Girl Who Swallowed a Faery.

Gordon Holt used to be in the army, and in the army he'd learned how
to survive in the wild. Now he was teaching his daughter Kady how to
survive in the wild.

They were down at Bluebell Woods, between Fenteroon Clumps and
Kenningstock Mill on the river Camel. It was summer.

"Look, ee can eat these," he said, handing Kady a grasshopper. "Goo
on."

"Do you pull the legs off first?" asked Kady.

"Can if ee like," Gordon said. "Can if you're a girl."

Kady didn't want to be insulted. She took the grasshopper. It wriggled
in her fingers. It didn't worry her to eat the grasshopper. She was a
tomboy.

"Goo on," Gordon said.

Kady pushed the grasshopper into her mouth and tried to swallow it
straight down. It stuck in her throat and came back up again. So she
chewed it and swallowed again.

"Good girl," Gordon said. "Anything what jumps in the grass, you can
eat. Remember that."

They walked over the footbridge and up the hill till they were close to
Tresinney.

Kady saw something jumping in the tall bleached grass and pounced. She
missed. The creature flew off through the tops of the grasses. She saw
it land near a wriggly hawthorn by the field wall.

Gordon called to her from the path.

"What ee at girl?"

"I caught one, father!"

"Well, bring it here then."

Kady's hand was down a dark hole between two roots, feeling around. Her
fingers closed over the creature, and she pulled it out. She held it
tight and peeped between her thumb and her curled forefinger. She'd
caught a faery. It was a blonde female faery with puffy red cheeks and
knotted hair in need of a wash. Its eyes were slitted and green and
angry.

Kady had seen faeries before, at Fenteroon Clumps and down at Giant's
Clump, but when she'd told father, he'd scolded her. He'd said faeries
were nasty creatures and if he had his way he'd spray them all dead,
for they'd ruined his crops more than one summer.

Kady was kneeling, and Gordon couldn't see her from where he was on the
path. So, keeping her head bowed she stuffed the faery, head first,
into her mouth. It was bigger than the grasshopper, the size of a
chocolate Santa, and she had trouble getting it all into her mouth at
once.

To make matters worse, the faery was kicking its feet. When Kady tried
to shut her mouth, its feet stuck out between her lips, so she forced
them inside it with the palm of her hand and clamped her jaws
shut.

"Kady, what ee playing at, girl?" Gordon called.

Kady knew the faery wouldn't swallow down in one, so she tried to
crunch it with her teeth. But her teeth didn't cut into it the way
they'd cut into the grasshopper, because of the bones. It was like
chewing on a chicken wing.

Kady sneezed, and before she knew it she'd gulped the faery down with a
shudder. For a moment she felt the faery kicking in her chest, trapped
there like a plastic toy in a pipe, but then the pain vanished.

Gordon swished through the grass towards her.

"Come on," he said. "Dun't mess your feyther about."

"Sorry, dad. I just caught a grasshopper." She held the palms of her
hands up sideways. "It was a big one."

"Where is he then? Let's see."

"Oh, I've et her."

"Oh," Gordon said. "Her?"

"Well, it," Kady said.

"Ee strange, Kady, sometimes," Gordon said.

And they walked home.

*

A week passed. And during that week Kady didn't eat.

"Why wun'ee eat?" Clare Holt said.

"Not hungry, mum."

"Well, if ee dun't eat soon, love, I'm taking ee to doctor's. I dun't
want ee catching that anorexia, do we Gordon?"

"No," Gordon said. "We dunt want no wimps in this family."

But Kady knew what the trouble was. That faery she'd et. She could
still feel it wriggling. It was still alive inside her. You can't eat
when a faery's inside you. That's well known.

"Try some pasty," Clare said. "I knows you likes your pasty, Kady. I
made it special."

"Your mother made it special," Gordon said. "So eat it up."

"I cant," Kady said. "I can't, I can't, I cant."

And she jumped up and ran to her room.

*

"It's just a phase they go through," said Doctor Clack, another week
later. "I advise syrup of prunes."

Kady was in bed.

"Her wun't eat nothing," Clare Holt said, scratching her hand.

"Give her three days, Mrs Holt. If she doesn't improve, we'll have to
put her on a programme."

"A programme?" Kady said.

She was squeezing the pillow to both sides of her head, like giant
earmuffs, as if she didn't want to hear. But she did want to
hear.

"Programme?" Mrs Holt said. "What d'ye mean, programme?"

