Emerald City Dreamer

by Luna Lindsey

  “Sorry, Elder Noah. Can we eat now?”

  “Of course not! What is wrong with you? Don’t you love God?”

  “I love God, of course I do. It’s just, I’m tired and hungry.”

  Noah sighed and shook his head. “Don’t you think Daniel was hungry when he was thrown to the lions? Don’t you think Yeshua was hungry when he fasted in the desert? Surely you can last a few hours.”

  Ezra nodded. The boy knew that Daniel was a righteous prophet and Yeshua was God. Ezra was just…

  “I know, I just thought, maybe a short break.”

  “Listen, kid, you might not like me, or the way I do things, but I don’t like being assigned to you either. I don’t like you, and I don’t like kids. We all suffer, right? So shape up.”

  Ezra sat a little straighter and tried to pay attention.

  “As I was saying, if you pray hard, and let the Spirit flow through you, it’s easier to ignore the jeers from the heathens. You must forgive them, for they know not what they do. Got it?”

  Ezra nodded again and played with the charms on his bracelet.

  “I said, got it?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it, Elder.”

  “Good.” He stood with a grunt. “We’re done here. Don’t forget, you’re on cleanup tonight.”

  Ezra stood and limped absently to the cooking circle. When he got there, the food was all gone, and a pile of dishes reminded him that everyone else had gotten to eat except him. And Elder Noah, I guess he didn’t get to eat either. These were small sacrifices to make for the Lord.

  A couple of the sisters were cleaning dishes, and one handed him an empty pail. “Go get some more water, please, Brother Ezra.” He nodded slowly, and headed for the creek. He squatted down to fill the pail and he heard a soft crying nearby. He set the bucket down and followed the sound.

  He found Sister Esther sitting against a tree, sobbing. She seemed so happy and confident when she spoke at Chapel.

  “What’s the matter?” he stammered.

  She quickly dried her eyes and stood up. “I’m sorry. I’m just… You’re the one that got up and spoke after me at Chapel. What’s your name again?”

  “Brother Ezra. You’re Sister Esther, the new convert, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why… why are you crying?” He wanted to reach out and comfort her, even though touching was strictly forbidden.

  “I’m just… everything has changed so quickly,” she said. “I know joining was the right decision… well, everything is so different now. And…” The sister looked down the path as if to make sure they were really alone. “Ezra, do they let you call your family?”

  “I don’t have any family.”

  “Well I do, and I want to call my mother and let her know where I am. She must be worried sick about me. They won’t walk me into town.”

  “Really? Maybe they’re too busy. Maybe you could go with the group tomorrow. They’re going in to sell bikes.”

  “No, no, I already asked. They will let me write a letter, but they will not let me call. I’m worried.”

  “Did they say why?”

  “They said Satan would use my family to try to get me to leave the true path. They said a letter is best, because it’s one-way. This way, I’m safe from the Devil. Do you believe that?”

  “I do believe Satan is cunning, yes. That he would try anything. I suppose if I were the Devil, and wanted to lead you astray, I might tempt your family to convince you to come home.”

  “That just doesn’t seem right. My mother isn’t evil. She always told me to lead a good life. She taught me about God when I was young. I was the one who did all those wicked things in high school and college. I was the one who looked for meaning in sex and drugs and alcohol, not her. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t even be here. How could the Devil use her?”

  Ezra had a hard time understanding. It wasn’t a big deal, right? She had a new family now. But she was crying, and Ezra should comfort her somehow.

  “Don’t worry too much. God will take care of us, right?”

  Sister Esther nodded and wiped her tears.

  “Listen to the Elders. They know everything. I’m sure it will be okay. Go ahead and write your letter. You were very convincing when you spoke at Chapel. Maybe you can convert her and she’ll come and live with us.”

  She laughed a little. “Maybe. Somehow, I doubt that. But maybe…”

  Ezra’s stomach growled loudly. He hoped she hadn’t heard.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked. “Didn’t you get dinner?”

