“Of Water and Toadstools”

By Christine Stoddard

I was born a fairy---or so I was so sure. I thought my wings just melted away
when the fairy queen, Titania, noticed I had been born to mortal parents. After all,
humans wouldn’t have known how to care for a magic baby. They would have been too
frightened.
Like any other fairy, I could decipher the forest’s song. When the trees sang, they
mourned the loss of all the seeds that were eaten by birds and never had the chance to
grow. I heard them moan every spring, every fall, every winter, and every summer. The
skies and rivers all seemed to chant. The deer and doves had their own words, too. Every
pebble, every rock, and every boulder whispered to me. Sometimes I worried myself with
what caught my ears and what I understood. I worried that it somehow made me wicked.
I always asked my mother questions about fairies, not hinting at all that I might be
one. I asked her quietly, discreetly, and swiftly---almost as if the answer didn’t matter.
But she was always very reserved about the topic. I think she feared that if the neighbors
overheard her speak, they’d accuse her of being pagan. My mother fervently practiced
Christianity. Perhaps that was why my interests in fairies so offended her.
Legend has it that children who die before they are baptized become fairies in the
afterlife, but when I first muttered that, my mother dismissed it as nothing more than
milkmaids’ gossip.
“Fairies are evil creatures that kill cats and poison wells,” she warned one
afternoon while boiling pigs’ feet. “Children are innocent and should never be mistaken
for such horrible beasts---even if their parents are negligent enough not to baptize them.”
And she repeated a different version of this strong opinion on more than more one
occasion, usually while involved in some household chore. Every time she said this, it
prompted me explore the shire, where the fairy kingdom was rumored to be. Maybe I
would find my true kin there and they would satisfy me with the answers I sought.
Something about the moss and toadstools there mesmerized me.
Every time I went to the shire, it was in a flurry. I hiked up my tunic and ran. My
mother knew better than to stop me. I trampled through the scraggly grass, net and cup in
hand. I was determined to catch one of the winged beings. Then I could interrogate it.
Maybe it could tell me my fate. Every step was more cautious than the last. I had to be
alert. There might be fairies curled beneath the stones or hiding under lily pads.
After all, Luke, the shepherd’s son, spotted one eating acorns by the brook one
day, years ago. With the courage of a knight, he caught the fairy in his bare hands but lost
hold of the little winged-man when it bit his finger. He said the fairy nearly tore off his
finger. Once a fairy was in my possession, I would never let it escape. And if it did, my
dignity would prevent me from telling the entire moor.
But time and time again my excursions into the shire were futile; I never returned
with anything more than a colorful mushroom or balled-up hedgehog. Still, I was
determined to bring a fairy home. Luke was simply too honest. As honest as my father,
people would say.
Before he died of the plague, my father had been a fairy exterminator for our lord.
The other serfs complained that fairies were destroying their crops so they called upon
the lord for help. He searched the entire kingdom for someone specializing in the dark
arts. As a youth, my father was a powerful wizard’s apprentice who was skilled enough to
attract the lord’s attention. The lord soon hired my father and gave him his own cottage
and cows. Not long after, my father married my mother and I was born a year later. My
father told my mother my shoulder blades protruded more than any other child’s she had
ever seen. Three years after that, my sister came into the world but my father only saw
her once before he passed away.
Even though my father never trained me in the art of magic, my interest in the
dark arts was instilled in my blood. I hoped that if I ever caught a fairy, I would force it to
reveal the secrets of its magic to me. If my suspicions were correct, that magic already
lived within me. I just had to find out how to tap into it. I would use my magic only for
good, I swore. I was, after all, my father’s daughter. And the lamb baas like the ram.
Or so I thought.
I came home one afternoon after playing outside to find my sister crying
uncontrollably. She had a serious fever. She kicked and screamed so hard that she nearly
fell out of her crudely carved cradle. Mother sat beside her, weeping.
I threw my apron full of grass to the floor and rushed to my mother’s side.
“What’s wrong, Mama?”
“My baby is dying! Your father’s baby is dying!”
I ran to the cradle, about to pick my sister up, when my mother pushed me away.
“Don’t touch her. Go outside before you get sick, too.” But I didn’t listen. I raced outside
to the well beside our cottage and brought back enough to splash onto my small sister’s
face.
