The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry

” Arial, come and look.” I was working at the computer when an e-mail message came in from a good friend, Katherine Bourgeois. Kat and I met on a social site for business people and were immediately friends. I was told by Queen Litha that faerie people find each other, and I am finding out that  she was right, people from all over are writing to me about some faerie sighting or another.

“Remember Kat? She introduced us to Patricia Saxton.” Arial was all smile’s as she made herself comfortable on my shoulder. “Yes, I do remember, have you received new tidings from her? (Fairy’s tend to talk “old world”).

“I have, would you like to see?” Arial jumped up and swirled about in a fast, rather complicated series of aerial maneuvers. She stopped suddenly and drew a tiny silver flute from  her belt. It wasn’t long after the sweet, melodic notes had faded away that the room exploded into hundreds of fall faeries, all struggling to look at the monitor. I had faeries sitting on my head and slipping off both shoulders, one even tried to perch on the tip of my nose. “Um…excuse me!” I carefully removed the offending faerie by lifting her up by the wings and setting her down on the desk, where remarkably, there wasn’t one other faerie. “Thanks Arial, just what we needed, a faerie fan club.”

The room vibrated with excitement. Arial darted back and forth, “Hurry, hurry hurry!” A couple of  things I have noticed about my faerie friends, they don’t have much patience, and they love a good story (that’s probably why Arial is so insistent that I write things down). “All right, calm down! I’m opening it, look, here it comes. She sent pictures too!”

Kat wrote:

Tami, on a recent trip blueberry picking in a beautiful valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, my granddaughter Chloe and I discovered several beautiful faerie hideaways.  These lovely little spots also sparked a little faerie haiku.

Arial wrinkled her nose as she tip-toed around the keyboard. “What is “haiku?” She ask this as if it were something to avoid stepping in.

I had to laugh at the expression on her face. “Haiku is a form of non-rhyming, Zen-like poetry that originated in Japan. It has a formal structure limited to seventeen syllables, five in the first line, seven in the second line, and five in the third line. Would you like me to read them to you?” All the faeries clapped and cheered so I began:

Deep in the valley

I thought I saw a glimmer

Of faerie luster.

Twinkling by the stream

Sparkling, blinking, and shining

Faeries as flashlights

******

Faerie, tucked in for

The night, did you hide your light

Under the covers?

******

Silly Faerie, why

Do you think I cannot see

You blinking at me?

******

Do faeries smile and

Stop to talk a while and be

Friends like you and me?

******

Is there faerie time?

Or can their days be measured

In winks of an eye?

******

When faeries get mad

Do they blink slowly and point

A mean wing at you?

There was a soft collective sigh when I stopped reading. Fairy eyes are, for the most part, large and dewy, but now I noticed that there were more than a few misty eyes in the group. I smiled. “Judging by everyone’s response I take it that you like Kat’s Haiku?” The faeries were sitting in groups of two and three hugging each other and humming softly.

Arial came up close to my ear and whispered “We must send Kat a missive this instant thanking her for her charming words and her captivating still life!”

The fall faeries drifted off, one by one, still caught in the magic of Katherine’s words.

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

With the fire faeries doing such a wonderful job of heating up the season, the only time I can enjoy my backyard is in the cool of early morning. The sky is a cloudless light blue and the air is calm, as if the world is holding its breath, waiting for the sun to melt away the last of the predawn shadows.

I love to lay on the chase lounge and watch my faeries coming and going through the ivy hedge. Ever since the celebration of Midsummer I have had a hard time concentrating, I feel the faeries whispering to me, inviting me to join them and leave the mortal world behind. “Come away with us, come, and leave your cares behind. Feel the soft breeze of the realm; hear the stream as it trickles over cool, mossy stones. Come away, come away…if it weren’t for Arial, Odette and I would still be there.

Arial has been trying to get me to write down my experiences, she tells me that it is the only way to break the spell cast over me when I entered the faerie circle; it seems that having faerie blood running through my veins makes it a little harder to resist the pull of the Fae. “Kind One, please, write down your thoughts on your computer machine, I will help if you like.” I had to smile. “Arial, I didn’t know you could type.”

Arial flew in low over my laptop, skimming her tiny feet across the keyboard. “I don’t mean helping you to spell the words, I mean helping you remember.” She flew up and landed lightly on my shoulder then began to braid my hair. I felt it again, that hazy euphoric feeling. The trees started to sway back and forth and I heard pipe music playing in the distance. It could have been my imagination but I could swear that the energy field around the portal wavered.

“Thanks, I think I can handle it.” I saw a look of disappointment wash across her face and felt ashamed that I had been so short and hurriedly added, “Why don’t you sit  and keep me company, I might need some clarification, I do still feel a little light headed.”  She jumped up and buzzed around my head, adding to my already disconnected feeling.

