Author Notes: “Aoife, the Queen Maker” is the story
the pixies told me when I wanted to write something
else. Sometimes I write a story with a theme and plot
that I have created; sometimes I just tell a story as
it unfolds in my mind. The story I originally intended
to create was a scary story with lots of wild, kinky
sex, but evidently the spirits of the glen had a
different idea, and they spoke a totally different
story in my head. It is a sweet, poignant story of
true love intertwined with ancient Irish myths that
gave birth to the holiday we call Halloween.

WARNING! All of my writing is intended for adults over
the age of 18 ONLY. Stories may contain strong or even
extreme sexual content. All people and events depicted
are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or
dead is purely coincidental. Actions, situations, and
responses are fictional ONLY and should not be
attempted in real life.

If you are under the age or 18 or do not understand
the difference between fantasy and reality or if you
reside in any state, province, nation, or tribal
territory that prohibits the reading of acts depicted
in these stories, please stop reading immediately and
move to somewhere that exists in the twenty-first
century.

***

It was dark and cold and rainy and lonely as I drove
north on a little used two lane highway that wound its
twisted way through the timbered foothills. The reason
I was in my car driving 90 miles in the middle of an
October night was because a man whom I had never met,
Doctor Nathaniel L. Sorensen, had summoned me to his
death bed.

That may sound like an odd way of putting it, but it
is exactly what his grandson, Earl, told me when he
called me just before ten o’clock tonight. “W,” he
began, “I have a very strange favor to ask of you. My
grandfather has asked me to call you. He says to tell
you that he is dying tonight and he is summoning you
to his death bed because you are the only one who can
understand the story he has to tell. Is there any way
you can come up here?”

Earl was a rather famous astronomer and professor.
Like his grandfather, he spent his nights staring at
the heavens – well, actually, in Earl’s case, he was
usually looking at monitors that gave him a numeric or
visual representation of what his giant array of radio
telescopes were seeing as they gathered information
from the skies. His grandfather, affectionately known
by his peers as “Night Sky Nate,” had actually spent
many, many nights staring through the eyepiece of
giant telescopes located on distant mountaintops all
over the world.

What the elder Dr. Sorensen had to tell me, and why he
thought I was the only one who would understand, was a
complete mystery to me. I had never met the man. I had
never spoken with him. I had never communicated with
him in any way in my entire life. I knew of him only
as Earl’s grandfather.

Earl and I had become friends when we met on-line in
an electronics discussion forum. We were both
interested in remote electronic control circuits. He
was, of course, interested in better ways to control
his telescopes. I was interested in better ways to
control… shall we say, more interesting aspects of
human behavior. One of my sidelines is various
electronic devices that stimulate the body for the
purpose of pain, pleasure, or control.

One session, Earl asked me outright what I actually
did with some of the control circuits we discussed. I
told him, “You would be shocked… pun intended.”

He answered, “You would be surprised what it takes to
shock me.” And then added “…pun understood.”

He then asked me to meet him in a private chat room
and gave me a link to a room on a different web site –
a site that I knew well. The chat room location was on
a very private BDSM site that catered to the tastes of
those who liked mechanical overtones to their bondage
and discipline.

In answer to my un-asked question, he typed, “I spend
my life looking for patterns in the sky. I recognized
the pattern of your posts – what abbreviations you use
and don’t use, things like that. The same pattern
shows up on several sites under several different
login names.”

I made a mental note to myself to look into ways of
masking that weakness in the future, and met him on
the new site. It turned out we had more in common that
just an interest in control circuits. Earl became one
of my very discreet customers. He was also a big fan,
and sometimes helpful editor, of many of my stories.
Evidently he must have said something about me to his
grandfather, because now the dying doctor was
summoning me to his death bed to hear, and perhaps
write his story.

What a super-intelligent, apparently straight-laced
astronomer who spent most of his life staring at the
stars might have to say that I hadn’t heard many times
before was a mystery to me, but deep in my gut I had a
feeling that this mystery was well worth exploring.

