chatter of the stream was close He held her two feet in his palms as they negotiated the hill down the ravine

And entered the mud hut for the night He didn't sleep and she did He set to work at the first glimmer of dawn Cat ate porridge from the wooden bowl It stuck to her fingers and got in her hair He gently plucked the goop From the strands before it dried And nestled her on her red blanket with the doll

Peeling off the drab tarp He scored the knife tip under the lid of the first barrel And sensed the new pressure That was not there when he sealed it a week ago With the weight of his wrist on the knife handle He pried the wooden lid open and felt the pop. He watched vapour emerge against the trees in the foreground,

and the barrel fizzed with enthusiasm. Bubbles rose up in the caramel liquid and frotted a yellow scum at the top that reminded him of an elderly malicious river. The pick-want hammer of alcohol met his nose. He dipped a glass in the barrel and held it to the sky. The morning sun shot through the bubbles and cast an awe-born stained window shadow over his eye.

He put it to his lips. The excited ghosts of barley colonels scarpered around the purgatory of his tongue and he spat them out on a dockleaf. He let the air of the bog enter his mouth and noted the uncorrupted fermentation of the brew. On the grass by the stream he blended coarse flour and water in a bowl and kneaded it into a fist.

sized ball of dough. It was speckled and rough. He left it to breathe. He kept one eye on cat and ran to pick her up when she crawled from her blanket. Flat rocks were lifted from the bed of the stream. He arranged them in two piles near the edge of the water, one taller than the other. The taller pile had a chamber in the middle. It was a fire pit. Sods of turf and sticks were placed in the chamber. He walked towards the hut to quickly retrieve the the components of the Puccine still. In the brightness of the sun, he detected footprints in the mud around the entrance of the hut. They were impressions of a cloven hoof, like those of a goat. He sensed terrible burning fright in the pit of his stomach, and it went up into his head where his

thoughts were, and began to control them in a very cruel way. What if they were the footsteps of a divil or a puka who had come to find cat? Well, they had said, slept inside during the night. What if it was watching them now? What if it had made its mind up and there was nothing he could do to stop what was going to happen to her? He turned to look at Kat, she stared up at his eyes and stopped playing with the doll. He scanned the trees in the water for danger. They all blurred into one threatening visage. His breath was up in his throat and he felt like he was dying. He hoisted Cat up and tried to protect as much of her body with his arms as he could. A panicked right hand grasped at her shoulder and then clasped her two feet. It was cold.

Cat's bottom lip quivered and her face became pink. His heart hammered at the bones of her chest. He considered abandoning the entire distillation process there and then. She cried. He kissed her forehead and the smell of her hair helped him to slow his breathing down. He listened to the air swushed through the hazel trees. Down the ravine in the distance at the end of the stream, he could now see a red deer fawn among the trunks of the trees. Beautiful and peaceful, with a coat-like flower flicked on a toasted loaf, its head grazing the earth.

Calmer now, he traced the cloven footprints from the hot entrance with his eyeline, and they led in the direction of the deer. With cat hunkered against his ribs, he entered the hut and saw the leftover piles of malted barley had been disturbed by an animal's muzzle. He felt relief and he felt foolish. He saw himself telling the Gadger about confusing a little deer for the puka fairy and how he nearly didn't distill the Puccine and the coins in the Gadger's hand and his dirty fingernails and his sneaky laugh. He situated Cat back down near the fire pit outside the hut. but she was still upset, but he didn't have the time to console her.

He rapidly retrieved the milk churn, a copper kettle, a pipe and a few dozen glass bottles that were stored in the hut. He hauled the tin milk churn onto the flat rocks of the fire pit. Using the big jug, he filled it with the fermented barley brew from the wooden barrels. It fizzed and small bubbles danced up over the brim of the churn. A copper kettle with a spout was secured on top of the churn. The burnished metal was cool against his skin. He had cut out the bottom of the kettle so that it had no base.

