Chapter one, seers, or
men of the second sight,
have very terrifying
encounters with the fairy's
they call Sliema, or the good people.
The Secret Commonwealth by Robert Kirk and
Andrew Lang, 1893.
Four ball side pocket, Asling pushed
the cue forward with a short quick thrust.
The ball dropped into the pocket
with a satisfying clack.
Her playing partner, Denny, motioned
toward a harder shot, a bank shot.
She rolled her eyes.
What, you're in a hurry?
He pointed with the cue.
Right, focus and control,
that's what it's all about.
She sank the two.
He nodded once,
as close as he got to praise.
Ashling circled the table,
paused, and chalked the cue.
Around her the cracks of balls colliding,
low laughter,
even the endless stream of country and
blues from the jukebox kept her
grounded in the real world,
the human world, the safe world.
It wasn't the only world, no matter
how much Ashling wanted it to be.
But it hid the other world,
the ugly one, for brief moments.
Three, corner pocket,
she sighted down the cue.
It was a good shot.
Focus, control, then she felt it,
warm air on her skin.
A fairy, it's too hot breath on her neck,
sniffed her hair.
His pointed chin pressed against her skin.
All the focus in the world didn't make
pointy faces attention tolerable.
She scratched, the only ball
that dropped was the cue ball.
Danny took the ball in hand,
what was that?
Weak-assed.
She forced a smile,
looking at Denny, at the table,
anywhere but
at the hoard coming in the door.
Even when she looked away she heard them,
laughing and squealing,
gnashing teeth and beating wings.
A cacophony she couldn't escape.
They were out in droves now.
Freer somehow as evening fell,
invading her space,
ending any chance of
the peace she'd sought.
Denny didn't stare at her,
didn't ask hard questions.
He just motioned for her to step away
from the table and called out, Gracie,
play something for Ash.
At the jukebox, Grace keyed in
one of the few not country or
blues songs, Limp Bizkit's Break Stuff.
As the oddly comforting lyrics and
that gravelly voice took off,
building to the inevitable
stomach-tightening rage, Ashling smiled.
If I could let go like that, let the years
of aggression spill out onto the Faye.
She slid her hand over
the smooth wood of the cue,
watching Pointy Face gyrate beside Grace.
I'd start with him, right here, right now.
She bit her lip.
Of course, everyone would think
she was utterly mad if she started
swinging her cue at invisible bodies.
Everyone, but the Faye.
Before the song was over,
Denny had cleared the table.
Nice, Ashling walked over
to the wall rack, and
slid the cue back into an empty spot.
Behind her Pointy Face giggled.
Hi and shrill, and
tore out a couple of strands of her hair.
Rack them again?
But Denny's tone said what he didn't,
that he knew the answer before he asked.
He didn't know why, but
he could read the signs.
Pointy Face slid the strands
of her hair over his face.
Ashlynn cleared her throat.
Raincheck?
Sure.
Denny began disassembling his cue.
The regulars never commented on her odd
mood swings or unexplainable habits.
She walked away from the table,
murmuring goodbyes as she went,
consciously not staring at the fairies.
They moved balls out of line, bumped
into people, anything to cause trouble.
But they hadn't stepped in
her path tonight, not yet.
At the table nearest the door,
she paused, I'm out of here.
One of the guys straightened up
from a pretty combination shot,
he rubbed his goatee,
stroking the gray-shot hair.
Cinderella time?
You know how it is,
got to get home before the shoe falls off.
She lifted her foot,
clad in a battered tennis shoe.
No sense tempting any princes.
He snorted and turned back to the table.
A dull-eyed fairy eased across the room,
bone thin with too many joints.
She was vulgar and gorgeous, all at once.
Her eyes were far too large for
her face, giving her a startled look.
Combined with an emaciated body, those
eyes made her seem vulnerable, innocent.
She wasn't, none of them are.
The woman at the table beside Ashling
flicked a long ash into an already
overflowing ashtray.
See you next weekend?
Ashling nodded too tense to answer.
