Moonchild, A Faerie's Tale

Episode 4: Journey. Moonchild agonizes over Eleanor's diagnosis of Consumption. She doesn't know if she can help Eleanor or not, so Moonchild departs the safety of the farm for advice.

An intense Moonchild zoomed down the staircase after departing Eleanor’s room, her brilliant glow not stemming from contentedness or happiness but from vital intention. The contented expression on little Eleanor’s face remained steadfast in her thoughts along with the distressed expression mother exhibited when the doctor somberly cited “consumption” for Eleanor’s ills. Now she had a name for the disease she sensed in Eleanor. Moonchild did not fully understand human hurt, pain, and disease, but if anyone in the fairierealm understood the affliction Eleanor faced, she knew who that one would be.

Ahead of her, the secret portal flew open in the doorframe, and Moonchild burst through, disregarding the doctor departing from the driveway on his horse-drawn carriage. She quickly sped past right across the backyard. Many of the neighbors had departed, though a few remained, scattered about wandering, talking in pairs, or tending distressed animals.

Moonchild made directly for her fairiedial and alighted within the ring’s center. The superior glossy black circlestone remained dead center as always, being the pivot point for the five stones that she moved around according to the annual seasons. As faeries habitually go, Moonchild was very gentle and lenient on most issues, but communicating the importance of the black circlestone to remain in place, untouched, continued an adamant instruction to Eleanor except, which she did not tell her little human playmate, in case of a faerie emergency and this indeed was such an emergency.

Moonchild, without hesitation or due caution, gripped the edge of the glossy black circlestone, flipped it up on edge, and pushed it over, revealing another black stone�"an access hatch. This stone was dark, dull, and nondescript, overtly plain to avoid curiosity if seen. Moonchild pushed the grass aside around the stone’s eastern edge until she found a small pebble. She kneeled on the ground beside the large stone and centered herself over the small pebble.

Moonchild spread both hands wide and placed them on the stone. With a deep, intense concentration and a firm hold, she twisted the small pebble. It swiveled, popping open the larger stone that revealed a dark cavity beneath. She glanced over her shoulder out of habit, but she didn’t really scan for observers. Standing up and glancing down, she jumped feet first into the hole while holding her gown from flying up over her head. She disappeared down within.

The cavity below was modest. Dropping to the bottom, only twice as deep as her tiny height, she scanned about taking it all in once again with some deep-rooted memories arising within her. The sun shone down into the hole at a steep angle, illuminating the suspended dust.

Moonchild hadn’t entered her cache for a few years, and dust covered the jewels and powder bags that lay situated in small carved out niches. She turned around and studied the jewels’ beauty despite their filthy covering. There was an exquisite blue marble-like stone, a gold nugget, and a couple other circlestones, but none of those pieces was the one she sought.

In the back, within a special stone-lined niche, a gleaming mother of pearl pebble sat perched, balanced, on-edge and appearing almost alive. As Moonchild moved in its direction it appeared to become unbalanced in color, shape, and density�"in reality, it was so. Moonchild studied it with a smile and notwithstanding her haste, approached it slowly, stepping to one side then the other. The pebble’s white-blue colors swirled and reflected her position wherever she moved.

She moved closer to the pebble and a bright sun-like luminous spot pinpointed and bulged out to touch her. Moonchild reached out with her palm and in the instant before her open palm touched the pebble, the bulge swelled out to touch and mold with her hand. She felt its warmth, its humming power; she saw the patterns swirl in happy brilliant swirls, stripes, and spins. This was not just another pretty pebble; this was her faeriefinderorb.

Closely guarded against discovery by all natural, and supernatural entities, she avoided entry into the cache over the years to prevent inadvertently exposing it to open air and prying eyes. The worry of the outside chance of the orb falling into the wrong hands was her main concern. Moonchild was desperate now and willing to take the risk. She picked up the orb and holding it in the sun’s beam, she froze, thinking she heard a voice from above, on the surface. Human? Or worse, pixie?

Moonchild moved over to directly under the hole and looked up. She saw a circle of sky and a sprig of willow branch. Taking a deep breath, she flittered her wings and slowly lifted off from the dusty cache’s floor. Headfirst, she emerged from the hole and twisted around to check the vicinity. No one there.

She let out her held breath with a rush and flew up to settle on the lawn next to the hole. The wind had come up, jangling her wind chimes and whistling through the willow branches. She reassured herself that she was just uneasy�"imagining things. A faerie imagining things�"she shook her head. She smiled but sobered and pushed down the access stone and heaved the fairiedial circlestone overtop. She then repositioned it ever so carefully into place even though her most prized possession was no longer within. Again checking about, she stood and pivoted about to check once again for intruders.