It would be the head of the still where the vapours collect. He took pinches of the coarse dough from the bowl. At the seam where the kettle rested on the churn, he moulded the dough to create a seal. He smudged the putty with his thumb, pressing and kneading, until no vapours would escape. Cat was crawling by his feet. She took twigs from the fire pit and broke them in her hands and put them back. He was afraid she might knock a churn on top of her. He moved her. On the shorter of the rock piles,

he rested a wooden barrel that had a hole at its base. The coiled copper worm was lowered into the barrel. It was a perfect fit. The worm spiraled, orange and metallic, from the top of the barrel to the bottom, and the end poked out of the hole in a spout, water tight around the hole. A pipe connected the spout of the kettle to the top of the worm. Both ends sealed with the dough. He filled the barrel with very cold water from the stream. He peered down into the clear water and watched how the submerged kyle was distorted in size under the surface. He placed cat on her blanket, which was a safe distance away from the still. A ball of dry straw nestled among the hazel twigs and turf of the fire pit. He napped lively sparks from his flint rock. They kindled

the hay. Whisp of white smoke licked out like tongues and he blew on them. Flames came into being as if given permission from his breath. Everything crackled and popped. The turf began to burn with the tiny green flames he'd seen over the bogs in darkness. The flickers reflected in his pupils and he felt the heat on his face. Angry orange fire rose up the base of the blackened churn

and the dowy seals at the seams of the metal shrank and hardened like white plaster. It was still blue early morning. He set a glass bottle directly under the warm spout at the base of the barrel. It would take at least 20,

minutes before the fire started to heat the fermented wash in the still he waited. The blanket was comfortable under him. Next to cat. He stroked her arm. The calluses of his skin scraped off her skin and she recoiled instinctively. He experienced shame and guilt and told her that it was just a deer earlier and that there was no need for her to be as upset as she was. He sat with his legs crossed and lifted Cat so that she rested on his thighs facing him. He held her hands and dored on her, telling her in high-pitched whispers how much he loved her. She looked back at him, her eyes wide and affectionate, a feathery smile with soft teeth. She stared directly into his face with an awesome glare of pure innocence and unconditional love. And when she did this, he broke

eye contact and felt deeply undeserving. A confusing flicker of resentment towards cat glimmered in an untrodden part of his brain. And then he knew that he was a despicable person. The churn began to rumble with the bile inside. He stalked around the side of the gargling still. A pinhole of vapor hissed through a seam on the kettle. He thumbed dough over the orifice. The charn growled and staggered. He poured quenching water on the fire underneath to modulate the aggression of the distillation. Squeezing his palm around the pipe that connected the kettle in the copper warm, it felt blood warm and pulsed with the chug of the spitting brew. Alcohol vapour coursed down the submerged coil

and condensed into liquid when it hit cold copper. Puccine trickled out of the turquoise lip of the spout into the glass bottle. He splashed more water on the fire. Opeg smoke wafed through the ravine and stung his eyes. The spirit sparted out until it stopped about three-quarter ways up the glass bottle. He held it up to his eye. It was like water, clouded with a thimble of milk. Under his nose, the odour attacked with an acridity that split a squirm through the middle of him.

and echoed back up his mouth in a gawk. He salivated. It retreated with the fruitiness of a withered brown apple. He shook a drop on the fire and it exploded in a green flame the way Puccine doesn't. The ghost of the spirit was demonised by vitriol. He would not even taste this. It was methanol.

The poisonous singlings of the grain that he expected from the first run of distillation. The singlings were the property of the fairies and could only be drunk by the fairies He held the battle in front of his chest with inertia As if he was considering the tradition Of throwing it over his left shoulder as an offering to them There was no point

