by Lynn Donovan
The one on her palm bounced from her glove and flew to the swarm. It hovered in front of the swarm. “What are you?”
Karole laughed. “Well, I guess… I’m a human.”
“Human!” They all seemed to say various versions of the word. “You look like Mother Righteous when she—” “But kinder.” “Yes. Mother Righteous has your eyes.” “Not her hair.” “No, not her hair.”
Like a ribbon, they swung over to Abbie. She ducked back from them as they halted several inches from her face. One slowly flew closer and reached out to take a handful of Abbie’s tear. The drop looked to be the size of a cantaloupe in its small palm. It sniffed the ball and lifted its tiny, yet disproportionally large sapphire eyes to meet Abbie’s.
She marveled at how beautiful its eyes were, like a polished jewel.
“Your energy is… amazing.” It blinked. Tiny crystals clung to its lashes “Why does it make you leak sea water?”
Abbie stared at the curious faerie. “You-you nearly smothered me. I couldn’t breathe.”
The faerie let the ball of tear fall from her hand. “We did not mean to… smothered… you. We were… flying to our trees, when a loud noise… Boom!” The faeries flittered around each other. “A lot of… strange things we had never seen before were thrown at us. We ducked behind the big leaves. Then we heard… you. Many of you yelling and running. We were fascinated. Your energy glowed. We could see it from our side. We have never seen this type of energy before. There are stories told…” The lone faerie turned to the swarm, gestured to the woods around them. “Could this be where our stories came from?”
Joseph tapped Abbie’s arm but stared at the creatures. “They’re speaking English now.”
Abbie glanced at him and back to the one who seemed to be brave enough to talk directly to her.
The swarm collectively shrugged, expressing one response. “We don’t know—” then their voices separated. “…where the stories came from.” “Could it be?” “Mother Righteous lived here long ago?”
Abbie leaned closer to the one who seemed to hover in front of the others. “How did you get here?”
“Flew toward your energy.” The brave little faerie said as it flew closer to Abbie’s hair and took several strands into its hand. It let the strands glide along its palm, as if fascinated with the texture. It sniffed her hair. “Fruit, no… berries?”
“Mixed berries, actually,” Abbie answered. “It’s my shampoo.” Abbie’s initial fear had slipped away. Perhaps they were harmless, like her beloved Tinker Bell. She watched from the outer reaches of her peripheral to see what the faerie did. “Are you really faeries?”
The one at her hair stopped and looked directly into Abbie’s eyes. “Of course. Crystal Faeries. Are you really human?”
A cluster of faeries seemed to focus their attention on Joseph. That same furrowed brow and squinted eyes. Were they studying him?
Joseph huffed, but it sounded like a short chuckle. “This is amazing. Take a picture! We need a recording of this.” He patted his pockets for his phone. Disappointment ebbed his face.
Abbie chuckled and turned back to the faerie. “My name’s Abbie. What’s yours?”
The faerie stiffened, her wings flapped so fast behind her shoulders that Abbie could barely see more than a blur. “What do you mean?”
Abbie paused. “How are you called?”
The faerie tilted her head, as if considering Abbie’s words.
“What distinguishes you from the others?”
“Oh!” The faerie flew backward a short distance. A squeaky-high pitch emanated from her mouth, something like rocks being rubbed on a slate. Abbie cringed. The faerie silenced and stared at her. “You did not understand?”
“I guess not.”
The faerie considered Abbie. “You have not our language, but somehow we have yours… hum, curious.”
“I hear you speaking English, my native tongue. But Joseph heard you in Spanish, his native tongue.”
He touched Abbie’s arm and stepped up closer. “No. At first I heard them speaking Spanish in my head, now I hear English when they speak out loud. How can that be?”
“Hmm” The faerie touched her chin. “When we speak among our minds, you hear us in your native ‘tongue,’ as you say.” She seemed to consider that, then opened her tiny mouth. “What distinguishes me from the others is— Aura.” She bowed at the waist while her wings buzzed behind her.
