Fairy Circle

by Johanna Frappier

  He shook his head once and grabbed her. He pulled her body with one hand, securing her hips against his, and the base of her skull with the other. He put his lips on hers and spoke through his teeth. “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, my God…” she laughed nervously as she wrestled her way out of his grip. “Markis, go home.”

  He flinched. It made her sad to see confusion eat at his confidence. He was slumped now, just like she used to stand. He turned around without another word and stalked out of the house. Coco closed in behind him, walking forward but looking back at Saffron and mouthing, “Why? Why?” until she walked into the doorway, swore, and then was finally, mercifully - her and her mouth - out into the night.

  Saffron heaved a sigh and ran upstairs. She passed Gram’s bedroom where her mother sat on the side of the bed reciting Yeats.

  Outside in the van, Markis fumed. As Coco backed up, he saw a light come on upstairs on the second floor. He squinted to look inside the room and his breath caught when he saw Saffron sit in front of her mirror and put her hair up. It wasn’t styled that way five minutes ago when she dismissed him. Is that how she got ready for bed? He watched her apply something to her lips. “What the hell?” he yelled into the silence, causing Coco to yank on the wheel, go off the driveway, and screeeeee along the alpaca gate. The band members shrieked like little girls and Coco squawked like a chicken.

  Markis’s thoughts raced. It looked like Saffron was getting ready to go on a date! Maybe he wasn’t all-knowing of the ways of women but he was pretty sure they didn’t do up their hair and apply lipstick or whatever to go to bed sick on the champagne that they didn’t drink! And she had been afraid! He thought of it now as the diss played in his head, just like it would a thousand times before he went to sleep. She had definitely been afraid when she was trying so desperately to get rid of him. At first, he thought she was nervous about what was going on between them, about how close they were getting, and about the thoughts of what they were about to do. But some little inkling told him her fear didn’t match that of being nervous about the first time you touched someone you liked. Which left him thinking what? That Saffron had pushed him out of the house to get ready for a date she was afraid of? Who? It was just too bizarre. He couldn’t be right. Suddenly, the van felt too small. The cracked leather seat was pancake-flat and painful to sit in. He rubbed the back of his neck and squinted at the dark road ahead.

  Unwanted puzzle pieces came clunking into his brain. The entire ride home, he juggled the memories of odd things that Saffron had done. Not long after the movie “date” he had gotten her phone number and had started calling her almost every day. They talked and talked and talked. She was always so animated. He imagined her sitting there in her room on the other end of the line, lying on her bed, laughing and twirling all of that red hair between her fingers. Sometimes they talked for hours. But she would never talk long after dark.

  He counted. Besides seeing her at the Black Chicken, he had contact with her after sunset only tonight, at the party she didn’t want to have, three times at band practice, and that first lame-ass date, if you could call it that, at the movies. His gut told him that if he proposed a movie to the group, this time she wouldn’t go. He wanted to test his theory but there weren’t any good flicks out right now, so they’d all say no.

  His heart dropped like a rock, rattling down his ribcage, and landing with a dull thud onto his lap. Was she seeing someone else? After dark? Who was he? A damn vampire? Markis shifted and bounced his knee. Then he leaned forward and heaved his body back, trying for an elusive bit of comfort in the stiff leather seat. He stared without seeing into the blackness of the starless night as the drunken band members sang, “Forget You.”

  Chapter 18

  As Saffron sat on her tuffet waiting for Jethin, she wondered; what would her life be like if she was a vampire? She felt a little ashamed just thinking about it but she couldn’t help it. There were pros and cons. She would never see Li again. Jethin had said something about him and Saffron not being allowed to be together in the fairy world. What did he mean? Why? She’d have to remember to ask. So, if she was a vampire, she could never go back to the fairy world. That was okay. Most people never saw the fairy world once; she had been there three times. She didn’t like it the last time, and she didn’t like seeing magical critters. They scared her. She was all done with the fairy world. Could Li come visit her in the regular world? Even if Li brought Ny with her, Saffron would have nothing to worry about - she’d no longer be attracted to him. He could try all he wanted but he wouldn’t be able to affect her anymore. She wouldn’t have to feel herself giving over to him, like a dog in heat, just to be repulsed by her actions later. Who did that? Who lost control like that? It wasn’t right. She needed to get away from him. She was so afraid she’d give into him, and soon, lose herself completely.

