Photographing Fairies: A Novel

by Steve Szilagyi

  Behind a wall in more ways than one, I wondered if the girls were under some kind of spell. In fairy lore, I recalled, there was something called the “glamour,” which was a kind of trance into which the fairies struck mortals to make them do their bidding.

  As I was wondering this, I found myself creeping alongside the wall toward where the girls had picked their little flowers. Another part of my mind had seized on the flowers as perhaps offering an answer, and the rest of my too-contemplative self was somewhat surprised to be dragged along by its purpose. Soon, however, my whole self was acting in concert. It was beyond question that the girls were eating the flowers for some good reason, and I intended to find out what it was.

  Waiting for a moment when their backs were turned, I bent over the wall and fished through the plant life around the shrub on the other side until my fingers closed around a tiny flower. After shaking off the loose dirt, I stuck the flower into my mouth and chewed.

  Sitting back against the wall, facing the deserted road, I slowly masticated the rough vegetable matter. The flower had an initially sour, weedy taste followed by a distinctly sweet note. As I licked the remnants off my teeth, I noticed a kind of mist rising far out on the other side of the farmer’s field directly across from where I sat. It was a little like the fog that forms along country ground in the early morning; but morning, I knew, was a long way away. What struck me about the mist was that it didn’t lie over the ground in a normal way, like a cloak, but seemed to move with a sinuous undulation, like a ribbon waving slowly in the breeze.

  Staring, I noticed that the mist seemed to run off around the distant tree trunks, where it curled around their roots and — I almost didn’t admit it to myself — glowed. Yes, it glowed! Or how else was I able to observe it so clearly from such a distance on such a dark night? As I rose onto one knee to observe the phenomenon more intently, another strange thing happened. The mist disappeared! But then when I stopped moving, it appeared again. There was some kind of optical phenomenon at work that allowed the mist to become visible when I held my head still, and caused it to be imperceptible when my eyes were in motion.

  It was all very curious. I couldn’t imagine what I was seeing. Was it really a glowing mist? Or was it some kind of illusion, swamp light, or will-o’-the-wisp? I stood up, determined to walk across the field and investigate. As it had before, the mist vanished as I moved my eyes, but became vividly clear when I stared. Indeed, standing up, I had my best view yet. The mist seemed even more ribbonlike than before. It even had a rather crisp edge.

  I wondered if the girls had seen me yet. I did not care to frighten them, and so turned around to call their names and announce myself. But as I did so, what I saw in the garden struck the words from my lips.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  How I Met the Fairies

  The garden was alive with misty tendrils. Glowing ribbons of light curled and flowed through the flowers and over the pathway. Here, they bent in long, looping folds. There, they tapered off into baroque curlicues. They flowed from the trunk of the massive old tree like streamers from a maypole.

  My first thought was that all the streamers in the garden were emanating from the massy, creviced bark of the old tree itself. But a look beyond disclosed other, corollary streams flowing down in gauzy rolls and curls from the vicinity of the factory and the grove of ferns.

  In my eyes, these were the impressions of but a second. The mist grew vague as I physically moved, or jerked my head even slightly. So it was that much of it vanished as I began scanning the garden for Anna and Clara, to see how they fit into this phenomenon.

  The girls, however, had seen me first. They were standing near the trunk of the great tree, staring at me, their hands clasped apprehensively at their waists. As I stared, I saw the mist again, rippling and waving around them.

  “Anna, Clara,” I said in a loud whisper. “Don’t be afraid. It’s me. Mr. Castle. Tell me, do you see it? Do you see all this?”

  Clara took a few steps toward me. “We don’t mean to,” she said, mysteriously. “But they’re hurting them, Mr. Castle. They’re hurting them.”

  “Hurting who? Who’s hurting who?”

  “The fairies, they’re — ”

  “Fairies? Where? Tell me, Clara. Where are the fairies?”

