The Book of Faeyore (2 page)

          “Ew!” I sprang to my feet. “Logan’s not like…
that
.” I wasn’t sure what
like that
was, but according to the girls in my class, it involved a lot of awkward text messaging and some sweaty hand-holding. “He’s like my brother. I’ve known him since we were five.”

          “Hey – if you don’t get the good ones now, they’ll all be taken up by the time you…” Annie stopped in mid-sentence. “Hey, Bree, where did you put that package again?”

          “On the kitchen table, why?”

          Annie looked up in confusion.

          “That’s weird,” she said, rummaging around the kitchen. “It’s not there. In fact – it’s missing…”

         
A
nnie and I spent a good two hours hunting for the package, but neither of us could find it. Annie was convinced that I’d mislaid it in my usual, absent-minded way, but I wasn’t so sure. I was positive I’d left it on the kitchen table – right on top of the rest of the mail – but no matter how much I protested to Annie, she kept looking.

          “We can’t have just dreamed it up!” she insisted. “You saw the package – same as me.”

          “Maybe it had some food in it…” I theorized. “You know sometimes when we don’t leave the bathroom window shut right foxes come in and eat whatever’s loose.”

          “You think a fox ate it?”  

          “It makes more sense than the package just magically vanishing.”

          “But who would send you food?”

          “Who would send me anything wrapped in leaves and twig?”

          Annie had to admit I had a point there. But even if it
had
been a fox – an answer we settled upon after two fruitless hours of looking behind the stove – something felt weird. Wrong, even. I had a curious sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. First the mysterious Book I had seen in my mother’s room– which I could have
sworn
had spoken to me – and now this? Maybe I was just dreaming things – maybe I had accidentally thrown away the package and just forgotten about it. We had learned in school about weird diseases that made you forget what you were doing, or start to hallucinate. I looked at myself in the mirror. I certainly didn’t look like I had any weird disease, I thought: my tongue hadn’t turned black and my eyes were the same light purple color they always were. But as my mind kept turning back to the strange events of the afternoon, I began to wonder if my brain wasn’t playing tricks on me after all. “Maybe you can contact the delivery company to ask who sent the package,” I said. “At least that way we’ll know what’s inside.”

          “It can’t disappear just like that,” Annie said. She looked some more before she gave up. “Maybe you can ask your mom about the package when she gets back.”

          Luckily, we didn’t have too long to wait – no sooner did Annie give up on ever finding the package then we heard the sound of a car in the driveway. My mother had returned home from work – just past eight o’clock, as usual. Her job meant that she had to commute into town most days for meetings, and I was lucky if she got back in time to watch a little TV together before bed. Annie left hurriedly – feeling as embarrassed and nervous about the missing package as I did – leaving me alone with my mother.

          “Did you have a good dinner, kiddo?” My mother hugged me.

          “I’m still hungry,” I said. We’d spent so much time looking for the package that we’d forgotten to eat, and the chocolate ice cream was already a thing of the past.

          My mother looked nervously at the empty fridge. “Pizza?” she said.

          “Pizza!”

          My mother joked that her pantry contained exactly one item – the Yellow Pages. When Annie didn’t feed me enough – or when she herself was hungry – she rang one of the five different delivery places in town. They all knew her by the sound of her voice.

          “Yep, Dom, it’s Raine. The usual, please?”

          My mother snuggled up to me on the couch when she’d finished ordering. “Good day, sweetheart?”

          I told my mother about the package. “But what I don’t get is – who sends me things? Your sister Daisy wouldn’t – international shipping is so expensive….” I looked up. “You don’t think it’s from…uh…the other side of the family?”

          I was always careful bringing up my father around my mother. I didn’t want her to think I missed him, or that I was curious about him, or that I didn’t think she was good enough on her own. But every so often, when mysterious things started to happen around me, I couldn’t help but wonder about the biggest mystery in my life.

          “No, I doubt it.” My mother laughed. “Your dad’s side of the family wouldn’t get in touch unless it was a matter of life or death, you know that.”

          It was our secret joke – that my father was a secret CIA agent who had to keep his identity hidden. I was old enough to figure out that this wasn’t quite true, but it still made me laugh. Deep down, though, I couldn’t help but wonder:
was he
?

           We spent the rest of the night watching television together – enjoying the relaxing fun of some mindless teen dramas with the remainder of our stock of ice cream – but no sooner had I gotten back to my room than I felt a strange sensation – like I was being watched. I put down my backpack on my bed. It had suddenly started to feel strangely heavy. Another shiver went down my spine.

          I opened the backpack and nearly yelped in surprise. There it was – the package – just as I had seen it earlier that day. But I
had
checked my backpack – I was sure of that! I had looked everywhere for the package, and it definitely hadn’t been in there. Was I just hallucinating, going crazy? Had I just missed it?

          I shook my head, willing myself to ignore the unsettling feeling in my stomach. I put the package in my lap. Suddenly, I began to hear a strange, murmuring sound in my ear – a sound that was strangely familiar.

          “Faeyore…” It was muffled, this time – like a whisper. “Faeyore.”

          I unwrapped the package halfway, but felt something touch me.

          “Ow!” I dropped it in surprise. Whatever I had touched had felt…strangely warm.

          I looked down in shock. Sitting before me was a book just like the one I had seen on my mother’s desk. The sound grew louder. “Faeyore! Faeyore!”

          I reached out to touch it, my hands shaking. It was warm – warm like a human hand – pulsing and throbbing with life, as if it had a heartbeat all its own. I began to shiver. Should I pull back – run? But something within me told me to stay; I felt as if an invisible hand were moving my own towards the cover, prying the book open.

