by S R Ahuja
avalon
Princess
S. R. Ahuja
Copyright © 2016 S. R. Ahuja
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1540708985
ISBN-13: 978-1540708984
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my first audience, Mom and Dad. Without your love and support, I never would have had the courage to do something as crazy as write a book.
Preface
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The small blue house on the edge of the forest had stood empty for several years. The old couple who owned the house lived there for decades. They didn’t sell it when they moved out, perhaps because it was the last place where their little family had been whole or maybe it was just the way that the house and the forest seemed to cling to their souls or the soul of the man at least. It was an odd thing; one of those things that you can’t quite put into words, but it was there, dancing across his brain. Every time the topic came up, he couldn’t help but remember two tiny pairs of feet dancing across the snow-covered ground, climbing trees, chasing butterflies. No matter how old his girls got, that was always how he thought of them, even after the one was gone.
Whatever the reason, the couple had never sold the house. It stood empty until one of the girls returned. She was older, not at all the same little girl who had once whispered her secrets to the trees, but the fairies don’t distinguish based on sight. Of course, Eulalie had never known the Now-Woman as a child; that was several generations before her, but she remembered her all the same.
Eulalie remembered the Now-Woman the moment she appeared out of the dirty white car and stepped into the dirty white snow. Her foot step echoed amongst the trees and set all the fairies alight. There was a time when this Now-Woman could have been the One. That was long ago, but the forest remembered her still. It vibrated with her presence.
Fairies, just like all creatures it would seem, are fearful of change, so of course, when the Now-Woman stepped out of that car, the forest trembled with the tinkling of fairies’ fear. Fortunately for the fairies, the Now-Woman made no drastic changes. She cleaned up the little house a little at a time.
One day, just after the fairies had become accustomed to her presence, she drove up and parked in front of the small blue house and she was not alone. There hadn’t been snow on the ground for many months, and the sun danced in the hair of the Child as she climbed out of the backseat. Hundreds of fairies hovered over her, hiding in the sunlight, to spy on this new creature. They were all stunned into absolute silence for one split second, and then the twinkling erupted so forcefully that Eulalie had to shush the other fairies, afraid they would be given away.
Eulalie had seen it too. The Child before them was not the one who had once lived in the small blue house – the fairies could sense that – but she looked exactly like her. It was the Now-Woman’s counterpart, resurrected in the same body with a new soul.
“I want to go home,” the Child whined.
“Jade, we’ve talked about this,” The Now-Woman said, kneeling down before the Child. “This is going to be a good thing.”
The little girl gazed around, staring at the little blue house, the dark forest, and finally the Now-Woman’s face. “How do you know?”
The Now-Woman shrugged. “I don’t. I just have a very good feeling, don’t you?”
The little girl eyed the forest warily again without responding.
“Come on,” the Now-Woman said, pulling the Child by the hand.
The fairies crowded around the window frames, eager to catch a peek at the Child. They all remembered the instructions their ancestors had been given. The only question was whether this was the Child that was spoken of.
Eulalie finally called a halt to all of the peeking. If this was the Child and they were caught, who knew what might happen. If they didn’t succeed, it would spell the end for their brethren on the other side. It didn’t matter that none of the fairies had ever been to the Other World. They knew their duty.
Eulalie was the only one to stay and watch the scene unfold. The old Couple arrived soon after the Now-Woman and the Child. Then some very large vehicles full of boxes. The Now-Woman and the Mother spent time in the home opening the boxes, taking things out, and putting them in other places seemingly randomly around the home. The Child and the Father, however, left the dreary interior for the splendor of the fairies’ forest.
Eulalie hopped from leaf to leaf, easily maintaining her camouflage as she moved through the forest, following the Child who soon left the Father behind. It took her no time at all to find the circle growing in a small clearing.
The Child crept closer until all at once she jumped back, crying “Eww!”
Eulalie couldn’t stop herself from laughing. Her bell-like laughter echoed out across the trees. She was not overly concerned as she knew, from her ancestors’ experience that the Northmanni did not hear any fairy sound.
The girl below did stop though. She cocked her head to one side, her ears practically twitching.
Eulalie decided to have some fun with the Child. Silently, she floated down by the Child’s right ear, just behind her head, and yanked hard on the girl’s pigtail. She flew stealthily above the Child’s head.
“Oww!” the Child cried, spinning in a half circle, eyes bouncing from tree to tree. “Who did that?!” she called into the stillness.
Eulalie took advantage of the Child’s momentary lack of awareness and swept down on her left side to tug on the other braid before spinning upward to land on a leaf high above the Child’s head.
“Hey! Stop that!” the Child cried. She spun again and then froze.
Eulalie watched from her vantage point as the Child’s eyes bounced higher and higher, finally landing directly on the fairy. Neither one moved for one long moment. Eulalie was waiting for her eyes to bounce away like every other child who had wandered into her grove over the past ten years – but the Child only stared.
Finally, the Child shouted, “Hey you!” pointing directly at the fairy.
Eulalie pointed at her chest, and asked politely, “Me?”
