Member-only story
THE NEED FOR EVIL
The Green Devil
They needed a villain. I was born green.
I was born green. That was all.
I had a name. My mother called me by it when she wanted me to come home before dark. I can still remember her standing at the door, calling my name as the evening light fell upon the fields. My father called me by it, too. So did my friends. It was an ordinary name, and I never thought much about it.
But the humans did not call me by my name. They called me a leprechaun. It was not my name. It was a word they used to decide what kind of thing I was.
I made shoes, drank whiskey, and sometimes took a nap. I did not remember cheating anyone. I did not remember stealing any gold. Yet the humans called me a devil.
I do not remember why they first called me so. In the year when the cows of the village died, somebody said he had seen me near the cowshed. In the year when the wheat did not grow well, another man said I had been walking through the fields. When the bridge was washed away, somebody claimed to have seen me staring into the river. Every year, there were more witnesses. But not one of them knew what I had actually done.
