Fairy Circle

by Johanna Frappier

  Saffron shot her a warning glance.

  “It was not her chosen destiny to have you. Her soul, deep down inside, knew that what had happened was very much…off its destined path. Your mother fought through terrible times of great confusion, and with confusion comes depression. But, as I have said, our lives are not set in stone, and remarkably, stranger things have happened. Your mother is…a special soul, so she was able to overcome her predicament.” Li’s mouth curved into the same and too-frequent smile. The smile didn’t reach her eyes. “That is the wonderful thing about our destinies; they can change,” She sat so erect, she looked painfully prim. She shot a sly look at Ny, who was tossing acorns. “You can meet new souls and new people to love.”

  Ny was unusually quiet. He was sure something was amiss. He had been suspicious for some time now. What was she up to? Beautiful fairy she might be, with her hair of spun sugar and flashing, violet-rimmed eyes, but she could be a mean spirit too. It wasn’t uncommon for her to be into some secret business. His eyes softened as they settled on the long, curving form of his naïve love. “Saffron, the meeting of true lovers is not common. Do not expect to have such a great love life this time around - nothing like what I have given you.” He tilted his head back to catch some of the sun’s rays.

  Saffron wanted to touch him, just once, everywhere. She wished she had the power to stop time and take off his clothes without anyone knowing, not even him. He could stand there like a museum piece while she admired him. As long as he didn’t know. He was so freakin’ arrogant.

  “Ah, yes, Ny. And what is it that you usually give our Saffron?”

  “More than she has now. She can feel that she does not belong, that something is amiss in this life. She does not belong in this time, with these people. She will never feel right until she leaves this life and comes back to us, until she returns to me.”

  “There is time, Ny. Things could change for our friend, Saffron. She could change things for herself, customize life to suit her needs and wants. Meet people who can help her.” Li had a Cheshire grin.

  Ny ground his teeth. “What is it? What do you know? You will not make me salivate over your secrets.”

  Li sprung from the log and stood toe-to-toe with Ny, both of their wings pumped. Saffron looked from one to the other. She saw the determination in their stances, the look of defiance in their eyes. Yeah, they were just like brother and sister, and a bratty pair at that. “Ny.” He didn’t seem to hear her. She spoke louder, more insistent. “Ny, what is the nature of our relationship?”

  His shoulders drooped, just a little. He wagged a finger at his sister.

  Li nodded. She had won. “I will tell her, Ny.” She brushed his wagging finger away. “Ny will never love you the way you want him to love you, Saffron. As for your part, you chain yourself to Ny. You give of yourself until there is nothing left to you but an empty shell of desperation and misery. One thinks you would, after a time, leave him and search out other loves. We all have many true loves. Sometimes we intentionally create chaos by entering a human life with two or more of our true loves. As human, there are absurd ways we learn to handle that. But most of us, most of the time, agree to enter the human race with one chosen love. Someone we can navigate the world with. Then there is you, Saffron…. Ah, well. You choose Ny over and over again. You give no one else a chance. And over and over again Ny cuts your heart out of you and laughs while its pulse slows and weakens in his hand.”

  Saffron fell backwards off the log. She scrambled up from the leaves and yelled, “What?”

  “Oh, I do not mean that in the literal sense, Saffron.” Li’s laugh tinkled like Christmas bells. “You would be much luckier if he did just kill you.”

  “Come now, Li.” Ny put his hands on his hips. His fine tunic clung to every edge, hill and valley of his torso. “Watch yourself. Or you will chase her away too.”

  The warning scared her. Ny could see. Saffron saw the flash of fear as well. Li blurted, “Saffron, we do not have much time left. You must leave soon. Be done with Ny. He hurts you, Saffron. Over and over and over again, he hurts you so terribly. You are married to him and you find him in your bed with another woman. In other lives, you have affairs with him, and even though he promises, he never leaves his wife for you. He promises the moon and gives you less than the fodder of a worm. You cry for him. You beg at his feet. You commit suicide…..”