With the orb in hand, Moonchild immediately took off flying low and swift heading east, the general direction where the faerie she sought resided. She left the still smoldering barn remnants behind, along with the concerned neighbors, the distressed family inside the house including her beloved Eleanor, and the countless other friends such as the birds, animals, and insects. Her thoughts touched them all as she stealthily hugged the browning grass that grew taller beyond the backyard providing cover for her flight. She was a fearful but resolute faerie on her imperative questing journey.

Well on her way, she knew faeries were not destined to journey, to travel away once they were embedded in their designated fairielocade. Moonchild had remained in her locade fairieinstinctual from her beginning when the young couple first settled there in the small one room cabin, then the shed, barn, and finally the big white house.

Now the barn was gone, would the family leave? What did this mean for her, the resident faerie? Moonchild worried on this as she ducked, ascended, banked, and zoomed across the hayfield following the deepest cover and low ground. Buckeye butterflies flew alongside or ducked aside, startled grasshoppers popped up out of the grass wondering what she was, and birds looked on with interest.

Moonchild didn’t need to employ the orb yet, for her innate ability to tell direction was exceptionally accurate night and day. At first leaving the familiar farmland, she wasn’t at all confident of her directional ability, but soon realized that she could distinguish the four compass directions with precise intervals between, derived from a dead reckoning on magnetic north. It was just one of those fairieabilities she hadn’t needed to rely on before.

She concentrated on her journey, but it was difficult not to continue pondering her past. Her faerie existence had been copasetic over the many years since the then young couple master/John and mother/Mildred had arrived. She remembered her determination to entice young Mildred into sensing and believing in faeries, but it was too late for Mildred even back then�"mature, married, and soon with child�"a son, Joseph. An adult human had no time for such nonsense, as most non-believers would describe faeriekind in the human world’s language.

Moonchild was not successful in converting a non-believer until years later when Eleanor discovered Moonchild or perhaps it was the other way around. Considering the current and wonderful connection between them, they preferentially considered their first meeting a mutually advantageous acquaintance.

Moonchild slowed for the hedgerow lined with bouncing brilliant orange black-eyed susans that set a pretty margin between hedge and pasture. She knew the local gnomes lived here in the row because the Gnome Gus had pointed out the location, but now with no time for socializing, she zoomed through the susans and up, through the branches of a p***y willow bush to pop out on the hedgerow’s other side.

Unfortunately, she quickly saw it was a newly plowed field, no grass, flowers, nor weeds to hide her passage. Moonchild’s fervor dropped a bit being not that far from her faerielocade, and she was already afraid of disclosure. In her departure’s haste, Moonchild had not realized she couldn’t fly a beeline directly to her destination, and that she would have to take detours for cover’s protection. She stopped and settled down to determine her path. This field was open, dry, and wide as far as she could see to the north and east. To the south, not that far, was a meandering thicket, maybe a streambed maybe it was even her brook’s tributary.

Moonchild took off, hugging the hedgerow going south, staying in the dry weeds and low brush that formed the boundary between thick hedgerow and barren dirt field. Like a firefly in the daytime, she flew single-mindedly quick, close to the foliage dodging low-hanging limbs and dry sticky weeds left behind after plowing. She rose up over a hill and began a slight descent. She continued full speed down into the gentle dale approaching the thicket running more or less perpendicular to the hedgerow. She was relieved to find the thicket did follow a small streambed.

Moonchild banked over and followed the streambed going east again for several minutes, staying close to the water, so she didn’t have to dodge the trees and brush along the water’s edges. After winding in the serpentine route, she found after awhile that the stream headed almost due south. This wouldn’t do.

Up ahead, she saw another west-east running hedgerow and banked up into it to fly east again. In just a little while, she came up near a farm, but she was relieved to see that the hedgerow was safely a ways away from the buildings, so she didn’t have to worry. Her orb began to swirl and hum. A faerie is nearby, Moonchild thought. Even though the allure to meet another faerie was strong, she pressed on knowing she mustn’t dally in social sojourns.

Into the afternoon she flew, following hedgerows whenever she could, making turns to go north, south, and east to maintain a generally eastern direction. Twice more the orb indicated a faerie close enough to detect, but Moonchild did not waver one bit. She came to a large lake and had to circumvent it around to the south, through a thick wood. Many animals she normally didn’t encounter lived within the forest: deer, foxes, rabbits, opossum, and birds aplenty, and apparently, also a family of gnomes.

She caught the gnome patriarch off guard with her swift and stealthy approach because when he saw her flutter his direction he dove under a cluster of toadstools. Moonchild felt guilty and swung back to hover several feet from the toadstools.