When I got to the hospice building next to the
hospital, Earl met me at the door. He said flatly,
“Nate says he is going to die tonight.” Then he
shrugged and added, as if in explanation, “It’s his
birthday. The doctors don’t think so, but his father
predicted his own death, and so he thinks that he
knows when he is going to die also. He says tonight is
the night.”

Since I was entering a hospice area, I was expecting
to find a very frail and decrepit old man, but when I
stepped into to the room, Dr. Sorensen was sitting up
in his bed reading an old field journal. “Come in W,”
he greeted me. “You are probably wondering why you are
here.”

“That is more than an understatement,” I replied.

He motioned me to a chair that had been placed at his
bedside, closed the notebook, and folded his hands
over the cover as it lay on his lap. “Let’s begin at
the beginning, shall we.”

He looked and sounded just like a college professor
about to start a lecture. I shouldn’t have been
surprised at that. He had, at one time, been a very
prominent professor as well as a renowned astronomer.

“Actually, let’s start before the beginning,” he
corrected himself. “My father was born on April 20,
1909. In case the significance of that date escapes
you, that was the day that Haley’s Comet passed
closest to the earth. He died on February 9, 1986,
again as Haley passed closest to the earth. He always
said that he was going to follow Mark Twain’s example
and ‘come in with the comet and go out with the
comet.’ He did.”

I must have looked somewhat confused, because he
looked up at me and added, “It’s all part of the
story. Be patient. I’m getting to it… I’m getting to
it.”

He smiled, took a deep breath, and started anew. “I
was born on October 21, 1930. The significance of that
date, of which I am sure you are unaware, is that…”

I interrupted him and finished his sentence with “it
is the peak of the Orionid meteor showers.”

It was his turn to look surprised. “A student of the
stars, are we?”

“No,” I answered, “but Earl is never available from
October 19 through 23 because chucks of old comet are
falling out of the sky.”

“All comets are old,” instructed the good doctor,
“they are the left-over debris from creation. And the
chucks don’t fall out of the sky, the earth merely
passes through the comet’s trail of debris. The
particular comet that causes the Orionids is none
other than my father’s old friend, Haley, itself.” He
laughed as he added, “That means that I am a chip off
my father’s comet.”

His laugh soon dissolved into a coughing fit. When it
subsided he continued, “I came in with the chips and I
am planning to go out with the chips. The cancer
doctors say I have another few weeks or even months,
but tonight is as good a night to die as any other,
and I might as well keep up the family tradition – – –
but first I have to tell you my story.”

He paused. But this time he didn’t laugh…, and he
didn’t cough. Instead he went very quiet with his eyes
taking on a very, very far away look. I had seen that
look before – usually in combat veterans.
Psychiatrists call it “the thousand mile stare.”
Whatever memory was flashing through his mind was very
powerful and highly traumatic. It was very quite in
that room as we all waited for him to break the
silence.

After a few moments, he sighed, took a deep breath,
and continued, “I need to tell you some things about
the arrows from Orion’s bow that I have never written
down for anyone except myself…” He held up the
notebook. “… and I have never shown anyone this
field journal – not even Earl. No one would have
believed me, and if I had ever published any of this,
I would have been laughed out of academia.”

“Earl has shown me some of the things that you write.”
He looked at me over the top of his glasses. His eyes
were now a very bright blue. “I think you will
understand… and I am sure that you can tell my story
to the world. I no longer care what my fellow
professors think of me. They can put it down to death-
bed lunacy….. but it is the truth….. the absolute,
god-awful, source-of-myth-and-mysteries truth.”

He paused to open the field journal that was again
resting beneath his hands. “W, I want you to have this
when we are through here. Everything is written down
in it… even the original Gaelic. Maybe you can pass
it on to someone who might be around in 2025, or even
2063.”

He again looked at me over the top of his glasses and
raised his eyebrows as if to ask if I was ready. I
nodded and he began, “On my nineteenth birthday,
October 21, 1949, I was stationed overseas with the
navy as – what else – a weatherman. My interest was
astronomy, not meteorology, but the Navy had enough
navigators and as the recruiter told me, ‘Stars don’t
affect ships at sea, storms do.’ They wanted storm
watchers, not star gazers and my enlistment choices
boiled down to being a weatherman or a ship’s cook.”

