Moira

My name is Moira, though that is not my real name. Moira is simply the name I allow the world to use when I must speak among humans. It is a borrowed name, a convenient one, easy on the tongue and harmless enough to pass unnoticed in the company of men and women alike. My true name is something older and more difficult, a name spoken only among my own kind and only in moments that matter greatly. Names carry weight among my people, and a true name carries more weight than most humans can imagine. For the sake of both of us, Moira will do well enough.

I am a leprechaun.

Now before you laugh—and most of you will—before your mind runs off toward green hats with buckles, dancing little fellows beside rainbows, and pots of gold at the end of clouds, allow me to speak plainly for a moment. The creature you picture in your mind is not entirely false, but it is so twisted and simplified that the truth is nearly unrecognizable beneath it. Humans have a gift for smoothing sharp things into something comfortable, and over centuries you have done precisely that with my people.

The cheerful image you know today did not begin as a joke, but it eventually became one. Stories passed from one mouth to another, and then to another, until the edges wore smooth. A glimpse of something strange in a field becomes a story told by a farmer. That story becomes a tavern tale. The tavern tale becomes a song. The song becomes a drawing in a book. After enough generations, the truth becomes so thin that even those who repeat the story no longer believe it themselves. That, I suspect, is precisely how the modern leprechaun came to be.

In truth, we have walked the hills of Ireland for longer than your historians can measure with any certainty. Long before kings ruled from stone halls and long before monks set ink to parchment in cold monasteries, our kind already lived quietly among the hills, rivers, and forests of that green island. The land itself knew us. We belonged to it in ways that are difficult for humans to understand, for your kind moves from place to place as easily as a bird crossing a field. For us, the land is not simply where we live. It is part of what we are.

There are old stories in Ireland that speak of hidden peoples beneath the hills, the Sidhe, the folk of the hollow places, the quiet tribes who lived beside the human world but not quite within it. Those stories drift closer to the truth than the cartoons painted on beer advertisements, but even those old tales are incomplete. My people have always occupied a peculiar place between things. We are not entirely of the world you see every day, yet we are not entirely separate from it either. We walk the same ground as you, breathe the same air, and drink from the same rivers, but the roots of our existence reach into older soil.

Humans tend to think of us as creatures of magic, and that word is not entirely wrong. Yet magic, as you imagine it, is often little more than the natural order of our lives. A bird does not consider flight to be magic. A fish does not marvel at water. In much the same way, certain things that seem impossible to you are simply part of how our world works. They are no more mysterious to us than sunrise is to you.

Among my people, one trait above all others defines who we are: we are bound by oaths. A spoken promise among leprechauns is not a casual thing, not a polite word given and forgotten as the days pass. An oath is a binding force that attaches itself to the one who speaks it. Once spoken, it becomes part of the speaker, shaping the course of her life as surely as a river shapes the land through which it flows. To break such an oath is not simply dishonorable; it damages the very fabric of who we are.

Because of this, our society has long been governed by a web of ancient laws. Some are simple rules concerning conduct among our own kind. Others concern our dealings with the human world. A few of them reach back so far into our history that even the oldest living among us cannot say when they were first spoken. Those laws are remembered through stories and teaching, carried forward generation after generation with careful attention.

When one of our kind breaks those laws, the punishment is not light. Humans have prisons and courts and sentences measured in years. Among leprechauns, the most severe punishment is exile. To a human ear that may sound almost gentle, but to my people it is one of the most painful sentences imaginable. A leprechaun belongs to Ireland in a manner deeper than simple citizenship or birthplace. The land itself recognizes us. The hills, the rivers, the deep soil beneath ancient stones—these things are woven into our existence. To be banished from that land is to be separated from a piece of your own being.

Many exiles wander the world for centuries, never again feeling entirely whole. Some eventually fade away. Others simply vanish into the vastness of human lands. A very few find a way to continue living with some measure of peace, though the ache of separation never truly leaves them. I know this because I am one of those exiles.

Before I speak of that matter further, however, there is something else you must understand about my people. One part of the old stories about us did, in fact, brush against the truth. Leprechauns are craftsmen and craftswomen. We are makers of things, and our craft has long been associated with the making and repairing of shoes. The reason for this has been the subject of many guesses among your storytellers. Some say it is because we are patient creatures who enjoy quiet work. Others say it is because travelers always need good shoes and travelers often stumble into strange places.