  It was interesting to consider those things. But, then she thought about her mother and started to cry, as if her mother had already grown old and died. She made herself sick. This wasn’t fun to think about at all. But, as a vampire, she could protect her mother and protect Derek. She could make sure they were always safe. The way she was now, she was no help to her mother at all. Her mother was the biggest dreamer on earth; she would never go to college. If she was a vampire, she would be strong. She could annihilate anyone who threatened her or her family. She would just go to her mother as a vampire, show Audrey she was okay, and show her all of the great things she could do. She would prove how smart she was, how confident. And she’d be a rich vampire. So Audrey could buy more acreage and make her alpaca farm bigger, and have a store built right on the land. Besides, weren’t mothers always saying they didn’t want their children to grow up? Her mother wouldn’t have to worry about Saffron losing her virginity, being tempted by drugs or any of those other human things mothers worried about. Saffron could walk down the most dangerous street, in the middle of any city, at any time of night and never fear attack. Saffron stilled. She wondered when she had crossed the line from musing about it to justifying it.

  Where was Jethin?

  She waited another hour and went to bed. She was half asleep when she heard the very sound she didn’t want to hear. But she was between sleep and dreaming and she couldn’t stop them. The tinkling of tiny bells and slapping of tiny wings heralded their arrival. Her puppet soul responded to their unspoken commands. Her body stayed behind and rested peacefully.

  Chapter 19

  The fairies knew something was very different about the girl tonight. They exchanged looks of alarm. It disturbed their ultra-finely-tuned fairy senses. It was almost as if she was…disappearing. They carried her into the clearing, dropped her, and blinked away. Ny was there, on his knees. He gathered her in his arms. The full moon splashed across her face, lighting her cheekbones and her thick, golden eyelashes. No matter how hard she tried to hold a firm expression, he saw how she instantly melted in his arms and soaked him up. He grinned. He would never lose her. She would never leave him. She could run away from him, run to the human world, and leave him behind. But, even in the human world, she chained herself to him in her dreams. He licked his lips and breathed her in. So desired to breathe her in. His blue eyes roamed the contours of her skin. He smoothed back her hair. She was his little treasure, always and forever.

  Saffron’s lips were parted, her cheeks flushed. She was waiting for him. She had been with him for only two seconds but she knew. And he knew. She would give herself to him. Not Jethin, nor Markis, nor any other man for all of her existences, because no man but this man mattered. She reached up to graze her fingertips along his jaw line, and then pressed his bottom lip. She reached up with her other hand and raked her fingers through his hair. An eddy swirled through her brain, gathered strength and, in only a moment, became a thundering tornado that whipped her blood. He pulled at her without touching her. She had no choice but to respond to his gravity. The sensations in her were, by measure, both excruciating and sublime.


  Then into the swirl came a picture, an image of pain, a sight so crippling, it would prove to be her savior. It was the strangest fleeting vision. She was at his feet, weeping. It was some other time, some other place. Her hand froze in mid-stroke as her eyes widened with a burgeoning knowledge.

  “Ny!” The shriek shook Saffron’s entire soul. The fog that Ny had created to dull her senses blasted out of her mind. She jumped out of his arms, sobbing. Why was this happening to her?

  Li stepped out of the shadows. “And now she will learn the truth, Ny. Before I allow her to give herself to you one more time; I will tell her the truth. Maybe she will protect herself with it and find some might to deny you.”

  “Why would you do this, Li? Why will you not leave this business alone? It does not concern you. It concerns only Saffron and me. We will decide our paths.”

  “You are wrong! It has everything to do with me. I will not watch my friend suffer. I will not stand by and watch her sacrifice herself to you. And I will not watch you destroy her one more time.”