By nightfall, the wailing stopped, but not because my sister healed; she had died.
For the next six days, my mother and I barely spoke. We both puttered around the
cottage, going about our chores in silence. Whenever I could steal a moment to myself
outside, I did. I wanted to hear the trees and the sparrows and the grasshoppers. I needed
their distractions. In less than two years, I had lost both my father and sister.
On the third day after my sister’s death, I found the courage to venture into the
shire with my usual net and cup in hand. I pulled up my tunic to free my legs and ran. I
ran until I could no longer see my home. I couldn’t see any of the cottages on the moor.
Everywhere I looked was deep green and dripping with crystal dew. There was no sign of
human life anywhere---not in the form of fences, pushcarts or plowed land. Nothing.
I paused to catch my breath and then walked toward the only sound I recognized.
Only a number of yards away, a brook prattled. It beckoned me to come nearer, to study
my reflection its clear waters. So I did. I pushed through the thrushes framing the brook
and almost stepped right into the petite rapids.
Smooth stones littered the bottom of the brook. They reminded me of the ones
Luke threw at lingering wolves. I bent over to pick one up. Strangely, it felt weightless in
my palm.
‘Maybe it’s just this one,’ I thought. I carefully placed the stone back in the brook
and chose a different one. It too felt as light as a pine needle. No normal stone is that
light. I put it down next to the first one I had selected and then scanned the brook from
where I stood. This was no ordinary brook at all.
Upon closer inspection, I realized that the brook contained a glittery substance,
like a sweet-smelling nectar, rather than regular water. The substance felt thicker than
water but not quite as thick as syrup. It resembled slushy oil. The longer I stood by the
brook, the more overwhelming the substance’s perfume became until I suddenly
collapsed. I never even felt myself landing.
I flickered my eyes open. Wherever I lied was dark and damp. I wondered if
someone from the manor had found me. A soft fluttering piqued my interest and I slowly
rose.
“Hello?” I called, “Hello? Is anyone there?”
The fluttering grew louder and louder.
“Yes, someone is here,” a high-pitched voice responded, “Did you sleep well?”
“I…guess so. Who are you? I want to see you.”
“You’ll see me soon enough.”
I paused and waited for the owner of this voice to appear. A moment later, it did. I
gasped. A diaphanous being about the size of my pointer finger flew toward me. It
sported massive eyes and large, pointy ears that stuck out of its long hair. No doubt, this
being was a fairy. But that is not why I gasped. I gasped because the creature’s face
resembled my sister’s.
“Don’t be afraid,” the fairy said, “I’m here to help you.”
“H-h-help me?”
“I said, don’t be afraid. You’ll be fine. You don’t believe all that rubbish about
fairies being evil, do you?”
“N-no.”
“Then don’t be afraid. We’re good creatures, wholesome creatures. Our hearts are
pure.”
I wanted to scream that the fairy looked like my sister but couldn’t find the words
to express myself. I settled for the more immediately important question. “Why am I
here? I don’t understand why---”
“You don’t remember falling? You fainted.”
“I did?”
“Aye. You did. Now, tell me, what was that you were mumbling about your sister
last night?”
I shuddered. “My sister is dead. You ought to know.”
The fairy perched upon my shoulder and leaned its little head against my neck.
“No, I didn’t know. Why should I?” It flashed me an innocent expression. “I’m sorry.
How did she die?”
“She…” it was so hard to finish.
“She…?”
“She died of a fever. She was just a baby.”
“Ah. Do you really believe that’s how she died?”
I shot the fairy a glance. “Well, she had a fever. And then she died. I only assumed
that she died because of the fever.”
“But that could’ve been a coincidence. She could have actually died of something
else.”
“What does that matter? She’s dead. My little sister is dead.”
“But you wouldn’t want to die of the same thing, would you? Or have your
mother die? Or Luke?”
I shivered at the mention of Luke’s name. The fairy knew of my secret love.
“Have you been spying on me?”
“Fairies don’t spy. We simply see.”
I jumped up and brushed the fairy off of my shoulder. The skin there felt very cold
after the fairy left it.
“You said you weren’t afraid,” the fairy cried from where it had fallen on the
floor. It was only now that I realized I was standing in a sprawling cave.
“I’m not. I’m angry.”
