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Brannoc.
    'Well I don't,' answered Padraig, tuning his fiddle. 'I never met such argumentative fairies in my life. I'm not surprised they were run out of Scotland. If they ever made it to Ireland, they'd be run out of there as well.'
    Violin tuned, Padraig started to play. He played 'The Milt-down Jig' slowly, then a little faster, then broke into a dazzling version of 'Jenny's Welcome to Charley', a long and complicated reel. Maeve joined in on her pipes. Fairy musicians have magical control over the volume of their instruments and the two blended perfectly.
    The animals stopped gossiping to watch and listen. Maeve and Padraig were the best fairy musicians in Ireland, and this is almost the same as saying they were the best musicians in the world, although Heather and Morag
    might well have had something to say about that.
    Kerry's apartment consisted of two small rooms. The bed was raised on a platform and underneath she stored her clothes. She lay on the bed. Morag sat beside her.
    'Back in Scotland,' said the fairy, 'I am well known for my astute psychic insights. And it strikes me that since I have been here you have never really been happy. Am I right?'
    Kerry burst into tears.
    'I was unhappy long before you arrived,' she said.
    'Why? Your life seems good. Braw even. Everyone likes you. You have lovers queuing up at your door, though
    you turn them all away.'
    Kerry stared at her poster of the New York Dolls. They stared back at her, pouting.
    'I turn them away because of my disease,' explained Kerry.
    Kerry had Crohn's disease, a most unpleasant ailment which rots away the intestines.
    'After a while doctors have to cut out the diseased parts.'
    Morag shuddered. This was beyond her imagination.
    Kerry undid her shirt. On her left side she had a bag taped to her skin.
    The meaning and function of a colostomy bag were not obvious to Morag until Kerry explained.
    Morag stared gloomily out the window. Life streamed past but she was not entertained. She was imagining what it would be like to have a hole cut in your side for your excreta to empty into a bag.
    The sun was particularly strong today. The heat was overpowering. Pedestrians sweated their way along the
    sidewalks and drivers cursed and sounded their horns.
    Kerry patted her triple-bloomed Welsh poppy, an almost unimaginably rare flower and the pride of her collection.
    It was finding it growing wild in a ruined building which had set her off on her quest for the flower alphabet. She kissed it, stroked it and spoke to it nicely.
    Next she checked her new Mimulus cardinalus, a pretty red and yellow flower, the newest addition to her alphabet.
    The cut flower hung upside-down to dry. Once it was dry she would spray it with hairspray to preserve it and add it to the other fifteen preserved blooms covering her floor.
    Cal had stopped going out with her when he learned about her colostomy, saying that he could not see himself
    having a relationship with someone whose excreta emptied into a bag at her side. This made Kerry feel very bad.
    Morag sighed. Being human did seem to involve some very unpleasant things.

SIX
    'I don't want a violin lesson,' declared Dinnie. 'And I don't want you here. Go and join your friend.'
    'She isn't my friend,' protested Heather. 'Just someone I had the misfortune to meet. I took pity on her. To tell you the truth, she annoyed the hell out of me.'
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    Heather settled down with a thimbleful of whisky, skilfully removed from the bar on the corner.
    'Brag, brag, brag, all the time. Just because she's got a few psychic powers. So what? Psychic powers are ten-a-penny among fairies. Common as muck. I wouldn't take them as a gift. Of course, her basic problem is that she is insanely jealous of my spectacular golden hair which made all the male fairies in Scotland fancy me