          It was empty.

          At first I furrowed my brow, disappointed. All this strangeness surrounding an empty book?

          But then I gasped. Dark letters were appearing, one by one, on the milky white page.

         
IN THE BEGINNING before there was life, there was magic. The great Mystery of the world hung over all that was and was not. The great primordial magic of the void – deeper than the deepest sea and darker than the darkest night – was beyond imagination. But out of that void came THAT WHICH IS – the two worlds, Mortal and Fey, the one alongside the other. The ancient magic divided into two worlds. Those that saw the magic for what it was, and were wise, and were magical – and those that could not see, and so could not attain the same gifts. The first Mortal and the first Fey were created equal – but the Mortal closed his eyes before the magic and cried aloud:

            “I cannot bear the sight!”   

            And so he was blinded, that he would never more be forced to bear the sight of magic. But among the Fey people the vision remained, more brilliant than anything we have seen in our meager modern times – they were thought to be made of thousands of shimmering lights, of an energy that came directly from the Great Mystery itself. They lived together at first, the Fey and the Humans – the Fey using their great gifts to guide their blinded brothers. The Great Fey Mother – for so did they call the source of their magic – had after all given birth to both humans and Fey in her birth agonies, and so although half of her children could not see or hear their mother she nevertheless trusted the Fey to deliver her love to them. The Fey protected and cared for the humans.

            And then one day one of the Fey cried out “why? Why must we, who have been obedient, serve the follies of our brothers who were disobedient? Why must we who are strong work for those who are weak?””

            “Fie!” cried the Great Fey Mother. “Speak not so. Speak not in these words. For I love my human children – and it is love that bids me to protect them even when they have rejected me.”

            “Love!” cried this Fey. “And is it Love that keeps us bound? Keeps us from fulfilling our true powers?”

            “Very well,” said the Great Fey Mother. “You will have your wish. You will no longer be forced to serve humans. You will be granted your own world – the world of the FEY. But this gift will come at a price. The gift of love, so freely granted to humans, will be denied you – for the humans were meek and humble before me, turning away their eyes, while the Fey were proud and looked upon me bare. Since you refuse to acknowledge your brothers’ gift, you will be denied it entirely! You shall be strong – but you shall not love!”

            And thus did she strike the earth, and from the depths arose the Crystal River, shining with great light. And from that day forth humans and Fey were divided into two worlds – one, a world of great power, the other, a world of great love.

            “And thus will they be divided,” said the Great Fey Mother, “until one comes who can unite these worlds – and teach the Fey how to love.”

           
I looked up in confusion. What was I reading? I’d never read stories like this – not in any of my mother’s collections. Sleeping Beauty this wasn’t. Yet I could feel my heart pounding against my chest; I had grown breathless with anticipation. The night spread out outside my window; the stars twirled and twinkled. Something within these words connected with something within my soul – something true. My very blood seemed to respond to the beauty of the book’s words.

         
I have to tell Logan.

          No sooner had the thought struck me than I laughed at myself for my foolishness. Logan would think I was crazy if I told him about a magic book and a package that kept disappearing.

          But somehow – deep down – I knew he had to know.

         
T
he next day, school couldn’t come quickly enough. I tried my best to sleep, but every time I closed my eyes, I could see the glimmering outlines of the Faeyore Book before me. No sooner had I nodded off to something like sleep than I would awaken, a voice ringing in my ears. “Faeyore!” “Faeyore!” Finally I gave up trying to sleep altogether, and instead spent the rest of the night staring at my ceiling. Was I going crazy, I wondered? Any normal person would tell me that the things I had seen and heard today were impossible – books didn’t just appear and disappear, and they certainly didn’t talk or write themselves. But deep down, behind this queasy feeling in the pit on my stomach, I felt strangely sure that what I had seen was real, after all. The chills at the back of my neck and the shivers going up and down my spine seemed to tell me that my body, at least, recognized the truth of what I had seen.

          I looked for Logan in the locker room in vain. We didn’t have any classes together this year except for P.E., so it was a relief when – after a day of fruitless searching – we were finally running laps alongside each other at two in the afternoon.

          I loved running with Logan. He was young, but he had hit his growth spurt earlier than the other boys, and could easily outstrip even the popular Paul Thompson, undisputed jock champion of Gregory Junior High. And he was never “too cool” to wait for me to catch up. Not that he made it easy for me. Logan always stayed a few steps ahead of me as we ran, challenging me to force myself to run faster, to work harder. Challenging me to get the adrenaline running through my veins. On this particular afternoon, though, I didn’t feel much like being challenged; I wanted to talk to Logan.

          “Hello, stranger!” I called out, struggling to keep up with Logan’s long, lithe strides.

          In the distance I could see Clariss’ pretty blue eyes narrow with jealousy. Beautiful and popular, Clariss seemed to never be satisfied with the dozens of boys already desperately in love with her. She wanted to have what other people had, too. And I got the distinct impression she wanted Logan. Her sour face made it clear what she was thinking: she thought Logan and I were a couple. I blushed at the implication, as I had done with Annie yesterday evening.
Dating
, as far as I was concerned, was something Clariss did to stay popular – and it wasn’t something I was particularly interested in one way or the other, especially at twelve. I didn’t care who asked me to the movies or who slow danced with me at the Junior High Formal. All I knew was that I liked to spend time in Logan’s company. But if letting Clariss think that Logan and I were dating would knock that smug smile off her face, well, I was all for it.