Faerie Heart

by Livi Michael

  She carries on washing too, bending and dipping in the water, humming and muttering to herself:

  Wash-a-day, wash-a-day,

  Wash the stains and dirt away.

  When it’s done, begin again,

  That’s the way to live with men.

  ‘Great,’ I mutter, but she doesn’t hear. Or she acts like she doesn’t. She just goes on washing and the moon goes on rising, and, finally, when my arms are aching and my back too, she says, ‘Done!’ and lays the final pieces out on the bank to dry.

  This is it. The moment I’ve been waiting for, to ask my question.

  Funny thing is, I can’t speak. My tongue’s gone funny, and I can’t think clearly what I need to ask. My heart starts hammering and my stomach twists, in case I get it all wrong and I lose her without having a chance to ask the right thing, the thing I need to know.

  Then she turns to me, and too late I see the demon light in her eyes. The moon’s full overhead, and the reflection of it glows red in each lidless eye. She raises a finger and points at me and says:

  In the forest, in the forest

  Forty years and more.

  You want to go back, go back,

  But you cannot find the door.

  Time to remember

  What you did before.

  I stare at her, speechless. Forty years and more? But she’s unwinding a cloth from her shawl. It’s all stained and dirty. She says something like, ‘This is the sheet of your memory. You need to wash it clean.’

  She throws it towards me and I catch one end. Then she starts to fold and crumple, so there’s nothing left of her but a bundle of clothes, like she’s turned into old washing herself. I look around wildly, but I can’t see her. Just the bole of a tree and branches swaying, and the river burbling on.

  I look down at the sheet in my hands. One more thing to wash. I jerk it impatiently into the river. What else is there to do? I keep hold of one end and let the river tug and pull at the rest of it. And just like before, the stains start to flow away.

  The sheet billows out in the stream, twisting and turning. It unfolds slowly, into the shape of something I recognize, then folds again. But the river’s straightening it out, almost flat, and I can see it all spread out before me. Like bedding, I think. It’s even bunched up at one end into a shape like a pillow. It is a bed, I can see that now, and it’s a bed I’ve seen before.

  Even as I think this thought, I hear the voice. The same voice that came to me in my dreams.

  ‘I do wish you’d help me,’ it says, ‘to make my bed.’

  That’s when I start to remember. Memories float like thistledown through my mind, whirling faster and faster. I’m in a swirling storm of thistledown, flying all around me like flakes of snow. And that voice, sweet and pure, like honey in my ear.

  ‘Do help me,’ it says.

  Then it’s as though I’m watching myself in a dream. Everything’s happening really slowly. We gather the bones of little wild animals, crickets and shrews, and link them all together into a kind of bedstead – that was the word she used for it – not hard and rigid like the ground, but springy.

  The bedhead is made from snail shells. We only gather the ones where the snail has already been pecked out by birds, and we lift up the silvery trail that the snail leaves and use it to fasten the shells together, and we smear it over them too, like a gloss, so that it shimmers in the moonlight. It takes a long time, but not as long as the mattress, and the pillow and coverlet, which are made from thistledown and woven together with spiders’ webs. Then the final coverlet was made from insects’ wings, drawn together with more cobweb thread.

  Doesn’t it hurt them? I asked.

  Oh, no, said the voice, so sweet, and wise and kind. They love company. And to be brought together in beauty – all things love that.

  And the coverlet was beautiful. Made from the wings of damselflies, mayflies, dragonflies, butterflies and moths, all held together by a shimmering silken thread. It hovered just above the bed, droning softly, in a gentle lullaby.

  Feel it, she murmured, and it brushed against my skin like a fabric of woven dreams. To lie on that bed would be like lying on air, wrapped in a cloud while the sweet humming lulled you gently to sleep.

  But we hadn’t finished yet. We had to gather more cobwebs for curtains and droplets of water from the spiders’ webs we’d collected and hang them around the room for starlight to shine through, like lamps.

  Then at last the bed was done, shell-shaped and glimmering, and she lay down on it with a sigh of contentment and bliss.

