Faery Tale (16 page)

Being awake, seeing the world with the eyes of a child, these were themes that kept recurring. I couldn't help but bring up some of the darker things I'd read about the faery world, the trickery, death, blindness, the baby snatching. But Peter shrugged off my neurosis.

“Don't forget that a lot of that is just Christian propaganda. ‘Now the devil lives here . . .' or ‘the faeries and the witches are carrying your kids off . . .' It could have all just been Christian propaganda that then worked its way into fiction. But then again, who knows? Could you blame the faery worlds for being upset with humans, what we're doing to the planet? They had every right to fight back, I suppose. I think there's a darker side to everything, but that doesn't mean that it's bad. You have to have a balance. I don't think nature sees good and bad, positive and negative. I think it just does what it does, for the good of the whole.”

 

Near the end of our tour we ended up in a bookstore on High Street where Peter suggested I buy
The Traveller's Guide to Fairy Sites
, by Janet Bord. I could hardly believe my luck—you mean they actually
made
travel guides for people who were looking for faeries? On the front it said, “A guide to 500 places that fairies have actually been seen.”
Cha-ching!

“And, Signe, there's someone else I think you should talk to while you're here,” he said in parting. He gave me the name and number of a woman who worked and lived in Glastonbury. “She might be a better person to speak with if you want to get behind some of the mystery of the faeries.” I slipped the number into my wallet and we said our goodbyes.

—ANNA FRANKLIN,
WORKING WITH FAIRIES

 

 

 

 

 

 

O
VER fish and chips that night, Raven described the ceremony she'd devised for us to conduct in the Chalice Well Garden.

“If you want to see the faeries,” she said, “I would be very surprised if this doesn't do the trick.” The students from her Mystery School, a weekly class that she teaches, had undertaken shamanic journeys on our behalf and created a ceremony for us, for which I was completely game. She and I were to sit back-to-back somewhere outside, bring candles to light, chocolate to leave as a gesture of friendship, and mirrors to lay in the grass so that the faeries could see themselves sparkling in the night. Raven had brought with her only the best chocolate for our soon-to-be faery friends—bars upon bars of Toblerone. And we'd already been partaking, I had to admit. It was all, you know, just practice for the big night. We split a bottle of chardonnay and lingered over our dinner, knowing that the sun wouldn't set until nine or later that night.

Hunger satisfied, we returned to the inn to freshen up for our nighttime sojourn into the Chalice Well Garden. I sat on the edge of the bed as Raven packed her supplies into a small satchel, adding her iPod so that she could record the whole evening, just in case anything unusual occurred. We dressed up in our finery—Raven in a white dress she wears for all her ceremonies, and I with my red hair twisted and pinned at the nape of my neck, a nod to the Raphaelite paintings that felt oh so faery to me.

My heart was beating in my throat as we stepped into the night. Raven took my hand, and we made our way up the path and through the gate toward King Arthur's Court—the waterfall of the Chalice Well that fed into the Healing Pool. We passed the garden lamp where Raven had seen the short figure flash by years ago, and continued up the path into the dark, following the sound of the clear running water. Maybe normal people would have thought wandering through a deserted garden in the middle of the night was awesome. Me? Not so much. I felt like there was someone behind me, breathing down my neck in the dark. I felt like there were a thousand eyes in the trees. I felt like we were intruders, out of our element and unwelcome. But Raven, oblivious to it all, carried on blithely. The waterfall, which had seemed so tame during the day when I'd encountered that friendly little bird, now felt wild and dangerous. I kept my gaze fixed on the back of Raven's head as we hiked uphill, past the gently trickling Lion's Head Fountain, under the long tunnel of the arbor. The breeze played with my hair as we emerged on the meadow, and it was a relief to see the open evening sky.

“Where should we go?” Raven whispered.

“How about we sit under that old tree?” I gestured. It had caught my attention earlier that day because it looked just as one would imagine a faery tree
should
look—ancient and gnarled . . . rather like the trees I'd seen near the Scorhill Circle. Close to a thick row of hedges that marked the edge of the garden, a thick, low branch jutted out from the trunk at waist level, barring access in a way, keeping it secret, untrodden, if only visually. We went around the back of the tree and thought it would be polite, since the area felt so secluded, to ask permission to enter. We lit the candles and set them out in a circle around us, placed the mirrors on the grass, and put one near the trunk of the tree. I stood next to Raven as she lifted her arms and began speaking, calling in the directions, her voice resonating in the quiet night.

“Spirit of the East, spirit of air, we come before you with empty hands and open hearts, teach us, show us how to live . . .”

As she went through each of the directions, she softly explained that this would cast a protective circle around us, one that would also help us tune in with the energies of the earth. When the circle was complete, we sank down in the grass back-to-back. I felt safer this way, even though the darkness was thick all around us. Raven said aloud that we were there to connect with the faeries, in whatever way they saw fit. More than a few of her students had come out of their journeys to advise that we should be very clear about our intentions. In light of this fact, I decided perhaps I would write the faeries a letter. I pulled it from my pocket now and began to read aloud. I told them how I wanted so badly to know if there was magic, still, in the world, and that to me, they represented everything magical there is. I told them I believed as a little girl, that I'd loved them, that I hoped I'd been loved by them, and that if we could make this connection, maybe through sharing any experiences I was granted, I could help others believe once more.

We were quiet for a moment then, not quite knowing what to expect. My eyes searched the bushes and trees all around us, watching, waiting. Mentally I willed something to happen.
Okay . . . here I am! Sitting in the dark . . .