He gave me a very wry smile. “I have always been a
terrible cook, but I can read a thermometer with the
best of them. A hitch in the Navy would pay for
college, and besides, it was right after the war and
the draft was still in place. They hadn’t drafted
anybody since ’47, but I figured it was better to eat
Navy chow for a few years than risk being drafted into
an infantry squad if things heated up with the
Russians or someone else.”

“In any case, everything worked out pretty well. I
ended up with a cushy post on a hillside in Ireland
near Birr Castle. The Earl’s great observatory had
been dismantled during ‘The Great War,’ but it was
still a place rich in history for someone like me who
was interested in the stars.”

He looked down a bit sheepishly. “I’ve never told Earl
where his name came from. I wanted him to be named
after the man who designed and built the great Birr
Castle telescope and first saw proof of spiral
galaxies. But I couldn’t remember the proper name of
the third Earl of Rosse. So, when my daughter was
considering what to name her first son, I suggested
‘Earl.'”

He looked up at the ceiling as though he was watching
the distant galaxies in his mind. Then he shook his
head as if to clear his thoughts and bring himself
back to the present. “Anyway, there I was smack dab in
the middle of the Emerald Isle with not a whole lot to
do except take temperature and barometric readings a
couple of times a day – and there were four of us
stationed there to do that. I made a lot of short day
trips around Demesne to kill time and learn more about
the Celts.”

“In a little, local museum in a nearby town, I came
upon some Gaelic manuscripts that the proprietor said
talked about the Orionid meteor showers, or as the
Celts called them, ‘The Arrows of Orion.’ I took it
into my head to translate those documents and spent
most of a month’s pay to buy high quality copies of
the originals.”

“Gaelic is a god-awful language with too many letters
and not enough words to really make sense in English,
but I did my best with a lot of help from a couple of
local Irish scholars. What intrigued me most was a
warning I found buried in the text that said not to go
walking on the fen during the meteor shower because
‘when an arrow from Orion’s bow falls to the ground at
mid-darkness on ‘Dark Night’ the doorway of the King
Makers will open.'”

“At least, that’s what I thought it said. A local
scholar, who had been teaching me Gaelic, told me that
‘King Makers’ should be ‘Queen Makers’ because the
Celts didn’t have Kings. They had Queens – Queens
known for their beauty and their daring and their
physical ability. Brave generals who had won great
battles would be rewarded with a night or two in bed
with the Queen. That not only served to provide
incentive to the generals, it also provided brave
breeding stock for future Queens to rule over the
Celtic tribes.”

“This same scholar assured me that ‘Dark Night’ was a
reference to Shavnah. If you transliterate the word
from Gaelic into English letters, you end up with
Samhain, but he was adamant it was pronounced,
‘Shavnah.’ He was especially adamant that Gerald
Gardiner had gotten it wrong when he pronounced it
‘Soween.'”

“Shavnah is the original basis for what eventually
became Halloween. It is the night of the first dark of
the moon following the Autumnal Equinox. My tutor
noted that the Romans took the holiday back with them
after they ALMOST conquered Ireland around 45 CE. They
moved it to November 1, and the night before became
known as ‘All Hallows Eve,’ or ‘Halloween.’ In today’s
calendar, Shavnah is somewhere in the first 21 days of
October, not on October 31.”

Dr. Sorensen paused to let all that information sink
into my very confused skull. “In 1949, my birthday…,
and the peak of the Orionid meteor showers, fell on
Shavnah, as it did in 1968 and 1979, and will again in
2025 and 2063.” He gave me a very mysterious smile and
went on, “I was back on those hillsides in ’68 and
’79, but I will have to miss 2025.”

