Kaleidoscope

by Mindy Hayes

  “Umm. . .” I breathed, trying to steady my voice.

  “Calliope, are you hurt?”

  I shook my head. I had frightened him. Probably not the best way to start this conversation. But really. . .was there even a good way to start this conversation? “Can I ask you a question?”

  He nodded, his green eyes creased with worry.

  “Umm. . .what do you know about faeries?” I asked the question as seriously as I could, but my breathing hadn’t slowed down yet. His immediate look of alarm told me all I really needed to know. “Dad,” I prompted him to answer, but he stayed silent. “Dad, are you okay?”

  “Why do you want to know about faeries, Calliope?” he said hesitantly. His green eyes tensed.

  I couldn’t believe I was about to ask this question. It was something you asked your parents when you were five years old and questioned every little thing in life, like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. No grown teenager in his or her right mind would question the existence of mythical creatures. “Do they. . .” I paused. “I mean. . .uhh. . .” A short huff of air choked out from my lips. “Do faeries exist?”

  He sighed heavily, but didn’t answer. His refusal to speak provoked me to further my investigation. It couldn’t be. . .

  “Dad,” I chuckled to myself, still baffled that I was gaining the nerve to ask. He was going to question my sanity. “Are you. . .are you a. . .faery?” The words came out as seriously and as cautiously as I could make them. I wanted him to take me seriously, though I could hardly take myself seriously.

  “Calliope, where would you get an idea like that?” His tone was angry, but it wasn’t aimed at me. He seemed scared.

  “Are you?” I asked quietly, sincerely, though I could barely get the words out of my mouth.

  “No.” He released a breath of air, placing his fingers over his temples and rubbing like he wished a genie could appear and take away this crazy questioning. Relief washed over me. I laughed in my head and cheered, I’m not crazy! Just gullible! He was going to laugh at me now, wasn’t he? Instead he turned my world upside down. “But I was. . .a long time ago.”

  My lungs choked me. “Was? How—When—How is that—Does Mom know?”

  He chuckled, breaking the thick air in the space between us. “Of course she knows,” he said.

  It didn’t make sense. “What do you mean that you used to be? How are you not anymore? How is it possible?”

  He clenched his lips, either not wanting to answer me or contemplating how to go about explaining his involvement with fairytale beings. “I was stripped of being a faery when I chose to live here. I had to make the transformation from faery to human. By willingly choosing to leave behind that world, I lost my abilities. As you have probably noticed, my ears are just that of a human. I don’t have the Sight anymore. I can’t see the faery world.”

  I swallowed. It was true. Those wild men in my backyard were for real. They were faeries. But I needed the confirmation to come from him. I needed to ask him point blank. “It’s true. Faeries are real?”

  He nodded slowly, steadily, gauging how I was going to handle the information.

  I attempted to measure my breathing, keeping it stable so I wouldn’t hyperventilate.

  “No. No. I don’t believe you. You’re just as crazy as they were.” A flash of alarm struck his eyes and I realized my careless mistake. I sucked in a breath and bit my lip nervously.

  “Crazy as who? Where did this idea even come from?” The shock written across his face seemed to say he just realized he’d spilled his deepest darkest secret and he didn’t even know why.

  How was I supposed to answer him? He would kill me if he knew that I had gone that far into the woods. He would be even more furious that I had run into two grown men and didn’t go running for my life the instant they spoke to me. Granted, they didn’t look much older than me, but I had carried on a full-blown conversation with them both. And they had actually been armed.

  I couldn’t speak.

  He set his eyes sternly on me. “The idea of being a faery didn’t come out of nowhere, Calliope.” His jaw clenched as he struggled to control his anger. “Who put the idea of faeries in your head?”

  I hadn’t thought that one through very well. I couldn’t lie to him or keep the truth from him either. What was the point now? If they had known my father, he might have known them as well. And maybe. . .just maybe if wouldn’t completely fly off the handle. “Kai and Declan.”

  Dad swiped a hand down his face and looked back at me. “You went deep into the forest didn’t you?”

  I swallowed and nodded reluctantly.

  “Of course those two would be behind this,” he muttered through deep breaths. Before I probably wouldn’t have been able to understand him, but my ears were becoming keener on sound. It’s not like I could hear the flap of butterfly wings in the distance, but I knew he had barely let those words out of his mouth. A normal person wouldn’t have been able to understand him. “How did you see them? Did they just appear or. . .?”

  I recalled Kai’s confusion. “Kai said I could see him without his consent.”

  My father’s breath hitched slightly.

  I had to know. The question alone made me feel stupid to ask, but it was necessary. I had to know what I was. “Am I a faery?”

  His cloudy green eyes held concern, the crinkles around them squinting. He didn’t know. He really wasn’t sure. “Why do you think you’re a faery, Calliope?”

  I swallowed. “I hear things in the trees. All the time. I’m not sure what it is I hear, but it’s not just the birds and the wind. And it’s not like what everyone hears. It feels like my ears are extra sensitive to every sound. And I feel this. . .pull—this yearning to be a part of the forest. It’s been happening for years now. I try fighting it, but it keeps bringing me back to the trees. It has become stronger and stronger every day. If I was. . .normal, like every other human—” I swallowed. “I don’t feel normal anymore.”