  Ny’s eyes narrowed. “You will undo our lives? But, sister, I am not the cause of her grief, but of her pleasure. I am the answer to her desires.”

  “What’s happening?” Saffron shrieked and started to run. But run where? There was nowhere to run. This was their world. She collapsed into a heap on the forest floor.

  With tears in her eyes, Li watched her friend. She dropped to her knees beside her. “Saffron,” Li whispered, “I must tell you now. I will not leave you in the dark any longer. You may not want to hear what I say, and indeed, it is much easier to hide from the truth than to face it. But face it you must, and if this truth does not destroy you, you will grow stronger for knowing.”

  Ny scowled at his sister but made no move to stop her. What could he do? Saffron would know all when she died anyway. What did it matter if she found out a few years earlier than expected? What did it really matter? He could take Saffron again. He had done it a thousand times before and he could do it again. After she cried it out, she would be his again. He leaned against the trunk of an ancient oak and watched his sister soothe her favorite pet.

  The girls sat side by side. Li’s wings glinted and flexed. Ghostly wisps of Saffron’s red hair had escaped her up-do and moved in the breeze. Li placed both arms around Saffron and held her tight. She spoke very softly. “Do you not yet know who I am, Saffron? Can you not feel what I really mean to you? Close your eyes and feel me. Feel what passes between us and tell me what it is that washes over you.”

  Saffron sighed and forced her breathing to even out. Her eyelids fluttered shut. At first, she felt nothing but the pain, confusion, and desperation that plagued her. Then slowly, the pain and confusion and desperation seemed to separate and take on solid forms. They were like odd shapes in her mind with piercing colors and jagged edges. Her breathing slowed to a stop. Waves of soft color floated into her mind, and with each pass a color first washed away the jagged shape of pain, then the scribbled block of confusion, then the downward spiral of desperation. The waves kept coming; they cleansed her and massaged the fatigue out of her muscles. They cleared her mind.

  After awhile, Saffron opened her eyes and started to breathe. She felt light and free. “Oh,” she gasped. She had been staring straight ahead, but now she turned to Li. “I love you.” She thought her lips would split from smiling. She hugged Li. They held on to each other for a long time.

  “Yes,” Li crooned as she wiped away her own tears. “You and I, before we enter our human lives, we choose to be best friends or mother and daughter or sisters. We are always together. We had never been apart, until now. You left me, Saffron.”

  Saffron started to shake her head no. She would never have done that.

  “It is true, Saffron. One day you begged off from a fairy feast, promised to be soon back, then never returned. You became human alone.”

  “No.” Then louder, “No! I would never leave you!”

  Li lowered her head.

  “Oh, no, Li. I know nothing would cause me to leave you. My God, I can feel that. How come I haven’t sensed you all along?”

  Li didn’t raise her head. “Because you were only sensing him.”

  Ny crossed his arms over his chest. He glared at his “sister.” “Come now. So melodramatic. Must you?”

  Li looked over at him, her expression blank. She stared at him for some time. He pretended nonchalance.

  She was still watching Ny when she said, “Your bond with Ny is also very, very strong. In the fairy world, he and I call ourselves “siblings,” as it is the best description for the platonic relationship we most usually share. The three of us, and several others, always enter the human world together and take parts in a play that is somewhat predetermined. Of course, the path of our lives is not set in stone. We are free to make our own choices. What kind of fun would the human adventure be if we could not make our own choices?"

  “So, sometimes you are my best friend and I, I marry Ny, and he’s your brother, right?”

  Li turned away from Saffron to tear fungus from a rotted tree. “Marry? Yes, sometimes.”

  Something tugged within Saffron - it wouldn’t go away. It was the force she sometimes felt when the fairies first took her, when she wanted to stay in her bed. It had made itself known to her on other troubling occasions, but she had always ignored it. “I know what you’re not telling me. It’s Ny. He doesn’t love me.”

