Fairy House

The day I was born was the last time I made an early appearance. December 4th, in the height of the North American 1998 blizzard. My mom started to feel pressure in her lower abdomen at 4am, woke up my dad and trudged their way through a foot of snow to the hospital 10 miles down the road. At 8am I arrived, exactly one month early the doctors said. I spent 5 days in an incubator while nurses made sure I began to thrive. A weak heart they told my mom who was at the sharp age of 19; it explains so much now. She steadied herself with my dad’s callused hands and didn’t let on to anyone how scared she really was for me.

My parents weren’t hippies unlike mine and my sibling’s names suggest. They were just young, in love, and impressionable by the outside world- literally. I was born in the winter; “it’s who you are” they would say.

They brought me home, both still babies themselves, to a modest house in the countryside. Growing up it reminded me of a place in which fairies would dwell. It certainly didn’t seem big enough for my 6’2 dad or 5’11 mom. A cottage just outside the city with wooden beamed banisters and quilted blankets. There was a corn field across the street that ignited into a sea of gold as the sunset, and inside always smelled of fresh coffee; especially on chilly early mornings when we would skate the hardwood floors in fuzzy socks. In the summertime we would spread blankets across the living room, open all the windows, and fall asleep to the symphony of crickets and a fan blowing. On Christmas our skin caught fire in the hot water of the bathtub after romping around in the snow, catching snowflakes on our eyelashes. All days held magic, but rainy days were my favourite, the pinging off the shingled roof, sipping tea in the breezeway, the humid scent of wet grass once it was all finished, and running outside too excited to see how it was going to help the garden bloom.

When I was one, they handed me off to my big sister. Gleaming with tight red curls all around her head, I was renamed “baby doll”. Emerald was the boss of the house. She was the first born, and reason my parents even stayed together. How such a forceful beauty could be made from fumbling hands on prom night is still a mystery to us all. Emerald quite literally was our family jewel, she sang and danced, spoke loudly and often, and never apologized. Even at 5 years old she knew what she wanted in life and how to get there. Fern, the second born, always kept to himself. I think the shadow Emerald caste was his favourite hiding place. He would sit on his bed and read, his dark hair swooped behind his ears and hanged like tendrils down his square shoulders. If asked, he would speak about his book in a soft, low voice and stare right through you with piercing green eyes. Then, there was me all wispy white tufts of hair and smiles. I was a happy kid, the peacekeeper of the family. I didn’t cry much so when crocodile tears came streaming down my face everyone dropped what they were doing to soothe me. “Stop upsetting Winter”, was quickly weaponized when someone was being moody. My face was pale, bright, and always squished up against my favourite stuffed animal of the week.

My siblings and I were close, all born between the span of 5 years. We had secret worlds we would slip into if the house became violent and loud. Our witch world was my favourite, it looked exactly like our backyard only greener and lusher. We rode majestic speckled horses into the woods. We made potions and formed spells, the cures to any ailment. The veil of the world only dropped when we saw our dad, storm from the house sputtering curse words and drive off in a rage. Our mom, standing just behind the glass door would motion for us to come inside, her face red and puffy. We each would pick a leaf we thought would make her feel better according to the spell books we made in our heads and handed it to her carefully.

“Thank you, my babies,” she’d say as she set them on the table and sulked into her room for the rest of the night.

As I got older the mysticism of my childhood dissipated. I was more aware of the toll my gentle, obedient nature took on my two rebellious siblings when our parents snapped at them to be “more like Winter”. I was also privier to the details of my parents fights and pleaded at the heels of my dad not to leave each time. When they both finally emerged a couple days later, my dad from the bar and my mother from the bedroom, we felt years older.

Now, as an adult those memories feel like a fairytale I was told while trying to fall asleep to the sounds of fighting. After mom died, our little countryside cottage was sold when I was 5 and most everything in my life turned grey and sounded like the screeching of the train tracks behind our subsidised city apartment. By 12 I was in foster care and split up from my two soulmates. We never lost touch, but things haven’t been the same.

At 2pm on a Tuesday I get a call from Emerald. Our dad is dead, a car accident she says. I bet he was drunk. The funeral is this Saturday.

“He made our life hell”, I said in shock that she would even care to go herself.

“But he was our dad, Winny.” She pleaded, no doubt with Fern at her heels quietly agreeing.

“I work anyway, I’m sorry” I say completely lack of sincerity.

“This isn’t a choice Win, there’s something big I have to tell you,” and the phone clicks. She knows I hate when she gets cryptic. Emerald and Fern don’t see things like me, they were 10 and 8 when our childhood house was foreclosed, they never had to go into foster care, and they didn’t have to be apart for all those years. They have a connection to each other and a spirituality I only have whispers of in me.

Getting off work isn’t easy but out of pure curiosity I manage it, and in all black I make my way out of the city on Saturday morning. I pull up to the address Fern texted me and realise that the closer I get, the more familiar everything is around me. The scent of fresh cut grass and cow manure, the sounds of creaking swing sets and children laughing, and green; the brightest I’ve ever seen it. I pull up to where the funeral is being held and my jaw drops open. It’s our home, exactly how I remember it in the stories I retell myself. I sit in my car until Emerald comes out to find me and walks me inside, holding my hand like she used to do when I was two. Fern is sitting in the middle of the floor where a board has been removed exposing the dirt underneath, and is holding a little black book. Without a word between any of us, he holds open the book for me to take. It’s filled with a gorgeous cursive handwriting and hundreds of dried leaves, so old they crumble between the pages as I turn them.

“What is all this?” I finally mutter.

“It’s moms journal” Emerald says softly, brushing the hair behind my ear. “We didn’t want to bother you with all the details on the phone but Dad actually died a month ago. Win, he left us 20 grand and we bought our home back, and we found this. We think mom left it for us.”

“But how has no one bought this place since we left?” Then it all came into focus as I looked around. This wasn’t a proper house as all. It was a one bedroom shack in the woods where witches were suspected to live and no one had dared come any closer than to break in with their friends on Halloween and graffiti the walls.

“We know how much harder your life was when Mom passed, and you never got a chance to grieve, but hopefully this will help.” Fern said as he got up to boil the kettle in our “kitchen” only 6 feet away. The next couple of days I spent all day and night reconnecting with my mom, my siblings, and myself. She wrote of growing up, having kids, fights with my dad, and getting sick. It wasn’t until the last couple of pages that I realised why Fern and Emerald were so attentive to me.

Mom wrote, “I’m close to the end now, and I don’t have any time to waste acting like I’m not about to die. I have one last thing I need to write in the hopes one day she will find it. Winter, it was the greatest gift I could ever give giving up my life for you. I would do it again a million times over. Just promise me you’ll live it better than I did.”

I look up confused. Emerald begins to explain, “Mom gave you a kidney transplant when you were younger, right? But that was before they found the cancer in the other kidney. She died waiting for a transplant.” Before I burst into tears Fern and Emerald both grabbed a shoulder, “But Winny, we are all back together again. Her death doesn’t have to be in vain. We can rebuild here and relive the magic she spoke into this house.”

I never thought this moment would exist. A turning back of the clock before all the hurt, and the exhaustion, and the separation.

Two weeks after that weekend I was on my way back up again. The house was pretty much finished. It’s bones were still good, and the garden just needed seeds. It mirrored how I felt- the right kind of foundation just needing some tending to in order to see the growth. The three of us framed up mom’s black moleskin journal and thanked her for all she’s done, even now, and we hugged each other in peace for the first time in so many years.