by Lena Coakley
“Do not insult me!” I shout. “I know that a boy is a kind of people—and I am not a people. I am Nix, foulest of the . . .” My voice trails off.
The man-people’s face has gone soft and gentle, too. He looks at my bent arm as if he is sorry for me—when he should be afraid. I wish he weren’t in front of the door, but he is there, and I am trapped.
“Child, you are not a fairy,” he says. “You are a skinny boy with sticks in his hair and dirt on his face. Come and have something to eat in my cottage.”
Maybe there is some terrible magic in his words, because when I look at my ragged clothes, my dirty arms, and my thin legs, for a moment I think he might be telling the truth. Am I a boy?
“Stop tricking me with your wicked words—or I will send the bees to sting you and the birds to peck your eyes. I will make stones fly in circles around your head until . . . until you are very dizzy!”
The man-people is quiet for a moment. “I would like to see those magics.”
Oh, he’s a crafty one.
“And you will,” I say. “But now . . . I must go.”
I try to push past, but the man-people grabs me. White powder sprays from his hands. I scream. The cow moos.
“It’s on me!” I cry, flailing and falling to the ground. “The powder!”
Desperately, I try to brush myself off, but I am covered in gritty flakes. They’re on my face, in my hair, up my nose. “No! No!” I cry. “I don’t want to disappear! I don’t want to be a ghost!”
“I see you,” the man-people says, kneeling before me. “It’s all right. I still see you, boy. You’re not a ghost.” He puts his hand on mine. It does not go through. “It’s only sawdust. From my carvings. It’s not magic.”
It takes a minute for his words to sink in. “Sawdust?” I touch some of the powder that fell on the floor and squint at my finger. Then I look at my arms, my body. “I’m not invisible?”
The man-people smiles. “No. I was only trying to trick you. I don’t have any more magic than you do.”
A trick. Only a trick.
“You’re a liar,” I say. “Everything you say is a lie.” I stand up.
“Wait,” he says, but I am already through the barn door, running. “Stop!”
I fly through the forest, leaping over bushes and roots, rushing away from his strange lies.
It was Mr. Green who taught me to howl. I used to be afraid of the wolves at night, even high in my nest, wrapped in my stolen blankets. In winter, their howling was like a song of loneliness and hunger. It got inside my bones, like the cold.
One night, the wolves were very close. The loneliness of their howling became my loneliness. Midsummer’s Eve seemed so far away, and I thought I’d never see my fairy family again.
Then I heard Mr. Green’s voice in the sighing of the wind, in the clicking of the frozen branches. He reminded me that my family was all around me: The animals sleeping in their dens. The frogs sleeping in the mud under the frozen river. Grandfather Mountain and Grandmother Moon. Even the wolves were my wild brothers, he told me. He said that I should do as they did and howl my loneliness away. And so I did.
Since then I’ve learned to howl about whatever I feel—fear, anger, happiness, sadness.
I howl now from high in the old oak tree. I howl until the man-people’s lie stops crawling around inside my head. I howl until I know who I am again. Nix. Wicked Nix. Foulest of the fairies.
12
I have an idea. One last idea. I could not trick the man-people. I could not scare the man-people. But tonight is Midsummer’s Eve, and my time is up. I bring my basket to his cottage and knock softly on the door.
“Hello? Anyone in there?”
It is hard not to run away when the door to the cottage opens. I have to keep reminding my feet to stay where they are.
“None of your tricks,” I say, looking up at the man-people. “Don’t call me a boy or try any of your magic.”
He nods slowly.
I hold out my basket. “I’ve come to trade. These are my very precious things. I might give you some, if you will go away.” I do not tell him that I will give him all my things if I have to. Maybe he won’t take the one thing I really want to keep.
The man-people eyes the basket suspiciously. “Come inside, and I’ll look at what you have.”
I take a step back. I’m not going in there.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll come out.”
He comes out and shuts the door, then sits down on the stone path. I sit down, too, with the basket between us.
“This stone I found by the river,” I say, pulling out my first treasure. “It’s precious because it’s so white and smooth, and because it has a face on it.” Now that I see it again, it reminds me a little bit of the man-people’s bald head. I don’t say that, though.
He touches the smooth stone and nods with approval. “What else?”
I set the stone carefully on the ground and pull out the carved animal I took from his window. “This is a fat otter with big teeth.”
“That’s mine!” he says. “And it’s a walrus.” He takes it from my hand.
“It’s not stealing if you’re a fairy,” I inform him, but he puts it beside him as if it’s his. I pretend I don’t care. “There’s no such thing as a walrus, anyway.”
I take out the next treasure, which is fragile and wrapped in dried grass. “This is a robin redbelly egg that will never become a chick.” Gently, I hold it out, blue as sky. “It’s precious because it’s beautiful, but also because it makes you think about the dead bird inside.”
He nods, and I’m glad to see that his face is sad and serious, just as a face should be when talking about dead birds. I set the egg down next to the stone. He points to the basket.
“And?”
“These are the skins of two nighty-night bugs,” I say, taking my second-to-last treasures out of the basket.
