The Faerie Ring Dance
by Kara Skye Smith
Fae-tality Publishingc. 2011
The Faerie Ring Dance
starts from an old, uncovered text which was found in the hollow of a six-shaped tree; written - as best detected by a process known as carbon-dating in 1910. Simply signed,
N.T.~personal account
The Faerie Ring Dance
Chapter One * The Uncovered Text
IIIIn a thicket in a wood, or perhaps in the dell of a
meadow - often at the base of a tree called the Yew
there sometimes grows a ring of grass more green, or
toadstools which form a circle - from low to high
mimicking in shape and hue the light, bright ring around
a full moon. This ring, known to mortals and the magic
folk as The Faerie Ring, is the sight where, on occasion,
a dance is held, like never a dance was known. Few
actual accounts of these dances retold - have ever
’gotten out’ - by eyewitnesses anyway. Only those who
have actually stepped inside The Faeries’ Ring during
the night of its magic can ever tell these tales.
Mortals be wary, there are only a few in existence
- this text being one of them - because the enchantment
of such a dance to the human sort is so enticing that most humans who have stepped inside The Faeries’ Ring
to dance have never returned home, nor were they seen
by their loved ones again!
This is the story of The Faerie Ring Dance held
in the Northern Muir Woods with one such unsettling
tale - the disappearance of Honor McGillicutty.
In the faerie circles of the Muir Woods, the
Ellewyon Faeries of the North dance. If a human steps
too close, close enough to be pulled in, only a loved one
can pull him out - by standing very near the edge,
waiting for the dancer to dance close enough to reach in,
grab, and then pull out! This distressing fact, as
troubling to accept as it is to divulge, ’tis not the most
ghastly mystery to note, here. If a mortal fell in among
the Twelyth Teg, a band of faeries with strong magic
which tended often to turn a bit more bad than good
regularly and intentionally enticing humans of all types
the mortal inside their fairies’ ring was often held
entranced to dance for years and years. Danced literally to death, some turned to dust or ashes right before the
very eyes of the same loved ones to have pulled them out
and stopped their dancing.
This text is very rare as many who’d escaped had
not even the time available to write or scribble something
down about the magic and merriment inside the Faerie
rings. And so it is, with sollum remembrance and athank
of Honor McGillicuty’s lucky stars that she fell into the
circle entranced by the Northern Ellewyon Faeries rather
than dancing to an untimely death among the Twelyth
Teg. In fact, there’d been reports of Honor’s
appearances in San Francisco, Paris, and Rome; but none
were ever validated nor followed up on, so one can never
be too sure of such unreliable reports!
On a warm, spring day after a particularly windy
rainstorm the night before, a mist hung about the
foothills of the Muir Woods like wisps of a low hanging
cloud from the sky. A fisherman named Michael
McDonnell walked home from the wedding chapel of St. Francis where his younger sister had just married a man
named Fitzpatrick, the owner of a sewing machine
factory. It was not a merry wedding party for Michael,
because he’d hoped his sister would marry a better man.
For the factory was not a place where sewing machines
were made, but a place where young girls were held
tightly in their seats to sew for long hours at a time,
with few moments off and not much pay.
The oversee-er of this tightly run ship was
Fitzpatrick, himself, quickly becoming a wealthy man off
the toils of young girls with such unbecoming ethics, and
he was taking Michael’s sister away with him to nearby
San Francisco - as soon as the wedding, and the
customary party which followed it, convened. Michael
worried at the sight of tears on his sister’s cheeks and
lashes several times during the ceremony and at least once
at the reception party where he celebrated the union of
the newly wedded with not even one single dance. He
did have a slice of cake, though, vanilla with white icing and white confection roses, which he enjoyed enough to
smile at his sister right before he said good-bye and gave
her a hearty, warm hug. This made the young bride
smile, too, and she insisted he find her in San Francisco
right as soon as the couple arrived.
“Nonsense!” she’d told him at his mention of
allowing the honeymooners a proper amount of time,
alone, to settle in.
“Right away,” she reminded as he left the
decorated parish doorway to walk, quite a ways, toward
the cabin he stayed in during ’off’ fishing seasons and
times like this when he’d been called home from the sea;
but, Michael McDonnell was not alone. He left, that
day, waving to his sister who watched him from the
parish steps, accompanied by a secret guest, as yet unseen
by both of them.
Honor McGillicutty left the steps of her house
with two friends by her side at that very same moment.
