Gift of the Fairies

My mother used to cut my sister’s hair in the garden so she could be seen through the neighbor’s window. Our neighbor was a fairy.

“If a fairy looks at you when your hair is being cut,” she told us, snipping away slowly at Shellie’s hair, one eye on the neighboring window, “it grows into gold when it falls to the ground.”

Only, of course, if your hair is golden colored in the first place. Mine isn’t. It’s brown. Medium brown hair. Medium brown eyes. Medium brown skin. I don’t know what fairies would do with brown hair. Turn it into dirt, probably. I’m fairly certain that’s the natural order of hair that falls onto the ground without a magical fairy glance.

Mom didn’t even try to cut my hair in the garden. My sister liked to point out that at least Mom looked at my head instead of at a window when she gave me my haircut, so my hair usually was more or less even when she was finished. This was true, so I never complained about my sister’s wonderful golden hair where she could hear me. But I complained in my head.

The fairies were among us: mute, beautiful, magical. In some of our storybooks the fairies are portrayed as miniature things in gauze and wings. Maybe there are some places where fairies look like that but ours were as large as adult humans, with massive, sparkling eyes, absurdly long, delicate ears that arced up into points, and graceful movements.

I went to New York on a class trip once and while we were standing in line, watching all the suits and briefcases stride past us, there were the fairies drifting among them, oblivious to the rush, pirouetting and strolling along, their flowing robes catching the sunlight and twinkling as they glided along, otherworldly, detached, simply beyond the petty humdrum of human life.

They never spoke to a human, but if you pleased them, whether by getting your hair cut, or offering them a seat on the subway, or who knew what, really, they demonstrated their pleasure by charming you.

Maybe your hair turned to gold as it fell onto the floor during a haircut. Maybe you suddenly had more money in your bank account, or large, sparkling fairy-eyes, or could sing so beautifully you could make grown men cry. You never knew what pleased them and what didn’t until they threw a charm on you, and sometimes you couldn’t tell even then what you'd done. If the fairy gave you green hair, you kept your mouth shut and were happy with green hair. It certainly wouldn’t ever grow back the normal color.

I wanted them to notice me. It seemed like my sister had fairies tossing her charms every other week. That’s why her blonde hair falls in perfect ringlet curls, the source of her better than average math skills, her adorable, pointed chin, her fingernails that never flaked, her perfect, bell-like laugh. I felt too average to be fairy touched.

Ironically, it was my mother, who had always been quite vocal about my lamentable failure to catch fairy attention, that changed that situation. Shellie was out at her weekly ballet lesson and Mom was making a cake when she realized she had no strawberry extract. So I was roused from my book and sent off down the sidewalk to the grocery store three blocks away.

I didn’t mind; it was a nice day and I like grocery stores. I got the strawberry extract, browsed the drink aisle, settled on a Yoohoo, and headed to the cash register.

I stopped, halfway hidden by the end cap selling potato chips (“Two for Five!!”) I knew the cashier. Sort of. It was Colin, the kid who sat two seats in front of me in Physics last year, a tall boy with red hair. A boy I’d not been able to muster the courage to speak to all year long. He was scanning items for an older woman who was having difficulties figuring out her debit card. He explained, patiently: “Try swiping the card, ma’am. No, the other way. The other way.”

Finally, she was gone. He ran a hand over his face, sighed, and turned to me.

And his whole face lit up. Like I was the best thing he’d seen all day. Nobody’s ever looked at me like that before.

“Cassie!” He said, blushed all over again, and stammered, “Uh, I’m sorry, you probably don’t even remember me. We had Biology together!”

“Colin, right?” (Like I was even slightly unsure.) And…then for this long, heavenly moment we just stood there, looking at each other and grinning at each other like a couple of fools.

“So, can I check you out?” He said.

