That was still over a fortnight away however, right now Gabriel was stuck in yet another dreary Maths lesson. Mr Fredrickson the Maths teacher, an aging, grey-haired stick-insect-of-a-man was droning on about the usefulness of simultaneous equations or something equally as dull. As a result, Gabriel’s attention had slowly diminished and he was now staring blankly at the teacher trying to determine his precise age. Ashley’s own level of focus apparently had sunk to a similar low.
‘So who do think was in his first class; dinosaurs or cavemen?’ he whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
‘Dinosaurs definitely,’ Gabriel replied equally as quietly, ‘the boredom’s what made them go extinct!’
The boys spluttered with laughter, trying to conceal it behind their textbooks but to no avail.
‘ASHLEY EVANS! GABRIEL MILLAR! When you have quite finished disrupting my class, I shall continue. And if I hear any more from either of you, I shall see you after the bell! Do you understand?’
Ashley and Gabriel nodded sheepishly in acknowledgement amidst the snickering of those around them. Moments later when Mr Fredrickson had resumed his lecture on the many uses of algebra in everyday situations, the two boys returned to their day-dreaming. Soon after, Gabriel cast his gaze involuntarily out of the window and across the school gardens. He was enjoying the warmth of the sunshine on his face and the peaceful chattering of the birds when suddenly he noticed it out of the corner of his eye.
A glimmer of light.
He jerked his head quickly in the direction of the gleam of bright light, half-expecting it to be a reflection off of a car or something equally as mundane, when there it was as plain as day, as bold as brass.
The light was beating off of the silvery wings of a fairy which was hovering above the reeds of the school pond. Or was it a pixie? He had also heard of nymphs before but wasn’t quite sure what they-
Gabriel snapped his mind back to reality. Whatever this thing was, it was something never before witnessed in the real world. Apart from those nutcases, probably, who believed they’d seen everything from Bigfoot to the Loch Ness Monster. Gabriel’s mind raced back to the morning when he thought he’d seen a fairy/pixie/nymph. Now there could be no mistaking it. It’s staring right at me! From across the wide school lawn and in the glaring sunlight it was difficult to see the creature’s facial features clearly but it was definitely female, he thought. The shimmering, shiny wings fluttered like a butterfly’s. A shock of luminous white-blonde hair topped the fair-skinned, elfin figure which was no taller than a Barbie doll. A silky white robe hung delicately from her shoulders completed the look of a truly stunning and magnificent, yet entirely other-worldly being. The fairy/pixie/nymph gleamed so brightly in the morning sun that it was almost as if radiated light itself: a miniature star nestled amongst the pond reeds.
For several moments all Gabriel could do was to gape in awe at the sight before him. Regaining his senses, he elbowed Ashley in the arm and motioned to him to look at the heavenly spectacle.
‘OW! What’s your problem, man?’ Ashley yelped.
‘Look out there! Quick! Do you see it?’ Gabriel turned to him.
‘See what?’
‘The fairy, of course!’
‘Are you still going on about that? Give it a rest!’
‘No, seriously, I swear! Look – it’s right there! It’s... it’s gone!’
‘If you ask me, you’re away with the fairies!’
‘MR. MILLAR! MR. EVANS! That is quite enough!’ Mr Fredrickson roared. Despite his age and meagre, wrinkly appearance he was not a teacher students wished to cross. ‘I GAVE YOU PLENTY OF WARNING! I WILL SEE YOU AFTER THE BELL! NOW, NOT. ANOTHER. WORD.’
The two friends shrunk into their seats, Gabriel especially. It was because of him that he and Ashley were being kept back. To make matters worse the whole class were now staring at them, including Leon Grant, the class bully. From the obnoxious grin spreading from ear to ear across Grant’s vile face, Gabriel suspected he’d heard him talking about fairies. This could be bad.
