Hello again. You’ll have to excuse my absence, you know how life gets away. I got quite the reception for my last regaling, one I wasn’t expecting in all honesty. Most people tend to be pretty quick to dismiss things like that- especially when spoken with any authority. The amount of times I’ve been called crazy could probably drive a lesser person to become so…
I’m rambling again. Let’s try this again.
I’m a witch. I always have been. My mom was a witch, and her parents, and their parents before them. I work with the Fair Folk; Faeries. I’ve already spoken about my first time meeting the Fae. Now I’ll share another story, since people seem so keen to hear about such things. I’m not complaining; The attention is flattering.
There’s been plenty of stories passed around about things that occur in the deep bowels of the woods. Staircases leading nowhere. Empty doorways standing in fields. Random fences protecting nothing and no one. What most don’t seem to realize is that these are all the work of the Fair Ones. We humans are curious things. We can’t help ourselves when faced with something… strange. Odd. Fantastical. Dangerous. We have to puzzle it out! It’s one of our greatest strengths– and our most crippling weakness.
My craft brings me into these places.
The woods not too far from my home were a place I wasn’t allowed unsupervised until after my 16th birthday had officially passed. My mother often accompanied me out there, and if not her than another person who was at least 16 years of age. Why that was the magic number, I could never figure out. I’m still not entirely sure. It simply is.
I had been curious. Burningly, achingly curious. I’m only human after all. I wanted to see more of the Fae. Were they all like my mysterious visitor, my horned friend? I had seen him a few times since our first meeting together- the most memorable being the night of my 16th birthday. That’s a story I might have to keep to myself. If anyone I knew found out about that…
I had gone into the woods with one intention. To find a Fair One. I hadn’t anticipated to be found instead.
The staircase was like most others that have been talked about in hushed tones here and there. Immaculate. As if someone had started to build a house, started with the stairs, and simply given up. Like someone had turned on the Edit feature in the Sims and plopped a set of the things down for the shits and giggles of it. I thought myself very bold and intelligent to walk right up to the things.
The air around them was charged with energy. This would be what you could attribute the oft described sense of dread to. I was standing at a threshold. A place where many things meet, conjoined at this singular point. The best way to describe it is as such: All worlds are layers of painted glass and they are all wholly unique- but there are spots and places where the colors and shapes will line up by total coincidence. These are the thresholds. The places where the worlds line up.
It didn’t take long for the world around me to warp slightly. Being in proximity to such a thing as this tends to activate them in some way. The unease grew heavier. Goosebumps broke out over my whole body. I started to shiver uncontrollably, and a thin sweat accumulated on my upper lip and brow.
I was torn between two desires.
One half of me, the half that is stupidly and beautifully human, wanted me to charge straight up the stairs. The other half of me, the one that is more animal than man and quite smart for it, was telling me to flee as quickly as my legs could carry me.
Predictably I did neither thing and simply stood there rooted to the spot as my stomach started to churn from my mounting anxiety. The only thing I could think to do was mutter an old phrase my mom taught me when I was little- something she said to say whenever I felt afraid.
“I am the Dark, and the Dark is I. I walk through the Shadows, and the Shadows I am. I face no Fear for the Fear is Me.”
It was about five minutes before I realized something that made me stop my possibly crazed muttering.
”–no Fear for the Fear is Me.” Echoed out a voice that was all my own if not for the fact my breath was currently stuck in my throat.
I turned, slowly, to where the voice was coming from.
“I am the Dark… and the Dark is…” The voice faltered as my eyes found its own.
There, crouched at the top of the stairs, was a figure. One could mistake it for a small bear if their eyes did not know what they were meant to be seeing. It was burly with a pelt of brown, course fur that upon closer inspection wasn’t fur at all; It was needle-like quills packed as densely as fur might be. The creature stopped speaking in my voice as it stared back at me in turn. As if I’d caught it doing something it wasn’t supposed to and it had become bashful.
“The Dark is I.” I finished breathlessly. It’s eyes, all six of them, were big and yellow with no sclera nor pupils. It blinked slowly, one eye at a time.
