Into the Land of the Elves: A Rainy Day Visitor

The Diary of Miss Aidyn Hall, elf friend

August 6

11:21 AM

A Rainy Day Visitor

It’s raining cats and dogs and there’s no sign that it will let up anytime soon. Usually I can get most of my work done on days like this, when it’s too wet to visit the Greenwood and there’s nothing to do but work, but it’s difficult to get anything done when you have no motivation.  I sit down to write, and end up doing more erasing, crossing out, and backspacing than actual writing. Lately it has been taking me entire hours just to finish up a few paragraphs at a time. Sometimes I sit down to write, pick up the pen, and forty-five minutes later the paper will still be blank. The stories just have no meaning to me anymore—they come out of my head, and when they do I am obligated to at least attempt to write them down, but the meaning behind them has disappeared. The only story that I have a genuine enthusiasm for writing is the one that will never be published. But perhaps a little journaling on yesterday’s elven adventures will give me at least a bit of the motivation that I need.

When I met Apple Blossom at the magnolia archway, she was all smiles about inviting me out on a picnic with her and her friends. “Can you bring some more grapes, Aidyn?” she asked, bouncing around on her feet. “Can you bring the same tasty ones that you brought yesterday? Oh, can you, please?”

“Of course I can, dear,” I said, patting her on the head. “In fact, I’ll bring another whole container of them. If you’ll let me go down to the store for a moment, I’ll go get some more right now.”

            “I’ll wait right here,” she said, and took a seat under the Grand Elder Guardian’s massive web. I headed home to grab my purse and car keys, thinking, How amazing is this? How many other people in that supermarket are going to be there to buy grapes for a picnic full of elf girls?

            There’s somebody at the front door, and apparently they haven’t heard of knocking or ringing the bell. It’s probably a friend of mine wondering where I’ve been, or else my mother coming over to check up on me. I have to go and answer that.

11:52 AM

            Oh my god.

            It was Apple Blossom! Apple Blossom was at my door!!!

            There she was, standing there with her hands clasped behind her back, drenched from head to toe. My heart beat so wildly that I had to clap my hand over my chest to calm it down. What was she doing here? How did she know where to find me? Did anybody else know that she was here? My god, had anybody seen her? I managed to choke out, “A…Apple Blossom?” I was sure that my worry was as plain as the nose on my face, but she was wearing her signature smile and did not seem even remotely swayed.

            “Hello, Aidyn!”

            Without really thinking, I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the house. She yelped, pulled back a little, and cried “Aidyn, what are you doing?” I slammed the door abruptly and peered out the window to see if any neighbors were around. There was no one out there. Good. As far as I knew, she had not been spotted. I waited for my heart to slow down, and then I turned my attention to Apple Blossom; “What in the whole wide world are you doing here?!”

            She gasped, taken aback by how I had raised my voice at her. “I…I only came to visit you, Aidyn. I just…I wanted to see where you go when it rains.”

            I exploded. “Are you completely out of your mind, Apple Blossom? Do you know how dangerous it was for you to come here?  This is the friggin’ human world! Did you see those other houses lined up alongside mine? Did you? Well, there are humans in each and every one of those houses, and who knows what they would have done if they saw you?!” Those haunting images from the picture books came back to me: grown men who beat little Jadeite children, humans attacking Jadeites with no discernible provocation, a boy throwing stones at a poor Jadeite woman just trying to go about her day. How was I to know that one of my neighbors, as nice and out of the way as they normally were, wouldn’t have turned out to be one of those monsters if they managed to get hold of Apple Blossom? My blood boiled, fear held on tightly to my heart, and to keep myself from bursting into tears and hysteria I converted the fear to anger. “Apple Blossom, this is no doubt the stupidest, most asinine thing that I have ever seen you do!” I hollered. “I mean, you’ve done some pretty dumb things before, but…”

            Now she was sobbing. Her face began to fall the moment I started going off on her, and by now she had completely erupted. She wrapped her arms around herself and trembled all over like an earthquake was taking place inside of her. Her tears fell like the rain outside as her sobs turned into blaring wails, and I realized that I was the only monster here.

            “Apple Blossom…?” I took a step toward her. She stepped back and turned away from me. “Apple Blossom, I’m sorry! I shouldn’t have…”

            She darted away like a frightened fox, scrambled into the darkness of a closet that I had left open, and crawled into a corner to hide away. I left her alone.

1:36 PM

            When I checked on Apple Blossom, she was still in the closet, sitting against the wall with her legs drawn up to her chest. She had finished crying, and her face was red and blotchy like a withered rose. I stepped over the old things lying on the floor and sat down beside her. “Hey.”

            She turned to look at me and said, “I’m sorry I made you mad, Aidyn.”

            My heart sank. “Oh, sweetie…” I put my arm around her. “You didn’t make me mad. You made me scared, and I shouldn’t have handled it the way I did.” I patted her shoulder and she rested her head against me.

            “I’m sorry, Aidyn.”

            “I’m sorry too.”

            I made lunch for both of us: a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of milk for myself, a plateful of black grapes and a glass of milk for Apple Blossom. Though she gobbled up her grapes greedily, she kept glancing curiously at my sandwich, until she finally asked, “What kind of meat is that?”

            “It’s pig,” I told her. “Haven’t you had pig before?”

            “Not thin like that,” she said. “Can I try some of it?”

            I broke off a small fragment of my sandwich and placed it on her plate. She studied it for a moment, took a bite, and made a face as she swallowed. “I don’t like it!”

            But she liked her milk. After chugging it down, she held the glass out to me and asked, “Can I have some more milk, please? And can you tell me what animal it’s from?”

            “It’s cow milk,” I said, “and I’ll give you some more if you answer a few questions for me.”

            “Okay.” She folded her hands and sat back in her chair.

            “First of all,” I began, “how did you know where to find my house? How did you know I was here?”

            “It’s because of your tag,” she stated. Oh yeah! I’d stopped bringing my tag with me on visits to the Greenwood a long time ago. It rested at the bottom of a drawer on my nightstand, and I had forgotten that it even served a purpose at all. “Oh, that’s right,” I said. “So, you went straight to my house? You didn’t run into any other humans?”

            She nodded. “I didn’t see any humans,” she clarified, and I sighed with relief. “Well,” I went on, “does anybody know that you’re here? Do your mother and father know?”

            She looked at me for a good, long while like she had just been caught stealing from the cookie jar. I knew the answer then. Still, I said firmly, “Be honest with me, Apple Blossom.”

            “Well…” Her eyes shifted from my face to the ceiling. “If they knew that I was coming here, I wouldn’t have been able to get here.”

            I sighed and got up to pour her another glass of milk. When I set it down in front of her, she greedily snatched it up and began to wolf it down, spilling a little down the front of her tunic. “Slow down, please,” I told her. “Remember your table manners.” She nodded and obeyed. I folded my hands on the table and looked over at her like a stern but fair school principal making ready to lecture a student at her desk. “Apple Blossom,” I said, “you should not have come here. The fact that you had to hide it at all is a sure sign that you should not have come here. Not only was it very dangerous, but it was very dishonest. If your parents or anybody at the palace finds out that you’re here, I could end up in serious trouble! You know that they still don’t trust me enough for you to be able cover for me.”

            “But they never have to find out,” said Apple Blossom. “I’ll tell them that I was with the meadow fairies all day—they have good, strong stick houses that keep out the rain, and I very often visit with them when it rains anyway.”

            I raised a brow. “So you’re going to lie?”

            “Well…” She shifted uneasily in her seat.

            “Do you see what I mean, Apple Blossom? You shouldn’t have come here! First you had to cover it up, and now you have to lie—and technically, covering it up is already a kind of lie! Your coming here spawned a web of dishonesty!” I pressed my fingers to my brow and sighed in exasperation. “And now I’m caught right in the middle!”

