The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry

While celebrating her new found ability to mind-link with Ember Innocenzi, the Kind One remembered that there are more serious matters back at the ivy hedge. Menacing forces were trying to breach the portal and her family was in serious danger.

Before her fears could run away with her, Arial intervened. “Don’t give into panic–there is a better way,” she said, and she invited the Kind One to think about what she had learned from the queens, and her interactions with the faeries. After pondering the gifts she carried with her in a small pouch around her neck, and with a little help from Arial, the Kind One was suddenly overcome with clarity of purpose…the items she carried were not just friendship tokens, they were tools with immense power.

********

I stood, shocked by the scene that confronted me when I finally returned to my cozy garden. The sun had long since set behind the mountains on the far side of the valley and shadows were getting darker under the trees, but there was still enough light left in the sky to make out a line of scorched grass that wove from the sidewalk to the ivy hedge. The path of devastation crossed the ivy, weaving up and down, leaving brittle, dead leaves littering the ground.

The laurel bushes at the back of my patio sit just to the left of the ivy hedge that conceals the portal, the small opening that leads to the faerie realm. The location of the portal is a tightly held secret, only a few of us know its exact location. Last year, our neighbor, Mrs. Shunner, a disgraced shape shifter who had been banished from the realm, started snooping around, trying to find the opening. Arial’s elite emerald guard started patrolling it 24/7 ever since.

Tears came to eyes when I saw the dried and shriveled leaves of the Laurel bush that stood farthest from the ivy. Arial, Sunny, Ferne, Bella and Pip all hovered in and around the branches and leaves of the wasted Laurel. Ferne pulled out her silver flute and played a melancholy tune while the others looked on with respect, honoring the departed green spirit of the shrub. When the last notes of Ferne’s tribute had faded away, I turned and dashed toward the house.

Pulling the back door open I called for my dogs. “Lucy, mama’s home! Lucy? Merry? Edie, where are you? Come to mama.” I was greeted by a cold, eerie silence and I felt a knot start to form in the pit of my stomach. Moving cautiously into the kitchen I called out for Bill. “Bill!” I took the stairs two at a time. “Bill….! Bill, This isn’t funny! Where are you?” All around me were signs of a hasty departure, dog blankets were strewn all over the floor, shoes had been kicked into corners, and Bill’s hoodie laid in a heap on a chair with its sleeves pulled inside out. I sat down hard on the top step and laid my head in my arms. What had happened here? Where is everyone?

********

Bill stopped the car for the red light and checked in the rear view mirror to make sure the kennels holding the chihuahuas hadn’t slipped askew in his frantic departure. His eyes were met with three pairs of shocked, round puppy eyes. Wide eyes that asked the question…”What was that all about!” He started talking in a calm, but shaky voice. A calm he didn’t really feel. “It’s okay girls, daddy is just taking you for a little ride, we’ll go home in a while.” Edie, the smallest, gave him a sideways look, a look that we have come to know means that she is very skeptical. Very skeptical indeed.

The light turned green and he eased the car forward, still not sure where he should go from here. They were far enough from the house by now, far enough that he was pretty certain they were safe, so he turned into the entrance of our local park that sits across the street from a small shopping center. I’ll just stop here for awhile and catch my breath, he thought and swung into a parking space by an isolated pavilion.

Cool, quiet, darkness settled around them. The only light came from a solitary street lamp that stood across a wide expanse of well tended lawn. Bill rolled down the window and let the evening breeze blow the built up stress he felt out of the car and across the shallow stream that ran through the middle of the park. He had forgot about the two little gnomes that sat silently in the seat beside him.

Warren slipped out of the wide seat belt that he and Odette had hastily crawled under as the car sped down the street. He climbed up the back of the passenger seat and jumped onto Bills shoulder. Bill had laid his head back and was sitting with his eyes closed,  when Warren’s weight landed on him. He shot forward, almost hitting his head on the windshield. “Mr Bill…sir, would it be all right with you if the misses and I went for a wee stroll?” Bill sat, starring at him in stunned silence. This was going to take some getting used to, these tiny talking dolls. Without speaking a word he nodded, then watched as the diminutive couple grasp each others hands and leaped from the open window, hitting the ground in a graceful run. He watched them go, laughing and dancing through the deep green grass.

He leaned the seat back and closed his eyes again, trying to calm his racing thoughts. This day’s revelations had taken all the energy right out of him. He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there, eyes closed, head back, when the feeling that he was not alone swept over him. It felt like he was being watched. Just as he was opening his eyes he felt a hand lightly touch his arm. Jerking his head around, he opened his eyes wide to find Lilly, the white haired little lady from down the street, starring at him with shining blue eyes and a reassuring, friendly smile.

© Tami Ruesch, The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry, 2009-2010

Today, when I came down to get my cup of coffee, I heard a strange shuffling noise coming from under my sink. Wondering what Warren and Odette were up to this early (they like to take their mornings slow and casual) I opened the cupboard doors to find that they had moved all my cleaning supplies to one side and were in the process of painting their pumpkin home bright green. They smiled up at me with their green smudged faces and waved the tiny paint brushes they were holding. “Top O’ the Mornin’ to you!” Warren continued to paint, making wide sweeping brush strokes then dipping his brush back into the bucket for more paint.

Odette set the brush down on the rim of her bucket and waddled over to me. “We thought we would spruce up the place for St. Paddy’s Day, what do you think?”

