The Faerie Ring Dance

by Kara Skye Smith

  caught the humans up, together, proving the Queen’s

  intuition right that Honor would find the human who

  had traveled from the Deep Woods’ Clearing to be her

  suitor, I began to think that I had been destined upon

  this journey of life to be, among these faeries, my own

  kind. For the first time, my differences did not exclude

  me, but gave me something the faeries didn‘t have

  experience and knowledge about living in the human‘s

  world, first hand, that the faeries didn’t. I knew that

  the human world held a kind of magic all its own

  although not as filled with fantasy, the human world

  could be a very exciting place. For a moment, I thought

  about seeing the shore of America from the ship for the very first time, and the first night I spent in my own

  little

  home. I glanced over at Einion, wide-eyed and alone

  surrounded by faeries and I thought him a kindred spirit,

  knowing what its like not to be around his own kind,

  knowing such a circumstance - although not unbearable

  can have an isolation all its own. Not aloneness,per se,

  as the faeries to Einion had become like the McGillicutty

  ladies were to me family. I made up my mind, right

  then, as the Buttergirl approached and offered me some

  gooseberry vine tea, that it was time I left the humans’

  side and made the faeries my family and the faeries’ realm

  my world. I also noticed the magical color of the

  Buttergirl’s eyes, the agreeable sound that her laughter

  made, and I asked her to dance until the wee hours of

  the morning, when we drank the dew from buttercups

  and the Queen’s court returned to the magical Yew in

  the final procession of the night.

  As the new shift of faerie band musicians picked up their instruments to play the enticing sound to

  continue the enchantment of the humans, I made a

  pledge to set them free. I became the loved one to break

  the magical spell that set the humans’ feet to dancing and

  their enchanted souls to disappear from view, entering

  into the faeries‘ realm inside the ring. All at once, I

  pushed Honor, then Michael, and then even Einion, hard

  as I could, sending them tumbling to the ground just

  outside the edges of the Faeries’ Ring.

  The full moon gone, the faerie music wasn’t heard

  by the humans. They all three sat up, blinking, and even

  rubbing their eyes in confusion.

  “Where are we?” Honor asked me.

  “Don’t you remember?” I smiled, “we’ve come

  into the clearing to pick wild mushrooms,” I said, “and

  instead you’ve met a friend.”

  “Why am I here?” Einion Gloff asked, first

  looking at the other two, and then at me.

  “You tend the sheep of the McGillicutty’s near the Hollow’s Rise,” again I smiled warmly to calm any

  suspicions about faerie enchantment as the Queen had

  told me, earlier, that we need never to explain.

  “Let’s go home,” I suggested, and Einion agreed

  with me. Honor McGillicutty, to my surprise, did not.

  She knew to return to her sister would be to lose her

  friend, her suitor, but to live on her own she would not.

  She would have the freedom, she said, to choose for

  herself - just as I’d wished for her, in this new land

  and she asked Michael if she could go with him,

  wherever it was that he was going. The two of them

  ‘disappeared’ from sight along the trail to the fisherman’s

  cabin, toward the Deep Woods, headed for the clearing

  past where Michael McDonnell had built the home he

  lived in when he wasn’t off at sea.

  Einion and I went straight to Blithe who asked

  me where Honor was, and I said I didn’t know. It

  wasn’t a lie, I really didn’t.

  I’d thought the fisherman’s cabin, but I knew she went to seek her freedom - and her happiness that in

  many ways Blithe had not allowed - so I held my tongue

  at those last words and watched as Blithe paced back

  and forth then grabbed her coat, disappearing out the

  back door saying, “Well, someone’s got to go and look!”

  Eventually, Blithe reported Honor as ‘missing’ to

  the newspaper in town, and she honestly insisted tothe

  owner of the Old Soul’s Times that he print where she

  was last seen: ‘with the faeries’, ‘in the thicket in the

  woods’, ‘most likely gone to pick wild mushrooms during

  the recent and popular - harvest in the wood.’ The

  article also said, ‘Any reports to her sister, Blithe

  McGillicutty at the McGillicutty homestead, for which

  she would be most grateful. Any leads or information

  about the disappearance should be sent to the

  newspaper’s staff as to be reported on in the daily

  Times.’ The part about the ‘faeries’ didn’t print but only

  alluded to Blithe’s ‘report’ about her sister’s whereabouts

  in the paper. When Blithe complained, she was accused of suffering a delusion due to grief about her sister‘s

  disappearance and told she was in the thoughts and

  prayers of everyone on the newspaper’s staff.

