When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae

by Kirsten Mortensen

  “Okay. First things first. Is there definitely something going on between them? Or are you just . . .”

  Maisey shook her head. “I don’t know. Tyler’s said there’s nothing going on. It’s just the way they act around each other.”

  “Have you talked to your Mom? What’s she say?”

  A tear rolled down Maisey’s cheek. “I haven’t really talked about it with her. She and Alex . . . they’ve gotten kinda close.”

  Libby felt another flash of anger toward Gina. Didn’t that just figure.

  “Okay. Tell you what. Let’s look at this objectively, okay? Like scientists.”

  Maisey nodded.

  The sky had darkened considerably and the wind was picking up. A few more drops splattered down around them, although it wasn’t raining really, not yet. These were stray drops, blown in from the thunderclouds that were mounding upward on the far side of the valley.

  They’d reached the highest point of her property now and had turned to face the valley.

  A shard of lightning stabbed across the dark gray sky.

  “Wow,” Maisey said, and Libby felt it, too—the first edge of the thunderstorm’s power, and then a loud BOOM echoed across the valley.

  The wind lifted her hair.

  If she’d been a kid, she’d have raised her arms then, it felt like she could just raise her arms and let the wind lift her up, up . . .

  On the other hand, being out here on a relatively open field during a lightning storm probably wasn’t very smart.

  “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s get ourselves over that way, by the woods.”

  They picked up their pace and Libby started talking faster, as well. “So let’s start with the facts. You haven’t, like, seen them . . . you know. Kissing or anything.” She didn’t want to come right out and ask the obvious. Are they having sex? This was, after all, the same girl whose braids she’d once done up with ribbons for her fifth birthday party.

  “No.”

  “And Tyler—he hasn’t said any of the things guys do, sometimes—‘I need some space’—anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “So what you have now is just—they seem to be friends . . . they have a connection of some kind.”

  “Yeah. Like, he smiles at her a lot. And he pays attention to her. Like, when we’re talking about the . . . about your website, and if I have an idea, and Alex has an idea, it’s like, her idea is always better.”

  Libby thought to herself, yeah, Maisey, maybe because you’re actually a decent person. So maybe your ideas don’t have that go-for-the-jugular intensity—

  They’d reached the trees now. The branches were whipping in the wind, their leaves flipped over to show their silvery undersides, and the fat stray drops were falling more thickly.

  “Aunt Libby,” Maisey said. “I don’t want to mess this up. I love him so much. I don’t want to lose my Tyler.”

  “I know. And you are caught between, you know, your pride and your love.”

  They started walking downhill.

  Libby hadn’t brought any water up with her that afternoon and even though the air had changed, she wished now that she had brought some along. She licked her lips. “Maise, if you really want to keep Ty, the best advice I can give you is, try to ignore all this.”

  Maisey looked over at her aunt. She looked thoughtful.

  “You love him, right? So here’s the thing. You raise a fuss, confront him or whatever, and all of a sudden you . . . you sort of make it a big deal in his eyes, and in Alex’s too, if she gets wind of it. So, you know . . . it may be that they don’t even realize it’s going on. Know what I mean?”

  “Yeah. I guess . . . you know what’s funny?”

  “What?”

  “I was in Mickey D’s the other day, and someone had left a registration packet for Geneseo on the table there.”

  Geneseo? “The college?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.” Libby wasn’t sure why that had come up.

  “I wondered if it was a sign.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m a biologist, Maisey. We don’t believe in signs.”

  Maisey laughed. “Aunt Libby, you talk to fairies.”

  She had her, there. Only not really. “Yeah.” Libby raised voice now to carry over the wind. “And look where it got me.” She rolled her eyes for comic effect. “See? It illustrates my point perfectly. We’re better off relying on good, practical common sense.”

  “Aunt Libby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you know it when . . . when Wallace was cheating on you?”

  “Kind of. Yeah. Toward the end.”

  But she felt uneasy all of a sudden. Her marriage had nothing to do with . . . with anything, really.

  “I don’t think Tyler is cheating on me. I don’t think of it as cheating. At all.”

  “Well then, that’s kind of my point. If it’s not cheating, and you make a scene like it is cheating . . .” They’d reached her growing beds. “I’m going to grab my stuff. Wait here by the trees.”

  Libby trotted over to where she’d left her tools and the basket of weeds.

  And there was her little man, sitting and looking at her.

  “Hi.”

  He nodded.

  “Everything okay?”

  He nodded again.

  She stood, looking at him. “Do you . . .”

  “Leave the purslane,” he said. “When you weed.”

  “Okay.”

  “The hail will do some damage, but most of your plants will be okay. Except your lettuce.”

  Libby winced. This was supposed to be her fall lettuce crop. The plants were only baby seedlings now. She’d tried to time them so that they’d be maturing as the weather cooled. “Is there anything I can do? To protect it?”

  “No.” He turned and walked away into the weeds.

  She rejoined Maisey. “Were you talking to one of them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That we’re going to get some hail. We’d better hustle, Maise, and get inside.”

  And then the first sheet of rain swept over them, so that by the time they got down to the house, both were drenched to the skin.

