Faerie Circle

Hello loyal readers!

It has been a while. My last post was October last year. University is incredibly busy and I haven't had very much time for writing or for documenting my sewing (although I have been doing some sewing; I'll post about it when the whole project is finished).

Also, I've been having SO MUCH DRAMA with Google and its stupid Google accounts all getting linked together. I'm considering moving this blog, but I don't blog very much anymore so not sure if it's worth it. Something to think about.

But anyway, I started scribbling in class a few weeks ago and then stayed up late one night finishing my scribblings into a short story. I'm out of practice at this writing thing so it's a pretty rough draft.

Rated M15+ for mild gore and supernatural themes.

Enjoy!

♥Nancy♬

Faerie Circle

Saturday Morning

            “Pantates for bretfast?”

            “Pancakes for breakfast?”

            “Yeah. And stor-bies?”

            “With strawberries? Only if we go out into the garden and pick some.”

            “Tan I?”

            “Mmm, we can, but go fetch your slippers first.”

Charlotte – who went by Charlie, most of the time – ran back down the hall to her bedroom. It was our first morning together, just the two of us. Daniel had worked late last night and I knew he wouldn’t want to rise before nine or ten o’clock. I fed Smokey, the black labradoodle.

            “Swippers!”

            “Good work Charlie, let’s put those slippers on your feet. This one first. And this one. Ready to go?”

            “Yeah.”

            I unlatched the back door and slid it open. Smokey’s ears pricked up at the sound of the door and he dashed outside into the chilly spring morning. We went out the door, across the patio and down the stairs onto the dewy grass. Charlie took off at a run towards the vegetable patch. Smokey, however, stopped short in the middle of the grass.

            “What’s wrong, Smokey?” I called out to the dog.

            And that was when I spotted it. In the grass, just in front of Smokey, thirteen little mushrooms were nestled in a perfect circle, about three metres in diameter.

            “Charlie, stop,” I called out, using my biggest, loudest, most mothering voice.

            She stopped. She was a well-trained child. But she turned to look up at me with startled eyes and I felt incredibly guilty for yelling.

            “Come on up, duckling,” I said, and picked her up. She was a month away from being three years old. “Can you see what I see, over there in the grass?”

            She looked. “Mushwooms?”

            “That’s right, mushrooms! What shape are they making?”

            “A cirtle?”

            “I can tell you’re looking very carefully. It’s a circle made of mushrooms. Listen to me carefully Charlie-girl; I have a rule about these circles. We do not go into mushroom circles. The mushrooms make a circle and we do not go into the circle. When we find a mushroom circle we stay away. Do we go into mushroom circles?”

            “No.”

            “That’s right, we never go into mushroom circles. What if we find one, what do we do?”

            “Stay away.”

            “Good girl, we stay away from mushroom circles. Okay. Go around the outside please and find me some strawberries.”

            I put her back down and watched her like a hawk.

            “Around the outside,” I reminded her, and she complied.

            Breakfast was otherwise uneventful. We made pancakes with strawberries. We brushed our teeth and got dressed. We went to the park instead of playing in the garden.

Saturday

            When we got home at eleven o’clock, Daniel was awake and washing our dishes from breakfast.

            “There are my favourite girls!”

            We kissed him hello.

            “TB?” Charlie asked.

            We put Frozen on TV for the fiftieth time.

            “How was she this morning?” Daniel asked.

            “Good. We picked strawberries to go on our pancakes. It was nice. She didn’t want to brush her own hair.”

            “She never does. You’re doing a good job.”

            “Daniel, there’s a faerie circle in the garden.”

            “A faerie circle? Liz, you’re not getting worked up over some mushrooms are you?”

            “Just try and keep Charlie out of it. Please. For me.”

            “Can’t we just pull out the mushrooms? I don’t want Smokey eating them, anyway.”

            “Please don’t do that, either.”

            Daniel was looking at me as if I were crazy. I hated that look. I’d seen it before. But I remained steadfast.

            “Fine,” Daniel said, in the end, “we’ll leave the mushrooms. We’ll keep Charlie out of them. I guess it can be a game.”

