When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae

by Kirsten Mortensen

  She waited.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “The crystalline structure of the soil is distorted, which is causing certain . . . drainages to occur. You need to correct its alignment.”

  Oh, brother. “I’m not sure what that means. Sorry.”

  “The crystalline structure of—”

  “I heard you. But I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” She considered adding “and I don’t do crystals” but remembered that she was supposed to hold down the hostility.

  “Boil a peck of horsetail in five gallons of water for three hours. Cool the solution.”

  “I don’t underst—”

  He had turned around and spoke, now, over his shoulder. “Then sprinkle it on the field. Two thirds on the beds, the rest on the fallow section. That should do it.”

  “Hey, where are you going? I’m not sure that’s enough information. Please, I mean, I have some more questions.”

  It looked like he’d crouched down into a sunken spot on the ground but now she could see him again. “Horsetail, the plant. Not horsetail from a horse.”

  “Where am I going to get—I don’t even know what—”

  “Check the ditches.”

  “Ditches?” But she couldn’t see him anymore, again, and this time he didn’t answer.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Tyler was on her computer when she got in. But he was with the program—he jumped right up and gave her back her seat.

  She Googled horsetail. It didn’t take long to sort it out. Equisetum Arvense. Also known as bottlebrush. Relative of the fern, descended from treelike plants of the Paleozoic period.

  She paged through the photos on Google images. Some of the plants in the photos looked familiar.

  “Okay if I get back online?” Tyler was with Maisey in the kitchen when Libby passed on her way to the basement. She nodded. She had several peck baskets stored there, picked up from a garage sale—she’d planned to use them to display produce if she ever joined a farmer’s market.

  A peck. Obviously pre-decimal fairies, she thought to herself as she scanned the metal shelves lining her basement walls.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Filling a peck basket with horsetail is harder than it sounds. Horsetail leaves aren’t exactly leaves. More like long, flimsy, scrawny pine needles. And she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to tamp them down, either.

  Obviously she’d get to “a peck” a lot faster if she didn’t.

  In the end she compromised. She tamped, but lightly.

  The little man had steered her right when he said “ditches,” though. She found the plant growing thickly in the drainage ditch along the road, up by Dean’s property.

  19

  “What is that SMELL?”

  Maisey and Tyler were back.

  Libby would have preferred to prepare her fairy brew while they were out, except that the stupid recipe had the “boil three hours” step, and it was a rare day that the two of them were gone that long.

  She glanced at Maisey. Obviously the girl wasn’t going to unwrinkle her nose until she got an answer. And Libby would have hated for it to get stuck like that.

  “It’s for my soil.”

  “Oh.”

  Tyler was pulling stuff out of a paper grocery bag. “Is it a fairy recipe?” he asked.

  Libby didn’t answer. Which, of course, they took to mean “yes.”

  “Wow!” Maisey said. “So you have talked to them again!”

  They took Libby’s non-answer as a “yes,” again, and started chattering at her, both at the same time. “When did you see them?” “Was it the same one as the other times?” “What did they say? How come they want you to cook that stuff up?”

  “It’s really not that big a deal, kids.” It was at a full boil now. She turned the burner to medium-low.

  “Aunt Libby! What are you talking about? It’s ha-yuge!” Tyler shook his head. “You’re like—it’s like, you’ve been chosen, man. It’s like being one of the Prophets or something, man. Modern day prophet.”

  Libby put a slice of bread in the toaster. “Yeah, right.”

  “Really, Aunt Libby!” Maisey chimed in. “We’ve been talking, and you know, these fairies might have an important message for the world, or something.”

  Libby turned from the toaster and looked at them. Their eyes were wide and earnest. And young. She shook her head. “No. That’s not anything like what’s happening here. Whatever these—this phenomenon is, it’s not like that, at all.”

  “Have you told Paul about it yet?” Maisey asked.

  “No. I told you, I haven’t told anyone else, besides you two. Well—” she thought of Dean, but changed her mind.

  “Who else?” Maisey said. “Mom?”

  “Um, I haven’t spoken to your Mom since before she took off with Pineapple Man.”

  The toast popped up.

  “Grandma?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Dean!”

  Argh. Libby wondered where there was an on-line course somewhere, “Lying for Beginners.”

  “Yes, it was Dean. It came up while I was staying there after the ice storm. But kids, this is not a big deal.” She put her toast on the plate. The crust was black and smoking slightly. One of them, Tyler or Maisey, kept turning the dial too high. “Look at my toast. I believe I’ve asked you two—”

  “So then, it’s okay to talk about it with Dean, if he knows.”

  “No! That’s not a good idea.”

  “Why not? He already knows. You just said!”

  “That doesn’t mean—” Libby hesitated. Her real problem was a bit difficult to articulate. Something about disliking the idea of the three of them talking about her. What else might they say? Why did Maisey think she had to be friends with the guy, anyway?

  But if she made a big deal about it, she’d be . . . making a big deal about it. “Don’t you have better things to talk about?”

  She got no answer.

  So she scraped the burned bits off her toast, buttered what was left of it and went up to her office.

  Turned on her computer and waited for it to boot up, munching on the toast, trying to swallow the uneasy feeling in her gut.