            Apple Blossom was about to cry again. “I’m…I’m sorry, Aidyn.”

            “I know, dear. I know.” I sighed again. “But I think it’s best if we get you home as soon as possible. You won’t have to cover for me, because I’ll be coming with you.”

            “Mother will be angry,” Apple Blossom said nervously.

            “She’ll be even angrier if you lie,” I told her.

            “Can’t we wait until the rain lets up just a little?” she asked. “Mother never expects me back until mid-afternoon.”

            “I don’t think we should wait that long,” I said, “but I don’t want you to get soaked again. You can stay here for just a little while longer, and then we’re getting you back home.”

            I led her to the back screen door to see my garden. Even in the grey day, my flowers managed to stand out as bright and colorful as ever, and Apple Blossom was absolutely delighted by them. “Oh, Aidyn,” she cried, “how lovely your garden is! I never could have guessed that humans could grow such beautiful flowers! They’re so big and so bright! Oh, I wish it wasn’t raining, so I could go out there with them and get to know them. Do butterflies and flower fairies ever visit your garden? If I was a butterfly or a flower fairy, I’d love to visit a garden as wonderful as this!”

            We played indoor hide and seek for a while, and her short stature and small build gave her a very distinct advantage. I tried to show her a cartoon on TV, but after only a few minutes she decided that she was not interested. “What’s so fun about sitting and watching pictures move on a box?” she asked.

            “You’d be surprised at just how many humans spend entire days doing that,” I told her.

            After she got bored with the TV, I gave her some blank sketchpad pages and colored pencils to draw with. “These are very strange drawing tools, Aidyn,” she told me. “Are they meant to be painting pencils? Does paint come out of them when you…oh! This bright blue one is so vivid! It looks just like a line of sky on the paper! I’m going to see what the red one looks like…oh, it’s as bright as a flame! I really like these, Aidyn!”

            While she was drawing, I sat at my desk mulling over my writing. Suddenly, she yelped and dropped the pencil she had been holding. Immediately, I was at her side. “What happened?” I asked, thinking that perhaps a bug had gotten into the house and bitten her. But her frightened eyes were fixed upon the window, and I turned to look. One of my neighbors was outside. He was only wiping the rain and mud off of his car and he wasn’t even looking in our direction, but the sight of another human had Apple Blossom transfixed with fear. “It’s all right, dear,” I said, laying my hand on her shoulder. “He won’t bother with us. He’s got his own business to attend to." 

             But my reassurance fell on deaf ears. Forgetting about the drawing materials, Apple Blossom scampered away and crawled under my desk to hide. She’s still curled up under there right now, though she’s shaking just a little less than she had been before. I think now might be a good time to take her home. 

Into the Land of the Elves: Grapes and Cranberry Greens

The Diary of Miss Aidyn Hall, elf friend

August 4

6:10 PM

Grapes and Cranberry Greens

“What are those fruits, Aidyn?” Apple Blossom asked when I held a container of grapes out to her. “They look just like onyx stones!”

“They’re called grapes,” I told her. “You’ve never had one before?”

            She shook her head. “Do they taste good?” she asked. “Can I taste one?”

            “They’re delicious,” I said. “They’re sweet like candy. And of course you can taste one, that’s why I brought them here.” I plucked a big grape from the bunch and handed it to Apple Blossom. She studied it for a few moments before popping it into her mouth—“Mmmm!” Her eyes lit up, and though she chewed politely she couldn’t stop a bit of juice from dribbling down her lip. When she finished, she held out her hand and asked, “Can I have another one, please?”

            I pulled a whole cluster of grapes from the bushel and placed them in her waiting hand. We ate as we made our way to the bridge, which was free of the beetle-like soldiers for the third day in a row. There would be no work or research today, as with yesterday. I had spent the day catching butterflies with Apple Blossom, Wildflower, and Holly Berry. The Jadeites have different names for butterflies than we do, and as enchanted as the girls seemed to be with our run-of-the-mill species names, I found the Jadeite terms to be vastly superior. A tiger swallowtail, for instance, is known as a “glorious sunbeam.” A mourning cloak is a “garnetwing,” and a painted lady is an “orange jewel.” The names they used made the butterflies sound as beautiful as they really were. After the butterfly hunting, we sat down to fresh baked fruit turnovers courtesy of the queen—not a servant or a cook, but the queen herself. We got two each, and I was pleased that she had gone out of her way to bake some for me. I went home that evening thinking, This is how it ought to be every day. No unnecessary work, no looking for ‘connections,’ just us enjoying our friendship for what it is.

            “Can I give some of the grapes to my friends?” Apple Blossom asked. “And can I take some home to Mother and Father?”

            “Sure you can,” I said. “I’ll even bring you some more the next time I come here.”

            It was a good day. The sun was shining, and it was the pleasant sort of warm that August brings after all of July’s sticky heat and humidity. The Bell’s Rush sang its happy tinkling bell song, mixed in with birdsong, the buzzing of cicadas, and the occasional croaking of early frogs. Sweet black grapes tasted even sweeter when you ate them with a friend on a day like today. “Let’s go pick cranberry greens with Raindrop,” Apple Blossom suggested. It didn’t sound like the most exciting thing to do, but I agreed to it because I wanted to see how Jadeites went about picking cranberry greens and what they used them for. Besides, cranberries grow in bogs, and there were plenty of interesting things to be found in bogs: bog stones, flowered reeds, frogs of all kinds, and more besides.

            Raindrop was helping her mother can the last of the season’s blueberries when we stopped by, but her mother was willing to let her go with us. She shot an icy look at me and told Raindrop, “Be careful.” Before I could respond, Apple Blossom chimed in with, “Of course we’ll be careful! We’re only picking greens. Oh, and would you and Raindrop care for some grapes? They’re a delightfully sweet fruit that Aidyn brought in from the human world!” She had emphasized the word “human” in order to make them sound interesting and exotic, but Raindrop and her mother looked uneasy, even appalled. “You shouldn’t be eating any human food, Apple Blossom,” Raindrop’s mother said. “They put strange things in their food. It may not be safe.”

            “There’s nothing strange in these grapes!” I assured her. “They’re only fruits, like your blueberries. Apple Blossom’s eaten about twelve of them now and she’s all right.” Apple Blossom nodded to affirm me. I held the container of grapes out to them. “Go on, try one.”

            Raindrop looked up at her mother, who carefully plucked a grape from the bushel and inspected it, before taking an experimental bite. “It’s very sweet,” she determined. “It’s so much sweeter than any fruit I’ve ever tasted.” She plucked another and handed it to Raindrop, who popped it into her mouth without a second thought. Her eyes sparkled with delight at the taste, and she quickly pulled off a second grape and was reaching for a third before I handed her a cluster.

            “Where do you get such sweet fruit?” Raindrop asked as the three of us headed down the road together.

            “From a store,” I told her. “The grapes are grown on far-away farms called vineyards, and sent to stores. We buy them from the stores. They’re so sweet because they’re grown that way—the farmer makes sure the grapes turn out as big and sweet as they possibly can.”

            “We grow things too,” said Raindrop, “but we don’t grow things like these. We grow berries and apples and greens and things like that.”

            “What do you pick cranberry greens for?” I asked. “Do you eat them?” I remembered watching them eat flowers at Apple Blossom’s party—they had looked very confused when I was forced to turn them down.

            “No,” said Apple Blossom, “we like to make things out of them.”

            I decided I wanted to be surprised. I didn’t ask anymore questions. We reached the bog, and Apple Blossom and Raindrop threw off their shoes and splashed into the tea-colored water. I set the container of grapes down and began to explore. I peered through reeds looking for frogs (unfortunately, there were none). I walked along the bank looking for bog stones. Apple Blossom waded up to me and tugged on my shirt. “Come on, Aidyn! Don’t you want to help us?”