            “Thank you.”

            The atmosphere in the room had become tense. I left Daniel and his daughter to watch their movie.

Saturday Night

            That night, after Daniel had gone to work and Charlie had been fed and bathed and put to bed, I got to work myself. I pulled one of our china bowls out of the drawer and brought Daniel’s Dremel tool out of the shed, with the engraving head. The case was dusty. I used one of Charlie’s felt-tip markers to draw the symbols on the bowl. Symbols of appeasement and placation. Symbols to promise that we meant no harm. Symbols to gently, politely, repel. I used the Dremel to carve the symbols deep into the inside of the bowl. My hand was unsteady at first but I grew more confident as long-forgotten skills started to come back to me. My movements were slow and methodical: I couldn’t risk getting anything wrong or doing a half-hearted job. I washed the dust off the carved bowl with hot soapy water and then filled the sink again. For the first time since I’d moved in with Daniel, I brought out my box of herbs out from the back of the wardrobe. To the water I added angelica root, basil, chamomile, motherwort, any herb I had in my box that could possibly protect a family, protect children. The water smelled foul but I washed the bowl thoroughly and dried it without rinsing. Finally, I took a sharp knife out of my wooden box and used the tip to pierce my middle finger on my right hand. Blood welled up on my fingertip and I smeared it onto the bowl, making sure that a little blood made it into every carved symbol. The bowl was ready. I filled it to the brim with full cream milk from the fridge.

            The sky was dark outside; there was barely a sliver of a moon. I carried the bowl into the garden, past the faerie circle, and placed it on the grass.

            I remembered my mother saying, “Never lure the fey closer. Placate them with treats but for gods’ sake do it away from your home.”

            “Take this milk, with my blessings. And leave our girl, please.”

            I felt the flash of power as my words linked to my blood.

            “As I will, so shall it be.”

            I walked back into the house without looking back. Ten minutes later, all evidence of my work was cleared away. Daniel would never notice.

I woke when he climbed into bed. It was half-past midnight.

            “Hey,” he said, as his arms curled around me. Our lips brushed together in the dark.

            “Hey,” I blinked, trying to wake myself.

            “I let Smokey out, he needed a piss. It’s warmer tonight, he can stay out.”

            “Mmm,” I said, and stretched up to kiss him again, pulling him on top of me under the covers.

            He kissed me in return and I didn’t think any further about Smokey the labradoodle that night.

Sunday Morning

            When I woke the next morning, it was too early and I had a sick feeling in my stomach. I walked through the house in my dressing gown. The silence made my blood run cold.

            “Motey,” Charlie said, calling for her dog.

            “It’s too early, duckling, go back to bed.”

            “Where’s Motey?”

            “Smokey’s asleep, Charlie. Go back to bed. Or go climb in with Daddy.”

            She toddled down the hall and in the silence I could hear Daniel stir as Charlie climbed in to the bed with him.

            I slid open the door and went outside. The grass was sparkling with dew. And with milk, I saw. And blood.

            I ran across the garden, around the outside of the mushroom circle, and fell to my knees. The china bowl was cracked into seven pieces. Smokey the labradoodle lay still and cold in the spilled milk on the grass. His throat had been torn open and the wound was still oozing.

            “Daniel,” I knelt beside the bed and tried to rouse him gently, “Daniel, something’s happened.”

            “Charlie,” he said, waking instantly. But his daughter was safe in bed with him.

            “It’s Smokey.”

            “Motey?” said Charlie, awake as well.

            “Oh gods,” I said, and tried to speak quickly so that Charlie wouldn’t follow what I was saying, “Smokey’s been killed, by an animal or something, I don’t know. He’s out there dead and bleeding and I don’t know what to do.”

            Tears ran down my face. I couldn’t pull myself together. I didn’t mention the broken bowl or the spilled milk. I had hidden the pieces of china. Daniel would never know.

Sunday

            But Daniel hardly spoke a word to me for the whole day. He let Charlie see Smokey and they dug a grave in the garden together. He sent me to the shops to buy flowers to go on the grave. Charlie was inconsolable.

