Wicked Nix

by Lena Coakley

  During the past year, I have returned to this meadow many times. I look for a secret door in the hill, but I never find one; I look for the hidden path to lead me home, but I never see it. It must have been magic that made everyone disappear, the Good Queen’s magic.

  I’m sure she did not forget me, though. I’m sure she loves me. She once pulled a star down from the sky for me—that’s how I know. She must have left me here to protect the forest. She must have left me here because she trusts me more than all of the others.

  I leave the meadow and go along the windy path. I cross the river on slippery stones. Finally, I get to the bramble patch where the don’t-eat-me berries grow. Careful not to prick myself, I break off some thorny sticks, putting them in my basket.

  After that I find the quiet place in the forest, where the green moss grows thick under my feet. Here I stop and fill my basket with big clumps, putting them on top of the sticks.

  The moss is soft, and the dirt smells good. All of a sudden, an old memory of the Good Queen comes to me.

  Once, I leaned into her body, my cheek on her thigh, and her dress against my face was as soft as this moss.

  “I miss you,” I say out loud.

  I put some moss against my cheek. I close my eyes. A breeze comes, and it feels just like her fingers touching my hair.

  “I will protect the forest for you,” I say. “When you come back, you will be proud of me.”

  Even before I see the man-people’s cottage, I can feel the bad magic of the line of salt. It makes my basket heavier. It makes the night colder. It makes all the spit go out of my mouth. Can I still sing the song if I don’t have any spit? I don’t want to shrivel down and down to the size of a bug.

  “Ha-ha, ma-ta, fa-fa-la,” I try to sing. My voice sounds like a whisper.

  Slowly, slowly, I put one foot over the line of salt.

  “Ha-ha, ma-ta, fa-fa-la. Ha-ha, ma-ta, fa-fa-la.”

  I move my weight to the front foot. “Ha-ha, ma-ta, fa-fa-la.” I put my other foot over the line.

  I’m across!

  I put down my basket and look at my body in the moonlight. I’m still here. And I’m not bug-size. I want to dance and spin like Rose would, but I have work to do.

  I told the man-people I would curse his hearth so that his fire always smoked, and so I climb his ladder and stuff his chimney with the green moss. While I’m there, I pull off all of the new shingles—careful not to touch the nails—and I toss them down onto the grass.

  I told the man-people that I would curse his garden so that it grew only thorns, and so I take my thorny sticks and plant them deep into the dirt of his garden, sticking them up as if they’d grown there.

  Then I climb into the shivery tree and wait. By this time there is a pink glow behind Grandfather Mountain. It is almost morning, and I want to be there when the man-people sees all my mischief.

  I doze off while watching the cottage, but when I hear the man-people’s cries, I wake with a start. The shutters fly open, and smoke pours out. He must have tried to light his fire. A moment later, he runs outside.

  “Oh, no! Oh, no!” he says. How funny he looks in his bare feet and nightshirt with his sleeping cap on.

  I giggle into my hand. Then my giggling turns to laughter.

  “I hear you, fairy!” the man-people says.

  “Yes, it is me!” I shout. “I have magic against your line of salt. Now leave and never come back!”

  The man-people glares up into the tree. “I don’t need a fire. I will eat my food raw.”

  “Food? What food?” I say, laughing again. I shake a branch, making all the leaves rustle. “Where will you grow it?”

  Then the man-people runs to his garden. He touches one of the thorny sticks, then jumps back with a cry, putting his finger in his mouth.

  “Leave or starve, badness!” I shout.

  His face is bright pink. Will he faint? I wonder. Will he get down on his knees and beg me to remove my curse?

  “This is my home,” the evil man-people yells, “and I will never leave, Wicked Nix!”

  Then he goes back into his cottage and slams the door.

  5

  I wait and wait in the shivery tree. I can’t believe what the man-people said. I’m sure he is packing up his things. In a moment, he will come out of the door, get his cow, and travel back down the road to wherever it is he came from.

  He doesn’t come out.

