Faery Tale (10 page)

In my spare time I tried to learn everything I could about faery lore to create a foundation for my journey. I had purchased a round-trip ticket to England and once we got settled down South, I would be leaving for nearly three months. It was in the midst of all this mayhem and nausea that I made a very interesting discovery.

After reading volume after volume of folklore, I started to notice that all the stories were oddly similar. I'm not talking about fairy tales here, I'm talking about
faery
tales. And especially in British, Irish, and Scottish folklore, there were only a few variations on a very few themes.

Exhibit A: The Midwife. In this story, a midwife in a small town is awoken from sleep by a tall, well-dressed stranger, begging her to come help birth his wife's child. He promises a great reward, and she agrees. Once aboard his finely appointed carriage, she is asked to blindfold herself. Considering the heavy pouch of coins, she complies. They arrive at a great estate, and the woman wonders how such a grand building could be within traveling distance from her home without her knowing it. Inside she finds a beautiful woman in the throes of birthing, and all her concerns are put aside as she focuses on the task at hand. After the child is born, one of two things happen. There is either ointment that she is asked to put on the child's eyes (and some gets in her eyes as well), or all those present in the room pass around a bowl of water and are asked by the lord and lady to dot each eye—the midwife dots one eye, not two.

Thanked, paid, and delivered back home, she pretty much forgets about the whole thing, until one day she sees the beautiful woman walking through the crowded market. “Good day, my lady,” she says, rushing over. “How is your beautiful child faring?” The woman seems surprised, but responds in kind, “He is quite well. And you can see I am quite well, too. You see me with both your eyes, do you not?”

At this, the midwife is confused. Of course she sees her with both eyes! But after a moment, she then realizes truly, she can only see the woman with one eye, her left.

“No, in actuality, my lady, I can see you only with my left,” she responds, utterly befuddled. The woman leans in even more closely and softly blows on the woman's face.

“And now, you shall never see me again.” With that, the woman disappears, and the poor midwife, it turns out, has gone instantly blind in both eyes, never to recover.

The same basic story is retold in England, the Isle of Man, Scotland, and Ireland, under various guises. Sometimes the victim is a poor woman in need of employment. Sometimes it is a blacksmith, even. But if the gender or type of employment varies, the result is always the same: when a human encountered the faery world, the results were never good. Blindness was a typical fallout from a faery encounter.

Then there are what I call the “Fall-Down-Dead Series,” in which some poor sap is stupid enough to kick, taunt, or in some way try to trick or swindle a faery. Unfortunately, there is no mincing about in these cases—the person simply drops down dead. Regardless of country or narrative bent, the outcome is, quite predictably, the same. Humans who interact with the world of faery, whether knowingly or unknowingly, do so at great cost.

 

Leaving behind the stories of the midwives, faery servants, or black-smiths, we come to the wonderfully woeful world of changelings. It's interesting to me that although the world of faeries in modern times has been so incredibly extinguished—I mean, who thinks about them, talks about them on a daily basis anymore—and yet your basic man on the street would at least know what a changeling was. Funny, isn't it? Yes, we've all heard about the practice of faeries stealing human babies, and leaving a sickly, or oddly “old”-looking child in its place. On the Isle of Man in the middle of the Irish Sea, mothers never left the nursery at night without placing a pair of iron tongs over the baby's crib, the fear of baby snatching was so prevalent. Apparently, the ancient word on the street was that faeries abhorred iron. It was the only weapon that worked against them. Growing up outside of Ithaca, we always had a horseshoe over our door for good luck, and it was a tradition I carried on as an adult. But as I did my due diligence in faery research, I learned to my surprise that the origin of horseshoe hanging, too, was connected to the faery world. Horseshoes were made of iron, and in days gone by, hanging one above your door was a signal to the faeries that they weren't welcome there. In fact, the belief was that if you had a horseshoe hanging above your door, a faery spirit couldn't even cross your threshold.

 

The day of the move came, and with the help of friends we managed to pack the truck in less than three hours. I carried boxes in and out of my familiar old building as though I were moving through water. It felt like some sort of space-time continuum had opened up and that every molecule of air was wavering like a desert mirage, breathing with uncertainty, with possibility. Before we knew it, we were driving away from New York City for the last time.

 

It rained our first week in Charleston. The water pelted down like silver bullets, its own type of confederate fury, as though the weather itself had sensed the presence of me, the carpetbagger. The house was empty, but it was ours, and for the first week while Eric worked furiously in his office to catch up from the move, I tried to settle into a rhythm that made me feel worthwhile. Boxes crowded every corner, and I worked on unearthing our belongings while Eric worked on earning us a living. I couldn't reconcile my place in the world—I had packed away for months saving for my trip into faery land. Now Eric was working and my job was to take care of the house—the unpacking, the estimate on the new roof, the putting together of furniture, the nesting, the arranging, the grocery shopping, the cooking, the cleaning. For that first rainy week, it devoured me. I felt like I had no control: I was there to open boxes and toast sandwiches.

Then, just as we were beginning to emerge into our new home, I woke up one morning and the sun had emerged as well. I picked up the cat and carried her with me into the sunroom, watched her pupils dilate as she took it all in—the sun shining through the river birch in the backyard, the male cardinal calling from beneath the waxy green leaves of the laurel bushes. I don't know how long we stood there, eyes darting from one thing to the next, two tame animals regarding the wild ones. But I can tell you one thing. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was on my way to obtaining that elusive feeling of finding home.