After class Mr Fredrickson berated the two of them for their lack of attention and punished them by having them clean up his classroom, especially the undersides of the desks, a place which every student knows is a haven for discarded chewing gum. Never had a break time lasted so long. Never had either Gabriel or Ashley faced a grosser punishment. They didn’t know which was worse: pulling off the fresh chewing gum, which was in some cases still moist and stringy, or scraping off the fossilised kind, which in some cases looked as old as Mr Fredrickson himself and was like trying to scrape a barnacle off of a rock. Worse still was the fact that because Gabriel had caused his best friend to get into trouble as well, Ashley would not even look at him.
The bell rang to signal the end of break. Ashley snatched up his bag and stormed out of the room, ignoring Gabriel’s profuse apologies. Ashley switched seats and sat away from Gabriel during the next two classes, Geography and History which were both taught by the same teacher, Mrs Catching (who could well have been even more ancient than Mr Fredrickson). The two lessons took place in the same classroom as well, which didn’t even allow the students a short break whilst walking from one room to another. At lunchtime Gabriel finally caught up with Ashley in the lunch queue but before he could even attempt to apologise again, he heard the mocking drawl of Leon Grant.
Grant, although not a patch on Gabriel’s size made up for this fact with an exceptionally large ego and even bigger mouth. His oily-black hair was cropped close to his potato-shaped head. Grant’s small, dark eyes looked like beetles crawling across his heavily spotted complexion. All in all Grant looked every bit like some grotesque troll that wouldn’t be out of place in a Lord Of The Rings movie. To compensate for his shortcomings in both the looks and brains departments, Leon Grant hung around with his even more dim-witted gang, which consisted of a taller, slack-jawed boy with a large forehead, named Charlie Forshaw, a short, dumpy-looking boy with red hair and a mono-brow called Lewis Driscal, and a tall, stocky girl with greasy brown hair and wide nostrils, called Maureen Braithwaite, whom could easily have been mistaken to be a boy. And a large, ugly boy at that.
‘Well, well, well. Lookee what we got ‘ere. If it ain’t Gabroids and Ash-face. So Peter Pan, how’s life with all the other fairies?’ Grant slurred.
‘Peter Pan isn’t a fairy and he doesn’t live with them, you idiot,’ Gabriel shot back.
‘Well you’d know wouldn’t ya, Meatbag? You might wanna lay off the steroids though, all this talk of fairies, sounds like it’s startin’ to pack fat on your brain, not just ya arms! And by the way,’ Grant and his gang were now surrounding Gabriel, ‘call me an idiot again an’ I don’t care how big ya are – I’ll break both ya legs!’
Gabriel held Grant’s stare despite a growing sense of unease in his stomach. He towered over Leon Grant, but whereas Grant was in constant trouble for getting into fights (which he was usually winning when they were broken up), Gabriel had never been in a fight in his life. With his commanding size, one-on-one he was sure he could probably handle himself, however Gabriel knew that where Grant was concerned, his cronies Forshaw, Driscal and Braithwaite would interfere as usual, and four-against-one were odds that nobody could stand up to.
‘Ha! Just what I thought,’ Grant continued, ‘all meat but no backbone! What a loser! What a wuss!’ His gang cackled in agreement. ‘And speakin’ o’ wusses – you’re very quiet Ash-Face, what’s the matter, your fairy godmother not bring you ya dress for the ball?’ The foursome exploded in raucous laughter.
‘Get lost, Grant,’ Gabriel retorted.
‘Need ya boyfriend to stick up for ya do ya now, Ash-Face?’
‘He’s not my boyfriend, Grant.’ The venom in Ashley’s voice took Gabriel aback.
‘Aww, had a lover’s tiff have ya? Well maybe if you ask ya fairy godmother really nicely she’ll bring ya a new one! And speak o’ the devil – here she comes now!’ Grant motioned towards Jessica who had ju
st entered the canteen. ‘Although that dizzy mare would probably turn a carriage into a pumpkin instead!’ The gang erupted in laughter again and turned to leave.
‘That does it! Don’t you dare-’ Ashley lunged for Grant as he left. Gabriel quickly leapt into his path to hold him off.