  Clara looked from side to side with a slightly confused expression, as if she didn’t know quite what was expected of her. Then she stepped back, as if to get out of the way of something, and a tendril of mist parted around her back and rejoined in front of her. This streamer curled to within three feet of me, and as I stared at it, it began to flicker and waver. For a fraction of a second, the mists vanished, or re-formed somehow into what appeared to be a rippling frieze, covered with human figures. In the next fraction of a second, the figures became round. Where there had been a misty, flat ribbon, there now danced a group of perfect little female homunculi — each not more than ten inches tall. Smiling, laughing, even. Stark naked and curling their little fingers delightedly.

  I blinked, naturally. And jerked my head in surprise.

  Suddenly, I was overcome by a physical sensation I had never before felt. It was a thrill of fear I had previously only experienced in dreams of falling. The sensation was one of near-total disorientation. My mind had grasped that what I saw were indeed little people disporting in the air, that they were real, and not an illusion. But it also knew that this was impossible. And that if this impossible thing were real, all the things it had taken for real in the past might not be real. My rationally constructed view of the universe collapsed in that moment, baring the most ancient foundations of the human soul. My bowels loosed. And like a terrified, unreasoning animal, I ran.

  Exactly how far I ran down the road, I do not remember. A mile, at least. And as my fearful sinews heated with exertion, my mind cooled and collected itself. Fear vanished. I slowed to a walk, and felt a new sensation overtake me. This was the sensation I should rightly have felt from the moment I saw the homunculi: a magnificent ecstasy; the thrill of discovering a new universe. As quickly as I had run away from the garden, I now ran back to it.

  This time, I leaped over the wall and ran up the center walk.

  “Anna, Clara,” I said, coming up to the children and kneeling down between them. “Do you see them? Do you see the fairies?”

  “Do you see them?” Clara asked.

  “Yes, yes, yes. You dear girls. I ate the flower.”

  Clara reached out and touched my cheek. There were tears running down my face. I grabbed her little hand and squeezed it in mine.

  “Where are they now? Where — ?”

  Seeing the fairies, I was learning, required a peculiar set of optical gymnastics and constant attention to the act of observation. I had to both look and to not look: to stare hard out of the corner of my eye, to swoop in with the full pupil, then look away and swoop in again at the last possible moment. With practice, this paradoxical way of seeing became easier, and soon I was able to fix the fairies one by one in my eye. At this moment, I descried some ten to fifteen fairies in my near vicinity. That it was late at night and very dark did not at all prevent their being seen with full clarity, given that one performed the optical exercises described above. The fairies “glowed” (for want of a better word) with a light of their own. It was not a vulgar, electrical sort of light, nor had it the sharpness of the firefly’s cool beacon. The fairies’ was a subtle luminosity, for which I can think of no parallel in nature, but which resembled somewhat the images thrown from a dim magic lantern.

  Since I am describing the fairies’ light, let me describe their walk. They did not appear to walk as we do, flat-footed and hip-heavy; nor did they walk precisely on the tips of their toes, like a corps de ballet. Instead, they stepped with a weightless bounce, as if they were underwater. And they were by no means tied to the ground, seeming to have access to some kind of invisible aerial walkways on
which they ascended and descended over and around the shrubs, pathway, and beds of flowers. I cannot say for certain, but the topography of these walkways roughly corresponded to the curling ribbons of mist.

  As I knelt between the girls, I watched a fairy come toward us. Gliding to earth on the flagstoned path, she stopped and appeared to be looking at us with the same corner-of-the-eye movements with which we were watching her.

  As we faced each other on the path, I marveled at the perfection of her tiny body. Like all the others, she was ten or so inches high, slender-hipped, bare-footed, and buck naked. Whether she was old or young I could not tell. There was no hair at all on her body, except for the head, where it was fair and very long. It floated down around her shoulders and her back obeying the very languid gravity in which she moved. Though neither brown nor white, her skin could not be described as a single color. Like a beam of sunlight, she was all colors and no color at all.

