The Fairy Trail

by Catherine Ras

  The Fairy Trail

  By Catherine Ras

  The Fairy Trail

  Copyright 2019 by Catherine Ras

  Cover Design: Catherine Ras

  First Printing- July, 2019

  NTL Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Acknowledgements

  To you…the reader, thank-you for taking the time to read my story. I love to write and bring my ideas to life on the written page. I hope you enjoy it.

  The Fairy Trail

  Chapter One

  “Margaret! Get your ass in here right now!”

  She hated the birth name her parents had given her, and when they called her, it sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. At thirteen years old she refused to acknowledge the old fashioned name her parents penned onto her birth certificate. She had fought against the name Margaret ever since her aunt introduced her to nicknames and called her Mags the first time they met when she was five. From then on, she insisted on being called Maggie.

  Even so, her parents continued to call her Margaret, and not just when they were mad at her which was most of her young life. She stopped correcting them after the second time that resulted in a hard slap across her face producing a stinging, red mark. Sometimes when she looked in the mirror, she could still trace the angry outline of her mother’s hand. From then on, whenever she heard her birth name her body tensed with spine-tingling irritation that quickly turned to fear. Nothing good ever followed the word Margaret.

  She walked cautiously into the kitchen to face her mother. With her head down, she daringly whispered, “Maggie,” then wished instantly she could take it back. She didn’t know what got into her to do such a stupid thing because immediately the back of her mother’s hand struck hard and fast across her mouth.

  “Don’t you dare speak to me that way.” Then her mother’s face contorted in that weird kind of smile that signaled Maggie she was about to torture her daughter. “You didn’t take the garbage out,” she purred.

  Maggie’s shoulders slumped as she looked at the worn linoleum floor with curling edges fully aware of what she would see. The garbage can had been turned upside down its contents strewn about. Food, paper, cans, and all sorts of gross things she couldn’t identify blended in with the faded colors of the floor. Because this was always the consequence, Maggie tried never to forget to take out the garbage. Today she got home late from school, and by the time she changed into her dirty clothes to do her dirty chores, her mother had already made her point—being late from school was no excuse.

  “You’ve got ten minutes, and then I need to start dinner, so it better be done by then.” Her mother turned to leave the kitchen. “Oh, and we’re out of rubber gloves.”

  Maggie sighed. It used to be fifteen minutes, then down to twelve. This, and the fact that her mother always failed to buy more rubber gloves, was part of her torture, but she had discovered ways around her mother’s attempts to make this punishment as foul as she could.

  Paper towels and the dust pan worked the best to prevent her hands from being covered by the gooey and smelly, disgusting stuff. As long as her mother didn’t noticed the decrease on the paper towel roll, and she cleaned the dust pan putting them back in the exact same place she found them, she escaped her mother’s wrath. But she’d have to work at lightning speed to get it all done in ten minutes.

  She worried that her mother’s next move would be to come back early thus catching her using the dust pan and paper towels. She didn’t have many options after that other than her hands to pick it up, and she’d run away before she’d do that.

  Maggie took the garbage outside and tossed it into the rusty, lopsided trash bin in the backyard, if you could call it a back yard. They lived in a small rural town that had been beaten down by high unemployment rates. The battered houses were stacked on top of each other with backyards the size of a jail cell connected to each other by tall, rotting privacy fences that were built to make them feel separate. But it wasn’t the fences that made her feel isolated; it was her parents that made her home feel lonely and cold.

  She lingered in the back yard until she thought ten minutes was coming to an end, and then suddenly realized she forgot to clean the dustpan. Panic set in as she ran to the kitchen, and as soon as she opened the door she felt a hand on her arm jerk her around. Her mother mockingly held the roll of paper towels in her other hand and glared at her. “What did you do? Use a half roll? And look at my dust pan. Get up to your room.” Her mother shoved her violently and Maggie stumbled just missing the refrigerator with her head.

  She spun on her mother years of bitterness spilling out as she yelled,” I hate you,” and then ran out the front door leaving her mother’s mouth wide open.

  Maggie never talked back to her mother. If she did, she got worse than the back of a hand across her face. It would then become her father’s mission to utilize his belt for more than just holding his pants up.

  She ran past the row of houses to the end of her street and turned left. Still running, she made several more turns until she came to the forest that bordered one side of their town. Sometimes, she would come here and play, mostly alone, because the other school-aged children that lived in her town stayed inside in the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter playing video games or watching television.

  She never had to worry about anyone seeing where she was going because the other kid’s parents weren’t much different from hers. They were too busy being angry at the unjust lives handed to them in a depressed, little town to notice anything but their own unjust lives. However, the other parents didn’t seem to take it out on their children like her parents did.

