Our first night of the drive to the Highlands, we spent the night in a castle. It was actually a hotel, which was a converted castle. Scotland is known for its beauty and for its tales of heroism and magic. We didn’t really expect to see any real magic on our trip but we are always up for an adventure. We headed down the long road that skirted the edge of the forest until we reached the castle. It was everything we had hoped for and we couldn’t wait to explore.
We unpacked our things and headed outside to check out the grounds. As we crossed the meadow we noticed a broken-down stone bridge so we headed over to look at it, when suddenly we notice a large fairy circle on the meadow.
If you are not familiar with a fairy circle, it is a ring of toadstools left behind after the fairies have had a dance party. They always dance in a circle and a little of their magic spills out causing the ring. If you are lucky you can catch a glimpse of them and maybe learn their dance, but usually you just see the ring.
We all took turns crouching in the middle of the ring to see if we could see any sign of the fairies or find some other interesting items. We soon found that the only thing that remained of the night’s festivities was the ring. The fairies had, of course, returned to the forest as soon as the sun came up. We’d have to wait until nightfall to try to get a glimpse of them. Since the Northern Lights had been rumored to be further south than normal we hoped to get a glimpse of them as well as the fairies. It seems only natural that fairies will have a big party every night that the Northern Lights are visible.
We headed back to the castle and ate a great meal then headed to the library (which doubled as the bar) to sample the local whisky and wait until nightfall. When the sky was sufficiently dark we headed out. Unfortunately there was low cloud cover and we couldn’t see the Northern Lights. We felt that the fairies would not come out and dance again because the lights couldn’t be seen. No “real” magic was observed that night, but in the morning, we saw that the steamy “two lover embracing” statute was actually putting off steam. A nice bit of magic to start the day.