  Li finally fell silent, satisfied with the horror in Saffron’s eyes. Saffron clutched at the log on which she leaned, pressing her fingers into the soft, mossy rot and crushing the fungus. Black spots formed and danced before her eyes. She broke out into a cold sweat and knew she was going to faint. She flopped and sprawled unceremoniously across the top of the log, passed out, only to come to a moment later. When she opened her eyes, she saw nothing but the woman on the cliff on the edge of the sea. She had felt every little last bit of that woman’s agony when she jumped. Saffron hadn’t known why she empathized with the woman, but she knew now. In a way, she was that miserable wretch of a soul. She was that woman so set on snuffing out her existence. She knew what it was like to live in such pain that the body wanted to dash itself like glass on rock.

  “It was you…” Saffron raised her arm up until her index finger stretched out and pointed straight at Ny. “In my dreams. Always cheating on me. In Rome, in China, in the tenth century, in the twentieth century…in bedrooms, in wide-open fields…all those women.” Saffron held her chest. “Oh, my God, those awful, awful dreams.”

  “Not dreams.” Li whispered. Her voice trailed in the breeze like a length of silk over smooth, cool marble. “Memories.”

  Not dreams, memories. Not dreams, memories.

  This was all wrong. This wasn’t like the reincarnation stories she had heard and read about. People who were hypnotized and asked to describe a past life always discovered that they were Cleopatra or Hercules, a king, a queen, an emperor, a celebrity. Even Jesus! Here she was, in what should have been her shining moment, reincarnation of all things, just to discover she was wretched, pitiable, and weak. But the humiliation was only one thing she couldn’t swallow.

  She had been able to tell herself to dismiss the pain. It was only a dream, nothing real, nothing to consider. Now to discover that all of the feelings were real was too much to bear. Every horrible moment came rushing back in the clearest of details and this time she crumpled and folded under the agony, knowing that the visions were all true. All true.

  Suddenly, everything happened at once. Saffron jumped up and flew at Ny. She thought of nothing but clawing his perfect skin and mocking smile from the bone of his skull. She wanted him to live while she ripped him to shreds. Li jumped after her and Ny blinked into a ball of light just as Saffron was about to lay her hands on him. She was running at him at full force when he disappeared. She tripped and flew face-first into the dirt and decay of the forest floor.

  Ny flew to a low branch on a nearby tree. He was low enough to keep an eye on Saffron but high enough to stay out of her reach. He stared at her in wonder as his body trembled; he had never seen her act like this. Where was his gently-cooing dove? Where was his mewling kitten, his weepy maid? “Even though you did not touch me, you hurt me, Saffron.” He was pouting.

  Saffron started to scream. She screamed until her throat became ragged and she could taste blood on her tongue. Then she raged some more.

  Ny looked to Li, who was wringing her hands as she stood over Saffron. Li wanted to touch the girl but was afraid to.

  “She must leave now or her rage will spoil our land. Take her away.”

  “Oh, ho, so you make a mess of her and I clean it up. Does this ring any bells, Ny?”

  Other fairies started to arrive. They told Li to take Saffron home. They told Li never to bring her back. Her human hate was hurting them. Hate, the only thing they could feel on their skin, with its crawling and biting like scorpions, burning them with its poison. It reminded them of their punishment, of why they were there. It was unb
earable to them.

  “Yes, yes. Here…” Li put her hand to Saffron’s brow and instantly Saffron was silent and staring with glassy eyes. “Please take her. I will take my leave and lessen her struggle.” She turned to Ny. “She will be done with you now.” She looked very sure of herself. “There is one with her. One who has loved her from afar. I had long known of his feelings for Saffron and I decided it was time to urge him forward, help him against you. And he will allow me to be near Saffron when next we take our human lives. He has promised me this. His now mother calls him, ‘Markis.’ He is from another tribe. He went to that tribe many ages ago. But he once belonged to our tribe. He was here for murder…yours.” She adjusted her tunic. “When he was here he watched how you continued to abuse her love. He tried to approach her. You blocked his way, and Saffron chose not to see him. He went away. He quickly ascended in the other tribe and was able to choose rebirth after a short period.