            She didn’t have to ask me twice! I threw my shoes down on the bank, rolled up my jeans, and splashed on in—and yelped when I felt my feet sink into the mud. Immediately, the girls were at my side. “What’s wrong, Aidyn?” “Are you okay? Did something bite you?” “I’m fine, girls,” I assured them. “I didn’t expect the mud to be so deep. I’ve never gone wading in a bog before.” Though I had them rolled up, my jeans still sported a sopping layer of mud. Too bad I hadn’t thought to wear shorts like the girls had. Apple Blossom took me by the hand and helped me through the mud. The water was so dark and murky that my feet disappeared at the end of my legs. “How do you girls find anything here, much less some little greens?” I asked.

            “Look here!” Raindrop cried, beckoning me over to where she knelt down. I let go of Apple Blossom’s hand (“It’s okay, I can walk,” I assured her) and waded over to her. A little cluster of tiny green leaves stuck up from the water, adding a pleasant brightness to the murk. She grabbed the leaves and yanked out a mud-caked stalk of greens and tiny, unripe cranberries. Apple Blossom waded over to us, and the picking began. We waded, scouted, knelt, and yanked. We fell on our hands and knees into the mud and came up laughing and tossing our hair. We made several trips to the bank with handfuls of greens. Flies and dragonflies made music around us, and every so often a colorful butterfly would land on a reed and flex its wings before alighting.

            The water was cleaner along the bank, and that’s where we washed our greens and our hands. Now that we had a decent pile (that now included water lilies), I asked, “So, what are we going to do with them?”

            “Well, first we’ll color them,” said Apple Blossom, “and then we’ll make crowns, bracelets, and chains out of them.”

            I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, color them?”

            Apple Blossom took a stalk and passed it between her fingers once, twice, three times…and the next thing I knew, the stalk was no longer green, but had turned a striking deep blue! “Oh my goodness!” I exclaimed with a gasp. “How in the world did you do that?”

            She answered by untucking from her collar the little jade stone that she wore around her neck. I wished more than ever that I could learn to work the jade essences and do pretty things like that. But I could do nothing but sit and watch as Apple Blossom and Raindrop colored the rest of the stalks blue, red, orange, yellow, gold, and pink. It was an astounding thing to see real magic in action right before my eyes, and I wondered what other kinds of magical powers were granted by the jade essences.

            After the stalks were colored, Apple Blossom sat down with me and guided me on how to weave them. She was simple and patient with her instructions as she gently guided my fingers along; “First, you move these leaves out of the way…you just flick them aside with your fingers, like so. Now, just tie these ends together. That’s it, Aidyn, just tie them right there! Now you weave them, like this…” It wasn’t long before I realized that it was essentially the same as making a daisy chain, which I had done on many boring summer afternoons. “I think I get it now, Apple Blossom,” I told her as I weaved the two gold stalks together. “Thank you. I can work from here.”

            Apple Blossom nodded. “Okay, but be sure to come to me if you need any help."
              “Will do,” I said with a smile. She scampered off, and I continued my work. I decided that any necklace I happened to make out of those lovely golden stalks would be a gift for Apple Blossom. I’d weave in the stalks of crimson red and add some of those tiny green cranberries as “jewels.” She would be delighted, as she had been with the crown I had made her for her birthday, which seemed like such a while back. Beside me, Apple Blossom supervised Raindrop’s construction with the same kind patience that she had shown me. It never stops amazing me just how human that she really is, even as the princess of a tribe of elven creatures so far removed from humanity. 

Into the Land of the Elves: An Answer We Can't Read

The Diary of Miss Aidyn Hall, elf friend

August 2

7:30 PM

An Answer We Can’t Read

There’s no reason to call myself an author anymore. My only claims to such a title are some unremarkable story serials in a magazine, and two novels that outgrew their meager popularity. Except for my diary and my notes about the Jadeites, I’ve become unmotivated to write, only forcing myself to for the sake of keeping the house and keeping out of a Starbucks apron. My human life in general is beginning to pass me by like an old interest that I am outgrowing. I haven’t talked to any of my friends since the jade thief incident, except for the occasional phone call to let them know I’m alive. I haven’t seen or talked with my family since the Fourth of July. The only real human contact I’ve had for the past few weeks has been with my editors and publication team, and I try to keep those conversations as short and quick as possible. Humans, the human experience, and human folly are beginning to bore me when they are not outright infuriating me. I find much better company in the Jadeites, and they are so much more interesting to talk to.

            Crystalline’s birthday party yesterday gave us a break from our research. This morning, Apple Blossom surprised me with a slice of honey cake from the party. We sat on the edge of the Bell’s Rush and ate while Apple Blossom chattered about the party. As I listened to her cheerful account (which she periodically interjected with, “I do wish you could have come, Aidyn”), I noticed that the soldiers were not waiting for us on the other side of the bridge. I wanted to ask, but Apple Blossom was so wrapped up in her story of dancing under arches of peach blossoms and butter cookies with blue and yellow icing that there didn’t seem to be a good time to butt in. Finally, she paused, and I asked, “Where are the soldiers today?”

            “Mother called them off,” Apple Blossom said with a shrug. She took another bite of her own slice of cake.

            Finally! Finally, the queen understood that I was not a threat and that I didn’t need soldiers to keep me in line. There would be no more green beetles clunking around behind us and frightening Wildflower. I was trusted, at least for now, by the queen of the Greenwood, and finally earning this trust made me feel more than ever that my decision had been the right one. It gave me even more of an obligation to protect the Jadeites.

            We finished up our cake and licked the honey and frosting from our fingers. “Thanks again for the cake, Apple Blossom,” I said, feeling as mellow as a fresh glass of pink lemonade. “It was so sweet of you to save me a slice. Now, what sort of work do you have for me today?”

            “No work,” said Apple Blossom. “I’m calling off your work the way that Mother called off the soldiers. You’re free.”

            “Are you sure?” I asked. “I haven’t been working for you for very long.”

            “I’m sure,” she replied. “Let’s go.”

            As we headed into the Greenwood, I thought again about the Jadeites’ inexplicable fluency in the English language. We had gotten sidetracked from the topic I had originally intended to be our main one, but I never really stopped thinking about it. In order to be so fluent in our language, the Jadeites had to have some sort of extended contact with us in the past, and there had to be a reason. I remember how fluent Apple Blossom and Wildflower had been in the language of the mermaids of the Bell’s Rush, who the Jadeites have a very cordial alignment with. Could the Jadeites and humans have had a similar alignment which was broken somehow? And if there are any Jadeites in other countries, do they speak the native languages of those countries?

            “Apple Blossom,” I said, “I think we should be getting back to our language studies.”

            Apple Blossom gave me a mischievous smile. “Now that the soldiers are gone,” she said, “I can get you into the royal archives!”

            “I’d rather not,” I said quickly, as tempting as it sounded. “I have some things that I need to return anyway.

            We stopped for Wildflower on our way to the Grand Greenwood Library. Her mother greeted us at the door, and my heart skipped a beat when she actually smiled at me and said, “Oh, hello, Aidyn.” First the departure of the soldiers, and now this! At the mention of my name, Wildflower appeared at the door, holding her treasured diary and smiling like she had been waiting all morning for me to show up. The three of us set off together.

