The Truth About Fairies Read online

  The wind and rain had at last died down to a point where her dress merely rippled against her otherwise naked body – again, another instruction of Tinker’s – and the magical cloth only slowly became first diaphanous and then transparent.

  She made her way to the clearing where a single, massive oak dominated everything around it, its oxen-thick branches spreading out as if specifically constructed to support the entire world.

  By this time, of course, her most precious silken garment was thoroughly wet. The cloth lightly rippled about her, until she was seemingly bathed in nothing but moonlight, wearing nothing but the purest imagination of a dress.

  Naturally, she didn’t find this in anyway unseemly, or believe it suggested impurity on her part in any way.

  She had been assured that the only person waiting for her here would be the fairy herself – or, as Tinker had explained, in this guise, in this form, she would have to be a he. For, of course, one form that fairies can easily take on is human form. As for gender – well, that all comes down to whichever they fancy taking on at the time.

  And to allow all this to take place, Tinker had sadly agreed to allow the fairy her freedom, provided he performed this one last, vital task – to ensure Timinamma would be with child, to grant her the child she so craved for!

  *

  When the fairy appeared, he was just as Timinamma had imagined him.

  Like her, he was garbed in the very purest moonsilk. He glowed, as if he had covered himself in nothing but the reflective oils of crushed mistletoe berries.

  She approached him, wrapped her arms about him as he embraced her, smelt, tasted, his skin, her skin.

  With the last blow of the storm, a huge bolt of lightning rushed down from the still threateningly dark clouds. The charge struck the great oak, spread out all along its limbs, reaching out and out to its very limits, making every single element of its being glow, shudder, burst into life.

  It was covered, everywhere, in tiny, brightly glistening moons. Fairy moons that seemed to be sprouting up from the earth itself, shooting up and up, trying to reach back up into and take up their rightful place once more in the heavens.

  They were the moon’s tears. They were the glistening baubles of a fountain, frozen. They were bubbles, captured, made to exist forever.

  They were Timinamma’s tears of bliss, made into the world’s most entrancing jewels.

  *

  As she slept, Timinamma dreamt of stars, of space, of being these things rather than being amongst them.

  She awoke with a satisfied smile, even though she was alone, even though her wondrous dress had vanished.

  Her skin felt like the smoothest, lightest silk anyway.

  The leaves of the great oak rising everywhere about her rustled musically in a light breeze. Amongst the leaves, curling along every branch and stem, the mistletoe delicately whispered too, its berries gleaming like the white spume of a wave’s last surge.

  Next to her, the fairy had left two keys. Unfortunately, one was so small Timinamma couldn’t fail to miss it, the other so large she couldn’t fail to ignore it.

  And this was despite the incredible joy she felt as she stroked her already hugely swelling belly.

  *

  Chapter 7

  The swelling of Timinamma’s belly was so remarkably large that she felt sure she must be carrying twins.

  In fact, she was sure she could feel the kicking of two.

  Now such a sudden, inexplicably abrupt pregnancy might have aroused suspicion in the minds of many husbands. Especially as the tinker had left with his horse and cart before anyone had woken that morning after the storm.

  But Timinamma assured Chros that, naturally, this was all part of the wish the fairy had granted her. If their farm had miraculously started producing strawberries the size of hayricks, then why couldn’t they also be blessed with twins overnight?

  And all this, of course, in her mind, in its way, was indeed the truth. Even though she had had to hide the large key she had discovered lying next to her that morning, as she couldn’t think how that could be explained as a part of her story.

  Truth means different things to different people, and that’s no lie.

  Think about it for a moment.

  Chros had exactly what he had always wanted.

  And Timinamma now had exactly what she most desired.

  Now, that’s not to say they both hadn’t been made fools of. In their way, if not in their minds.

  For, as many wiser people might have been able to already guess, the man who had ensured that Timinamma’s wish came true hadn’t been a fairy at all!

  No: he had been an angel.

  And, as everyone knows, that is far, far worse!

  Fairies may be in no way as trustworthy as we are frequently led to believe, but it’s made quite plain in many renowned and highly revered books that a third of all the angels were undoubtedly very bad indeed!

  These very same books reliably inform us that another third of the angels were – or what they term as – neutral.

  That means, of course, they couldn’t decide whether they were good or bad. They sat on the fence. They were, in other words, completely indifferent to a moral imperative – are you good, or not?

  In anyone’s book, that means they were bad, surely?

  So, that’s two thirds of the angles who are bad!

  Thankfully, we’re told the remaining third were good.

  Or, at least, so good that they’re the ones who will be charged with wiping out the whole of humanity when the time arrives for them to just get on with their job and do it!

  But not to worry: apparently, they can fulfil this otherwise completely onerous task with absolutely no qualms, being entirely indifferent to our suffering. A bit like we’re prepared to pour boiling water into an irritatingly irksome ants’ nest.

  You don’t think so? Do you need to be reminded what happened to Sodom and Gomorra? To Lot’s wife, simply for taking a curious peek back?

  You’ve just got to be extremely indifferent to commit an act like that!

