The Bone Fairy

Everyone has heard of the ‘Tooth Fairy’. Whenever you would lose a tooth when you were younger and so you would place it under your pillow and eagerly await the dollar you would find under your pillow the next morning, only to be disappointed that when you found out that the Tooth Fairy gave your rich friend more money than you. But at least the tooth fairy works on the system of give and take. She takes your lost tooth and in exchange she gives you some money. The Bone Fairy doesn’t work like this, however. The Bone Fairy just takes.

Like you, I had never heard of the Bone Fairy until a few weeks ago. My six-year-old daughter, Lily, first mentioned the fairy when she came home from school one day.

“Dad is it true that I will soon lose my baby bones?”, she asked me, her eyes filled with worry.

“What do you mean your baby bones”, I replied, unsure of what she meant.

“Well, it’s just that Rebecca at school was telling me about the Bone Fairy. She said that it comes to visit you while you are asleep, and it takes your bones home with them. So, I know that the Tooth Fairy takes my baby teeth, so the Bone Fairy must take my baby bones”

I had never heard about the Bone Fairy before so my first thought was that it was something that Rebecca must have made up or something that she had heard from someone else. So, I reassured Lily that the Bone Fairy won’t visit her and take any of her bones. I also explained to her that there aren’t any ‘baby bones’, but the bones you are born with are the same ones that you will always have. This seemed to comfort her, and I saw the worry begin to leave her eyes as she began to understand that she would be safe from the Bone Fairy.

The rest of the night continued as normal. My wife, Lily and I all ate dinner together, we watched a little bit of television and before long it was time for Lily to go to bed. I helped her get ready and then read a short bedtime story and then it was time to turn the lights out. Just as I turned the light off and darkness took over the bedroom, I heard Lily’s small voice say to me,

“Dad, if the Bone Fairy does come, you will protect me won’t you” she said to me.

I couldn’t see her that well but I could just tell by her voice that she was still a bit afraid and so she needed some comfort and reassurance from me.

“Of course, darling”, I replied, “I will protect you from everything that you are scared of”.

I bent down and gave her a small kiss on the forehead, told her that I loved her and left the room. I told my wife about the Bone Fairy and how Lily was scared of it and my wife also agreed that it was just something that one of the kids in her class had made up. That was the last this mysterious fairy was mentioned that evening, until we were awoken by Lily later that night.

“Dad! I just saw it. It was in my room”, Lily yelled as she came running into our bedroom at three in the morning. I jumped awake and quickly sat up. I processed what she had just yelled out to me and instantly became wary, thinking that someone was inside the house. I jumped out of bed and slowly crept towards Lily’s bedroom. I made it to the doorway and slowly poked my head around to look inside the room to see if I could see anyone in there. It was empty. There was no one in there.

“Who was in your room, sweetheart?”, I asked my daughter, still thinking that there may be someone inside the house.

“The Bone Fairy”, she replied, the fear in her voice was evident, “I saw her flying out of the window. She was really here”.

I let out a sigh of relief. Of course, that’s what she had seen. I knew that it was probably just a mix of fear and her own imagination that led Lily to being able to see ‘The Bone Fairy’. I told her that no one was in her room and walked into the bedroom and looked around to show her that no one was in there with her. I could tell that she was still scared, so both me and my wife decided that she could sleep in our bed for the night.

The next morning over breakfast I asked Lily if she felt any better and if she slept okay in our bed. She said that she did feel better and that she felt a lot safer in our bed and not in her own. We then ate our cereal and soon we were talking and laughing about other things like Lily’s favourite cartoon, The Bosco Show, and what she would be doing at school that day. I noticed that Lily was eating cereal with her left hand that morning, even though she is right-handed and made a slight joke about it. She didn’t seem to find it too funny and looked down into her bowl. I apologised for making the joke and she seemed to accept my apology because we were quickly back to normal.

The rest of the day passed by with no mention of the Bone Fairy and I thought that maybe it wouldn’t be mentioned again. Well, I hoped that it wouldn’t, but come bed time Lily was scared again and said that she wanted to sleep in our bed for the night again. I told her that it was probably best that she tries to stay in her own bed tonight. I told her that if she were scared again later in the night then she could come into our bed once more. She then agreed to try her best and stay in her own bed. She did manage to stay in her own bed for most of the night but once again at three in the morning she came running into our room again, waking us up.

“Mum! Dad! She’s back! I saw her looking at me through the window” Lily screamed as she ran and jumped into our bed, “She wants my baby bones!”.

My wife and I gave Lily a big hug and told her that everything was going to be okay, that she was safe now. It took a little while, maybe twenty minutes, to fully calm Lily down, but we managed and soon she was asleep between me and my wife. We looked at each other and we didn’t even need to say a word, we knew from the look in each other’s eyes, that we needed to do something about this, but we didn’t know what.

I rolled over to try and go back to sleep, but thoughts of what to do about this problem were circling in my mind. I must have dozed off though because I awoken by a small scratching sound coming from the end of the bed. At first I thought it might have been Lily, but I looked down and saw that she was still fast asleep next to me. It was dark in the room and so I couldn’t see anything, but I could definitely hear it. A faint scratching sound and then what sounded like a small footstep. I blinked a few times, trying to let me eyes adjust to darkness. I then heard another footstep, then another. I then heard the sound of rushing air, like something was beating its wings. By now, my eyes were beginning to adjust to the blackness. I could make out the outline of a fairly small figure. It may have been only two or three feet tall. I could see that it had the body of a person, but it had two large wings sprouting from it’s back. The wings were making the sound of rushing air, as the flapped up and down and the figure was beginning to float off of the floor.

I saw the figure rise higher and higher off of the ground and it then flew towards the window. I don’t remember too much of what happened next, but I do remember two piercing, yellow eyes turn around and look directly at me. I could also see in this figure’s hand was a small object. It was hard to see this object in the darkness, but I knew exactly what it was. It was a bone.

I don’t remember anything after that. I just remember waking up the next morning and looking around and seeing my wife and daughter still asleep in the bed with me. I thought everything I had seen must have been a dream. The thoughts of the Bone Fairy must have been overtaken my mind and seeped into my dreams. I breathed a sigh of relief and let out a small laugh because I knew how ridiculous this all was. The thought that I was had been scared of a story that was probably meant to scare children made me laugh. I laid in bed for another few minutes before I heard Lily stir awake. She laid there awake for a second before she looked up at me and said, “Dad, my finger hurts.”

As she said this she held out the index finger on her right hand. I looked down at it and it appeared to be normal. I couldn’t see any cuts or bruises on it anywhere.

“Where exactly does it hurt?”, I asked her, and she pointed to the middle of her index finger. I told her to tell me if it hurt when I touched her finger and I lightly touched her finger. She immediately screamed in pain and pulled away her hand. As soon as I had touched her finger, though, I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t the fact that she was in pain that concerned me so much, it was that when I felt her finger, it felt a lot softer and squishier than it should have, like there was nothing solid in it.

That’s how we ended up in the doctors, looking up at the x-ray that they had taken of my daughter’s hand.

“Wow, I have never seen anything like it.”, the doctor said while he was looking at the x-ray. It didn’t take a doctor to see what was wrong, though. Even me, someone who has no medical knowledge at all knows that there are supposed to be bones in all of your fingers. So, it was very disturbing to look at the x-rays and see that inside my daughter’s right index finger, there were absolutely no bones at all.