Faery Tale (9 page)

She looked at me another moment, as if to slowly shake her head in shame, then resumed eating her pureed turkey breakfast.

That night, I decided to try something different. Since peasants in the countryside would often leave fruit or vegetables for the faeries from the harvest, I sliced up some small pieces of watermelon and left them in an eggcup in front of each of the faery homes.
Remember this? This is for you.

The watermelon was still there in the morning. Sure, I knew it wasn't going to disappear or anything. When it came to offerings, I'd read that faeries didn't literally
eat
the food—rather, they absorbed its energy or essence. Nonetheless, by day four I was getting discouraged. Despite all I'd read about faeries' reluctance to interact with humans, how one must be patient, how one must understand how horribly humans have damaged the relationship that existed between our two races in ancient times, after all I'd been told by Raven and Coleen about faeries being in my apartment and faeries hanging about in my aura, I had hoped we could cut through some of the usual formalities. If a human reached out in complete sincerity, shouldn't the faeries be
delighted
to make contact?

On this fourth day, I began to wonder, exactly how it is that organized religion gets
away
with this? I mean, how many people have actually seen God? We may see things that we believe
represent
God, like a beautiful sunset, a smile, a selfless or kind gesture. But those are all just things—we can ascribe any meaning to them. How many people have seen heaven, or hell, or demons, or angels appear right before them? Not very many, I tell you. And wasn't I trying to accomplish the same sort of thing? Billions of people believe God exists, angels exist. Millions don't even question. Wars are waged, causing tremendous human suffering, all in the name of something for which there is no empirical proof. And yet here I was, contemplating laying myself bare before so many disbelieving eyes, hoping to prove something that could very well be impossible. Why?

For the first time in months, I considered that I may never find proof to support what I so wanted to believe. I let out a long sigh. Maybe the real challenge was to acknowledge that there may simply be no way to prove such things. And to undertake to do it anyway.

When I woke up on Friday morning, the starling had returned, perched and gazing through our window. I crept closer and scrutinized it carefully. From its blue-black feathers to its iridescent green specks, I had to admit that this was a pretty convincing starling—there was nothing unusual about it. Nothing fell on top of me as I got ready for work, and nothing seemed out of place. I decided it was time to call in a very special reserve. Raven had a Reiki session in our apartment that day, and I asked her if she could tune in and tell me what she experienced, if anything. Upon my arrival home, I received the following note.

“The faeries came out for Raven, but they're boycotting me.”

Eric and I sat over veggie pizza with half an eye on the Olympics.

“I'm sorry, honey, I don't know what to tell you. You've certainly been trying your best.”

“They're hurting my feelings.” I picked off a mushroom and contemplated it forlornly before popping it into my mouth.

“Hey, is it true what they say about cats being able to see them?” he asked.

“Yeah, that's what they say. In one of my books I read that the best way to chase away any uninvited faeries from your house is to get a cat. They see them and try to hunt them or something.”

“Well, maybe that's why Willoughby's been acting so crazy lately. Just last night she was staring at the wall in the bedroom, like how she stares at a fly—she was trying to jump up and get something, but I looked and there was nothing there.”

“Eric, are you telling me
you
think that Willy saw a faery?”

“Sure. I mean . . . maybe.”

“How crazy is that? My boyfriend believes in faeries!”

“Well . . .”

“Shush, honey. Don't ruin it. As for you, Willoughby, you are no longer allowed to chase our new faery friends.”

“Mmmert?”
she responded.

“Nope. No more.”

 

I put fresh honey out that night and changed the water in the eggcups.

The apartment was silent, though Willoughby had spent the evening tearing around the living room and jumping up so she could swipe at the walls.

“Good night,” I whispered to the darkened room. “I do hope we can get to know each other soon.”

With a small sigh, I turned and climbed into bed. I could give them the time they needed.

I hoped.

 

The experiment in my apartment might not have turned up any magical creatures, but it helped me realize that there was no more denying it—my quest had become an obsession, and a fun one at that. I made up my mind to plan a trip: one grand voyage to the home of the ancient Celts, to see what I could really discover about faeries. My only concern was how on earth I was going to juggle a grand voyage with work. I told myself that somehow I could find a way. Autumn came and the leaves began to turn, and Eric and I began talking about life somewhere else, but what a dream.

As the days grew shorter and fall decayed into winter, there were days when I felt the city was eating me alive. Every time I was pushed on the train it bothered me a little more. Every time I got stopped on the street by some spa promotion, I wanted my thirty seconds back. Every time a homeless man threw my money back at me because he wanted quarters instead of a stack of nickels, I got closer to saying, “See you later, Manhattan.”