  And what have we agreed indifferent means? Well, bad, actually.

  So that’s three thirds of the angels who are bad!

  Which means there’s a more than evens’ chance that, if you’re dealing with an angel, you’re not going to come out of it very well.

  *

  Chros found the large key that Timinamma had hidden.

  She’d hidden it in the kitchen’s cutlery drawer, thinking there was absolutely no chance that Chros would ever go rooting around in there. Such things as kitchen utensils being purely women’s business.

  He’d been looking for an old, bent knife to prise out an even older, bent nail.

  He observed the large key with curiosity. Something so large, so elaborately wrought, so respectfully ancient, must open something very important, he reasoned. Something containing something of great wealth or prestige.

  Due to the fabulously unbelievable size of his farm’s crops, Chros was naturally already wealthy, already admired and envied in the nearby towns and rival farms. He could have lived a life of ease, the farm remarkably almost taking care of itself apart from the harvesting and selling of its produce that, anyway, he could pay teams of men and accountants to accomplish for him.

  The key, however, along with all the secrets it must by rights unlock, intrigued him to distraction. Failing to find the treasure chest or a door to a secret cellar anywhere in his house, he set his teams of men to endlessly digging up his fields, letting his crops rot, or destroying their extensive roots.

  One day, one of his men rushed excitedly towards him; at last, they had uncovered a dark, stone chamber leading down into the bowels of the Earth!

  Resolutely taking his great key in his hands, Chros began to confidently descend the steps, lighting his way with a blazing firebrand.

  He had expected to find a pair of thick, oak doors, perhaps, barring the way into the cellar of some long lost,
long forgotten palace or mansion. But the tunnel simply went on and on. He would have turned around, for fear that he had been tricked and would end up in the underworld, but the tunnel soon began to flatten out. Next it began to rise and rise, the steps becoming ever steeper, as if he were ascending the interior of a towering mountain.

  Which was very odd, because there weren’t any mountains this close to Chros’s patch of the edge of the world.

  The key, however, began to sing.

  Exuberantly sing!

  And with the most wondrously enchanting voice too!

  It also began to glow, as if caught by the rays of an otherwise invisible sun. Chros no longer required the illumination of his blazing torch; the key lit the way forward better than the strongest daylight.

  The light expanded, became ever brighter, until Chros could no longer make out anything surrounding him. The steps were easing off too, until Chros was at last walking along as if out for a peaceful, restful daytime stroll.

  The key sang louder and more joyously than ever as a pair of large, locked gates appeared before him.

  Chros slipped the key into the lock. It fitted perfectly.

  He turned the key.

  As the gates smoothly opened for him, he stepped inside with a satisfied smile.

  *

  Chapter 8

  Despite the surprisingly abrupt swelling of her belly, Timinamma had carried her babies for what had increasingly come to be seen as a never ending period.

  Now, at last, Chros’s sudden and unexpected death brought on the birth pangs.

  When he hadn’t returned from the dark chamber he’d entered, a team of men had warily set off on a search for him, thankfully discovering his body just a few steps down into the tunnel.

  Chros was smiling blissfully, as if he’d finally found the lock he’d been seeking for so long. You see, he hadn’t smiled once since his discovery of the key and the beginning of his all-consuming quest to find the door or chest it opened. There was no sign of the key itself, however.

  The incredibly large swelling of her belly, together with the many kicks she suffered every now and again, had long ago persuaded Timinamma that she was carrying twins. So she was surprised that the chid she eventually give birth to wasn’t only completely alone, but was also ridiculously tiny and delicate too.

  A fairy child, she thought, recalling the moment of conception.

  The girl’s skin was as white, as wondrously glistening, as those moon-struck mistletoe berries.

  Her eyes were as brightly green as the leaves.

  Her hair, as it began to grow, to rapidly reach out and lengthen, seemed to curl in the slightest breeze, as the mistletoe subtly curls its way up the greatest oak.

  It’s colour, however, was that of reflected moonlight on midnight streams and waterfalls.

  Her tiny hands would grip Timinamma’s fingers as if they would never, ever let go: and Timinamma smiled blissfully, for she had never, ever been so incredibly happy.

  *

  Even though it was impossible for anyone who saw her to remain unaware of the girl’s ethereal beauty, her natural grace of movement, Timinamma’s child grew up like any other young girl living on the very edge of the world.

  In fact, the girl’s entire early existence seemed perfectly unremarkable, until the day the Fay Queen decided it was – at last – time to intrude into her life.

  The day, as days usually do (particularly those that will end badly), started innocently enough.

  The girl – let’s call her Luna, for that, after all, is what Timinamma had called her – was out in the woods. She often played here, sometimes alone but more usually with her closest friend Rouger, an almost similarly-aged boy from the neighbouring farm.

  Rouger was in many ways Luna’s complete opposite; his hair red, his skin so freckled it was near enough red itself. He was impetuous, excitable, incorrigibly curious. Yet he was also foolishly courageous and the possessor of an instinctive intelligence that rarely let him down, particularly whenever he eagerly accepted the many challenges he set himself.

  Of course, the young Luna found a boy like that so wonderfully exciting to be with.