See, now, you’re probably thinking that I was standing at a cash register, and the cashier’s job is usually referred to as “checking out” and so therefore this is obviously what he was talking about…but I wasn’t really thinking about the grocery store much, just then…

My mouth fell open and I stammered a couple incoherent syllables: unsure, embarrassed, a little disappointed, but at the same time wildly flattered…and then my brain kicked back into gear and I realized he was talking about my groceries. I could tell he’d realized exactly what had gone through my head.

“Yesplease.” I muttered, head down, face burning.

“Cassie—”

“Ihavetogo.” I whispered, and ran out of the store.

I hurried into the sunlight and paused, gasping in pure embarrassment and mortification. How was it even possible to be that awkward? I’d never be able to look at him again—I was just short of publicly pulling out my hair with grief when someone tapped my shoulder.

I spun around, hoping—and subsided. It wasn’t Colin. It was a fairy. She was about six foot tall, as willowy as a supermodel, and her hair hung in dark ringlets down to her waist. She smiled this sympathetic, sweet smile, and glanced backwards, indicating my recent catastrophic interaction. I shrugged, falling to even greater depths of mortification than I’d previously thought possible.

But she held up a finger, gave me a secret, smug smile, and touched the tip of my nose. I felt a spark, a shimmer of magic run through my nose (I had a hard time not sneezing in her face, honestly) and then she kissed me on the forehead and glided off.

It had happened. I had been given a fairy gift. And at the strangest time. I touched my face, felt nothing. Looked in the reflection of the glass. I didn’t look different.

“Excuse me?” I whirled around to find a weedy kid two years younger than me looking at me with stars in his eyes. “Could I have your number?”

I gaped at him. And I said, “Um, I’m sorry—” And came to a screeching halt. “That’s not—that’s not my voice!” The words coming out of my mouth were low, sultry…sexy—and really, really loud. It was like I was talking into a megaphone. Several people across the parking lot looked my way. The kid’s expression was, if possible, even more impressed. “I don’t—no, you can’t have my number!” I shouted, and ran away, only to find myself face to face with a rich college guy—you know, the kind with the chinos and the pink polos and the perfect tan.

He flashed a smile so brilliant his daddy must have paid for it. “Hey, uh,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Just wondering…could you let me know when you turn eighteen? Because I would love to show you a good time—when it’s legal, of course.”

“What the heck!” I shrieked, backing up. This was not what I wanted, not what I’d been hoping for from fairy attention.

Two women, probably in their fifties, sidled up to me. “I’m sorry to interrupt, dear, but I just have to say, I love your hair. Where did you get it done?” The raw envy in her eyes unnerved me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Colin coming out and I knew I had to get out of there at once. I didn’t want to see him act like this, just dragged along by fairy magic. There had been that one, perfect moment, when he had been happy to see me, just my normal self—I couldn’t let this ruin that. I turned and ran.

Shellie found me an hour later, hidden under my bedcovers, sobbing.

“Cassie?”

From outside the door I heard my mother continuing the monologue she’d begun when I came home.

“—ever tells me anything! She just runs inside crying and slams the door in my face! I mean, don’t mind me, I’m only your mother, I’ve only cooked and cleaned and raised you—”

Shellie rolled her eyes and shut the door, muffling our mother. I handed her the note I’d written earlier, realizing that I’d have to communicate eventually but not wanting to hear my own traitorous voice. She read what I’d written and sank down on my bed beside me, my note loosely held in her hand.

“So you think the fairy wanted to make you more attractive?”

I nodded, sniffing. “I’m stuck this this forever!” I bellowed across the room, and then tried a whisper: “With sultry-megaphone voice! And Colin—I’m never going to be able to talk to him again…!”

I started crying again. Shellie, to her credit, only jumped a little when my sultry, amplified voice shouted out of my mouth. “You’re not going to start cooing over how amazing I am?” I asked, wiping my eyes.

She rolled her eyes. “Cassie. I’m your sister. There’s some realities even magic can’t glam up.”

