Lessoc Fountain - a fairy-creature tale

Ch. 24 Forget-Me-Not

'Memory is a living, growing and changing tree,' was written in Fanchon's sprawling script across the bottom of the page. 'Its roots are too deep to see, its bark hides its many rings, its ever-expanding branches sprout leaves in spring that are shed in autumn and the blood of its sap courses in its own time.'

The recipe above these lines was for willow-bark tea, marked as being a remedy for aches and pains of every sort. The picture at the top of the page was not, as Cocot would have thought, a willow tree or branch, but an empty snail shell. She traced the shell's spiral to the point in the middle.

"One, two, three and take your leave," she whispered. The recipes in the book were also magic spells. They had to be. How was she supposed to interpret this one, though? Her mother had made white willow-bark tea, adding peppermint leaves for taste, countless times and it had never improved her memory. The shell was the key. Somehow, Cocot had to add a snail shell to the tea. Boil it, steep it, something.

At least the snail wasn't still in it.

She left the cookbook open on the table and went out in the early morning air to find Hector. From the doorstep, she saw the horse grazing at the side of the chalet, a silver blanket of field fairies resting on his back and his pen rope strung out like a monstrous earthworm through the garden.

And on the edge of the step sat Soufflé, fidgeting with his tea cup and swinging his legs in the air. He frowned up at her.

"Good morning," she said.

"Hmmph."

"How about coming in for breakfast?" Some days a 'hmmph' from a grouchy hand fairy was better than silence from no creature at all.

He flitted inside to land on the table next to the cookbook. Cocot hurriedly scooped it up.

"Soufflé," she said, knowing she would regret asking him, but unable to contain her need to know, "if you wanted to use a snail shell for preparing tea, how would you, as a fairy, go about it?"

"No one makes tea from snail shells. Or any other sorts of shells, for that matter," he answered.

"But if for some reason you needed to, such as to make a particular kind of tea," she insisted.

"A tea for aches and pains?"

He had obviously had time to see the cookbook page. "Yes...or even a tea to improve your memory."

"Hmmmph." He was silent for a moment and Cocot rubbed the wooden cupboard for luck. She needed to remember the hall of the great fairies, and this spell could help her. Soufflé shook his head once. "I wouldn't make any such tea. It would call undue attention upon myself."

And Cocot regretted asking the moody, grumpy, stuffy old fairy for advice and wished she could smack him with the fly swatter. Why had she invited him in for breakfast, anyway?

Two footsteps creaked on the boards from the workroom. Both the small fairy and Cocot winced and stared at the inner door in alarm. Soufflé cleared his throat.

"He has woken up again, then?" he asked.

Blood rushed to Cocot's cheeks and she immediately set about readying the breakfast and putting a pot on Sarine. She didn't know why she was ashamed or what she was so afraid of. Her mother had never been afraid of Jean-Baptist's shadow in the other room.

"I happened to notice a couple of days ago," Soufflé continued, "that there is an abandoned chalet on the far side of Moléson, about half way up. The roof could use some repairs and the floor is covered with mouse droppings, but it would make a nice place to live."