Never Play Board Games with the Fae Read online

subject.

  You will not be the one to convince them otherwise. Besides, how is it that you think you would begin to go about convincing them what with the inability that you have to speak underwater while you struggle to stay conscious due to your ever dwindling air supply? You do not have a good answer for that, do you? Therefore, you should always consider mermaids as something that is potentially hazardous to your health.

  Do not, however, make the mistake of confusing mermaids with siren. They are not the same thing at all no matter what you may have heard from various sources to the contrary. There are, in fact, many similarities between the two, but there is one very important difference that overrides them all. That difference is intention. Mermaids and sirens do not consider human beings in the same light. Mermaids are trying to indulge their curiosity and even trying, in their own way, to be friendly. Mermaids are not trying to harm you. They have no intention of inflicting damage. They do not want to kill you. They are inept and lack the ability to deduce information from their observations, but they are not malicious. The same cannot be said for sirens. Sirens want you to die. That is the entire purpose of their musical displays -- to lure you to your demise. They have no other purpose and no other interest in you than seeing whether or not they can draw you in over any thought of personal safety or self-preservation instinct that you may have. They are a bit like the Fae in that -- they just want to win.

  If you should happen to notice a mermaid in your vicinity, then you should do your best to avoid contact. I do understand that they make lovely subjects for sketching, but you should avoid the temptation to move closer. If you happen to spend a great deal of time cavorting in the oceans, then your chances of an encounter are obviously greater. If that is the case, then I suggest that you consider that there are a great many other things (things with lots of teeth) that lurk in the ocean that are liable to want to eat you. I would worry about ways to avoid them (and whether the copious amounts of sea bathing are actually worth it) first.

  Banishing Banshees Does Not Work

  I repeat that banishing banshees does not work. It simply does not. You can try all you like, but it will be a waste of both time and resources. You will be engaging in a battle that you cannot win. Further, you will be engaging in a battle in which you would gain nothing even if you did manage to succeed.

  The first thing which you need to understand is that banshees are harbingers. This means that they do not actually cause anything to happen. They just report on what they think is about to be. Think of them like you do your local weatherman. He (or she) does not actually make it rain, snow, or drop sleet on your head. The weatherman just tells you how likely it is that such events will occur in the near future.

  Banshees are the same way. They do not cause an unfortunate incident to befall yourself or your family. They just let you know that they think it likely that such an incident is about to occur. It just so happens that banshees go about this “letting you know” in a particularly annoying manner. Some would even term it creepy. It really is not their fault that they do not have a mastery of the language of the persons with whom they are attempting to communicate.

  Banshees wail. That is their natural language, and they are not about to change that simply because we find them difficult to understand. In point of fact, they cannot change their method any more than you can change the fact that you are a native speaker of whatever language it may happen to be that you are.

  My advice to you if you find yourself the focus of a banshee that has decided that it needs to give you a warning is to find yourself some good quality earplugs and wait it out. I realize that that sounds dreadfully dull and practical instead of some harrowing list of macabre tasks to complete to make the banshee go away, but there you have it. The wailing will eventually stop. Banshees stay until they feel that they have adequately delivered their news. Then, they leave you alone until the next time they find it necessary to make a pronouncement.

  I can assure you (from personal experience) that the earplugs do work. It will not block out the sound completely (they do get rather loud once they get going), but it will do a sufficient job that you should be able to sleep provided that you are adequately tired (which is pretty much a given by the time you reach the point that you have resorted to the earplugs).

  What, you ask, about the warning that they are conveying to you? What can you do about that? This is a trickier proposition. Remember what I said about banshees being the messenger and not the cause? Whether the banshee wails the night away, disappears, or never comes at all does not change whatever it is that they thought was coming -- much like it matters not to the weather whether or not there are any weathermen around to make their forecasts.

  Allow me to let you in on a little secret -- there is no such thing as fate. Our lives are a complicated string of decisions that unfurl out in front of us. It unravels out in a line that can loop or curve or stretch out straight. It can cross paths with other strings and even knot up into a tangle that looks impossible to undo. There is nowhere that it has to go. There are times when it looks like it is going in a certain direction. There are times when it appears to be on a collision course with something or someone. These possibilities are what banshees see and respond to when they are dishing out their warnings.

  Time and our choices (and the choices of everyone else) change the patterns of the likely paths and, at times, turn them around altogether. Banshees cannot predict people’s choices. Therefore, their warnings of likely things are no more accurate than banking on rain when the weatherman tells you that there is a 70 percent chance. Things happen. Things change. People make choices. Banshees can end up being wrong just like the weatherman can fail to accurately predict what will happen tomorrow.

  The important thing to remember is that just because a message has been delivered does not mean that the message itself has to be correct. You might attempt to put yourself on your guard, strive to be extra careful, or one of those other things that people in the stories that you hear at your grandmother’s knee try to do, but that may not be your wisest course of action. How long would you continue to do so? What extremes would you be willing to go to in your attempt to ward off a nebulous threat that you cannot even specify? Do you want to live like that?

  That is not even considering that there is such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy. I will not dwell on that subject in detail here, but you should know that both history and legend are full of people who made so many decisions in an attempt to ward off something that they had been told was “fated” to happen that they themselves were the ones who caused whatever it was to occur. That is not (by the way) some sort of proof of fate as some would have you believe. It is really further proof of the fact that our choices are extremely important.

  It is this confusion about fate and a misunderstanding of the cause and effect spectrum that leads people to think that attempting to get rid of the banshee herself is some sort of goal to work toward that will result in the warning being moot. As previously stated, you need to understand the difference between the messenger and the message.

  First, you will have little to no luck trying to influence a banshee to leave you alone. They have no interest in what you think about them choosing to show up in your life. It is not actually about you. It is about their belief that they are called to broadcast what they see. They do not care if their information is unwanted -- let alone whether or not someone appreciates the form of the delivery. They convey it for their personal satisfaction.

  Someone may try to tell you that they have some secret to removing the banshee and therefore whatever ill luck is being forecast -- that should be your first clue that whoever it is is trying to sell you something and has no idea what he or she is talking about. Anyone with a functional knowledge of banshees understands the messenger/message dichotomy. You are going to end up paying (what will likely be an outrageous fee) for someone to stand arou
nd and pretend to do something until the banshee leaves of her own accord along the same timeline that she would have done without any form of intercession at all.

  Save your money. Or, better yet, spend it on the previously mentioned ear protection. You can always find a use for that later. Be practical about it above all. You are a human being. Life is fraught with risks. You should know that already even without a banshee around to wail it at you in the night.

  Closing Thoughts

  There are, of course, large numbers of fantasy creatures that I have not touched on in this guide. It was not intended to be exhaustive. The above are the creatures most trifled with by modern fiction and likeliest to be encountered by human beings (still rare, but likeliest). It is my sincere hope that the advice offered in this guide proves to be helpful to those who read it and that many unnecessary and unpleasant situations may be avoided.

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  Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this story, then please leave a review. The author would enjoy seeing your thoughts. You can find out more about works by this author at sarajamiesonblog.wordpress.com.