The Moonlight Boy | Ferry's Tale # 1

Echoes from the past (part two)

A log in the fire snapped and the three children throbbed. Mrs. Cobbs had her eyes focused on the sparks in the fireplace, but her thoughts were somewhere else. 

"I searched for all the pieces of information I could find on fairies," she continued. "But it was hard. People in the village wouldn't want to talk about them as if the very mention of those creatures would have brought malice and misfortune upon them. The older people were the only ones to tell me a bit about the fairies. They said the fairies were responsible for the disappearances in the village.

"I began looking for books about fairy folk. You have no idea how many things you can discover if you read between the lines. For behind every tale, there is a bit of truth. That was how I found out that sometimes, the doors between their world and ours opened, and humans could actually catch a glimpse of their realm. So I visited that forest ever more often.

"Yet, my husband, Nicholas, was not very pleased with my new obsession as he called my continuous search for our daughter. Our relationship, as frail as it was, had turned even frailer after Poppy's disappearance. Now, there was nothing between us except for the pain. He was suffering just like I was, only he decided to leave the past behind while I was still hanging on to it.

"But time was passing by and I could find no trace of the fairies, nor the smallest sign of their existence. I even doubted them until an old gypsy who found shelter in our village told me about the fairy ritual in the Round Meadow. In the summer, on the nights with a full moon, the fairies gathered to sing and dance, away from human eyes.

"Agatha, the old gypsy woman, said that I had to watch them so I could find the door to their land. But she also said I had to avoid being seen, for fairies are vindictive creatures and they did terrible things to those who dared to spy on them.

"So when the next full moon occurred, I snuck in the bushes near the Round Meadow, with the thought of glimpsing at their world. I waited and waited. Then, I closed my worldly eyes and opened the eyes of my mind. I emptied my mind of everything and let peace and tranquility come over me.

"And then, it happened. It was something I felt, like a shift in the air. Everything around me froze. No sound, no movement. That's when I saw the fairies descending from the skies in a whirlwind of petals and light. They were laughing and bouncing, barely touching the ground with their bare feet. Their heavenly songs filled the air. I think they have danced for hours and hours without showing the smallest sign of tiredness. But at the first sign of dawn, they rushed towards the stone in the middle of the meadow and vanished. I was still standing in awe of that odd occurrence. When I came to my senses, the stone where the fairies vanished was cold and rigid and everything around looked as if nothing had happened. Only the grass where they danced looked dark as if burnt.

"I came back almost every night, that summer. And even if I could see the fairies with my own eyes, somehow, their world was forbidden to me. But the more I was seeing the fairies and their world, the more the world around me would become gloomy and blurred. Little by little, my sight was getting weaker. But that did not stop me. I was determined to find my little girl and nothing was to stop me.

"That was when I decided to talk to my husband about my uneasiness. He didn't believe me, of course. He wanted to see the fairies with his own eyes. But the people in the village found it rather strange our constant search into the forest. So the rumors about us having something to do with our daughter's disappearance spread. That determined Nick build a tunnel under our home which led to the hill near the forest. That way, we got there without the villagers seeing us.

"Yet, building a tunnel away from people's eyes, without no one suspecting anything, wasn't easy. It took us a whole year before the tunnel was ready. But one night, in the middle of the winter, Nick went to the forest and didn't come back.