“Wow, thanks.” I whispered, sarcastically, because I saw that she was teasing me, but I really did mean it. I’ve never been so happy to have someone unimpressed with me.

She stood up. “Come with me. We’re going to find that fairy and change this!”

“You can’t!” I hissed. “And please don’t make me talk to anybody!”

The door slammed open, and my mother stood there, her cake battered spatula still in her hand, her eyes wide. “Stuck forever?! Does that mean what I think it means?” She hustled into the room. “Cassie, are you fairy-touched?”

“Mom!’ Shellie snapped. “Really?!” And grabbing my arm, she dragged me out of the room, away from our mother’s shocked cries of dismay.

“What was the fairy wearing?” Shellie asked, leading me half running, half walking down the sidewalk.

“Blue.” I whispered, ducking my head as a family out playing ball in their front yard all turn to stare at me, open mouthed as we pass. “It seems to be an all-over glamor,” Shellie said, observing them. “Not just aimed at men or anything. I think she thought you needed help in the attraction department.”

“Great.” I muttered. “The first fairy gift I get and it’s a low-key insult.”

“They all are!” Shellie snapped, striding along, a scowl on her face. “I don’t know why you haven’t seen that already. Did you ever see a fairy care about leftover human hair? Or get their hair cut themselves? They think it’s beneath them. Their bodies just take care of themselves, and they see us out in the yard cutting hair and think we’re lower creatures, less than them. They’re pitying us. My hair used to be straight you know, but some fairy thought it needed to be prettier. My voice was ugly in some stupid fairy’s opinion so he made it all tinkling and bell-like.” She whirled on me. “Have you been wanting to be fairy-touched all this time, Cas?”

I couldn’t look her in the eye. “Yes.”

“It’s not nice to be slowly whittled away! I don’t care if my voice wasn’t charming; it was my voice!” She shouted. I cringed; even more people were looking our way now. “And I’ll be damned,” she said, fiercely, “If I let them take you away from you, too. Now describe her to me.”

I did, though we did get interrupted halfway through by a bearded little fat man who wedged himself in between us wanted to hire me for his radio show.

“You could be a star!” He crowed, walking backward away from us, even after Shellie called him an interfering buffoon and elbowed him in the stomach.

“The ones that dress in blue tend to hang out near the docks.” Shellie said, cutting left down a suburban avenue.

“How do you know?”

She cast me a disgusted glance. “While you read in your room and make your own choices, Mom’s had me out trying to ‘impress’ fairies. I learned things.”

I followed her in silence. Apparently I didn’t know my sister as well as I thought I did. I knew we had different lives; she was the bubbly, social one, always wanting to go to a party or study with people or just go out, running off to do Mom’s errands for her, happily, I had assumed. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. How much of my opinion of my sister had been affected by her perfect blonde curls and her sweet little voice?

“I thought fairies didn’t change their wishes.” I said, meekly recognizing her as an authority.

She gave me a steely glance. “They are about to learn how.”

And funny enough; I wouldn’t have bet on the fairies at that moment.

When we got to the dock though, I started to have my doubts. Humans hang out at the lake on boats, innertubes, stuff like that. Fairies just…walk into the water, as nature intended, I guess. There were some draped fetchingly over the branches of a low hanging tree, a few wading around looking ethereal.

Normally, an old fishing dock rambled out into the lake here, a weathered thing with warped boards and K+B and Martin Hearts Lucy carved into it. Dad had taken us both fishing on it many times when we were younger. But the fairies were there, so they had turned it into a marble pavilion, draped in ivy, with a little soft-glow filter about it so that it looked slightly celestial. It was gorgeous. But I missed the dock.

The fairies were all draped gorgeously on the pavilion. But it was still just Eean’s lake. A sea-do buzzed past and there was six feet of red clay at the waterline because it hadn’t rained in two weeks, but they stared off into the distance like they were gazing upon some beautiful vista just out of our sight.