A slight breeze blew through the trees, carrying with it the sweet scent of honeysuckle. It lifted my hair and made the wind chimes sway. The pipe music I was hearing grew louder as the backyard seem to fade into a fine mist. My thoughts took me back to the path at the bottom of the hill. The dragonflies and faeries had escorted us  from the Elvenwood and were landing in groups of two and three at the edge of the forest. The sun balanced on the top of the hill sending blazing fingers of orange and pink reaching out toward high, thin clouds, and in the east, the early evening hues of violet and indigo signaled the coming twilight.

Arial suddenly materialized on the path in front Odette and I. Her sparkling bright orange and pink appearance took us by surprise and we had to shield our eyes from the intensity of her glow. “I’m so glad you are back! I trust that Elendain treated you well. Don’t you love the elvenwood? I knew she was nervous because she was talking fast as she whipped around us in an excited frenzy. “We must hurry to the meadow, the celebration is about to begin.”

I grabbed Odette and carried her as we made our way up the hill. By the time we reached the top, the purple and blue of the evening sky was blending with the sunset and the shadows on the forest floor were quickly deepening to black, blotting out the definition of the tall deep green pine trees. I expected to see a flurry of activity in the meadow but it was empty. “Arial, where is everyone?” Arial had flown ahead of us toward the center of the clearing and was hovering just inside what looked like a ring of soft white mushrooms that were nestled among the tall grasses, their large caps tilted in every direction.

Arial’s glittering wings reflected the last of suns fading rays. She beckoned us forward.  “Come, come and join the dance. Step inside the fairy ring, come.” I had never seen Arial act like this; she was swaying back and forth as if listening to soft music, and she had a dreamy look on her face. Odette and I exchanged puzzled glances. “Missus, why is she acting like that?” she pointed at Arial. “All befuddled and the like.” I had been wondering the same thing. “I don’t know, maybe its part of the celebration?” Odette nodded. “Aye, I’m thinking you’re right about that, but strange it tis.”

I took a deep breath. “Well, we might as well find out what Midsummer is all about.” Moving closer to the fairy ring, I stepped in.

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

Odette and I followed Elendain up the rope bridge to a large platform high in the tops of the gigantic evergreen forest. We burst out of the branches into bright morning sunlight that spread as far as we could see. I stopped at the end of the bridge, holding tight to the rough rope. “Is it safe up here? I mean, won’t we fall off if the wind starts to blow?” Elendain turned back to me, smiling. “My dear, we have been here since the dawn of time, no one has ever “fallen off”. Come, walk with me and I’ll show you.” She held out her hand to me. “I promise, you won’t feel even a whisper of movement.”

I took her hand and carefully stepped out onto the large, round platform. Elendain continued. “We live in harmony with nature, we respect Gaia and she respects us, the wind never blows strong in these woods. Walk to the edge and put out your hand.” I moved gingerly toward the edge, a tingling sensation of dread crawling up my spine. Stopping about five feet back, I held out my hand toward empty space.

Elendain glided up behind me. “That’s right, keep going. Hold your hand out in front of you, yes, that’s right.” I nervously inched my way closer to the edge of the platform. Two feet to go and my hand hit something. My eyes told me that there was nothing there, but my touch said there was a wall in front of me. With my eyes wide and my mouth hanging open, I took a few more steps closer and put both hands out, palms forward, and mimed  my way around the entire platform. “It’s an invisible wall!”

Elendain motioned for me to return to her side. “There are charms all through the elvenwood. This great hall is where we hold all of our celebrations and we prefer to be as close as we can to the heavens. That is why we charmed the ceiling and walls to be invisible. Odette was giggling under her breath, with a mischievous look on her face she darted toward the edge. At the last moment, before she could leap out into the blue sky, she turned her body and smashed, shoulder first into the invisible wall.

“Oh, Odette don’t…”. She rolled on the floor at my feet laughing hysterically. “Ah missus, these inviseeble walls mess with yer brain they do. Lettin ya think yer gona fall.”  Elendain was laughing too. I turned toward her with a mock look of exasperation. “Don’t encourage her.” I tried to keep my voice stern but it’s hard not to laugh when everybody around you is laughing.

Somewhere below a flute played. Elendain turned toward the east. “Your escort is arriving.” In the distance I could see bright flashes of red, orange and yellow all through the dark green of the trees, it looked like tiny  fireworks moving toward us.

As we made our way down, dropping once more into the  shelter of the evergreen boughs, I had a thought. “Elendain? If there are charms all through these woods, how did a troll find you? When Arial and the emerald guard helped me get home through the woods by the faerie palace, they kept throwing little silver orbs into the bushes at the side of the road. They said that it made the path invisible to the trolls and since they couldn’t see the road, they would wander off in another direction.”

A shadow of doubt played across Elendain’s face. Her eyes darkened the way Lilly’s did the day Lucy and I walked down the street in front of the little white house. Elendain’s voice pulled me back from my musings. “Yes, that is a good question, and one I will be looking into, but for now…” She stopped at the bottom of the tree and stepped to one side to let me pass in front of her. “Your escort is here.”

I looked up, flying toward us through the lingering mist on the forest floor, came hundreds of  faeries riding on fireflies.

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