The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry

Posts Tagged ‘Ivy’

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

If you have been following the day to day adventures of Arial and the faeries you know that a gnome couple, Warren and Odette, came to set up housekeeping in my garden and help the faeries understand human kind. They have been living in a Halloween pumpkin under the kitchen sink until the weather got mild enough for Warren to start building their gnome home in the ivy.

Today is Easter and Bill gave me a wonderful gift, he started to dig some stumps up so that I could plant a garden. Well, when Warren heard that there was going to be digging in the garden, he just had to be there to supervise. To quote Warren, “No one knows gardens like gnomes!” Odette wanted to go out and search for Easter eggs so she grabed her little basket, I grabed my camera, and we all went outside to watch. At first, I had a hard time keeping  Warren out from under Bill’s feet and at a safe distance. It finally came down to Odette grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back before he got smushed. Disgusted, Warren stood back with arms folded, muttering something under his breath about angles of the shovel and depth of the hole. Bill pretended not to hear him. Warren couldn’t hold still for very long, gnomes aren’t known for their patience, so after it became clear that Odette and I weren’t going to let him jump in the hole Bill was digging, he decided to wander off and tend to his frog. One thing lead to another and before long he was happily building their gnome home in the ivy. I think Odette found a few more eggs. All in all, it has been a very pleasant Easter. Happy Easter everyone! I hope your day has been as uplifting ours!

Success! I’ve been rewarded with my patience. As I was leaving the house this morning I noticed a flurry of activity. Sunny and several other fairies were over by the ivy hedge collecting the Hawthorne berries that had fallen and were lying on the ground. I stood quietly watching as each fairy would roll a berry into a spot of sunshine. After the berry had sat in the sun a while (I can only assume that it was for the purpose of thawing) two others would pick it up, each holding one side, then they would make a tiny jump by kicking off with one foot, and after they were about three feet off of the ground they would dart into an opening in the ivy.

I knew that I didn’t have much time this morning but my curiosity got the better of me and I had to see where the hole in the ivy led. As I started toward the opening, several fairies broke away from the group and started flitting around my head, squeaking and squawking in a very irritated manor, as if to tell me that I wasn’t allowed to see. One stopped right in front of me, quickly shook her finger, then poked me in the nose! I must have had an astonished look on my face because they all began to laugh, spinning and doing somersaults in the air and coming to rest, hovering about a foot from me, staring intently at my shocked expression, then, much to my delight started to copy me, looking at each other with shock and amazement on their own faces.

This went on for sometime, each of them spinning and pointing and laughing at each other. I have to say that it was quite a production, this flurry of tiny sparkling wings, punctuated with the high tinkle of fairy laughter. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud myself. No sooner than the first giggle left my lips, they stopped short, gathered together as if whispering to each other, and took turns looking over their shoulders at me. Then they all simply disappeared. I don’t think that they knew humans could laughed, but I had no time to spend sorting things out now, still, I made a note to myself to find out what is through that opening.

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