  There was a good side to having no one to play with. Whenever she went to the woods, she didn’t have to worry about running into anyone else so she could be alone and imagine herself living in a mansion with parents who didn’t abuse her and doted on her every desire. She pretended the trees surrounding her were huge, marble columns encircling a large play room that was stocked with every toy and electronic device she could think of.

  Thoughts of leaving home for good ran through her head when she ran to the woods to get away from them. It was the only way she could stand up to her parents to stop the continual onslaught of abuse. “I wish I were invisible!” she shouted, then quickly looked at the houses still a little nervous that someone might hear her. She relaxed knowing as with any other day she walked this street, not a soul would notice her. As always, doors and windows were closed giving her town a dead feel to it.

  She didn’t stop until she was out of sight of the road and hidden by the cover of the forest. It was then she bent over and took deep breaths to fill her depleted lungs. When she stood up, she noticed something out of place on a tree in front of her. She tilted her head as if the different angle might help her to make out what it was.

  Blending in with the branches was what appeared to be a miniature house. She didn’t think it was a bird house because it was too elaborate and too clean. There were no bird feathers, bird seed or droppings on the tree, house or the ground beneath it. Still, she looked around for birds, but there weren’t any.

  The small structure had a door and windows trimmed with tiny pebbles in different tones of brown and grey. The ornamental trim was contradictory to the shades of darkness covering the

  little home�
��s openings that gave it a hollow and empty appearance. In the middle of the house was a door knocker. She took one step closer to study the adornment in the shape of a lion’s head. It seemed like an odd place to put a door knocker when the door was one level below.

  She inched her way closer to the tree fascination with the house piquing her interest. She had been in these woods many times before and never noticed the little structure hanging on a tree. Maybe someone put it there after the last time she had been in the forest. She smiled. It was the cutest little house she had ever seen, and she was very tempted to take it down and play with it. She had some toy figures at home that might be just the right size to romp around in the wood house.

  She couldn’t help but get excited because she had never owned a doll house; in fact, she didn’t own many toys, and what she did have was second-hand. She had learned to make the best of the broken and battered objects her parents called toys. She could do the same with the tree house.

  As she reached up to touch it, a light appeared in the upper window. She withdrew her hand and lifted a foot to take a step back, but curiosity made her put it back down. Examining it closer, she could see the shadow of a tiny person moving about inside. She was mesmerized as the little figure wandered from the second floor to the first floor and back up again. Suddenly, it stopped and looked out the large window it was standing in front of.

  “Maggie! You’re here. It’s about time.”

  Chapter Two

  Maggie backed up so fast she tripped over a rock and fell on her behind her eyes struggling to stay focused on the sight before her.

  The little person hurried to the first floor and floated out the door. She stared down at Maggie, hands on her hips. “Oh, my, are you okay?” Her voice was tiny, high pitched and sounded like it was very far away.

  Maggie continued to gawk at her. She had long blond hair, fair almost white skin, and she wore a sparkly blue, long dress. But Maggie wasn’t focusing on her physical appearance. She was mesmerized by the blanket of shimmering, blue light that surrounded her total body.

  Maggie stood up, brushed off her pants, and brashly walked toward the tree. “Who…what are you?”

  “I am Fairy Blue.”

  “How did you know my name?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “You have? Why?”

  “Let me correct that. You called for me, and here I am.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Maggie said shaking her head. “You’re not real. There’s no such thing as fairies. It’s probably Johnny Matthews playing another trick on me.” She walked around to the back of the tree. “He’s good at this kind of stuff. Bet I’ll find wires back here. You’re just an image.” She looked on the tree, the ground, and around the fairy’s house. There were no wires, no electronic devices. When she came back to the front of the little home, Fairy Blue was standing on a pathway of stone steps in front of her door with her arms crossed an amused look on her face.

  “I have no idea who Johnny Matthews is and you can touch me if you want. I assure you, I am real.”

  Maggie reached up then withdrew her hand slightly before gently touching the fairy afraid she might poke her too hard and knock her off of her front step. She was smaller than Maggie’s hand, but solid and definitely not an image.

  “Satisfied? Now can we get back to why you called me?”

  “I…I didn’t call you.” Maggie stepped back and kicked at the ground with her foot. The fairy watched her amble around the base of the tree inspecting the roots, looking for rocks that she could kick.

  “You’re angry,” Fairy Blue said. “That’s why I’m here, why you called me.”

  Maggie’s head snapped in the direction of the fairy. “I told you I didn’t call you.” Her tone was pertinacious resulting in a staring contest for several moments. Maggie finally relented and looked away her foot drawing a circle in the dirt. “I’ve been angry before, and I’ve come here and never seen you.”

  “That’s because you never called for us before.”

  “I didn’t call…,” she began to retort then stopped. “Us? There are more of you? Where are they?”

  “You will only see them if you require their help. We each have our…specialties.”

  “How can you help me? Besides, maybe I don’t need help. Did you ever think of that?”

