I Stole You
Page 1
I STOLE YOU
stories from the fae
KRISTEN RINGMAN
HANDTYPE PRESS
Minneapolis, MN
* * *
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
Makara: a novel
AS EDITOR
Everyday Haiku: an anthology
* * *
COPYRIGHT
I Stole You: Stories from the Fae.
Copyright © 2017 by Kristen Ringman.
Cover design: Mona Z. Kraculdy
Cover art: The Nightmare by John Henry Fuseli (1781)
Author photograph: Robert Lusignan
A Handtype Press First Edition
SMASHWORDS LICENSE STATEMENT
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission. Please address inquiries to the publisher:
Squares & Rebels
PO Box 3941
Minneapolis, MN 55403-0941
squaresandrebels@gmail.com
handtype.com
A Handtype Press First Edition
* * *
STORIES
The Meaning, Not the Words
Nang Tani
The Vampire from Vondelpark
A Real Dog
Floating in the Sargassum
The Dream Thief
A Murder of Two
The Art Lover
Love within Tangled Branches
Shining Orange
For My Mother
Huldra
So Many of You Want to Die
Seed
Acknowledgments
About the Author
* * *
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
— W. B. Yeats
* * *
for Willow,
you stole me from 2002 until 2012
I’d like to think I’ve stolen you forever
* * *
THE MEANING, NOT THE WORDS
I stole you from your tent.
I’m not usually so impulsive, but your eyes—one hazel and one green—were so beautiful I couldn’t help myself. You never actually saw me, not then. Not while you zipped your tent shut or while you lay down on the top of your sleeping bag because that night was humid. Not until my hands were in yours, my body against your body, pulling you outside with strength I only have in those moments. Strength for taking humans. I am otherwise made of slim bones, pale white skin, and red fur. A fox who is sometimes a girl.
You weren’t like any other human I had taken before.
You didn’t speak with your mouth; instead you used your hands. Your family, who seemed to have coerced you into their camping trip high up in the White Mountains, didn’t sign with you. But I knew of your hand language because of the way you used it with your friends in video chats on your phone when you were able to find a signal. You used every muscle in your face to add layer upon layer of inflection to the movements of your hands. The conversations kept cutting out, so you sometimes punched the side of a tree in frustration. I apologized for you, but I didn’t have to—even the trees understood: blood relatives surrounded you, but you were alone.
We steal people like you.
Humans who don’t just feel alone but are isolated. In a group of people, you go unseen like a fae creature, like a spirit. It’s easier this way. Not only because your friends and family don’t notice your absence at first. You’re our kindred and you don’t even know it. You ache for the magic only we can give you. The songs of trees and rivers. The lives of animals up close, sometimes right against your skin. Stars reflected in pools like so many shiny fish. A sky filled with bats and the unnoticed wings of the fae, blending in with the background, as we always do.
I stole you because I fell in love with your eyes and the voice you kept in your hands like the glow of a firefly. Words I could understand better than spoken English. Not words—meanings. The way your dark hair always got in your face. The way you moved through the trees without caring what you were stepping on or how loud your steps were. I wore my fox skin during the day and I watched you, listening to the snapping of the branches under your feet as you walked away from your campsite and back, away and back. I felt the tension between you and your kin like a tightrope you walked with your arms out like wings. I don’t know how you crossed that line, back and forth, so fluidly, without stumbling. I wasn’t sure I could have done it, not like you.
I had to wait until nightfall before I could take you without anyone else seeing. Lucky for me, your tent faced the dark grove of hemlocks, away from the campfire and the circle of voices who didn’t seem to care that you couldn’t hear. I shifted under the hemlocks: my red fur became a long mane of tangled russet, my small breasts stayed hard against my skin, my nipples perked up from the chill in the late summer air, my human ears pointed up ever so slightly. The only part of me that stayed exactly the same was the amber in my eyes that matched the color of my fur and hair.
I knew my own beauty. I couldn’t take humans so easily if I didn’t have it.
You didn’t hear me unzip the opening in your tent, nor did you hear me slip inside and take you in my arms. Once we touched, I knew it would be easy. Your skin sang against my skin as if it finally found something it had been looking for desperately.
It’s not always that simple, the stealing of humans.