  And I stood over her, bent almost double, clutching a stick for support with my wrinkled, withered old hands.

  Can I go now? I asked.

  Go? she responded, sitting up again, her hair like a fall of water on to the bed. I had hoped that for my sake you would stay.

  But even in my dream-like state I knew I wanted to get home. I had spent too much time – so much time – with this beautiful stranger, and now I had to get back. My mother would be worried, I said, in my thick, rasping voice that could not have contrasted more with her musical tones.

  She laughed a little when I said this, then sighed a sigh of gentle regret.

  It is a perfect bed, she said. There is none better. Since you have done your job so well, I will give you a gift. And that gift will be…

  She traced a pattern on the coverlet with her finger – I can still see the pearly fingernail.

  … you will not return to your people old and frail as you are now, but young, and healthy, and full of life as you were when I found you. That way I hope that one day you may return. But you must leave me something in exchange…

  With one part of my mind I can hear myself groaning aloud as I remember all this. Because now I can see the strangeness of it all, the weird enchantment I had fallen into, though at the time it made perfect sense.

  Slowly the white thistledown stops whirling around me. I’m on the bank of the river once more, still holding the sheet that billows and tosses in the water. I let it go and it folds and turns and drifts away. But I’ve seen all I want to see. I drop to my knees on the muddy bank, horror and despair welling up in me. I’m in no doubt at all about who the beautiful stranger is.

  Mabb.

  Mabb, Mabb, Mabb! Queen of the Faeries. The wicked enchantress who steals men’s lives away.

  And she’s stolen mine!

  I can remember more now, though it all feels like a dream. I remember finding her in the forest, or at least, coming to a little round hut in a clearing. There was light pouring from it, and it seemed like the most welcoming place in the world. And I was so tired and hungry that I went inside. Then everything’s blurred, but she must’ve taken me in and fed me. And made me work for her. For more than forty years! And all because…

  Because she wanted me to make her bed!

  This thought is so huge and horrible, I can hardly bear to think it.

  But I can’t not think it. It comes bursting and burning up into my mind, until I can’t think anything else. She left my brother and took me, just like I asked her to. But while I was away, everything changed. Everyone I knew and loved grew old and died, or just grew old, without me. She tricked me into coming back to a world where everything I knew had gone!

  The full horror of what’s happened comes to me, and I open my mouth to let it out in a howl of rage.

  MAAAABB!!!!

  All the rage and pain and sorrow of the world comes bursting out of me in that one desperate howl. And when I finish I’m empty, weak and shaking. I could roll into the river myself and let myself drift away.

  But not yet. Not yet. I haven’t finished yet. It isn’t over.

  What did she say to me? In the hope that you might return?

  Well, I’ll return all right. I’ll give her something to think about. I’ll take her life the way that she’s taken mine.

  Except that I don’t know how.

  What was it in Myrna’s story – something about
the gates of the wind and the door of the rain?

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  The woman in the story didn’t know either, though. She just had to set off.

  Slowly, I lift my face up and look around. My heart’s beating thick and fast. But nothing else has changed. I’m on the bank of the river, alone. The Peggotty Witch has gone and the night’s drawing on. One thing I know for certain is that I don’t want to go back to the huts where my little brother’s turned into an old, old man, who can’t see or hear me, and where Little Ogda looks older than Myrna.

  But where else can I go, what else can I do?

  Suddenly I see the bundle of clothing that is all that’s left of the Peggotty Witch. I go over to it and shake it, thinking perhaps that I’ll shake her back into them. It’s a complete set of clothes, cloak and tunic, leggings, cloak. And shoes, though I’m fairly sure she wasn’t wearing shoes before. And they look as though they’d be my size.

  I glance down at myself, suddenly conscious of the naked flesh peeping through my tattered rags.

  Well, what else is there to do? I put them on. I strip off my rags and let them drift away in the water, and pull on the tunic, cloak, leggings and little pointed shoes. All greenish, as far as I can work out, except for the shoes, which are red. The clothes fit perfectly, clinging to me like a second skin. And the cloak spreads and lifts around me, almost like wings.