  Libby knew Gina was there, somewhere, so she kept her voice to a whisper when the stepped inside. “Sometimes women have to be . . . patient. Keep our cool, let our men sort out their little problems. Tyler’s a good man, Maisey. You take it easy, it’ll sort out.”

  Maisey nodded and went to her room to change.

  34

  “So what can I do for you, Libby?” the doctor asked.

  She sat on a stool on the other side of the little examination room. The nurse had done the usual stuff—taken Libby’s blood pressure, her weight, given her a bunch of forms to fill out about her medical history. Only Libby wouldn’t tell the nurse why she was there. “I’d rather just speak to the doctor, if you don’t mind,” she’d said.

  The nurse didn’t like that very much. She made a face and mentioned that every thing Libby said was confidential.

  But Libby had made up her mind. Her new resolution. To stand up for herself more.

  She waited for Dr. Grande. And then explained her situation.

  The doctor listened, nodded, and then looked again at the papers Libby had filled out.

  “So how are you feeling? Any headaches? Nausea?”

  Libby shook her head. “I get headaches, tension headaches, once in awhile. No more than I used to, though.”

  “Change in sleep habits?”

  “No.”

  “And you say you’re not using any stimulants—” She flipped over one of the forms and scanned the back. “You’re not on any prescription drugs. No anti-depressants.”

  Libby shook her head again.

  The doctor rested her clipboard back on her lap. “Okay. You have a worried boyfriend. I can understand how this would upset him. But absent any physical symptoms, I really don’t see the point of ordering an
y tests. You say these . . . people you’re seeing—they don’t frighten you?”

  “At first, yes. Yeah. But now—no. I’ve sort of, you know, adjusted to it.”

  She nodded. “And you’ve put here—there’s no history of schizophrenia in your family.”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “Well, Libby, here’s the thing. Generally speaking, if there’s a psychiatric problem, the patient will exhibit emotional problems—agitation, paranoia. That kind of thing.”

  Libby nodded.

  “If you’re feeling at all anxious about your experiences, I can recommend a therapist.”

  “I don’t.”

  The doctor stood up. “Then tell your boyfriend I said you’re fine.”

  She shut the door behind her and Libby changed from the gown back into her clothes. She was relieved, she admitted it. Oh, she’d known she was fine, but it was still nice to have a doctor say so.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  She’d showered before the appointment. Now she changed into a new outfit that had come mail order earlier in the week. A skirt and matching floral print top for her date, that evening, with Paul. It seemed important to dress up in something a bit special, play up the girlfriendy stuff a bit.

  Only Gina was waiting for her when she came back downstairs.

  “Libby,” she announced. “This is an intervention.”

  “What?”

  Gina took Libby by one arm, and Alex took her by the other.

  “Stop it, guys. I have to leave. I’m meeting Paul for dinner, and I’m already late.”

  “Forget Paul,” Gina said. “This is about you.”

  Somehow, Libby kind of doubted that.

  They pulled her into the living room and who should she see but Jade, the woman who’d barged into her house months before to talk about The Work.

  Maisey was there, too, sitting on the easy chair in the far corner. She didn’t meet Libby’s eye.

  “This is Reverend Jade,” Gina said.

  “We’ve met,” Jade said, standing up. She was wearing a purple and gold sarong, which made her look kind of monk-like in a psychedelic way.

  “Good to see you again,” Libby lied. “But I’m sorry. You have to excuse me, I have someplace I need to be.”

  “Not so fast, Libby,” Gina said. “You have time for this.”

  Libby glared at her but of course her sister ignored her.

  “You need to hear what Reverend Jade has to say. She’s a clairvoyant. She’s been in contact with your nature spirits.”

  “Oh,” Libby said. “Now they’re ‘nature spirits.’”

  “This is a highly charged quadrant,” Jade said. “It’s relatively straightforward for any sensitive to establish a bridge under these conditions.”

  “Fine. Bridge away. I have to be somewhere.”

  Gina’s grip on Libby’s arm tightened and she caught her shooting a look at Alex. A “don’t let go now” look. “You can leave,” she said to Libby, “when you’ve accepted this aspect of yourself that you’ve been fighting. This is about your inner growth, Libby.”

  Libby sighed. Perhaps the fastest way to get this over was to play along. “Okay, fine. What is it you want me to do?”

  Gina smiled. “Have a seat.”

  So she sat.

  “Jade, why don’t you tell Libby what happened yesterday?”

  Libby looked at Jade. The woman had repositioned herself on the sofa and gave Libby a smile followed quickly by a terribly serious expression, as if to say, “I’m friendly, but this is an occasion for extreme solemnity.” Rather like a school principal when confronted with a lively rule-breaker. Yeah, yeah, you’re charming, but you’re about to be punished just the same.

  “The energies that you perceive are becoming . . . restless,” Jade began.

  Ah, that explains everything.

  “They need you to understand that you were chosen for a reason, and when you resist them, the positive vibrations become inverted, with potentially harmful consequences.”

  Libby saw Maisey moving restlessly out of the corner of her eye.