            Our first foray into the Jadeite/tree elf language hadn’t really gotten us anywhere. We spent hours flipping through childish alphabet books and tedious dictionaries to find nothing particularly noteworthy. The tree elf language was made up of whispery “shh” and “fff” sounds that reminded me of leaves rustling against eachother in the wind. Apple Blossom could speak it as fluently as she could speak English, and she taught me that “shwehshweh” means “wind” and “fiftha” means “leaf” and “shekru” means “wish” (which explained the “shekrumseh”). The Jadeites did not have their own language. They spoke either tree elf or what they called “common.” I realized now that we hadn’t found anything because we had spent too much time looking up the tree elf language, when we should have been looking for information on the common language and how it came to be.

            The librarian at the Grand Greenwood Library was still cold to me, even when I said my cheerful hello to her and set every one of the books I had signed out on the desk. She glowered at me without saying a word, but she had a smile ready for the princess and Wildflower. Not everybody was ready to open up to me. We found a table, and Wildflower dutifully assisted us in laying out our things. She was rewarded with a flower print ballpoint pen I had lying around in my bag. I set my elbows on the table and clasped my hands under my chin. “Okay,” I said. “Before we start, I have a question. Have the both of you been speaking the common language all of your lives?”

            “Yes,” said Apple Blossom. “When I was little, Mother and Father spoke both common and tree elf to me, so I grew up knowing both.” Wildflower nodded as if to affirm. “I thought everybody was like that,” she said quizzically.

            “Is everybody like that?” I asked her. “Do you know any Jadeites who don’t speak common?” Wildflower shook her head. “Don’t you think it’s strange,” I went on, “that I, a human, can speak the same language as every Jadeite you know?”

            Wildflower shrugged. “I never thought about it. Do you think it’s strange?”

            “I do think it’s strange,” I told her, “and I want to find out why it’s the case. Now, do either of you know anybody—besides me, of course—who can speak common and is not a Jadeite?”

            “Yes,” said Apple Blossom. “I don’t think it would be called the ‘common language’ if we were the only ones to speak it.”

            “That’s a point,” I said. “Well, in the human world, what you call the ‘common language’ is called the ‘English language.’ Not every human speaks it, but most of the ones that do have grown up speaking it and have done so for decades and decades.”

            Apple Blossom interrupted: “Only decades? My tutor says that Jadeites have spoken the common language for as long as they have been around.”

            Apple Blossom had a tutor! Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I knew that she couldn’t have gone to school the way that human children do, and she was way too smart to be completely uneducated. But somehow it had never occurred to me that she had a teacher. What I wouldn’t give for an opportunity to talk to this teacher, but I was sure that he or she wouldn’t be too willing to give any information to a human. Still, it was something to consider. “Well,” I went on, “did your tutor ever tell you where it originated?” Apple Blossom shook her head. “That’s what I would like to find out,” I said, “because I have a strong feeling that it has something to do with humans.”

            “Do you really think so?” Apple Blossom asked, her eyes wide. 

            I nodded. “It’s very possible.”

            Apple Blossom practically leapt off of her chair. “I’ll ask the librarian where the common language books are,” she said. She started to run to the front desk, but then caught herself. Wildflower padded over to me and asked, “What do I get to do?”

            “For now, we both get to wait,” I told her.

            “I don’t like waiting,” Wildflower said with a sigh. But she climbed into her seat, folded her hands, and waited quietly until Apple Blossom speedwalked back and fluttered around our table like a happy little butterfly. “I know where all of the common language books are!” she chirped. “Follow me!” We got up and followed her deep into the maze of books. Someday, when I have the time, I will come here just to immerse myself in all that such an enormous collection of books has to offer. I’ll let Apple Blossom read me the stories and fables that her mother and father read to her. 

            We reached a shelf full of uninteresting looking texts bound in brown, grey, and tan. Apple Blossom began plucking books off of the shelf and handing them to me and Wildflower. The books were dull, mostly thick, and had nothing-special covers. They seemed awfully tedious, and I wondered if Apple Blossom would even be able to read them. Thankfully, we only collected six of them before Apple Blossom said, “Let’s go,” and led us back to the table. They had schoolbook-like titles such as “Everything to Know about Speaking Common,” “The Mastering of the Common Language,” and “The Common Alphabet, A to Z (with A and Z written in English).” It was all pretty drab, and I wasn’t sure why we needed such books. But then we came across the biggest and thickest of the six; if the others were like schoolbooks, then this was like a small college textbook. Apple Blossom eloquently read the title off to me: “The Common Language: its Fundamentals, Principles, and Background.”

            I slammed my hand down on the thick black book. “Bingo!”

            Apple Blossom and Wildflower looked at me curiously. “What does that mean?” asked Wildflower.

            “It means I’ve found what we need,” I told her. “We’re going to start with this book.” I opened it up and passed it to Apple Blossom. “Find the table of contents, please.”

            Apple Blossom found them and scanned them with her eyes, passing her finger over each bulletpoint. Suddenly, her eyes widened and she began to rapidly turn the pages. “Hey!” I exclaimed. “What’s up? What did you find?” She didn’t answer me until she found the page she was looking for and flipped it open. “Here we are!” she cried. “Chapter Two: Origins and Early Use.”

            “That’s only on chapter two?” I blurted out a bit too loudly, and quickly clapped my hand over my mouth. “I thought we would have to really dig for it,” I said more quietly. “Well, go on and start reading.” I armed myself with my notepad.

            But Apple Blossom sighed and shook her head. “I’m not sure if I can read this,” she lamented. “There are too many big words.”

            “You have to try,” I said. “Please just sound them out.”

            “I can’t,” she insisted. “There are too many syllables. We’ll be here all day and night if I try to read these big words! Besides, I have no idea what they mean. This is a grown-up book.”

            I had to force myself not to bury my face in my palms and scream. We had found what we needed, it hadn’t even taken as long as I expected it to, and she was backing down because the words were too big? She couldn’t even attempt to sound them out? Just how advanced could these words be? I hoped she wasn’t only using the size of the words as an excuse to blow off the project, but at the same time I was sure that was Apple Blossom’s way.

            We had our answer, and we couldn’t even read it. Suddenly, I began to wonder why it even mattered. Why did we even need to know how humans and Jadeites are connected? It wouldn’t make any difference if we did know; I wasn’t publishing the book, and my friendship with Apple Blossom would certainly not be affected. My arrival used to mean games and Greenwood exploration and other fun things, but now it signaled long days spent in a stuffy old library, working hard reading and searching for tedious books, taking notes…it had been a while since Apple Blossom and I had played together without any work attached to it.

            “Research is cancelled for tomorrow,” I said impulsively.

            “What?” Apple Blossom’s eyes were wide and her lips formed an O.

            “I said there will be no research tomorrow,” I clarified. “In fact, you’re dismissed for today.”

            “Is this because I can’t read that big book?” Apple Blossom asked, and her face fell. “I’m sorry, Aidyn! I’ll find somebody who can read it, I promise!”

            “Don’t worry about it, dear,” I said, patting her on the shoulder. “It’s not about the book. I’m just so sick of research! I’m sick of work! I realized that this is an answer that we just don’t need to find! Maybe we weren’t meant to know.”

            “I think we were meant to know,” said Apple Blossom. “Me too,” Wildflower chimed in.

            “Well, it wouldn’t change anything if we did know,” I insisted, “and I miss the days when I would come here and we would just play together without all of this extra work attached to it. I miss the days when you were only my friends, and not my research grunts. So, all I want for us to do now is get out of this old library and go for a swim in the Bell’s Rush again. Do you think we can do that?”   

            Apple Blossom smiled at me. “Yes,” she said, “I think we can."

               We gathered our things, put the books away, and left the Grand Greenwood Library. But I noticed as we were heading out that Apple Blossom was signing out that big, black book. There was just no suppressing her insatiable curiosity.