The very two friends who had actually prevented Honor McGillicutty from being the bride of Mr. Fitzpatrick in
the very same parish where the McDonnell-Fitzpatrick
wedding had been held that day. Mr. Fitzpatrick had
not liked Honor’s friends, and since his introduction,
considered her an unsuitable choice for a bride.
In fact, the same word spoken to Michael
McDonnell that day at the parish, “Nonsense!” was the
same word he’d said every time Honor would speak to
him about her friends. With this much in common, and
the timing so right, it seemed a little more than destined
that these two - Honor and Michael - would be brought
together - somehow! - and it was!
Honor left the house that day with a pail to
gather wild mushrooms which grew near a clearing she
knew about amid the foothills of the Muir Woods. That
night was to be the Hunter’s Moon - round, full, and
bright - at the peak of the mushroom harvest, namedso
because gatherer’s would work late into the night - or as
often referred to: by the light of the moon. Because of this, Honor did not choose to bring with her a lantern.
Honor, being lively in her mood and gregarious
about her task, was quick in step keeping to a pace more
rapid than the melancholy Michael McDonnell’s pace
allowed. Honor made it further from her home than
Michael made it from the parish by the time the two
met, face-to-face, beneath a Yew tree, directly
across
the half-moon shaped clearing from a tree known inOld
Soul’s Hollow as the Six-shaped Tree.
Luckily, it was this tree - the Six-shaped - that
caught the attention of the fisherman, having spentmuch
more time at sea than in Old Soul’s, and he hurried
toward it to ‘have a look’ which kept Honor at least ten
paces back from a ring of grass that grew more green
than the other grass in the clearing - which neither
noticed at that time - and Honor bent to pick a bunch of
blue-eyed grass - to fix for a bouquet at home - a home
she would never enter into again.
“Fascinating!” Michael McDonnell said out loud, stepping back from a closer look at the tree to marvel its
shape entirely.
“Excuse me?” Honor asked, looking toward the
Six-shaped tree to notice the fisherman who had been so
bold as to speak right out loud to himself (as fishermen
often do. Proof of this is always found near any
waterbank while listening to a man in a boat by himself
catch a fish.
“I said, fascinating!”
“Are you speaking to me, or the tree?” Honor
asked unfolding from a flower picking posture to upright
as proper as any lady from England, but not quite. No,
not since she’d left England, anyway. Her hair, which
had been held tightly in buns for many years which her
overly controlling sister had fastened for her - much too
tightly as to have given her a pinched look - now tousled
freely down about her shoulders, nearly to her mid
waist. And her waist, from now doing the chores
around the farm upon which the sister’s homesteaded was fit and trim which left the cotton dress and coat about
her flowly, like her hair. Her cheeks were rosy with the
outdoor walks and her skin was bright. Her eyes round
and warm with her appreciation of the beauty in wild
flowers, little people, things like the Harvest Moon, and
the Six-shaped tree held interest. So, as Michael
McDonnell took his eyes off the Six-shaped and focused
them across the clearing to gaze upon Honor
McGillicutty, now the loveliest maiden of Old Soul’s
Hollow, he only stood and blinked, for a moment, his
jaw held open to the ‘ing’ part of the word ‘fascinating’;
and, he had to remember back, first to her question and
then to the tree.
“I said, fascinating!”
“I know that,” said Honor, “but what about?”
“This tree,” Michael pointed, his eyes remaining
upon Honor, although he’d pointed at the tree, while
three other people, not seen by this pair at that moment,
whose plan this had been all along, giggled out loud as they watched Michael do this - keep his eyes upon the
lovely Honor, instead of looking at the tree - and, at the
sound of these giggles, a strange music started up within
the ring of grass more green - the Faerie Dance Ring
and the music which had started up was the music of
enticement to ask the couple, without words, “Come and
dance inside the faeries’ ring!”
As Michael McDonnell gazed upon Honor, the
faeries’ music reached his ears and all at once, all of the
dancing and merriment he’d held back at the wedding
reception - a room and event made for such things
reached his feet and swayed his hips. Michael
McDonnell raised his arms up high and went whirling
and twirling toward Honor McGillicutty, who tried not
to laugh, but did (although back in England, standing
next to her strict sister, Blithe, she certainly would have
held her tongue.)
“My goodness!” she said.
“Goodness, now,” he said to her, “for I have walked away from badness without even a waltz or
getting involved in stopping the badness at all. And
now, I feel like waltzing. That must be it! Please?!” he
asked and held out his hand to Honor McGillicutty with
a slight bow forward. He stopped just short of feeling
silly at the catch of the gaze from her dark, warm eyes
upon his own.