  No. It wasn’t so much that Maisey and Tyler and Dean would be talking about her—about what was happening to her.

  It was one thing to have seen something unexplainable. That happens all the time, right? Look at people who see UFOs. But now it was different. Now Libby was actually looking for them, trying to talk to them—and then following some crazy instructions they’d given.

  She’d crossed a line.

  Right?

  She didn’t think she was crazy. She didn’t feel crazy. She didn’t feel different from how she’d always felt. Which was part of the problem. It would have been easier if she’d felt different—special. Or like she’d been singled out for something, like Tyler had said—if the clouds had parted and a booming voice had announced she’d been chosen to bring a Message to All Humanity.

  Instead, she was getting weird gardening advice. Nothing had changed. She was still just Libby Samson. Aging, childless, middle class divorcée. Dull as a Monday.

  She plucked a tissue from the box on her desk and wiped her fingers so she wouldn’t get her keyboard greasy.

  Maybe she should tell Paul after all. If she presented it in a neutral way, he might be able to help her explain it. It would be nice, to be able to explain it.

  20

  Libby’s rescheduled on-site visit for her farm’s organic certification was finally set. For a Wednesday.

  She woke up that day at 5:00 a.m., threw on some shorts, a tee shirt and sneakers, and ran up the hill to her beds to look at her lamb’s lettuce.

  It was still there. Jade-green whorls of spoon-shaped leaves. Beautiful against the straw mulch.

  She told herself there was no reason to be nervous. And truthfully, seeing those plants there really did help. Some.

  She waited in the house, dr
inking more coffee than she needed. Her hands got all sweaty from nerves and the coffee, and every time she checked out the window to see if the inspector had come, she carried her forms with her, so that by 11:00 there was a rumpled bend along one edge where she’d been gripping them with her damp hand.

  Then, at long last, a car pulled into her drive.

  She watched the inspector guy hop out of his car and when enough time had passed that she figured it wouldn’t seem too much like pouncing, she opened her door and went out to meet him, telling herself as she walked that she was ready. She was ready.

  He was short, receding hairline, moustache. White crew socks folded over above his boots. Fit. Really fit. Not a scrap of fat. It gave him a cop-ish kind of look that didn’t do anything for her nerves.

  “Libby Samson?” He put out his hand. “I’m Chip Hanford.”

  “Nice to meet you. What do you want to see first?”

  And then they started. Mostly he asked questions. Which was okay. At first. He went over everything. Where she bought her seed, where she stored her equipment. What water would she use to wash produce. Who had owned her land before and how did they use it. A lot of the same stuff that was on her application forms but of course he needed to hear her say it, too.

  Then he wanted to walk the perimeter of her property to check the maps she’d drawn up. He wanted to see the adjacent properties, too. Organic farmers need to prevent contamination from neighboring land—pesticide sprays can drift, for instance. But in Libby’s case, her property wasn’t bordered by anything that might present a problem. There was Dean’s forest on two sides, country roads on two others. More undeveloped land on the other side of the roads. Not even a lawn that somebody might treat with something prohibited.

  “Okay. Let’s take a look at your beds, then.”

  “Sure.”

  They walked back toward the lower field and Libby’s growing beds. Him, not talking; Libby, trying to look around, without him noticing she was looking around. In case the little people were about.

  She was hoping they wouldn’t be.

  She was hoping that, if they were, they’d keep a low profile this morning.

  “That’s all you have in cultivation right now?” he said.

  “Yes. That’s all. I do plan to—”

  Then she saw him. The little man. Seated on the stone wall. Back in the shadows of the hedgerow but clearly visible to anyone who glanced in that direction. Sitting on the edge of a large stone, kicking his feet out like a child, staring at Libby.

  “Are you okay?”

  It was only then that she realized she’d broken off in mid-sentence.

  “Uh! Yes. Fine. Something caught my—”

  Ach! He was looking over at the wall.

  “Gone now!” She practically shouted it. “As I was saying, what was I saying—” She brushed the sweat from her forehead. “Wow, it’s gonna be a hot one today, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” He frowned. “So, Ms. Samson. What are you doing for soil amendments?”

  “Oh, yes, um, well. Let’s see. Since the land has been fallow for several years, nothing, nothing this year. I plan in the future to mostly use green manure. Rotate the beds, plant white clover when, um . . .”

  The little man was still there. She could see him out of the corner of her eye.

  “You know what I mean. When I’m not growing anything. I’ll grow clover. So I guess that means I will be growing something, won’t it?” She laughed nervously and noticed the crease in Chip’s brow had deepened.

  They were back by the end of the bed nearest the house. Libby glanced again toward the big stone where the little man was sitting. Her watering can was a few feet away from it—the can she’d used to sprinkle her horsetail brew on her fields. She hadn’t thought anything of it. Until she saw Chip Hanford follow her glance and notice it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you say you own the property east of this plot?” He pulled her map back out of the folder he was carrying, stepped over the bed and toward the watering can.

  “I . . . yes. Yes.” Libby followed him, her heart hammering. If he saw the little man . . .

