The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry

The other day I walked into my magic room to find a couple of rather nasty goblins under my desk. They were hunched over and chewing on my computer cables. After chasing them around the room for a few minutes I called Arial to help get rid of the nefarious creatures. “Arial! come quick! There are sneaky goblins reeking havoc on my computer!” Arial shot into the room followed by two glowing fire fairies. They formed a triangle around the two little slimy green beasts, pointed their wands at at the center and chanted:

“Goblins green in face and arm

Here to do the Kind One harm

Be ye gone by count of three

Lest we fairies clobber thee”

Streaks of bright green light flashed from the fairie wands and surrounded the offending pair of goblins in a glowing bubble, then vanished in a burst of sparkles leaving only a  faint trace of footprints. Arial checked around the room to make sure that there were no more intruders. “That should do it. I think that it will be a long while before those two decide to come over again”

I turned on the computer and tried to get on the internet. “Shoot! They have fried the modem cable.” I checked to see if the lights on the router were flashing, nope, all dark. “Oh no, they wrecked the router too.” I looked over at Arial and the other fairies. “It’s going to take at least a week before I have this all replaced, what are people going to think if I don’t keep them up to date on the fairie happenings?”

Arial landed on my shoulder, her usual place, and whispered in my ear. “If you write it, they will come.” Yeah, yeah, I know, ever since Arial discovered videos she spends entirely to much time watching TV. She is a HUGE fan of Kevin Costner. I had to think for a minute. “I guess I could try to tweet on my cell phone until my network is up and running again, it won’t be the same, but I guess it will have to do. I wonder how they came through the portal, isn’t it invisible anymore?”

The three fairies put their heads together in a huddle then Arial floated back to my shoulder and stood with her hands behind her back. “It is the opinion of my colleagues that they came through the night you came back from the Midsummer celebration. Honeyed mead can make fairies a little, oh, how shall I say it, light headed.” I frowned at her. “So what you’re saying is that no one noticed that we had two to  many people in our group?” She giggled.”We do love our celebrations.” She stood a little taller and flipped her wings. “But we are now focused on the task at hand once more, never fear.” The two fire faeries slid up beside her, nodding agreement.

“Well, the damage is done, there is nothing else to do but go forward from here. Just make sure that the emerald guard is watching the portal.” I thought back to the day the trolls hairy arm came through the ivy. “It could have been a much scarier creature.” The three of them spun around my head, smiling and whispering words of consolation, then they winked out of sight. I have noticed something about the fire faeries, the air shimmers around them. The more determined they get, the more defined the shimmer becomes. When Arial and the two fire faeries winked out, the fire faeries had a very heavy shimmer around them.

I looked out the window to see Lilly heading down the street toward her little white house, it looked like she was talking to someone, but there was no one with her that I could see. I squinted my eyes and looked harder, nope, there wasn’t anyone else with her, not that I could see anyway. There is something more to her than she is letting on. I made a mental note to visit her again, maybe I can figure out what it is.

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

“There is another way.” Arial’s words keep echoing in my mind. I remember the look in her eyes,  it was a look of cold determination. This was a side of Arial I hadn’t seen before and I just knew that the “other way” wasn’t going to  be easy. I decided to wait a while before I asked the inevitable question.

The storm had subsided a little, the wind had died down to  a relatively calm, steady, 35 miles an hour and it was a  balmy (Ha!) teeth-rattling, 10 degrees above zero, maybe Orlaith was getting over her anger.

I ventured out at one point, to give the dogs a potty break. Chihuahuas do not like rain, or snow, or cold, or wind. They scurried back into the house, giving me an are you joking kind of glare. I can’t blame them, I wouldn’t want to go potty out here either! I let them back inside and then thought about my faerie sign.

Glancing toward the back gate I made my way down the walk, pushing against the wind, searching for the sign. Like I suspected, it wasn’t on the wall. I found it around the corner, against the border of the garden that runs between our property and Mrs. Shunner’s, it was sticking out of a two foot high drift of snow.

Looking from the sign, to the Shunner’s house, then back to the sign again, I inched my way across the drive to retrieve it. Being this close to the neighbors house, a house that I knew harbored a dark creature from the faerie realm, filled me with shuddering dread.

It was bitterly cold outside, and despite the warmth of the parka that I had on, I felt a chill run down my spine. Using my foot to move the snow away so that I could keep watch on the house, I began excavating the sign.

