Freda the Fat Faery Part 2
by Mark Heeney
Quite what "That does it" meant Freda did not really know, but she did know that she had had just about enough of living with these damn humans, their damn rubbish food, and their so-called domesticated bloody animals!
As she picked herself up, plumped her wobbly bottom down on a broken brick, and started to pick bits of chewing gum from off the sole of her shoe, she began to think of what to do. She was depressed not only about her own personal situation -- and she really would have given anything to do to the cat, without an anaethetic, that which verts usually do with one -- but also about the state of Faeries folk in general.
What had happened?
Why had what had happened been allowed to happen?
It was not that Faeries were like humans, endlessly debating whether there were a God or Gods and whether "Life" was all part of some great plan. The Faeries knew that there were Gods, at least at their level. There were tree gods, river gods, animal gods; all of whom had once not only kept an eye on the running of things in the woodlands, but had also been there to answer questions and to help when needed....Had they died? Or had they just moved on to another place.
She tried to remember what had first brought her to the world of humans. She remembered that the Darkies had slowly pushed them out and away from the woods. Her own eyes became cold and hard as she remembered how they had accomplished this. Traps and poisons had been some of the nicer ways that they had edged them out.
Unwished for tears began to well up as a picture of her parents and sisters flashed across her mind, dead, and nailed to a post as a warning to the others to leave before it happened to them. And then a question. Nails, where the hell did the Darkies get nails from? None of the small folk, Fair or Dark, had any doings or dealings with metals. Everything they used or made came from the Great Mother, Nature. Obviously now that these disgusting humans had taken over so much of what was once green and fair, they could scavenge many things from their gardens, bins, and occasionally, their pockets. But before this they had no access to "teknolegy" as she had heard humans call it, and so it would have been impossible for the Darkies to make nails. Stakes yes, nails no.
**************
She sat, stunned in the realisation that it could not have been the Darkies alone, that they had had help from the one source available at the time: the bloody humans! Or at least A human had helped the Darkies to destroy their homes, to kill thier families, and to almost completely flush away any trace of their existence.
With a strange unknown feeling that she was later to recognise as a mixture of sadness, rage, and confusion, she arrived at the conclusion that the only person who was likely to be able to give her any more information about what had really happened all those years ago was Crosof -- but no one had seen or heard from him in over a century.
She decided to go and visit Edna, who had a small but rather natty paint tin where whe lived behind the shed next to the broken wall. Edna seemed to have more links with the old ways than the other surviving Faerie folk, and she might well have some knowledge of where Crosof could be found. But before that, and in order to give her a start to the day a bit of a lift, she would make a present for the cat.
With a sort of half grunt, half harumph, which signified that the task she presently had in hand promised an exquisite but slightly naughty delight, Freda heaved herself up onto her feet and started back to her flowerpot. She wasn't sure whether they were in the matchbox or whether she had put them "somewhere safe". She hoped to God -- or Gods -- that they were still in the matchbox, for they had been put "somewhere else" then they could be almost any-bloody-where.
"Somewhere else" was a strange sort of place which had a strange magic all of its own. The mere act of referring to it almost guaranteed that whatever object you happened to be looking for would -- with no outside help -- move both geographically and temporally to a place where one could not possibly have put it.
Before coming into close contact with humans the Faeries had used another word instead of "Somewhere else" -- they had used the word "LOST", or in cases of extreme agitation, "I've got no bleeding idea". Because, along with their many thousands of other faults, humans found it difficult to admit even to themselves that they had done something wrong, or lost something, they instead had come up with the idea of "Somewhere else", a state of existence which implied that the object in question was endowed with powers that enabled it to shift through space and time, and to reappear -- often years after last being seen -- in places of which the owners would say "I've no idea how it got there, cos we all there hundreds of times, and now the bloody thing's turned up again." Due to the fact that "Somewhere else" proved such an easy tool with which to shirk responsibility or to shift blame, the humans had endorsed it wholeheartedly -- and as with most things, the mass aura of futility and pointlessness generated by "S.E." had actually created the magic field which now surrounded it.
In point of fact the things that Freda wanted were still in the matchbox. Emepamph -- the herb from before the fleeing of the woodlands -- was almost impossible to get these days, unless one still had contact with the pixies. As the majority of pixies had decided to emigrate to the New World many years ago -- due to the fact that it was mooted that there were vast areas of forest which were still uncontaminated by Man -- it was unlikely that anybody did still have contact with them.
It was strange, said a passing thought to Freda as it floated through her mind, that no one had heard anything of the pixies since they left, as they had all promised to check out this new continent and, if the vibes checked out and they found a human free environment, the pixies had promised to let them know. All that was left now of the pixies was a piece of torn paper that the man who picked up the huge wooden crate which hundreds of pixies were hiding in, had signed and left behind. This paper had been on the shed floor for years and by now the only words left on it which were legible enough to read were "Southampton", which sounded like the name of a human town, and a word which none of the Faeries understood, "Titanic"..... Yes, thought Freda, it was a real shame that you just couldn't rely on people to stay in touch these days.
***** The End ******
Copyright The Bentilean 1999
Mark Heeney was a part-time tutor at the Willfield Open Learning Centre, Bentilee,and commuted from Wolverhampton where he lived (lives?) with his wife and young daughter (for whom the story was written). This first installment appeared in issue 5 of "The Bentilean", July 1992, and the second one in the following issue. Unfortunately, I lost contact with him when he found a more conveniently located job so no further installments were forthcoming. In fact I've only just realised how appropriate the last line of the story is :-)Back to: The Contents Page | The Archive | The Bentilean Main Page