The Windvale Sprites
MACKENZIE CROOK
Table of Contents
Title Page
Prologue
1: The Storm
2: Questions
3: Some Answers
4: The Mereton Warbler
5: Windvale Moor
6: An Accident
7: Search for the Chest
8: Discovery
9: Tooth’s Works
10: The Windvale Sprites
11: Back to the Moor
12: Tooth’s House
13: Capture
14: Tooth’s Cruelty
15: The Greenhouse
16: Destruction
17: The Statue
18: Home
19: An Ancient Find
20: A Close Shave
21: Redemption
About the Author
Copyright
Prologue
When I was a boy there was a man by the name of Fish whose job it was to tell us his weather predictions.
Mr Fish was good at his job and though he never claimed to be 100 per cent accurate, we trusted his forecasts and adjusted our clothing accordingly.
That was until one day when a woman phoned Mr Fish in his place of work and told him that she suspected a hurricane to be on its way.
Now Fish took this badly. None of his machines had spotted a hurricane and he had some of the best and most expensive machines in the country. He had to, people trusted him.
So he went on television and not only told us what the woman had predicted but dismissed it with a scoff.
Reassured and amused we all went cosily to bed.
Only to be awoken by a monster.
To this day Mr Fish claims the storm that ripped across the country that night was not technically a hurricane but I reckon it was. The next morning the whole county was devastated. Roofs were gone from houses, leaving just the walls (and in some cases the four walls had been blown clean away leaving only the roof). Most of the trees in the area had been laid on their sides and the residents of Sevenoaks awoke to find only one of their famous oak trees still standing. Windows were smashed and those people who foolishly left their washing on the line overnight never saw their pants again.
I’m telling you this because it is on the night of that great storm that this story begins. For a week afterwards we had no electricity and so all the schools were shut. Mums and dads still had to go to work so we were left to ourselves during the days to go and explore this strange new landscape. What an exciting week that was, but none more so than for a boy called Asa Brown who, that first morning, made a discovery that would lead him on an extraordinary adventure.
1
The Storm
When Asa Brown thought back to the actual night of the storm he found he couldn’t really remember it very well. He’d had a busy day previously and had fallen into bed exhausted. There he slept fitfully through noisy dreams of howling beasts and old steam trains until, eventually, he was woken by the sharp rap of a stick hitting his window. He vaguely remembered peering through the curtains but not being able to see anything clearly. It was so dark, unusually dark, there were no streetlights, no cars on the road and the rain was coming straight at the windowpane. He lay back down and listened, for a while, to the tempest.
The raging wind was playing the houses and trees like the instruments of an orchestra, producing extraordinary noises. It whined and whistled, changed direction and dropped an octave, turned to the window and rattled the glass. Then it dropped silent for a second and crept back across the road to start again. Each time the wind slammed into the house it seemed to get louder until it reached a crescendo, when a terrifying bass note would kick in and make the house vibrate to its very foundations. Beneath this noise, Asa could make out the smashtinkle of greenhouse glass and toppling terracotta pots, with fence panels and gates banging out an idiotic rhythm.
Strange though it might sound, these noises eventually lulled him back into a deep sleep. The house was old and prone to making unearthly noises, which he was used to and the drone of the wind was not unlike being on a train. So he went back to dreaming of locomotives thundering through tunnels and slept that way until morning.
*
The next morning was calm by comparison. The hurricane was now a mere gale and was carrying out its final checks, seeing that everything was dislodged that could be dislodged, uprooted or simply repositioned.
Many power lines across the area had been blown down and so, as there was no electricity, school was closed. Asa lost no time in exploring the damage outside.
There was a large pampas grass deposited in the middle of the lawn like a giant, stranded jellyfish. It had probably been blown there from Mr and Mrs Singer’s front garden at number 72. A television aerial was trying unsuccessfully to get a signal at the top of the Hawthorn.
*
Then he saw it. Floating amongst the duckweed at the edge of the fishpond was a small figure. Asa assumed that it was a toy that had been blown from somewhere else, why wouldn’t he? But as his fingers closed around it he jumped back in horror for what he touched was not plastic or wood. It was skin.
He sat down with a bump on the wet grass with his back to the fishpond and tried to calm down. His heart was pounding and he felt shaky. Thank goodness there was nobody around to see him, he thought, he must have looked pretty silly. Slowly he turned back to the pond and looked over the tall iris leaves.
There it was, floating face up just a few feet away.
It had big eyes. Huge black eyes that were all pupil. It was skinny like a stick with extraordinarily long legs that were bent back unnaturally. Its slender arms ended in delicate hands and fingers that tapered to fine points.
It was hard to tell exactly how tall it was but it couldn’t have been more than six inches long.
Asa crawled closer.