“Aura.” Abbie smiled. “Please to meet you, Aura. This is my sister Karole with a K and an E at the end.”
Karole nodded with grave uncertainty. “Hi.”
Aura smiled. “Hello Karole with a K and an E at the end.” She turned to the swarm, “Such a long distinction.” She shrugged and held up her hand to the other faeries. “This is my sister Diamond, Amethyst, Jasper, Heliodor, Agate, Malachite, Celest, Azur, Charo, Lole, Emerald, Garnet, Xan, Jade, Kyan, and Morganite.”
Abbie chuckled. “You’re all named after crystals.”
They all stared at her, blinked as if on cue, and then nodded as one. “Yes. We are Crystal Faeries.”
“This is so cool!” Abbie glanced at her sister. “But please forgive me if I cannot remember which of you is who. You all look alike to me.”
Aura turned to gaze at Karole, then turned back to Abbie. “You look alike to us.”
All the faeries laughed. Abbie couldn’t help but laugh too.
“Except for the energy,” one finally said. “Yes, this is true.” “We have not seen this energy.” “It is what makes you look not alike.” “Except him.” One pointed at Joseph.
His eyes widened.
“Oh, yes.” “His energy matches…” The swarm swung toward Abbie. “You!”
Abbie’s eyes bulged. “Me?”
The swarm nodded enthusiastically. “Yes. You.” “Don’t let Mother Righteous know!” “She would be very angry.” “At us.” “And you.” “She demands it.” We must squash such emotions when she’s angry.” “We want to stop squashing beautiful emotions.” “But she is very strong.” “Yes, we must do what she commands.” “She sends the shade!” “Or the golem!” They all nodded in fearful agreement.
Abbie’s brow furrowed, dipping low over her eye. “What are you talking about? Who is this mother righteous?”
Aura separated from the swarm, flying closer to Abbie’s face. “Mother Righteous lives high in the floating mountain.”
She serpentined her arms together and lifted one shoulder to her jaw. Her eyelashes fluttered. “But you. You have an energy that Mother Righteous won’t allow. And it is the same prism stream as his.” She poked one slender finger toward Joseph.
“What does that mean?” Abbie glanced at Karole, then Joseph.
The faeries chortled. As one, they spoke, “Love!”
Some of the faeries swarmed Joseph. A frown replaced their sweet smile. They squinted, as if focusing on him. A harsh sensation seemed to emanate from them.
“An attraction thread.” Aura said at last, drawing Abbie’s attention back to the leader.
Abbie’s mouth gaped. “What? I— we just met! We’re not—”
The faeries in Joseph’s face squinted. His face flushed, as if he were holding his breath. Fear, or was it anger, washed over his expression.
“That’s enough!” Joseph swatted at the creatures.
They scattered out of his reach. Why did they look pleased with his reaction?
“Look. I don’t know how you’re doing this.” He glanced at the hole in the ground, then back to Abbie. “Is this some elaborate joke? Am I being punked? I’m not finding it funny.” His hand plunged into his dark curls. “We evacuated the building for God’s sake!”
A darkness filled his face. He squinted, glaring at Abbie. “I think I’ve had enough of your idea of fun. I’m going back to my lab.” He stomped away, letting the slope of the mountain affect his momentum.
Abbie turned to her sister, utterly confused. The faeries swarmed her hair. Others moved
with her eyelashes as she blinked. “How could he think I had anything to do with this?” She gestured to the swarm. Then took a double take at the ones in her peripheral.
Karole touched Abbie’s arm. “Work Force Development.”
Abbie stared at her sister. “What?”
“WFD, on the canisters, it stands for Work Force Development. The joke it that it creates jobs for those who didn’t go to college. It’s no big deal, and I don’t know why I thought it was such a huge secret.” She perused the swarm of faeries. “This! Is a huge deal, and we’ve gotta keep it a secret. Let’s get outta here before that security team comes back.”
Abbie watched the odd little cluster. Why were they still glaring after Joseph?
Chapter Seven
“I want you to come to medical,” Karole touched Abbie’s shoulder as they tramped down the mountain.