Into the Land of the Elves: My New Decision

The Diary of Miss Aidyn Hall: author, mentor, researcher

July 30

6:22 PM

My New Decision

            On the desk in front of me sit three small stacks of pictures: tree elves, Jadeites, and humans. The pictures of tree elves and Jadeites are photocopied from books that I took home with me; you don’t need a card to check out books at the Grand Greenwood Library, but you do need to have them signed out at the front desk. The librarian refused to sign the books out to me. She just sat there gawking as if I was an unusual animal (and to her, I suppose I was) and clasped the books protectively as if I might have been thinking about stealing or burning them. Apple Blossom had to sign them out for me.

            Tree elves and Jadeites have the same skin tones from milk-white to rosy pink, small builds with petite frames, pointed ears (though the tree elves’ ears are slightly larger and more pointed), and clean, unblemished faces. The Jadeites’ hair ranges in shades from golden blonde to greenish blue, and the tree elves sport the more conventional colors of blonde, brown, and auburn red. I had learned that prolonged access and exposure to the jade essences caused the change in hair color, as well as a slightly greenish tinge on the skin of Jadeites that did not exist in the tree elves. The tree elves’ eyes are nearly universally blue, and the Jadeites’ eyes are nearly universally green. The eyes of a Jadeite are large and round like perfectly cut gems, while the eyes of a tree elf are smaller and more teardrop or almond shaped.

            In comparison to humans, both Jadeites and tree elves have two arms, two legs, five fingers and toes, heads of hair, and distinctly human facial features. Jadeites and tree elves are short, with willowy builds—if you can compare the build of a human to a tree trunk, then you can compare the build of a Jadeite or a tree elf to a flower stalk. The rounded five fingers of a Jadeite compare more to a human’s than the gangly, pencil-shaped digits of a tree elf. The arms and legs of a tree elf are slightly longer than those of a Jadeite, their feet are pointy and oddly diamond-shaped, and their hair is stringy and unkempt in comparison to the more well-kept hairstyles of Jadeites. The Jadeites and tree elves bear the same heart-shaped faces, though the tree elves’ chins are pointed slightly.

            The Jadeites are certainly closer in appearance to humans. It doesn’t surprise me, considering the tree elves were older and less evolved and still likely flaunted the characteristics of their dryad ancestors. But Jadeites have our hair, fingers, toes, noses, eyes, mouths, teeth, and language capabilities. Somehow, I don’t feel that is a coincidence…

7:15 PM

            The books explained why Jadeites fear a creature so similar to themselves. It isn’t our appearance that frightens them, but our tendency to be horrid to anything that isn’t one of us. I certainly know better than to go rampaging through a forest full of elves, beating and destroying everything in sight. None of the people I know would ever behave so despicably (or at least, I hope not!).  But the Jadeites in general possess a sort of childlike naivety that leaves them vulnerable to the other, much less desirable sort of people. I always knew that such a sort of people existed, hopefully far, far away from my little speck of the world. But I never dreamed that there could have been enough of them to taint the Jadeites’ perception of the entire human race for decades. And yes, it has been decades—centuries, even. It wasn’t only recent texts and children’s picture books that depicted us in such ways. There were plenty of old books written over a hundred years ago in that library, featuring the “tan-skin beasts” in all their infamy. There has to be a reason, hasn’t there? What could have possibly provoked these hostilities? As much as the Jadeites swear by it, I refuse to believe that there was no provocation at all—it would go against everything I was taught about human nature. Could the Jadeites have tainted the relationship with humans, or was it the other way around? Did it begin with the Jadeites, or with the tree elves before them, or even longer ago? Could there have been a war, a misunderstanding turned into a conflict, a communication gone horribly wrong? What kind of royal family did the Jadeites have when it began? Did it have anything at all to do with the striking similarities?

            There is just so much that I don’t know, and I feel as though that maze full of books couldn’t possibly have all of the answers.

10:17 PM

            This is the first time I have visited the magnolia archway at night. The Grand Elder Guardian is absent from his web, which glistens in the starlight along with the magnolia leaves. The white blossoms that had adorned the trees the day I met Apple Blossom are long gone. It’s rather dull, but a peaceful place for thinking when there are too many things on the mind.

            My tag says that I am the fifth human to come by the Greenwood, and Apple Blossom had told me on that first day that only one of the other four had returned, and they had been deterred by the Grand Elder Guardian. What if they, like me, had not been deterred? What if they had gotten through, or ran into Apple Blossom? Would they have treated her with kindness and become her friend, or would they have…no, I refuse to think about that.

            An awful thought has been lingering in my mind all day, and I know I won’t get any sleep until I get it out. What if publishing this diary the way I want to ends up attracting the kind of people to the Greenwood that the Jadeites—and I—dread? What if publicizing the story of the Greenwood to a wide audience ends up contributing to its destruction? Of course I would try to pass it off as fiction, but that wouldn’t stop people—especially children—from getting curious. How many children waited for their Hogwarts letters or spent Christmas Eve waiting for the Polar Express to show up at their doors? How many people traveled to the nothing-special city of Forks, Washington simply because Twilight told them that Bella and Edward live there? How many tourists swarm forests, lakes, parks, and villages around the world, hoping to catch a glimpse of some mythical creature that dwells there according to a story? Even the people who know that stories are only stories, and don’t really believe (or at least tell themselves that they don’t) tend to take part in order to experience some of the magic. The fact of the matter is that I can pass it off as fiction all I want, but it won’t stop anybody who’s really keen on traipsing through the forest hunting for Jadeites. 

         My diary contains a truly wonderful book, one that I’ve already read over and over and enjoyed every word of. It just fascinates me how much of a real, viable story this diary turned out to be long before that was my intention. But still, I am beginning to think that it is best if I never publish it. As the only human entrusted with the Jadeites’ friendship and their information, it’s my duty to protect them from any “tan-skin beasts.” Their protection is so much more important than anything I could get from publishing their story, so this is how it is going to be.

Into the Land of the Elves: The Picture Books

(I have no clue why the font has shrunk. It's the normal font size I always use, I have it set to normal, I've tried bolding it, resizing it...nothing works. Sorry about that...) 

The Diary of Miss Aidyn Hall: author, mentor, researcher

July 27

7:00 PM

The Picture Books  

           

            When I met up with Apple Blossom at the magnolia archway, the disappointment in her eyes told me that things were not going to go the way I’d planned. “Uh-oh,” I said. “What happened?”

            “I was only able to get one person to join our research group,” Apple Blossom said with a disappointed sigh.  

            “Oh! That’s not so bad!” I was relieved that she had gotten any volunteers at all. “Just one person is better than none! So who is our generous volunteer?” Right then, Wildflower sprung out from behind a holly bush, holding on tightly to her treasured diary. How had I not noticed her there before? “It’s me!” she cried, bouncing on her toes. “It’s me, it’s me!” She ran over to me and stood at my feet like a soldier reporting for duty, smiling hopefully. I smiled back. “Somehow I knew that you would join us,” I said. “Welcome to our research team, Miss Wildflower!” I was happy that she would be working with us and I was proud of her for volunteering, but at the same time I was disappointed that she was the only one who had. She was only five years old and her abilities were very limited. The unfortunate truth was that there just wouldn’t be much for her to do, and the only assignments I could think of for her were meager pittances. Still, I was willing to take what I could get—after all, we could have gotten zero volunteers. But things were certainly not going to go as I had planned.

            “Wildflower, dear,” I said, “is it okay if Apple Blossom and I talk privately for just a moment?”

            “What does that mean?” asked Wildflower.

            “It means that I would like to tell her something that’s only for her to hear,” I told her. “Will you let me do that? You can write in your diary for a moment while I do.”

“Okay.” Wildflower returned to the holly bush to sit down beside it and write. I gave her an approving smile and pulled Apple Blossom aside. “What is she able to do?” I asked.

