Faery Tale

by Signe Pike

It was somewhat heartfelt, somewhat sarcastic, but I thought it anyway, with a smile. Never hurts to be polite when having imaginary conversations. I stood there hopefully, waiting for a few long moments. At times, I thought I saw the bushes move, but it could’ve been a bird. I was, after all, only a few hundred yards from the ocean. Shrugging my shoulders, I headed back to my room and my cozy stack of reading.

  That afternoon the sun was out and it drizzled, creating the most decadent rainbow I’d ever seen. It arched across the park, and people came out from their houses to gaze up at it and say good evening. The people of Findhorn were certainly magical. But were there faeries here? Lini and I’d been spending quite a bit of time together, so I was thrilled when she grabbed an umbrella and walked the puddled path with me to the trolls and gnomes extravaganza.The session that evening was held by a Swedish woman named Marie Soderberg, with the assistance of a man named John Wragg. We made ourselves comfortable and looked around to see it was only a small group of us who’d gathered that night.

  “Good evening, everybody,” Marie began. “I was walking in the woods of Sweden when I began to have . . . weird experiences. I’d always been interested in esoteric subjects, and growing up in Sweden, gnomes and trolls were actually a big part of our culture. But I’d never truly given them much thought. Until one day, as I was sitting quietly in the woods, I felt energies approaching me. And as I ‘tuned in’ to them, I realized—these were gnomes!”

  I waited, as images of gnomes carved in wood flashed on the projector behind her. “They told me that I was supposed to help them. That I’d been chosen to travel around and be . . . well, like the gnomes’ spokeslady, really. And they told me something else. That they actually work in partnership with the trolls.”

  According to Marie, every house or property had a gnome that looked after it—and if they were lucky, it looked after the human inhabitants as well. They knew what was going on with each plant, each tree, they oversaw everything that flourished on the property. They worked in concert with the nature devas of each plant to ensure that all the flora were growing as designed by the divine spirit that is life. The trolls, Marie explained, were in charge of harnessing and directing the energy. And thus, the two worked hand in hand. Trolls containing and amplifying energy, the gnomes focusing it to achieve the ultimate goal: natural perfection.

  The idea of little dudes with pointed hats and gray beards, for me, felt inauthentic. But Marie reminded us that when we “see” the faery kingdom, they’re at a disadvantage—they must use our thought forms to communicate with us. So they appear in archetypes, how we want to see them, or perhaps the only way we can understand what we were seeing. Since Brian Froud had mentioned this to me, I’d read further that faeries often grow fond of the image they project, and they might stick with the same one for many years—brown hair, green eyes, blue clothing, whatever—perfecting it over their lifetimes, which were rumored to span centuries compared to ours. Human beings, apparently, are just a flash in the pan.

  I tuned back in to Marie, who was talking about a man who’d visited the previous week and given a tour of various faery sites around the park, such as he saw them. Two in particular. And both of them were located in the dunes.

  Now she had my attention.

  “On the tour, we were led to this spot,” she said, clicking a slide projector to a photograph of a clearing with bushes surrounding it.

  “He called this place the Amphitheater. Our guide said that this was like . . . oh, how can I explain it . . . like the faeries’ parliament. Faery creatures of all types come here to discuss issues, or just to generally convene.” I squinted at the photo.

  Could that be? No way.

  “If you’d like to go there and check it out, here’s where it is on a map that John and I put together.” She clicked to a hand-marked drawing. “They’re actually two of them. One here, and one here. The faeries use them both.” It was exactly where I’d been. This couldn’t be real! I shook my head in disbelief.

  “Maybe the next time you guys are out walking, you can stop by and say hello!” she suggested cheerfully.

  Just say hello. Introduce yourself. I sat in stunned silence. I couldn’t be making this stuff up—I’m not freaking . . . psychic! Maybe I really had been standing in front of a parliament of faery creatures. In retrospect, it might’ve been wise to be less sarcastic. There was a definite pattern that had emerged on my journey. If I was open, and I listened, I’d be given something—a clue, an instruction. If I chose to act on it, there was a verification. I was still reeling when Marie requested we get comfortable to prepare for our guided meditation. I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing, and focused on her voice.

