It’s hard enough to find fairies on purpose even when you know where they are. I’ve always thought fairies are like mushrooms, you trip over them when you’re not thinking about them, but they’re hard to spot when you’re searching for them. I hadn’t brought my key ring, and everything I was wearing was new and had no connections, so I couldn’t use that. But my cane was old, and wooden, and might work. I tried to think about the elm trees and whether I could help. I tried to calm my mind.
I closed my eyes and leaned on my cane. I tried to ignore the pain, and ignore the huge hole where Mor ought to be. The pain is hard to put aside, but I knew it would scare them off like nothing else. I remembered them scattering and bounding away like startled sheep when I cut my hand up behind Camelot that time. The normal pain in my leg is in two parts, a sharp tug and a slow grind. If I stand still and balanced the grind goes down to an ache, and the tug doesn’t come unless I shift my weight, so I tried that and got it down. I tried to think of what would we do if we wanted to call them. I opened my mind. Nothing happened. “Good afternoon?” I said, tentatively, in Welsh. But maybe fairies in England would speak English? Or maybe there aren’t any fairies here. It’s not a landscape with much room for them. I opened my eyes again. The cows had wandered away. It must have been milking time. There was a bush and a little stunted mountain ash and a hazel tree on the school side of the ditch. I put my left hand on the smooth bark of the hazel, not really hoping for anything now.
There was a fairy up in the branches. It was wary. I’ve always noticed how much more fairies are like plants than anything else. With people and animals you have one standard pattern: Two arms, two legs, one head, a person. Or four legs and wool, a sheep. Plants and fairies, though, there are signs that say what they are, but a tree might have any number of branches, growing out anywhere. There’s a kind of pattern to it, but one elm tree won’t look exactly like the next, and might look completely different, because they’ll have grown differently. Fairies tend to be either very beautiful or absolutely hideous. They all have eyes, and lots of them have some recognisable sort of head. Some of them have limbs in a roughly human way, some are more like animals, and others bear no resemblance to anything at all. This was one of that kind. It was long and spindly, its skin like rough bark. If you didn’t see its eyes, which are kind of underneath, you’d take it for some kind of creeper draped with spider’s web. In the same way that oak trees have acorns and hand-shaped leaves and hazels have hazelnuts and little curved leaves, most fairies are gnarly and grey or green or brown and there’s generally something hairy about them somewhere. This one was grey, very gnarly indeed, and well over towards the hideous part of the spectrum.
Fairies don’t go much for names. The ones we knew at home we gave names, and they answered to them or not. They seemed to think they were funny. They don’t name places either. They don’t even call themselves fairies, that was us. They’re not big on nouns at all, come to think, and the way they talk … Anyway, this fairy was completely strange to me, and I to it, and I didn’t have any names or passwords to give it. It was just looking at me, as if it might go bounding away at any moment, or fade back into the tree. Gender’s another iffy thing with fairies, except when it isn’t because they have long trailing hair full of flowers or a penis as big as the rest of their body or something like that. This one didn’t have any indication in that direction, so I think of it as it.
“Friend,” I said, which should be safe.
And then from total stillness it exploded into motion and speech. “Go! Danger! Find!” Fairies don’t exactly talk like other people. It doesn’t matter how much you want them to be Galadriel, they’re never going to make that kind of speech. This one said that and then vanished, all at once, before I could tell it who I was or ask it anything about the elms and if there was anything I could do. It felt as if I’d blinked, but I hadn’t. It’s always like that when they go quickly—gone between one heartbeat and the next, gone as if they’ve never been there.
Danger? Find? I have no idea what it meant. I didn’t see any danger, but I headed back to the school, where the bell was ringing for supper. I was one of the last in the line, but the food isn’t worth eating even when it’s hot. Danger didn’t find me and I didn’t find danger, at least not tonight. I drank my watery cocoa and hoped the fairy was all right. I’m pleased it’s here, even if it isn’t very communicative. It’s like a little piece of home.
THURSDAY 20TH SEPTEMBER 1979