The Lost Princess

The town bustled with the anticipation of the oncoming season. Harvests planted weeks earlier now sprouting with the first blooms of fruits and vegetables. Many townsfolk were scurrying about to gather and preserve as much as they could. This year was surprisingly more bountiful with crops yielding more supply than in recent years. However, my own crops yielded the same amounts that promised the year before. Acquiring the land from my late father, only enough to feed myself and scrape by to sell for more funds were produced. While the others prepared dish after dish to provide for this year’s Litha celebration, I was only able to bake a couple loaves of bread and salted meats.

Our celebration of Litha was a tradition in our village many years ago when the fairy people, the Sidhe, came to our village. On this day they are said to have entered our human world to enjoy a feast that was prepared in exchange for all of our wishes to be blessed. Being the longest day of the year, their magic was at it's strongest during this time. The Sidhe do not visit the humans anymore, if there is any truth to this story. Yet, it has become a tradition to prepare such a feast for good luck to our entire village. It wasn’t until taking over my late father’s affairs that I discovered family documents of these encounters with the fairy people. My great grandmother encountered a Sidhe on her own. It was injured with a wound in its abdomen. She could tell right away that it was not an ordinary man. Long and thin, but large and muscular. Her description of them sounded enchanting, but terrifying. Terrifying as it was mysterious. She was afraid , but her kind and caring nature did not allow her to walk away.

She took the creature into her village after nightfall. Days turned into weeks when finally, the Sidhe was healed. In my great grandmother's writings, the Sidhe still stayed with her for a while after that. Teaching her of their ways and most importantly, how to summon the realm. I was surprised that it sounded so easy that it was almost impossible that this knowledge died with the other townsfolk.

It was this night, the night of Litha, that I was to open to realm into the fairy people. I hoped so dearly to summon the Sidhe and to be blessed with yielding crops. To no longer suffer, unlike the others, and to let good fortune upon me for once. During our feast, the long tables once littered with foods I could hardly provide, I said goodbye to the others that were leaving as the last few candles started to dim. Taking my lantern, I travelled deeply into the forest.

Eventually, I could no longer hear the laughter and the conversations echoing out of the village. The chirping sounds of the crickets died down. The greenery being so thick, the moon and my own lantern barely casting a glow. Remembering my great grandmother’s writings, it was down this curved path of three gnarled trees growing together I would find a patch of bluebell. The most imperative piece was the primrose. Blooming earlier in spring, the one crop I was able to maintain was this portion of primrose. I had a bustle in my apron pocket. Squatting next to the bluebells as the moonlight cast a glow onto the flowers, I used my index finger and gave them a tickle, ringing the bells to call the Sidhe forward. A mist started forming a circle around the three gnarled trees, somehow bringing them closer. The mist-circle started forming into an arch and I stepped forward. Pulling the primrose from my pocket, I touch it to the mist forming arch and come down across a solid object. A door has taken shape. The mist whirls furiously around and around until it dissipates, and the door jostles with movement. It opens and a figure emerges in the doorway.

Tall, thin, but large. Its shape fills the arched doorway. The creature fully steps through the threshold and my lantern casts its glow. Illuminated before me is a female with pointed ears that reflect the light of my dancing flame. Her skin shines as does the long, white dress she is in. I feel dizzy and light-headed I started to feel afraid.

“You have summoned me,” she says in a voice, but does not open her mouth. Only in my head. I speak back with my voice.

“Yes. I have come to ask for your help.”

She pauses for a moment, taking me in. I wonder how long it has been since a human has asked such a thing. Her face changes- something that goes from curiosity, to recognition, to mischief.

“Not until I feast,” a smile spreading across her face. I do not have time to say much as she is off. Prancing so quickly towards the village, it is as if she is made of mist herself. The door she has came from has since departed and I gather my wits and quickly walk back to the village.

The moonlight beams down on me, my lantern illuminates my path fully as the greenery lessens. Then I can hear the crickets guiding me home. As I approach the village, nothing seems disturbed. The tables of food are cleared, evidence of human activity having been erased. I realize I have let a Sidhe into our world. A world they have not been into for a long time. A world in which they had hoped to feast, yet nothing is in preparation any longer. Something I did not think much of as I did not think the Sidhe would run from me. All I can do is go back home to find something in my great grandmother’s writings.

I find nothing about an escaped Sidhe in my great grandmother’s stories. There is nothing more regarding the fairy people once Sidhe leaves and enters directly into her life as a mother. Talking of raising my grandmother, then watching my own father and aunt grow up. A loud clamor in the village brings me out of my thoughts and out my front door. It is of a young mother, and she is holding her baby daughter; however, she is adamant that the child is not her child. Its birthmark is missing.. It seems like the others are just as confused but are quick to comfort the mother. It is well known to our village that the fairy people were known to kidnap children and replace them with that of their own, similar like a cuckoo’s trickery, and I just unleashed it.

Quickly, I headed back home. I recall some of the teachings from my great grandmother’s Sidhe about summoning the realm on non-powerful days. Maybe I can find something there. As I approach my home, the front door is wide open. My great grandmother’s books are spread across the floor. I drop to my knees gathering them all together when I feel as if something is watching me. The door slams shut, and I quickly turn behind. Emerging from the dark is the Sidhe. She holds the crying mother’s babe and is looking at me peculiarly. She smells me, I realize. Her eyes again look as if she recognizes something.

“Please, give back the babe,” I plead.

The Sidhe snickers. “You would be betraying your own livelihood by wishing that upon me,” she replies in an ethereal voice. Again, only penetrating my thoughts. I am confused by her statement, and she knows this by that same smile spreading across her face.

“I will not give back the babe. You summoned me for a feast which there was not, so I take what I want in place. You should know this, or do you not know of your own kind?” She asks, in a more rhetorical way. She cackles when I am too distraught to reply.

“Come now. We have been searching for you a long time, Princess” the Sidhe says as she reaches for my hand.