Fairy Tales

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Although it was hard to tell, given they were invisible. But it wasn’t the dragons that I feared most – it was the fairies. And the Valley was never short on the number of fairies flitting around and creating havoc among the villagers.

In fact, once, Friar Flannery tried to seek out and hire a dragon to come to our land and burn all of the fairies at one of their clan gatherings. He said they were surely evil and would have to burn by dragon’s fire to return to hell. But even the dragons would not interfere with the fairy folk, for they knew their powers, and that with one twinkle and nod, a fairy could erase the fire from a dragon’s throat forever.

As a child, the story my parents told me was that the fairies stole babies from cradles, which was frightening, however, there were so many tales spread through the village, it was hard to dissect the truth from the falsehoods. I had never seen a fairy, although I saw Miss Lily’s vegetable garden destroyed, and saw the huge bump on Mr. Collins, after a fairy rolled a log from his wood pile onto his head. And my cousin Draper had a baby sister who was stolen from her cradle through the night when he was just a toddler.

So, one day, when we were twelve years old, after hearing yet another fairy tale, Draper and I decided to leave the confines of our town to find a fairy and discover the truth. It was rumored by the townsfolk that they lived in the Black Forest nearby. No one dared to go there, except the Friar, when he tried to find a dragon.

The Friar never returned, and it was said that the fairies put him under a spell, keeping him trapped in the forest forever.

We did not plan to spend the night there, so we just packed a sack with some bread and apples for ourselves, and some extra bread to bargain with the fairies, if needed. Everyone knew fairies loved bread, so people often kept some in their babies cradles to appease the tiny terrors, and leave the babies alone.

So off we went, unbeknownst to our family or friends. It was a cloudy day with a light drizzle of rain, when we entered the thick, looming forest. I remember we both acted bravely as we gruffly marched forward through the trees. We hardly spoke, and when we did, there was a tell-tale touch of trembling to our speech. It’s a wonder we didn’t wet ourselves.

Had we known how dark it was in the forest (which we should have known given the height of the trees), we would have gone on a sunny day – even though it was morning, it seemed like early evening in the forest.

After weaving through monstrous fir trees for an hour, we stopped to have a quick lunch, and we chatted about what we would do upon finding a fairy. I dared to say I would capture one in our sack and not let it out until we heard the whole truth about their terrible deeds, and what they did with the stolen babies. Did they eat them? Did they turn them into fairies? We also hoped we would find Friar Flannery, and make the fairies break the spell on him. We would bring him back to town, and be celebrated as heroes!

After our snack, we continued to trek forward, saw many forest animals, and peeked under every mushroom we saw, for that was where the fairies were alleged to set up their homes. Upon finding nothing after a two-hour search, we were about to give up when we came across a strand of wooden beads with a cross, and instantly recognized it most certainly was Friar Flannery’s! He may have been in prayer, and dropped them, if the fairies took him suddenly. So, we decided to keep looking through the Black Forest, feeling confident that he could be very close by.

As we walked along, scrutinizing everything we saw quite closely, we came upon a hidden gorge. Draper looked over the edge, and seeing how deep it was, said “Wow!”.

Curious, I also walked to the edge to have a look when Draper loudly let out a curse word and scared the living daylights out of me. I jerked, and suddenly some gravel let loose underneath my foot, and I slipped on the edge. I tried to grab onto a branch, but it immediately snapped off, then it all happened so fast – I looked up as I felt myself falling, and saw the look of horror on my cousin’s face. Then I must have hit the ground, because my body was searing with pain from broken bones, and my head was twisted to the side. I felt blood trickle down the side of my head and into my eye, making the one blurry, while the other could see everything before me quite clearly. Within moments, I took my last breath as everything went dark, but not before I realized why Draper had shouted.

There was a half-decayed body just a few feet in front of me, wearing a long wool robe, and a rope around the waist.