Mummy went off to work at Uncle Enoch’s tailor shop in Bradford. Elsie went to her job at Gunston’s photographers. Uncle Arthur went to the Briggs’, and Aunt Polly bragged about being the first on the street to get her washing on the line, remarking at least a dozen times on the whiteness of her sheets as they flapped in the breeze and how Edna Morris—our busybody neighbor—could stick that in her pipe and smoke it. It was a warm, oppressive day, the air heavy with expectation that stuck to my skin as I walked to Cottingley Bar to catch the tram to school.
The sense of anticipation followed me around all day like a playful puppy, nipping at my heels until I could give it my full attention. I was distracted and forgetful at school, making a muddle of the simplest of comprehensions. Mrs. Hogan sighed with frustration when she corrected my work, saying she didn’t know what on earth had got into me, and did I have a fever coming on?
I was glad when the school bell rang, and I was glad to find the house empty when I returned home, a scribbled note on the table telling me Aunt Polly had popped in to Bingley and would be back at teatime. It was a perfect afternoon for dipping too-hot toes in cool water and for watching the painted lady butterflies fan their wings on the purple buddleia that grew by the riverbank. I didn’t hesitate for a moment.
Dropping my satchel in the scullery, I ran straight out to the garden, skipping across the grass, scrambling down the bank and down to the beck, where I pulled off my stockings and shoes, hitched up my skirt, and walked along the edge of the shallow stream. My skin savored the cool of the water, drawing the clammy heat down through my legs and out through my toes. I dipped my hands beneath the surface, the water slipping like silver ribbons over my fingertips before I pressed my palms to my cheeks, absorbing the refreshing coolness. I repeated this several times before sitting on the bough seat of the willow tree.
Leaning back against the smooth bark, I closed my eyes and listened to the gentle gurgle of the stream, the splash of a fish snatching a fly from the surface of the water, the soft rustle of fern and leaf, disturbed by unseen riverbank creatures. I imagined Daddy sitting beside me, my head on his shoulder, the tickle of his five o’clock shadow on my forehead. He would love it here. I imagined the flowers and plants coming to life, uprooting themselves, joining leaf and petal, like hands, to form a circle, entwining themselves around and around the trunk of an oak tree, like eager children in a Maypole dance.
It wasn’t a sound that disturbed me, more a sensation—the feeling I’d experienced so often at the beck, the suggestion of others around me, the sense of being watched.
I sat up and let my eyes adjust to the light, watching the shadows and shifting shapes among the trees. The beck was alive. The air around me hummed as my attention was caught by a willow leaf spinning around in an eddy at the side of the beck. I followed it as it drifted free of the bank and floated out into the center of the stream, where it continued to twirl and spin before carrying on, not downstream to follow the natural course of the flowing water, but straight across to the other bank, as if guided by something, or someone.
That was when I saw the first flash of emerald, then another of blue, then yellow, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. Not dragonflies. Not butterflies. Something else. Something moving among a cluster of harebells, the delicate white flowers nodding as their petals and leaves were disturbed by the slightest of movements, like a gentle breeze blowing against them and yet there wasn’t the slightest breath of wind at the beck that day. All was perfectly still except for my heart thumping like a piston engine in my chest, my breathing fast and shallow. I pressed my hands against the solid bark of the tree trunk, anchoring myself as I leaned forward, wide-eyed in wonder, afraid to blink in case I lost them in the fraction of a second my eyes were closed.
Fairies.
They appeared to me like a thin veil of mist, translucent, almost—not quite there. But for all their misty peculiarity, they were as clear to me as the minnows in the shallows and the foxgloves on the riverbank and the butterflies fanning their wings. They flitted from flower to flower, as swift as dragonflies, sometimes glowing brightly like a candle flame suddenly catching, sometimes fading like a breath of warm air on glass, so that you would never know they had been there at all. Yet there they were. And there I was, watching them.
I had never observed anything so intently, conscious even amid my amazement and wonder that I had to remember this, had to take in every detail so I would be sure of it later. As I looked, a beautiful ringing filled my ears, a sound unlike anything I’d heard before, a sound I wished I could hear always, because it filled my heart with joy.
Half of me was desperate for Elsie to appear so that she could see them too. Half of me was anxious that nobody—nothing—would come along to disturb them.
I watched for two or three minutes, maybe more. Time was suspended in those magical moments. The stream stilled at my feet. The birds paused mid-song. It was as if all of nature watched with me in respectful silence. And then, as suddenly as they had arrived, they disappeared. The birds resumed their singing, a soft breeze ruffled the foliage of the ferns, the stream trickled along its endless course, taking my astonishment with it.
Giddy with excitement, I hopped down from the branch and made my way slowly, quietly, along the center of the stream, searching among the foliage for any last sign of them. I sat on the riverbank for a while, tucking my knees up to my chest, waiting, watching until the afternoon sun grew too hot and I grew terribly thirsty. Reluctantly, my heart bursting with the greatest secret imaginable, I clambered up the bank and ran through the garden, back to the cool shade of the house where Aunt Polly’s note was still on the table, my school satchel was still on the scullery floor, and everything was exactly the same.
Yet nothing would ever be quite the same again.
NOTES ON A FAIRY TALE
Cottingley, Yorkshire. July 1917.
A wonderful array of color burst from the hedgerows and marched jubilantly across the hilltops that summer, defiantly smothering the lingering shadows of war. When I arrived home from school, I often found Aunt Polly napping in the garden, a bowl of half-shelled peas on her lap, her head tipped back, her mouth wide open in a deep, heat-soaked slumber.