  All the birds are awake now, singing their good-morning songs, and I haven’t even been to sleep yet. I go back to my nest in the old oak.

  “Check your knots,” says Mr. Green. His face is high above me in a rain cloud.

  I sigh and tighten all the knots in all my ropes and blankets. If they get loose, I might fall out of the oak tree again.

  “Put the sheet on top. It’s going to rain.”

  “Do you tell all the birds and squirrels how to build their nests?” I snap.

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Mr. Green says.

  “Oh.” I think of all the birds and squirrels in the forest and decide Mr. Green must be very busy. “Well. All right then.”

  I make a roof for my nest, then I lie down and pull a blanket over me. I’m about to close my eyes, when I have an idea.

  “Mr. Green, you could get rid of that man-people for me.”

  “Hmmm. I don’t know.” His face is teeny-tiny, hiding in the splotches of blue-green fungus on a branch. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “Wrong! He’s a people living in the fairy forest. It’s not allowed.”

  “Those aren’t my rules.”

  I turn my back to him. “Well, I don’t need you, anyway. I just have to change that man-people’s well water into skunk spit and frog pee. It’s just—I don’t know how I’ll do it.”

  “Nix!” says Mr. Green, and the whole tree quivers with his voice. I pull the blanket over my head. “You’re not going to hurt any of my frogs or my skunks, are you?”

  “Mr. Green!” My voice is muffled in the blanket. “You know I would never do that.”

  “Humph. Yes. I suppose I do.”

  For a while he says nothing, only sighs and whistles with the wind as the storm gathers. The air smells like rain. My nest sways back and forth. I know I should sleep, but I’m worried.

  “Why do you really want to get rid of him?” Mr. Green asks.

  “You know,” I say. “For the queen. She’ll be angry to find a people in the forest.”

  “And what will she do if she’s angry?”

  The question sits in my chest like something heavy. The queen can do many terrible things—turn a fairy into a toad, freeze rivers with her icy breath, make lightning fall from the sky—but that’s not what I’m afraid of. I answer so softly I can hardly hear myself over the sound of the wind. “She might leave me again.”

  “Nix,” Mr. Green says, and with that the rain begins to fall.

  I lift the blanket a little and see Mr. Green’s face in the shifting raindrops.

  “I don’t know what I did wrong,” I tell him, “but I must have done something. I don’t think I could spend another year in the forest, even with your help. I get so cold, and I get so hungry. If she leaves me again, I think . . . I think I’ll die, Mr. Green.”

  I pull the blanket over my head again and squeeze my eyes tight.

  “Listen to the rain,” Mr. Green says softly, “and perhaps the answers you are looking for will come to you while you sleep.”

  I yawn. Mr. Green always give good advice, and so I do what he says and listen to the rain go pittery, pattery, pittery, pattery.

  The roof I made isn’t very good, but somehow I stay dry. Maybe Mr. Green catches all the raindrops with his leafy fingers.

  Pittery, pattery, pittery, pattery, pittery, pattery.

  Mr. Green is right: The answer does come to me in the sound of the rain. When I wake up, I’ve thought of a new trick.

  The forest smells fresh and clean as I run along the deer path. The sun g
litters on wet leaves. Even though I won’t play my trick until tonight, I need to know what the man-people has done while I was sleeping.

  I am right. He has done things. The cottage is different again. More grass and weeds have been pulled up, and now I can see a path of white stones leading to the door.

  Something hangs in the open window. A lot of somethings. When I get closer, I see carved wooden birds and animals, swinging on strings.

  Leave the cottage alone! I want to yell. Stop changing it!

  I get the strangest feeling deep in my fairy bones. Even if peoples didn’t make the queen angry, I would still want to get this man-people out. It is wrong for him to be here. Very wrong. He is disturbing something that should stay asleep. The abandoned cottage must stay as it always has been: empty and forgotten.

  I am about to leave, but then I notice something. The line of salt has washed away, but now nails and thimbles and other bits of iron are hiding in the wet grass. I almost missed them! This is terrible magic against fairies. Any one of those iron things could burn a hole right through my foot if I stepped on it.