            I overheard Daniel on the phone with his ex-wife and my heart broke.

            “Karen, can you come early to get Charlie? Our dog was killed last night and she’s a mess. She could use both of us right now.”

            Karen had the decency not to say anything too snarky when she came to collect Charlie. The three of them sat in her bedroom together, as a family, and talked about how much they loved Smokey and how much they were going to miss him. Daniel and Karen stayed civil but cold to each other, as always, but they had all the warmth in the world for Charlie.

Sunday Night

            When Daniel went to work that night, I immediately got on the phone to my mother.

            “Mum, I need your help,” I said, with my voice low even though there was no one else in the house. “There’s a faerie circle in my garden. I tried to ward them off and I did everything right, I swear it, but they killed my dog. They killed my dog and they’re gonna take Charlie and I don’t know what to do about it.”

            “Calm down, Liz. Tell me what you tried.”

            I took a deep breath and recounted my efforts to my mother.

            “Well, that is a puzzle,” she said, when I finished. “But I have some ideas…”

            When I eventually hung up the phone on my mother it was nearly midnight and Daniel was due home any minute. I rushed to bed and pretended to be asleep.

            “Liz,” he said, “wake up.”

            “I’m awake.”

            “Have you been up crying? About Smokey?”

            “Yes,” I said, because it seemed easier to lie than to explain that I’d been discussing the finer points of faerie repellent techniques with my mother.

            “I’m sorry about today, Liz. I’m sorry about Smokey. It was probably just some feral cat or something in the neighbourhood. I’m sorry I left him outside last night. Please say you’re not mad at me.”

            I sighed. He blamed himself for Smokey’s death. Relief washed over me, as did guilt. Smokey’s death was my fault, really, but it was so much easier if Daniel believed that he was to blame.

            “I’m not mad. It was an accident, a mistake. Unlucky. Don’t blame yourself.”

            We snuggled all night.

Monday

            The next day I drove an hour out of town to a horse-riding academy. I’d spent a good long time Googling before I found a farrier, and this horse-riding academy was apparently the place. I bought two horseshoes and a packet of shiny new horseshoe nails.

            “Do you have a horse?” asked the farrier.

            “No, it’s umm… it’s for a craft project,” I lied, badly, “I’m doing a mosaic. With a horse theme. How much for those nails?”

            At home, I hid one horseshoe in the rafters by the front door, carefully positioning it so that the opening faced directly upwards. I hid the second horseshoe by the back door, being just as careful. I spread the horseshoe nails out around the perimeter of the house, keeping three separate. I hammered one nail into the wooden frame of Charlie’s bed and two into our bed, one under Daniel and one under me.

            The local outdoor store was selling wind chimes to go on the patio, but they only had the long tubular type.

            “Do you have any of the bell wind-chimes, with the strings of bells? Do you know the ones?”

            “Maybe in the old stock...”

            But they didn’t have any. I visited the sewing store instead and bought as many packets of bells as I could carry in my arms, along with ribbon to tie them all together. I would make our patio ring like a belfry. Who needed sleep, when there were faeries to repel?

            At the jewellery store, I bought a necklace for Charlie.

            “That’s pretty,” said Daniel, “I think daisies are her favourite flower.”

            He held up the necklace, which was a string of enamel daisies.

            “I thought she needed something nice, after what happened to Smokey, you know?”

            I decided not to mention to Daniel that daisy chains offered protection from faeries. Besides, I wasn’t sure that enamel daisies would work the same as a real daisy chain.

            “Are we missing a bowl?” asked Daniel.

            “I haven’t noticed.”

            The lies were piling up.

Tuesday Morning

            At breakfast the next morning, we opened the new bottle of milk to find that it was sour. There was a dead bird on the patio, its throat torn open and red blood still oozing out of the wound.

            “Bloody feral cats.”

            “I’ll call animal control and see if something can be done about it.”

            But I knew it wasn’t cats. Animal control wouldn’t help in the slightest.