  “No. I was working with Elder Noah. I’m going on a mission in a few days.”

  “And you missed dinner? I was on cooking team tonight. I think I can get you some leftovers. Let’s go.”

  “I have to help clean the dishes.”

  “After, then.”

  Ezra grabbed the pail of water and followed her back into camp.

  CHAPTER 10

  *

  THE REAL MEETINGS OF THE SURVIVORS of Faerie Trauma were held in the parlor of Sandy’s mansion. The antique furniture which had been pushed against the walls contrasted with the plastic folding table surrounded by second-hand plastic chairs. A tissue box sat in the center like a bouquet of white flowers.

  In attendance: Jina, Gretel, and Hollis, all members of Ordo Cruentus Ferrum Talea; Leland, a businessman who worked for a local software giant; and Shelly, a suburban housewife. All were regulars, all believers in fae, all survivors.

  Sandy was conspicuously missing, as usual. Jina really wished she would have come this time, especially after the rose incident.

  The door opened in response to the ‘Come Right In’ sign taped to it. Jina leapt up. “Trey, I’m so glad you could make it!” She shook his hand warmly and then showed him to the table. As she sat, she introduced him to the group, first names only.

  She noticed he still wore that intriguing chain around his neck. It was something sentimental, then. Jina couldn’t think of anything more intimate than learning about a person’s secret sentimental objects.

  These meeting barely needed moderation. Everyone knew and respected the rules: Be respectful, no crosstalk, anonymity, and so on. Jina read a few lines from a book she’d assembled with relevant inspirational paragraphs lifted from other kinds of support groups. Then she quickly opened the floor for sharing.

  Gretel began with what sounded like an invocation, her tale emphasized by her accent.

  “I was only a girl, too young to even struggle, when they took me. I watched them place another child in my stead. This child was not me, but an ugly thing, twisted and deformed, infantile.

  “They led me down the faerie furrow, a path to the underworld. I remember it like yesterday. I did not try to flee, for I assumed I would return in the morning, none the worse. The visions, they were not so frightful at first. Elves, sprights, gnomes, all as if from my picture books, peered at me as we passed ancient stones, trees, cottages, and streams. Then some of the faces began to frighten me, ugly, like the thing they’d left in my trundle bed. Ghostly, like things dead. The trees loomed darkly and had faces of their own.

  “If only I’d had breadcrumbs, like my fairytale namesake.

  “How quickly I set aside my fears when a castle appeared at the end of the elfin road. So magnificent, so bright. The Lords and Ladies there, such shimmering creatures of beauty.

  “They offered me the richest foods. With the war rationing… I was but a child, and could not have known the dangers of eating the faerie food. I partook of the feast, eating more than I had ever eaten before.

  “They dressed me in finery, in princess gowns that every girl dreams of wearing. And I danced without stop the whole night long. In repayment, I found myself the next day, dressed in rags, cleaning the ashes from the hearth.”

  Gretel reached out and took a tissue to dab her eyes. “I would never see meine mutter again. At first, there were the kitchens to clean, day after day. At night, I would once again wear the fi
nery and dance, without rest.

  “This, it was bad enough. Until they began to have their fun on the bodies of lesser fae, for punishment or sport, I am not sure. My eyes were too young to have witnessed such atrocities and perversions. Animals, too, small furry beasts they had abducted, dogs and rabbits.

  “These bled, and it was I who carried the bodies outside to bury them in a tiny graveyard. It was I who scrubbed the bloodstains from the floor the next day, so that it would shine again to welcome the guests and to accept more blood the next night.

  “It was said the unseelie court had no scruples, and I wondered, if the unseelie were to be judged by such as these, what things they must do in those darker realms.” Gretel shuddered.

  “The first two days, I thought to protest or whimper. I was harshly punished. After that, never once did I complain, for I could easily myself be subjected to such sport.