  I notice something else. Hanging on the door and over the windows are chains of daisies. Fairies love most flowers, but daisies are evil. They put fairies into a deep sleep. If I go near one, I will fall down snoring in the grass, and then I will be at the man-people’s mercy.

  How will I get near enough to play my trick? I wonder.

  I turn and run into the forest. Rose the Wise will know the answer.

  6

  The flowers in Rose’s garden are all drooping from the rain, and Rose is drooping, too. She is sitting on the stump, her back to the house. Her face is shiny with tears.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask.

  Her words come out in gulps. “My mother says I can’t sit still.”

  “You can’t.”

  Rose lets out a wail.

  “I’m sorry!” I say. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sure you can.”

  She falls to the ground and sobs into the wet earth. “No. It’s true. I can’t.”

  I lie down, my face right next to hers. “Why would anybody want to sit still, anyway?”

  She looks into my eyes. “To eat a nice dinner at the table. To have my hair brushed.”

  I shudder. People-y things. “I’ve never had my hair brushed, and I never will.”

  She touches my hair. “It’s got sticks in it.”

  I sit up and say proudly, “That’s right. And probably bugs, too.”

  Rose also sits up and wipes her face with the sleeve of her dress. “I’m going to live in the forest with you. I’m going to put sticks in my hair and be a fairy.”

  I start to remind her that you can’t just decide to be a fairy, but Rose has already gotten up and is gathering sticks from the ground. I don’t want her to cry again.

  “Sometimes,” I tell her, “the Good Queen of the Fairies will let a people come live with her in the Summer Country. I never saw one there, but I heard it’s true. It has to be a very special people, though.”

  Rose pushes sticks under the ribbons in her hair. “What’s the Summer Country?”

  I’m surprised she doesn’t know about it. “It’s the fairy kingdom under the hill. Time passes slow and sweet as honey there, and everything is like a dream.”

  “Do you have to sit still there?”

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “Oh,” Rose says with a twirl. “I want to come!”

  “Maybe you could,” I say. “All my friends are there—Fleet and Flit and Wing and Dart. They’re fairies, like me. In the Summer Country, everyone laughs and tells stories all day, and we listen to the queen’s songs, which are the most beautiful songs in the world, and we eat fruit from the silver trees, which is the most delicious food in the world, and no one is ever cold or lonely or unhappy.”

  Rose climbs up on the stump, opens her arms, and sings as if to an audience, “I’m going to beeeee . . . a little faireeeee . . . in the Summer Countreeee!”

  “Not a fairy, a guest,” I say. “And the queen will have to like you.”

  “She will like meeeeee! Because I am meeeeee!”

  I think this is probably true. Rose is so wise, and she doesn’t scream and run away when she sees my face. Surely the queen would see that she’s not like most peoples.

  “I suppose I could ask her on Midsummer’s Eve. But Rose, that man-people is still in the forest. Rose, please stop singing for a minute . . .”

  “I will never eat peeeeeeeeas! I will never say pleeeeeeeeeease! I won’t clean my roooooom! I won’t use a brooooooom! When I’m a faireeeeee! In the Summer Countreeeeee! How happy I’ll beeeeeee!”

  “Rose, the queen will be in a very bad mood if that man-people is still in the forest when she gets here. She won’t be interested in hearing about any other peoples then—even special ones like you.”

  “You must play a triiiiiiick!”

  “Yes, I know, but the man-people has put daisy chains on his door. That’s powerful magic. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Take this magic stiiiiiiiiick!”

  Rose takes a stick from her hair and gives it to me. It looks like any ordinary stick, but when I hold it in my hand, I can feel its magic. I put it carefully behind my ear.

  “Thank you!” I say. “But he’s got nails and thimbles and other iron things in the grass, too. If I step on one, it will burn a hole right through my poor fairy foot!”

  “Here’s what you must dooooo!” Rose sings, but before she can finish, another voice calls out.

  “Ros-ie!”