Tuesday Night

            Daniel was due home from work at midnight, so I was taking a risk when I slipped out the back door into the darkness. It was the witching hour and I was protecting myself in the most witch-like ways that I knew how. I was wearing all black. I was wearing a daisy chain, made of real daisies, around my neck. I had horseshoe nails in my pocket. I carried a branch from a rowan tree; it had taken all day to find one. In the other hand, I carried the chef’s blowtorch from the kitchen, the one that we would usually use to make crème brûlée.

            “You are not welcome here,” I said aloud.

            There was no moon. I stood barefoot on the grass in front of the faerie circle. Shadows covered the entire garden.

            “You are not welcome in this garden. You are not welcome near this house. You are not welcome near our child.”

            “She is not your child,” whispered the wind, or something else, in a high pitch.

            “She is under my protection.”

            “She is not yours to protect,” said the voice or the wind, I couldn’t be sure.

            “You are not welcome near our child,” I said again, and I bent down to the closest mushroom in the circle and set the blowtorch on it.

            The faeries popped into vision like fireworks. They were tiny things, the size of a man’s hand, and ugly as sin. They had tangled hair and wide eyes like a cartoon alien. Their fingers were sharp and their nails bloody. I knew that one of these creatures had killed Smokey. My face grew hot with rage and I moved on to the next mushroom with my blowtorch.

            “You dare destroy our circle?” cried the faeries, in one voice.

            Their teeth were sharp.

            “You are not welcome here,” I said, again.

            “We do not listen to man.”

            “I am woman.”

            “We do not listen to human kind.”

            “I am witch-kin and you will listen.”

            I burned another mushroom, another, and another, moving my way around the circle.

            “Stop,” they cried as one, but I didn’t.

            “You will regret this,” but I knew I wouldn’t.

            “We will take revenge,” but the revenge I was taking was more important than their threats.

            I burned the thirteenth mushroom.

            “You will leave,” I commanded. I recalled my mother’s lessons and poured all my power into the words. “Your kind is not welcome here. As I will, so shall it be.”

            I glared at the faeries. And then they were gone.

Wednesday Morning

            The faerie circle was gone without a trace. Not even a charred piece of mushroom remained.

            “The mushrooms are gone,” Daniel observed, “I guess it was nothing to worry about.”

            “Mm, you were right.”

Friday Afternoon

            Karen dropped Charlie off in the late afternoon.

            “Hi duckling,” I said.

            “Motey?” said Charlie.

            Daniel and Karen took Charlie off to her room again, to explain that Smokey was dead and buried and wouldn’t be coming back.

            “Come on, let’s go see where we buried Smokey,” Daniel said, leading his daughter out into the garden.

            I said goodbye to Karen, locking the front door behind her. If I had paid closer attention, I might have noticed that the horseshoe in the rafters had been knocked askew. I picked up the daisy-chain necklace, ready to give to Charlie, and headed out the back and across the patio. If I had paid closer attention, I might have seen the decapitated mouse under the outdoor table and the drops of blood on our doormat. I might have noticed that the horseshoe that was meant to be out there was gone without a trace.

            “Say one last goodbye to Smokey, okay?” Daniel told Charlie. “And then we have to go inside because the sun’s nearly set.”

            He walked back across the garden and on to the patio. We stood together and watched as Charlie whispered to Smokey’s grave. If my eyes hadn’t been blurring with tears as I thought of my dog, I might have noticed the thirteen mushrooms that had sprung up from the grass in a perfect circle.

            “Time to come inside, Charlie,” called Daniel, as the sun dipped below the horizon.

            Charlie turned to walk back across the garden and made a beeline straight for us. She stopped, still as a statue in the middle of the grass.

            “What’s wrong, Charlie-girl?” asked Daniel.

            And that’s when I saw the mushrooms.

            And Charlie, in a high-pitched voice with perfect adult articulation said, “We do not go into mushroom circles.”

            “Charlie!”

            I screamed her name at the top of my lungs and stepped forwards off the patio, reaching toward her.

            But she was gone.