Modern Fairies, Dwarves, Goblins, and Other Nasties Read online

  And yet, according to the encyclopedia, many people had reported sightings: in India, in Africa—even Czar Nicholas II of Russia had reported seeing ball lightning as a child. If there had been so many sightings, Cecilia wondered, why did no one believe that it existed? People never wanted to believe in anything. She put down the encyclopedia and picked up the book about Coney Island.

  Here was an especially interesting and relevant passage:

  Coney Island is most closely associated with the image of its iconic roller coaster, the Cyclone. The Cyclone holds the unique honor of having been hit by lightning more times than any other roller coaster in the world: 46 times since the ride opened in 1927.

  Cecilia’s heart pounded. She looked out the window. Clouds swelled in the sky again, turning it purple and gray and green, like an ugly bruise. She grabbed her backpack and hurried out of the library. On the front steps, she almost ran smack into the library’s custodian, who dropped a bucket of dirty mop water down the stairs.

  “You’ll break your neck, running around like that,” he hollered. “Where’s the fire?”

  “At the Cyclone,” Cecilia shouted back, and she ran and she didn’t stop running until she reached the amusement park where the Cyclone lived.

  It looked like the skeleton of a huge, sleeping animal, a dragon, maybe, or something worse.

  The fence around the Cyclone was like a cage, keeping the animal inside. The park was closed and empty, and Cecilia had to walk quite a way before she found a hole in the fence big enough to crawl through.

  The sky was almost midnight-black and she heard a rumble. At first she thought that rumble was thunder, but it didn’t sound like any thunder she’d ever heard before. It sounded like a deep, ominous death rattle from the belly of the earth. Then Cecilia looked up and realized that the rumble had not come from the sky or the earth.

  It was the sound of the Cyclone coming to life.

  A set of coaster cars began to inch up the arch of the Cyclone’s spine, like a yellow and red caterpillar. The metal wheels groaned and creaked. Suddenly a soft shape in the first car caught Cecilia’s attention.

  “Lucius!” she screamed.

  The boy turned his head and looked down at his sister. He waved gaily.

  “Come down from there right now,” shouted Cecilia before she realized how ridiculous that sounded. A flash of white light filled the sky, and by the time the thunder had cracked, Cecilia climbed into the next set of Cyclone cars, which shuddered as they lurched up the ramp.

  Lucius’s car reached the peak, hovered at the top for a moment, and then plunged down the track. Cecilia heard him scream with glee and soon her car had reached the peak. Her stomach knotted up when she saw the drop, and a second later the car hurtled downward. The smell of painted metal and ozone filled her nostrils as the roller coaster jolted her left and right and the park flashed by.

  Soon the car slowed and turned upward again and began to climb the next steep hill. Cecilia wiped her eyes and saw Lucius’s car ahead of her on the ramp.

  “CeCe! CeCe!” he shouted down to her. “Isn’t this fun?”

  Just then a blinding flash of lightning and a crack of thunder happened at the exact same moment, and out of the sky came three or four fiery balls. But instead of shooting like bullets across the sky, they hovered—dawdled, even—like dandelion fluff blowing in the breeze toward the Cyclone.

  Lucius stood up in his car.

  “CeCe—aren’t they pretty?” he yelled. The lightning balls bathed him in yellow light.

  “Sit down; are you crazy?” cried Cecilia, and then his car reached the top and the fiery balls floated in and surrounded him. The light burned so bright that Cecilia had to cover her eyes, and then there was another clap of thunder and Lucius’s car raced down the ramp on the other side.

  This time it was empty.

  Eventually the police came, and fire trucks and ambulances too. They looked everywhere to see if Lucius had fallen out of the car (he had not) or been burned up by the lightning (which, again, he had not; in fact, the roller coaster car in which he’d ridden had absolutely no evidence of a lightning strike at all). In the end, they concluded that Cecilia had been lying (sound familiar?)—not just about seeing Lucius on the roller coaster, but also about the lightning balls.

  Because Cecilia had been right back in the Coney Island public library: people never want to believe in anything that they can’t explain.

  I know that this story is a little different from the other tales in this book. But I’m willing to bet that you knew fairies were somehow involved with those lightning balls that followed poor Lucius from the day of his birth to the day he vanished.