  “Imagine yourself in a home. It doesn’t have to be the home you live in now, just a place you love or have really loved.”

  The image of our house in Charleston was a cozy one—I’d go with that.

  “Now step through the door. Imagine it is winter, and there is a fire crackling in the hearth. There is a spirit that guards and protects every home, and you. Pick a place you are most comfortable and sit down there. See if he or she will come to you.”

  I imagined myself walking past the kitchen toward the sunroom. And in that moment, I was surprised to see a little gray-haired gnome, about three feet high, with a pointed green hat, walk in from the patio. He didn’t notice me, just plodded through, with a little bit of a waddle. He was instantly endearing: old, rather innocent-looking, and sweet. I somehow understood without thinking about it that he knew I was there, but he wasn’t acknowledging me because he was used to not being acknowledged, and it made me so sad. Sensing my gaze, he turned to look at me, and his face grew . . . wise. Hoping to communicate with him, I moved outside and sat cross-legged on the patio where he plopped down across from me. “Now you can ask him anything you want,” Marie suggested.

  I considered him a moment.

  Are you happy that Eric and I live here now? I asked.

  He smiled. I didn’t hear him speak; instead, I saw scenes flash in my head. Eric and I viewing the house when it was for sale. The backyard with the majestic red pine and the sweet little shed with the black shutters. I saw Eric working in the shed with lawn equipment and me on my hands and knees, gardening. We were happy, smiling. I got the feeling that he had somehow brought us there, that he would hold us, and I saw a nest. I understood. He wanted to always make this a good nest for us. Then I felt a surge of love coming from him, and it was for me and Eric. He loved us. It was very fatherly. Like he was proud of us.

  “Now, ask him if there’s anything that he would like for you to do,” Marie instructed. Immediately, before even formally asking, I saw our neighbors’ houses, the bits and pieces that we can see from our yard, covered by a fast-growing plant. I get it, I thought. You’d like us to plant more green things, plant more trees. Then he showed me the shed. And I got the sense that the shed was important to him, and that we should keep it nice, organized, orderly, and give it a use. Right now, it housed empty, ,rusted paint cans and expired fertilizers. It was weird how I felt these things to be true, what he was communicating. It was utterly vivid.

  “Now it’s time to thank your gnome and say goodbye for now. If you’d like, you can establish a time to meet with him or her again, in an actual place, or through meditation.”

  I’ll see you when I get back to the house, I thought. I’m so excited to know that you’re there. I sent him warmth, gratitude. He showed me an image of Eric sitting on the couch watching TV, with the cat asleep on the arm of the couch beside him. The gnome was standing there, looking at them, guarding them. It was surprisingly moving.

  “Next,” Marie’s voice came, “we’re going to meet some trolls!” I jerked partway out of my meditative trance. No way did I want to meet a troll. But I tried to calm myself. I’d had such a good time using my imagination to meet our friendly house gnome. Maybe I should just relax and give this a shot.

  “You find yourself out in the woods,” Marie int
oned. “They can be woods that you are familiar with, or just a really beautiful grove of trees.” I pictured myself walking through Palmetto Islands County Park near our house, surrounded by tall palmettos and southern brush.

  “Find a small clearing,” Marie said, “and sit down on the ground or on the trunk of a tree.”

  Ha! Fat chance in Charleston. Unless you’re fond of getting swarmed by fire ants. But luckily this was meditation, so I sat, suspending my disbelief. “Now you may become aware of a troll energy.” I became aware of a small creature, about a foot and a half tall, who resembled a darker, long-haired orangutan. It was peeking at me from behind a nearby tree. It was so sweet-looking and shy, and it seemed so lonely, I couldn’t help but feel a wave of sympathy. It came close to me then, and I wasn’t afraid. It sat down next to me, and the next thing I knew, it had leaned its little head against me. It looked up at me with tender little eyes, and then surprised me by reaching out to hold my hand.

