~Hope

The fairy home is the same as the last time I visited, the shadows play with the bright light that shines through the canopy above. I can never be sure if the movement in the corners of my eyes are simply my imagination, or the true forms of these mischievous beings trying to catch us unawares.

Fate is already in discussion with the phantoms that she claims are their real forms. If they’re able to hide from sight like this, I’m not convinced that anything that anything any of us see is real. We can’t trust these creatures, but I don’t know of any other way to save the boy that they stole.

I can’t simply stand by and let him be killed.

“Let’s get started planting.” Fate says, eagerly bouncing to my side and helping to pull the bag down without damaging the flowers. I’ve already carefully lowered the mountain flower to the ground, thankfully it’s not as delicate as it looks.

Pulling out my shovel, I get to work making space for it in the centre of the arrangement. It’s obvious that it’ll be in the centre, but the rest of the eclectic mix of colours and shapes really makes this difficult.

The mountain flower is obviously the centrepiece overlooking the smaller cousins, so I slowly build an arrangement around it, placing the flowers together by colour following the rainbow as a guide. I never actually played my hand at this when I was younger, but I my older sister, Grace, was always out in the garden plucking flowers and making proper arrangements.

“Keep your eyes on the centre, and use the sides of your eyes to see what’s missing.” Was her advice, and this really isn’t much different.

I have to rearrange them a few times to balance the sizes of the flowers more than the colours, but in the end we have a rather nice looking bundle of flowers. I lean on my shovel looking at the scene, trying to remember anything Grace made back then, but all I can recall is a blend of colours.

“Why a garden, anyway?” Fate asks, looking over my work as she rubs the dirt from her hands.

Whatever whisper she hears as a reply, incites a sour expression. What could they have said that would inspire this reaction? What exactly have they planned to do with this garden?

~Fate

“We want to save them.” The fairy says cheerfully. “All flowers are different and these flowers we can keep so they don’t get burned into nothingness with the rest of your stupid world.”

“This world isn’t stupid.” Sara says, pouting like someone just told her that her favourite blouse is ugly.

“Can you walk on the ceiling here? No! Do you have dragons spitting fire and rhymes? No! Do you have deep dungeons filled with strange monsters? No!

“This world is boring!”

“We have flowers, and nice people.” Sara declares, in the face of the fairies tirade.

“Not for much longer.”

“Where’s Luek?” Sara asks, looking up at the glowing fairy.

“We’ll give Luek back to you, you’ll see!” Shouts the fairy. “Stand in the circle, but don’t tread on any of the flowers.”

“Why?” Sara asks, looking at the fairy with wide eyes. “Aren’t you bringing Luek back here? Why do I have to stand in the circle?”

“Don’t you trust us?” The fairy asks, fluttering about while ushering her towards the circle of mushrooms.

“Sara?” Her mother calls to her still gripping tight to her shoulder, as she holds the iron dagger in the other, ready to be used.

“I just have to go into the circle.” Sara says. “They say they’ll bring Luek back if I do it.”

“No.” Her mother hisses, gripping the knife so tight that her fingers turn white. “That is something you absolutely mustn’t do.”

“Mum?” The girl asks, looking back up at her mother.

“No. You won’t be taken away.” She says, gripping her daughter in a tight grip and lifting the knife up to her neck. The iron blade sinks into her flesh enough to draw blood, but stops there as the woman starts to breath faster, her face pale as she looks down at her daughter.

“I have to save you.” She whispers.

“Sara!” I cry, stumbling closer, but pausing when the mother pushes the knife in deeper. The girl struggles, frightened and confused, as she starts to bleed.

The fairies flutter all around, their light swirling around the pair as they make faces and call the mother silly little names even though she can’t see or hear them.

“We’ll be perfect in the hearts of the gods, but only so long as these tricksters don’t steal your soul first.” Sara’s mother whispers, even for how much she’s trembling the knife isn’t even close to slipping.

“Don’t do it.” Hope says, holding the shovel up like a club. “Let her go.”

“This is none of your business. Leave.” Sara’s mother says. “We’ll be fine. I know what I must do.”

“That doesn’t sound fine at all…” I whisper, backing away. “Let’s talk this out, I’m sure we can figure things out somehow.”

“Sara, we’ll bring you to Luek, and bring Luek to you.” One of the fairies says waving the girl closer, “Just step into the circle.”

“We’ll be together in the gods embrace.” Her mother says, breathing deep and looking up. There’s conviction in her eyes, and finally she sighs in slow resignation.

Hope lunges for her, the shovel slamming down on the woman’s head as she moves the knife, slicing her daughters throat. Blood sprays over us as the two fall, the mother backwards, and the daughter forwards, closer to the circle.

“Sara.” I cry out, reaching for the girl trying to catch the blood from her neck.