At night I fell asleep to the persistent chirp of cicadas, and I woke to the singing of our backyard birds. Our Charleston friends opened their worlds, and in observing them, I was able to understand some of what my new life meant. I watched Eric's brother Ben balance barefoot on the edge of his flat-bottomed boat, arm arced smoothly as he cast his shrimp net into the muddy waters of the creek. I watched his girlfriend, Cameron, watering her sunflowers barefoot on Sullivan's Island. I watched Eric's intent brown eyes soften as he gazed out at the sea. It was in noticing these little things that I began to feel something stir within me. And I realized that somewhere along the line in life, I'd fallen asleep. Maybe this was why I'd had so little success thus far on my venture into the faery world. I'd been racing through my days with my eyes shut to the world around me, despite my best intentions. As I felt myself come awake, I wondered if I hadn't discovered the first real step to connecting with enchantment. How can we expect to see and experience the faery kingdom until we have come alive enough to notice and be grateful for the beauty of our own?

 

The night before I set off on my trip, we had out first party, both a housewarming and a goodbye, at least for me, for the rest of the summer. My heart was filled nearly to bursting. It felt so incredible to have the house filled with people, to hear the tinkling of glasses and the laughter bubbling from inside our new home, that in that moment, I deeply regretted my decision to leave this unbelievable life that had unfolded here in such a short time. My friend Laura made her way over to me from across the room, her green eyes not missing a thing. As we stood there she let out a little sigh. “You'll be back,” she assured me, “but you know you've got to do this.You're embarking on an incredible adventure! And besides”—she leaned in with a smile—“if you're right about all this, you've got faeries waiting on you.”

The next morning, Laura's words echoed in my head as I sat in the dim cabin lighting, the huge plane hurtling over the Atlantic Ocean.

In taking stock, I had come to a few realizations, if not rather belatedly:

It all seemed too immense. When the plane landed in London, my journey would truly begin. And I'd discovered an eerie coincidence. W. Y. Evans-Wentz had made this very journey—to many of the same places I hoped to visit—exactly one hundred years before. It was the summer of 1909 when Evans-Wentz began his exploration into the world of faeries, and something about the timing of it all sent a shiver down my spine. Either faeries were all around us, or they weren't. Either they existed, or they didn't. It was time for me to find out.

—ANNA FRANKLIN,
WORKING WITH FAIRIES

 

 

 

 

W
ELCOME to Hampstead Heath: you are here.”

When you're walking in the woods in the United Kingdom, you must be careful not to get “pixie led.” The pixies, who are apparently a terribly tricksy bunch who delight in toying with mortals, will jumble your head, leading you this way and that, until you end up exactly where they want you to be—and exactly where you don't want to be. It seemed that, for reasons yet unknown, I was meant to be in the park, for the park certainly found me—despite my very best efforts. I turned and headed into the Heath, my feet following a thin dirt trail until the path exploded into a field of knee-high Queen Anne's lace and long, lush green grasses blowing softly in the breeze. It nearly took my breath away. But my fear of the unknown was palpable. Where did the path lead? If I got this lost attempting to follow simple directions, how on earth would I find my way back through an eight-hundred-acre park?

Breathing in the sweet smell, I found my way to a wooden bench under the shade of some tall trees at the edge of the field. I dug out my pen and a small notebook and began to write. I hadn't been writing more than a few minutes when I heard a snuffling sound coming up the path toward me and turned to find a floppy-eared black-and-white spaniel bounding toward me.

“Hi, puppy!” I crooned, massaging his velvety face in my hands. This dog belonged on calendars. I smiled at the woman following him.

“I love your dog,” I murmured, as he jumped onto the bench next to me and proceeded to crawl into my lap.

“Oh, Harry, no!”

“It's okay, I don't mind,” I reassured her. She looked to be in her late forties with dark brown hair and surprisingly warm brown eyes.

“You're American! How wonderful!” she exclaimed, setting me immediately at ease. As we began to talk, she not only gave me directions into town, but she told me about a stunning panorama of London that could be viewed from just across the road. “Actually,” she said, glancing at her cell phone, “I've got a few minutes. Would you like me to take you over there and show you myself?”

“Wow, yes! That'd be incredible, thank you!” It was bound to be a little awkward, but I knew I was lucking out big time. Before I knew it, my new friend Alison, and her impossibly cute dog, Harry, had invited me to come along for their daily walk through the Heath. I wondered at my good fortune as we made our way down a shady path that led deep into a forest. Alison was fascinating. Five years earlier, she'd had a call to life when her husband of seventeen years came home and announced that he was leaving her. The next day she found out she had a life-threatening tumor that needed to be removed by surgery, which required her to be cut open from just below her breasts all the way down to her uterus. She vowed from that day on to live life to the fullest.

“Now I live for myself, and my kids,” she said. “I do what I want, when I want to.” She smiled. “So what brings you to England, Signe?”

I don't know what it was about Alison, but I found myself spilling my guts to her. I told her about my father passing away three years ago, about how hard it was to not know the hows or the whys, about how much I missed him. About meeting Eric, getting engaged, leaving New York together, and I told her about my desire to find out the truth behind the existence of faeries. “Because,” I told her, “I find it really hard to believe in God. I mean, no one else in my family ever has. So in a roundabout way, if I can discover what else there is out there, maybe it will somehow make losing my father . . .” I trailed off, not really knowing how to finish.

She looked at me for a moment as if we were playing a game of chess and she was about to sweep in with one simple move that would change the game entirely.