  “You may find,” Marie said then, “that they’re shy at first, but are actually quite sweet. They love to cuddle, and they might want to hold your hand, or come into contact with you if you’re okay with that.” My troll and I were so far ahead of the rest of the class! “Your troll may seem a little sad,” she said, “and if you want to, you can give it a hug.” I hugged its hairy little body to mine, and I instantly felt it go from sad to bursting with joy. I put it down on the ground and it danced around me, grinning in delight, swinging its arms like a little monkey.

  “You might notice a change in the troll’s demeanor,” Marie said. “Hugs make them really happy.” All right. It was a little odd that things were happening in my visualization before Marie said the exact same thing. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be convincing for anyone else. Maybe it was just serving a personal need. But it was convincing to me.

  On the way back to the house Lini and I swapped stories—she’d met her house gnome as well and, like me, was profoundly touched by the experience. She, too, felt a surprising authenticity, and we confided that we were both looking forward to getting together with these loving beings in meditation again soon. That night as I drifted off to sleep I remembered something else Brian Froud had said. “Within the meditation, you do actually genuinely touch faery land—you’re in it, whether you realize it or not.” The thought made me smile. Perhaps the faeries were far closer than we thought.

  I spent the rest of my time at Findhorn attending regular group meditations or sitting in the nature sanctuary while people around me sang in the early morning hours. Findhorn had somehow cleaned me, put me back together. I’d been eating vegetarian for four days, and my body felt light and clean. I’d been skipping wine at the general store, helping myself instead to Lini’s incredible selection of herbal teas.

  In Scotland, I think, people remember where they came from. We come from the earth, are composed from its elements. And yet we treat it with such disrespect—the only thing that can truly sustain us. I simply can’t understand. Maybe the problem is that most of us live in the places that can make you forget.You can’t walk around expecting to feel an organic connection to a high-rise. And I could never quite find peace in a city that never slept. But there was something about Scotland that allowed you to truly feel the land, and the force of it all can bring tears to your eyes.

  Findhorn was the last stop on my faery-finding journey. I reflected back as I rode the train from Edinburgh to London. I’d seen what I thought might have been faery lights in Glastonbury. All summer long, I’d had bizarre impulses, which I followed, despite not fully knowing why. I didn’t know what I could say I’d accomplished. But I knew one thing. I was different now. And yet I felt more myself than I had ever been. In leaving one life behind to go on a search for the fantastical, I had rediscovered a whole new one. In chasing the beliefs I had as a child, I’d somehow managed to grow up. And I truly liked the woman I’d become.

  As my plane lifted off the ground at Heathrow, I wished for a safe journey, smiling at the thought of a thousand little winged creatures supporting the plane’s mass. I’d spent so much time with people who were living magical lives—from Brian and Wendy Froud to the entire peaceful and progressive community at Findhorn. And in seeing the way these people chose to live, their values, how they treated one another, the planet, the wonder with which they greeted each day of living, I was able to see the world around me as enchanted once again, too.

  Maybe, I mused, it’s not us who are helping the faeries by believing in them. Perhaps it’s the humans who stand to benefit, if only we could make the faeries believe in us once more.

  24

  The Truth About Faeries: Putting the Pieces Together

  Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.

  —HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON

  ERIC met me at the airport; hands in his pockets, he gave me almost a sheepish grin, and his dimple was right where I’d remembered it. Outside Charleston International the palmettos swayed in the evening breeze and the night air felt balmy, humid. My massive pack soon rested just inside the front door, and I looked upon my house in new wonder. Good God! I had a whole huge closetful of clothes I could wear—and a washer and dryer—no more washing my clothes in the sink! Just riding in a car was a luxury—you mean, no waiting for the bus? Everything felt new after having been away for three months. After a hot shower I pulled back the sheets and crawled into bed, my feet reaching over to find Eric’s. We intertwined our legs and I drifted into a fast and dreamless sleep.

