caught the humans up, together, proving the Queen’s
intuition right that Honor would find the human who
had traveled from the Deep Woods’ Clearing to be her
suitor, I began to think that I had been destined upon
this journey of life to be, among these faeries, my own
kind. For the first time, my differences did not exclude
me, but gave me something the faeries didn‘t have
experience and knowledge about living in the human‘s
world, first hand, that the faeries didn’t. I knew that
the human world held a kind of magic all its own
although not as filled with fantasy, the human world
could be a very exciting place. For a moment, I thought
about seeing the shore of America from the ship for the very first time, and the first night I spent in my own
little
home. I glanced over at Einion, wide-eyed and alone
surrounded by faeries and I thought him a kindred spirit,
knowing what its like not to be around his own kind,
knowing such a circumstance - although not unbearable
can have an isolation all its own. Not aloneness,per se,
as the faeries to Einion had become like the McGillicutty
ladies were to me family. I made up my mind, right
then, as the Buttergirl approached and offered me some
gooseberry vine tea, that it was time I left the humans’
side and made the faeries my family and the faeries’ realm
my world. I also noticed the magical color of the
Buttergirl’s eyes, the agreeable sound that her laughter
made, and I asked her to dance until the wee hours of
the morning, when we drank the dew from buttercups
and the Queen’s court returned to the magical Yew in
the final procession of the night.
As the new shift of faerie band musicians picked up their instruments to play the enticing sound to
continue the enchantment of the humans, I made a
pledge to set them free. I became the loved one to break
the magical spell that set the humans’ feet to dancing and
their enchanted souls to disappear from view, entering
into the faeries‘ realm inside the ring. All at once, I
pushed Honor, then Michael, and then even Einion, hard
as I could, sending them tumbling to the ground just
outside the edges of the Faeries’ Ring.
The full moon gone, the faerie music wasn’t heard
by the humans. They all three sat up, blinking, and even
rubbing their eyes in confusion.
“Where are we?” Honor asked me.
“Don’t you remember?” I smiled, “we’ve come
into the clearing to pick wild mushrooms,” I said, “and
“Why am I here?” Einion Gloff asked, first
looking at the other two, and then at me.
“You tend the sheep of the McGillicutty’s near the Hollow’s Rise,” again I smiled warmly to calm any
suspicions about faerie enchantment as the Queen had
told me, earlier, that we need never to explain.
“Let’s go home,” I suggested, and Einion agreed
with me. Honor McGillicutty, to my surprise, did not.
She knew to return to her sister would be to lose her
friend, her suitor, but to live on her own she would not.
She would have the freedom, she said, to choose for
herself - just as I’d wished for her, in this new land
and she asked Michael if she could go with him,
wherever it was that he was going. The two of them
‘disappeared’ from sight along the trail to the fisherman’s
cabin, toward the Deep Woods, headed for the clearing
past where Michael McDonnell had built the home he
lived in when he wasn’t off at sea.
Einion and I went straight to Blithe who asked
me where Honor was, and I said I didn’t know. It
wasn’t a lie, I really didn’t.
I’d thought the fisherman’s cabin, but I knew she went to seek her freedom - and her happiness that in
many ways Blithe had not allowed - so I held my tongue
at those last words and watched as Blithe paced back
and forth then grabbed her coat, disappearing out the
back door saying, “Well, someone’s got to go and look!”
Eventually, Blithe reported Honor as ‘missing’ to
the newspaper in town, and she honestly insisted tothe
owner of the Old Soul’s Times that he print where she
was last seen: ‘with the faeries’, ‘in the thicket in the
woods’, ‘most likely gone to pick wild mushrooms during
the recent and popular - harvest in the wood.’ The
article also said, ‘Any reports to her sister, Blithe
McGillicutty at the McGillicutty homestead, for which
she would be most grateful. Any leads or information
about the disappearance should be sent to the
newspaper’s staff as to be reported on in the daily
Times.’ The part about the ‘faeries’ didn’t print but only
alluded to Blithe’s ‘report’ about her sister’s whereabouts
in the paper. When Blithe complained, she was accused of suffering a delusion due to grief about her sister‘s
disappearance and told she was in the thoughts and
prayers of everyone on the newspaper’s staff.