I stared into the cabinet. Green paint was splattered ever where. “It’s…ah, it’s certainly bright.” My little gnome friends are very sensitive and I didn’t have the heart to point out the mess they were making.

She beamed back at me. “We are goin to be havin some company. My cousins are wantin’ ta be visitin’. I don’t know quite when so rather than be in the garden, we thought we could have them here.” She pointed at their now mostly green pumpkin house. “I’m thinking its a grand color, will make them feel right at home. Warrens goin’ ta put out the wooden rockers.”

I pushed the mess to the back of my mind. “I think it will be great to have your family here Odette, you are very gracious to have them.”

Odette waddled back to her brush and began to paint, without turning around she said, “Oh, and don’t you be frettin about the mess, Arial is going to zap everything sparklin clean when we’re finished.”

I started to close the cupboard door when she squeaked, “We’re lookin forward ta your corn beef and cabbage tonight!”

Offering a weak smile, I closed the door and left the two gnomes to finish their project. I grabbed my mug of coffee and sat at the bar, staring out the kitchen window. Two thoughts kept running through my mind as I watched a blue jay pulling nesting material out of my hanging pot, first, how did Odette know what I had been thinking when it came to the mess of paint, and second, where in the world did they get little cans of green paint!

Oh well…I had better get started on the corn beef and cabbage.

Something was wrong! I didn’t know what it was, but my heart started doing a Gene Krupa drum solo in my chest and my breathing stopped, then started with a squeak. I thought I was having a heart attack. Men my age have them, you know, but I’ve learned the warning signs of a heart attack and this wasn’t it, nor was it a stroke. I think it was a panic attack. I was panicked but without a cause. Doesn’t that seem odd?

I was looking out the kitchen window at the ivy covered back fence. I stood there shaking and grasping the sink until my physical sensations settled down. That’s when I saw it. There was a beam of light like laser pointers, only it was an icky green instead of red. It was aimed at the ivy near the round outdoor thermometer. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. My best guess was across the street, but lasers pointed at the moon 238.000 miles away have illuminated spots that were seen from earth. If this was a laser its source could be anywhere there was a direct line of sight.

As I watched the green pinpoint started to grow and the ivy leaves scorched where it touched. I was shocked but fascinated. I had never seen anything like this and I wondered what I should do. If it grew any bigger it could cause some real damage. What if it shifted from the fence to the house? That’s when I got scared. We had to get out. We had to let someone know that our fence was under attack by, by what?

I didn’t know but I didn’t want to wait any longer to find out. I went rushing through the house yelling for my wife, but she didn’t answer. I didn’t know she was out, but she sure wasn’t in. I grabbed for the dogs who were yapping like a pack of idiots because they didn’t know what was going on. Better to yap than to be caught unprepared. The silly things ran away from me every time I tried to pick them up. I had to herd them into a couple of kennels so I could carry them out to the car. You’d think a four pound dog couldn’t put up much of a fuss, but they can. I don’t know if they were reacting to my fright or if they sensed something wrong too. They were bumping, and thumping against the sides of the kennel so hard that I could barely hold on to them. The handles on top were straining and I was afraid that they might break and they’d tumble down the stairs kennels and all. I was lucky, no breaks.

We reached the back door when I heard something strange above the caterwauling of the dogs. I know, dogs don’t caterwaul, but these three were coming very close to disproving that belief. It was loud, and obnoxious, and high pitched. I didn’t think I could hear a bomb go off in the din they created. But I heard something. It sounded like a woman shouting at me, “Mr. Bill, Mr. Bill don’t go away and forget us! We’re scared too.”

“Wha?”

It must have been the ringing in my ears and my overactive imagination. “Nah,” I thought, “I didn’t hear anything.”

Then just as I turned back to the door again, I heard it again, “Mr. Bill, don’t you dare leave this house without us!”

I turned around and there standing just outside of the kitchen were two little people only six inches tall. My eyes bugged out. I dropped the kennels, which caused the dogs to get louder if that was even possible, and I fell down hard on my butt. “Oh great,” I thought, “Here I am running around the house like a crazy person, scaring the wits out of our dogs, and the truth is I’ve gone around the bend to the funny farm and climbed the slippery basket-weaver’s tree.”

The little folk took this chance with me seated on the ground to run up my legs, scramble up my shirt and perch on my shoulder. The female said, “Hurry, we have to go. There is going to be a breach in the portal and we can’t be here when it happens.”

I didn’t move. The male of the pair slapped my ear and yelled, “Get up, yer big lug — we don’t have time for yer amazement. You can be amazed later — right now we gotta go.” With that he yanked the hair at the nape of my neck and screamed, “Go, go, go!”

So I did. Luckily the car door opened easily. In went the kennels. The tiny folks scrambled from my shoulders on to the front seat beside me. I jerked the door closed and backed the car down the drive. There wasn’t a moment to lose, I turned and shot down the street. Car, kennels, little guys and me, rushing headlong into the darkness. I glanced over at the little man and woman struggling to get under the broad seat belt and started to think. Were these the gnomes that lived under our sink? My wife said they were there, but I had never seen them. Not until today that is. What else has she been talking about that seemed too fanciful to be believed — fairies, shape shifters, and centaurs? What if it was all true? What if? The thought made my stomach queasy. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. Besides I had better figure out where we were going and what we were going to do once we got there.

© Tami Ruesch, The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry, 2009-2010

Why is Bill surprised? Visit “Real Men Don’t See Faeries”

Be sure to check out the post “What Lurks in the Dark Wood?” to catch up on the action

Related posts: “At the Request of the Queen”