Another shake of the head brought him back to his
story. “In ’49 it was a very clear, very dark night,
and the meteor display was phenomenal. Looking up at
stars that you would never see in the light pollution
that exists today, I could clearly see the full
outline of the mighty hunter and watch as arrow after
arrow seemed to leave his bow and flash across the
night sky. Then one of the ‘arrows’ fell to earth not
more than a few yards from where I was standing. I’m
sure that it was nothing more than a speck of dust or
a very small pebble by the time it hit the ground, but
that close, the flash was nearly blinding.”

“As my eyes began to readjust to the darkness, I
thought at first that the flash had damaged my
retinas. I was sure that something was wrong with my
vision because I could not believe what my eyes showed
me. Standing there before me was the most beautiful
woman I had ever seen. She was tall, with a body any
Olympic athlete would die for. Her deep-copper-colored
hair wound around her body nearly to her feet. Her
nipples were bright pink, and stood stiff and erect in
the cold, night air. The hair between her legs was a
brighter shade of copper-orange and curled tightly
against her cleft.”

“I shook my head as if to clear an odd hallucination,
but the nude woman remained standing before me and
began to approach me. As she walked slowly toward me,
she said softy, ‘There is not much time. The door
remains open only for a short while. We must make a
Queen before the energy dissipates.’ At least, that’s
what I think she said. She was speaking a very strange
form of Gaelic, and I had enough trouble trying to
understand the local version.”

“She pulled me into her arms and began tugging at my
clothing. Soon we were both lying naked on the spongy
soil of the Irish fen. Our love making was frantic,
she, from a need only she could understand, and I from
my lust for her nearly perfect body. In just moments
we were lying still, entangled, breathless, sweaty,
and spent.”

“‘We have made a Queen,’ she said to me. ‘Now we can
take our time and truly enjoy each other. You may call
me Eve.’ I didn’t learn until later that Eve was
spelled A-o-i-f-e.”

“We made love all night. I was 19, and that was
possible for me then. In the morning, we returned to
my apartment together. I was shirtless, she was
wearing nothing but my shirt and coat. It was
scandalously short for that day, but would not even be
noticed today. I wasn’t sure how I was going to
explain her to my roommates, let alone to Mrs.
O’Malley.”

“Mrs. O’Malley, our landlord, was an extremely
fastidious, little old Irish lady who ‘didn’t put up
with any shenanigans in her place.’ She was sitting on
the front porch as we came walking up the path.”

“I was still trying to figure out what to say when Eve
spoke to her in Gaelic.

Mrs. O’Malley’s eyes went wide and she crossed herself
rapidly several times. ‘Of course, dearie,’ she
answered. ‘I will put you up in the spare room until
we can make the arrangements for the wedding.'”

“As Eve walked up the steps and went into the house,
Mrs. O’Malley pulled me aside and said to me in her
heavily lilted English, ‘So, Nate, me boy, you just
had to go wandering on the fen on Dark Night when the
arrows were shooting, did ye? Well, the door opened
for ye, and you were chosen. Now you’ve gotten
yourself a Queen Maker for a wife. Aoife tells me that
the Queen has been made, but understand this: You be
good to her, and the leprechauns will envy your luck.
You treat her wrong, and you will envy those in the
deepest pit of hell.'”

“I was deeply in lust, if not love for Eve. Mrs.
O’Malley’s words overcame any hesitancy on my part,
and I answered her, ‘I love Eve. Of course I will
marry her, and I would never treat her wrong.'”

“Mrs. O’Malley answered, ‘Aye, you will marry Eve. She
will wait for you and you will wait for her. That is
foretold in the stars and written in the stones. But I
was speaking about the Queen. You love her and raise
her right or my spirit will track you down when I’ve
gone beneath the sod…, and you will see a side of me
that no one above the green has ever seen.'”

“I married Eve about six weeks later. A very aged
priest conducted the ceremony far out in the
countryside in a very old church that seemed to be
almost in ruins. I expected something close to the
church’s standard wedding ceremony, but instead of the
regular book, he used a very, very old leather bound
volume that appeared to be written totally in ancient
Gaelic with elaborate calligraphy on every page. He
spoke most of the service in that same, strange form
of Gaelic that Eve had spoken and I had trouble
following a lot of it. When we got to the vows, he
repeated each statement in English for my benefit.”