We each began to reach our own personal city limits. And the more we talked about the future, the more I started daydreaming about taking the time to really write this book. Eric had grown up in Charleston, South Carolina, and we fantasized about a house with a yard by the beach. His younger brother, Ben, still lived there and had a boat.

The next thing I knew it was December 15, and Eric was down on one knee, with a ridiculously sparkling diamond ring between his fingers.

“Signe, I want you to be my wife,” he said, his soft brown eyes questioning. “Will you marry me?”

I'd been hoping, hoping so much, but trying not to expect. And now that it was happening . . . well, I didn't know I was a crier. Horrible, machine gun-like sounds issued from my mouth, and when I uncovered my eyes I whispered, “Ask me again.”

I discovered in that moment, when you're going to be with somebody for the rest of your life, you get unlimited do-overs for embarrassing moments.

He laughed. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” I squealed.

That night we decided. So long as at least
one
of us could keep their job and work remotely, it was time for a change.

—EDGAR ALLAN POE,
ANNABEL LEE

 

 

 

 

A
WEEK before our move to Charleston, panic struck.

I had quit my job to search for faeries.

It was 11:24 a.m. on a Tuesday, which would typically find me in my office, fluttering frantically between emails and phone calls. Instead I was sitting barefoot in a Cornell T-shirt on the couch, with bile slowly rising in my stomach. What had I
done
?

Outside on Broadway I could hear the roar of traffic—my white noise. Looking around the room cluttered with half-packed cardboard boxes I couldn't help but feel I was being swallowed whole—everything in me and around me was under construction. And for what? I had quit my job and purchased myself a one-way ticket to utter obscurity. I pushed my breakfast away and ran into the bathroom, just in time to kneel and dry-heave into the toilet. I knew I should be welcoming this change with optimistic excitement. But as I leaned my head against the cold tile, I thought,
No.

Periods of transition have never been my forte.

I sat on the long blue sofa, waiting. My mother looked tired sitting there next to Kirsten, who was swinging her feet against the edge of the couch. Out the big picture window I could see our birch tree, and a gypsy moth caterpillar with long, spiky hairs, winding its way up the trunk. I thought of the tin can filled with gasoline, the way my father would pluck their writhing bodies from the papery bark, the way they would twist and buck in the stinking liquid until they suffocated or drowned. Either way was a terrible way to die.

Over on the love seat my father's fingers were interlaced in his lap. He was letting Mom do this, this talk to us.
Trial separation
. . . I rolled these foreign-sounding words around on my tongue, tasting them.They were bitter and left a fluttering in my stomach. I glanced at him and his face looked drawn and sad, like a quitter. He cleared his throat. “We're going to fix up the house and sell it. So your mom and I can both get new houses of our own.”

“We're going to live apart.” She paused. “And you two will live with both of us . . . you'll spend time with both of us. What I mean is, you'll have two homes soon, instead of just one.”

My gut clenched.

“But I don't want to leave,” I whispered.

“I know, sweetheart,” Mom sighed.

There was a long moment of silence, as the weight of it settled in.

“But the most important thing for you both to know is that we love you more than anything.” Her voice caught in her throat.

“And that will never, never change. And we want you to know that this has nothing to do with you girls—this is
not
your fault.”

My
fault? I hadn't considered this.

Later that week my fourth-grade teacher took me to the school library. Her hand felt cool and papery in mine, and it calmed me. We settled into a corner and she pulled books off the shelf. Inside I looked at pictures of children crying, all of them wanting to know,
Is it my fault?
My face flushed with anger.
They
were the ones quitting, pulling my home out from under me, making me leave the place where I knew every leaf and pinecone, every shortcut and mossy stone.
Trial separation, divorce
.
They
were the ones arguing all the time.

But if it didn't have something to do with us, then why did everyone keep bringing it up? Could it actually be our fault they couldn't stand to be together anymore? That we were going to leave our house on Woodcrest Avenue forever?

My NewYork friends couldn't really understand why we picked Charleston. But despite my anxiety, I knew we'd done the right thing. In moments when I least expected it, like a subversive magic, I could feel it calling. Locals called Charleston the little Kingdom by the Sea, and its majesty was undeniable. Its haunting echo felt ancient, dark, Gothic, and salty like the ocean. Some of our closest friends lived there—they were a built-in welcome wagon full of love. The city had done its part to lure me with palmetto trees, winding creeks, marshy wetlands, and the ghostly footprints history had left on its cobblestone streets. Now Eric and I were nothing more than hermit crabs, pulling our bodies blindly along the sand to the silty waters of the Low-Country's Atlantic Ocean.