  I never worried that I’d done the right thing, or

  the wrong, as every time Blithe mentioned Honor she did

  say ‘when she found her’ she’d lock her in her room, and

  possible never let her ‘out’ of her sight again! Lonely,

  sad, and worried about her sister, Blithe still did not let

  go her bitterness, nor figure that she forced Honor away

  from her, in order to seek a happy and fulfilling life. I

  did not think that Einion would be the one to fill the

  void in Blithe’s life - and my own - but he was most

  helpful and a happy sort of person to have around the

  homestead. He’d said to Blithe that he was most happy

  to be among humans, again.

  About the faeries, he told her, “They were the

  most magical things I’d ever seen, at first,” he said, “and

  then the merriment drew on and on, with a wickedness

  that wasn’t wicked, but enchanting - I suppose - but to have control over one‘s own life and be among your own,

  well that something that the faeries‘ world could not

  provide,“ he told her. After hearing Einion’s tale, Blithe

  made up her mind to dislike all faeries of any kind. So I

  went home, that night, alone, and vowed to never visit

  or even talk to Blithe McGillicutty, ever again. I

  wondered, for a moment, if Honor would ever be heard

  from again, either. I felt terribly bad about whatBlithe

  had said for the faeries had freed us all to find what we

  most wanted - all but Blithe, I thought, and so I

  realized, then, and understood her pain, and I guess, her

  discontentment with the faeries. Honor had found

  herself a suitor for a love she thought she might never

  get to have, Einion had been set free from a most

  punishing and wicked man, and I had been given

  permission to enter the faerie realm by the faeries’ Queen.

  It wasn’t but two months later that I received a

  letter - in the mail - of my very own. It was from

&nbs
p; Honor! She and Michael had gotten married. They had been to San Francisco, and they were setting sail, soon,

  for Paris, and then possibly Rome. In the letter, Honor

  expressed that she felt she had found her soulmate for

  life. She would remain a ‘believer‘, indebted to the

  faeries for their incredible help in openingup her heart

  and leading her off to her newlife. I appreciated the

  letter as it set my worries to rest, forever, and I was

  most pleased to have ‘received the post’, just like a

  regular citizen, equal and fair - quite a feat for an Irish

  pixie gnome.

  “My mom,” I thought, “would have been proud.”

  I folded the letter and tucked it into a box of keepsakes

  to reread whenever I missed Honor’s friendship. I was

  happy for her, but more than just a little lonely, myself,

  until one day - All Hollow’s Eve, nearly two and a half

  years since the steamship voyage to America, the Old

  Soul’s goblin sent word

  to me, an invitation to attend a dance, the Faerie-Goblin

  dance at the Faeries’ Ring and the Six-shaped Tree. I was most happy to attend and what a night it was! I

  fell in love, and that is why I have written this personal

  account and left one for my children, and one inside the

  Six-shaped Tree for the children who happed upon the

  wood in Old Soul‘s Hollow. Children? Me? Yes!

  That night, I asked the butter girl to marry me. We

  have twelve, half Irish-butterfly-pixie-faerie-gnome

  children and we have lived happily near the pond in my

  home which I added onto, of course, rooms for the

  babies and the other children; and, although I often

  wonder about Blithe, I don’t choose to mix my life with

  humans, anymore.

  From afar, I’ve seen that Einion lives with Blithe

  and works the farm, tending their flock, selling sheep’s

  milk and wool. Blithe, from all appearances, has become

  quite wealthy, almost as rich as the sewing machine man,

  curing her bitterness with the good deeds of taking in

  young, orphaned Einion, teaching him a smart business

  and tricks of the wool trade. He eventually married, too, and had twin girls.

  Blithe could often be seen pushing the babies’ carriage

  and cooing somewhat like she’d once done around Peter

  the cat - while the young couple strolled nearby, hand in

  hand.

  Blossom and her sisters were seen at every faerie

  ring dance in the thicket in the wood, at the baseof the

  magical Yew tree, just across the clearing from the tree

  known in Old Soul’s Hollow as the Six-Shaped Tree.

  And for that, any human with the sort of soul to

  wonder, “What makes a ring of grass grow more green?”

  can be grateful, as this personal account retells, if he

  steps too close, close enough to be pulled in, that this

  circle is enchanted by the Ellewyon Faeries of the

  Northern Muir Woods, and not by the Twelyth Teg!

  For one can never be too sure just who might hear the

  music and be ever so enchanted, to, “Come and dance, inside the faeries ring!”

  8 The End. E