  My dad sighed and closed his eyes. I did my best to wait patiently, but this wasn’t like just waiting for an answer to go to the movies or to hang out with Lia or Cam.

  “Am I?” I repeated.

  “Sit down, honey,” Dad directed, helping me into a seat at the kitchen table where he sat across from me.

  He pressed his lips together, watching me, his arms folded across his chest in near defiance. His eyes closed for a moment and I tried to calm my breathing and seem comfortable. When his eyes opened back up to me, they glistened. My father’s eyes had always been a beautiful green, but now that I knew why, they shined a faintly faded chartreuse color, completely inhuman. He really had been one of them.

  “It appears to me that the changes are starting to take place. So, yes, Calliope,” he said. “You are a faery.”

  I gasped. “How is it possible? You lost your abilities or whatever. And I don’t have any of the physical features,” I pressed.

  “They still might come,” he said, anxious. I’d never seen my father physically afraid before. “They come with age. I actually wasn’t sure if they would ever come. You are past the normal age of faery maturity, so it’s possible that they still might not come. Or you may simply be a late bloomer.”

  Kai’s term came rushing back. The walls of my world had come tumbling down. “What do you mean late bloomer?”

  “Faeries get their ears and wings during their adolescent years, which is similar to puberty for humans when you get your,” he cleared his throat and tried gesturing to me.

  “Dad,” I scolded.

  “Well. . .it’s sort of a rite of passage,” he said. “Your mother and I thought you were out of the woods. But there really is no telling. You don’t age like a faery, but you don’t age quite like a human. You are in between.”

  “So I’m half faery.”

  He heaved out a deep breath. I could tell by the way his eyes grew sharp and weary that his head hurt. “What you are, Calliope. . .it shouldn’t be.” He scratched his head the
way he did when he was unsure of answers, but wanted to give some sort of information. “I had assumed you would be immune, but the fae blood must still run inside of me. I guess I was wrong. I had a feeling I was going to be wrong.”

  “You think?” I nearly shouted.

  “Please don’t be upset, Calliope. There was no way of knowing this.” He sunk back further in his seat, troubled. A million emotions passed across his eyes as he sat there, thinking. I wanted to crawl inside his head and know everything he was thinking, everything he was holding back.

  I wanted to run. I wanted to get away, to be far from the forest, far from my father, far from my thoughts. I just wanted to be me and nothing else.

  “I need some air.”

  He didn’t stop me as I bolted for the garage door and headed for my car. I pulled the top down and started the engine, backing out of the driveway.

  The world passed by me as I drove. Wind blew through my hair and flapped in my ears. Where was I even going? I couldn’t go to Cameron and I couldn’t go to Lia. What would I even say to them? Hey, guess what? I’m a faery! I didn’t want to go back to the trees with the bickering twins. So I just drove in circles. For hours.

  Have you ever had the fear of drowning? I haven’t, but I have a feeling it would feel a lot like this. My lungs were closing in, making it hard for me to breathe while my mind was thrashing about trying to keep afloat. On the outside I might have looked calm, probably scary calm like the kind before the storm, but inside I was like a loose cannon ready to blow at any minute. I only required a trigger.

  I drove without direction until it was dark out. When I got back home it was after seven and my mom still wasn’t home. All of my questions were starting to come to a head like lava in a volcano and if I didn’t ask them, I was going to erupt.

  • • •

  I found my dad in the same place I had left him, blank stare plastered to his face as he looked out the windows from the kitchen.

  “This other world,” I said softly, getting his attention. “Your faery world. How long ago did you leave?”

  He peered over at me and guarded his words. “When I met your mother, over twenty years ago.”

  “So you left to be with Mom?” As surreal as it was, it was romantic.

  He nodded.

  I had so many questions. Everything I wanted to say, everything I wanted to ask jumbled all together, making it impossible to form a logical question.

  “How can faeries do what you did? Faeries can simply choose to be human?”

  He eyed me, choosing his words carefully. “Under special circumstances,” he said in all seriousness. “It’s not easy. It’s not as if one day a faery can just say, let’s be humans now. Most faeries don’t want anything to do with the human world. Some faeries find the idea of even becoming a human blasphemous.”

  I took a deep breath. “What does all of this mean? If I’m a faery, what will become of me?”

  My dad patted the seat beside him at the table. Once I was situated, he folded his hands, leaning his mouth against them, contemplating my question. “We’ll wait and see.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Wait for what? For me to turn into a freak show? Will I have to live in that world? The faery world?”

  “Faylinn.”

  “What?”

  “Our kingdom, our homeland, is called Faylinn,” he said.

  Anger boiled under my skin when the thought of being lied to my whole life set in. “How could you keep all of this from me?”

  “We are humans, Calliope,” he said. “Why would I tell you about Faylinn if I didn’t have to? When was I supposed to tell you? You wouldn’t have believed me even if I tried. I have no proof.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I really didn’t. “Maybe. . .”

  “I didn’t know what kind of an affect it would have on you. And obviously it wouldn’t have been pleasant no matter the timing.” He reached out and set his hand over mine on the table. “The forest calls to you as you call to it, and you can’t fight who you are anymore.”