  There’s a rushing noise in my head as I finish. The world around me seems different somehow, more vivid, glowing. I can see all the little night creatures scurrying about in the undergrowth, and the trees wave and point as though trying to tell me something. The rushing noise is the noise of the river, calling to me with a thousand, thousand voices. Even the stones are murmuring to one another.

  There’s so much to see and hear that I can’t take it all in. I look up and away from it all, towards Mabb’s Hill.

  What was it that Myrna said? If you light a fire on Mabb’s Hill, she will come to you.

  That’s it then. That’s where I have to go.

  I take one step then another in my little pointy shoes. My footsteps are quick, darting along the riverbank. Seems like I only have to look towards where I’m going and I’m there. I’m speeding along the river towards the ford, then I have a sudden thought. I step out into the water, and instead of sinking, my foot slides over the surface. My cloak lifts, and I skim across the surface like a damselfly.

  Takes me no time at all to get up that great hill. Time’s turned into something else – I can almost hear it whizzing past my ears. I flit through the gorse and bracken, past all the stones that stipple the hillside, moving faster the higher I go, so that I can hardly think for speed, and for the voices of everything that’s talking to me.

  This is it, I’m thinking. This is everything I’ve ever wanted! All the old Keri ever wanted was to be part of the magic of the world, and now I am!

  Wildflowers open as I pass, calling to one another. Stars like flowers in the sky, they tell me. Flowers like stars on the earth. And in fact the stars do seem to be grouped together in some special way, in the same pattern as the flowers in the grass. And the flowers burn brightly, and the stars blaze back down at them.

  Seems like everything’s trying to talk to me, maybe it always was, and I never knew it before. Many and one, many and one, cries the grass, and the stones chant and rant and mumble with their stony tongues. And I want to listen, I do, but there are so many voices, and I can’t stop. I carry on buzzing and flitting up the hill like a great, glowing insect.

  And then at last I come to the summit. Stars blazing, trees waving, all the grass in motion, and through it all the river cuts a dazzling trail.

  I knew the forest was big, of course, but I never knew, could never have imagined how big! It stretches on forever, just like Myrna always said, rolling and waving like a giant sea. The moon hangs above me, low and huge and brilliant, like I could just reach out and touch it. And it’s so, so beautiful. I could stay up here and watch it forever.

  But that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to find Mabb. And I don’t know how.

  I look around the stony hilltop. There’s a bush beside me, burning with life, and the stones are thrumming. But no Mabb.

  I call her name. The wind takes my voice and carries it right round the world. It comes echoing back to me, ‘MABB, MABB, Mabb,’ but no one answers. I do it again, two or three times, just to hear the way it spreads out like ripples in water. The stones stir and the forest trembles, but there’s no reply.

  I have to light a fire.

  Bryn once taught me how to light a fire, but I was never very good at it. You take a stick and rub it into a notch in another stick, for a long time, until smoke appears. The sticks have to be absolutely dry, that’s one thing, and not green at all, that’s another, and you have to have patience, that’s the third, he told me, when I flung the sticks down and stamped off in a rage. I can still see him now, sitting with his legs stretched out, and the sticks between them, and a look of concentration on his face like he’s calling to the fire to come. As though the fire was always there, inside the wood, waiting to be called.

  When I look round now I can see that there is fire in everything, burning away in grass and stars and stone.

  A thought takes shape in my brain and it goes something like this.

  The old human me wasn’t any good at making fire. Didn’t have time for all that sitting around and rubbing sticks. But now I’ve changed. Don’t feel human any more. Don’t know what I am. I’ve been taken into the faerie world and come back different. That old Peggotty Witch called me Pixie.

  Well, if I have changed and I’m not human any more, what am I? Part human, part faerie? And if I’m a faerie, maybe I can do magic.

  The thought comes to me like a bright, glowing spark. I want to leap and shout, but instead I stand very still, looking around.

