Bite-size shivers
Our UK break on the Isle of Skye was more than magical.
Scrolling through sunshinedrenched images of overseas holiday destinations online, I sighed. My husband Mark and I had moved back to my Mum and Dad’s in Liverpool for lockdown.
After months of being cooped up, we were feeling a bit stir-crazy and in need of a getaway, especially as I’d been very ill with the virus in March 2020.
‘We can still have a UK break,’ Mark reminded me. So we booked to go away with my parents to the Isle of Skye, sharing a quaint two-bed croft, with a loch at the bottom of the garden, and horses in the fields nearby.
‘Magical,’ I beamed taking in the stunning view. We enjoyed days out in the rugged countryside and evenings spent chatting in front of a log fire.
Fairies and ancient magicians were part of Skye’s folklore, we learned.
One day we visited a stunning glen with crooked, gnarled trees.
‘It looks like fairy world,’ I joked when suddenly… Whoosh. I gasped. A swift, strange sensation, like a gust of energy, had passed by me and seemed to land by a nearby tree.
‘What’s wrong?’ Mark asked, concerned, as I walked in a bit of a trance towards the tree.
Rocks were strewn underneath it and a strange sort of basalt stone caught my eye. ‘Dad! Bring your camera!’ I called. He snapped the stone as, transfixed, I picked it up and placed a 20 pence piece under the tree.
‘An offering to the fairies,’ I murmured, a feeling of joy spreading through my body.
Squeezing the stone, it broke into four pieces. ‘The fairies must want us to have a piece each!’ I smiled.
When we returned to the croft, we looked through our photos of the glen.
On the photo of me with the stone there was an orb with a smiley face. I gasped and realised that, for the first time in months, I could breathe more easily, something I’d been struggling with since contracting Covid.
Meanwhile, everyone was using the croft’s Wifi to check their emails.
‘Oh wow!’ whooped Mark as he read his messages.
He’d been fretting about his little sister Emma who’d received disappointing A level grades, but she’d messaged to say she’d been regraded with top marks and had landed her dream university place.
‘I’ve got good news, too,’ grinned Dad. He’d received a message saying the charity he worked for had received some more funding.
Mum had received good news as well – an email to say her cat had given birth to healthy kittens, and her eBay business had had a sudden, mysterious boost in orders.
‘Must be our magic stones,’ smiled Mum. We agreed, it was odd how all the good news had come after we’d each taken ownership of a fairy stone.
We still each keep our precious, mysterious memento of that holiday close by – touching my stone gives me an enormous sense of peace and freedom… and hopefully luck will continue to come our way.