“Kind sir gnome, don’t be alarmed, I am Moonchild of the Easternclan of Faeries,” she said, alighting for a resting seat on a large Douglas fir cone.

The stout gnome peeked out and with immediate recognition, looked about with a nervous frown. Moonchild waved politely, watching the gnome’s deep down-turned lip and eye wrinkles arch upwards. He crawled out from beneath the toadstools and stood up while brushing his hands off.

“Welcome, welcome fair-haired faerie Moonchild to our humble shady woods,” he said, walking closer. “Am George, patriarch of the Gnosh Forest Gnomes.”

“Very fine to meet you, sir. Again, sorry to alarm you during your labors.”

“Sure, sure,” he waved casually. “Am not alarmed. Lost something under those stools�"am retrieving it.”

“I’m glad, not being of these parts and the making of you, a new acquaintance,” said Moonchild. “I am making my way around your grand lake on the south and now heading to the north. I am on a quest of assistance from another of my kind.” 

“Yes, yes of course,” George beamed. “But you said of the Eastern Faerie Clan?”

“Well, yes, they are my embedders.”

“No, not that far then, for I know of a faerieconstellation not a two-day gnome walk from here�"in the general direction you persist�"there in Leicester, the big people call it.”

“Oh, how wonderful!” Moonchild glowed brightly.

 George took a step back and held his arm up to shield his eyes from Moonchild’s glow. “My, my! You are a powerful lady faerie.”

“My vital quest and the proximity to my kind illuminate me.”

“Willy-nilly, indeed,” said George, picking up pinecones to begin a new pile. He stopped with a thought. “Only a couple human abodes on your path ahead, and from what I know are very friendly to fairiekind�"young female humans.”

“Ah good, for a human child of my own requires my help, and that is why I search for my relatives. Excuse me, for I must not dawdle. It has been pleasant George Gnosh, wishing bright labor-filled days to you and yours.” She fluttered up and back-flittered away.

“Nice, nice, very nice to make your acquaintance, miss faerie Moonchild, and good tidings on said quest.”

Last Moonchild saw, George had raised a hand, dropped it, and returned to his labors. She flew vigorously onward.

The lake was very large, larger than she had thought on her first approach, and it had a large creek pouring in that lay across her path. Moonchild felt defenseless and exposed flying across the wide, shallow creek’s rushing water, but she didn’t stop to worry over the crossing. She made it quick enough and found that the lake’s shore bowed back slightly northward, so she felt that she had to head due east again.

Not a two-day gnome walk, George had said.

 Moonchild calculated in day-fractions how long it should take her as she continued dodging trees’ branches, ferns, and rocks. She surmised that persisting at her present velocity, it could be as little as a third of a daytime period providing all due luck to her mission.

Keep your eyes open and don’t take any risks now, she advised herself.

With a course correction to the east, the late day sun lay low behind her, making narrow slatted sunbeams from the gaps in the trees. In the dimming purplish light, she saw the forest’s edge begin to thin with open land lying beyond. Within a minute, the forest’s trees fell behind her with the countryside and the twilight-falling sky yawning open wide.

Moonchild continued onward feeling more at ease in the fields but serious darkness began to fall about her. Her sharp faerie eyes perceived everything in lowlight as well as daylight, so the lack of light did not impede her speed; however, she was aware of perils that depend on the night’s darkness.

A cluster of houses and barns lay ahead of her, and she veered around to the north sailing past only a few meters from one backyard. A pair of young girls strolled along the yard’s edge; Moonchild heard them as she passed by.

“Look there, two lights flying�"big and little.” One said, “A firefly mother holding a baby.”

“I don’t think that is a firefly mother, it is too large.  Perhaps it is a faerie holding something,” said the other.

 “Oh, that would be grand!” They squealed. “Let’s give chase.”

Moonchild thought about introducing herself but instead held her orb out forward of her body and flew flatter and faster, quickly leaving the girls behind.

 “Come back little sweet faerie,” one girl shouted, but Moonchild flew out of earshot in short order.      

 Total darkness enclosed Moonchild while she maintained her frantic velocity east. Of course as she went along, other flickering, flying lights caught her attention at times, but they only turned out to be in reality, fireflies. Lights in farmhouses whizzed by with hardly her notice.

Estimating her distance from George’s suggestion, she thought that her destination must be near and the orb responded to the proximity of another faerie, alternating its directional indication between her and the other faerie presence to the northeast. She commanded the orb to disregard her indication in its search. Accordingly, she deviated in the orb’s indicated orientation over a stubbly field of harvested hay toward the weak pinpricks of light laying on the horizon. She sensed they indicated her destination.