  She would giggle, a mix of fear and admiration, as Rouger grasped the rope he’d dangled from a tree rooted at the world’s edge to throw himself out in great circles into that endless space.

  She would scream out in anxious concern when he ran pell-mell from another farm’s chicken coup, clutching the hens he’d decided deserved their freedom.

  In the woods, they would both race along the paths they themselves had made, seeking out any new dens made by foxes or badgers.

  They flattered themselves that they knew every valley, every rise, even every hollow and slight undulation within the woods, at least within a range of a half-day’s brisk run. So they both frowned in puzzlement when, running along one of their familiar paths, they suddenly found themselves in a huge clearing they had never come across before, never even knew existed.

  It was a clearing graced by a spectacularly spreading oak tree, covered in the uncountable, glittering white orbs of mistletoe.

  They stared in awe at the great tree, giggled excitedly, amazed that they had never encountered it before. Luna could see the elated blaze in Rouger’s eyes: he would have to climb it, to see how high he could go.

  Before he could begin his climb however, there was an unexpected noise from the surrounding woods, the racing-heartbeat rhythm of the pounding hooves of a rapidly approaching horse. As if the horse’s increasingly thunderous galloping had disturbed the very wood itself, blossom began to rise up from every nearby hawthorn, to whirl around as if caught in a wind that neither Luna nor Rouger could feel.

  Horse and rider burst through into the clearing, veiled from the children at first by a particularly vigorous swirl of blossom. Now, however, the oncoming rider and horse seemed to dispel the hawthorn flowers encircling it, such that the blossom fell and whirled everywhere like snow, but for a perfect sphere of strangely clear air surrounding them.

  Even so, there was nothing whiter than that horse and rider, for they shone as if struck with the light of the moon. The horse was staggeringly gorgeous, a unicorn but for its lack of a horn. The rider was even more entrancing, a woman of delicate beauty, draped with glistening veils that could have been made of spun mistletoe berries.

  Rouger stared at the incredibly bewitching woman, his eyes wide with astonishment, with (as Luna came to recognise later) longing. The rider’s eyes were locked on Rouger’s; and yet Luna sensed their power as if it were her they had locked upon.

  It was a gaze that used your own eyes as portals, as entrances to your innermost secrets, fears, and needs.

  The rider was amused by Luna’s insecurities, the insecurities she believed she had hidden deep within herself. But the woman’s gaze sought out all these needs, these anxieties, like the mistletoe curls and spreads along the oak’s branches, seeking out every corner, every last twig to serve as a support, eventually burgeoning into its own gleaming life, it’s berries that sparkle as small moons. And each moon is an emotion, and our emotions make us who we are far more than our physical body ever can.

  ‘See what you’re missing, what you should be capable of?’ the woman assuredly declared.

  But to Rouger, the message was completely different.

  ‘I could change the world if I had you!’

  The swiftly approaching rider hadn’t slowed her raging mount in any way. Yet everything about her had slowed, apart from the swirling of the blossom, which spun and swooped everywhere faster than ever. It could have been a snowstorm, yet here the falling flakes were warm, not cold; the blossom stuck to you, enveloped you, it didn’t melt.

  Luna could no longer see anything but the rapidly falling flakes. She heard the laughter of the woman, the joyful whoop of Rouger, the beat of the horse’s hooves, all of it fading, receding.

  ‘Rouger!’ she cried out worriedly. ‘Where are you Rouger?’
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  She reached out into the whirling flowers that were blinding her, hoping she would find her friend where she had seen him only moments before. She blinked, to clear the flakes that had rested on and clouded her eyes: and suddenly, all the swirling blossom had vanished.

  There were no whirling hawthorn flowers, not even one. There was no blossom on the ground. Nor any covering her body in a white sheen, as had been happening only a second ago.

  There was also no great oak, no clearing.

  It was just a regular part of the woods, one she recognised as a part of the path she and Rouger would often take through here.

  But Rouger wasn’t with her.

  Like the blossom, like the beautiful rider and her mount, Rouger had vanished.

  *

  Chapter 9

  With everything around her having changed so much (naturally, she didn’t realise she had something from the clearing firmly embedded in her shoe’s grip), Luna had no idea of the direction the rider and her captive Rouger must have taken.

  All she could presume was that, as the rider surely wouldn’t head towards the farms, she must have gone deeper into the woods.

  Luna ran along the paths, the innumerable forks, taking her farther away from the farms, farther into the woods, crying out Rouger’s name as she went.

  No one back on the farms knew these woods better than she did. There was little point in heading back there for help. Especially when it was in completely the opposite direction to where she needed to be.

  Besides, how would she explain Rouger’s disappearance?

  If she told everyone that the Fay Queen had taken him, they would all assume she was crazy: aren’t all children endlessly told to beware any pure white rider, for fear it may be the Fay Queen?

  Isn’t it regularly beaten into the very youngest child (the edge of the Earth, as has already been explained, is a vastly different place to the rest of the world) that the Fay Queen will kidnap any child foolish enough to gaze in wonder at her rather than immediately fleeing?