Suddenly, something began to move in the bushes at the edge of the clearing. Raven was facing the open slope of the meadow, but I was facing a dense, tall crop of grasses with thick hedges beyond. I froze. I could hear the rustling—
shuffle, shuffle.
(Pause.)
Shuffle, shuffle
. It couldn't be more than ten feet away from me, by the sound of it. It seemed to move matter-of-factly, and I could hear it getting closer. I tried to keep calm, but I felt my chest tightening. I reached back and clutched Raven's arms, linking them in mine. I could tell her ears were keenly perked as well, but she was radiating excitement.
Shuffle, shuffle
. . . I couldn't see what it was, but
something
was coming toward me. My legs felt vulnerable, my bare feet so close to the edge of the circle, to the edge of the grass. Any moment it was going to appear—was it some kind of animal? I really didn't want to freak out; this was where it counted.

But some sort of Homer Simpson-like noise issued itself from my mouth.

“Neeeaaahhhhhhhhhh . . .” I said, pulling my legs into my chest. Just as I thought I was going to have to shout “Stop!” as soon as it had come, it was gone. My heart was clamoring inside my chest.

“Raven, I did
not
like that. I did
not
like that at all.”

She patted my arm, completely unfazed. “Do you want to go in?”

God, I was such a sissy! “No,” I said, reluctantly. “But can we switch places?”

I mean, come on! It was only natural that the brazen sorceress with the magical powers should be facing the
scary
part of the hill, right?

“Maybe we should sing,” Raven suggested. So we sang . . . and it was truly challenging to come up with songs that a faery might like. According to legend, faeries possess the most beautiful voices and create the most unearthly enchanted music imaginable. Uh, what have we got that compares?

I heard Raven shuffling through her bag as I was winding up with my contribution—an off-key rendition of “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” and she picked up her iPod to see the time.

“Well, Sigs, we've been at it for fifty minutes,” she said. “But we can obviously stay out here as long as you'd like . . .”

“Let's stay out a little longer,” I said, wanting to be patient. We decided to sit in silence for a while, taking in the night.

We'd been sitting quietly for a few minutes when I was startled by Raven letting out a loud gasp.

It scared the living hell out of me.

“What? What is it?” I whispered urgently.

“Oh my God!” she said, her voice filled with wonder. “Signe! Do you see it?”

“No! See what?”

“Oh my God, they're everywhere!” She sounded shocked, almost beyond words.

“
What?
What are you seeing?”

“I—I'm seeing little lights everywhere. You're not seeing this?” I could feel her moving her head from side to side in disbelief.

“No,” I whispered fiercely. “I'm not seeing anything.” My eyes strained in the darkness. I turned to look over her shoulder and saw nothing but black.

“Signe,” she said seriously, “they are
definitely
here. I cannot
believe
you're not seeing this! They're zooming
right over your head
!”

Of course they were. They were probably thumbing their noses at me while they performed the opener from
Riverdance
on my forehead. But I thought a moment. What if this was really happening for her? Why couldn't I see it?

“Tell me what you're seeing,” I whispered, my brow knit in concentration. “No, wait, don't tell me. I don't want to have any impressions for my mind to work with . . .”

But Raven wasn't listening. She was laughing, laughing in delight, and looking around her in utter amazement.

“Oh,” she whispered reverently, “thank you . . . thank you . . .”

I rolled my eyes. I didn't want to accuse her of making this up, and I certainly didn't want to disrespect her, but how could I know if what she was claiming to experience was real?

“Signe, seriously, they keep just zipping right over your head. I can't believe you're not seeing this.”

I felt my frustration flare, but I made myself sit quietly, squinting around me, hoping to see something, until she let out a long sigh that signaled the event, such as it was, was over. If there was nothing there, it meant I couldn't trust my friend's accounts. Every instinct in me, since I first met her, had told me that Raven was the real deal. But if there
was
something there, why wasn't I able to see it? I was, once again, being snubbed by the faeries.

 

That night we unwound by nibbling on some Toblerone and reading in our respective beds. Raven was knee-deep in
The Teachings of Don Juan
, by Carlos Castaneda, and I had flipped open Janet Bord's book on faery sites to a section on the Isle of Man. As I thumbed through, I was astounded—the author had devoted nearly ten pages to this place that I'd barely even heard of, and there were no fewer than sixteen well-known sites on the tiny island! Then again, Wales, where the author had lived for the past thirty years, had an astonishing sixty pages. It would be far better to head there next—and I was far closer to Wales than to the Isle of Man. On the other hand, I would be driving Raven back across the country to Oxshott at the end of our trip, so I'd be equally far from both places, it seemed. How to decide, how to decide . . .

The next morning we went to check our email at an Internet café in town, where I discovered, with nausea-inducing shock, that my car accident in Chagford would
not
be covered by my insurance, as I'd been led to believe.

I began to panic. This could cost me thousands of dollars. That was my budget for the whole summer. I would be stuck in the United Kingdom, starving and alone, with no way to get home, no way to pay my bills that were accumulating there in my absence.

Slowly it dawned on me that this had faery mischief written all over it. I seethed with anger. How
dare
they? I had given up
everything
to come here for them. I'd left everything behind in this stupid effort to believe. And what
was
this, some kind of test? I had tried to be forthright in my skepticism, but always respectful, and I considered myself a hopeful skeptic at that. How could they have let this happen to the one woman who was trying to revive them, trying to champion them?

After I'd exhausted myself venting to Raven, I decided to switch gears and call Peter's acquaintance. Anything to set aside the growing knot in my stomach.

I flipped open my UK cell and dialed the number I had jotted down. When a woman answered, I explained why I wanted to speak with her, but she seemed very reluctant to meet me.

“Please,” I begged, “it would mean so much for the book. I can respect whatever terms you'd like . . . I'd just really like to talk with you.”