“She can’t really do anything,” Apple Blossom said concernedly. “I could teach her a little bit about note-taking,” I suggested. “She can’t really write yet, but she knows how to formulate ideas.” But Apple Blossom shook her head. “You’ve got to help me change the others’ minds,” she said. “That’s your job for today.”

“Well…I can certainly try,” I told her, “but I can’t promise anything.”

            “They’re frightened,” said Apple Blossom. “That’s the only reason they won’t do it.”

            “They’re frightened of me?” I asked, alarmed.

            “Oh, no, not of you!” said Apple Blossom. “They’re frightened of what they might find out.”

            “I can understand that,” I said, “but I have a feeling that learning the truth would make them feel better about it.”

            Apple Blossom gave me a hard look then, a look that meant, “Aidyn, you’re wrong.” The truth was that they didn’t want to know the truth. The truth might shatter the perceptions they had that had become facts so long before now. If the Jadeites and the humans had any connection, they didn’t want to know about it. Jadeites were Jadeites and humans were humans, and if anything at all indicated that they were anything more than two phenomenally different creatures, they didn’t want to hear it.  Nothing would change their minds. Apple Blossom had given me an impossible task. “Apple Blossom,” I said, “I respectfully request that you give me a different job for today. What if I were to be your research assistant?”

            “What would you do then?” asked Apple Blossom.

            “I’ll find the books you need,” I explained, “and I’ll take notes, write down page numbers and titles, make citations…things like that.”

            “Are you sure we can’t convince the others to help?” she asked with a sigh.

            “I can’t be entirely sure,” I told her, “but I really don’t think so.”

            “So what is Wildflower going to do?” she asked.

            “The small tasks,” I said. “She can put things away and carry books and papers and things.”

            Apple Blossom looked very unsure about it all, but she finally said, “All right,” with a sort of uneasy shrug. I waved Wildflower over, and the three of us set out for the Grand Greenwood Library. The soldiers met with us at the bridge, and that was something Wildflower was afraid of. She whimpered and hid behind my legs, and I could feel her trembling. They had kept out of sight the day Apple Blossom and her friends had gone off in search of the “shekrumseh,” but today they towered over Wildflower—a few of them were human sized—and their armor gleamed in the sun like the exoskeletons of giant green beetles. I found it to be in incredibly poor taste for these soldiers to clank around behind us when we had a young child with us. Of course she was going to be scared! They had kept out of sight before, and they should keep out of sight again. But, of course, they weren’t going anywhere, and I had only myself to blame for that. I held out my hand for Wildflower, and when she took it I could feel her shaking. “It’s all right, Wildflower,” I said, giving her hand a squeeze. She moved closer to me, and every so often she glanced over her shoulder at the soldiers, keeping an eye on them as they tried to do for me.

            The Grand Greenwood Library gave us a welcome release from the soldiers’ all-seeing eyes. They must have picked up on how much they had frightened Wildflower, as they didn’t even bother to peer in at us through the windows (which would have set her off in a bad, bad way). We set down our equipment: my messenger bag, notebooks, bookmarks, and pencil case, Apple Blossom’s leafy green notebooks and matching tree-bark pencils, and Wildflower’s diary and pen. I asked Apple Blossom, “Can you name some of the picture books about humans?” It was as good a place to start as any.

            “I can name one,” Wildflower piped up.

            “Go ahead, Wildflower.”

            “The Beast on Two Legs,” she said, and I had to laugh. It sounded like a cheesy B-movie from the 1940s. “All right,” I said through my giggles, “what about you, Apple Blossom?”

            “Well…” She looked up at the ceiling. “There’s The Menace of the Outskirts, Humans: Creatures of Destruction, The Tan-Skin Beasts…” I wrote all of these down as she listed them off, but I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself as I did. They were the cheesiest-sounding book titles I had ever heard. I mean, “Tan-Skin Beasts?” Honestly? Well, these five titles told me that to the Jadeites, we humans really were nothing but unpredictable, menacing, destructive beasts. And yet, I wasn’t treated like a beast at all. They certainly didn’t trust me, and they didn’t view me as a friend or a welcome guest (with the exception of Apple Blossom and Wildflower, of course). My sticky fingers and insatiable curiosity hadn’t done anything to help that. But the Jadeites were amicable enough to me. Wildflower’s parents obviously approved of their daughter’s association with me enough to keep allowing it. The king and queen allowed me to continue visiting with Apple Blossom, so long as it was done under the watchful eyes of the soldiers. Even with my restrictions, I was given a considerable amount of the Greenwood to explore and experience. It was certainly not the way that most would treat a dangerous beast. I knew that I had Apple Blossom to thank for most of this, and I felt a surge of warmth and gratitude for my friend.

            “That’s all that I need for now,” I told Apple Blossom. “Can you tell me where to find these books?”

            “Well, do you want fiction, or…” Apple Blossom stopped herself from finishing that sentence. “You know, it’s probably best if I just show you. Come on.” She got up from her chair and headed off into the maze of books. “Come on, Wildflower,” I said. “I need you to carry some books for me.” She appeared at my side almost instantly.

            Two of the books were found in the same section, a section full of brightly illustrated picture books with boldly written titles in large print. They were the kind of books that you would find in the children’s section of any library. “This is The Tan-Skin Beasts,” said Apple Blossom, handing a book to me. I looked over the book’s cover. The title was written in an urgent shade of red and hovered directly over a detailed illustration of three people: a man, a woman, and a child. Their facial expressions were blank, and except for the swords and spears they were carrying (even the child held a weapon), they seemed perfectly ordinary. Their skin was the same creamy color as my own, but in comparison to the Jadeites who were all pearl-pink and paper-white, it could be considered tan. Whoever had illustrated this book must have seen humans before. I had expected us to be depicted as some kind of exaggerated horror movie monsters.

            After some more searching, we found The Beast on Two Legs. This cover featured a towering man with biceps big enough to rip a tree in half. In one hand he held a lit match and in the other he carried an axe. In the background was a forest that had been set ablaze. “I don’t know anyone who looks like this,” I said as I handed both books to Wildflower. Now that I had seen two different interpretations of humans (both labeled “beasts”), I was more curious than ever to see exactly what it was that made us so scary.

            We returned to our table, Wildflower dutifully set the books down, and I opened up The Tan-Skin Beasts. “Do you need me to read it for you?” Apple Blossom asked. “Not right now,” I answered. “I just want to look at the pictures.” I could tell that she didn’t want to read me any book that called me a beast.

            Those pictures didn’t tell me anything about a possible connection between Jadeites and humans, but it did tell me everything about “the tan-skin beasts”; there were full-color illustrations of humans partaking in such acts as gleefully cutting down trees, burning up forests, and brutally attacking Jadeites. There was a picture of two grown men kicking around and pulling the hair of two little Jadeite girls. There was a small group of Jadeites looking mournfully out on an area of forest that had been charred and littered with plastic bottles and balled up papers. There was a human woman clubbing a Jadeite woman over the head, a sadistic smile painted on her face. This is what Jadeites expected of humans. These were the monsters that Jadeite children were terrified of—and until I quickly proved otherwise, they feared that I was one of them. I was so trusted in comparison to the rest of my kind because I was a human and yet not one of these monsters. And the slightest hint of evidence that I was not as angelically good as I led on—the thievery of five jade stones—resulted in a league of soldiers keeping sharp eyes out for any signs of escalation.

            But this isn’t what bothered me. What bothered me was that things like this had actually happened. They had to have happened, in order to give the authors of books like these any material. It was nearly universally accepted by the Jadeites that humans were fearsome monsters, and in order for that to become a universal constant that was documented and depicted in books, some humans had to have made their way into Jadeite Greenwoods and acted like fearsome monsters.