She looks between me and the beckoning fairies, before leaping into the fairy circle.

A bright flash of light blinds me, and I have to look away. I blink a few times to clear my vision, and by the time I can see again, she’s gone.

The mushroom circle is exactly where it was before, but now there is no more Sara, and the flower garden we crammed into the small space has disappeared as well. Only a lonely tuft of grass remains inside the circle.

Sara’s mother shakes her head, slowly recovering from the hit.

“Sara!” She screams the moment she remembers where she is.

She reaches out to the mushrooms, crushing a few in her hands as she tries to pry the earth apart to find her missing child. I don’t think she’ll find her buried under the ground.

“Fairy!” I cry waving to the little trickster still hanging nearby. “What the shit was that?!”

“We did as we promised.” The fairy says, fluttering down here. “We brought Luek to Sara, and Sara to Luek. It was a promise to the boy, too.”

“Um, what?”

“They get to play forever now, and they’re little baby fae.”

“Again, what?”

“It’s way better than staying on this dying world. Thanks for the flowers, it’d be sad if they didn’t survive.”

The girls mother slices madly with her iron knife and the fairy barely has to dodge to escape her fury.

“Farewell stupid humans. We’ll be back in a few thousand years when things settle down. Good luck with the dying.”

“We’re not going to die.” I insist.

“Oh, then good luck with the pretending not to be dead.” The fairy says with a wave before fluttering over to the mushrooms, spinning about before fading from existence.

Sara’s mother crushes mushroom after mushroom, but the magic is already gone from them.

The fairies have left.

~Hope

“They’re gone?” I ask, and Fate quietly nods, eyes still focused on the circle of mushrooms slowly being crushed by the crazed woman before us. There’s no surviving the wound she inflicted on her daughter, but maybe the fae can heal it…

I hate to think it, but it’s the only conclusion I can come to that isn’t a dreadful ending to this disastrous little trip.

“Sara!” the woman screams again still clawing at the earth. She’s dropped the iron dagger and isn’t fighting any longer, her blood drips onto the ground from the wound on her head where I hit her with the shovel.

“Sara.” She whimpers a little weaker this time. Pulling at the grass and dirt.

“We should leave as quickly as we can.” I say, looking between the bereaved woman and Fate. If we go back to town and report that we’ve lost another kid, that they’ve both been taken by the fae…

I’ve been chased by villagers with torches and pitchforks before, and I’m not very keen on reliving that bloody night again.

“It’d be dangerous to travel of a night.” Hope says, turning back to me and shaking her head. “We’ll head back to town and tell everyone what happened.”

“Fate…” I say warningly, I’m not so worried about dying, but I do have something I need to do first.

“It’ll be fine.” Fate says with a distant smile, touching some of the blood that’s splattered onto her face. She grows pale as she looks down at it and sees what it is.

“When peasants get worked up, they don’t listen to good sense.” I say, taking a handkerchief from a pocket and wiping the blood from her face. “We should be careful.”

“Do you think she’s going to be alright? Sara, I mean.” She asks, turning her gaze away into the circle that’s already been wiped from existence.

“I’d follow them into the fae’s realm if I could.” I say, feeling a growing frustration. I failed again. “We can’t. We’ve done what we can.”

“I think she’s going to be alright.” She says, shaking her head and plucking a familiar confident expression from nothingness, “And the stupid fairies are wrong. The world isn’t going to end.”

I don’t correct her, there’s no need. I’m sure that she already knows that she’s lying.

Sara’s mother continues weeping on the ground, tearing up soil and screaming her daughter’s name. I hesitantly take the knife from her before considering how to proceed.

“I couldn’t save her.” The woman weeps, staring down at her bloody hands. “I… I failed her. My own daughter…”

“She’ll be alright.” Fate says, leaning down to the woman’s other side and rubbing her shoulder. I’m not sure how she can comfort this woman after watching her nearly kill her own daughter.

“She won’t become part of the gods. Her soul is lost.”

“She’ll live on with the fairies.” Fate says, “She’s not gone. She’s just… not here.”

“I…” She stares at the knife in my hands, but chuckles sadly before pushing herself to her feet. “The gods will find her eventually.”

“That’s the spirit.” Fate says, patting the woman’s back.

“I… I’ll trust in the gods. I can’t have perfection without Sara, so she’ll come back. The gods will find her.”

Thankfully Fate is here to keep her distracted, because I’d be running the opposite direction now if I was left alone with this woman. I can halfway sympathise, but also… I just watched her nearly kill her daughter before my eyes. That’s not something I can forget easily.

“Heyya, what are you all up to? Did you get that kid back?” The bard says, stumbling up to us. “No? Wait, where’s the other kid?”

Sara’s mother breaks down into tears, falling to the ground.

I smack him up the back of the head.