Fairy Circle

by Johanna Frappier

  “But, ah, love…. Most humans can never learn to wield it. They don’t want to wield it because it takes constant attention, and cleaning, and polishing, and updating - too much work.

  “Believe me when I tell you, very few in humanity could ever handle this power that surges through my veins.” He shook his head sadly. “If they cannot even grasp the power of love, my power would make their heads explode.”

  “So, you became a vampire because of your great capacity to love?” Huh. That sounded…off.

  “Yes, Saffron. The greatest love, love of oneself.”

  “Okay. Now I see.” She checked to see if he was looking at her. He wasn’t. She rolled her eyes.

  “Saffron. You can handle this power. Within you, I see a great capacity for love. Please, don’t be alarmed at what I am about to tell you. I have notified my counsel of your existence, of your unique qualities. They are excited to meet you. You will be greeted as a dignitary among the vampire race!” (They knew nothing of her, and if not hidden well, she would be taken immediately after he changed her.) “And I, Saffron,” he reached for her hand and she gave it to him. He kissed her palm. “I will treat you like my queen.” It was the first time she had physically touched him. Cold washed beneath his smooth skin.

  “But Jethin,” she wrinkled her nose, “I don’t want to drink blood.”

  Laughter exploded from deep within him. Saffron jumped and glanced back at her bedroom door. “SSsssshhh!”

  “Don’t worry about them, Saffron. They will sleep for as long as I wish. I have seen to that.”

  Saffron pulled out of his icy clamp of a hand. What had he done? What had he done to her mother and Derek?

  “Relax.” He held his hands up in a placating manner. “They’re fine. They’re only sleeping.”

  “Yeah? Sleeping how? I sleep in my bed every night but we had to put my dog to sleep last year. What did you do to them?” Saffron discovered that he could really annoy her. She had never given him permission to exercise some kind of mind game or whatever he did over her mother and Derek. He never asked. She thought he didn’t have power inside her house. How much more was he capable of?

  “I didn’t do anything to them. It’s just a sound barrier trick. The fairies know it, everyone knows it but the humans and the gnomes.”

  Mr. Gnome had eavesdropped on every conversation between the two idiots, that vampire and the human, since they had started. He kept himself well hidden in the brush by the antique tractor that Audrey never got restored. He ate sunflower seeds and garden contraband while he reclined and listened.

  “As for the blood, you develop a thirst for it. You will find, in time, that you crave it, worship it. You can still eat regular food, you know. It’s true. It’s a little-known fact that vampires can eat any food they want. It just won’t keep a vampire nourished like it would a human.” And you won’t enjoy it, he thought but didn’t tell her. She didn’t need to know that all food would taste like glue when she became the undead. Gooey glue, crunchy glue, slippery glue, hot glue, cold glue. That about summed up the vampire food experience.

  “The food goes in, it comes out. As a vampire, if you want to rejuvenate, feel incredible and alive, well, then you must drink blood. This is not so strange. Do you know what humans eat by choice? Listen, in many countries people eat bugs. Humongous, burst-when-you-crunch-‘em, live bugs. If you can’t take them straight, how about some chocolate covered cockroaches? That’ll help them slide down. Have you ever heard of Casu Marzu the Sardinian cheese? Sometimes it’s called “maggot cheese.” It’s goat cheese with fly larvae. The larvae eat the cheese as it’s fermenting and they are growing. Their waste gives it that special flavor…. I once went into a specialized market in Asia. They served a drink with a frog hopping around the bottom of the glass. It is customary to consume the drink in one pull, then munch on the frog. Let’s go to Alaska where we can eat fermented salmon heads; they’ve been rotting in the ground for a few weeks now, let’s have Puyuk dig them up and mash them into a pudding for us. Let’s drink coffee made from beans regurgitated by weasels. Yummy preserved ant eggs? Jellied moose nose? You look like a lamb-brain-with-rice-and-yogurt-sauce girl. No, no, not brain. Lamb’s eye in a vodka shot… Or Hasma, made from the fallopian tubes of frogs. Finish it all off with musk-flavored Lifesavers.”

  Saffron had gasped at every delicacy.