            Some Greenwoods had been completely trashed, or even burned, by careless people.

            Some people had encountered some Jadeites and responded by attacking and brandishing weapons at them.

            Some people had found it appropriate to beat a Jadeite child.

            For some reason, it had never occurred to me that there must have been a reason for the Jadeites to fear humans the way that they did. It had never occurred to me that humans had done something to establish their place as the bogeymen of the Jadeites. Or maybe it had occurred to me, and I just didn’t want to believe it. Humans are bullies to anyone who doesn’t fit into their own limited little ideas of the world.  

          Those picture books left me with a hatred for my own kind.  

Fairy Sound House

Every evening after ten-o-clock, I heard the sound. It was actually a collection of many sounds playing all at once: metallic clangs like pots and pans rattling in the wind, dissonant jangling like cowbells tied to a post, the gentle tingle of swaying windchimes, and more besides. It all started up at the same time, at exactly ten-o-clock PM, and it diminished to silence at the crack of dawn. At first, it annoyed me. It kept me awake at night and I hated it. I thought it had been the next-door neighbors having a little too much late-night fun, and I was all set to go over there and give them a piece of my mind. But when I left to go confront them, I heard that the sound was coming from the woods behind my house.  

            Those woods were nothing to me but some mildly-interesting background scenery absolutely teeming with bugs. I couldn’t stand anything with more than four legs. The sound of a buzzing bee would have me running for an exit. Butterflies and moths were not quite so pretty to me, and even the sight of a tiny fly would send me into a minor panic. The fact that those woods were filled to the brim with every sort of creepy-crawlie imaginable was enough to make me avoid them at all costs, and no amount of racket could change my mind about that. So the sound played on, every night of the summer, and over time it became more of a comfort than a nuisance. Instead of keeping me awake, it soothed me to sleep, and its presence in a dream indicated that the dream would be a pleasant one.

            I had thought that the sound would end with the summer, like the sound of the crickets and katydids and the smell of burgers from my neighbor’s barbecue grill.  But as the crisp chill of the fall evenings settled in, the sound continued on. By now it had me itching with a curiosity as annoying as the collection of mosquito bites I had added to over the summer, but the ladybugs, dragonflies, and small flies that were still around were enough to keep it suppressed. Every so often, though, I would bring it up to my neighbors when we got a chance to talk—“Have you heard that weird noise that comes out of the woods at night? It sounds like bells ringing, or things clattering, or…something.” The responses were varied: Mr. Joe Roberts told me that there were way too many sounds resonating from the inside of his three-kid house to think about any that came from outside. Joyce Applebee said that she and her husband had heard it, but they didn’t give it too much thought—it was probably a noisy pine hick, or else some teenagers having too much fun. Ralph Wilson said that the racket was becoming insufferable, and if it didn’t stop very soon he would find a way to make it stop. I guess I was the only one who found it to be pleasant.

            Fall turned to winter, the sound played on through the evenings, and the welcome disappearance of the bugs opened up an opportunity. The time had finally come for me to squash my curiosity and discover the source of the sound! Remembering what Ralph Wilson had said, I thought about asking whoever it was to quiet down a bit (but certainly not stop), but I mainly wanted to thank them for the lovely racket that kept me company through so many wonderful nights. So one afternoon after work, I made my way down to the woods. For the most part, the woods were wild. Vines—some covered in thorns—twisted and tangled around the trunks of trees and the branches of shrubs. The brown carpet of fallen leaves was dotted haphazardly with shiny green bushes. Every so often a root, shrub, or wayward branch would trip me up. It was a place with no sense of order or reason, and there was no sound except for the occasional bird call or the rustling of a squirrel searching for remaining acorns. Bugs were no longer an issue, but I worried about snakes. I hoped that the cold had driven them away along with the bugs.  

            After walking in the wilds, I came upon a much more orderly dirt road leading off into the deep woods. My sense of adventure outweighed my unease and I began the trek. The flapping and chirping of the occasional bird, the quiet whispering of the light winter breezes, and my feet crunching through the dead leaves and fallen pine needles made for a beautiful melody against the eerie silence. The haphazard arrangement of trees and shrubs began to morph into neat rows of Christmas cedars and box-shaped bushes. I thought that I must have been entering somebody’s property. My heart fluttered as I wondered if it would be a nice somebody, who would take “Sorry, I got a little lost” for an answer.

            On and on went this clean-cut path, with no further hints of civilization or ownership. I froze up at the sight of a small, winged thing zipping away from one of the boxy bushes. “It’s too cold for bugs, it’s too cold for bugs,” I repeated as I forced myself to continue on in spite of my shaking legs. It was just fine until I caught sight of another one, and another, and another still, and I was forced to admit that it was not my imagination.

            I screamed and swatted aimlessly at the air in front of me, bringing my hand down on a tiny, beating wing. I screamed again, closed my eyes, and took off running without knowing or caring where I was headed. The silence of the woods was broken by tiny, mousy screeches in the air. Oh god, I thought, these bugs can scream! Screeching bugs was where I drew the line. I fell to my knees and curled up with my face buried in my hands. I trembled and I whimpered, and when I felt a wing brush my face I screamed again. But then I was aware that something was softly patting my cheek. I opened my eyes and beheld a bright, fresh, childish little face with rose-petal lips curled up in a decidedly-friendly smile. This girlish face was held in place by a doll-shaped arrangement of bright white light, and the only other discernible features were the iridescent, rapidly-beating wings on its back.

            I, like most people, had heard my fair share of fairy stories. I knew about Tinkerbell and Thumbelina and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I also knew that fairy stories were just that—stories. They are nice to hear, and often very enchanting to read, but you never expect to actually experience one. If you do happen to experience one, no matter how vivid an experience it is, you just can’t bring yourself to believe that it’s really happening. You think you’re dreaming, or your imagination is running wild, or you hit your head just a little too hard after tripping over a root. When I was confronted with this little light creature, smiling prettily at me and patting me on my cheek, I thought of all three of these possibilities. I certainly didn’t think that she was real!

            The little fairy perched on my shoulder like an obedient bird, and said in a high, chirping voice, “All right?” I hesitated for a moment—it was just so strange to be in a dream and know I was in a dream—and then I simply nodded. Others came into view, looking at me the way a parent might look at a child who has fallen over and scraped their knee. There were the angelic faces of men, women, and children, all attached to these winged bodies made of light. “I’m all right,” I told them. “I was just scared.”

            “Scared?” The little fairy tilted her head at me the way that a curious animal might. She didn’t seem to understand the word, or else she didn’t understand what there was to be scared of. Then she smiled again and patted my head. “No scared!” she chirped in a tone that hinted at assurance. “Not scary! Nice!” I didn’t know what to say, so I smiled and nodded.

            “Your name?” she asked me.

            “Molly,” I told her, “and yours?”

            She looked at me quizzically while the others happily chattered and chanted, “Moll-ee, Moll-ee!” like they really enjoyed the sound of it. I’d never thought of my name as anything special, so hearing them make such a big deal out of it would have given me a serious case of the warm-fuzzies if I hadn’t thought it was a dream. The little fairy confusedly responded to my question with, “My what?”

            “Your name,” I elaborated. “What is your name?”

            “Oh! Aiki!” she cried cheerfully, clapping her hands. “Aiki, Aiki!” She was so downright adorable that I wished she was big enough for me to pinch her cheeks. “It’s nice to meet you, Aiki,” I told her. She fluttered off of my shoulder then and gestured enthusiastically to me. “Come, come!” she cried, and the others followed suit; they fluttered off ahead of us, crying, “Come, come, come!” They all sounded so urgent about it that I rose to my feet and obeyed, following them farther into the deep woods and away from any hint of civilized society. At any moment, I’ll snap out of it and they’ll all disappear, I thought, so I’d better enjoy my time in a fairy story while I can!