“Well this is something to say, ‘My Goodness’
about, indeed”, she said, “I haven’t been asked to waltz
in years and years, and out here in this field, too? Well,
my goodness,” she laughed, “is all I can think of to say!”
“Then you will?” he asked again.
“I -,” and just then Honor saw Blossom waving to
her from the edge of a ring of grass beneath the Yew
tree as the Queen of the Faeries and her accompanying
entourage entered the circle and disappeared from view.
“O, my goodness,” Honor said, again, but this
time the laughing tone was not in her voice. She put her
hand up near her mouth, and Michael McDonnell grew a bit annoyed. He sighed and withdrew his outstretched
hand and turned to look in the direction of the fairies
which had caused Honor’s latest gasp of the repetitive
exclamation, however, Michael McDonnell saw nothing.
Nothing but a ring of grass more green.
“Well, look at this,” he said; and, Honor smiled
knowing that Blossom and the Faerie Queen, herself,
were waiting just inside the ring’s dark edge. I was not
in it, yet, and because of that I know this tale. A tale
which started back in England with a formal invitation
to the dinner party of a rather rude and well-to-do
Mistress - daughter of a Dame of English upbringing
Miss Tullie. A dinner party where Honor did not do
much but enjoy a vast array of teas, cheese, and exotic
delicacies while her sister, Blithe, engaged in
conversation, almost a debate, expressing the firmness of
her opinions quite openly among the guests of lackadaisical English upper crust.
The Faerie Ring Dance
Chapter Two * The Unkind Word
There it was, Miss Tullie had said it, “Shrew.”
She said it to Blithe. Shrew? Shrew. The social stature
of Miss Tullie afforded her the luxuries of an often
willfulness with words overlooked. She could have
called her any other word - any word at all - and Blithe
wouldn’t have cared; but, shrew hurt, because, it held
with it a curse, the curse that she might never marry,
and, the insinuation that her unmarried status was not
due to a lack of suitable men her own age, but rather,
something all her fault in that she’d often spokenharshly
and could not hold her tongue. Today it was Miss
Tullie who had spoken harshly, though, wasn’t it?
Nonetheles, the word stung Blithe. It was cruel,
downright unkind; and, it cleared the room for several seconds of all sound - even the staff stood still
scarcely daring the sound of an exhale. All eyes were on
Miss Tullie.
Slow, upturned and doe-eyed glances plead,
“Please don’t.” It wasn’t until the final 1000, if you’d
have counted 1, 1000, 2, 1000, 3, 1000 during those
moments (self-consciously, I think I did) when Honor’s
spoon made a tinkle in it’s tightly held cup that the room
began to fill with a wave of slow r
olling murmurs.
When the conversation nearest the mistress of the room
- the sword-tongued lasher, Miss Tullie - refused to
include her that she turned on one heel, flipped her
shawl about her and marched out of the room uttering
just what the glances had plead her not to, one last jab.
“It just HAD to be said. Can’t help it ifI’mthe
one to say…” Luckily, the door she’d swished through
slammed closed behind her before more cutting words
wounded innocent Blithe, already killed in a room
supposed so proper with her finishing touch, “the
obvious”.
No one had dared to look at Blithe until the
door slammed. Conversations interrupted at the sound,
however, and all eyes turned toward Blithe. A lavishly
decorated room in an uptown home of proper standing
seemed full of pin-suited and lace-dressed ancients of the
cave as they all quickly looked toward Blithe, as if she’d
stood her ground, chased off the sword-tongued lasher.
Similarly upturned glances, looked at Blithe and then the
others. Was Blithe now their social queen?
Blithe, feeling obviously awkward (probably even
worse - as the cruel word had suggested) cleared her
throat, slightly, quietly, politely and said, “A lack of
proper manners, and in such a home, too, poor dear. As
we all know, I’m not the loveliest nor the most poetic,
and never claimed to be; but, I did not come here to be
insulted. Honor?! Let us gather our things and go.”
“Certainly, dear,” was Honor’s response as she
hurried in one last sip of a devilishly delicious tea she had found among many other types laid out upon a buffet
style table for those not choosing the cordial of the
evening.
“We’ll get our things.”
Then, Honor and Blithe McGillicutty made an
exit, not quite as defiant as the bitter-tongued Miss
Tullie, with Blithe uttering all sorts of excuses,revealing
all sorts of insecurities like, “from the school yard boys,
maybe, I’d have thought Miss Tullie more thoughtful,”
and “I just never have time to put in on myself,” and
then, in nearly a whimper, “I’ve never been so hurt in my
life!” To which Honor added, “and publicly humiliated,
The Faerie Ring Dance Page 1