“You need not be angry.”
“You’ve been spying on me!”
The fairy fluttered backward for a moment, in a miniature tumble. “Alright. So I
have. The entire fairy kingdom has---you know why.”
I stared at the fairy. I stared at the fairy for a long time before any words emerged
from my mouth. My hands grew numb and my head spun around. I was dizzy and about
to faint again. But I had to stay awake long enough to confirm what I was so certain of.
“I’m a fairy,” I mumbled.
The fairy’s tiny roar of a laugh said it all. “Don’t be foolish! You’re much too big
and clumsy.”
I frowned. “Then I don’t know what this is about.”
The fairy leaned into me. It smelled of mud and early spring. “It’s about your
father.”
“My father? Why would you spy on me, then? My father is dead.”
“Just like your baby sister.”
“So? What does one have to do with the other? They died for completely different
reasons.”
“Believe what you will,” the fairy scoffed. It fluttered away from me and toward a
pint-sized hearth. All it did was blow some of its breath onto the hearth and suddenly a
blazing fire appeared. The flames danced back and forth, up and down. I gazed into the
flames until my eyes burned. As I rubbed the sting away, the fairy dropped onto a shiny
stalagmite and gazed at me as intently as I had at the fire.
The fairy asked rather bluntly, “Do you trust me?”
“I…I’m not sure.”
“Do you want to find out how and why your father and sister died?”
“I guess it d-depends.” The fire flickered.
“Did you watch them die?”
“My father, y-yes. I only saw my sister…already dead.”
“Tell me about your father’s death---don’t mince your words.”
I bolted right up but my head began to ache again. This whole situation was
unnerving. I marched right up to the fairy and bent down to bore my pupils into its
bantam face.
“I don’t appreciate your interrogation.”
The fairy scoffed, as it was wont to do. “I don’t appreciate your lack of curiosity.”
“I’m very curious.”
“Strange or inquisitive?”
Beyond impatient, I flicked the fairy off of the stalagmite and watched it fall to
the ground. Then I ran around in circles, desperately looking for an escape.
“You’ll never leave---not until I say so,” the fairy sputtered.
 “Who made you God?”
“In this world, I am God.” I whipped around because the voice that responded
was not the voice of the same fairy that had pestered me with personal questions. This
voice was poetry and fresh milk entwined.
Nor was the fairy I had only spoken to a moment ago there. Instead, the most
beautiful, doe-eyed being greeted me with cascades of red hair and the most magnificent
white gown. Silver jewelry encrusted her fingers, wrists, neck, and softly pointed ears.
Her lips conjured a freshly blossomed lotus. Her skin was the most untainted of colors,
with only the slightest hint of pink in her translucent complexion. She had no age.
I whispered the only possible explanation, “Titania.” She, the queen of fairies,
would save me. Almost instinctively, I knelt before her, humbled and in awe.
“Aye, mortal.”
“What happened to the other fairy?”
“That other fairy was me.”
“But you’re…”
“Stunning, I know. Such is my burden.”
“Burden?”
“What would you understand, with that crooked skin and that coarse mop of hair?
Your freckles---isn’t that the sickening appellation you mortals have for those nasty
marks---stain your ruddy skin. You are my antithesis.”
“I’m but a serf. I work in the fields.”
“Work.” She placed a strange emphasis on the word.
“I work very hard.”
“And yet both your father and sister died.”
“That was not my own doing!”
“Do you not collect water for your family?”
My mind flashed back to all of the times I trudged to the well. It was because of
me that my family drank. The well was so low that I had to jump down inside of it to
collect water. My parents were too large to fit inside of the well and my sister was still a
baby. For as long as I had lived, a drought cursed the land. None of our neighbors would
share their water with us because they hardly had enough of their own. My family
depended on me for fresh water everyday. But what if that water was sullied? What if it
was poisoned?
I began to pant. I panted so hard that my lungs started to bleed. I was breathing
much too roughly. The more my lungs bled, the faster Titania disappeared until not even a
strand of her ginger hair remained. I was alone in the cave, where water dripped from the
wall. Again, I fainted.
I woke clenching the handle of a pail. Luke hovered over me. He pecked me on
the forehead and exclaimed, “Look at what I found!”
It was a small bottle of a glittery substance, like a sweet-smelling nectar.