The creature had olive-brown skin with a seam of sharp-looking thorns running up the outside of each limb. It had dark wispy hair on its head from which sprouted two long antennae and pointed ears.
As Asa looked more closely he could see that the surface of its eyes were made up of countless facets that glittered in the light. The tiny face had a sharp chin and framed a small nose and an even smaller mouth. On the creature’s chest was tattooed a design like a Celtic knot and its skin was covered in bruises and scrapes.
With heart thumping, Asa dipped his fingers into the water and underneath the creature. It was all he could do to stop freaking out as he lifted it out of the pond and deposited it on the bank, quick as he could.
It flopped on to its front on the grass and Asa saw, with amazement, that sprouting from its shoulder blades were four, slender, transparent wings. An intricate network of veins divided each like a stained-glass window.
That is when the thought struck him. I’ve found a fairy. Just like that with no exclamation mark.
It’s dead, but I am almost certain that I have found a real-life dead fairy. It suddenly all made sense. This is what ‘fairies’ are. Not wand-waving Tinkerbells but sinewy insect-men: wild creatures that must be very secretive and hardly ever spotted. This one must have been blown in the hurricane from the remote place where he lived and ended up in my fishpond.
Asa ran inside and found a shoebox to put the creature in; he didn’t know quite what he was going to do with it but he knew he had to do something. He also had the presence of mind to grab his dad’s old camera and, returning outside, he took snaps of the creature until the film was used up. It wasn’t a great camera and the light was not good but at least you would be able to make something out.
Eventually he lifted the limp body into the box and took it back inside the house where he almost collide
d with his mum at the foot of the stairs.
‘I just saw Chris’s dad up the road and he said your school will be closed until the end of next week while they repair broken windows and roof tiles,’ said Mum. ‘Dad and I will be back at work on Monday so you’ll have to occupy yourself until the end of the week. Don’t forget to find out if your school trip is still going ahead next Sunday as we’ve bought all the stuff for it so I’ll be annoyed if it’s cancelled.’
The impending biology field trip had been hanging over Asa like a dark cloud for a couple of months. The entire class were off to some bleak cove for a week in a remote part of the country to study species of lichen growing on drystone walls. The stories told of this field trip in previous years were of seven days of crushing boredom. It was an endurance test just to make it through without going insane. Many boys, much tougher than Asa, ended up feigning illness and being picked up by their mums on day two.
But for now this was the last thing on his mind.
‘OK,’ said Asa and tried to slip past.
‘Were you listening?’
‘Yes,’ Asa lied.
‘If it is cancelled you’ll just have to come with us to Grandma and Grandpa’s.’
‘OK.’
‘What’s in the box?’
Asa froze.
‘What do you mean?’
Mum looked at him then the box.
‘What’s in the box?’ she repeated.
‘Oh! The shoebox!’ Asa acted as though he’d forgotten he was holding it. ‘Oh nothing, it’s empty, I need it … for the school trip.’
Mum looked unconvinced but decided not to pursue it any further. Asa saw an opportunity and legged it up the stairs and into his room where he carefully hid the box under some clothes at the back of his wardrobe.
2
Questions
For the rest of the day Asa wandered around in a daze. Nothing was normal, most of the shops in the nearby town of Mereton were shut and every other tree was on its side.
One shop that was still open was the camera shop so Asa dropped the film off to be developed. He could hardly wait to see the photos but only had enough money for the four-day service so had no choice.
Then he headed towards the library where he hoped to pick up a book on rare creatures that would explain the thing he’d found. But the library was closed – a horse chestnut had fallen on it and taken out most of the large-print section.
Everywhere he went Asa saw people merrily enjoying the catastrophe, sawing logs and hauling branches whilst recounting stories of horrible deaths across the county.
Asa wondered how long it would take to grow back all the trees.
He walked past the recreation ground and was pleased to find that his favourite fallen tree was still fallen and hadn’t been blown upright in the storm.
But as Asa explored the devastated village his discovery was never far from his mind.
He resisted the urge to keep looking in the shoebox by staying out for the rest of the day but he made sure he was back before it started getting dark and the candles came out.
He ran up to his room but had hardly stepped through the door when he realised something was wrong. A rank smell hung in the air and as he opened the wardrobe he realised with horror that he had put the box right next to a hot-water pipe. The creature was still inside but it had changed. Instead of the limp body he had pulled from the pond the fairy was now stiff, frozen into a grotesque pose and its olive skin had turned grey. He briefly thought of freezing the creature before remembering that there was no electricity to power the freezer and by now the smell was so pungent he realised he would have to dispose of the body.
Twilight was drawing in so Asa lost no time. He opened his bedroom windows wide to let in some fresh air, took the box and set out on his bike the short distance to Cottingley Woods.