It was not unheard of for a Northmanni child to be able to hear and see a fairy. There were those incredibly intuitive children who possessed that unique gift if only for a short amount of time. The Now-Woman had been one of them. But it was rare, and even those who could hear them could never understand them.
The Child put her hands on her hips and said, “Yes, you. Come down here.”
Without blinking an eye, Eulalie slipped off her leaf and fell gracefully onto the Child’s outstretched hand.
The Child stared with wide eyes before finally asking, “Are you a fairy?”
Eulalie rolled her eyes but nodded her head.
The Father called out behind the Child. She whipped her head around, swinging her pigtails over Eulalie’s head. She ducked hurriedly to avoid being swiped off of the Child’s palm by the hair.
“Why, you insolent child!” Eulalie cried. “How dare you attack me?! You will rue the day that you ever…”
The Child looked back at the fairy who had risen a few inches into the air, her wings vibrating in anger.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” the Child said, holding up her hands in front of her in a sign of surrender.
Eulalie crossed her arms in front of her chest and looked up to the tree leaves. “Yes, you had better be sorry. I won’t be so forgiving next time.”
The Father called again, and the Child whipped her head around yet again. Then she quickly whipped it back, Eulalie all the while ducking and diving to avoid the projectiles.
“I have to go,” the Child said, hurriedly grabbing a small teddy bear she had dropped on the ground.
“What a foul little g
irl you are!” Eulalie called after her as she darted into the trees. “There is absolutely no way that you could…” she trailed off. The other fairies fell down beside her, watching her.
“Well?” The purple one nudged her side. “Could it be?”
Eulalie smiled and shot off into the treetops.
Chapter I
Halloween
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As soon as Aunt Anna started her job and Jade started going to school, the weeks started to fly by, and then the months flew, and then the years. Jade started kindergarten, and then first grade, and then second. She had settled into her new home easily, but school was a little bit different. She was very popular when she was young; all of the other kids always wanted to hear her stories. But as she grew up, the other kids got bored of the stories, and by the time she was in second grade, some kids had started to tease her about them, calling her names because she believed the magic in the stories was true. Jade had Aunt Anna though, so she tried not to let the stupid kids bother her. She knew fairies were real despite what they said; Lali was proof of that.
The little golden fairy hadn’t vanished out of Jade’s life that first day in the forest. She came back repeatedly to see Jade.
Whenever Aunt Anna was not around, especially at night, little Lali would show up and take her on some wild adventure. Sometimes it was to search for hidden leprechaun gold and other times it was just to see a mommy bunny tuck her babies in for the night. Lali kept Jade’s life exciting.
And of course, they frequently revisited the fairy ring. It had been years since she had first discovered it, and the mushrooms died with the snowfall each year, but every spring, they always came back. Even Aunt Anna said it was odd, but Jade new it was more than that. Like the Rabbit’s hole to Wonderland, the wardrobe to Narnia, and the brick wall to Platform 9 ¾, she knew it was a passage to a secret world. The only trouble was she couldn’t figure out how to open it. Lali knew, Jade was quite sure, but she wouldn’t tell her.
Just on the other side of that circle was all the adventure Jade had dreamed about, but instead, Jade’s days were filled with school and home and very little else. A couple times a month she and Aunt Anna would go to visit Grandma Molly and Grandpa Charlie at the Home, but that was never very exciting. They’d just sit around and talk, mostly about Jade’s school, which wasn’t a fun topic for Jade.
Still, all was not bad or boring in Jade’s life. The days were getting shorter, the weather colder, and the leaves had already turned bright colors and started to fall from the trees, and all that meant only one thing to Jade: Halloween, Jade’s favorite holiday.
It was the one day a year when everyone else seemed to accept the magical in the everyday. With each day that passed, Jade got more and more excited for the big day, but on the very day of Halloween, something happened that would jeopardize her evening of costumes, treats, and tricks.
Jade stared up at the clock on the wall. The hand could not be slipping by any faster. It was as if the world knew what was facing her when she got home from school.
She should be excited. This was Halloween, her favorite holiday. She should be going trick-or-treating tonight with Aunt Anna, but she felt very certain that it wasn’t going to happen this year. She wanted to cry, but she knew that if she did, it would surely get back to Tommy-Jerk-Face, and she could have none of that. So she held back her tears, and watched her life tick by much too quickly.
Ms. Johnson had already called Aunt Anna at work; she’d told Jade after she’d gotten out of lunch detention. She’d called Tommy’s mom too, and she had actually come and picked Tommy up from school. Aunt Anna of course couldn’t do that because she was working, but Jade knew that in no way meant she was getting off the hook for this. Aunt Anna would be furious. Jade was usually a good kid. She got her homework turned in, she helped out Mrs. Johnson after school sometimes, and she even helped her aunt around the house, but she had an awful temper especially when it came to stupid people.
It could only have been moments ago that she’d been sitting in detention, but the hand was striking twelve, and the bell was ringing.
