Such Tales as Fairies Tell

“You have come to hear a tale told?”

Always.  He knows that’s the way of this.  Everyone comes for the stories.  It’s dark, and the street is dreary with age, with lichened walls, and weeds growing in gutters.  There are cracks along the surface of a near-empty carpark, and what few streetlights adorn this neighbourhood: their light is obscured by the drizzle.  And by more than that.  By the intensity of the darkness that somehow seems to infuse this little patch of city.

He looks at the bouncer – if bouncer is what you call this kind of person – and nods.  “Yeah.  A story.”

The man just waits.

Jordy takes three twenties out of his wallet.

The man just looks at him, his withering eyes are plain with their point.

Two more twenties.  Come on.  He doesn’t have much more.  He doesn’t want to start trading with things that are not money.  The currency of the Fey is always blood – even if you can’t see it flowing at first.

The man nods.  “Through there.”

“Thanks.”

“You know what you’re getting yourself into?”

“Sure.”  Nope.  Not a bit of it.

A smile.  A twisting of pity with contempt.  How these simple humans imagine themselves to be worthy and competent in a world so far and perfect beyond them.  There’s a purple tinge in this man’s eyes, an undercurrent of violet, a twinkle of light that despite its tiny size is just for a moment unbelievably bright.

The door is old and painted green, but long faded.  It has four wooden panels and an ordinary, rounded doorknob with grooves incised.  An epitome or ordinariness.  Jordy turns the handle slowly, his fingers numb with… something.

#

At first, he can’t see inside.  Or at least what he sees is so jumbled and so surreal that it can’t make a proper impression on his mind, and instead it’s just a blurring of colours – cream mixed with sunset, and a warbling of shapes and movement.  Only slowly these things settle down, and he sees that he’s in a garden. 

Sort of.

He’s also in a great, grand hall, with walls that rise up approaching the sky, that are painted in an eternity of strange flora.  The sky is half ceiling – moulded plaster and twinkling chandeliers mix with night sky and stars.  The duality of that, ever-shifting against his eyes’ efforts to discern one from the other.  The paintings are in rich colours, and yet faded by age; flowers with huge petals, or tall ones with tiny rainbow-coloured petals; great twisting leaves and huge, reddened trunks of old, folded, timeless trees.  And these snake away from the walls, becoming more than paintings, becoming the living trees and flowers and thick mosses and butterflies of a growing, living forest. And yet: the brush-strokes are plain on them, thick globs of unearthly paint.

For a moment: Is this totally a good idea?

He sees the fairies only when his eyes are ready for them, when he can push past all the cascading of gold and silver and rose-tinted light and see their strange faces buried amongst the foliage.  There’s no end to the uniqueness of them, to these faces that have twenty eyes, or which are gaping holes with only a bare outline of flesh around them.  All eyes, all mouth, all chin, a whole face squashed onto one side of head, or into just the tiniest corner and strange, oozing gills to cover the rest.  Universally beautiful, even in the same moment that some of them are hideous or horrifying, almost beyond comprehension.

“Come, human.”

The one who calls him doesn’t seem like very much to fear.  Her eyes are huge and arrestingly blue, her cheeks are ridged and glittery.  A small mouth offers up a voice that is melodious and like rain falling.  She extends a three-fingered hand, beckoning him to come over.

“Sit before me.”

Jordy does exactly as he’s told.  This thing like he’s never seen before.  There are prickly little spines amongst the ridges of her cheeks, but compared to some of the other strange creatures he sees here they’re as nothing.  She seems almost non-threatening.

“You have come for a story?”

“Yes.”

“You are brave.  There is a price to this gift.”

“I paid- coming in the door…”

“There is another.”

“I’m not sure…”

“You don’t need to.  All that will become clear.”

“Okay.”

“What would you hear?  What kind of tale?”

“A… love story.  I need to hear a love story.”

“Those are popular.”

“Please.”

“Your heart is broken.”

“Into pieces.  I wouldn’t have come here, would I, if it was nothing?”