“‘Eve,’ he said, ‘you have come through the door and
chosen this mortal man. Will you love him in the time
you have together and wait for him until the arrows
call him home?'”

“She answered, ‘Aye.'”

“‘Nathaniel,’ he said to me, ‘you have been chosen. Do
you accept your chosenness? Do you promise to carry
the Queen to her throne and love and protect her for
as long as you live? And do you promise to wait for
Eve until the night on which the arrows call you back
so that you may be together forever?'”

“I answered, ‘Yes, I do,’ but I really had no idea
what in the hell he was talking about. None of it made
sense. I just assumed that they used some strange,
ancient marriage ritual in that area.”

“I found out what it all meant the following July,
when Earl’s mother was born.” Dr. Sorensen’s eyes
clouded as he continued. “Roisin was to be our only
child. Eve died in childbirth. Or at least that’s what
the doctors said. Eve had told me a few days before,
with tears in her eyes, that after the child was born,
she would have to be going home, but she would wait
for me there as she had promised. Her grave is on that
hillside where I first met her. By her request, it is
marked only by the shamrocks and wild flowers of the
heath.”

His voice was thick as he continued, “I raised Rose on
my own – not easy for a man going through eight or so
years of college to get a doctorate. She had a fiery
spirit that matched the color of her hair, and in
another age, in another place, could very well have
become a true Queen.”

“Instead, I made sure that she was properly educated
at the best colleges and universities in the world.
She lives out east and is now the head of one of the
top Fortune 500 companies. The chair in her office is
a design based on the throne of the Celtic Queen,
Medb, a mythical warrior Queen of ancient Ireland. A
portrait of Medb in full battle armor hangs behind her
desk. I don’t know where she got that painting, but
the artist painted Medb to look very much like Eve.”

Another look at me over his glasses, “It would appear
that the CEO’s of our large companies are the Kings
and Queens of today and Rose has fulfilled her destiny
in today’s world.”

Then he slumped slightly forward. It was as if he had
expended the last of his energy telling me of the
Queen Makers and the Queen he helped to bring into our
world. He said softly to no one, “Our little Rose has
become a Queen.”

We could almost see the life flowing out of him. With
great effort he raised his head. “Tell my story, W.
Tell it so people will believe. Tell it so someday on
an Irish fen, another Queen Maker can step into our
world and a proper man will be waiting. Maybe she can
stay longer for him than Eve did for me. Tell my
story. Tell the story of Aoife, the Queen Maker and
Queen Rose whom she brought into this world.”

With that his head lolled fully forward. Almost
simultaneous with his final words, the room was filled
with a flash of light accompanied by a loud bang just
outside the window. A nurse came rushing into the
room, “Is everyone all right?” she asked. “You won’t
believe what just happened. A small meteor hit the
ground right next to the building. I was afraid it
might have broken the window, it was so close.”

“Everything’s fine,” I answered. All eyes followed
mine as I looked back at the bed, “That was just the
door opening so Dr. Sorensen could go back to a
hillside on the heath to be with his beloved Eve.”

We all stood around in the room silently as Earl
softly said his final goodbyes to his grandfather.
Most of what he said was too quiet for me to hear, but
at one point I could clearly him say, “I should have
believed you, gramps. We could have gathered the whole
family to be here tonight instead of just me. But I
guess you wanted it this way. I hope you told W
everything you wanted him to say.”

When he was finished and we were all starting to go
out the door, I paused and turned back to the bed. I
addressed the body lying in the bed, but I was
actually speaking to a spirit that was probably now
walking the heath in Ireland with the woman he had
loved – and waited for – his entire life. “Don’t worry
Nate,” I told him, “I will tell the world the story of
Aoife, the Queen Maker. And if I am still above the
sod, I will be on the fen that surrounds Birr Castle
on Dark Night in 2025. I know that I will be too old
to be chosen – if I had ever been worthy of that – but
maybe, just maybe, the door will open near me, and you
and Eve can tell me more of the story of the Queen-
makers.”