  Observing this creature and her fellows gave me a visceral delight. She was so cunningly formed in every detail. So like a perfectly animated doll. And when she gave her head a quizzical little tilt, as if she were wondering what kind of creatures we were, a little sob of pleasure caught in my throat.

  Wishing this fairy to come closer, I held myself perfectly still, as I would trying to coax a squirrel to take a peanut from my hand. But fairies are not squirrels, and the two girls simply ran up and held out their arms to the fairy, who rewarded them with a smile and a little skipping, bobbing dance. Ducking under Anna’s legs, the fairy pulled herself up the little girl’s night-dress and circled up around onto her shoulder. There, she braced one leg on Anna’s collarbone, grabbed a strand of the girl’s golden hair, and swung around until she was directly in front of her face. There, she bent forward and gave Anna a kiss on the lips, before bounding down her arms and toward the branch of a nearby bush. From there, she flew into a bed of yellow yarrow and vanished.

  (Here, let me add one more item to what might be a huge and contradictory rulebook of fairy visibility. To wit: When a fairy stops moving, it disappears.)

  While watching this single fairy, I could not help being aware of the other fairies nearby. The movements of one seemed to affect them all. And since the fairy with whom I was interacting seemed to have the most intentionality in her movements, it was hers that seemed briefly to rule the others. There was no purpose to this elaborate minuet, and I can only state that when this one fairy jumped up on Anna’s arm, I sensed that the others in the vicinity adjusted their movements in concert. I was reminded of a flock of birds, all turning in unison, linked by some unknown telegraphy.

  Now other fairies were skipping, sailing, and bouncing toward us and past us. Where were they going? I wondered. It was difficult to tell, owing to the fugitive glimpses by which they were of necessity observed. They seemed to be coming from the direction of the great tree, and bounding toward the house, or the end of the garden, past which they were no longer to be seen.

  Anna and Clara both had two or three fairies sporting through their hair, running up and down their arms, and balancing on their outstretched fingertips. Would the fairies do the same to me? Lowering myself to the grassy verge between the pathway and the flowerbeds, I leaned on one arm and waited. A second later, a fairy bounced and sailed and came to a stop on the ground directly in front of me.

  She was looking at me, into my eyes, trying to understand me, I think, even as I was trying to understand her. Once again, I felt frightened and disoriented. Here was this creature from another world, a scientifically unknown dimension of the universe, trying to determine if I was real or an illusion, even as I did the same to her. A second later, I ceased to question the reality of both of us as the little creature danced onto my ankle and laughingly curled up in the crook of my knee. I could feel the slightest pressure from her tiny body through the cloth of my trousers and hose. Then, with an acrobatic little twist, she jumped up and onto my hand, which lay open at my side. I dared not move, though the sensation of her touch was chilling, outlandish, and totally overwhelming.

  Now I felt the pressure of her toes on the backs of my fingers, one, two, three, as she hopped along. Though she weighed no more than a leaf, every nerve in my body prickled; a chill spread up my back and out around my shoulders; and the two points where her toes rested tingled with sensitivity.

  Would she sail off if I turned my hand? I dared to do so, and was delighted to see that she stayed on. In fact, as I turned my hand further, she began to treat it as a game like rolling on a log, silently laughing all the while. Now she slid into the palm of my hand. Some reflex caused me to close my fingers gently around her hips. She slid out and upward a few inches, balancing one foot on the tip of my index finger. I made another tiny motion as if to grab hold of her, and she again bounced away, coming to rest on another finger. Soon, we were engaged in a teasing game where I would ever so softly snatch at her, and she, with clear signs of delight, would evade me by dancing across my hand.

  As we played this game, I could feel her arms and fingers and ankles brushing against my palm and fingertips. I found myself almost laughing out loud with the sheer, uncanny delight this caused me. As I finally did so, I found myself almost covered with fairies. They danced on my nose and cheeks, sported on my chest, and raced up and down my legs. Laughing ridiculously, I lay back on the ground and felt their pattering footsteps up and down my body.

