The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry

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”

When I woke up this morning the sky was a clear blue. The birds were chirping in the trees and the breeze carried the scent of spring through the open window. The first thing I did when I opened my eyes was check my arms and legs for black fur. I jumped up and slipped into my robe. Ah! how nice it was to be walking downstairs on just two legs.

I walked into the kitchen to find Bill pouring himself cup of coffee. When I opened my mouth to say good morning the only thing that came out was a squeak. I couldn’t talk! Well, I could talk but all the words came out in a scratchy whisper. I grabbed my throat, “I can’t talk! I don’t know what’s wrong, my throat feels all clogged.” Just speaking those few words sent me into fits of coughing.

Bill slapped me on the back like he was trying to dislodge something from my throat. “Maybe it’s allergies” I straightened up and tried to catch my breath. Now, not only was my voice gone, my throat was raw from all that coughing.

“I don’t think so, it wasn’t like this yesterday, I was fine.” Just then Arial spiraled down the stairs and darted into the kitchen. We watched as she did her best Tinkerbell imitation around the kitchen, darting here and there, all bright and bubbly. “Airal?” I squeaked out the word. Arial froze mid flit and quickly turned to look at me. To say that she had a look of concern on her face would be putting it mildly.

With a quick flip of her wings she was at my nose, pulling on my upper lip to get me to open my mouth. “Arial, stop! What are you doing?” If it wasn’t hard enough to speak before, now I had to try to get my words out in a raspy whisper with a faerie pulling on my mouth.

” Be quiet, open your mouth and let me see inside.” My, she can be bossy at times. I stopped trying to push her away and said “aaaahhh….”. Without warning she crawled in my mouth, half way to my tonsils. Being blessed with an over active gag reflex I almost hurled. She was tickling the back of my tongue.

Trying not to bite down I croaked, “Ahweal, ge  ouw!” When she didn’t budge I grabbed her by her skirts and pulled. I held her dangling a few inches from my face. “What were you looking for?” The words came out a little to strong and it sent me into another coughing fit.

She took the opportunity to break free of my fingers and flipped saliva from the tips of her wings. I gained control of the coughing. “Sorry about that, but you were the one who chose to crawl in my mouth.” Arial just smiled at me, “Not a problem. I know what’s taking your voice away. It looks like your voice box wants to revert back to cat form.”

“It what!” Bill and I shot each other alarmed looks. “Not to worry.” Arial was calmly weaving back and forth with a bright smile on her face. “I’ll just have Cythia brew up a potion and you’ll be good as new.”

“Yes, but how long will it take? There’s a lot of stuff I have to do that requires a voice, like recording.” Arial whizzed around my head a couple of times then stopped and gave me a light kiss on the cheek. “Not to worry!” She waved goodbye and dissolved in green sparkles.

© Tami Ruesch, The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry, 2009.

Mrs. Shunners other cat met me at the door, to my over excited imagination it looked like a huge black panther getting ready to pounce. Head low, ears pinned back, he kept his front paws pulled beneath his shoulders in a crouched position, every muscle was tensed and he lashed his tail back and forth.

My first hurdle in rescuing the faerie, Krystal, was convincing the big black cat that I was his superior. Not knowing exactly how to respond to the hostile welcome I was being given by my twin, I decided to play it safe and make the first move. I arched my back, every hair standing straight out, and hissed menacingly. When that didn’t seem to cool his virulence, I extended my claws and quickly swiped at his face, just for good measure, I did it again. My aggressor let out a terrified scream and vanished under a low sofa in the murky recesses of the room.

Having to deal with an angry cat, first thing upon entering Mrs. Shunners house, did wonders for my courage, but was going to prove to be the least of my concerns. I peered around the dim room. Hazy light filtered through curtains that hung over small high windows. There were cabinets on either side of the room that held an impressive array of bottles of all shapes and sizes, dulled by a fine layer of dust that had settled over everything. Crumbling yellowed papers were piled high in every corner.

I guess shape shifters have more important matters to attend to rather than being tidy. I remembered what Arial had said about the faerie energy coming from the back of the house, I was at the back of the house now and I couldn’t see anything that looked like a faerie. Don’t be a silly! you can only see things at floor level!

With that thought, I turned my attention to the bottles sitting high on the counter. Pulling myself up on my hind legs and stretching my head forward, I craned my neck, trying to see the bottles at the back. No good, the light was bad and there were far to many bottles and jars. Some of them were so dusty I couldn’t see what was in them.

I needed to get up there, but how? At the end of the counter sat a chair piled high with books, they had titles like, “The Dummies Guide to Living Among Humans”, ” Shape Shifting, Going Unnoticed and Loving It!”, and my feline self’s personal favorite, “Skulking Made Easy”.

I was poised to make an elegant leap from the floor, to the chair, and then to the counter top when I heard a scraping noise behind me. Darting under the chair, I turned to see flabby ankles in dirty pink bunny slippers shuffling through the hall door with my evil twin winding around every step.

I craned my neck to pier up at Mrs. Shunner. She looked around the room, then started calling in a high thin grating voice that she used to summon her cats, like a cat is going to come when it’s called. Did I mention that her voice was like screeching chalk on a blackboard?

She saw me, pushed back as far as I could get, under the chair. When I didn’t come running, she reached under and pulled me out. My first instinct was to claw her face as I wriggled to get down, then Arial’s words came back to me, “remember, you’re Mrs. Shunners cat, act like you belong there!”

I relaxed and allowed her to stroke my long black fur. ” Where have you been Beauty? Midnight and I have been worried about you, disappearing like that. Did you catch the nasty gnome that lives under the bushes next door?” She laughed at the picture of her cat dragging home the lifeless gnome.

My repulsion was growing rapidly, if she didn’t put me down soon I would have no option but to sink my teeth into her neck, or at least hack up a hairball. Holding me under one arm she slowly walked the length of the counter, stopping now and then to tap on a jar or wipe the dust off another so the she could peer into the cloudy liquid.

I saw what I was looking for even before Mrs. Shunner got to the end of the counter. There, back in the corner, was a bell jar, and under the bell jar was a tiny faerie. She was lying limp on the bottom of the jar, her glow reduced to a slow pulse around the tips of her wings.

Oh no! No, No, NO! The cruelty of it was more than I could bear. I literally jumped at the opportunity. I sunk my teeth and claws into the arm that held me, Mrs. Shunner screamed at the unexpected attack and jerked her arm back.

I pushed myself away and landed in the middle of the bottles, sending several over the edge to smash on the floor, splashing their slimy, noxious contents everywhere. Mrs Shunner grabbed at me but I wedged myself between two large carafes’ causing her hand to hit the glass hard. Pushing out with my back legs I sent the cracked jar sliding toward her. She batted it away. The already damaged bottle shattered, allowing fluid and round, squishy things that look suspiciously like eye balls to spread freely over the counter top.

Without looking back, I tipped the bell jar over, grabbed the faerie like a kitten, then sprung off the counter and out the cat door. I raced around the far corner of the house. All I could hear was the pounding of my heart in my ears. Not daring to slow down, I raced across the yard toward the garden wall, where twelve faeries were waiting, with silver orbs in hand.

I vaulted over the wall in one easy bound. Sliding to a stop, I turned in time to see the faeries cast multiple silver orbs into the garden that boarders the two properties. We saw the anger on Mrs. Shunner face as she thundered up be hind me. Anger changed to shock, then to dismay as she watched everything on our side of the wall disappear from her view.

I carried the little faerie to the backyard and carefully released her into the waiting arms of Arial, who flipped her wings once, and disappeared, followed quickly by four other faeries.

© Tami Ruesch, The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry, 2009.