He knew the woods inside out having spent long, hot summers exploring every corner and climbing every tree. He cycled to a favourite spot where he sometimes made a campfire to cook sausages and there he started digging with a trowel brought from home. When the hole was deep enough he placed the entire box in and covered it over with soil. After that he scattered leaves on the patch to disguise it and sped off home.
*
That night Asa had a worrying thought. What if everybody knew about these creatures? Everybody except him? It was only a few years ago when his school friends had laughed at him because he still believed in Father Christmas. But what if this was the same situation but in reverse and he was the only one who didn’t believe in fairies?
So the next day Asa tried to furtively ask questions that would determine whether this was the case. The trouble is that it is hard to find a subtle line of questioning on the subject of fairy-folk and he was unsure of the best approach.
Asa’s mum sometimes used an expression when he was distracted or in a daydream, she would say he was ‘away with the fairies’. Asa thought if he could get her to say it he could then quiz her about its origins. So, at breakfast he deliberately sat there looking gormless and staring into space, pretending not to hear when asked a question. But Mum wouldn’t take the bait and after a while he felt a bit stupid so he just asked,
‘Mum, what do you mean when you say I’m
“away with the fairies”?’
‘Well, you know, just that you seem to be in a different world, that you’re playing with the fairies.’
‘What fairies?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Which fairies do you mean?’
‘The fairies, you know, fairies.’
This was less than useless so he decided to try his dad.
Dad was down the garden salvaging the wreck of the greenhouse. The hurricane had smashed five panes of glass and tried its best to make soup of the tomatoes. Dad, in his frustration, had decided to abandon this year’s crop and try again next spring. He had dumped the bedraggled vines on the compost heap and was replacing the broken glass.
Asa asked him outright.
‘Dad, do you believe in fairies?’
‘Of course, son. Who do you think leaves you money when you lose a tooth?’
‘Well, I know that’s you. I know there’s no tooth fairy. I mean other types.’
‘Other types? What, like the one at the top of the Christmas tree?’
‘That’s an angel.’
‘All right, smart-arse, go and do your homework.’
Later he found himself in the kitchen asking Mum:
‘Why are fairy cakes called fairy cakes?’
‘Because the fairies like them.’
‘What fairies?’
‘Please, Asa, don’t ask stupid questions.’
But why was it a stupid question? Because everyone knew about fairies or because there was no such thing?
Either there was a massive conspiracy going on or he had made an earth-shattering discovery. Either way he was on his own.
3
Some Answers
Two days later the frustration was almost too much to bear. Asa was still no closer to explaining his discovery and at times he wondered whether it had all been a dream. There was still a whole day to go before his photographs were ready and at lunchtime Asa grabbed his bike and headed back to the woods.
What he found there filled him with horror. The patch where he had buried the body had been disturbed. More than that, the grave had been exhumed, and the shoebox and body were nowhere to be seen.
Asa started searching in the bracken but soon realised it was futile. Had an animal dug it up? A fox maybe? If so, where was the box? Could someone have taken it deliberately?
He raced back home to gather together all the loose change he could find. He needed answers. He had to see those photos.
As it turned out, the extra cash was not needed because the photographs were ready a day early. Or rather, the photograph was ready, as only a single, blurred print had come out.
The man in the shop was very sympathetic.
‘
How long have you had the film?’ he asked.
‘Don’t know,’ said Asa glumly, ‘probably years, it’s my dad’s.’
‘Well, that will be it, I’m afraid. Film doesn’t last forever you see, it has a shelf life and after a while it starts to deteriorate.’
Asa looked at the print. At first he couldn’t even make out what it was, it certainly wasn’t the clear shot of the creature he had been hoping for. Then he realised it was a very close-up shot of the tattoo on the creature’s chest. It was out of focus but you could definitely make out the design. The shopkeeper craned his neck to see the photo.
‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘like the one on the fairy. Don’t worry, I won’t charge you for that, I’m sorry you didn’t get the rest of your prints.’
It took a few seconds to register what the man had said, but when it did it was like an electric shock.
‘Pardon?’ Asa coughed. ‘What did you say?’
‘Don’t worry about the money, it’s only the one print.’
‘No, sorry, you said something about the photo.’
‘Yes, that pattern,’ the man pointed to the picture. ‘It looks like the one on the fairy.’
He’d said it again! Asa couldn’t believe his ears.
‘What fairy?’ he found himself asking.
‘Not fairy, ferry. The Ferryman pub on Church Street has a plaque above the door with a similar design if I’m not very much mistaken.’
Asa expressed his gratitude as quickly as he could and set off for Church Street.
The street was full of modern shops and new buildings but halfway down was an old Tudor house whose upper floor jutted out over the pavement and whose roof sagged like a wet tarpaulin. This was the Ferryman and it had a painted sign above the door showing a cloaked figure punting passengers on a shallow boat. Asa thought this was odd as there was no river running through Mereton and it was ten miles from the nearest beach at Inglesea.
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