Abbie focused on the faeries buzzing around her head, like bees to a flower. They seemed harmless enough, a nuisance maybe, but harmless. But something deep in Abbie’s gut told her to be wary. Joseph had suddenly become angry and paranoid. Did the faeries have something to do with his sudden change? They had said their dictator forced them to squash emotions that made her angry. Is that what happened to Joseph?
They chattered on and on about her energy and his too. And how Karole’s energy was different and the one they called Mother Righteous. They spoke the forbidden “L” word.
Even in their world it was forbidden. But to a much different degree than here. Here it was an etiquette issue. Nobody used the L word so soon after meeting. Abbie wasn’t in love with Joseph. Lust maybe. Big time attraction, by all means. But how could she even begin to entertain the idea that she had any type of love for him?
Why had the faeries said that? Just blatantly blurted it out. If their mother righteous banned the emotion, then they had no idea how sacred the word was. Not to be thrown around so flippantly.
Their world?
Where were they from?
Was Abbie right about the quantum entanglement going wrong? Had the explosion caused dimensional instability? Opened up a portal? Was it still open? Would more faeries come through? Was the mist the portal? The faeries said they could see us through whatever happened on their side. A big boom. Debris flew through.
Debris… flew… through— “Aura.” Abbie stopped abruptly.
The faeries fluttered about Abbie’s head. “Did you see a… a man in a red shirt come through after you heard the big boom?”
The faeries stared at Abbie, blinking as one. “No.”
Disappointment filled her heart. She ached to go examine the lab and the quartz wall. She turned to her sister. “Why do I need to go to medical?”
Abbie continued walking, adjusting her vision from the faeries to her sister. Karole held her glasses up off her nose in order to view the flying creatures through her bifocals.
“You don’t. But I want to take a better look at these little guys and they seem to be attached to you, so… I need you to come to Medical.”
“You mean you want to… put them under a microscope and… analyze them?” Why did the thought of Karole examining them put such terror in Abbie’s gut?
Karole brought her gaze to meet Abbie’s. “Well, they are amazing. Don’t you want to know more about them?”
Abbie’s face washed with incredulous shock. “Yeah, but I thought I’d just talk to them, observe them. This is no different than any other discovery we make in our work. You wouldn’t destroy a new form of life you found. You’d look more closely, watch how it functions…” Abbie gasped. “Were you going to” —she lowered his voice to a whisper— “dissect them?”
The swarm gasped and swooped back away from Karole. “She wants to cut us up!” “She wants to kill us!” “She is evil!” “She is like Mother Righteous!”
They crowded Abbie’s head. Some landed on her shoulders, in her hair, others flew just inches above her. “Do not let her squash us!” “We want to be with you!” “We want to know your love energy.” “We do not have to dissect you to study your energy.”
Abbie pursed her lips, stifling her need to shoo them from her personal space. They were scared and sought her for protection. Of course, she would not let Karole, or anybody else for that matter, turn them into lab experiments. These creatures had a voice. They could convey their thoughts. She, too, was very curious to learn more about them, but she’d do so by talking to them, asking questions, exchanging ideas and information, the way one would do when one first met a person. The way she had hoped to learn more about Joseph.
These creatures were persons. Very small, but obviously intelligent, persons. She backed away from her sister. “We do not need to go to Medical, Karole. We are not injured. I’m going to take these faeries to my office and sit down and have a conversation with them. If you want to come ask questions, you’re welcome to join us. But if you’re thinking of dissecting even one of them, forget it.”
Karole frowned. “What’s this ‘we’ business. I… was just thinking of holding a magnifying glass up to them, so I could see them better! I wasn’t going to dissect anything.” She paused, perusing the swarm. “But… if any of them die, you let me know. I would like to perform a necropsy!”
“Oh my God! They are quite alive and well. Back off!”
“See, that’s another thing… how do you know they are well?” She stared at Abbie.
Abbie’s shoulders rounded and she continued down the mountain.
“Just promise me, if anything happens to one of them, you’ll save the body—”
Abbie spun around to face her sister. “Karole! Seriously! Back off!”