He wrinkles his nose. “And?”
I don’t think he understands. “They walk out of their skins!” I say. “And leave this behind. See”—I hold them out—“the skins even have eyes.”
“What else do you have?”
“Gah!” I say in frustration, and I set down the treasure. “I also have good ropes and blankets I could give you. I make my nest with them.”
“I think there’s something else in that basket.”
How does he know?
“Wait! There’s this, too.” I search my hair for sticks, pulling out three and laying them on the ground. “One of these is definitely magic.”
The man-people points at the basket without saying anything, but I don’t want to show him my star.
“All these things—the stone, the egg, the fat otter with big teeth, the skins, the magic stick, and my ropes and blankets—I will give you if you leave the forest and never come back.”
The man-people hasn’t stopped pointing.
“I will also give you a basket to carry them in.”
The man-people says nothing. He narrows his eyes and wobbles his pointing finger. Reluctantly, I pull out the last treasure.
“Oh!” the man-people cries.
“It’s a real star,” I tell him. “From the sky.”
He takes it carefully, cupping it in two hands as if it is as fragile as the egg. I see that even though he is an evil man-people, he knows when he is looking at something wonderful. It makes me almost like him.
“Where did you get this?”
“The queen pulled it down from the sky for me a long time ago.”
The man-people winces as if my words hurt. He stares into my eyes as if he’s never seen me before. I stare back.
“All right.” He says it so quietly that at first I don’t hear him. “All right,” he says again. “I’ll leave today, if that’s what you want.” I can hardly believe my ears.
He stands up, holding the star to his chest and looking down at me.
I nod and carefully put my other treasures back in the basket. He’s tak
ing my star, I think, but that’s not so bad. I have my memory. Once I leaned up against the Good Queen’s thigh, and her dress was soft as new moss. I remember that. Once she had flour on her apron. I remember that. Once she pulled a star from the sky for me. I don’t need to have the star to remember it.
“But first I want you to hear a story,” the man-people says.
I glare at him. Hasn’t he got enough? I look to the sky, but there’s still some time until night, when the fairies will come.
“What kind of story?”
13
“Come in,” he says, holding open the door.
I don’t move. I went into the barn, but this place has even more of an inside feeling to it; the floor is made of wood instead of good dirt, and I don’t think there are any holes in the ceiling for light to come through. I imagine being squashed and surrounded by walls like the dead bird inside the egg.
“Tell your story out here.”
He shrugs. “Stay by the door if you want. I’m going to have some bread and milk.”
He goes through the door, but I stay where I am, peering in. Everything is carved and twisty—even things that could be straight, like chairs and table legs. Little animals made of wood are everywhere—on the table, in the corners, above the fireplace. I see rabbits and ducks and birds and deer. I want to go in and pick up each one, but I don’t.
The man-people cuts two thick slices from a loaf of bread, then drips honey on them from a pot that looks like a bear. He comes back to the door and hands one to me.
“A man and woman lived here once. Their names were William and Hagar.”
He faces one of the twisty chairs to me and sits down. I lean against the doorway and lick the honey from my bread.
“They were wood-carvers, as you can see. They made this place. Oh, the villagers warned them that this is a fairy forest, but they thought they knew all the tricks to keep themselves safe. They hung daisies on their door. They scattered iron in the grass and hung horseshoes on the windows. On Midsummer’s Eve, they made a ring of salt all around. After a few years of never seeing a fairy, they thought they had nothing to worry about. They even began to think that maybe fairies were just a story.”
The man-people pours two cups of milk, but he does not bring one to me. He just leaves it on the table in the place closest to the door. I have finished my bread, and milk would be the perfect thing to wash it down.
“Then they had a child.” He looks at me. “A boy named Nicolas.”
He drinks his cup of milk and makes an mmm sound as if it is the best milk he’s ever tasted.
“Nicolas loved the forest,” the man-people goes on. “He was always wandering off. Even though they didn’t believe in fairies, William and Hagar kept him safe with daisy chains and were sure to keep him inside on Midsummer’s Eve.”
The man-people cuts another piece of bread and drips some honey onto it. “Have some more if you like.” He puts the bread on the table next to the milk.
I want that piece of bread and honey. I want that milk.
“They had another child. Another little boy.”
I put one toe through the door. Nothing terrible happens. After all, it’s not a ring of salt. I creep forward. The floor is very flat against my bare feet. The creaking sound it makes is exactly the sound of a tree creaking in the wind.
The man-people looks at me, and I feel trapped by his eyes, but I don’t run away. “Nicolas was good to his baby brother, or so I’ve heard.”
“What was his name?” I ask. “The new one?”
“Jonathan,” the man-people says. “Nicolas and Jonathan.”
I feel as if I have heard those names somewhere before.
“One Midsummer’s Eve, little Jonathan caught a cold. His parents were very worried. They didn’t watch the older boy the way they should have. They didn’t make him a daisy chain to keep the fairies away. For years after, they regretted that.”