Sometimes they fight the connection. They reach for their gadgets: the material possessions their inner psyche understands it is losing. Instead of reaching for their lives themselves, they covet the things inside them. It becomes hard for them but effortless for me. I don’t care about how pretty they are then—their souls are full of greed and plastic. It’s not an asset to our realm. It’s nothing that would make a good fae. Those are the humans that I take and I find a way of dissolving them. Of turning them into so many grains of sand at the bottom of a pond. Or I let them stay human. I let them go back to those objects they worship, the clothes they drape over themselves like capes, the phones they clutch in their small hands, the paint they smear on their faces. Humans like that—they think they’re witches, but they’re slaves.
Other times there are people like you: the human I stole from a tent in northern New Hampshire on the eve of the August full moon. You were perfect.
As soon as I released your body by the shore of the pond in the moonlight, you pulled off your clothes and dove into the shining waters. You thought I was a girl.
“Who are you?” you signed.
I understood you, but I couldn’t sign back. I could only mime things that made you laugh at me, or stare in wonder at my eerie accurateness, or nod with comprehension of the meaning behind the words. You understood me, too. I loved you more for that.
&
nbsp; We spent the night dipping in and out of the gray waters, walking the Moon’s path along the shore of the pond, watching the deep green pine trees sweeping themselves back and forth over the stars. I spoke with you of fae things I had never told a human before, all with my hands making shapes, my face learning to move in the subtlest ways. Your hands were on fire with language and stories, telling me of school and home, your friends, your parents, your dog. I loved that your dog was closer to you than your family—that he was your family. But then he was gone, and you would always be broken inside. I heard things from your hands that made my fae heart ache and my skin yearn to shift back into the fox skin—into the mind that wouldn’t quake at such emotions, the mind that would sort them out and follow the scent of the nearest food, slinking through the trees like a red shadow.
Your life made me cry. You kissed me.
For the first time in my life, I wasn’t prepared. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make you like me. I loved you for who you were already. A human.
But a fox girl and a human?
It would never work.
I could have kept you, but I didn’t. I put you back with a quiver in your heart and a dream in your head of a naked girl in a pond. The next day you and your family packed up and left.
I always wonder if I chose wisely. If sending you back to your world was the best possible thing for both of us. I wonder, but I don’t let it change me. I remain a fox by sunlight and a girl by moonlight. A wanderer. And now—a lover of signed languages. Taken: hundreds of humans. Loved: almost half of them. Deeply loved: five.
Sometimes I wonder what that means about humans. Sometimes I wonder what that means about me. It’s the meaning that’s important, not the words used to describe it.
We’ve got to let the things we love go. I at least know that.
But every eve of the August full moon, I return to that pond and I wait for you.
* * *
NANG TANI
I stole you from the temple.
A crescent moon hung low in the sky. The monks laid out little candles all along their walkways so that visitors to the temple would not trip and fall in the dark. You walked by the golden Buddhas in your best clothes before kneeling at the back and praying with your head down low. You stood and walked slowly down the meditation path behind the temple, past the small man-made pond, past the white stupa, past the homes of the monks, until you reached my tree.
I am Nang Tani and my home is this wild banana tree you came to see. I’ve lived here for so long, I don’t remember if I’ve ever had another life, but sometimes I wish I did. Sometimes I wish to be human like you and be able to go to the markets and buy fresh fruit or go to the city and take a bus somewhere.
When you reached my tree, I stepped out from the wide green leaves in my green top and skirt wrapped around my green-tinted skin. I had a red flower in my long hair. I watched you light incense as an offering to me at the base of my tree. You tied a beautiful orange silk ribbon around my tree to add to the yellow and pink ribbons I already had. I felt gratitude for those things.
You were not someone I wanted to harm.
As you stepped back from my trunk and turn to leave, I became desperate. Couldn’t you stay a little longer? Couldn’t you sit down and be with me for just a while?
I moved in front of you to stop you from leaving, but you didn’t see me.
You walked through me like a ghost.
I floated back to my tree, wrapped my arms around it, and sobbed. For days, I felt lost to the world. I couldn’t connect with anyone else who came to see me. People came and left so quickly. My life was an empty stretch of space between one visitor and another. A gap of time where I sat and watched the sky change from day to night to day, watched the monks attend to the gardens between my tree and their temple, watched the birds land on the white stupa and fly off again.