In a blurringly quick move Doe Eyes
flicked a thing blue tongue
out at a cloven hoofed fairy.
The fairy stepped back, but
a trail of blood already dripped
down his hollowed cheeks.
Doe Eyes giggled.
Ashling bit her lip hard, and lifted
a hand in a last half wave to Denny.
Focus, she fought to keep her steps even,
calm,
everything she wasn't feeling inside.
She stepped outside,
lips firmly shut against dangerous words.
She wanted to speak, to tell the Faye
to leave so she didn't have to.
But she couldn't, ever.
If she did, they'd know her secret.
They'd know she could see them.
The only way to survive
was to keep that secret.
Grams taught her that rule before
she could even write her name.
Keep your head down and your mouth closed.
It felt wrong to have to hide but
if she even hinted at such
a rebellious idea,
Grams would have her in lockdown.
Homeschooled, no pool halls,
no parties, no freedom, no Seth.
She'd spent enough time in that
situation during middle school.
Never again.
So, rage in check,
Ashling headed downtown toward
the relative safety of iron bars and
steel doors.
Whether in its base form or
altered into the purer form of steel,
iron was poisonous to Faye, and
that's gloriously comforting to her.
Despite the Fairies that walked
her streets, Huntsdale was home.
She'd visited Pittsburgh,
walked around DC, explored Atlanta.
They were nice enough, but
they were too thriving, too alive,
too filled with parks and trees.
Huntsdale wasn't thriving,
it hadn't been for years.
That meant the Faye didn't
thrive here either.
Revelry rang from most of the alcoves and
allies she passed.
But it wasn't ever as bad as the thronging
choke of Fairies that converted
on the Mall in DC, or
at the Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh.
She tried to comfort herself
with that thought as she walked.
There were less Faye here,
less people too.
Less is good.
The streets weren't empty, people
went about their business, shopping,
walking, laughing.
It was easier for them.
They didn't see the blue Fairy who had
cornered several winged Faye behind
a dirty window.
They never saw the Fairies
with lion's manes racing
across power lines
tumbling over one another,
landing on a towering woman with
angled teeth, to be so blind.
It was a wish Ashling had held
in secret her whole life.
But wishing didn't change what was.
And even if she could
stop seeing the Faye,
a person can't unknow the truth.
She tucked her hands in her pockets and
kept walking,
past the mother with her
obviously exhausted children.
Past shop windows with
frost creeping over them.
Past the frozen gray sludge
all along the street.
She shivered.
The seemingly endless
winter had already begun.
She'd passed the corner of Harper and
Third, almost there.
When they stepped out of an alley.
The same two Fairies who'd followed her
almost every day, the past two weeks.
The girl had long white hair,
streaming out like spirals of smoke.
Her lips were blue,
not lipstick blue, but corpse blue.
She wore a faded brown leather
skirt stitched with thick cords.
Beside her was a huge white wolf that
she'd ultimately lean on, or ride.
When the other Fairy touched her,
steam rose from her skin.
She bared her teeth at him,
shoved him, slapped him.
He did nothing but smile.
And he was devastating when he did.
He glowed faintly all the time,
as if hot coals burned inside him.
His collar-length hair shimmered like
strands of copper, that would slice her
skin if Ashling were to slide her
fingers through it, not that she would.
Even if he were truly human,
he wouldn't be her type.
Tan and too beautiful to touch,
walking with a swagger that said he
knew exactly how attractive he was.
He moved as if her were
in charge of everyone and
everything, seeming taller for it.
But he wasn't really that tall.
Not at as tall as the bone
girls by the river, or
the strange tree bark men
that roamed the city.
He was almost average in size,
only a head taller than she was.
Whenever he came near, she could smell
wildflowers, could hear the rustle of
willow branches as if she were sitting by
a pond on one of those rare summer days.
A taste of midsummer in
the start of the frigid fall.
And she wanted to keep that taste,
bask in it,
roll in it until the warmth
soaked into her very skin.
It terrified her,
the almost irresistible urge to get
closer to him,
to get closer to any of the Faye.
He terrified her.
