02 October 2026
2023
R. Linda:
Me Mam loves October. Me kiddos love Halloween. We look forward to the month. The excitement of costumes, who's being what, and, for me, the kitchen smells of pumpkin and apple pies, warm glasses of cider, cider doughnuts, and the first hearth fire of the season. We have apple picking all set up, and we are psyched.
But one of the wonderful things about October be Mam's stories. We Irish love to tell stories, as you can tell from me blog. But the stories aren't just something we look forward to; they're also about the bond she has with her grandkids. As you may know, it takes a lot for a teenager to sit still and a twenty-year-old to be interested in old tales; only the wee one (not so wee anymore) would be fascinated. Not so; she gathers us all at the fireplace. We sit with our warm pie and cider, and she tells tales the Irish have told for centuries, that keep our attention rapt and our imaginations soaring with magic and a lesson.
Here is one of them:
October arrived not with a roar, but with the crisp scent of crushed apple leaves and woodsmoke. In the small village of Glenmorrow, the harvest was already heavy in the barns, but the real magic began when the sun went down.
Maeve pulled her wool cardigan tighter as she walked the perimeter of her pumpkin patch. The moon was a round golden sphere casting long, dancing shadows across the fields. Tomorrow, the village's autumn festival would begin. But tonight belonged to the older traditions.
A sudden, low hum vibrated through the crisp air.
Maeve turned toward the centre of the patch. There, nestled between two of her largest orange gourds, a narrow cobblestone path had appeared out of nowhere. It glowed with a faint, violet luminescence, winding into the misty woods where no path should be.
She smiled. The Midnight Market had opened, where an ancient yearly exchange between the ordinary agricultural world and the magical one came together.
Taking a deep breath, Maeve grabbed her wicker basket, filled with jarred blackberry preserves from the August harvest, and stepped onto the glowing stones.
As she walked into the treeline, the quiet woods transformed. Strings of floating paper lanterns—shaped like grinning jack-o'-lanterns and glowing autumn leaves—bobbed between the branches. The air filled with the rich, intoxicating scent of spiced cider, roasted chestnuts, and something older—like the pages of an ancient book.
Figures wrapped in cloaks of woven moss and star-patterned velvet moved between stalls made of living birch trees. At one stall, a vendor with eyes like polished obsidian was trading silver thimbles for bottles of bottled moonlight. At another, an old woman spun yarn out of literal fog, dyeing it the exact shade of a sunset.
Maeve approached her usual spot next to a cider brewer named Brian, whose beard seemed to spark with tiny, harmless embers.
"Late this season, Maeve," Brian mumbled, handing her a steaming wooden mug. "The harvest moon waits for no one."
"Had to make sure the crows didn't steal the autumn magic early," Maeve laughed, taking a sip. The cider tasted like liquid warmth, cinnamon, and a memory of a perfect childhood afternoon.
She set her blackberry preserves on the wooden counter. Within minutes, a traveller in a coat of iridescent crow feathers stepped up, offering three heavy, shimmering silver coins in exchange for two jars of 'summer preserved in glass'.
The coins didn't buy bread in Glenmorrow, but Maeve knew their worth. After the first hard frost, she would bury them at the corners of the pumpkin field and leave them there through winter. By spring the silver would be gone, spent into the earth, and the soil beneath the melting frost would wake dark, loose and hungry for seed.
For the crow-capped creature, Maeve's jars held berries from an actual August afternoon.
For hours, Maeve traded, laughed, and drank in the enchanting atmosphere. She exchanged stories with travellers from realms fuelled entirely by autumn winds, and watched children—some with small, velvet fox ears—chase falling leaves that turned into golden moths when caught.
"Ah, the October rule: Nothing is harvested without something being planted, and nothing magical is received without something of yourself being given in return." She said, turning to Brian. "Your bees are still humming unusually late, I hear," she said.
"Aye, so they be. And me brother Liam's wheat grew particularly well. We all made a good bargain last year here; the orchard survived a killing frost." He raised his cup of cider in toast.
But as the first pale blue lines of dawn began to bleed into the eastern sky, the lanterns started to flicker out. The vendors began packing their ethereal wares into trunks woven from roots.
"Until next year, Maeve," Brian said, tipping his hat as his stall slowly dissolved into a thick, morning mist.
Maeve blinked, and suddenly she was standing at the edge of her own pumpkin patch. The cobblestone path was gone. Morning frost was just beginning to lace the grass, and the sun was waking the valley. Her wicker basket was empty of jam, but heavy with silver coins and a small glass vial of starlight a passing weaver had given her.
"One coin for the soil, one for the seed, and one for the season."
She walked back to her farmhouse, woodsmoke still clinging to her hair. The harvest was safe, the magic was awake, and October had officially begun.
Gabe
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