Jade leapt from her chair, grabbed her jacket and book bag, and high tailed it out of the room before Ms. Johnson could ask her to stay to “talk”. The short walk from the school to the house went quickly. Lali was ringing in Jade’s ear the moment she made it out of earshot of the school, asking her all kinds of questions. Jade just ignored her and kept walking.
She dumped the contents of her book bag out on the floor of the living room as soon as she entered the house and went to the kitchen. She filled her backpack with snacks, and then grabbed her journal off the counter where she had left it that morning. She didn’t say a word or even acknowledge Lali as she walked out to the woods. She followed the trail that she herself had worn through the trees to the fairy circle and sat down with her back leaning against her favorite tree.
She took out a pencil and opened her journal, but she did not start drawing. She just sat there and waited as the sun crept closer and closer toward the ground.
“Jade Elizabeth Green!” Aunt Anna called all too soon. “You get in this house this instant!”
Jade stood up, dropping her journal in the dirt where she had sat, and she did not pick it up. She left her book bag there too and started trudging back to the house. She walked as slowly as she could, but soon enough she had broken through the tree line and could see Aunt Anna standing at the kitchen door, arms crossed, still dressed in her work clothes with her ID badge hanging around her neck. Lali had left her side the moment Aunt Anna had called, so Jade approached her aunt alone.
Aunt Anna stepped back to allow Jade to walk into the house first. Jade went in and sat at the kitchen table. Her feet dangled several inches above the ground. She examined her feet closely, picking out every speck of dirt, trying to pretend like Aunt Anna wasn’t glaring a hole through the top of her head. She heard the other chair squeal against the linoleum as it was pulled back.
“Well,” Aunt Anna began, “do you want to tell me your side of the story?”
Jade squirmed in her seat, “It wasn’t my fault…”
“Stop right there.” She held up her hand to silence Jade. “I’ve already spoken with Ms. Johnson and Mr. Knucke. I’m giving you the chance to tell me what happened not whose fault it is.”
Jade glanced up at her aunt’s face. She wasn’t smiling. Her eyebrows were drawn together, but she didn’t look angry; she looked sad. Jade looked away quickly.
“I punched Tommy Tinkus during recess,” Jade admitted to her sneakers.
“I’ve gathered as much. Do you want to tell me why?”
Jade glanced up and back down again. “He said that magic wasn’t real, and he said that I was stupid for believing it was.”
Aunt Anna sighed heavily. “Jade, we’ve been over this before, and this is not the first time a kid has said that to you. Why did you punch Tommy? You know physical violence is just unacceptable.”
“Because…” Jade said defiantly and then trailed off.
Aunt Anna didn’t say anything. She just waited for Jade to continue.
Jade sighed and let all her pent up words come rushing out of her in one long breath. “Because when he said magic wasn’t real and I was stupid for believing in it I told him that it was real and that grownups like you knew it was real and he was the stupid one and then he said that if you thought magic was real then you were even stupider than me and I would have been better off living with my druggie mom who didn’t even want me.” As she said the last words, tears she hadn’t even felt forming in her eyes rolled over her cheeks.
“Ms. Johnson didn’t mention that part,” Aunt Anna said quietly.
“I didn’t tell Ms. Johnson that part.”
“Jade, come here,” Aunt Anna said, opening her arms to her.
Jade jumped off her chair and rushed into her aunt’s open embrace.
No longer angry, she said, “That was an
awful thing for Tommy to say, but you know it’s not true. You and I have talked about your mom. You know that she would have kept you if she could and that she loved you very much.”
Jade buried her face in Aunt Anna’s chest and nodded silently.
“But there is no excuse for using your fists, Jade. You know better.” Aunt Anna was quiet for a long time while she slowly rocked Jade back and forth. “You know this means no trick-or-treating this year.”
“Please! Aunt Anna!” Jade begged, looking up at her. “Halloween is my favorite! Please don’t make me miss it!”
“I’m sorry, Jade, but this behavior is not acceptable and you are not leaving this house again tonight.”
Jade climbed off her aunt’s lap and backed away from her until her back was against the kitchen wall. She slid down to sit on the floor, staring at Aunt Anna, letting the betrayal spread from her heart through every part of her.
“In fact, Jade, I think it’s time that you and I have a talk about our fairytales.” She stopped to take a breath before she kept going. “This world is a wondrous place, and I see little bits of magic all the time. Just today, one of my students was getting picked on and another student who wasn’t even her friend stood up to the mean kids, and there was magic in her bravery. But the magic in the stories… the fairies, the sorceresses, the magical worlds… Jade… do you know the difference between real and imaginary?”
“Yes,” Jade said quickly. “Real means that it is something I can see or something that really happened and imaginary is just pretend.”
Aunt Anna nodded. “The story you told me just now about you and Tommy, was that real or pretend?”
“Real,” Jade said definitively.
“And the story that your principal told me, that you punched Tommy on the playground, was that real or pretend?”
Jade had to think this time. “Real, but he didn’t know everything that happened.”
Aunt Anna nodded again. “And, the story of Princess Lunette and her magical kingdom, is that real or pretend?”