How I wished I could be a bird instead of a tree spirit.
Or a human. I especially wanted to be able to dance on a stage with makeup on my face and beautiful, shiny costumes adorning my body. I wanted to dance and make everyone smile.
I wanted to be free.
But people came and went as predictably as the days and nights.
Weeks passed, and finally, you returned on the night of a half moon.
I hadn’t singled you out for anything particular. There was nothing unusual or remarkable about your dark eyes and hair, your small frame and the simple clothing you chose to cover it. In a crowd of local people from the villages around my tree, you wouldn’t have stood out at all. You’d blend in with everyone.
The reason I felt kindred to you was because you had an invisible disability. I didn’t know it myself until you had come to see me a few times. A monk came up behind you once while you were walking on the path and he startled you. Another person tried to speak to you and it was clear that you didn’t hear or understand their words.
When I saw that, I wondered if you felt as alone as I did with my tree. I wondered if there was a way for both of us to be together.
Every time you came to me, I stepped out from my tree. I approached you, but you looked straight through me. You didn’t see anything besides my tree with the silk ribbons tied around its trunk.
I was frantic. I don’t remember ever crying so much in my entire existence. Discovering you, desiring you, made me lonelier. It didn’t make sense to me.
One night the moon was so full it shone like a white sun in the dark sky. The stars faded around it. Even the candles around the temple, usually bright and fiery, seemed muted in the wake of such a moon. It gave me hope.
You approached my tree once again with an offering of incense and a small handful of sweets. This time when I stepped in front of you, your eyes widened and you stepped back. You made a sign with your hands again and again.
You were signing my name. You saw me! You knew me!
I was overjoyed, but when I went to embrace you, you fell backwards to the ground.
I stopped. I wasn’t sure how to sign, so I tried to gesture that I only wished you well, I only wished to sit with you. I sat down between you and my tree and I waited.
Your ragged breath slowed down. You sat cross-legged and stared at me. I couldn’t read your face.
I waited once again, wishing for some kind of friendship or something between us. I only wanted to connect with someone, you see. But soon you stood up and bowed low to me before turning to go.
I couldn’t let you leave me again. I couldn’t bear the light of that full moon illuminating my solitude. I didn’t choose my life. I was not like the monks of the temple. I couldn’t stay with my tree forever if this was what forever meant.
I grabbed you from behind. I wanted to be kind. I only wanted to hug you.
But you fought against me, your arms flayed around, and I heard the sound of you trying to scream but it was as if your scream was caught inside your throat and you didn’t know how to release it properly. I took your face in my hands and pressed my lips against yours.
I kissed you sweetly, but you didn’t stop struggling.
I had to hold you tighter and tighter.
The loving embrace I had in my mind dissolved as quickly as your body weakened. I knew I might be hurting you. I knew I was clutching for something that wasn’t mine, something you didn’t want to give me, and to be honest, I hated myself for it. I hated that I needed you so badly I squeezed the life out of you.
I didn’t realized I had killed you until you went slack in my arms, your head fell back, and your eyes stared blankly at the moon behind my shoulder.
A sob caught in my throat like your screams. I felt such a deep sorrow that I couldn’t even cry anymore. I sank to my knees and held you while the moon crossed the sky and set behind the palm trees on the other side of the temple.
I lay beside you in the dark until another trapped spirit appeared out of the woods.
She was the floating head of a woman with her organs dangling down from her neck in a thic
k wet tangle. Her name was Krasue and I knew she was hungry from the way she sniffed at your body even though you were not bleeding. She usually followed the scent of blood and killed chickens or wild wounded animals. But maybe she didn’t find enough of them to eat that night.
I usually felt bad for her. She was one of the spirits I used to remind myself that my fate was not that bad. At least I was not a severed head with my organs hanging down from my neck. I also floated and I couldn’t walk, but at least I still had feet. I resembled a human girl.
She looked at me with an air of challenge. She knew I wasn’t a killer like her, but because of that, she also knew you were more rightly hers than mine.
I wanted to fight for you. I did.