October 20, 2021 / Jeff's Writing

The Honey Tree

The Honey Tree

There is absolutely nothing supernatural at all about The Honey Tree.

That sounds just like it should be the start of something horrible, doesn’t it?

But it isn’t.

Sure, if you were to sit yourself down with some Celtic mythology, you, like most of the rest of us, would never, if you could help it, think the word “faerie” again. You’ve heard the Fae can be distracted by throwing a few shiny coins into a field; it’s true, albeit the distraction is really along the lines of, “Is that idiot really going to try to avoid getting Irish-jigged to death by a hundred tiny feet through hurling a couple of dimes out into the field?” ‘

The Honey-Tree may be a local tradition, or it may have been passed down (or perhaps sideways, with a bit of an accidental lilt in one’s walk) from parts unknown. It’s too easy to say that things which make Faeries happy are part of the so-called “primitive” lore of so-called “simpler” times; but that’s nothing but the kind of optimistic hindsight which would make history a muddle if we didn’t have resourceful people out there to correct it. Like yours truly, of course – humble semi-biographer that I am, demi-historian, and your must devoted guide to the wonders of this marvelously green land.

It’s just a tree with a hollow in it, the sort in which you might find honey or, in a more terrifying Universe, a pocket Black Hole. In this case, what you’ll find is whiskey, which manages to be somewhere between the two.

The good things about the whiskey are (a) it’s not a trap, and (b) it’s whiskey. You just reach into the hollow and pull out the bottle and have yourself a celebratory drink or two. Simple as that.

Simpler, really. If you’re like me, you don’t care if it IS a trap. If you dig a pit, cover it cunningly with grass and twigs, then hang a bottle of strong Irish alcohol over it, I will leap right into the damn thing, as long as I’m at least 80% sure I can grab the bottle on my way down.

I have priorities, after all.

 

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Jeff Mach Written by:

Jeff Mach is an author, playwright, event creator, and certified Villain. You can always pick up his bestselling first novel, "There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN"—or, indeed, his increasingly large selection of other peculiar books. If you'd like to talk more to Jeff, or if you're simply a Monstrous Creature yourself, stop by @darklordjournal on Twitter, or The Dark Lord Journal on Facebook.