Laura Schlitz - The Night Fairy

The brilliance of the garden made Flory rub her eyes. All the same, the colors thrilled her, making her heart race and her skin tingle. For a moment she forgot the pain of her broken wings. She pulled herself up to sit in the doorway, feet dangling. The wind ruffled the cherry blossoms above her head. She pulled a cluster of petals nearer and drank the dew off them. Then she gorged herself on pollen, ripping handfuls from the blossoms.

After she had eaten her fill, she sat and gazed at the garden. There were no bats in sight: only butterflies — but they were no danger — and birds. Flory had never seen such noisy and energetic birds. They swooped and lunged from branch to branch, twittering and caroling and swearing at the tops of their lungs. All of them looked huge to Flory, but she knew that most of them ate seeds or small insects, not fairies. She wished she were a day fairy and could live in a world with birds instead of bats.

An idea flew into her head. Flory sat up straight and raised her chin.

“From now on,” she said firmly, “I will be a day fairy.”

Being a day fairy was not easy. Flory had never met a day fairy, and she knew little about their lives. Day fairies are afraid of giants, and they live in the wild places in the world. Night fairies, on the other hand, have a daredevil streak; they like to see how close they can come to giants without being seen. Even the boldest fairy would not choose to live in a giant’s garden, but Flory had no choice. Without wings, she couldn’t escape, and she needed the shelter of the cedar house.

She soon found that her body did not like the day. Her skin liked to be cool and moist, not hot and dry. When the shadows fell, her whole body itched with alertness, and she found it hard to sleep. Sunshine made her eyes water, which made her irritable. It is always prettier when fairies are not irritable, but Flory could not help herself. She missed her wings, and she had to make a whole new life for herself, with no one to show her how.

She hauled the twigs out of the wren house and covered the floor with cherry blossoms, casting a spell over them so they wouldn’t wilt. She gathered thin blades of grass and wove them into baskets for the storage of fresh greens. With unskilled hands, she knotted together a dress of cherry blossom so that she could blend in with the flowers on the tree. The day after she finished it, a strong rain came and tore the blossoms away, which made Flory shake her fist at the sky.

She spent a great deal of time sitting on the peg outside her door hole, watching the garden. She noticed that the oak tree drew more birds than any tree in the garden. First one bird, then another, swooped at the tree and darted happily away. When she looked closely, she saw that there was a metal hook in the tree. Dangling from the hook was a clear tube full of seeds. It was this tube that drew the birds. They came to eat the seeds.

Flory shook her head, baffled. Fairies are born knowing certain things, and one of the things she knew was that seeds come from plants, not from round tubes. All the same, the seeds smelled as if they might be good to eat. Just as she was thinking about the best way to climb down the tree, the door of the great house opened, and the giantess came out.

She was — if Flory had known it — a rather small giantess, but she was the largest creature Flory had ever seen. She had white braids that crisscrossed over her head, and woolly slippers on her feet. She lumbered over to the oak tree and filled the tube with fresh seeds.

Flory watched, holding her breath.

The giantess wandered over to the fishpond. She opened a tall can that had pictures of fish on the side, and sprinkled little sticks on the water. The fish came to the surface, gulping and flicking their tails. The giantess watched them, making cheerful noises. After five minutes or so, she waddled back into the house.

Flory thought about the giantess for a long time. She knew that giants were supposed to be very terrible, but it was hard to be afraid of anything so old and so slow. She reached behind her back to scratch the scabs on her left wing. She had never been taught to be afraid of bats. The bat people and the night fairies had been at peace for a thousand years.

And yet it was a bat, not a giant, who had taken her wings.

“I’m not afraid of giants,” Flory boasted aloud. It sounded so daring that she said it again, swinging her feet. “I’m not a bit afraid of giants. But I hate bats.”

It was quite safe to say so, because the bats were all asleep.

“I hate bats,” Flory repeated, “I hate, hate, hate bats, and I’m always going to hate them.”

It seemed like a good decision. Flory lolled back against the side of the house, enjoying the fragrance of onion grass and grape hyacinths. She wondered if the grape hyacinths tasted as good as they smelled. Tomorrow she would climb down the tree and find out. It would be a long trip, but she was quick and agile, and she didn’t have a lazy bone in her body.

She shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed at the thorn apple tree. She admired its long, sharp thorns. If she could break the thorns off the tree, she might be able to make herself a pocketknife or even a dagger. She liked the idea of a dagger. If a bat ever attacked again, she would take out her dagger and stab it to the heart, and then . . .

Flory dozed. The spring day was warm, and she was dreaming of slaying bats. Suddenly the sensing feather on her left wing stirred. Something was nearby — a warm-blooded animal, a large animal. She leaped to her feet.

The squirrel was only inches away. He was huge, almost twice as big as the flying squirrels she had known: a mountain of shaggy fur and sharp claws. Flory knew he ate almost everything that could be eaten: acorns, nuts, seeds, insects, eggs, baby birds. . . . She saw that his eyes were fixed on her and his nostrils were twitching hungrily.

Fear flashed through her like lightning. Her mouth opened, and she shrieked.

The squirrel leaped aside, startled. In an instant he was halfway down the tree, but Flory went on screaming. “Get away from me!” she shouted. “Don’t touch me!” All at once, her mouth was full of words she had never spoken before. As she yelled them, the squirrel jumped straight up in the air as if he had been burned.

“That’s right!” Flory cried. “Go away, or I’ll sting you again!”

The squirrel tore off across the yard. Flory watched him scramble up the wooden fence and disappear over the top. She put her hands up to her mouth. She was smiling.

“I said a magic spell,” she said. She did not know where the words of her spell had come from, but she was overjoyed. “I can take care of myself.”

She had discovered a new spell, a stinging spell. Fairies are not taught magic as human children are taught the alphabet. Fairies are born with the seeds of spells in their minds. As they grow older, the spells grow too, like the little white teeth that sprout from a baby’s gums. The stinging spell had come to Flory because she was old enough to use it — and because she needed it.

“I like that spell,” said Flory. “I’m never going to forget it. I’ll practice it over and over — and if I ever see a bat again, I’ll sting him until he squeaks.”

If a person — whether she is human or fairy — spends most of her time thinking of ways to sting, it is bound to show. In the weeks that followed, Flory practiced her stinging spell so often that she began to have rather a prickly look. Her nose and chin grew more pointed, as did the tips of her ears.