Faery Tale (7 page)

“So, Diana,” I began, “do you think the people buying your homes believe that faeries really do exist?”

She considered this a moment. “Yes, I think so. I mean, if you buy a birdhouse, you're inviting the birds to come. It's the same thing with the faeries: if you buy a faery house, you're inviting the faeries to come.”

“And what about you? Do you believe faeries are real?”

She avoided my eyes a moment, embarrassed. “I mean, I believe that all sorts of stuff we're not tuning in to exists. People always want to know where artists draw our inspiration. And I guess in this case, I'm going to have to blame it on the faeries. I think these houses incorporate
their
ideas as much as mine. I was a very limited artist before I began working on these. I'd worked with clay to produce functional pots, ones that would sell. These days when I'm working, the ideas just come. More ideas than I can really deal with!”

So it seemed that for Diana, the faery world was her muse. But I wondered, what inspired her—the
idea
of faeries, or the faeries themselves
?
As we trooped down the stairs Diana told me that she had never once heard little voices whispering in her ear. She'd never even seen a faery. And she wasn't sure she wanted to.

We spent the better part of an hour touring her basement workshop where she showed us drawers upon drawers of semiprecious gem-stones meticulously organized by color and type. Plastic organizers filled with polyurethane-glazed mushrooms, pinecones, tree bark, and silk flowers stood stacked and ready for action.

Diana had mentioned over the phone that there was a psychic medium in Syracuse who I should really speak with while I was in town, a woman who, according to Diana, had an excellent rapport with the faery realm: Coleen Shaughnessy. Since I'd scheduled a meeting with Coleen right after my interview with Diana, time was running short. But as we said our goodbyes, I realized I had one final question to ask her.

“Sorry, Diana, I'm just wondering. Have you noticed anything in your life . . .
change
since you started working on these homes? You know, in trying to do something for the faeries?”

She considered this carefully. “Well, I guess it depends on what you believe. I mean, I'm not so good at the sales, and so I kept saying, ‘Bring people to me that are interested in doing something with these.' And then . . . people came.” Her gray eyes looked at me meaningfully. Did she mean me?

As we pulled away from the drive with a wave, I couldn't help but smile. I was inclined to disagree with Diana about not being so good with “the sales.” Her houses start at thirty dollars apiece. She'd sold me two for eighty.

 

Coleen Shaughnessy looked like Joan of Arc.

“It's no wonder you're doing what you're doing!” she exclaimed, as she ushered me into her home. “You have
so
many little faery energies all around you!”

“Thank you!” I said, thankful I'd insisted Stan stay in the car for this one.

As I sat at her dining-room table I studied her small, roundish glasses and the etched lines around her eyes that suggested a lifetime of easy laughter. It was the bowl haircut that reminded me of the French saint. That, and the fact that Joan of Arc was known for her conversations with faeries.

At the mention of faeries, Coleen laughed girlishly, tossing her hands up in delight.

“I
love
the faeries!” she exclaimed. “I've known they existed ever since I was a child. At my family's lake house I could feel an energy between the water and the shore. It wasn't until later that I learned places like that—between the water and the land—are called 'tween places.”

“'Tween places?” I asked.

“Yes. 'Tween places occur where two things overlap and become, for a moment, neither one thing nor the other,” she explained. “Faeries love anything 'tween. There are 'tween times, too—between night and day, between morning and afternoon.”

I nodded eagerly, waiting for Coleen to continue.

“As a little girl, I met flower faery friends, and there were little brownies that helped me clean. And then, of course, downstairs in the cellar, there were the dark elves under the stairs.”

Oh, yes, of course. Dark elves. Who hasn't heard of them?

My look of fear must have betrayed me because, across the table, Coleen chuckled.

“No, no, don't worry, dark elves aren't
bad
,” she reassured me. “But their eyes, their eyes do scare me.”

“Why?” I asked hesitantly. “What do their eyes look like?”

She leaned in toward me. “When I saw them they were . . . bright. But the rest of them is inky black. And if they stepped out from the shadows they would be dressed from head to toe in dark clothing.” I pictured an evil Legolas from
The Lord of the Rings
, jumping out from behind the washing machine. It was terrifying.

“But why are they there? I mean, why would they gravitate toward humans in a house? Wouldn't they rather be outdoors?”

“They don't gravitate toward houses. They gravitate toward
dark spaces
. There are dark elves outside, too. But in homes,
we're
the ones who stumble into
their
space.”

She stopped and looked at me. “You could encounter them, too, you know! You've probably felt them, especially with your vibration. When you go down into the cellar and you think, ‘Oohh.'” With a mock shiver she added, “‘It feels like there's something down here.'”

Right. I wouldn't be trying to connect with dark elves anytime soon. Despite my new fear of dark elves (add that to the list), Coleen explained that making gestures of friendship is very important in the faery kingdom. Buying something like a faery house, for example, would be a good way to let them know
you
know they're there. Putting honey out, creating a little space for them in each room, talking to them, buying them shiny things—these were all good ways to open the lines of communication. As she described the various methods for building a relationship with the faery realm, it began to seem like an awful lot of work to me. They sounded just like . . .
women
.

“So is creating a bond with the faery world ultimately beneficial to people?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” she assured me. “Oh, the faeries can do
many
things. But unlike your angels and guides, the faery realm does not have to help you
a bit
if they don't want to, okay?” Her voice was stern.

“Okay . . .”

“So the fact that you already have a bunch in your aura, that told me right off the bat, ‘Oh, okay, they already like
her
.' Believe me, that's a very good thing.”