‘Come on, Ash. Don’t do it, it’ll only make things a million times worse!’
‘Get your hands off me! And don’t talk to me! This is all your fault anyway!’ His brown eyes flashed with fury, before he violently shoved Gabriel’s hands aside and stomped out of the canteen.
Looking slightly bewildered, Jessica approached with caution. Grant and his gang could still be heard from across the hall, roaring with new waves of laughter as they each impersonated Gabriel and Ashley.
‘What was all that about?’ Jessica said.
Jessica having done better than the two boys in her exams the previous year had been put into higher sets than them in almost all of her subjects and so was oblivious as to what had transpired earlier in the day. Gabriel explained the events of the morning whilst Jessica watched him intently. Despite being scatter-brained and rather flighty at times, she had an unrivalled talent for making one slightly uncomfortable when she stared at them with her pale blue eyes. Jessica did not intentionally unnerve people, it was just she held an intense focus as she listened and processed every minute detail one was saying. After Gabriel finished talking, Jessica dropped her head causing her thick-framed glasses to slip down. She promptly pushed them back up and let out a deep sigh.
‘Well, you’ve really done it this time,’ she groaned disapprovingly, ‘why did you have to keep on with this whole fairy thing?’
‘It’s not a thing,’ said Gabriel defensively, ‘I really did see one and I wanted to prove it to Ash. What should I do now?’
‘Just drop it. This whole thing is ridiculous. Fairies? Seriously, how old are you? It was probably just a butterfly or a dragonfly that you saw.’
‘I know what I saw.’
‘No, you think you do. And because of that you’ve alienated your best friend, got him in trouble with Fredrickson and given Grant more stuff to tear into both of you about. Why can’t you just admit that you were wrong?’
‘Because I wasn’t! Why won’t you believe me?’
‘Because you want me to believe in fairies! Wake up, Gabriel, this is the real world!’ Jessica chastised. ‘I’m going to go and find Ash. When you’re ready to re-join the real world come and find us. Until then... maybe you should... I don’t know... Do whatever you want.’ And with that Jessica abruptly got up and left the canteen, her hair billowing like an angry flame behind her.
Both of his friends avoided him for the rest of day. At three o’clock when the bell sounded for the end of school, Gabriel waited at the gates as always for Jessica and Ashley. He pulled out his mobile phone and typed a text message which he sent to both Ashley and Jessica.
Hi just outside gates c u soon. :) G
No reply.
By a quarter past three it became apparent that his friends had gone home without him.
***
That evening over dinner, Gabriel was picking at his food, his appetite dwindling. Had he imagined the whole thing? Was it just his imagination? No, he thought, he knew what he’d seen, he was sure of it. He excused himself and headed upstairs to his room, collapsing on his bed in misery.
He checked his phone. Nothing.
Failing to receive a reply from either Ashley or Jessica, Gabriel had sent them another text when he had arrived home from school.
Sorry about 2day can we talk about it? :( G
No reply.
He had then sent them the same message via Facebook and received nothing from either of them in response. He knew they must both still be really mad – neither had shared or even posted anything on their social media pages all evening.
He opened the internet browser application on his phone and typed: what does seeing fairies mean
He scrolled through some of the generated results.
Fairies – Fact or Fiction?
The Truth About Fairies
Is it Wrong to Believe in Fairies?
I see Fairies – Am I going Mad?
The Sort of People that see Fairies
Gabriel swiped the app closed, tossed his phone onto his bedside table and buried his face into his pillow.
Soon after, his father knocked on Gabriel’s bedroom door and stepped inside. Alan Millar was a man with an appearance as unremarkable as could be. If you passed him in the street you wouldn’t look twice; average height, average build, dark blue eyes hidden behind wire-framed spectacles, his once liquorice-black hair, now greyed and slightly thinning. Yet he was incredibly perceptive and had an innate knack of pinpointing the precise cause and solution to any issue or problem. He cared for the wellbeing of his family above all else and for that Gabriel respected him more than anyone else in the world.
