When it didn’t, she sighed. “All right, what’s a Fomorian?” she asked patiently. Why is it that people who know something expect you to somehow pick it out of their mi—oh. Well, I could do that, I suppose, but it would be terribly rude. Mary paused a moment, gathering her thoughts. “Well, according to really ancient Celtic stories, humans weren’t the first people here—certainly weren’t the first people in Ireland, where you find most of these stories, although the Celtic stories from Britain often as not mirror the Irish ones. The first ‘people,’ if you can call them that, were the Fomorians. They were extremely powerful magicians. Most of them seem, at least in the legends, to be monsters of various sorts. Creatures with the bodies of men and the heads of animals and reptiles, or reptilian humans. Their leader, Balor, was a giant with one eye.” Mary paused, as Nan frowned. “That sounds familiar,” she said. “Like a Greek Cyclops,”
