I.
“There are fairies at the bottom of the garden,” Mame said suddenly.
Dad guffawed.
“Yes, Mum,” Mom said absently, peering down at her crossword. “Derek, do you want the last of the toast?”
“Yeah, I’ll take it,” Dad said through a mouthful of crumbs. He glanced up at Mame from the sports section in the newspaper. “She’s off with the fairies today, then, is she? Next thing she’ll be saying is she saw something nasty in the woodshed.” He laughed again, and Mame stared straight ahead, as if she couldn’t hear him.
“Oh, stop it,” Mom said, smiling tolerantly. “She’s never that bad, not yet. Don’t be cruel, love.”
Kristin pushed back her hair, tilted her head and smiled in that utterly condescending manner she had perfected since Year 9. “Do they have wings, Mame?” she asked sweetly. “What kind of fairies are they?”
“They’re the kind that live at the bottom of the garden,” she said tartly, suddenly turning mad, dark eyes in Kristin’s direction. “There’s a unicorn, too, not that the likes of you could get near him.”
Kirsten’s complexion chalked, and she drew back, her smile crumpling.
“Girls, get along with your breakfasts,” Mom said, shooting Kirsten a keen glance. “I’ll drive you if I have to, but I’d rather you got a bus to the orthodontist this morning.”
“I’m finished anyway,” Kirsten said, pushing back from the table and picking up her plate. “Will you get me a note for first period? We have some kind of assembly.”
Mom followed Kirsten down the hall. Dad turned a page in the paper.
“Where?” I whispered.
Mame’s glance darted toward me. “Where,” she said with no inflection, and my throat constricted.
“Where, Mame?” I whispered again. “Where are the fairies?”
Mame’s opaque gaze was a thousand miles away.
“Robyn,” Dad said, pulling himself away from the hockey report, “Now, you know she can’t understand whatever it is you’re going on about. We talked about all this before. Go get your books now, or you’ll be late.”
“Yes, Dad,” I said glumly, and rose from the table. I took a last longing look toward my grandmother, and out the window to the back garden.
“See you, Mame.”
At the door, it was the usual fast forward as Mame’s bus pulled up to the curb and Dad grabbed a last cup of coffee and went out to his real estate office. Mom had a deposition at the courthouse, so she was headed downtown in a hurry, teetering down the front steps in her good crocodile pumps. Kirsten checked her hair one last time in the mirror and sauntered toward the bus stop, hooking her iPod cords down the front of her hoodie. I grabbed my backpack and edged around the man from New Realms as he maneuvered Mame’s wheelchair down the ramp.
“Have a good day, Mr. Lin,” I called. “Bye, Mame.”
As the caretaker gently turned Mame’s wheelchair, she spoke again. “Red shed,” she said clearly, staring at the wall of the house. “There are fairies at the bottom of the garden.”
“Oh, good for you, Mrs. Donovan,” the stooped, gnarled man patted her arm as he expertly kicked the wheelchair lift into action. “I’ve got fairies in the flower pot on my front porch. I wish I had them in my garden.”
I hesitated. Mr. Lin sounded like he was dead serious.
“Robynnn!” Kirsten was shrieking. The bus was coming around the corner.
I’ll look for them, I thought, running down the sidewalk. Later. I’ll look for them later.
“Red shed!” Mame shouted agitatedly. “Red shed!”
“I’ll find them,” I shouted back.
“Hurry!” Kirsten screamed.
Tightening my braces produced, as always, the feeling that a vice had been tightened around my whole head. For the ten thousandth time I wished my mother wasn’t such a fan of the perfect smile. My overbite had been slight, and the space between my two front teeth minimal, but since Kirsten was having work done, my parents had thought to get me “all squared away” as well.
As we walked away from the orthodontist’s office, Kirsten informed me that she was going downtown.
“Fine,” I muttered, blinking as I saw my sister with a shimmering haze around her person. “I’m getting a migraine, so I’m going home.”
“Good,” Kirsten said, unruffled and unfeeling. “I’ll tell Mom I had to walk you. Okay?”
I agreed miserably. In a way, I wished she would walk me home. The sunlight seemed to be stabbing through my eyes into the back of my brain. The sixteen blocks home seemed impossibly long. I staggered onto a bus, and slumped into the seat, cringing at each bump.
When I walked into the house, I thought I heard the printer in Dad’s office.
“Dad? I’m home.” I walked into the room but only found the fax blowing noisily as pages sifted into the hopper. I wandered into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of milk. Finding my migraine medication, I swallowed it with down, stumbled to my room, pulled down the blinds, and collapsed into bed.
II.
What woke me was the light.
It was warm, sleeping in a sun puddle at the end of a long autumn afternoon. I stretched and turned over, luxuriating in the warmth of the sun on my face. The migraine meds had left me a little bemused and fuddled, fuzzy, but in a comfortable way. I stumbled to the window and looked out, rubbing my eyes.