  “People eat the feet, tongues, intestines, cockscombs, brains, and organs of animals. Around these parts, in your own home, people munch on the still-filled stomachs of mollusks! You love your pizza; am I right? Do you even know what you’re eating when you eat every day? Did you know that there is pus in cheese? MmmMmm. Yummy yummy cow pus.

  “In desperate times, people eat the corn from their own waste. And there are even blood drinkers, human blood drinkers. Not the kids playing around in basements with expensive pointy-teeth dentures, but in South America, in Africa, in Asia, they eat the meat of their kill and drink its warm, collected blood from their earthen jars. For them, it’s not fantastic. It’s not for shock value or intimidation. It’s life. It’s the same for me - just life.” He shrugged.

  Saffron’s face was yellow. She dry heaved, once.

  “So now you’re enlightened. Vampires prefer blood. It’s warm and clean, fresh and fragrant. It’s not such a hard concept to grasp.” His eyebrow rose. “There are much worse things than blood.”

  “I guess.” Saffron’s hand was covering her mouth; she was breathing through her fingers.

  “I really must go. Think about what I’m offering you. Think of all that plagues you just suddenly…disappearing. Think of burdens lifted and hardships flying away with the wind. Think of questions. I can give you a satisfactory answer to anything, because there is no more perfection in the world than this.” He indicated his chest. “Later.” With his customary eyebrow wiggle, he left.

  ***

  Markis wasn’t happy. Something weird was going on with Saffron. Granted, he didn’t know her that well. But he’d been after her for months and they never seemed to get anywhere. She was so…preoccupied? He wasn’t quite sure. People never acted bored around him before, but now he wasn’t so sure. Was he boring her? It wasn’t like that in the beginning. She had liked him. He was sure of it. What had changed? When did it change?

  When he had finally made a move to go over and talk to her, really talk to her, that night at the movies, he felt so on. He had always thought she was pretty. In school he often thought about bumping into her at her locker or dropping something near her table in the cafeteria. But he was always with his friends and she was always with her friends and the two groups didn’t mix. And she was always looking down, across, or up. She was always looking away. When he was able to snag her, lock eyes with her, her face would turn ten shades of red. Then she’d actually run away. It was fun at first, that he could get such a reaction from her. But, after awhile, he gave up. When Jeanine told him she was working at the Black Chicken he thought he finally had a chance to approach her slowly and without all of the high school drama to separate them.

  At the theater, he saw the look in her eye. She was thrilled to see him. Her smile really did light up her face. It made his insides jellyfish and wiggle. He had had girlfriends before. He had crushed on loads of girls. In first grade, he used to lure girls into the coat closet and see how many times he could kiss them before Mrs. Walker pulled him out by his ear. On one such occasion, his parents were called in for a parent-teacher meeting. That night they discussed “propriety” and “discretion” with him. When his mother left the kitchen, satisfied with the verbal hand slap, his father waited until she was out of earshot before he clapped his son on the back. And while the great big, redheaded man stifled roars of laughter behind his large hands, Markis sat grinning, his legs swinging from the dining room chair. His father wiped the tears from his eyes. He smiled at his son, his little stud, his virile guy. Markis’s parents were called in at other odd times and told to corral their young stallion
. His mother would pin both father and son with her evil eye, so they would keep their giggling to themselves. But who didn’t want such a confident little boy who was in love with the entire world? His mother was secretly proud.

  Markis was in awe of Saffron. For the first time in his life, he felt neither smooth nor in control around a girl. She seemed almost…magical, like she wasn’t even human. He wondered if he was good enough for the girl that he wanted so badly. For all of her timidity, he felt she was almost too overwhelming.

  Now, over the last couple of months, he saw a transformation come over Saffron. A change so swift and total, it stunned him. She smiled all of the time. She held her head high when she worked with the customers. She yelled to him when he came in through the convenience store door - yelled clear across the long space that separated them. And she smiled at him. They were special smiles. The kind that grabbed you and held you until you couldn’t breathe. She would look right at him over the deli case, without blinking, and hold his gaze over the rows of congealed salad and fat-free bologna. She liked to giggle. She flirted with him all of the time. She’d sneak up behind him from the rows of Corn Pops and Stouffer’s Stuffing and slap his rear.