The truth is somewhat simpler and somewhat stranger at the same time. The work of a cobbler is the work of shaping leather to the exact measure of a foot. It requires patience, precision, and a deep understanding of how a traveler moves through the world. A poorly made shoe causes pain with every step. A well-made one allows a person to travel farther than expected. My people have always taken a certain pride in that craft. We know how to make shoes that last, shoes that carry a traveler safely through rough country, and shoes that hold together long after ordinary stitching would have failed.

For this reason, many of us became cobblers in the human world, quietly working in small shops, repairing boots, crafting fine leather footwear, and listening to the stories of travelers who passed through our doors. Humans seldom notice the person who sits quietly at a workbench, stitching leather with careful hands. It is a profession that invites little attention and offers a great deal of observation. In that quiet way, leprechauns learned much about the world of men.

Some among my people guard treasures of various kinds. Humans have always been fascinated by that notion, imagining gold coins hidden in clay pots or buried beneath the roots of ancient trees. Gold does occasionally appear in our stories, but it is not the most valuable thing we protect. Some of our treasures are objects. Others are knowledge. Some are words that must never be forgotten, and some are secrets that must never be spoken aloud. Each generation of my people takes responsibility for guarding a portion of those things.

Another misunderstanding concerns our lifespan. Humans often believe that creatures like us live forever. That is not so. We live much longer than your kind, it is true, but even our years eventually come to an end. Three centuries is common among my people. Four centuries is not unheard of. A rare few have seen five hundred years, though such elders are greatly respected and seldom seen outside the deepest places of our homeland.

Death comes to leprechauns in several ways. Time eventually claims even the most careful life. There are also certain substances in your world that can prove fatal to us, cold iron chief among them. Humans once knew this well, though the knowledge has faded with time and disbelief. A few other dangers exist as well, but those belong to matters that would take longer to explain than this introduction allows.

Now you may wonder why I am telling you these things at all. My people have spent centuries allowing humans to believe the comfortable fictions that surround us. Most of the world laughs at the word “leprechaun” now, and laughter is an excellent shield. A thing that people consider ridiculous is rarely investigated with seriousness. That simple truth has protected us for a very long time.

Yet time changes all things, including the world of men. Humans now travel faster than ever before. Your machines speak across oceans in an instant. Your curiosity pushes into every corner of the earth. Old places that once lay undisturbed for centuries are now examined, mapped, and studied with relentless determination. Secrets that once remained hidden beneath quiet hills are beginning to attract attention.

In such a world, the old silence becomes harder to maintain.

As I mentioned earlier, I am an exile from Ireland. I broke one of the oldest laws among my people many years ago, and the consequence was banishment from the land where I was born. Since that time I have lived among humans, moving from place to place, sometimes working as a cobbler as my people have always done, sometimes simply watching the strange and restless progress of your species.

Exile gives a person a great deal of time to think. It also gives distance from the traditions that once governed every step of her life. Over the years I have come to believe that some of the old rules among my people may not serve the world as well as they once did. The earth has changed. Humans have changed. And certain matters that once remained safely hidden may not remain so forever.

So I have decided, perhaps foolishly, to speak.

Not to reveal everything, for some things must remain guarded no matter how the world changes. But I will tell enough that you may begin to understand who we truly are, where we came from, and why the stories told about us only hint at something much deeper and older.

I will speak of Ireland as it once was, of the hidden places beneath the hills, of the old laws that bind my people, and of the mistake that led to my exile from the land I still consider home. I will tell you about the quiet lives we lived beside the human world and about the strange intersections where our histories touched yours without your knowing it.

These are not tales meant to frighten you, nor are they stories meant for laughter. They are simply the memories of a very old people who have watched the world turn through many centuries. Some of those memories are gentle. Some are sad. A few are dangerous.

But all of them are true.

My name is Moira, though that is not my real name. I am a leprechaun, a cobbler by trade, an exile by circumstance, and a witness to many things that humans have long forgotten or never knew at all.

And what follows now, if you care to listen, are the memories of my kind.

These are our stories.