‘Hey, Champ. Everything okay? Your mum and I are worried something’s bothering you.’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘Come on, you know you can talk to me. What’s up? Everything alright at school?’
‘Fine.’
‘Sounds it. Tell me. It’ll make you feel better.’ Alan Millar perched on the corner of his son’s bed.
Gabriel rolled over to face him but avoided eye contact. ‘Well it’s just I saw something and Jess and Ash don’t believe me.’
‘Really? And what did you see?’ Alan probed.
‘Nothing. It’s stupid.’
‘Only if you think it is. What did you see?’
Gabriel paused and let out a deep breath, ‘A fairy. See? Stupid!’
‘A fairy, huh?’ his father repeated flatly.
‘See? You don’t believe me either!’
‘No, I never said that,’ Alan stated calmly, ‘I believe that you believe what you saw.’
Gabriel rolled his eyes, ‘Oh great, so you think I’m nuts too!’
‘No, no I didn’t say that either,’ Alan said. ‘If you say you saw a fairy then I believe you did. Gabriel, there are a lot of unexplainable things in this world. People say they see things all the time and others don’t believe them. Just look at Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster, or UFOs...’
‘OK, so now you’re grouping me in with those weirdoes. Brilliant. Thanks, Dad.’
‘Why is that weird? When your mother and I were younger we had almost given up hope of ever having children, then along you came, our own little angel – with wings to prove it!’
‘Those were just bone growths, dad,’ Gabriel stated reprovingly.
‘Think what you will but even Doctor Warner said that they looked like wings! Look, the point is this – people believe in a god, or a messiah, or whatever for their religion even though they’ve never seen them. But it doesn’t make it any less real to them, does it? So why is it such a bad thing to believe in something you’ve actually seen?
‘There’s a lot of unexplainable things in this world and those people who get to experience one of those wonderful things, well I for one think that’s pretty special and would consider myself very lucky indeed if it were me. So don’t let what other people say effect the way you think or act.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘No problem, kiddo. Just doing my job. Hope that helps.’
‘Yeah,’ Gabriel said, ‘it actually does.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Alan said. ‘I’m going to go make your mum and me a cup of tea, fancy one?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Suit yourself. Give us a shout if you change your mind.’ And with that Alan got up and left the room leaving Gabriel alone with his thoughts.
That night Gabriel again dreamed of people he’d never met, flying away and beckoning him to follow, which he remained unable to do. Over the next few days this same dream repeated over and over and each time Gabriel’s desire to follow grew and grew, despite his inability to do so.
***
Durin
g the course of the following week things did not improve any between Gabriel, Ashley and Jessica. He also became very aware that he was being watched wherever he went. Almost every day he would see the same glimmering fairy at least once, whether it would be during his lessons, travelling to or from school, or at the local shops whilst picking up groceries for his mum. Gabriel even saw it a few times at the bottom of his very own garden. Each time there it would be as clear as day staring right at him. To begin with Gabriel would quickly motion for someone else close by to look, but every time, even in the fraction of a second it took them to turn their head in the direction he was pointing in, the fairy had vanished. At school, after several vain attempts to point out the fairy to others, Gabriel had successfully alienated himself from everyone and turned himself into an utter laughing stock.
In desperation, Gabriel had even whipped out his phone to try and take a photo of the fairy. Each time however, it had, of course, vanished before he could open the camera function. Pulling out his phone during lessons had resulted in it being confiscated by the teacher as well as a severe telling-off for him at the end of the lesson.
If there was any positive aspect that came from these failed attempts to convince people, it was the fact that other students no longer teased him about a made-up drug problem. Instead, now the focus was on his insistence that fairies existed, “Tinkerbelle,” “Tooth-Fairy” and “Fairy-Gabe-Mother” were just some of the mean nicknames thrust upon him. The worst thing was that he no longer even had the support of his friends to fall back on. Whenever he passed Jessica or Ashley in the school corridors they would look away from him and shake their heads disapprovingly in unison.
Child of the Gryphon Page 3