I found I was smiling at the thought that the faeries might
like
me, and were already hanging around me. Could it be true? And if it was, were they around
all
the time? Because that would be a little pervy.

“Some people have to earn their trust over and over again,” Coleen continued. “But when they like you from the start, they can give you all kinds of gifts—health, wealth, prosperity, gifts of prophecy, clairvoyance, all those kinds of things. I'm very blessed. I get faery gifts all the time.”

“So when you see a faery, what does it
look
like exactly?”

Coleen's face lit up. “Some of the time, I'll just see little lights. But sometimes, within the lights, I'll see their actual forms. There are also a number of things they can shape-shift into. They can become a dragonfly, a butterfly, a bird, or even a larger animal.You can tell the difference between a faery, or say, just a normal butterfly, because they'll do something unusual, out of character. You'll have it on your finger and try to fluff it off, and it'll hang on! And you go like this”—she shook her hand—“and he's still hanging on.”

Thinking back to unusual encounters with nature in Manhattan, the only creatures I'd had regular contact with were cockroaches, and we met as mortal enemies engaged in combat. I refused to believe—no matter how fond of the natural world faeries were—that they would deign to shape-shift into the form of a New York City roach.

“So . . . sometimes faeries look like fireflies?” I interrupted.

“No,” she insisted. “People always try to tell me that's what I'm seeing. But there is absolutely no mistaking it. It's bigger than a firefly or lightning bug, with a totally different color of light. And lightning bugs don't have little forms inside them at times. I mean,
hello
?”

I asked Coleen how someone like me might be able to see a faery, and she explained that anybody could learn to see beyond our physical world, see the faeries, if they wanted.

“If you develop a good relationship with the faeries—if they trust you and know you're an open person—you can't
not
connect,” she explained. “But you must be a person pure of heart—a good, loving, kind heart. You must respect the earth and the faery realm, or they won't want anything to do with you.” Thinking for a moment, she seemed to grow solemn and reached over to touch my hand.

“Signe, I want to tell you something.”

“Of course.”

“What you're attempting,” she began, “this is a very important time to be doing it. Right now, the faeries are trying to reestablish contact, to get more information flowing back and forth between the human species and their world. If we work together, we can help to heal the planet. The planet is sick now, in a lot of ways. If we are going to survive, if the planet is going to survive, it needs a lot of healing. The faeries can help us to do that.”

I felt as though I had been socked in the gut, and I couldn't help but wonder: Had my search for faeries begun with me turning off the radio when I'd had enough? Or was I really somehow responding to a larger call to action? Was I helping the faeries, or was it the other way around?

I snuck a peek at my watch and realized that Stan had been waiting in the Jeep for almost two hours. Yikes. Giving Coleen a hug goodbye, I made my way down the steps and opened the door to climb in.

“Sorry for the wait, big cousin, but I'm telling you—you would
not
have been able to handle it. You would have definitely had to crack a joke.”

“Probably, but
man
. It would've been fun.”

“Not for Coleen and me.” I cleared my throat.

“Well, Siggie, I'm just glad you made it out in one piece,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I was just hoping you weren't tied up somewhere in the basement. A captive of dark elves or something.”

So even
Stan
knew about the dark elves?

I looked at him, then burst out laughing.

 

The bus ride back to New York City was long and quiet, with too much time to remember. I'd grown up breathing the air here, the particles of water that evaporated off the grass, the leaves of the trees. These hills were in me, my father, my mother, in Kirsten. I looked out the window past the fields and into the woods, trying to penetrate their greenness, somehow transport myself there from the confines of the mothballscented bus seat. Under that wild canopy of green, with my feet planted on a winding trail or on the mossy carpet at the base of a rushing stream, I would be once more where the Indians walked.

As the Port Authority came into view, I wondered: What had happened to the girl within me, the one who was happy to take a walk in the woods, pretending to be an Iroquois hunter with her father? God, I missed those days. Coleen had told me I had faeries in my aura. If I did, I certainly wasn't deserving. Going back upstate made me realize that somewhere in my life in Manhattan I had become distracted by all the wrong things—the money, the clothes, the success, the shoes, the handbags . . . what had happened to the little girl who loved a good story and an apple on a log in the woods with her father? Every time I reached out and took a step toward the faery world, I felt closer to that little girl. With each small peek into the faery realm I felt as though I were somehow reclaiming a small piece of myself.

But coming back to Manhattan with faery dust between my toes came with its own price tag. The horns blared louder, the neon lights looked more garish, and I so missed seeing the great swaths of trees. Sighing, I tugged my duffel bag out from underneath the bus and headed out to the crowded New York City streets to fight my way into a cab.

—EDAIN MCCOY,
A WITCH'S GUIDE TO FAERY FOLK

 

 

 

 

I
AWOKE every morning to the sound of birds. Granted, they were pigeons on the fire escape battling over a discarded Frito Lay bag, but as far as I was concerned, they were bluebirds and I was a red-haired Cinderella, awakening in the soft light of dawn to begin the morning's duties. In April, Eric and I had packed up our respective apartments and moved in together to a newly renovated one bedroom on the seventh floor of my building. Our lives found a new energy: the house was filled with friends, great food, and music to fit every mood from Eric's collection of one billion CDs. We were madly and utterly in love.

My weekend trip upstate had been informative but the travel had been draining, and I soon realized that if Raven had seen faeries in my old apartment, perhaps it was possible to contact them from the comfort of my very own home.

There are, surprisingly, several books that teach everyday people how to contact, invite, and otherwise get in touch with the faery kingdom. Sadly, none of these books are written for people who live in New York City.