I never worried that I’d done the right thing, or
the wrong, as every time Blithe mentioned Honor she did
say ‘when she found her’ she’d lock her in her room, and
sad, and worried about her sister, Blithe still did not let
go her bitterness, nor figure that she forced Honor away
from her, in order to seek a happy and fulfilling life. I
did not think that Einion would be the one to fill the
void in Blithe’s life - and my own - but he was most
helpful and a happy sort of person to have around the
homestead. He’d said to Blithe that he was most happy
to be among humans, again.
About the faeries, he told her, “They were the
most magical things I’d ever seen, at first,” he said, “and
then the merriment drew on and on, with a wickedness
that wasn’t wicked, but enchanting - I suppose - but to have control over one‘s own life and be among your own,
well that something that the faeries‘ world could not
provide,“ he told her. After hearing Einion’s tale, Blithe
made up her mind to dislike all faeries of any kind. So I
went home, that night, alone, and vowed to never visit
or even talk to Blithe McGillicutty, ever again. I
wondered, for a moment, if Honor would ever be heard
from again, either. I felt terribly bad about whatBlithe
had said for the faeries had freed us all to find what we
most wanted - all but Blithe, I thought, and so I
realized, then, and understood her pain, and I guess, her
discontentment with the faeries. Honor had found
herself a suitor for a love she thought she might never
get to have, Einion had been set free from a most
punishing and wicked man, and I had been given
permission to enter the faerie realm by the faeries’ Queen.
It wasn’t but two months later that I received a
letter - in the mail - of my very own. It was from
&nbs
p; Honor! She and Michael had gotten married. They had been to San Francisco, and they were setting sail, soon,
for Paris, and then possibly Rome. In the letter, Honor
expressed that she felt she had found her soulmate for
life. She would remain a ‘believer‘, indebted to the
faeries for their incredible help in openingup her heart
and leading her off to her newlife. I appreciated the
letter as it set my worries to rest, forever, and I was
most pleased to have ‘received the post’, just like a
regular citizen, equal and fair - quite a feat for an Irish
pixie gnome.
“My mom,” I thought, “would have been proud.”
I folded the letter and tucked it into a box of keepsakes
to reread whenever I missed Honor’s friendship. I was
happy for her, but more than just a little lonely, myself,
until one day - All Hollow’s Eve, nearly two and a half
years since the steamship voyage to America, the Old
Soul’s goblin sent word
to me, an invitation to attend a dance, the Faerie-Goblin
dance at the Faeries’ Ring and the Six-shaped Tree. I was most happy to attend and what a night it was! I
fell in love, and that is why I have written this personal
account and left one for my children, and one inside the
Six-shaped Tree for the children who happed upon the
wood in Old Soul‘s Hollow. Children? Me? Yes!
That night, I asked the butter girl to marry me. We
have twelve, half Irish-butterfly-pixie-faerie-gnome
children and we have lived happily near the pond in my
home which I added onto, of course, rooms for the
babies and the other children; and, although I often
wonder about Blithe, I don’t choose to mix my life with
humans, anymore.
From afar, I’ve seen that Einion lives with Blithe
and works the farm, tending their flock, selling sheep’s
milk and wool. Blithe, from all appearances, has become
quite wealthy, almost as rich as the sewing machine man,
curing her bitterness with the good deeds of taking in
young, orphaned Einion, teaching him a smart business
and tricks of the wool trade. He eventually married, too, and had twin girls.
Blithe could often be seen pushing the babies’ carriage
and cooing somewhat like she’d once done around Peter
the cat - while the young couple strolled nearby, hand in
hand.
Blossom and her sisters were seen at every faerie
ring dance in the thicket in the wood, at the baseof the
magical Yew tree, just across the clearing from the tree
known in Old Soul’s Hollow as the Six-Shaped Tree.
And for that, any human with the sort of soul to
wonder, “What makes a ring of grass grow more green?”
can be grateful, as this personal account retells, if he
steps too close, close enough to be pulled in, that this
circle is enchanted by the Ellewyon Faeries of the
Northern Muir Woods, and not by the Twelyth Teg!
For one can never be too sure just who might hear the
music and be ever so enchanted, to, “Come and dance, inside the faeries ring!”
8 The End. E