  When it comes to explaining ball lightning, scientists are both wrong and right.

  As you know, they are wrong when they claim these fiery spheres are hoaxes or fictions.

  But this is where scientists are right: ball lightning is not lightning at all.

  Ball lightning is a fierce field of electricity that surrounds a breed of fairy known as the Pyrofairies. The prefix “pyro” comes from the Greek word for “fire.”

  Very little is known about the Pyrofairies, which are possibly the most elusive creatures in the fairy world. As you saw from the encyclopedia entry in the Coney Island library, there have been Pyrofairy sightings across the globe, and fairy experts in every culture have different theories about the breed’s origin. In Mexico, for example, fairyologists believe that Pyrofairies are direct descendants of an early Aztec sun god named Tezcatlipoca; in Egypt, they’re believed to have sprung from the early Egyptian sun god Ra. No one knows for sure.

  What all Pyrofairies in every country have in common: every once in a while, they become attracted to a child, and eventually that child disappears. I have researched nearly every recorded Pyrofairy case, and these are the facts:

  Over the years, each targeted, or “marked,” child followed by Pyrofairies looked vaguely like Lucius, with dark hair and mirror-colored eyes.

  Each spoke in a strange language before learning the language of his or her parents.

  All “marked” children disappeared when they were six or so, usually amidst a storm during which “ball lightning” was reported.

  For the most part, these children are very attracted to fires and often get into trouble for playing with matches when they are little. Also, they never get sunburned at the beach, even if their skin is as pale as milk.

  There is only one conclusion to be drawn: these children are not human children at all; they are changelings—which, as you learned earlier in this book, are fairy babies that have been secretly left in the place of human ones. The Pyrofairies track down their offspring about six years after swapping them out—usually by luring them away from their foster homes to a high peak and seizing them. This is what happened to Lucius at the top of the Cyclone.

  In the meantime, the fire fairies check in on the changelings every year or so, leaving a scalding calling card each time.

  Lucius’s disappearance is still listed as “unsolved” in police files.

  Other Fairy-Inhabited

  National Landmarks

  Coney Island is considered by many to be a national landmark; in fact, some historical parts of the amusement park and its old signs are now part of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

  As you probably suspected, Coney Island is not the only national landmark where considerable fairy activity has taken place. Below are a few other such places.

  Mount Rushmore

  Sixty-foot sculptures of the faces of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln are carved into the granite side of this peak, representing the first 150 years of the United States’ history. It took sculptor Gutzon Borglum and four hundred workers fourteen long years to make these carvings.

  Well, it would have taken twice as long if the Black Hills dwarves hadn’t stepped in to help—for a price, of course. Borglum cut a de
al with this local dwarf tribe to continue the hard work at night, when no photographers were around. Skilled granite carvers, these dwarves eventually introduced Borglum’s workers to all sorts of unusual carving techniques. Of course, no records detail how much Borglum paid the dwarves, but a trusted associate later told his wife from his deathbed that Borglum paid them about half a million dollars.

  People often say it’s a miracle that not a single worker died during the construction of Mount Rushmore; after all, two million tons of rock were dynamited off the peak—rather dangerous work. Actually, this “miracle” is also the work of the Black Hills dwarves, who cast a protective spell over the workers as part of their deal with Borglum.

  Unfortunately for him, Borglum gypped the dwarves out of their final payment and they angrily reversed the protective spell. Not surprisingly, Borglum died shortly thereafter and his son had to complete the project for him.

  The Chrysler Building

  If you point a pair of binoculars at the top of this beautiful Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, you will see several menacing steel American eagle gargoyles jutting out of the building on the corners of the sixty-first floor.

  If you had very powerful binoculars—plus fairy sight—you might notice the unusual nests nestled on top of the steel beaks of the gargoyles. These nests belong to the Avian fairies, a breed that is half bird and half winged fairy; they hatch from eggs, and downy feathers cover their wings. Accustomed to staggering heights, Avian fairies rarely descend to the ground, spending their days instead amidst the clouds, coasting from skyscraper to skyscraper.

  The Liberty Bell

  This two-thousand-pound symbol of American freedom hangs in Philadelphia, the country’s first capital. Made mostly from copper and tin, the bell was originally cast in 1752 in London and shipped to Pennsylvania.