  As Li opened her mouth to speak, Ny leapt from his tree. He just sprang like a wild jungle cat, all of his muscles pumping. Saffron didn’t see him cross the distance but suddenly he was right there, by her side. He pulled Saffron to him with tears in his eyes. He clutched her head to his chest. Saffron was wide-eyed, but made no movement to get away from him. She lay as limp as a frightened mouse between the paws of a cat.

  “I will not have this, Li! I will not have you leading her to believe that I do not love her! You know that is not true. Will you now start another chain of lies to protect her from the truth?”

  “Pah, truth. What does truth mean? Fine. Yes, Saffron, Ny loves you very much. Just look at that display of crystalline tears. But come now, Ny; you do not respect her.”

  Ny took Saffron’s head in both of his mannequin-like hands, warming his palms for her. He looked into her eyes. “Only love matters, Saffron.”

  Li scoffed.

  With very little patience, Ny ignored her. “Saffron, sometimes you cannot handle the nature of our relationship…” He flipped a hand imperturbably at the air, “…you get yourself very worked up. But I tell you now, I love you. This relationship that we share. It is incomparable.”

  Li walked a little away from them as Ny continued whispering, holding Saffron’s face. “Ny, you say Saffron cannot handle the nature of your relationship. Should you not explain what that means? By the moon and the stars, Ny! The nature of your relationship is like that of a violent storm, or raging bull, or any number of destructive things!” Li’s eyes blazed. It was coming. She could feel it, the first fairy throttling since the dawn of time. But what would that accomplish? It would be as fruitless as choking the wind for scouring, choking the rain for drowning, choking the sun for burning…

  Saffron spoke very softly but her voice was firm. “What, exactly, is the nature of our relationship, Ny?

  Ny released Saffron. “Well…”

  Li beckoned for Saffron to sit with her on the mushroom-covered log. Wild flowers grew there too. Wherever the sun could break through the trees and nourish the seeds, the tiny flowers grew, though their roots were relatively weak. Li plucked several flowers of white and fuchsia and red. She wove the stems around and around. Silently, Saffron watched her. When Li completed the crown, she placed it upon Saffron’s head and petted the rings of fiery curls that fell down Saffron’s back. In one of the trees above, worker bees slaved for their queen. The drone of the males could be heard even though it competed with the wind, the rustle of leaves, the bubbling of a brook, and the far-o
ff, forlorn bleat of a deer.

  Li smiled and continued stroking Saffron’s hair. “The fawn searches for her mother. We are in much the same situation.”

  “You are not my mother.”

  Li’s hand stilled, then continued stroking a little more stiffly. “Ny is all things male to you. I am all things female. It is what we have chosen.”

  “What does that make me, the eunuch?”

  “Saffron, sshhh. Listen.”

  Saffron leaned away from the white fairy.

  “You were lucky to receive your mother.” Li chuckled and shook her head. “Although, the poor soul would give her life for you now, you did scare her upon the declaration of your arrival.” Li tilted her head like a mischievous puppy. “She thought of killing you, you know. Something I had never considered in all of the times you were in my womb.”

  Saffron sucked in her breath and instant tears welled in her eyes. “Did I do something wrong to her? I mean, did I cause her trouble?”

  “Oh, yes, Saffron.” Li’s laughing bubbled over, and Saffron wanted to know what was so hilarious. Causing her mother grief should not be so funny.

  “Your mother was very young when she learned she was with child. In that era, she was too young.” Saffron nodded. She knew this. Her mother was only sixteen years old when she discovered she was pregnant. Saffron, who was now nineteen and no closer to sex than Vlad the Impaler was to pleasant, couldn’t fathom being several months pregnant at this point in her life, never mind sixteen. Saffron squirmed on the log. She definitely did not like talking about this. Her mother + sex = disturbing.

  “Do you know why birth control pills are only ninety-nine percent effective? Because of fairies! Sometimes we want to get born.

  Saffron looked impressed.

  “At that time, you decided for everyone that Audrey should be your mother…” Li sniffed. “I’m really not sure why.”