“Yeah. I’m in 1b. There’s… someone else in 1a.”
“I didn’t realise it was two houses.” Rowan looked at Fergus. “Was it always split like that?”
Fergus shrugged. I thought of the sealed door in the basement.
“Looks like,” I said. “We share a chimney, I think, but we have separate front doors. I’ve not been inside 1a, but I’m guessing it looks like mine, but backwards. Mirrored.”
“They used to have long terraces like that all over,” said Fergus. “For farmhands, then for seasonal workers.” He glanced down into his pint glass. “Now they put all the workers in caravans and sell the buildings to rich English cunts for second homes.”
Rowan cleared his throat in Fergus’ direction. Fergus rolled his eyes. I smiled, determined to be undeterred.
“Well, not this one,” I said. “I’m here to stay.”
Fergus cast a cold look at me.
“Aye, course you are.”
“Fergus is right,” said Rowan quickly and a little too brightly. “They’re probably farmhand cottages.”
“I didn’t see any farm buildings close by,” I said.
“Probably an old farm then.” Rowan turned again to Fergus. “Do you know whose farm they used to belong to?”
Fergus lowered his voice, “Well, it’s a bit of an old story.”
Ok, this felt a bit more promising. Sharing stories. I leaned forward.
“Yeah, Rowan was saying something about that—”
“It’s just had few people live there over the years,” Rowan leapt in. “No one ever seems to stay but—”
“You know the mound it’s set on?” said Fergus.
I nodded.
“That’s a hollow hill.”
“What’s a hollow hill?”
“It’s one of the ancestral homes of the Fair Folk. A fairy hill. Story goes the man who built those cottages wasn’t from around here, so he didn’t know he should leave the hill be. He was starting a goat farm to make his own leather. He was an excellent leatherworker, but he wanted to control the entire process from start to finish. Herding, culling, tanning, the lot. One day, the man’s youngest son disappeared right out of his bed. They looked all over for him and eventually found the boy in a small clearing in the woods. But something was wrong with him. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t laugh, couldn’t talk. Just stared. There was talk that the Fair Folk had stolen the boy away and replaced him with a soulless double. Just as the man was deciding what to do with the boy, he disappeared. The whole family died of cholera the next summer. The man’s final words were, I never should have built those damned cottages. Now whoever lives there has terrible luck.”
I gripped the table.
“Really?”
“Nope.” Fergus’s face split into a grin. “I had you there, didn’t I?”
“What?”
Rowan rolled his eyes. “’Sake, Ferg. He’s telling you stories. Even had me with that one for a moment there.”
My face felt hot. Fergus shrugged.
“Your house probably belonged to a smaller farm, back before they all got bought up by the larger ones,” said Fergus. “Gobbled up to make them bigger and bigger. Digging up the hedges and turning the patchwork into one big boring blanket of rapeseed or potato.”
The table went quiet.
I thought of the Sgàthan Sìth cottages. Just the two little houses left, holding hands together on the hill, like abandoned conjoined twins, forever reflecting each other until the hotel chain and the digger comes to mow them down.