  “When Saffron left us, I discovered early on what had happened to her. I have always loved her better than you, Ny. I have always been concerned for her welfare, truly cared for her pain. I easily realized what had happened and what she had done. I acted on my hunch and found the truth; Saffron was better than both you and I. Her only crime was in not protecting herself, so her sentence here was short. We were both too selfish to notice that she was not our equal. She is better. She stayed with us in the fairy realm after our other incarnations because she chose to, not because she was imprisoned like we were. Like we are.

  “I set out to find the soul that would be Markis. I found him. I found him still greatly in love with our Saffron. Of course he was; true love doesn’t go away. He went after her and was born not many months after she arrived into the human world. I told the rest of you so many years later, when it would be fruitless for you to give chase, when she would consider you just a baby and give you no audience. You had been looking for her among the tribes all that time, with never a thought to what she had really done. You have underestimated her. And, although his human body is not aware of what a great chance this is, Markis’s soul will lead him home to her. True love cannot die, Ny. But I think obsession can fade if Saffron will let it.”

  She stood tall, towering over him, her chin lifted in victory, her hair flapping and furling around her like a long, white flag.

  Ny sneered. “You think it so easy to keep her from me? She thinks it so easy to keep from me. You are both wrong! I did not know of Markis. So what? It does not matter. I have my own secret…I have shown her the lake!” Right then, he didn’t look so beautiful. Even to Li, who had always been proud of his good looks, he was like a creature neglected - ugly and vicious.

  Li wasn’t expecting to hear anything so terrible. Her wings seemed to fail as she stumbled toward a tree; her clear skin turned a sickly gray. “Oh, Ny,” she breathed, “How could you? We’ll be chained here for eons. How could you?” Through her tears, Li summoned the wind and sent a message to Saffron. “You are in danger, but I will help you. Do not leave your home. Allow no one in. Do not make contact with the creatures of magic. Do not speak on the phone. Pull your shutters. Do nothing at all until you hear from me again.”

  Li raised her hands to her mouth and held back a scream of frustration. That was why it was no good to have humans there. Humans left residue. Hormones flying around freely in fairy air were like an airborne disease. Too many little bugs in the air could make fairies sick. And Li felt ill now. She knew what the lake meant. Dreaming of the lake told the soul to prepare for death. The dream came to all humans just before death. It was like the final announcement before your train left. Ny had sent the dream and tricked Saffron’s soul. Saffron did not know it, but inside, in the blackest and strongest part of her mind, she had been preparing for death. To prepare for death was to justify it, to give in. If Saffron died now, her shameless soul would be reborn somewhere else and they’d have to find her and wait for her all over again and still she wouldn’t really be with them. That was the best-case scenario. The worst case would be if something caused her to break the circle…

  “Ny. Ny! Jethin has developed a relationship with her! If he tricks her well, she may not die! Did you not know of her meetings with him?”

  Ny looked doubtful. “Oh, please. Not Jethin again.” Was this another ruse of Li’s?

  But Li saw him falter. “Did you really not know what was going on with your love all of this time? Of course not! This is what I mean. You care nothing for her! Why do you not release her? Thanks to you, her soul fears death, it may cause her to make very rash decisions, decisions that are probably being offered to her with sugar and cream and blood! Ny, our Saffron would never entertain a vampire. You did this; I am sure. I am sure her defeated soul accepted Jethin only after you showed her the lake.”

  Ny’s face drained of color; even his long, sooty lashes changed from black to gray. The veins under his rice-paper skin turned gray. How had everything turned into this? How had Saffron become this creature who caused him such pain? It was not fair! It was not their way! The way they had always chosen…a simple way, each acting a role, fulfilling basic needs. He half-fell and half-jumped from the tree. When he landed on the earth, his legs were splayed beneath him. His palms were before him, on the ground, supporting his weight. His fingers dug into the black earth. So that was the mystery; that was why he could not ease into her mind in these past countless months. She had saddled herself to one of the undead. Jethin had found her. How had Jethin found her? His head snapped round to stare at Li, his eyes like white-hot flames as he glared at her from under his dark brows. She stared off into nothingness, her hand still over her mouth.

