441: Celtic folklore: Deerly Beloved

But Ian, the son of the fisherman who, in the months since his father drowned, had seen his mother struggle, looked up at the stranger.

Each day and each month had been a slow descent into destitution.

Here was something different.

Here was a guy with a dog and a hawk holding a gun, which, yes, does give the negotiations an uncomfortable vibe.

But Ian turned those negotiations on their head by offering a trade.

Would the man part with his gun, dog, and hawk for the horse? "Deal," the man said, and unlooped the gun from his shoulder.

"So yeah," Ian smiled with his mom back at their cottage later on that evening.

"Now we have a gun, a dog, and a hawk." Ian's mom looked at the young man.

Okay.

She was wondering if he thought about this at all.

Did he know how to use a gun? Ian shook his head, but that was a good thing.

He could learn.

"And you can make rounds, gunpowder, too?" the mother asked.

"Also, do you know how to hunt with a hawk? How do you know that this thing, once you take that hood off, won't immediately go for our eyes?" Ian was silent, and then he said, "Well, we got a dog, too." "Oh, those things that are everywhere, and you only need to leave a little food waste for a stray, and then you basically can't get them to leave?" Ian said he was sorry.

"Oh, you'll be sorry all right," the mother said, and picked up the stick.

Ian felt the teeth in his mouth, avoiding his bulbous lip as he lay staring at the thatched roof of his home.

At the very least, they were all there, the teeth that is, and none of them were loose.

His mother snored a few feet away.

He was just trying to help, but Ian knew he messed up, that his mother took out her grief over his father, her rage at the world over their circumstances, and her despair over her future on his face and hands and back.

But that only brought more pain into the world, not less.

They were in this together.

But if he was gonna make things worse with his mistakes, and she was going to make things worse with her reactions to them, then maybe they were better off apart.

He was just trying to do something.

Hope, even foolish hope, that the stranger was magic and the dog could talk and the gun could hit anything it shot and the hawk would return with gold and jewels, was better than the wretchedness in which she wallowed.

The dog slept on her bed, and the hawk sat hooded in the corner.