Traveling diagonally across the field, a triplet of coyotes broadcasted their presence with howls and whimpers off to her left, so she veered right giving them added clearance. There was no need to tangle with them tonight, she thought. The pinpricks of light grew in her sharp vision to be the windows of another house, and her excitement grew as her orb swirled with its indication focusing straight ahead. Moonchild pressed on through a thicket of woods and brush, around a pond, and past a small herd of cows bedded down.

A huge L-shaped barn loomed ahead, blotting the stars out causing Moonchild to slow down and take stock of her surroundings. The orb’s focus stayed hard ahead and then quivered to the right, directing her toward the house. She couldn’t imagine the faerie she sought would be close to the house, so she veered further to the south of the house.

Suddenly, a flash darted toward her from a clump of white birches. The light flicked right and left and then toward her rapidly. Moonchild slowed and stopped. The light came closer and closer becoming bluish as the orb spun wildly. The figure of a male faerie formed as the glow slowed its approach, and she was surprised how large the faerie appeared.

“Good evening, fellow faerie. I sincerely wish your journey was safe and prudent.” The male faerie smiled and glowed brighter. “I recognized you far off, fair daughter Moonchild,” said the large blue faerie with a dignified nod.

“Indeed the journey was both noble father�"Moondazewaxing,” Moonchild said curtsying.

“No need for such formality from neither of us, daughter. Come here,” Moondazewaxing reached out and he and Moonchild embraced for a few long moments. He held her out at arms length. “I see recent damage to a wing. I hope not danger endured during said travels.”

“No, no,” Moonchild said. “It has started to grow back. I damaged it in a terrible fire at the abode of my humans.”

“So sad when terrible things happen to our humans as I have witnessed for myself.  How brusque of me. Is that the reason for your journey? All your humans have passed?”

“The family lives on though damaged somewhat,” Moonchild said, with sigh.

“A relief daughter for no faerie should ever lose an entire human family,” He hesitated. “Though it happens�"as with fairemaidenChild.”

“Mother? Endured such a tortuous event?”

Moondazewaxing nodded his head sadly, “Yes, her glow never fully returned until she finally succumbed.”

“Why wasn’t I told of this,” Moonchild said.

“It is the way of faeriedom,” he said, holding his palms out flat. “We do not share unpleasant incidents, and also, it is very seldom we meet with faerie relatives as we converse at this moment.” He looked away. “Faeries, once we are embedded on our fairielocade, stay in place without visitations unless dire circumstances intervene. Do I assume such circumstances exist?”

“Yes,” Moonchild said, nodding sadly. “My human female child, a friend, is dying.”

“How sad, but that is the way of humans.” He shrugged with a gesture of nonchalance. “There will be others.”

“You do not fully understand, father.” Moonchild hovered with intensity. “She is my friend, she sees me, hears me, speaks to me. A dearest human friend as I have never experienced before.”

“Oh, I see,” Moondazewaxing said, sitting down on a stone. “You are lucky my child, very lucky indeed, for it is very rare to experience such a perceptive human, though I have heard of instances.”

“But she is dying!” Moonchild cried. “I had hoped you would understand and�"help.” 

“I do understand,” her father said, nodding. “It is simply the way of those instances I have alluded to. As for helping? Sit my daughter.” He waved her down beside him. She slowly alighted on the stone.

“Those instances of faerieperceptive human children I mentioned always end the same. In opposition to what happened to your mother, these special children seem to burn out. They burn bright, so bright and perceptive, they see our faeriekind and can interact with us, but these children do not burn for long, like your friend�"”

“Eleanor,” Moonchild said, her glow fading.

“Ah, named after the sun’s most brilliant rays, how fitting.” He smiled grimly at his daughter. “Prepare and be strong for her departure from her humanrealm, however�"” He paused, looking away. “There is one particular course of action a selfless faeriekind may attempt�"if a faerie is especially fervent and predisposed.” He paused again. “No, I would not, should not reveal that option to my daughter�"”

Without hesitation, Moonchild pleaded. “Anything it takes, father. I am willing.”

Moondazewaxing paused and sighed deciding whether to tell Moonchild the faeriesecret or not.

Moonchild recognized his indecision, so she leaned in and said, “Father, please I must know.”

When he finally relented and began to explain what she might attempt to save her friend, both father and daughter’s glows abated. He hesitated, glanced away and down before continuing. As he began again, providing the details and uncertain outcome, Moonchild’s eyes grew wide and her already weak glow paled to naught   

 

         

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[wondering]

Adventure, antisipation, like the end of a good book waiting for the next one to come out