Tin Whistle Trade

The sound of a tin whistle came floating across the moors, as if carried on the early morning mist.
The man thought briefly that he knew the tune. It was something old, notes painted on air, like the landscape of his youth spent in the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains.

The song brought with it a chill of an old memory, something long forgotten, stirred to the surface again. The man tugged on his jacket, fished in the pocket for his battered pack of smokes as the memory gained strength with the dawning light.

A boy carried a crate of bottles out the back door of the pub in Enniskerry. He loved helping his father but disliked the darkness of the alley. Back here the noise from the pub was muted, and the doors of neighboring businesses were dark. He felt alone and apart from the world of light and sound.

All at once there came a thin, high whistle. The disjointed notes quickly came together as a jaunting tune, drawing closer as it traveled up the alley toward the boy. An older man playing a shiny, tin whistle, half danced into the dim light at the pub’s back door. He stopped before the boy, smiling. He had a smart green suit with red shoes adorned with buckles that shined like his instrument. His face was framed in a wiry red beard and if not for the tall, green top hat, he would have been no taller than the boy. He pocketed the whistle.

“Does your father sell good whiskey in that pub?” he asked the boy, then began to chuckle.

“Is there any such thing as bad whiskey then though?” and the man laughed louder, and it turned his cheeks a ruddy red.

The boy stared. This was like no man he’d even seen in town, or in his father’s pub. He was slight, and his bright eyes seemed to spark with his words. He had a strange accent too, almost musical.

The strange man’s eyes settled on the boy’s neck, where a gold pendant of St. George sat on heavy chain. Something passed through those electric eyes then, a flash of something dark the boy thought. The man’s smile widened but there was no mirth in it.

“That’s a pretty thing, I have something pretty too” He singsonged, and retrieved something from the pocket where he’d stowed the whistle.

He extended a hand out to the boy and opened his fingers to reveal what lay on his palm.

It was a gold doubloon. “Pirate treasure!”, the boy thought, and his heart leapt with the sight. He reached for it eagerly, wanting to hold it suddenly as if all the adventures of the high seas were contained within it.

The man drew his hand back sharply. Then, cocked his head to one side, as if thinking.

“A trade then?” he suggested, pointing to the boy’s neck. The boy clutched at the medal, the last thing his mother had given him. He looked again at the piece of gold in the man’s hand.

“Is it real?”, the boy stammered.

“As real as I am!” the man answered, thumping his chest for emphasis.

The boy ached to possess the pirate gold. It called to him with the same magic of his richly bound adventure books.
The man crept closer, licking the corners of his mouth with a tiny flicking tongue, anticipating the weight of the medal in his fingers.
All at once the back door of the pub flew open.

“Get on with ya!” the boy’s father bellowed, towering over the stranger. “We’ll have none of your trickery here!”

The boy watched as the man’s features seemed to dissolve and reform as an angry, withered mask of mottled fresh. It made a grab for the boy with razored fingers, a black mouth keening and hissing, before it turned and flew into the darkness.

“Damn Bloody Leprechauns”, the boy’s father spat, and pulled the boy inside after him.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PROMPT: A LEPRECHAUN
In traditional Irish legend, the Leprechaun was a shoe-maker, dressed in green and red. Pots of gold at the end of a rainbow were later additions to the legend.
In this story, make the Leprechaun evil!

WORD COUNT: 666 words