  Quickly, I hide behind a tree. A woman-people is standing on the steps of Rose’s house, drying her hands on an apron. The apron is the same flowery material as Rose’s dress.

  “What is that terrible noise you’re making? What are you doing out there?”

  Rose turns around on her stump. “I’m singing to a fairy, Mummy!”

  Rose’s mother takes a few steps toward the garden, frowning at the forest. She looks and looks, but she doesn’t see me.

  “Fairies are nothing to pretend about,” she finally says. “They’re dangerous. Come inside.”

  “Yes, Mummy!”

  She climbs down from the stump and runs toward the door, but a moment later she comes back. “Here’s what you must dooooooo!” she sings. “You must wear a shooooooooooe! Or twooooooo!”

  “Rose!” her mother shouts, and Rose scampers to her. “That dress was clean a minute ago, and now there’s mud all over it, and where is your hair ribbon?”

  Poor Rose, I think, as she disappears through the door. I can’t imagine someone so wise having to do the bidding of an ordinary people.

  If I do get rid of that man-people, I think, and if the queen is in a good mood on Midsummer’s Eve, I will ask if Rose can come and live with us. Then she will never have to sit still or brush her hair or eat peas ever again.

  7

  It’s dark. Grandmother moon is round and fat. I go a different way tonight, through the valley where the thin-white-lady trees grow with their papery bark. These are my favorite trees, but I never say this out loud in case other trees are listening.

  I startle a fox, who stares at me with glowing yellow eyes. I nod a greeting, and he runs away, going about his business.

  Finally, I get to the pond where the stinkflowers grow. I wade in, mud squishing between my toes. All around me, moon-bugs go on and off, on and off, their light reflected in the water. I find the smelliest stinkflowers and put them into my basket.

  When I am near the man-people’s house, I gather some leaves and vines, tying them around my feet. Rose said I must “wear a shoe,” but fairies never wear shoes. I think this is what she meant. If I protect my feet, the iron things in the grass cannot hurt me. I inch toward the cottage, touching the stick behind my ear, hoping it is powerful enough to keep away the sleepy magic of the daisy chains.

  I am thinking so much about shoes and sticks and daisies and ir
on that I almost don’t notice the ring of salt! He must have made a new one after the first washed away in the rain. Evil man-people. He is using all the tricks he knows against me tonight.

  “Ha-ha, ma-ta, fa-fa-la,” I whisper. I cross the white line, but I do not shrink.

  Slowly, I go toward the house. I accidentally step on a horseshoe, but I am not burned.

  I yawn, and for a moment I think the spell of the daisy chains must be working, but I poke myself in the arm with the magic stick, and I don’t feel tired at all.

  “Thank you, Rose,” I whisper.

  I take my basket to the well at the side of the house. I told the man-people I would turn his well water into skunk spit and frog pee, and so—holding my breath—I dump in the stinkflowers. I don’t know exactly what skunk spit and frog pee smells like, but I think this will be just as bad.

  I am about to go back over the line of salt when I see that the man-people has left one of his windows open. The carved wooden animals spin on their strings. I come closer, wondering what kind of animals they are.

  I can feel the magic of the daisy chains trying to make me yawn. My mouth opens wide. The more I think about not yawning, the more I want to. I poke myself with the stick a few more times.

  I touch one of the animals. It has a tail like a fish and two long tusks coming from its mouth. I’ve never seen anything like it in the forest.

  I give it a tug, then another. It’s not stealing if you’re a fairy.

  Ping. The string snaps. It’s only a little noise, but from inside the house, a voice calls, “Who’s there?”

  I run toward the cover of the bushes. I can’t see the line of salt, but I sing “Ha-ha, ma-ta, fa-fa-la” again and again under my breath.

  The man-people comes out of the house, holding a lantern. From the bushes I can see his face change as he smells the stinkflowers.

  “Oh, no!” he cries, running to the side of the house.

  I laugh as he puts his whole head down the well. Then he pulls it back with a groan, his hand over his nose. “Skunk spit and frog pee! Oh, horrible fairies!”