The fire picked up pace and he let the cloudy methanol fill the battles The sun was higher in the sky now He wrapped the tin charned to hear its hot. clank, eight bottles of milky fluid, rested on the grass by the river, ready to be caught. The fire was only ashy coals. Cat was seated in his left arm and was groaning in the cranky way that implied hunger. Tears and commotion if he didn't feed her soon. After they ate a lunch, he would fill the churn up again with the wash from the barrels and begin another distillation. He'd repeat this until he had 24 bottles of Puccine ready for the

gadger that night. On cat's blanket they sat together. The water was at their feet with the mud hut behind them and the still to the left. Brown as the pebbles beneath, the trout were hidden in their forever dance with the current of the water. He watched spidery-looking flies skirting across the deeper pools of the stream. The satisfying circles rippled out when a fish surfaced the bite. The ravine had a piece in the ether, and the leaves of the hazel didn't sway at all. The bread he had baked was round like a mushroom, tanned and blackened from the hearth. The crust made a tapping noise in his hands.

His fingers pulled apart the loaf in two halves, and revealed the spongy innards with big, creamy holes of air. It smelled like the comfort of their cottage over the moor. He pinched at the soft bread and rolled it in a ball. He inserted some cheese and handed it to cat. She gummed at the morsel and clasped her hands, studying the food in her mouth with her serious expression. He smirked at her face in adoration. He ate too and relished the tang and resistance of the toasted crust against his teeth.

He'd made a pot of black tea On the fire pit embers And drank it warm and tanick From the vessel it brood in The tea coaxed out the unctiousness Of suet in the bread He was distracted by the eight bottles of Puccine that stood on the grass

In the corner of his eye The pale greyness of their fluid Brought up the shame in him If he could only have a week To let them sit and then run it through the still A second or a third time he could purify it and make it safe for the drink, ideally a month to breed in a barrel after,

but even one more time through the still would nearly be enough to sort it. Maybe if he'd have thrown a few lumps of charcoal in a funnel under the spout, that might have extracted some of the badness before it went in the bottle. Why didn't he think of that? His feet stretched beyond the red blanket

towards the mud of the stream bed. The heels of his boots indented in the sludge of the earth and sank a bit. He watched the mud, enveloped the leather. He knew the Gadger Muld Queen wouldn't give two fucks about the colour of the drink. The gadger would have no bother on him, watering it down and cutting it with horse's piss to hide the fruity tones of the methanol. It was none of his business what the Gadger did or who bought the bottles.

And it was the Gadger on his bed sheet who told him to rush the whole thing anyway. He gritted his teeth again. and evicted bread from a molar with his tongue. Cat had eaten well and was stroking her doll's dress and making cooing noises in a languid state of satiation. She sat up between his legs with her back to him. His left hand was on her left shoulder

and his other hand was across her chest. He raised a finger and felt the softness of her ear and the wisps of her hair. He tried to bend his chest forward to kiss the crown of her skull, but her head was just beyond the reach of his lips. He watched the surface of the stream with intent, tried to locate the trout underneath. A quick shadow blackened a ripple and his eyes

flew up. It was the cormorant flapping up above. The bird landed in a pool of the stream where the water was slower and deep, about two yards from him and cat. It bobbed on the water with the look of a malnourished swan, much smaller than when its wings were outstretched. The slick iridescence of its plumage, scintillated like black pearls you wouldn't see on a divils necklace. Feathers shifted shapes in front of him. The panic came up into his forehead, but he was determined not to react to this feeling after the incident with the deer. He focused on its snaky head and the tiny sighed at the end of its beak. He couldn't decide if the bird was monitoring cat, or if that was just the way it held its head.

Slowly, the cormorant arched its slender neck back, raising its beak skyward, and then sprang forward and disappeared its entire body under the water. It barely created a ripple. The eyebrows raised on his face, and he waited for the diving cormorant to return to the surface. He was unable to tell if touch. time was slowing down in the moment, or if the carmrent was really under the water for that long. How could it stay down that long? It must have been two minutes. He became aware of his tongue and his mouth and the metallic taste of his saliva. He wondered if he controlled his tongue, or if his tongue controlled itself and what was preventing him from swallowing his own tongue

and choking on it. This brought on the heartbeat again. He scanned the stream, fixing a stream, fixing and darting his field of vision on all the possible spots where the cormorant might emerge. What type of cormorant is this at all, that it can stay down that long? Doesn't it have lungs the same as me? He heard an unmerciful splash that slapped through the quietness of the ravine in an unexpected spot of the water. The cormorant emerged, as if a hand was pushing it up underneath the surface and stabilising it. Two black wings stretched wide with sharp feathers that dripped silver beads of river.

