The Piskey
I only ever lead astray the ones who won't look up from the path.
Who they are
Cornish small-folk — grinning, pointed-eared, red-capped, and wingless, because piskeys walk, and they walk you. He works the bramble tangles of the moor at twilight with a foxfire lantern, and the West Country testimony about his kind is consistent: travelers piskey-led, walked in circles within sight of their own chimney smoke, found dazed a field from home — and the cure known in every parish, so simple it's insulting: turn your coat inside out and the spell breaks. He is not malice. He is correction with a sense of humor. He picks the sleepwalkers, the ones grinding down a road they stopped choosing years ago, and he spins them until they finally look up. The wisps drifting beyond him are laying a false path right now. It is not for you — unless you refuse the lesson.
Drawn upright — the teaching
A little disruption is knocking you off the automatic path — the plan collapsing, the route closed, the day refusing to behave. It is not against you. You've been sleepwalking the same road so long your feet do it without you, and the interruption is the favor. Loosen your grip, laugh at yourself, and look again: the better way was there all along, one field over, and you'd have walked right past it.
The working
When you catch yourself going in circles — same argument, same commute, same 3 a.m. thought — do the old cure for being pixy-led: turn your coat inside out. Literally. The coat, the jumper, one sock if that's what dignity allows — and wear it a while as you walk on. It works because it makes you ridiculous, and glamour cannot grip a person who is laughing at themselves; while you're grinning, the real road shows. Then take the turn you never take. Leave him a bit of bread at the field's edge for the lesson — no thank-you, just: "Blessings on the trickster; the joke landed."
Drawn reversed — the shadow
You're going in circles — busy, distracted, worn thin, getting nowhere — and this isn't harmless; it has teeth. Whole years go into circles like this. The circling has quietly become the destination, and you are the only one who hasn't noticed.
The undoing
Stop walking. Turn the coat. Then look again at the thing you swore was true — the job that was going to get better, the person who was going to change, the plan that only needs one more push — and say out loud what you see the second time. Keep refusing to look and you'll wander the bramble till dark, and dark on the moor is his hours, not yours.
Its tree · the ogham
Muin — the bramble. Walk into a bramble patch certain of your line and you'll cross your own trail three times before you notice. The vine circles; that is its nature. His letter's lesson: the tangle only holds the traveler who won't admit he's in one.
Sit with this
Where are you walking in circles and calling it progress? And what would you see if you looked at it inside-out?