DISCOVERING FAIRYLAND (1)

A man spends his day off work by walking down a country lane when he finds himself in a most unexpected place.

“It is,” thought Jeremy Cumming to himself, “it is a day when just about anything might be expected to happen. That’s it! An anything sort of sunny day in summer, so I’d best look where I plant my feet.”

And he did look, very carefully. He gazed down at first one foot, then the other, as he walked down the sweet and cosy lane on the outskirts of the pretty little village of Briddleton.

“That’s odd!” he thought suddenly, out of the blue, “that’s very odd indeed! The world, for a moment, seemed to ripple, and worlds don’t do that! Do they?”

But he couldn’t answer himself because, in all honesty, ne thought the question might be bordering on the nonsensical, so he carried on, humming to himself almost melodically, until he came to a large road sign with a heraldic device involving wings and sugar plums engraved on it and the message WELCOME TO FAIRYLAND in gigantic black letters.

“Someone’s playing silly games,” he muttered, “Fairyland, indeed.”

Then, mere minutes later, he came upon a second sign and almost choked when he read FAIRYLAND WELCOMES CAREFUL DRIVERS”, also in thick black letters.

“Arrant nonsense!” snorted Jeremy to himself.

“That’s unduly discourteous of you,” said a voice just behind him, and he spun round because he’s been absolutely one hundred per-cent sure there was nobody within half a mile of him. That’s why he was walking down this road, to get away from the pests he knew people could be.

And he saw her, clear as a very clear day, hovering half a foot above the middle of the road with the cutest gossamer wings glittering and fluttering and the brightest, most beautiful smile on her peaches-and-cream face.

Jeremy bunched both of his hands into fists and screwed them into his eyes. This sort of vision was something he poo-pooed in others when they said they saw things or heard voices, and here was he both seeing something and hearing a voice. It needed erasing before it drove him mad, and his vision returning to normal or he might start thinking he had caught one of the dreadful psychological disturbances enjoyed by his more special patients (Jeremy Cumming was a head-doctor, his own description and not mine, and he knew a thing or two about insanity).

“I am here, you know,” said the pretty tinkling voice, and he peeped between two fingers praying that the owner of the voice would turn out to be any little old lady in an overcoat and headscarf who chanced to be walking down that road. But it wasn’t.

The actual and real owner of that voice was a beautiful female of normal woman size but dressed all in pristine white like a ballerina or classical dancer off that popular television programme that everyone’s talking about, and with the addition fluttering gossamer wings that gleamed like shot silver in the sunlight. And, what’s more, her costume (it simply had to be a costume, no real woman would dress so delightfully or even provocatively in the normal run of things) was so almost indecently short to his very proper mind, and he had a clear and unobstructed view of her frilly underthings, a vision that embarrassed him no end and made him blush.

“Women don’t fly,” he said, sounding absurd.

“I do,” she giggled, “look at me! We all fly in our country! And before you say another word let me warn you against saying you don’t believe in fairies, because if you were to something truly disastrous would happen.”

“What do you mean?” he stammered, aware that any observer would order a special re-enforced ambulance to cart him off to the nearest facility for the criminally insane, and he’d worked for long enough in that kind of institution as a medical man with a respected reputation to know it was the very last kind of place he wanted to go to during his day off.

“Every time someone says they don’t believe in fairies, one of us dies,” murmured the driftting delight, and she floated the foot or so that separated her from the road and landed so close to Jeremy that he could smell the hypnotic sweetness of her breath every time she breathed, which nearly knocked him out.

“But...” he stammered, remembering that only last week he’d ordered a concentrated regime of electric shock treatment coupled with high doses of powerful psychotropic drugs for a seriously disturbed elderly gentleman who claimed to have had a conversation with a fairy himself, and the treatment had been so cutting-edge and powerful that his patient had, alas, passed away.

He didn’t fancy being subjected to that himself, yet here he was seemingly talking to an actual fairy. And not only talking: he could see her, could (and he actually did this mentally) gaze rapturously at the shapely perfection of her beautifully bare legs and that low-cut minuscule white dress didn’t leave much to the imagination either.

Someone, he was sure, had decided he needed to be taught a lesson. Talking with fairies indeed! What kind of man did they think he was? Delusional or what?

“Who’s put you up to this?” he asked, and his own voice sounded so crude and bluff to him he could have withdrawn the words, but that sort of thing has always been plainly impossible. Once out, words are out. They cannot be unsaid.

“Silly man,” giggled the fairy, and she fluttered her wings and rose several inches into the air and hovered right up close to him until he was absolutely certain that she had encroached seriously into his own personal space.

How did she do that? Did she have one of those science-fiction hover-boards tucked in her knickers? How else could a full-sized woman rise into the air like that? It certainly couldn’t be the wings, which were barely big enough to lift anything more substantial than a church bible into the air. He could feel the draught of them fluttering, and like her breath the smell was captivating, a bit like he imagined a summer meadow might smell like if you lay in it and covered yourself with its flowers.

“You’re to come with me,” she giggled.

“How…?” he spluttered, really meaning to add do I get back to the rational everyday world of Briddleton, but failing to utter more than the initial monosyllable.

“Come on, silly?” she giggled, and she took him by one hand.

She actually touched his skin with her skin!

And the feeling of that skin against his nasty rough epidermis was what a gentle floating piece of thistledown might experience when it touched upon a nasty crusty nettle.

“Your hands are soft,” he whispered, not wanting to sound crude or rough by speaking louder.

She giggled again, a tinkling, cheery, delightful giggle, and her tiny skirt fluttered in the air as together they rose as high as the tops of the trees that bordered the road, and he found himself ogling her underwear as if he was a teenage boy experiencing his first flood of hormones.

Suddenly he knew what perfection was: perfection of soft skin, perfection of sweet fragrance, perfection of movement, even perfection of vision as he watched the world beneath them silently slide by.

“Where…?” He was going to ask where are we going but thought the question might be a little bit too nosey.

“We’re going to the birthing house,” she trilled, “you and me together,”

“We are?” he asked, not knowing what on Earth she meant.

“Of course! I told you, didn’t I, that every time someone says they don’t believe in fairies then one of us must die … so baby fairies need to be born or our people will all die out, and that can’t be right, can it? But there are no male fairies, none at all, so we need to welcome fresh blood … blood from the world of men … welcome to fairyland, welcome to our world...”

TO BE CONTINUED

© Peter Rogerson 28.11.17