The shimmer around the trees made me squint. Things seemed to be moving, occasionally jumping, shifting. The shed at the bottom of the garden seemed almost a living presence, crouched and watching from its position at the very end of our long, narrow plot of land. The light touched the building oddly.
“Red shed,” I murmured aloud, and blinked. Mame had been on about it just this morning. What had gotten her all wound up?
Fairies. In the bottom of the garden.
Galvanized, I shoved my feet into a pair of moccasin slippers, and headed into the hall. Outside, everything seemed suddenly too bright, so I picked up a pair of Dad’s old sunglasses from the kitchen counter, and slipped them on, stepping out the back door.
As the screen slapped shut behind me, all was breathlessly silent in the garden, as if the wind itself had drawn in a great breath. I waited, oddly unsettled, for the birds to continue cheeping, and the traffic from the road down the hill from us to resume. After a moment, the wind sighed once again in the tops of the trees, and a magpie croaked from the crossbeam of the roof.
I sat down on the stairs and looked around. The morning glories had died back some, but their vivid blue blooms were still weighing down the fence between our garden and the neighbor’s. A warped picnic table with a cracked terra cotta pot graced the other side of the yard, sad proof of one of Mom’s attempts to save Mame’s porch garden. The late rain had left the trees along the edge of the yard shedding their reddened leaves and the wind had scattered twigs all around. In the middle of the yard, a drift of golden brown leaves in the thick green grass seemed to undulate, as if …breathing.
“Weird,” I said, crossing the yard to peer at them. “That’s not the wind, is it?” As I bent toward the leaves, the movement stilled, and I drew back, startled. “Oh, gross, don’t tell me it’s some kind of bugs,” I muttered to myself. I reached out a hesitant hand, daring myself to flip over the leaf and see what lay behind it.
“One… two… three!” My fingers flicked at a piece of bark, and I squeaked. Nausea roiled inside as I fought to keep my feet. It had been tiny and brownish pale, and twisted – probably just a piece of some kind of root, but for a moment… a moment… wild, beady eyes, long, sharp fingers, a bulbous, wrinkled abdomen…
I shivered. The migraine medicine, I decided, wasn’t finished with me. I should go inside.
Ugh. Shouldn’t have gotten up so fast, I thought, rubbing my arms and tottering back toward the house. Should probably see if I can keep down some lunch, see if I can sleep off the rest of this buzz…
My foot had touched the bottom stair, when a movement from the shed caught my eye.
Dad’s knights. Hadn’t they been all in one piece the last time I’d looked?
He’d been so proud of them, putting them together for Kristin’s Year 5 history faire. Finding bits and bobs of old metal, he’d fashioned one a serviceable hauberk and a shield, a broadsword for the other. Now one of the knights was headless, but held only the bottom of the hauberk, while the other retained his head, but his arms ended in rusted stumps.
I peered at them, frowning. It could be that I just didn’t noticed when they’d begun to fall apart, I reasoned. School had been going for the last six weeks. It had been awhile since I’d come out to the yard and just sat.
I trotted up another stair, and had pulled open the door when I heard a screech. Startled, I turned back.
The door of the shed was wide open now. A strange light emanated from the old red building, and the rusted figures of the knights seemed to stand closer now, their truncated limbs stretched out across the door.
As I recoiled, I heard the doorbell ring.
“Robyn?” Mr. Lin’s voice was calling. “Hello? Donovans? Is anyone home?”
I risked another look over my shoulder at the shed, and heard Mame’s shout. “Home! Fairies!”
“Robyn?” Mr. Lin’s voice sounded relieved as I opened the front door. “Thank all Gods. She’s had a difficult morning.”
“Are you bringing her home?” I sputtered. “I-I’m home sick. I can’t take care of her by myself. I can’t understand her. What if she needs the toilet?”
Mr. Lin looked uncomfortable. “Of course, I wouldn’t leave you to cope without anyone. It’s just…” He cleared his throat and ran his finger along the color of his spotless white shirt. “She seemed so… worried.”
I blinked. “Worried?” And Dad’s words echoed in my thoughts, Now, you know she can’t understand whatever it is you’re going on about. We talked about all this before…
I bent down and addressed Mame’s expressionless face. “It’s all right, Mame. I’ll just get my bag and come back with you. If it’s okay,” I add, looking up at Mr. Lin.
“Fine,” he said, relaxing a little. “We’d love to have you.”
“I’ll come back with you,” I continued, “and Mr. Lin will tell me what you want me to know. About the shed. And the fairies. All right?”
Mr. Lin looked down at me with a fathomless expression, his dark eyes hooded and distant. I met his gaze and waited until finally he nodded, a single decisive bob of his head.
“Right, then,” he said, turning Mame’s chair. “Grab your things, then.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lin,” I said.
“Might as well call me Tam,” he said, kicking the wheelchair lift. “Everyone else does.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Photographic Inspiration Courtesy of nikpawlak, more stories from the usual suspects can be found on our Ficktion-Ning site. Cheers, and beware of fairies!