  “I grew older, my child body developing into a young woman. A very, very young woman. Only then did I learn my true purpose. I was to be concubine to Der Erlkönig.

  “No longer did I spend my days cleaning; now I spent my nights sitting at Der Erlkönig’s feet, waiting until the moment when he led me to his chambers.”

  She paused for a long, long silence.

  “I have told this tale many times, and each time I reach this part, I cannot continue. No matter how I try, to linger here and remember, I cannot. I skip ahead to the part where I escape, where I find myself here, sixty years later, World War II long past, and I in your land, confused and full of wild tales, able to speak only the basic of English I had learned in school. The state put me in foster care until they could find my parents, which of course, they could not.

  “Some attend meetings just like this to complain of the abuses that befall orphans in the foster system, and thus did I also withstand such pain. However, the hands of humans will never create such evil as the horrors I faced in those shining, dark, beautiful, ugly halls of the elves.”

  She finished by grabbing a Kleenex and tearing it into pieces.

  “Thank you for listening.”

  “Thanks for sharing,” everyone said in unison.

  Jina looked over at Trey, who seemed two shades lighter than white. He made eye contact with Jina as if to say, “I have no right to be here.” She gave him a sympathetic look.

  Gretel spoke again. “I would like to add that as a benefit of my abduction, I know much about the fae. If any of you have questions about your own experience, you may speak to me after the meeting.”

  “Hi, my name is Leland,” the businessman began. “When I was a boy, I saw faeries take my younger brother. They didn’t even leave a changeling behind, and my parents never believed me. They thought I had something to do with his disappearance. The child psychologist told them I had made up a story to cope with my loss. I grew up thinking I was crazy, because I never could erase the memories which are still so clear to me, or their sneering faces as they lured him into the woods behind my house.”

  Now it was Leland’s turn to take a tissue. “My mom had left Walter in my care!” He gripped the Kleenex tightly between his fingers and stared at the box. “She trusted me to take care of him, to watch him in our backyard and make sure he didn’t wander off. It was all my fault. I should have watched him better.” He buried his face in his hands. “I should have fought them,” he wept.

  He sniffled, and then collected himself. “The day after he disappeared, I found a pile of his clothes, the clothes he was wearing, sopping wet with slime, behind the house. The police dredged all the local ponds and streams, but they never found his body.

  “I still can’t sleep with the lights off. I can imagine their eyes, peering at me from the darkness, laughing at me, preparing to take me as well. I often feel like such a child.”

  He blew his nose and the group murmured, “Thanks for sharing.”

  Jina kept reassuring Trey with her facial expressions. He seemed to not relate at all, as if the idea of cruel fae were too far from his experience. She felt a little guilty for spoiling his innocence.

  The meeting continued.

  Shelly described a year of her life where two fae tormented her continuously. It had started small, items misplaced, noises in the night. She’d called in a priest, who only seemed to make things worse. Then a paranormal researcher; he said it was a ghost and tried all kinds of things. That didn’t help either. Then she started seeing them at their mischief, speaking to them. She became faestruck with a number of maladies and minor curses. And they started hurting her physically. Like Gretel, Shelly skipped over some parts of the story, becoming speechless and quickly moving on.

  She begged them to stop, offered them anything they wanted. She moved to a new apartment, she even moved to a new city, and they followed her, relentlessly.

  After a year, the haunting had abruptly ceased.

  Jina had heard these stories before. They all had. The members of the group found that it helped to share them again, to reveal new insights, to learn how others coped with the pain.

  Hollis had never once, in group or in private, shared anything about his past, though his bitterness and hatred rivaled them all, perhaps even Sandy’s. Jina didn’t expect him to share here, so she gave Trey a moment to chime in. He declined, so she started.

