The Fairy Club

by Moshe Harel

  She didn’t even wait for him to thank her, as she left the room promptly. He turned his chair around and motioned us to set our chairs in a tight circle. His sister frowned. “Why is he here?” she pointed at Brian.

  “He’s Sophie’s fiancé, so he’s also family.”

  Judging by the way he had earlier talked to Gran, I didn’t feel too proud to be part of the family, but this was not the time for discussing that. I just moved my chair closer to Brian’s and let him hug my shoulders.

  “For the benefit of these youngsters, let’s introduce ourselves,” the man said. “I’m Bernard Smith, Edith’s older brother. The woman at my side is our sister, Charlotte Johnson, who’s two years younger than me. Edith is the youngest, and she looks even younger than her age.”

  Gran decided to introduce us. “My granddaughter, Sophie Brown is magically mated to Brian Levi. Both are fairies, like me, although they are more talented than I will ever be.”

  Bernard seemed interested, yet Charlotte looked like she was given some more lemon juice. It took me another moment to realize what it meant—Charlotte was envious of our gift. I hoped I could do something about that.

  “Where’s your daughter?” Charlotte asked harshly.

  “Mom stayed at home. She needs to take care of my younger siblings, and she knew I could help Gran better than her,” I said.

  There was an awkward silence for a moment. “Your daughter . . . is she . . .” Charlotte started asking.

  “She’s just like you—as normal as one gets. I’m not yet sure about her other children,” Gran said. Her sister seemed relieved.

  “What are you doing now?” Bernard asked, clearly interested.

  “I’m single, no longer searching for ‘Mr. Right,’ but enjoying my life as it comes. I’m a lawyer, by profession, but I do all kinds of jobs, unrelated to that. I’m currently head of the board for two small companies. It pays quite well. I spend most of my time on fairy stuff, though.” That was much more than I had ever heard Gran talk about herself. “What are you doing these days?”

  Bernard shrugged. “I think you heard of my divorce. It caught some headlines a few years ago. I’m keeping a small specialty store and live quite nicely. I’m still reluctant to start any serious relationship, though.”

  Charlotte didn’t wait to be asked. “I also divorced, only two years after my wedding, and it wasn’t a day too soon. Luckily, we had no children to make things more complicated. I’ve been living with Sarah since.” She turned to me and explained, “Sarah was my best friend and lover since high school.”

  I felt it was my turn now. “I’m a high school student and I’ve still not made up my mind about the future. Gran told me about being a fairy on my sixteenth birthday, and that’s when Brian became my boyfriend. We became much closer during the summer, when he also found out he was a male fairy.”

  “Did you help our parents?” Charlotte asked.

  I was surprised by her question and not sure how to answer. Gran replied instead. “After I told her about their conditions, she suggested helping them with our magic, something that I didn’t even think of before. Once I saw what she did for Mom, I tried doing the same for Dad. I wasn’t even sure it would work, but evidently, it did.”

  Charlotte surprised me as she hugged her sister tightly and started to weep.

  The atmosphere had changed completely during our conversation. Gran had been fully accepted back to the family. I’m sure that our work on healing her parents helped, but I also think that it would have happened anyhow. Charlotte had finally understood that it was jealousy that made her distance herself from her sister. Bernard, as I understood, had never had a strong opinion about Gran, and just acted like his parents and his sister towards her. He actually seemed relieved that the animosity seemed to have melted away. I wondered how her parents would react, though.

  Gran’s parents stayed at that hospital for more than a week. Mom started visiting them either with Gran or with me, as we used to open the portal to let her visit without spending hours on the road. I think that helped her appreciate our magic much more than before.

  “Why does it take them so long to heal?” I asked Gran after one of these visits.

  “They are recovering fantastically fast. Without our intervention, if they even survived, it would have taken them many months to recover, and they would have not healed as well as they do now. The doctors think of sending them home in another two or three days, which is unheard of for their kind of injuries and their age. It’s all due to you that I could finally regain my parents. You’re a formidably talented and powerful fairy, dear. Don’t ever forget that.”

  I was glad that Gran appreciated what I did, but I was sure that she was exaggerating, as most grandmothers do when talking to or about their grandchildren.

  14 Elves

  Every few weeks we joined Brian’s parents, visiting Avalon. His sister joined occasionally as well. We usually adhered to a very specific route. It didn’t bother me and I thought it was the way they knew best. Avalon was a whole world and one could easily get lost there or encounter unknown dangers. Sticking to a well-known route seemed logical.

  Yet we didn’t stay only on that route. We visited some nice lakes, where we could swim and then dry in the sun; we found some fields with delicious flowers, whose nectar could maintain us for long times; we watched (from safe distances) some dragons resting in their lair or flying out for hunting. I felt lucky that being so small, we couldn’t interest the dragons as either prey or enemies. We seemed insignificant against these large flying beasts. Well, we seemed insignificant compared to most other creatures as well.