The full span must have been the length of his leg. There was a plump, chumessent trout thrashing in the cormorant's beak. The cormorant's eye was bright green and round like a wound. Cat was now pointing at the bird and shouting gack, gack, in her high pitch. Delight and excitement on her face. The cormorant hopped onto a rock. Through the splashing and cat's shouts, he saw and heard the trout's tail thud off the rock, its mouth gaping in a steady rhythm like it was trying to drink the air.

The fish was drowning in the same air that he was tasting in his mouth. The cormorant pinned the trout with the talons on its left foot and pierced its beak into the slimy skin of the creature until it stopped being alive. It celebrated the killing with a clacking noise from its throat. When cat shouted, the bird paused and then resumed. This terrified him to his core. Blood that was bloodier than blood, oozed on the stone and diffused into the water. The cumber had pincered its beak around the fish's robust torso, muscular and firm,

and then bit through it until the trout was severed in two. Cat pointed more and screamed, Gack, drawing attention to herself. In that moment, he jolted to his feet and grabbed Cat under her armpits from behind. Her doll was clasped in her hands, its hair dangled, her mouth gaped into a silent maw. She searched for a noise and then let out a mighty cry that changed in pitch as he dragged her away. He pulled her towards his chest and ran with her into the mud-hub. But it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, he said. Kat squirmed under his arm.

In a panic, he used his free hand and raised the doll to his mouth. He gripped his front teeth around the fabric of its blue dress and pulled, revealing a sparse wooden skeleton. He situated the doll on the bed of straw where he and Kat had slept and furrowed the indentation of a miniature crib. He exited the hut backwards. Tears were tracking down her skin. skin as he glared at the stiff dummy boy in the straw that would bide them some time with the fairies. Outside, Cat wailed through the ravine. Her muscles had tensed with fear and she stretched out her limbs in a star shape against his chest. The cormorant was still eating the trout on the rock.

He shouted at the bird. Hey, hey, look at me! Cat faced outwards, his hands under her arms. he kicked at the churn. The tin buckled down the centre and stuck on his boot. He shook it off and the contraption crumpled into a heap. He fell back on the grass but held cat so that she didn't make contact.

His toe was sore. He got up. He turned to the eight bottles of Puccine with the peg of his boot and knocked them all towards the stream with frantic swipes of his legs. Some spilled out on the grass. Others plopped under the ripples of the stream.

Their milky essence blended with the water and the ghosts of the barley dispersed back into the land. He was certain that the cormorant saw this. Cat was now bawling loudly. He ran into the stream and generated big splashes with his knees. Trout dispersed in all directions away from him. He held cat high above his head and screamed an animal scream at the cormorant, a scream from the bottom of his guts where the pain lived, as if to make himself sound bigger than he was. The cormorant flew off over the hazel trees and left the bloodied trout on the rock. He turned Cat around into a hug and held her firmly and lovingly with both arms around her, hoisting her higher up to his chest than usual, so that her

head lay over his shoulder. Her pink, swollen face, sobbed and gasped intermittently as she watched the Puccine still in bits behind them. He would explain this day to her when she could understand it. No smell to follow or tracks to trace. He waded deeper into the river until it reached his stomach and never touched her feet. They both moved with the current and blended with the flow upstream until they exited the ravine. His heart was dancing inside his ribs. Steam rose from his clothes like a horse and he stared out at the moor. He told the blue mountains that he would figure something else out and begged for their protection. Cat's bum nestled in his arm. His hand secured her back with her head resting over his shoulder. She slept with the movement and a little brown curl

from her neck blared into his vision. He told himself that he would kill or die just for one of those curls.