            The path finally ended, and there stood an old, dilapidated Victorian-style house, painted a faded brown that had once been yellow. Ivy vines and stalks of Virginia creepers grew up the walls and along the shutters of the windows, and an overgrown patch of weeds now stood where a garden might have been. Illuminating this house were at least a hundred—but likely more—of the little light fairies. They chattered like birds as they flew in and out of the windows, climbed the sprawling ivy vines, weaved inbetween the weeds in the old garden, and floated happily above the slate-colored rooftop. These were the sort of perpetually happy creatures only encountered in dreams, books, and children’s television.

The exterior decoration of the house was a colorful smorgasbord of objects with no discernible order, reason, or purpose. Pots and pans of all sizes lined the olive-green porch steps. Bells of all shapes hung from bushes and small trees. The garden of weeds was laden with brightly-colored glass globes positioned on short stalks. Jingle-bell shells tied on strings hung from the window shutters. Windchimes hanging from the awning greeted me with their cheery tingle.

            That’s when I realized: noisemakers! The house was filled to the brim with noisemakers of every shape, size, sound, and type, and it was the combination of all of these noisemakers playing in unison that resulted in the mysterious nightly sound that I had come out here to discover. I had discovered it, and at the same time I had come to the understanding that this wasn’t a dream or my imagination. This was all real, and these were real fairies! In that moment, I experienced the unease that anybody would feel when something happens to change their perception of the world. It wasn’t a bad change—in fact, it was a wonderful one! How uplifting it was to know that there really were hidden, out-of-the-way places of the world where fairies really existed! But at the same time, it was a change that would force me to think of the world in a different way from now on. I sat down in my place and allowed myself some time to properly take it all in.

            Little Aiki fluttered over to me then and asked, “All right, Moll-ee?” I nodded and smiled a genuine smile. “I’m all right.”

            “Home!” Aiki chirped, and spread her arms in a wide gesture to the entire house and grounds. “Yes,” I said, “I see. I like your home. Aiki, do you like to make music?”

            “Moo-sic!” Aiki happily clapped her hands. “Yes, moo-sic! Come, come!” She motioned for me to follow her, and I obliged. She led me around to the side of the house, where a little band of fairies was playing a chasing game that looked quite fun. They paused and waved when they saw me, and I waved back.

            Positioned on an old post was a small triangle—small, but certainly not fairy sized. Aiki reached for the stick, held it like a baseball bat in both of her tiny hands, and gave the triangle a whack. Ding! I was able to recognize that sound from the nightly cacophonies. Now I knew the identity of its little player. Ding! Ding! Ding! She giggled like she was being tickled. Other fairies, including the four playing chase, looked on with laughter and chirped merrily like songbirds. They began to hop and sway in time to the melodic little sounds that Aiki called “moo-sic.” Aiki suddenly stopped whacking and held the stick out to me. “Moll-ee, ting-ting-ting!” she cried.

            “Oh? You want me to play it?”

            “Yes! Play ting-ting-ting!” The others assisted her in egging me on; “Ting, ting, ting!” I found myself giggling just like them. “All right,” I said. “I’ll play.” I knelt down and tapped the triangle one, two, three, four times—ding, ding, ding, ding—paused, then a fifth and a sixth. I tried to create a melody of my own that would get them to dance and sway the way that Aiki’s staccato whacking had done.  But as it turned out, they would dance to any sound in any order or rhythm (or lack thereof). The sound itself was music to them. Their joyful steps inspired me to tap faster, louder, then slower and softer, fast, loud, slow, soft, alternating and letting them follow along. One of them added jingle bells to the little song. Another one provided the clinking of glasses. Others, clapped, and others sang in bell-like voices that instantly brought Christmas angels to mind. The joy of leading this merry band set me into laughter, and the perpetual happiness of these childlike fairy creatures spread like fire and was just as warm. My song ended when I ran out of ways to continue it, though if I had my way I would have sat there and played the “ting-ting-ting” forever. I stood up and bowed, and the fairies applauded me so raucously that I felt like the leading lady of a Broadway production. Aiki started up a cry of “Moll-ee, Moll-ee!” and I was cheered and kissed and nuzzled and given holly boughs to weave in my hair. The eventual return to my own world was nothing but an afterthought. All I wanted was to stay, to befriend these creatures and see everything that this wonderful house had to offer.

            As the sun began to set, I was led inside and served a dinner of milk, a strange, gamey meat, and wrinkled orange fruits that tasted like candies. Aiki hadn’t left my side since my little concert. She smiled brightly when I accepted her small shares of her candy-fruits. She was agreeable to being patted on the head with the tips of my fingers as she sheltered herself in my coat pocket. She showed me through the rooms of the house, which were old, dusty, and overgrown with ivy, moss, and even mushrooms in some places. We played hide and seek using the many hidey-holes and crannies that were scattered throughout the house. She trusted me with the location of a secret room that none of the others had found yet. Every so often, she took it upon herself to entertain me with an energetic dance full of leaps and twirls. We sat out on the front porch together to blow dandelions and look up at the starry winter sky. It didn’t take long at all for Aiki to become my friend, and I relished in the form of quiet conversation we had that we could both understand.

            At the fairy sound house, the hours blended into one-another, so there was no way to tell when one ended and the next began. But at one of the darkest hours of the night, every fairy suddenly left the house all at once and began to scamper around outside. I followed them and found that they were positioning themselves at the noisemakers—three or four fairies per noisemaker in most cases. At long last, the time had come for the nightly sound to play! I found a place to sit and waited eagerly for the start of the show. I saw that Aiki had taken her place at the triangle—the “ting-ting-ting”—along with two other girls. A bell sounded off, and then another. The jingle-bells joined in, then a windchime was stirred, then the glass globes were tapped, and then every inch of the house blared with sound. It was not simply background noise, it was a performance. It was music in its simplest and most natural form, without all the fluff of conductors and note-reading. It was a large-scale version of the kind of music that a child produces with his first toy xylophone—no real order, no real reason, but so happy and innocent and pleasant to hear. I had already made up my mind that they were never going to stop, Ralph Wilson be damned. They could play at their house of music any way they wanted to, and they kept themselves so hidden and out of the way of human civilization that no one else would bother to come out here and find them.

            This live performance brought to mind all of the summer nights I had spent lying in bed and listening to the same sound intermingle with the crickets and frogs. I thought of the dreams of fairy parties and singing dryads that the sound had inspired in me throughout those nights. I thought of autumn breezes, early winter winds, and bird songs at the crack of dawn. I felt my eyes growing heavy, and the next thing I knew, my head was resting on the soft grass. As I drifted off, I became aware that the sound of the “ting-ting-ting” was one of the loudest of the whole menagerie.

            I awoke at sunrise, and felt delightfully warm and comfortable in spite of the cold. All of the fairies slept peacefully beside their instruments. Careful not to disturb or step on any of them, I padded over to where Aiki lay with the triangle stick still in her hands. As I approached, she stirred and opened one eye and then the other. She smiled rosily when she saw that it was me.

          “Goodbye, Aiki,” I said, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. She snuggled against my hand and looked up at me like an animal that had suddenly been wounded. “Moll-ee…” I could feel her little body quivering like she was ready to cry. “I’ll come back,” I told her, “I promise. I’ll see you all again very soon.” That satisfied her. She kissed my fingertips and curled up to go back to sleep, and I rose to my feet and headed for the path leading home. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay here and play with the fairies and listen to their nightly songs forever. But I belonged to my world, where I had duties and responsibilities. I had the incredible feeling, however, that I could belong to the fairy sound house as well.