  It became painfully evident when we visited one of the high-elves villages. Although they were aware of us and treated us nicely, letting us sit on their shoulders to talk with them, I had a distinct feeling that we were no more significant for them than the birds that people use to feed in the public gardens. There was another problem evident during these visits—speed. As small creatures, we did everything very fast, although that seemed normal to us. Listening to the elves talking or watching them move seemed painfully slow, yet I knew that they were quite fast. Still, I wished I could be in my human size when visiting them. Some seemed really interesting.

  I asked Gran about it, the next time we met. “Can I go back to my big size while at Avalon? I’d like to talk with the elves as equal, not as a miniature.”

  Gran gave it a thought. “I believe you can, just as you can change your size here. You can do practically everything you can imagine if you only direct your magic right.”

  Well, that gave me an idea. I thought ‘bigger!’

  A moment later, I was towering over Gran, my head almost touching the ceiling. Luckily, my previous experience also helped me keep my clothes the right size, or they would have been ripped completely as my body grew to almost twice its size.

  Gran looked amazed. “I knew you would be a very powerful fairy, but I still find it hard to believe that you do such things with no visible effort at all.”

  She looked me over and smiled. “Have you chosen the basketball team you’d like to join?”

  I shrank back to my normal size. “You know I don’t like sports too much, don’t you? Besides, nobody who has no magic should see me doing this. You told me so yourself.”

  “I sure did!” Gran laughed. “I’m looking forward to some more surprises, though.”

  I mock-pouted at her and then hugged her. As much as I loved her before, we were now much closer, since I became a fairy as well.

  The next time we visited the elves we were only with Gran. She and Brian landed on the shoulders of one of the maidens. I landed on the ground nearby and urged my body to regain its normal size. Once it did, I was surprised that it maintained the wings and the pointed ears. I gave it a thought, though before asking for an explanation. It became perfectly clear: This time, I only wanted to change my size, while in most cases I wanted to regain my human form. My magic just did exactly wha
t I asked it for.

  I was now about the same size as the female elves, although not dressed like them. The elven maidens used to wear flowing gowns of very thin materials. While each was quite transparent, they normally wore several layers of cloth, hiding their bodies quite well. My clothes were very different. Luckily, after our first few times in Avalon, I decided to wear my bikini while flying. It wasn’t for protection, as you may imagine. It was just a security measure in case we had to return in an emergency to a different place than planned. Being nude in public is not acceptable behavior in any country I know, except for very few nudist areas.

  Still, my bikini attracted some undue attention, especially from the resident males. Now, that I was the right size, I looked just as attractive as a young female elf, something they barely even noticed while I kept my fairy size. Not wanting that attention, I forced my magic to conjure some layers of sheer cloth around me, making me dressed similarly to elven maidens. Some of the male elves seemed disappointed, but I felt better.

  The change in size caused some other subjective changes. I no longer found the elves slow. In fact, they talked so fast that I could hardly follow, and they walked quite fast as well. It took me a few minutes to get accustomed to these aspects of the change. I then started enjoying myself.

  “I didn’t know that fairies could change their size this way,” one of them said. “Is this common?”

  I shrugged. “How would I know? I’m quite a young fairy. Have you seen any?”

  The maiden elf laughed, sounding like bells. “You’re the first. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Sophie. How may I call you?”

  “My name is Eladorohid, but my friends call me Ella. You may call me Ella as well.” She looked me over, noticing the semi-transparent wings that looked too delicate to be of any use. “Are you flying with these?” she pointed at them.

  “Yes. When in fairy-size, they are very useful. I doubt they can be more useful than fans in this size.”

  “Why don’t you try?” Ella suggested.

  I tried. My wings barely moved, but I soared up, higher than two elves standing one on top of the other. I was probably using magic for flying, but it didn’t feel any different than I normally did.

  “Wow! That’s impressive! I wish I could do the same,” Ella exclaimed.

  “Why? You have magic. You can try. I certainly couldn’t trust these wings to carry me up. I barely even moved them, as you’ve seen.”

  Ella shook her head. “Elf magic is different. We can change some things around us, but we can’t use magic on ourselves or on another living being, except for some healing.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  She smiled at me. “Don’t be. We have other things that you may envy.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, we live very long lives. I’m just a youngster, not yet ready to mate, by our standards, yet I’m already seventy-nine years old. It may take a few more decades before I find my mate.”

  “And how long do you normally live?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really know. I’ve heard of no elf dying of old age. Elves die either in battle, in accidents, or by suicide, when they get tired of life, usually after passing more than five centuries. It looks odd to me now, when I’m still young, and I can’t understand anybody getting tired of living. Can you?”

  “I’m not yet seventeen, but I know that some humans think the same, and much sooner at that.”

  Ella shook her head in wonder. “I hope to never be able to understand that.”

  I took a better look at her. Despite her age, she looked like a fifteen years girl. Time had a different meaning for her than for me, as either human or fairy. I wondered if I could ever understand her feelings.

  Brian came to land on my shoulder. “You’ll have to teach me how you did all this,” he chirped in my ear. Ella didn’t even hear him.

  Other elves joined our conversation, jumping from subject to subject. Although I could understand their talking, most of what they talked about was unknown to me. It was clear, though, that their knowledge far surpassed mine on every aspect of Avalon.