  “Why would I? You asked for help. You asked to be invisible to your parents.”

  Maggie took a short, sharp breath. “How…how did you know that?”

  “I heard you, and since being invisible is my specialty, I’m the fairy that can help you.”

  “You can help me be invisible to my parents?”

  “I just said that, didn’t I?”

  Maggie’s eyes lit up. “Really?”

  Fairy Blue rolled her eyes slightly annoyed then nodded.

  “Cool. Let’s do it.”

  The little fairy held her hand up. “Not so fast, Maggie. I need to know a little more. Why do you want to be invisible to your parents?”

  “Because they’re mean to me.” Maggie turned and walked around the tree, her wandering reflecting her skepticism over accepting help from something that she still wasn’t sure existed, and if it did, it was too good to be true.

  “Have you tried talking to your parents?”

  “The hand that smacks me hard in the mouth kind of keeps me from getting a word in edgewise.” She whirled around. “You get the picture?”

  “Oh, my,” Fairy Blue exclaimed. “Isn’t there anybody else you can talk to about this who won’t hit you in the mouth?”

  Maggie’s shoulders dropped, her head tilted and her eyes and mouth scrunched up as she mumbled, “You’re kidding, right? Then she said aloud, “I don’t want to. Besides, there’s no one.” Maggie crossed her arms. “You said you could make me invisible. Do it,” she challenged.

  The pitch of Fairy Blue’s voice dropped almost an octave. The lovely blue, shimmering light that surrounded her was gone; in its place was a dark blue aura. She lifted her head as she spoke as if giving a great political speech. “It is a gift I would bestow upon you, and you must not misuse it. The gift will be yours until your next birthday. But…if at any time before that you abuse my gift, you alone will reap the consequences, and the gift will come back to me.”

  Being a thirteen year old girl whose frontal lobe where the comprehension of consequences reside and is not yet fully developed, Maggie stared impatiently at the fairy.

  Fairy Blue’s voice went back to her normal pitch. “Well then, that’s it. The gift is yours.”

  Maggie jumped up and down, spun around in circles with clenched fists pumping the air as she whooped and hollered. Feeling her problems would finally be solved, she turned to ask the fairy a question. The house was gone.

  “Fairy Blue?”

  She walked around the tree looking up and down in every branch, on the ground, and in neighboring trees. There was nothing. Maggie began to question herself. Did she really see a fairy and her house? Was her mind playing tricks on her? Maybe she just thought she saw it because she wanted so badly to be invisible from her parents.

  She shrugged her shoulders and sighed. This time she saw a stone on the ground, and she kicked at it as hard as she could. She missed the stone and jammed her toes into the ground.

  “Ow!” she bellowed. She jumped around on one foot then began to lose her balance, so she plopped down on the ground. “Damn fairies,” she said as she massaged her toes.

  Finally, she stood up knowing she couldn’t avoid the inevitable any longer. She was going to get a good beating for yelling at her mother and running away.

  She brushed herself off, took one last look at the tree, and left the woods. It was going to be bad when she got home. Most likely she’d be put in her room to wait for her dad’s belt.

  Why hadn’t she just kept running?

  Chapter Three

  Maggie had a plan all worked out. She would walk straight through the front door and rig
ht up the stairs to her bedroom. She would shut the door quietly and wait. Maybe if she avoided her mom, she’d only have to deal with her father’s wrath. She just had to hope he hadn’t been drinking.

  She eased the front door open and peered inside for any signs of her mother. There were none. She quietly shut the door behind her and crossed the foyer to the stairs. The tricky part was getting up them without any creaking noises from the boards.

  By the third step, there was no getting around the groaning of the wood, so she quit trying and hurried her pace. At the top of the stairs she stopped when she heard the back door slam and hard footsteps heading her way. Her first impulse was to run, but she knew she had no time.

  Don’t see me, don’t see me, don’t see me,” she whispered with her eyes tightly shut as she flattened her body against the wall. When she opened them, she saw her mother standing in the foyer with her hands on her hips eyeing the front door. Maggie froze as she waited for the onslaught of swear words and a possible hand across the face.

  But it didn’t come. After a few moments, her mother turned around and went back toward the kitchen.

  “No! Can’t be,” Maggie said in a hushed voice. She debated going to her room or back down to the kitchen to see if her mother would notice her. Curiosity won out, and she moved quickly down the stairs without concern for the squeaking boards. The noise brought her mother out of the kitchen once again. Maggie stopped at the bottom of the stairs, stepped just inside the dining room and braced herself against the wall, and preparing for the worst.

  Her mother stared at the steps not noticing Maggie. Then the impossible happened. She walked past Maggie and up to the second floor. From the sound of her footsteps in the upstairs hallway, Maggie knew her mother went to her bedroom. She heard noises coming from her room and surmised her mother was looking for her.