  “Interesting,” Libby said. “They haven’t, you know, mentioned any of this to me.”

  “Of course not!” Gina said. “Libby, you’re resisting it. That’s what resistance is.”

  Jade held up her hand. “Wait a minute, Gina.” She looked at Libby again. “You may have noticed it yourself. Are you getting headaches? Vertigo? Pressure right here?” She touched the spot between her eyebrows.

  Libby shook her head. “Sorry, no.”

  “You do too have headaches,” Gina said.

  “Well, no more than before. And did it ever occur to you, maybe you’re the one giving them to me?”

  “Hold on a second, Gina,” Jade said, and then, to me, “Well, that’s a blessing. I’m relieved.” She shut her eyes now and they waited until she began speaking again, this time with her eyes closed. “You were chosen because of certain alignments. You were first called to this property in . . . 1991. But you chose at the time to pursue other . . . avenues. You weren’t quite ripe yet, in a manner of speaking. Then came a point about a year ago when the energies here attempted to contact you again, this time through the dream state, and at that point . . .”

  Gina had loosened her. Libby, naturally, considered whether she could make it to the door. And how undignified it would be if the three of them, four if Maisey joined, responded by tackling her in the kitchen.

  “. . . pick the proper quadrant and continue the communication from there—”

  “Look,” Libby broke in. “I don’t mean to be rude, but what is it that you want, exactly?”

  Jade opened her eyes. “Your destiny is not in your hands,” she said earnestly. “Do you understand that?”

  Oh yeah. I’ve understood that for a loooooong time.

  “You’ve been chosen. You need to accept that.”

  “Let me ask you a question, Reverend.”

  Jade smiled.

  “You say you’re able to speak to these spirits. You call them, as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, here’s an idea, then.” Libby stood up. Gina took a step toward her but Jade raised her hand again to stop her.

  “Go ahead,” Jade said reassuringly.

  “How about you take over. You know, you do all this—the communicating with the spirits, and managing all the campers, and the whole thing.”

  “That would work,” Gina said, and Alex nodded vigorously, and Libby realized she’d stumbled onto an idea that they’d already discussed.

  Alrighty, then.

  She took another deep breath to quiet her churning stomach. “Good. We’re in agreement. So I can leave, now?”

  “Yes. We can discuss the details later,” Gina said.

  “Yup.” Libby started toward the door.

  “We’ll start by redoing the website. And Jade—she’ll need a place to sleep. Libby, don’t leave yet—just a couple of things. Jade will need a place to stay, and obviously it will have to be here. There’s enough room in your office, I’m thinking, for a single bed, we’ll just need to move the couch out somewhere—”

  The sweat from Libby’s hand made the metal of the door handle slippery. “She can sleep anywhere she likes, Gina,” she said over her shoulder. “All she needs to do is come up with the money to buy the place.”

  “What? Hey, wait a minute, Libby—nobody said—”

  “Nobody needs to say anything,” Libby called through the door just before she broke into a sprint to her car. “I’m putting the place up for sale. You want to run a cult, Gina, you’ve got it. Yours for the taking.”

  She stood by her car for a second. Gina was standing on the stoop now, with Jade behind her. And Alex and Maisey, their faces showing dimly through the screen of the door.

  “See?” she called out. “Now everyone can be happy.”

  She slid into her car and turned the key in the ignition, and then when she’d turned the car around so the
y couldn’t see her, that’s when she stopped grinning.

  Because of course, everyone wouldn’t be happy.

  Not if everyone included Libby Samson.

  Paul, on the other hand . . . Paul would be. Very happy.

  She just needed to focus on that. First, her good news from the doctor. Then the even better news about selling the place. And that their relationship could now, finally, get back to normal again.

  Yeah. She was about to serve him a regular good news sundae. Cherry and whipped cream on top.

  Or so she thought.

  Until, about halfway to the stop sign at the end of her road, she passed a van going the other way.

  It wasn’t just any van.

  It had a satellite transmitter dish affixed to the roof.

  Libby took her foot off the gas pedal and watched the van in her rearview mirror.

  There was no reason whatsoever for a television news crew from Rochester to be driving along her road at 3:00 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon.

  None at all . . .

  35

  You know what she really wanted to do?

  She wanted to just pretend she’d never seen that van. Drive right on in the direction she was already going. Show everyone, show herself, that she was right now filing this whole sorry chapter of her life under Old Business.

  But she couldn’t. She had to turn around and follow it. Just to be sure.

  Reassuring herself the whole time. That news crew—they were probably lost. They were probably on their way to an annual corn festival in Bristol or something and had gotten lost. Maybe their GPS had been knocked out by an unexpected solar flare.

  So she’d just turn around, and follow it, and by the time she got to her house they’d already be a half mile past it, out of sight where the road curls around Dean’s property and starts its descent back down into the valley.

  But of course she was kidding herself.

  Because when she got to her house, the news van was parked in her driveway and a bunch of campers were crowding around it, and Gina was on her way down Libby’s front steps like a flower girl preceding the towering Jade in her flowing purple and gold.

  Libby got out of her car.