  Eventually, the whole group reached the nearby stream. They all undressed and went into the shallow water, washing, splashing water on each other, and having fun. I was a bit reluctant, at first, if only due to my wings, but then I thought better of it. I had nothing to be ashamed of my body, and I could handle my wings just as I was always doing. ‘No wings!’ I thought, and I could then feel the wings shrinking into my back until only the two slight lines remained. I removed my clothes quickly and joined the group. Gran and Brian stayed nearby, not knowing how to change like me.

  We didn’t talk about that for the rest of our visit to Avalon. We spent some time at the library, finding more information about Fairy culture, and had another splash in a lake (well, a small pond when seen as human, but quite a big lake for a fairy) before going back.

  Once we were all in our room, Brian could no longer hold his curiosity. “How did you manage all that? Making yourself big, yet maintaining your wings, flying without really using the wings, and then creating your clothes out of thin air?”

  I wasn’t really sure what to say. Gran beat me at answering. “She just used what I taught you all at the club. She thought of what she wanted and let her magic do it.”

  Brian didn’t like her answer. “Why didn’t you do the same, then?”

  She smiled reluctantly. “I wish I could. I’ve never thought of changing my size and I still find it difficult to imagine it, although Sophie’s demonstration may help me with that. The rest is quite obvious, I believe. Fairy flight is mostly magic anyway, come to think of that. Most of us have wings that are much too small and too delicate to be useful for flight, although they may give us some better stability in the air. Just compare our wings to those of birds with similar body weight and you will see.”

  Brian frowned a bit at that. I had not given it any thought earlier either. I had just acted.

  “As for the clothes,” Gran continued, “that was not quite as extraordinary as it looked. It did require concentration and patience and quite a bit of talent, but I’m sure you can conjure some simple clothes as well. Go on, try now!”

  Brian tried. I saw the air above the nearby chair getting denser and then it turned into a pair of shorts—sort of. They were very asymmetric and quite a bit too large for any man to wear, but Brian did conjure a clothing object.

  “I won’t order my new dress from you,” I laughed.

  Brian glared at me for a moment and then joined the laughter. “I’ve always been awful at handicraft,” he admitted. “Can you show me how you changed your size?”

  “That’s simple. I thought ‘bigger!’ and let the magic act,” I said, doing just that, stopping when I was a head taller than him.

  This time, Brian got ambitious. A moment later, he towered above me, with a large smirk on his face. Gran wouldn’t let herself be outdone, though. I could see her ambition taking hold, and soon enough she was towering even over Brian. We all returned to our natural sizes a moment later.

  “That’s what I did with the elves,” I told them. “Next time, I think I’ll wear some more clothes, as I felt too exposed, once I adjusted to their size.”

  “And miss all the splashing fun when small? I wouldn’t like that. You can use a slightly larger bikini, though,” Gran suggested.

  “Well, maybe . . .”

  15 Messages

  It was the first day of my period. Despite my magic, which helped me make this painless, I couldn’t completely avoid the mood swings. This also happened to be Brian’s free day, making my stay at school less tolerable than usual. It didn’t help that some of my friends had a quarrel and acted nastily with each other. I could have probably used some magic to calm them down, but I wasn’t quite sure how to do this and I was even less sure of being able to control my magic at such times when my mood went out of control. When I came home, all I wanted was fo
r Brian to hug me and cuddle with me, but he wasn’t in our room when I came in.

  ‘Oh, where is that boy when I need him the most?’ I thought.

  “I’m here, honey. I just washed my hands,” I heard Brian seconds later. “Please don’t be angry at me.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Well, you sounded quite angry a moment earlier.”

  “I didn’t say a word!”

  “Still, I heard you.”

  That made me think. “Did you hear my voice?” I wanted to understand. Actually, I also welcomed the distraction, taking me out of my foul mood.

  “No, not exactly. It was more like . . . you were talking in my mind, somehow.”

  ‘Are you sure about it?’ I thought, trying to direct it at him.

  “I heard you again! How did you do it?”

  It took me a moment to phrase it. “I just directed my thoughts to you.”

  Brian seemed confused. “How would you do it?”

  I tried to think of how I did it and then explained it better. “Think of this as if each person has a radio receiver, each tuned to a different frequency. All I need for you to receive my thoughts is to transmit it especially for you, on your personal frequency. Does this sound any clearer?”

  It took him a bit of thought, and then I sensed him, ‘I think I’ve got it.’

  ‘You certainly did!’ I thought to him.

  Brian smiled. “I think it’s quite easy, really. Do you think we can do it over larger distances?”

  I wasn’t sure. I didn’t feel close enough to his parents to try talking with them this way, nor to any of the girls in our Fairy Club. I only felt close enough to Gran. Sure! Gran was the natural choice! I concentrated for a moment and sent, ‘Call me if you can hear me.’

  I didn’t know where Gran was, and for all I knew, she could just be on the other side of Earth, yet I had a feeling that she could sense me and would respond if she only had a chance.

  A few minutes later, my phone rang. “Sophie, are you alright?” my Gran’s worried voice came through.