  But Chip wasn’t interested in the little man. He was interested in the watering can. He’d thought that was what she was looking at.

  He picked it up and looked inside.

  “What’s in the can?”

  “Oh! Oh. Nothing. I was just—”

  The little man hadn’t moved. He was still on the rock, still kicking his feet. “Go AWAY” she mouthed to him over Chip’s shoulder, gesturing with one hand, but he didn’t act like he noticed. Or knew what she meant.

  But she needn’t have worried. About the little man, that is. Chip’s attention was entirely on the can. He tilted it, staring inside. Smelled it. “Ms. Samson?” He swirled the contents and stuck his face back toward the opening to smell it again. “What is in this can?”

  “It’s . . . it’s . . .”

  Now how was she going to explain this?

  “I assume this is something you’ve applied to your beds?”

  “Well . . . yes, yes . . .”

  He lowered the can. He had Libby pinned down now with his eyes. No messing around with this guy.

  “It’s, uh, an herbal infusion.”

  “Herbal infusion.”

  “A friend, uh, suggested it . . . as a soil amendment . . .”

  “I believe you said you weren’t using any amendments this year.”

  “I forgot about this one.” Libby shifted her feet as she realized her blunder. Little man. Least of her problems. Libby, you idiot. You idiot.

  Chip lifted the can and sniffed at it again. “What sort of herbs?”

  “Horsetail. Equisetum Arvense. It’s very high in silica. I’m a . . . biologist.”

  “I see.”

  The silica thing was true. Also a stroke of brilliance. What soil didn’t need more mineral content? “It’s an experiment, really. But interesting, don’t you think? I—”

  “You prepared it yourself?”

  “Yes! Yes. One peck in five gallons of water. Then I cooled it and strained it and used the can here to . . . I gathered the horsetail from down the hill there, next to the road—”

  “Next to the road?”

  Libby froze. Knew before her brain caught up that she’d just made her blunder worse. “Yes, yes, in the d—alongside the road.”

  “Ms. Samson. You are aware that roadside plants are often heavily contaminated with heavy metals? Lead? And also possibly petrochemical residues?”

  Oh, no. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, yes. Of course.”

  Chip produced a vial from his vest pocket. He pulled its cork out with his teeth and poured some of the infusion into the vial where it swirled around for a second, greenish and murky.

  Then he set the watering can back down and thrust the cork back into place.

  “We’ll have to have this tested. At your expense.”

  “Oh, of course. Of course. I’m sure it will be fine . . .”

  “Anything else you want to tell me, Ms. Samson?”

  He didn’t look very happy. Not at all.

  “No. No. I, uhn, I guess that’s it. Really.”

  He put the vial back into a pocket and she followed him down toward her house.

  She didn’t dare look over her shoulder to see if the little man was still there.

  21

  “It’s beautiful, Libby,” Susan said.

  She and Libby were standing, side by side, looking down into the chest cooler at Libby’s lamb’s lettuce. Her first harvest.

  “Thanks,” Libby said, keeping her tone deliberately even. Inside, though, she was jumping up and down. No, she was crying with relief.

  Or maybe exhaustion. Not that harvesting had been that hard. But she’d had trouble getting to sleep the night before. Then up at 4:00. Filled six 5-gallon buckets with ice water and carted them up to her field. Sun coming up. The harvesting itself, moving down her rows, cutting the
plants off with a knife right at the ground, flicking away the occasional slug, a bit of cosmetic trimming if any leaves were yellowed or chewed. As soon as a plant was trimmed, she plunged it into a bucket of ice water to keep it from wilting. Then carted the buckets to her car and transferred the greens to the cooler.

  Then the drive to Susan and David’s farm. Libby had to push to make it by 7:00. Plus Paul called her cell at 6:15, right as she was about to leave her place—what was he doing up at 6:15 on a Saturday? And her reaction, she was sorry to say, was irritation. She didn’t need an interruption right at that particular moment, so she didn’t pick up, then she felt guilty so she rang him back.

  He’d called to wish her luck. He’d actually set his alarm so that he could call her before she left, to wish her luck.

  So then she felt even guiltier.

  They agreed to meet for lunch in the city at about noon.

  She jumped into her car, jumped back out when she realized she’d left her gloves by the side of the road, then finally, on her way.

  “I’ve never seen lamb’s lettuce heads that big before.” Susan picked one of the heads up. “You must have some amazing soil.”

  Libby laughed a bit nervously. She’d thought they’d looked kind of . . . lush. “The land’s been fallow so long. Or maybe that it was pasture before? I guess that probably explains it?”

  Susan thought she and her husband could move about 20 pounds of Libby’s greens that day. She had some of her CSA members coming out to work in the afternoon, and they’d take some. David was hitting Rochester’s open air market and would add Libby’s stuff to the greens and herbs he and Susan were selling. This time of year, that was mostly what they had, plus their preserves—Susan kept an inventory of jellies and jams to give them things to sell when the harvest wasn’t in full swing.

  Of course, he’d have to mark Libby’s greens as “transitional,” not organic, since she wasn’t certified yet.

  “So, how’d your on-site go?” Susan asked as they transferred the lamb’s lettuce to the back of David’s pick up.