I edge closer to the table. It’s strange to have a ceiling above my head. It feels like it’s pressing down on me, so I keep my eyes to the floor and don’t look up at it. I reach the bread and push it all into my mouth, taking the cup back to the door.
“Nicolas was stolen away that Midsummer’s Eve. By the time Hagar and William got to the meadow, the fairies had already gone back to the Summer Country, taking their son with them.”
This must have happened a long time ago, I think, because I’ve never seen a boy in the Summer Country.
“The queen would have gotten tired of him after a while,” I say with my mouth full, thinking of the singer with the fiery red hair.
“So William and Hagar thought,” the man-people says, “but it never happened. Every Midsummer’s Eve, they would try to find the fairy meadow to beg for their child.”
“Try to find?” I say. “But it’s easy. I’ve been there lots of times.”
The man-people shakes his head. He cuts more bread for me, leaving it on the table. I come and get it, dripping my own honey onto it from the bear pot.
“You see, every Midsummer’s Eve, the fairies would play tricks on William and Hagar. Sometimes mysterious lights would lead them from the path. Sometimes they’d hear Nicolas crying, and they’d chase the sound all night, getting more and more lost. Music from the fairy meadow seemed to come from one direction, then another.”
I nod. We fairies do love tricks.
“Once, the fairy queen even made a life-size doll out of leaves and twigs, held together with magic. She left it in front of the cottage on Midsummer’s Eve. William and Hagar were sure it was their Nicolas come back to them—until dawn came, and the doll fell apart in their arms.”
The honey is too sweet in my mouth all of a sudden, and the bread is hard to swallow. “No,” I say. “No. I don’t believe that. The Good Queen is not so cruel.”
The man-people only looks at me with sad eyes. I imagine my fairy friends laughing at the prank and calling William and Hagar “stupid peoples.”
“Maybe some of the other fairies,” I say, “but not the queen.”
“All their lives William and Hagar waited for Nicolas,” the man-people says. “They always had hope. They even thought he might still be a child when he came back. Time is a strange thing in the Summer Country.”
That’s true, I think. The singer with the fiery red hair only a spent a few years in the Summer Country, but when he came home, the girl he had left behind was a white-haired old woman, and everyone else he knew was dead and gone.
“Did William and Hagar die?” I ask quietly.
The man-people nods. “And their other son, Jonathan, grew up and went away to become a sailor.” He runs a hand over his head. “And he got older. And lost his hair. And then came back.” He smiles, waiting for me to understand.
“Oh,” I say. “Is that you? Are you Jonathan?”
“I am,” he says. “And Nix, I think you are my older brother, Nicolas.”
14
“I told you not to play tricks,” I say. My stomach feels quivery. Maybe I ate too fast.
There is a candle on the table. Jonathan lights it and holds it up. “Look, Nix. Look at the ceiling.”
I look up. Hanging from strings are carved stars. They are painted silver, with bits of mirror in their points to make them shine.
I catch my breath. Jonathan is tall enough to touch one and make it spin. Then another.
“Stop it!” I tell him.
He picks up my star from the table and holds it out. It looks exactly the same as the others. “Our parents made them. They told me they carved one for every happy memory in this cottage.”
“The queen gave that to me!” I say. “The Good Queen of the Fairies.”
“I think it is our mother you are remembering,” he says. “Hagar.”
“No!” I look to the open door. It’s dusk. The fairies will be coming. They might be here already. “It was her. It was the fairy queen.”
“Don’t go,” Jonathan says. “She’ll steal you away again
. She’ll take you to the Summer Country.”
“That’s what I want!” I shout. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted!” I turn to leave.
“Wait!” The look on Jonathan’s face makes something twist inside me. Above him, stars swing back and forth.
“If you go, then I’m coming with you,” he says.
“We missed you, Nix! We missed you, Nix!” the fairies call as I run down the road toward the meadow.
I recognize their voices. There’s Fleet and Flit and Wing, and Naughty and Scruff and Dart.
“Where are you?” I shout.
I hear a whirring sound, and I’m sure I see Flit just through the trees, her yellow wings a blur.
Jonathan catches up to me and puts a hand on my shoulder, but I shrug him away. I set off into the forest toward my friends.
“Don’t leave the road, Nix,” Jonathan warns, but I don’t listen.
“I missed you, too!” I yell to the fairies. “The winter was so cold.”
They begin to sing a song I know well.
Golden fruit and silver tree,
Flowers sweet and buzzing bee.
Forget your cares and follow me
To the Summer Country.
Endless hills of emerald green,
Beauty as you’ve never seen,
Ruled over by our midnight queen
In the Summer Country.
Home, I think. They are singing about my home. Lately I have been remembering all the bad things about the fairies—the way they tease me, the way they laughed at the singer with the fiery red hair. But now I remember all the good things—how strange and beautiful they are, like flowers or bats or hummingbirds; how they are always laughing or singing; how they are always thinking of the next trick they are going to play.
I follow their voices, and soon I can see lights flickering in the distance. It must be the fairy bonfires. I must be almost at the meadow.
“Nix, stop!” says Jonathan, who is far behind.