As usual, the Shunner’s yard was quiet as a tomb. The drapes were closed against the outside world, nothing moved. Nothing Moved! I suddenly noticed that even in this constant wind, the bushes on the Shunners property were standing completely still. Trees and shrubs all up and down the street were tossing madly back and forth, but not theirs.

Oh, all right, you can’t tell me I’m the only one seeing this! The comparison is glaring. Time suddenly stood still, the driving storm retreated, I thought back to when I first started seeing my faerie friends. It seems like a lifetime ago, so much has happened, but it has only been three months.

I have been reading about and studying faeries for much of my life, I know that there bad faeries as well as good faeries, I just didn’t count on being plunged into the middle of a world where faeries battled over control of their realm. I naively thought that if I ever saw faeries, they would just be these sparkly little beings flitting about my flowers (duh!).

A blast of freezing wind shattered my concentration. I felt snow pelting my face and I realized that I had been standing there, for who knows how long, just staring at the Shunner’s house. Even if people can’t see the weird things going on over there, they can see me doing weird things, like standing outside in a bone-chilling snow storm. Who does that?

I shook off my thoughts and bent to retrieve the placard. Standing up, I used my glove to brush away the snow and inspected the edges for damage.The sign was intact. I skimmed over the words with my finger, Truer words were never spoken, I wonder if the people who made the sign knew what they were writing.

Something made me look up, glancing casually over at Mrs. Shunner’s front window I saw her standing in full view, something she never does, she was standing motionless, watching me. She looked like the Mrs. Shunner we have come to know, but now her eyes were glowing dark red, and she wore an evil smirk.

Startled, I jerked quickly around and started to make my way to the gate, the journey made easier by the wind  shoving me urgently away. As I started to round the corner of the house, I risked looking back. The drapes were drawn, and the little blue house with the black roof where our neighbors, the Shunners live, was radiating a sickly green-yellow light.

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

There’s a sticker on my bulletin board that reads: “Magic Happens”. I have always thought of it as an inspirational motto, but in light of  recent events, I am beginning to think that the phrase is more a foreshadowing of life itself.

A good example of the saying “Magic Happens” is our next door neighbor, Mrs. Shunner. We just recently found out that she isn’t what she appears to be at first glance. If you saw her on the street, you would say that she was a short woman with sandy brown hair, about thirty something, and on the shy side.  Ask any of her neighbors they will tell you that she keeps mostly to herself and rarely goes out.

I know why she keeps to herself, it’s because she’s afraid that people will find out she’s a shape shifter from the faerie realm, hiding in the mortal world until she’s able to return and take control. Believe me, I know how this all sounds, but it’s true, Mrs. Shunner has become aware of the presence of  faeries in my backyard and her curiosity is compelling her to take chances that she might not otherwise take.

We stood at our window and watched as Mrs. Shunner came out her front door, held her arms wide, and morphed into a large black crow, flapping her wings to stay airborne as she shrank, the shining obsidian feathers reflecting the last of the suns light. I’d say that is about as magic as it gets. I can’t believe others haven’t seen her change, but then again, I have been living with faeries coming and going through the portal, I have experienced the realm on the other side, and I didn’t know she was anything except an odd little woman.

Arial says that the Shunners have placed invisibility charms around their property making it impossible for the neighbors to see anything mystical. She broke the field when she came snooping around our house, she didn’t know that I had faerie vision and that once the she set foot on our property, she would no longer  be able to hide her true identity from me.

When it comes to dealing with Mrs. Shunner there are two things that work in our favor. First is the fact that her power has been diminished. She has been away from her magical beginnings for so long that she can’t do much more  than change shape and keep the charms around her property in force. Now that we know she is so close, Arial and the guard will be able to defend against her attempts to gain access to the portal. Second, she doesn’t know that I can see what her abilities are.

There is a feeling of security that comes from having my faerie guard close by. Half of them are on the faerie side, keeping trolls and other dangerous creatures from being able to come across, and the others, including Arial, stay on this side, making sure that a certain level of normalcy is maintained, (like my life is normal!)

Tonight as I was closing the drapes, I glanced out the window, looking for any signs of Mrs. Shunner. Her house was dark, there were no signs of life but I had the errie feeling that she was in there, looking back, playing a waiting game. But waiting for what?…

Will Mrs. Shunner be abel to find the portal? What do the dogs think of all the mess Warren is making as he builds the new gnome home? Visit with us again for more news from the misty world of Arial Hollyberry.

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