  I can see the same fire in different things. Leaping and shimmering in shoots and blades of grass, dark and simmering in the heart of stones. But it’s the same fire all right, everything, all around me is burning with it.

  All I have to do is call it out.

  I fall down to the ground and stare, eye level, at the grass. I can see it there, tiny sparks travelling from the root to the tip. My tongue flickers with the flickering of the spark. And suddenly I’m calling to it, calling to the fire to come out of the grass.

  The flame flickers more brightly and I call to it some more. Don’t know the words I’m using – my voice hisses and crackles and spits with the tongue of fire. The grass burns green before me and suddenly a spark shoots from the tip, smoulders and fizzles out. I dart back quickly, before I get singed, and stare, fascinated at the smouldering blade. Then I crouch down again.

  Once again my tongue forms the words I don’t know, more confidently now. Sparks fizz from the blades, then fizzle out quickly as they meet the air. But then it happens. Two sparks meet one another, almost like kissing, and the grass ignites.

  I carry on calling, calling in a hissing whisper, and everywhere small flames shoot from the blades of grass, leaping and dancing, and the smoke curls. Once the sparks meet there’s no stopping them – fire travels quickly from one blade to another. Soon, it seems, the whole hilltop is ablaze.

  Probably shouldn’t have used the grass. There’s no end to it. Small sparks start off greenish, then leap into yellow and orange. Smoke rises, and yellow and orange sparks whirl round in it, then fizzle out. But the fire’s running now, all over the top of the hill. I stand still for a moment, fierce with pride, watching my handiwork. I’m not scared at all, though the fire’s near my feet. The bush near to me bursts into flame and blazes merrily. Don’t know how I’m going to stop it, but I don’t even want to try.

  The fire’s beautiful – everything it touches curls and coils and shakes in a fiery dance. And soon I’m dancing too, leaping about and calling Mabb’s name. If this doesn’t summon her, nothing will.

  ‘Mabb! Mabb
! Mabb!’ I shriek as the flames leap higher.

  Don’t know what I expect. Maybe that she’ll step forward from the flames. She’ll be angry that I’ve summoned her, and set fire to her hill, but I don’t care. I go on dancing and leaping and shrieking until I’m entirely surrounded by flames. Feel like I’m part of the fire myself, and I never want it to end.

  ‘Come out of your hole, Mabb!’ I shriek. ‘You can’t hide from me! You took my life and I want it back!’

  I go on like this, howling like a demon, but still she doesn’t come. And the fire rages, burning everything it touches, but it doesn’t touch me.

  And it doesn’t call up Mabb. Either she can’t hear me or she won’t come. I whirl round and round the hilltop, like one of the sparks in the smoke, but there’s nothing, and no one.

  I stop dancing and the fire starts to die down. I look all around in desperation. I can see shapes in the fire, but none of them looks like a faerie queen.

  One of them looks like a doorway, though. An arched doorway, made of flame. At least I think I can see it, but the flames keep moving. Other shapes come and go, but the doorway’s still there. And it’s starting to open.

  I look round again, at the dying fire, then back to the door. It’s dying down too, though it’s still opening. Any minute now it’ll disappear, with the rest of the flames. Still I just stand there, panting and looking at the fiery door. My eyes are smarting from the smoke, and I rub them and look again, but it’s still there. Just.

  Only thing I can think is, I have to step into that door. Don’t know where it leads to, or how I’ll get back. Don’t know that I won’t just shrivel up and burn. I do know that if I don’t do something, it’ll just disappear, and I might not be able to call it back again. This might be my last chance of seeing that other world, of getting to Mabb. I don’t know how I’m going to do that, but I’ve got to try, and I’ve got to try now.

  And that’s when I step into the fire.

  PART III

  I’m terrified, of course. Just for a second I feel its scorching heat, and I expect to burn to ashes any moment. But I’ve no time to think about it because the flames part in front of me, and there’s a gust, like the blast of heat from a furnace, and I’m lifted right off my feet. The fire turns into a kind of tunnel, and I’m whisked along it, blown through on its fiery breath.