  My brow ruffled in confusion. “What?”

  “Their world is starting to beckon for you,” he said gently. “That feeling you were trying to fight. Faylinn is calling for you to go home.” I didn’t want to believe him. Logic was in the boxing ring fighting against Dad’s confirmation. “I’ve been watching you watch the trees. I could see the yearning in your eyes. I was afraid that’s what it was, but I didn’t want to alarm you by forcing you to stay away from it. That’s why I figured a fence would help.”

  Humorless laughter bubbled to the surface of my mouth. “I can’t be a part of that world, Dad. I’m a human. I live in the human world beside other human beings, my friends, you and Mom. I refuse to believe that I’m a fictional being.” I wouldn’t be freaking out right now if I didn’t really believe it could be true, but I was so mixed up in the head that I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

  “Faylinn doesn’t know that. And we are not fictional. As faeries we are drawn to the forest. We are drawn to our home. Our kingdom.”

  “Will I have to go?” I asked incredulously. That question instantly became the most urgent.

  “I won’t make you, if you don’t want to.”

  At least that was reassuring. “And there’s nothing I can do? I’ll turn into a faery?”

  “We will have to wait and see. The abilities you have now might be the extent of everything. The Sight, your hearing, the pull. You still may be able to live in this world—not pleasantly mind you, but tolerably. You will feel that constant need to be out there. Every day.” He pointed to the borderline of trees.

  I sighed, trying to alleviate the pressure weighing on my chest. It didn’t work. It wasn’t just that my world was crumbling down and everything I ever knew to be true was a lie. When the impossible became possible, nothing seemed impossible. Anything was up for grabs. Nothing was for certain. “What are we supposed to tell Mom?”

  “Nothing,” he decided immediately, leaving no room for argument. “Your mother doesn’t have to know anything about this unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”

  I nodded without question for some reason, wanting to obey him.

  “I want you to stay out of the forest, but I know that’s not possible or fair of me to demand now.” He sat there, searching his thoughts for something—answers. . .solutions. “And I’d tell you to stay away from all other faeries, but I don’t know how possible that is. Declan and Kai,” he said. “What did they say to you?”

  “Not much. They just kept arguing.” He chuckled softly and shook his head as if recalling old friends. “But because I could see them Kai didn’t know what to make of me. I don’t have my wings or whatever, so he just kept staring.”

  “Do they know you belong to me?” I nodded. “And they didn’t mention anything else?”

  I shrugged, going over our conversation in my head. “Just that Declan has been watching over me for a few years. I’ve apparently been able to hear them for a while without being able to see them.” Which really didn’t sit well with me now that I thought about it. What had they seen or heard during all that time?

  “So your abilities are coming in gradually,” he concluded.

  All this time when I heard a random twig snap or a tree branch shake, when I would hear low babbling from the trees, it had been them. Through the years of sleepless nights from the subtle unexplainable pulsing, it had been Faylinn.

  “I’m really a faery,” I said it aloud this time, letting it sink in and absorb in my brain.

  “You’re a faery, Calliope. And with that comes a price.”

  My stomach twisted. “What more could there be?”

  “You can’t tell a single soul.”

  • • •

  Lia and I met at the theater for her movie after my conversation with my dad, but I wasn’t much company. I nearly blew her off and told her I wasn’t feeling well, which was the honest truth, but I knew she really wanted to see this movie. During the e
vening I think she could tell I was a little on edge. Thankfully she just brushed my behavior off as the blues over Cameron and Isla, which normally would have bothered me. I didn’t want to be that girl, but it was a better alternative to what was really going on with me.

  When I saw Lia was eyeing me as we walked back to our cars, I realized she had said something that required a response and I had no idea what it was.

  “Huh?”

  “Colleges. Applying. Where are you applying?”

  “Oh.” Of course it was going to be college application time soon. Was I going to be able to go to college now? “USC, UNC, Clemson,” I prattled off some of the universities I’d been thinking about. “I’ll apply to a few places in case I don’t make it in.”

  “You’ll get into all of them and then you are going to have to make a decision,” she stated undoubtedly.

  What if in the end the changes became too apparent and I couldn’t go to college? I was supposed to get wings for crying out loud. How in the world was I supposed to disguise those?

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to stay focused on the conversation at hand and apparently doing very poorly. “I’ll figure that out when the time comes.”

  “I think you should apply to Princeton and Columbia with me.”

  I laughed. “Lia, those are colleges you spend your whole life preparing and planning for. I don’t have the grades to even be considered. They would laugh in my face.”

  “Well it was worth a shot in the dark to throw it out there.” She threw her arm around me and tugged me to her side. “It would have been so fun to go to college together. Oh. Oh! What if we went and studied abroad with Matt?”

  “Lia,” I chuckled. “You don’t want to study abroad. You want to go to medical school.”

  She slouched her shoulders. “Well. . .yeah. . .it was just a thought. Something we could do together.”

  “College probably won’t be one of those things,” I sighed.

  I was going to be lucky if I could even go to college.

  Becoming a faery changed everything.