  He could never get her to be serious. Conversations flip-flopped and contained no real substance. She was so sweet to him, sickeningly sweet. Always calling him “sweetie” and “uh-huhing” everything with a big smirk stretched across her lips, the stars permanently in her eyes. This wasn’t Saffron. This was not the girl who had always intrigued him.

  Chapter 17

  Saffron invited the band over to the farm. It was Derek’s idea, a “Coming Out” party for Saffron because she was starting to come out of her mother’s house on a daily basis, what with her job and the few trips to watch the band jam. When Derek first mentioned the idea, Saffron had gone to work that night complaining to Coco, who thought it was a great idea. Coco proceeded to call the band members and let them know about the party.

  “What night?” Coco blinked rapidly as she held the receiver to her chest. She was on the phone with Iggy. Saffron chucked Coco the bird and walked away. “Saffron says the first. Yeah, duh Iggy, that’s Saturday. God, man, you’re thick….” She hung up the phone and called Markis. Then she called Hippo, telling them all about the great jam session/party they were going to have at Saffron’s house by the sea. Coco even called Bernice and left a message. Bernice never answered his phone.

  On that warm June night, under the azure sky with the air smelling new and green, Saffron begrudgingly hosted her very first party. The ocean heaved against the cliffs, the alpacas grazed on the tender new grass, and somewhere off in the distance, a faraway neighbor gunned his mower to start cutting long expanses of lawn.

  Saffron and her mother worked all morning on hors d’oeuvres and canapés, salads and meat marinades, chips and dips. Audrey didn’t know if she should supply the beer and tell the parents, or supply the beer and pretend not to know what was going on, or to not supply the beer and pretend not to know what was going on. She decided on the latter with the intent to make everyone sleep over if she had to. “Derek, set up the ten- man tent.”

  Big Derek halted as he crossed the kitchen. His arms were full of condiments; he was balancing a bag of charcoal on his head with a bundle of wood pinched under one arm. He mumbled behind the tongs in his mouth. “I’m not setting up the fricken ten- man tent.”

  Audrey blubbed her tongue at him and went back to the salads. She tried not to grin too much, but couldn’t help it. Saffron had come a long way. Derek disagreed. He said there was something up with Saffron; he didn’t trust Saffron’s poor-me drama, and he didn’t trust her ‘happy girl’ drama. He would tell Audrey, “We haven’t got to the root yet.” Audrey pooh-poohed him. Fricken Scorpio - he was so suspicious. Audrey finished stirring the potato salad, licked the spoon, then threw it in the sink and covered the bowl with its lid. “Hey, Saffron, have you been thinking about colleges?” Behind her, there was a kafuffle; a second of silence, then the smashing sound of what Audrey rightly assumed was the jar of relish. Every muscle in Audrey’s body seized up as she raised her eyebrows.

  “Mom, aren’t you happy that I’m working at the Black Chicken? I thought you were all set with everything. Look at this,” she indicated the counters littered with party prep, “I’m socializing. So, we’re going to drop it; right?”

  “Saffron, it’s not about what I’m all set with. I was just wondering what you’re thinking. If you think you’re ready to take the next step.”

  “Because you want more.”

  Derek came gliding into the kitchen on roller-sneakers and carrying lawn chairs. “Oh, lucky me, I get to walk in on the volleynag game.” He set down the chairs and waggled his fingers at them. “No, thanks, ladies. Call me when you’re ready to start the grill.” He turned on his heel and rolled right back out.

  “Yeah, Mom, call me when you’re ready to start the grill.” She hunched out of the room.

  Audrey picked up the potato salad spoon and throttled it. She felt her blood pressure rise deliciously in her head and muffle the sound of the neighbor’s lawn mower. “I’m doing the grill myself!” she yelled at the empty room. She had never lit a charcoal grill in her life. “Screw that.” She started slamming through the cupboards, grabbing the pink grapefruit juice, cranberry juice, cranberry vodka and champagne. She sloshed the ingredients in a pitcher and poured herself a Mason jar full.