  Now that I was back, my focus was on collecting the pieces to the puzzle, trying to understand if there could be hidden connections in any of the clues I’d been given throughout the course of the summer. By digging through history, I hoped to discover what stuck and what led me amok.

  Among what I termed loosely as “evidence,” I had the photo from the old Fairy Bridge on the Isle of Man of the inexplicable small, glowing light. In addition, Raven had since forwarded me pictures of bizarrely colored orbs from our nighttime climb down Glastonbury Tor. But it was the less concrete occurrences (typical of faery) that I had found the most compelling: In England I’d experienced the inexplicable sparkling in the hedgerow of the Chalice Well Garden. There’d been the robin that seemed to find me at will with various insects in its beak, and the seeming arrival of my faery advocate—after which point I felt guided throughout the rest of my trip through feelings, and even sometimes, uh . . . a distinguishable voice in my head.

  On the Isle of Man I’d felt overly sleepy in Castletown, destroyed (or sacrificed?) my iPod when my water opened in my pack, and there was the murder of Betsy Crowe—and the connection, if any, it might have had with my hike that day. I’d had the bizarre encounter with the towering man and his black dog in the fields of Glen Auldyn, and then there was little George’s eerie hint that we were getting close to Fairy Bridge . . . when none of us had a clue where we were. After which point I’d met Charlotte, who cropped up to provide me with a “tune-up” as well as the rock I wished for on my birthday after my visit to Fairy Bridge, which I found on Point of Ayre. And let us not forget the bikers: gifts from the faeries if ever there were.

  In Ireland, Peter Guy took me to the site of the last battle between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fir Bolgs, where I somehow knew the function of the old “cattle well” before asking the museum attendant. There’d been the disappearing and reappearing of the tent poles (and the borrowed pedometer), and the image in my mind of the bearded redheaded man at the fort on Black Head near Doolin. In Crusheen, Eddie Lenihan told me of faeries shape-shifting into human form and their connection to the mysterious black dogs. And there was the strange vision of an ancient line of pagan people climbing and worshipping at Mount Brandon. In Scotland there was my odd confirmation at Findhorn, when I’d been told to “say hello” to the faeries by the beach, and the strange way things seemed to happen in my trolls and gnomes meditation before Marie Soderberg suggested they might occur.

  Then there were the things I t
hought of as “the Connectors.” Wendy Froud mentioned that the faeries might leave me gifts—things that would mean something only to me, like the black feathers I’d been finding all summer. Another connector could be the strange terracing I’d noticed on both Glastonbury Tor and Fairy Glen on the Isle of Skye. Then there were the bizarre shapes of the hills themselves: Glastonbury Tor, Hango Hill in Castletown on the Isle of Man, Fairy Glen in Uig, and Doon Hill in Aberfoyle.

  Most urgently, now that I was back at my desk, I wanted to dig into the backstory of Betsy Crowe. A certainty had settled within me and had haunted me throughout the trip—there was something to discover, some hidden connection. I tore through the pages of an obscure British volume called Manx Murders. Please, oh, please. And there she was. Elizabeth “Betsy” Crowe, murdered in 1888. I held my breath and read on. Her brutal murder, on Old Douglas Road outside Ramsey, rocked the entire island, and it had remained unsolved.

  But Betsy’s neighbor, twenty-five-year-old John Gelling, had been brought in as the main suspect. The book contained a map of the area, not drawn much to scale, but it gave me an idea of where the Old Douglas Road was—a rough cart track that ran from Ballure Bridge up along the tiny glen, and then along the reservoir until it intersected with the paved road I’d crossed. The field with the ruin was beyond. There was no way of telling whether the stone house I visited belonged to Betsy, John Gelling, or another neighbor. Comparing the map of the murder scene to a modern map of the area and tracing my route, it seemed I was near the murder spot, separated only by a small stream, where I’d seen the blue coat hanging inexplicably in the middle of the dark forest. A coincidence, I was certain. But I kept reading.

  There were some suspicious oddities in Gelling’s account of his whereabouts that night. But the piece of the story that stopped me in my tracks was yet to come.