She leans in, letting those too-blue eyes spin.  Her voice changes, but it’s still full of melody, it still reeks of promise, forgetfulness, transport.  “There is a tale.  About a princess…”

“They’re all about royalty.”

“Amongst the Fairy our blood is all.”

And our blood?  He shouldn’t think too much.  Just go with this.  Just let this be.  “Okay.  A princess.”

“Her name was Boella, and she was the bravest and fiercest of all the warriors.  She was trained in the great arts from her earliest childhood, from the days when her feet first learned to walk.  She learned the sword, and the bow, the spear, the trident, the fan and the spellbook.  She learnt how to dance, how to smile, how to sing, and how to love.  For these are all weapons, and in battles of different kinds they might all be brought to the fore.

“When she was of age she was taken to the desert, where she called upon with blood the fire-ancients, and she challenged them to battle.  She battled them for twenty days, without food or drink or rest.  And though the fight taxed her body she held on, she would not yield, and at length she drove them back into the sand.

“Having thus proved herself she became the warrior of her people, she stood against the dark forces that came against her kingdom, and she relentlessly drove them back.

“But there was one force she couldn’t stand against: a small deer, a little white fawn, a wounded creature that one day came into the great hall seeking her aid.  Its big eyes looked up at her imploringly, and its shaking body called to her heart.  So, she took this creature and carried it down to the Pools of Attarai, she knelt there amidst the bubbling waters and offered the creature to their healing secrets.  In exchange the pools required secrets from her: they must have her power, her martial prowess, her graceful dancing, her witty chatter, the sound she made when she laughed.

“Though the price was heavy, Boella paid it, since she had come to love this fawn as though it were a fey-child and her own.  She laid it in the pool and watched as it healed, watched as it grew into a fine stag.  She admired its strength and stroked its soft, silk coat, she let it rub its face against her cheek, and she caressed its proud antlers.

“The stag returned to the forest – as was its place – and Boella returned to the castle.  Her people understood her sacrifice, and they took her back amongst them.  She was welcomed and comforted.  But she could no longer lead her people in battle.  So, when the next dark threat came, she could be nothing more than a foot soldier, chancing with the common men and women, with the loyal beasts and the secret dwellers of the inner space.  She raised her spear against the ice-spitting shadows that charged the castle, but she was no match for them, and like so many others amongst the common soldier, she was torn, diminished, cast down and thrown aside.

“Her people grieved as she was sucked beneath the ground, as the grace and beauty of her faded and failed.  She reached out towards her family, her oldest friends, but her arms were weak, and none of them could reach her.  As she sank beneath the realm, she thought she saw for a moment a stag standing high on the horizon, emblazoned with clouds and sunrise, but then it - and all her world - were gone.”

#

Jordy’s staring.  He hadn’t known he was.  He sees his hands shaking and doesn’t understand why.  “There,” says the fairy, “you have heard a tale.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The story.  What you came for.”

“But my heart still hurts.  More than ever.  I came to be healed.”

“Did you?”

“I… I don’t know.  Boella…?”

“A true story.”

“Are they all?”

“Amongst the Fairy there is only truth.”

“I have to find her, don’t I?”

“I can’t tell you your path.”

It’s shocking.  And yet the truth of it is everywhere around him.  He can’t deny this, he can’t resist it, it’s everything about him.  Suddenly… somehow… it’s become that.  “You said a price…?”

“In time.”

“I should…” his brain is so… fogged… so befuddled.  As if this forest is closing in on him, reaching out cobwebbed branches and singing him a death-song.  It’s sweet-smelling poison to someone like him.  Isn’t it?  What they don’t tell, what there are only hints and rumours of.  And hadn’t he come here half knowing, at-least-guessing?

“Yes,” her voice is treacle, honey, cream-and-berries.

“I should go.”

“Yes.”

He stumbles, finding the door.  It’s there in the walls, encumbered with flowers and painted in rainbows; diamonds are lodged in its wood.  His fingers are bleeding a bit as he staggers out into the wet, mundane night.

A fairy-woman turns to the blue-faced lady behind her.  “I think he will go.”

And the other smiles softly.  “He will.  And he will come back.”

Always.  Always that is the way.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work