  Jethin’s persistence was entirely Li’s fault. Ny had barely known Jethin back in Ireland. Li was Molly and Ny had been Molly’s father. Usually, Ny liked to laugh about those times. Li, as Molly, had formed herself into such an angry slut that it was comical. And, when Jethin had killed Molly, then spiraled down into the world of the undead…well that was a story Jethin never tired of telling around the bonfire. He was not to blame for Saffron’s dalliances!

  If Saffron became the undead, barred from his loins for all eternity, then Ny felt most certain he would snuff Li for it. He’d be branded a demon but it would be worth it. He could work at being a demon. He roared with fury and actual fire burst from his orifices, singeing the tender growth nearby.

  Li’s whisper was hoarse. “Who was waiting for her on the shore?” Li knew she, herself, was certainly not there. Had Ny convinced any of the others to join his scheme? Souls soon to depart their human body have a dream just before death. It is a vision of a dark lake in the shadow of tall, dark mountains. All is blanketed by a black-domed sky pricked with a million stars. The moon is so large you can see every detail of the craters on the visible side; it glows with a light of such brilliance it illuminates a glass boat and the lake around it. There are neon fish that swim just below the surface.

  When a person is about to die, that person has a vision of the lake, of themselves seated pleasantly in the glass boat being propelled forward by an unknown force toward the glittering moonlit sands of an unknown shore. As all the loved ones of that soul are notified of the impending arrival, they all gather on the beach to show that they are happy to see their beloved again. This is why humans are entranced by sandy beaches, why when one walks the beach at night his steps are as inspiring as a trek to forever.

  This is the only way to die a peaceful death, to accept the inevitable without fear. When one has a vision of the lake and the crowded shore, they know at the very core of their heart, soul, and being, that they are loved and therefore have nothing to fear.

  But Ny showed Saffron an empty shore.

  Li felt fear creeping all over her. It was so unusual to feel fear again, like a coat of slime over her body; a sentient slime that tried to probe every inch of her. Anger, fear - these were not the emotions she so longed to feel again. She wept bitterly. Like a demon, she thrashed at the tree and gnashed her tee
th.

  “The empty shore was no fault of mine, Li. Saffron pulled out of the trance before I could complete the message.”

  “A thief is not excused from breaking a window by accident when he only meant to rob the bank!” Her hands found her hair and pulled.

  “There was no one waiting on the shore, Li. I am truly sorry for that.” He rushed on. “At first I wanted her to see no one was on the shore. I wanted her to panic, just a little. Then I wanted her to see me, coming out of the mist - her savior. Then when she died, her soul would know…. She would believe…. She would think no one cared for her as I have cared for her…” It was no use; the last part of his speech did not come out as strongly as he had wanted it to. He had made a grave mistake, and now he knew it. “Her soul would know I was the only one there for her.” This last, he whispered without conviction.

  “What do you mean, ‘when she died;’ have you not stopped trying to coax her to her death?”

  He shook his head like a naughty three-year-old, black waves sweeping back and forth over his forehead. “I have lessened my efforts. Those with her guard her very well on the full moon, and we both know I am not as effective on any other occasion.” He put up a finger. “She did fall asleep in the forest once. I almost succeeded then. But we were not alone and I think the dead may have helped her.”

  Li looked at him sideways. “You will cause our sentence to lengthen by a hundred years.”

  “Who are you to speak? Consumer of rabbits. That too, condemns us.”

  “It is a lighter sentence, to consume the lower creatures. I cannot live without sensation. I need those rabbits. The sensations that their essence brings are exquisite, even if it is only for a short time. You only require to be fondled in dreams, but I want it all here, in our waking world - the smells, the tastes….” Li lay back on the earth and stared up into the growing dawn. Now, not only was Saffron’s soul preparing for death, it thought no one was waiting for it on the other side. Deep down, so deep that goodness and light could not reach it, Saffron’s soul felt utter despair and loneliness. And, as was natural for a soul to do, it would search for a way out of the pain.