“Hello,” I managed to say in a voice barely above a whisper. The tension in the air had reached a physical peak. It was like being strangled by the very oxygen I was meant to breath. The beast before opened its mouth and inhaled deeply. They were almost mandible-esque. The sound it made next is partially beyond description though for the sake of the story I’ll try anyways.
Imagine this: The sound of rough metal grating against rough metal combined with the rumble of an on-coming rock slide. Then pitch in the whine of an electric guitar being strummed at its highest note at max volume. Now if you could, imagine that sound coming from a creature that you at first glance mistook for a juvenile brown bear.
Now imagine that it is now advancing down a flight of mysterious stairs in the forest at an extremely fast pace directly at you.
The noise made every hair on my body stand up at once and very nearly made me piss myself as well. My whole body clenched painfully and for a moment I feared I’d tear my muscles straight away from my bones. It was lucky for me that at that moment my brain decided that being Human was much less necessary than being alive. Instinct took over.
My spell of paralysis broke as I took off in a dead sprint in the exact opposite direction.
“THE FEAR IS ME, THE FEAR IS ME, THE FEAR IS ME!” Screamed the Fae.
I kept at my pace, tearing through the foliage that attempt to snag and stop me. I jumped a fallen log, scaled a rock, and hopped a stream; It stayed on my heels the whole time. Beneath the trilling terror and numbing adrenaline of being pursued by something that very actively seemed like it wanted to gore me to death I couldn’t help but think about something my grandfather had said to me.
That the times had changed. That much of the Fair Folk had changed as well, despite being the most resistant to change. They lost their sense, their propriety. That was why they mustn’t change, he had said. For they never changed in good ways. It was best they stay the same for their own sake as well as ours.
This was a Fae who had changed, certainly. They had lost themself somewhere in progression of time. They were beyond reason or sense. They apparently weren’t beyond hunting down idiots like myself that came poking the hornet’s nest to sate their own curiosity.
I felt something lash against the back of my calves and screamed shrilly. The pain didn’t even set in- I was still high on fear and survival. The blood I left behind me must have ended up a thrilling find for whichever hiker passed through there next.
It was my luck that salvation lie on the horizon.
I mentioned earlier there are many different kinds of thresholds to be found, especially in forests such as these. I had already encountered one, a well documented one at that. It was often mentioned in hesitant passing that one might see a flight of stairs in these woods but it’d do well to avoid them.
“Wild animals,” they said “like to take shelter under them. Better safe than sorry.”
Now I came across another! A fence gate connected on both sides to one meter each of rickety brown pickets. The gate itself was hanging wide open. Rather inconspicuous to the random passerby. If I hadn’t been running for my life I would have made a comment on how curious it was, how funny it was. Now wasn’t the time for that. Something had just embedded itself in the back of my right shoulder.
I made a straight beeline for the gate, narrowly avoiding twisting my ankle in a small animal burrow as I went. As soon as I passed through it I slammed the gate shut behind me, and with fumbling hands I drove the latch into a locked position.
On the other side of the gate, the Changed One skidded to a stop.
It peered at me blankly for several long moments before grousing like a child denied a cookie. It stamped the ground with its paws and paced at the fences; It did not pass them, despite the fact there was only about two meters of pickets in total.
“The Fear is… The Dark is… The Shadows…” It echoed. Its mimic of my voice had grown distorted. It was already forgetting how I sounded, never mind the fact it had been listening to me screaming my head off the past five minutes during our chase.
It groaned lowly and began to cry in earnest. The liquid that dripped from its six eyes was iridescent and vaguely tinted green. As I watched, it turned tail and started to rush back the way we had come. Back to its staircase no doubt.
“What gives you right to come to my home?” Came a voice from behind me. I felt tears slip down my face in sheer relief. I turned to face my host.
She was tall, though not unnaturally so. Perhaps 6’4 at max. Her face was aquiline and bore a beak that was lined with large blunt teeth reminiscent of an herbivore. She had two eyes, both a pale baby blue with three pupils in each iris. Her translucent skin was just barely visible beneath the multitude of grey feathers that sprouted from her.