The faeries flutter above Abbie’s head, all glaring hatefully toward Karole. Abbie focused on the ones she could see in her visual range. “Let’s go to my office. You’ll be safe there. And I have some crystal core samples you might enjoy seeing.”
Excitement flitted among them.
“Hey!” Karole called after her. “Don’t forget you’ve got a date at The Oasis this evening.”
“What?” Abbie halted. Her mind was so consumed with this phenomenon of faeries she’d forgotten all about the ‘gathering of friends’. “With Assad? You saw him storm away, right? I don’t imagine he’ll be joining us for a drink tonight, or ever.” Abbie turned to continue walking, but turned back. “You really think people are going to gather at The Oasis after that… accident?”
“Only makes sense.” Karole shrugged. “Trauma, alcohol— kinda goes hand in hand. Besides, I wouldn’t be so sure he’ll stay angry.”
Abbie turned a questioning gaze toward her sister. How would she know what he would do?
Aura swung into Abbie’s visual range. “Abbie. He has your love energy. You are matched. He will be there. He wants to be with you.” The little faerie turned a disappointed glare to some of the faeries over her shoulder. “We are sorry we pushed anger on him. It is what we do.” Aura shrugged. “Mother Righteous demands it. But… we prefer the way it is here.”
Another faerie flew up next to Aura, giggling. “It is funny.”
Aura turned to her “No, Amethyst! It is different here. You saw! They have love. We can learn love here. It’s not like Velona.”
The other faeries bent their heads. “Yes. Not like Velona.” “Will Mother Righteous punish us?” “I do not want to be stripped into nothing but light.” “Like the shade.”
“Velona?” Abbie focused on them. “Is that where you are from?”
Aura nodded toward Abbie, then touched the other faerie’s shoulder. “We do not know what here is, but I do not feel Mother Righteous’s energy. Maybe here we are safe from her. She will not make us suffer… like the shade.”
“What is a shade?” Abbie visualized a lamp shade. That’s couldn’t be right.
The faeries shivered. But none seemed to know how to explain. “Anak was whole, now he is… not.”
Abbie tried another angle. “You are afraid of this mother righteous?”
“Not afraid!” Aura stiffened as if offended.
“We stay away.” “When she comes down.” “From her mountain.”
Aura glared at the other faeries’s interruptions. “But her energy reaches everyone.”
“Huh?” Abbie continued to walk down the mountainside. The faeries swarmed her as she went. “Let’s sit down and talk. Do you eat? Do you want water or tea? How do you sustain yourselves?”
“See!” Karole interjected from behind. Abbie had almost forgotten she was still walking with them. “That’s something I’d like to know. That’s a medical question!”
They buzzed with excitement, chattering about things Abbie didn’t understand. She hoped she could at the very least figure out nutrients for them. As fast as their wings flapped, surely they had some system of sustaining that energy. Other than feeling her “love energy.”
If they survived by absorbing her love energy, they would indeed starve to death. She chuckled at the thought.
Sadness washed over her. She really didn’t want them to die. As irritating as it was to have them swarm her face and hair, she was quickly becoming attached to them and wanted to learn so much more. Perhaps find out more about all this love energy and Dr. Assad having a matching prism stream?
Abbie gritted her teeth, fighting the knee-jerk sensation to swat the faeries from her hair and face. They rode on her rather than fly along with her as she made her way to her office. Hiding in her hair and clothes seemed better once she reached her building. A few people moved about the halls. Karole was right about one thing, she should keep the faeries a secret.
Nearly everyone had gone to the auditorium. Karole told Abbie about the facility-wide meeting Karole had ignored when she realized security was called to look for the missing technician from Lab One. “If there was a possibility of finding Zeke Callahan, my Hippocratic oath takes precedence over a schmoozing mandatory meeting to tell everyone that nothing happened. Right?” Karole insisted.
Abbie agreed, but she had a more pressing distraction with the faeries crawling through her hair. The memory of a documentary she had seen a while back played in her head.