  Being touched by the fairies was an experience that was so far unlike anything that I had felt before, my mental workings had trouble finding their accustomed channels. As the fairies pattered over me, I felt myself being blown along as if by a fresh breeze. This splendid zephyr seemed to whisk away the accumulated experience of my adult life like so much dust, baring what lay beneath: that delightful childlike state where fascinations succeed one another without stopping, where curiosity aches and is satisfied and renewed with every glance.

  As I felt this very literal touch of wonder, I delighted in the range of fairy shapes and sizes and the range of expressions they displayed. There was not one fairy “type.” Each was an individual. Some were slim of hip and slender of shoulder. Others were riper in limb and hip, and rounder in bosom. Although faces were less easy to capture in the eye, it was clear that variety obtained there also. Some of the fairies had noses longer, flatter, or wider than others, with cheeks, chins, and foreheads corresponding. And these features were not for a moment passive. They were every moment expressing some emotion, whose sources, I’m sorry to say, were more mysterious to me than not. One second a fairy might be smiling (you could see their little teeth), and the next second she would be looking quizzical, wondering, or abashed. They might have been going through an emotive drill, like an actor, but there was nothing false or actorish in their manner.

  As to their age, you could tell nothing by their skin or features; but some of the fairies displayed a whip-cracking energy I could not help but associate with youth, while others moved with a measured grace I could not help attributing to greater age and maturity.

  As I enjoyed observing the fairies and feeling them dance over me, my first feelings of wonder and curiosity gave way to a certain slackness of mind. This grew into a kind of torpor. The constant exercise of the eyes required to keep the fairies in sight left me somewhat confused as to what was of the fairy dimension and what was not. One moment, it would seem that the fairies were the only things that were real, and that the house, garden, and trees were all a flat mural painted around me. The next moment, the fairies would vanish and things would resume their ordinary roundness.

  I grew sleepier. My limbs went slack, and I felt one arm rise from the thigh where it had been resting. Looking down, I saw that it was in fact being lifted by two of the fairies.

  What could they possibly be doing? I was curious, but had not the energy to speculate or resist. As I watched, several other fairies came around and began lifting my elbow. My consciousness was overwhelmed
by something I can only describe now as a kind of enchanted sleep, and I was aware that a whole troop of fairies had gathered around me. As my body dropped into the attitude of slumber, I had the impression that at the same time it was being lifted off the ground

  and carried floatingly along. A golden haze filled my mind and the velocity of my transportation seemed to accelerate. I was being motivated at an alarming pace. As I went faster and faster, my heart began to race, my stomach seized up, and all my muscles grew disobedient in their dread. Then, when it seemed like I had reached a truly awful rate of speed, I crashed. It was like slamming into a wall. There was a horrible, sickening second of unconsciousness. Then I awoke.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  How I Met the Little Men

  I had not moved an inch. It was still very dark, and there were no fairies to be seen. Sitting up, I saw the girls over by the great tree. Though I could no longer see the fairies, they apparently could. I guessed, therefore, that the effects of the tiny flower were only temporary. Staggering over to the shrub where both the girls and I had been getting our flowers, I searched around and found another, which I picked and ate.

  Recovering from both physical and mental exhaustion, I sat down against the wall and rubbed my eyes. I recalled how earlier, when I had eaten the first flower, and sat against the other side of this same wall, I had seen the fairy mist off on the other side of the neighbor’s field. Now I stood up and looked again and, indeed, there was a long patch of fairy fog off across that field, near the edge of the wood.

  And where else, I wondered, might I see the fairies if I walked this night with a pocketful of the little flowers? Were there patches of fairy life all over Burkinwell? All over England? Where did the fairies come from? And where did they go? I saw before me the outlines of a great architecture of knowledge yet to be discovered: a natural history of fairies that would keep generations of scholars immersed in study. Somewhere walked the man who would be our Darwin or Humboldt of fairies. There was much to think about. Much to do.