  Later, when they were all sitting around the fire pit, with Bernice and Iggy plinking their guitars, Saffron opened her “Coming Out” gifts. The gifts were Coco’s idea. There were suitcases from her mother (she shoved them away with a wan smile to the confusion of the others); a polka-dotted bra and panty set from Coco (which made her burn purple while everyone laughed); a fairy figurine from Markis, that was so finely detailed and so beautiful he was shocked when her face turned deathly white and the little thing slipped from her hands. Markis looked helplessly at Coco. She shrugged.

  Thankfully, the band members and Derek got her more mundane things. A Star Wars t-shirt from Iggy (gently used and all the more valuable he demanded); a recording of their band from Hippo (Hippo always gave homemade gifts); a set of maracas from Bernice (so she could play in the band; she welled up); and a George Michael CD signed by the artist himself (from Derek who was so proud he was crying, tear dollops splashing onto his rotund belly, until he took a deep pull on his Mason jar and several cleansing breaths). Around the bright fire in the dark night, everyone started to get slap-happy and rowdy.

  “I know this is your prized possession, Derek. Wow, thank you.” She was sincere in her thanks. She liked George Michael and hoped one day to attend George and Derek’s wedding, but she was especially thankful for Derek’s ability to clear the air and make a place fun again.

  Bernice plucked some flamenco and inspired the rest of the band. He always did that, talked with his guitar. Saffron had never ever heard him speak. Suddenly, Bernice stopped plunking and sat up straight. He looked toward the cliff just as Saffron heard her suicide ghost start caterwauling. Bernice looked around the group. His eyes settled on Saffron. She looked bug-eyed back at him. But still, he said nothing. He looked down at his guitar and started plinking again.

  For the next couple of hours, they jammed badly and loved every minute of it. It was only ten o’clock when Saffron yawned outrageously loud and said, “Whew, that was fun! Let’s do this again!”

  The band members frowned. Audrey, who didn’t leave when Saffron hinted because she just loved these kids(!), frowned. Derek, who snored chin-on-chest on the lawn chair, frowned. Was Saffron dismissing them? They were ready to go all night. They always went all night - she knew that.

  She got up and started to pick up paper plates with half-eaten food and the beer bottles that Audrey had ignored. The others grumbled as they slowly packed up and made their way to Bernice’s van. Coco was the designated driver. Poor choice. Coco talked too much when she drove and was a menace to society
even if she didn’t drink.

  Markis followed Saffron around as she cleaned. Maybe she was getting rid of everyone else so they could be together? He trailed her to the kitchen where she dumped the trash from her arms into an almost-over flowing bucket - the trash bag sliding off one side. When she turned, he was right there in her face, looking hopeful. He took her hand and moved into her space. “Do you wanna hang out tonight?”

  Saffron felt everything in her body lock up. Jethin would be here soon. She pulled her hand out of Markis’s and edged away from him. “Markis, I’m sorry. I don’t know what it is, maybe the champagne… (He knew she didn’t have any; he studied her every move as if she were a theatre performer) …but I really don’t feel good. I have to go lie down.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” He hooked his fingers into the belt loops on her jeans and pulled her into him. He wasn’t going to give up, not tonight. She was taking forever.

  Saffron coughed, backed up, and tripped on the extension cord they had used for Coco’s keyboard. “Ah, yeah, not with my Mom in the next room, know what I mean? That would be kind of weird.” She looked really strained.

  “So come with me, we’ll go someplace and hang out.” He pulled her to him again and rocked them back and forth, his face coming closer to hers.

  His breath smelled sweet and she actually swooned like a broad from a 40’s movie. She turned away and looked out the dark window. She bit her bottom lip. What if Jethin was watching? Was he here early tonight? She and Jethin weren’t an item, and they weren’t about to be, but Jethin gave the impression that he was one of those not-sharing types. The, ‘I don’t want it but you can’t have it either,’ type. The idea of Jethin’s rage scared her so much she jerked away from Markis and placed both of her outstretched hands on his wide shoulders. She didn’t blink. “You have to leave with the rest of them, right now, okay?”