“You might pardon. Your door was wide open in invitation.” Her gaze flicked to the closed gate behind my back and back to me. The great crest of fans that sat on her head waved as she looked me over.
“Invitation… Yes, I do suppose it was. Where might my manners be. Shall you stay?”
This is a loaded question, as I’m sure everyone reading this has come to understand by now. If I say yes I could end up trapped with my new host forever. If I say no I risk insulting her and giving her fair reason to rip me to pieces where I stand. Just because her fingers ended in soft squishy pads didn’t mean anything.
“I will not stay for more than several minutes.” I answered finally. The ambiguity of the phrase was just enough to allow me some wiggle room while also making sure she couldn’t keep me here indefinitely. These kinds of statements usually drive fae up the walls, by the way, so it’s best not to use them too much when speaking with them.
“So be it,” she grumbled. “Though it’d do you well to stay longer.”
“It’d do me well to leave sooner. I would not like to be an inconvenience to you.”
“You are of no inconvenience.” Came the quick reply. Fae are obligated to politeness. Perhaps, yes, their ideas of polite are foreign to us humans. Nonetheless. Her gaze quivered as she unfolded her wings from her back. They were insectoid and shimmering. Not too unlike the wings you’d find on a fairy in a storybook. She shook them, creating a soft breeze, before letting them lie down on her back again.
“Perhaps not yet, but I would not like to be. Your hospitality is praiseworthy. Surely there is something in exchange I can give you that is not my Time?”
She perked at the idea. Faeries are loathe to be indebted by gifts, but they do quite like trades. There are many things that humans can give to them that they find uses for beyond what we could ever. As she steepled her fingers and smiled, I felt a small chill roll down my spine.
“Oh, yes. I could not refuse such. To be given such option!… I should like a warm summer day, speckles of water on the cheek…” A memory was immediately conjured to the forefront of my mind. Haggling memories with the Fae was a slippery slope. Once you had made the incision for one memory, the others tended to bleed out after them. My grandmother had told me that her own father had been foolhardy about such matters and was senile by forty because of it.
I thought long and hard about if I was willing to part with pieces of my own mind in exchange for bodily safety. Knowing what I knew, I was well aware that we could sit here forever in this small space between times and locations talking back and forth at one another until we were both blue in the face. In the end I agreed to it.
As to the memory she took from me, I don’t know. When it was no longer mine, I could not recall it any further. It simply slipped free… I can’t say I regret the choice, because I don’t feel any loss for it. That would be like saying one regrets clipping their nails.
She puffed up quite largely in satisfaction as the memory that was perhaps once mine became her own.
“Indeed… How vivid…” She murmured.
“Your graciousness is without parallel.” I remarked as I tried to shake off the new gap in my mind. It was most disturbing right after the fact- when the brain struggles to fill the void with something that makes sense. Trying to pull the strings back together so to speak.
The Fae before me once more smiled, which is something I still not sure how she managed with the configuration of her face, and reached to her breast. I watched in slight delirium as she plucked a single grey feather from her chest and reached to tuck it into my hair.
“Such flattery. You do not grovel like the others. Whomever has reared you has done so suitably. Very suitably indeed. Go then. Safe passages, traveler.”
I did not make to linger. Regardless of if I felt I had gotten somewhere with the strange Fae of the Fence, she had bade me to leave and it was in my best interest to do so. She had already given me something of herself- though I would not call it a gift.
This experience was not spoken of for many years. Not until it slipped out one day while I was drinking with my mom and some of her friends, prompting them all to swoon and cry out and reprimand me for being a dumb ass. I can’t say they’re wrong.
I kept the grey feather safe in a little satin lined box that was once used as a gift box for a bracelet. Whenever I’m feeling in need of a little extra security I like to tuck it into my hair or on the inside of my coat or shirt. I never did see the Fae of the Fence again, nor the Changed One from the stairs, but I think about her often. I can only hope any other moron who happens upon her hostel the way I did has half the mind to treat her with some respect before they start weeping and begging for their life.