Seeing them with my newfound understanding of Shellie, I suddenly grasped their ridiculousness, pretending they were part of an epic when they were just sitting in a muddy low-water lake. But at the same time their old glamor remained…they looked like part of nature—no, they looked better than nature, like they had tapped into some grand, supernatural beauty that the rest of us couldn’t hope to access. I felt frumpy just standing there.

“Hey!” Shellie bellowed, shattering the illusion. She was standing there, fists on her hips, a snarl on her face, her blonde curls bouncing in her cheerleader ponytail. “Who’s the brainless bimbo who took away my sister’s voice?”

To my surprise, a figure previously shadowed under the low hanging branches of a tree at the water’s edge, pushed aside the hanging leaves and stepped out into the sunlight. She was even taller and more majestic than I remembered. She waded slowly over to us, her dress rippling behind her in the water. She stopped in front of my sister, raised her chin, and cocked a single eyebrow. It said: What could you hope to trade to make me do what you want? If I had seen this interaction an hour ago, would I have recognized the scorn so clearly on her face?

But Shellie only smiled, a humorless smile. “In all the fairy tales you have to bargain with fairies. Give up something that you love. Handy for you lot since none of us know what would please you.” She gave the fairy a toothy grin. “Except me. I know what you want. And I can take it away from you.”

She pulled a knife out of her pocket. The fairies all stepped back.

“Shellie!” I said. “What—”

She lifted the knife to her ponytail, the blade flashing white in the afternoon sun, and began sawing one curl off. Just one. Then she took another curl, further up so they were uneven, and another, and let them fall to the ground. They clinked and clattered, changed to gold, and Shellie kicked the gold pieces into the water.

“My hair was straight and it was dirty blonde!” She shouted. “It wasn’t ugly! It was how I was, and it was good enough!” She dropped her backpack off her back, stomped into the water, scooped up a handful of good southern red clay mud and flung it at the pavilion. The fairies gasped and hurried away from her, sploshing and splashing and stirring up the mud in a most normal, un-ethereal way.

“My dad taught me how to fish on that dock! It didn’t need to be beautified!” She flung more mud at it, climbed back up out of the water, and began to rummage in her backpack. She pulled out a hatchet, of all things.

“Shellie!” I bleated, again, uselessly. The fairies milled around, making little gasps of horror, glaring at Shellie, wringing their hands, scowling.

Shellie brandished the hatchet and snarled, “I heard you made old Mrs. Rawlson live in a two-story mansion with stairs she can’t even climb! She has arthritis and a bad leg! And you put her bedroom on the second floor! It’s two blocks away! Want to see that demolished? Because I’m about to!”

“Shellie—this seems extreme—” I stopped, the words halting in my throat. Shellie wheeled to gape in delight at me even as I gaped in surprise. My voice—it was normal!

The fairies were grouped in a wet, muddy, grumpy huddle around my fairy. They had their arms crossed. My fairy rolled her eyes, tossed her head, and stalked off along the shoreline. The other fairies followed her, leaving behind them an old dock, my sister with straight, dark blonde hair, and me—just normal me.

Shellie beamed at me and flung her arms around my neck. “What did I tell you?!”

In a very short time, everyone knew we were the sisters who stood up to the fairies (technically it was just Shellie, but I got lumped in there too). So while I did continue to get some attention I wasn’t expecting, it meant that a few more people began to rebel against the idea that we needed fairies to fix us—so I was okay with it.

But best of all, next Tuesday I crept into the grocery store, hoping to run across Colin and also terrified to find Colin—and just when I was about to give up on being able to find him, I walked down the aisle where he was restocking the green beans. He looked up and his whole face brightened again—just for me, plain old me, with no magical glamor or fairy help. He shot to his feet, “Cassie! Hey, you ran off last week! I heard you had a run in with the fairies—that was pretty awesome that you got your voice back from them. But um…” His face went a little pink again, “I just wondered, instead of checking you out this time, can I just ask you out?”

I said yes, in my own voice, which was perfectly good enough for both of us.