"Oh, we can feed her through tubes. And if that doesn't work we can
connect her up to electric wires and sort the problem out that way.
We're very modern these days."

"My poor Kady," Clare said.

"Might knock some sense into her," said Gordon, who was hovering in the
background. "I wish we'd had a boy."

*

That night Kady was very frightened. She could feel the faery inside
her trying to get out. And that wasn't the only thing. Now there were
other faeries in the room with her.

First had come a brown one, just before sunset, buzzing in the curtains
like a moth. Then others, in threes and fours. Some hovered above the
bed. The ones without wings climbed on to the bed and crawled about on
top of the quilt. Kady could see them in the dark, glowing faintly, and
hear them buzzing. At first she'd brushed them away, but she was too
weak to keep it up all night. Later she just held the bed sheets to her
chin to stop them getting in.

But they did get in. They got in at the bottom of the bed, and they got
in at the side of the bed. And some dug up through the bed from
underneath. They dug holes under the sheets and crawled in between her
legs and tried to get inside her. She had to clench both her holes as
tight as she could to keep them out. She prickled all over.

That night she slept face down on the pillow to stop them getting into
her mouth. She flattened the pillow tight against her ears.

*

The morning after the doctor visited, Kady glanced down and saw a
silver arrow painted on her chest. It poked up above the collar of her
nightdress. It was as if a snail had left a trail, but Kady knew it was
done by the faeries.

She looked in her hand-mirror and saw an arrow on her face, pointing to
her left ear.

She doubled up with a pain. It started at the base of the arrow, just
above her belly-button, and worked its way up her throat and into the
side of her head. She fell unconscious. When she woke up, her brain had
been partly eaten away. At least, that's how it felt.

It must have been late evening already, because the light was fading.
She could see the faeries very clearly now. About thirty of them were
standing on the bedclothes looking up towards her face. Others were
clinging to the wallpaper. None looked into her eyes. Faeries never
did.

Kady felt a pain inside her head and pressed her hand to her ear. She
tried to put a finger in her ear, to poke the pain, but her ear was
blocked with a hard round shape that was moving. Kady grabbed it
between her fingers and wrenched it out like a stopper from a
bottle.

The faery wriggled in her hand. Its head glowed deep green like a
faery-light bulb on a Christmas tree. The other faeries swarmed round
Kady's hand, stinging and biting her, but she was beyond pain now. She
pushed the faery's head down into the dish of prune syrup her mother
had left on the bedside table, and held it under the syrup till the
faery was limp and drowned dead.

*

When Clare entered the bedroom the following morning the first thing
she noticed was a bloodstain the size of a pizza on the
pillowcase.

Kady was standing by the window in her nightdress, gazing out.

"See them mother, out there, mother, on the lawn, mother,
dancing."

"Well, I am glad you're on your feet, love. And, oh, you've et them
prunes. Good girl. See what?"

"The faeries."

Clare came forward and touched Kady's ear.

"Your ear is crusted in blood," she said.

"Oh, it's nothing," Kady said. "I was picking it."

"What with, a chisel?"

"They took my soul, that's all."

"Your soul?"

"There's always a bit of a mess."

"I'll get ee a flannel."

"But it dun't hurt."

"Let me see," said Clare Holt, reaching out.

"Naow!" Kady sprang away. "Dunnee touch me, witch!"

She shrank to the end of the window and chewed the corner of the
curtain.

"I'm a grasshopper," she said.

*

Kady liked it in the hospital. The grounds were pretty, and you could
be alone with the faeries whenever you liked, especially down by the
pond and along the beech avenue that led to the gate. Gordon and Clare
visited her every Sunday afternoon, with a bag of Devon toffees.

One Sunday, the three were sitting on the bench by the tennis courts
when Kady leapt away on to something she'd seen in the grass.

"I got one, feyther," she said. "I got one, feyther. I got one,
feyther."

Despite everything, a tingle of pride stirred in Gordon's breast. Kady
was holding a plump green grasshopper between her fingers.

"It's a faery," she said. "It's a faery."

"It's a grasshopper, darlun," Gordon said gently.

"I can't eat it, dad," she said. "I'm all fulled up with toffees. You
must eat it."

Gordon smiled and took the grasshopper in his hand and put it into his
mouth and tucked its legs in and swallowed it without chewing

*

The following Sunday, Clare came on her own to see Kady.

"Your feyther's ill," she said. "Nasty ill."

"Will he survive?" Kady said, looking for toffees.

*