The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry

“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 time of day where the light in the sky is the same, whether dusk, or dawn. Have you ever fallen asleep and woke up not knowing how long you slept? You can’t tell from the light in the sky. Is it six in the morning, or six in the evening? What time was it when I went to sleep? Have you had that surreal feeling that you slept all night (or day). Sometimes the only way to get your balance back is to run through the house looking for someone else. Someone that you can ask what the time  is, and risk appearing the fool when you ask, “Did I sleep so long that I missed something?” They will look at you strangely, I promise,  when you follow up with, “You know, is it today or tomorrow?” It’s a very disorienting feeling.

That’s exactly how I felt when, after long frantic discussions, held in hushed tones, and a flurry of tense activity by the faeries in the emerald guard, Arial finally decided to open the portal so that we could go home.

She pointed her wand at the ivy hedge, sending out  a beam of blinding white light that penetrated the vines. As she whispered something in elvish, the gnarled branches began to fold back on themselves, groaning and creaking as they twined around, finally producing an archway large enough for us to pass under.

The night was starting to bow to the birth of a new day in the faerie realm, but as we stepped through the portal into the mortal world, the light in the sky was the light of sunset. Dusk and dawn, yin and yang, I was beginning to see how intertwined our world was with the transcendental world of the Fae. One world can’t exist alone, each is dependent on the existence of the other.

We had barely passed through the arch when the hedge begrudgingly filled back in, letting us know with every groan that it resented being disturbed at this early hour (I couldn’t help wondering if the hedge, being the boundary for both worlds, regarded the hour as early, or late). Arial and two other faeries remained with us, while the others stayed in the realm to continue their vigilant guard of the portal.

Jet lag drains all the energy out of you, and even though we hadn’t traveled across physical time zones, we had traveled across time, so we retired to the upstairs earlier than we would normally and fell into bed exhausted from our recent adventure. The last thing I remember Bill saying was, “Wow, our pillows smell good!”

We woke up this morning to a blizzard of whiteout proportions. It’s not unusual for us to have a spring snow storm, but this was furious driving snow that beat against the windows making them rattle like they might crack and break. It didn’t feel right, this storm, and it wasn’t until Arial appeared as we were having our coffee that I understood why.

“Queen Orlaith is livid!” I traveled to the northern realm to ask the queen’s council on the disappearance of the faerie, Krystil. I told her we suspect that Mrs. Shunner has taken her away to a dark place to drain her of her magic.”

Arial saw Odette on the floor trying to get our attention by waving her coffee cup. She floated down and grabbed under her arms, then shot back up to the top of the counter and  gently let her down. I got an eyedropper full of coffee and filled the little mug that she held out. “Didn’t want to be stopping the conversation now!” She took a sip, “I’ll be thankin’ ya for the brew.”

Arail continued, “Orlaith flew, enraged, to the topmost tower of her castle. Turning to face the south, holding her arms out in front of her, she pursed her lips, and with fire in her eyes, blew out a thin wisp of  frost. She turned back to me with instructions to return quickly, that I might keep the biting cold out of your garden.”

“This breath of frost gathered shape and intensity, it grew into a powerful freezing storm, prepared to do Orlaith’s bidding. Orlaith instructed the storm to pound down on the shape shifter, demonstrating the full power of the Queen’s anger at the audacity she showed when she took a member of the queen’s realm. I barely made it back ahead of the storm!”

We  huddled together under blankets on the couch, listening to the wind whistle around the corners of the house. It sounded like it was going to tear the awnings off. There is a sign hanging on the wall leading to the backyard, that is if it’s still there, it reads: “DON’T PISS OFF THE FAERIES!” I always wondered what would happen, and I’m glad that Orlaith and I are on good terms.

“Arial?” The queen’s daughter backed away from the window and turned to face me, I could see from the look in her bright green eyes that a plan was  forming in the back of her mind. “Arial, I can appreciate the queen’s anger, and it doesn’t surprise me that it took the form of snow, but, this storm is freezing everyone, not just Mrs. Shunner.”

“Yes, that is true.” She casually spun around my head, stopping right in front of me. “There is another way…”

© Tami Ruesch, The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry,

Once in a while, as we move through life, we are fortunate enough to meet people who make a profound and lasting impression on us. Dorothy Haslam is one of those people.

Al and Dorthy Haslam moved their family to Canada when their girls, Linda and Julie, were young, but because Dorothy suffered from rheumatoid arthritis decided to move to a warmer climate and ended up settling in Salt Lake City where they opened a print shop, Seagull Printing Services.

When my husband and I started our print brokering business in 1990, Seagull Printing quickly became one of our favorite vendors to work with. Al and Dorothy were just nice people, and the working relationship developed into a very rewarding friendship.

In the early years, Bill worked the new business almost exclusively, while I had my full time positions with other companies. He had the benefit of knowing the Haslam’s long before I did. That all changed in 2001.

On October 31st 2001 Bill and I remarried. We decided that since we were footing the bill, we would have the kind of party we wanted. We settled on a medieval themed ceremony, complete with medieval attire, we even had the wedding party dressed for the occasion!
The medieval theme intrigued Dorothy. Being from England, I guess it just felt natural to her. She really got into the mood of the celebration! The first time I met Dorothy was at our open house. Bill was standing by me when she and Al walked in with their daughter Linda and her husband, Tom. “That’s Al and Dorothy Haslam, you know, the owners of Seagull Printing.”

I had heard of them of course, but this was the first occasion I had to be introduced. Dorothy walked up to me with her hand outstretched in the most elegant, lady like manor. Smiling, she curtsied, and in the most charming of English accents said, “You must be the beautiful lady Tamara!”

Talk about a first impression! Have you ever had the feeling that you already know a person, even if you had never met them before? That’s what this first meeting with Dorothy was like for me, I felt a deep, sole-stirring bond with this lovely English bred woman. I have told her many times that I thought that I was English in another life!

I always looked forward to any time that I got, to visit with her. Sometimes I would ask to go to press checks just to be able to chat with her for a minute. I started to write little faerie stories that I would send along with business faxes, she liked them so much that she would take them around the office to show everyone else what the fairies were doing that day.

She asked me one day if I had thought about writing a book about fairies.  My little paragraphs were so delightful that she thought they should be published.

That conversation was several years ago now. I had filed it away with all my other warm, wonderful memories of Dorothy. We lost her about a year and a half ago. I feel it a privilege to have known her for as long as I did.

A few months ago, I was thinking about Dorothy. Bill had been writing a book that he titled “The Whistling Salamander”, it was very good and I started thinking again about what Dorothy had said about the fairie book.

I started to write, one thing lead to another, and ended up with “The Misty World of Arial Hollyberry.” Sometimes, when the words come easy, I can almost feel Dorothy standing by my side saying, “Oh, I like that!” in her charming English accent.

I miss you terribly Dorothy and I want you to know that you are my greatest inspiration and support. Bill is my motivation, but you are the reason I write. If it wasn’t for your enthusiastic support I don’t think I would have had the courage to even try to put my thoughts down on paper.

I look forward to the day that I will be able to greet you again. Smiling like you did so many years before, you will  hold out your hand to me and we will  courtesy to each other. You will say,”Lady Tamara”, I will bow my head and reply, “Lady Dorothy.”