  “Most of you know my story. It doesn’t haunt me as it once did, so I’m not planning on retelling it tonight. I did find out that one of them has been attending my concerts, and may be stalking me. It’s scary, but I’ve been paying attention during Gretel’s defense classes, and I think I can protect myself. I haven’t seen him yet. It’s good to know you’re all here for support, even if you can’t be with me all the time. Likewise, you’re in my thoughts.

  “I wanted to offer you all hope. Keep sharing, keep journaling, crying, feeling it out, talking about it to anyone who feels safe. I can tell you, there is hope. The memories will never go away, but over time, the wounds will heal. Eventually the nightmares will cease and you will be able to breathe again.

  “What they did to you, what those creatures did to us, was unacceptable. We are not to blame for their monstrous behavior, any more than a child of an alcoholic is to blame for her mother’s drunken rages. None of us deserved it.” She stabbed the table with a finger to emphasize her point.

  “When you’re feeling at your worst,” she continued, “when the shadows seem to taunt you and call you names, when you doubt your visions and question your every action wondering if you could have prevented it, remember three things:

  “You are not alone.

  “They can’t hurt you anymore.

  “And it wasn’t your fault.”

  By that time, everyone but Trey was in tears. Trey merely seemed overwhelmed, bewildered. They stood and held hands in a circle, repeating the words together, three times: “I am not alone, they can’t hurt me anymore, it wasn’t my fault.”

  Shelly stayed behind to talk to Gretel. Everyone else left. Trey lingered, and Jina approached him.

  “Well… what did you think? You were looking a little pale there for a minute.”

  “You didn’t tell me it was going to be like attending a funeral.”

  “It isn’t always this gloomy. But yeah, real support groups are never pretty.”

  “Why did you tell them they can’t be hurt anymore? And you said one of them might be following you… How do you even leave the house?”

  Jina pulled something out of her pocket. She handed him an old-fashioned iron square nail on a black cord. It had been twisted around into a heart. “Wear this. You’ll be resistant to their glamour. Faeries don’t like real wrought iron, like they used to make. This whole house is warded. They can’t get in the same way that fae girl got into our other meeting. It’s a safe house.”

  She wondered if he would wear both necklaces now, or if he’d add this to the other one he wore.

  “We also hold workshops once a month,” she continued, “where we share our combined knowledge of how to
protect ourselves. How to ward a house, how to disbelieve them to prevent their magic from working, things like that. Just wear that and you’ll be fine.”

  He put the roughly-made amulet on, over the other chain. He dropped the new one to join the old one under his shirt. “They don’t seem to bother me, I guess. It’s hard to accept the idea that there’s a faerie lurking around every corner, waiting to nab the unsuspecting.”

  “You’ve really never met an unseelie faerie?”

  “Unseelie… The bad ones?”

  Jina nodded.

  “Sometimes I get this strange sense of… darkness around a faerie, and I get a feeling that they’re dangerous. I avoid those. Sometimes I’ve been startled or creeped out, but nothing bad.”

  Jina put a hand on Trey’s shoulder. “That one at the group made you think you’d been ridiculed. Don’t minimize that experience.”

  Trey laughed, removing her hand and holding it in his own. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “Wasn’t it? When I found you at the store, you were afraid to even speak to me.”

  “I suppose, but that wasn’t anything like… like any of these other stories.”

  “There you go, minimizing again,” she said. “You should talk about it. It helps.”

  Trey let go of her hand. “I really, really don’t want to tell anyone again.”

  “Consider this possibility: maybe the faerie did more than give you the illusion of ridicule. Is it possible she cast a spell to prevent you from ever talking about it? To isolate you from us?”

  He looked away. “That’s silly. I can talk about it whenever I want.”

  “So tell me what you told us in the meeting last week.”

  “I told you all… that…”

  Jina folded her arms and raised an eyebrow.

  “I simply said… It’s scary, I can’t say it.”

  “Yeah, see?” Jina smiled and turned away. “Hey, want a drink?” She walked to a doorway at the back of the parlor. Trey followed.

  “It feels like I’ve always been this scared…”