  You’ve likely heard about the famous crack up the side of the bell; no one can decide exactly how many times it has cracked and been repaired or why it kept cracking in the first place. I suspect that the family of fairies who’ve lived inside that crack for centuries might have something to do with it. After all, if someone kept trying to seal up your house, wouldn’t you get mad and do something about it too?

  On the Question of

  Photographing Fairies

  Every once in a while, someone claims to have taken the world’s first photograph of a fairy. These photographers and their pictures are always proven to be fakes. Likewise, as you saw in the encyclopedia entry in Tale No. 7, ball lightning has never been photographed, causing many people to call the phenomenon a myth.

  Consider the following famous story as well, about the so-called Cottingley fairy photographs, taken by two young cousins in England in the early 1900s. Elsie Wright, sixteen, and Frances Griffiths, ten, presented their families with five photos of themselves with tiny winged creatures taken in the forested Cottingley Glen, near Wright’s home.

  Many experts—including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes detective mysteries—examined the Cottingley photographs and proclaimed that they were indeed pictures of fairies. After sixty long years of ill-earned fame, Elsie and Frances admitted that the photos had been a hoax; the Cottingley “fairies” in the photos had been simple paper cutouts.

  If you have plans to take your camera out into your own backyard to document fairy activity, prepare to be disappointed. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but no fairy has ever been successfully photographed and no fairy ever will—and this includes the Pyrofairies behind ball lightning.

  You’ve probably been taught in school that there are only three forms of matter: gas, liquid, and solid. Fairies are made from a fourth form of matter, the composition of which cannot be understood by humans or photographed. It has something to do with the particular way fairy matter reflects light, and this applies to all breeds—from goblins to mermaids to the winged species.

  Now that we’ve settled that, let’s move on.

  Fairies and Animals

  All fairy breeds have long and storied histories with animals.

  As you will see in the next story, stables are one of the most likely places to encounter fairy activity today: winged fairies often live with birds who build nests in barn eaves, and help themselves to eggs from under the warm feathered rumps of hens. One tiny type of fairy—the Equine fairy—makes its own barn nests out of horsehair and hay.

  If you own a horse or pony, look closely at its mane or tail on May Day; you may notice tiny white flowers hidden in the coarse hair. Fairies love to decorate horses with flowers. They also leave hollyhocks in the southwest corner of horse stalls on Christmas Eve; this supposedly protects the horses from cold winter winds and illness.

  Fairies also love most dogs, whether wild or domesticated. If your dog naps a great deal, it may be because a fairy has “adopted” it and sings lullabies to it throughout the day. Dogs with large upright ears—like German shepherds or French bulldogs—are great favorites, because they can hear a fairy calling from outside.

  Long life in a dog is another sign that it has been adopted by a fairy, who probably cast a long-life enchantment over the animal when it was a puppy. When dogs do eventually die, their bones and graves are very holy to winged fairies and are protected with spells against roaming trolls.

  On the other hand, cats are far too independent and shrewd for fairies’ liking. If your cat tends to sneeze a great deal, a pesty fairy may be blowing dust and pollen into the cat’s nose to annoy it. If you want to protect your cat from fairies, simply roll up a sock and put it under the cat’s bed, and the problems will disappear in no time.

  Not many people know this, but all inchworms and ladybugs are fairy pets—every single one of them. If you see either of these creatures in your house, it’s best to shuttle it outside on a sheet of paper as quickly as possible, lest a fairy come looking for it and think that you have stolen it.

  On that note, never put a found inchworm or ladybug into a cage; it will die very quickly, and you will certainly make an enemy of the fairy who owns it.

  Tale No. 8

  Molasses

  The bedroom door swung open.

  “What is that smell?” demanded Edie’s mother, her nostrils quivering as she sniffed about.

  “What smell?” said Edie innocently as she lay in bed, her sheet and blanket pulled up to her chin.

  “You know what smell,” said her mother, narrowing her eyes, and then she whipped the blanket off the bed.

  “Aha!” she cried. “I knew I smelled those filthy riding boots. Take them off this instant. Just wait until your father hears about this.”

  Edie sat up, pulled off the black leather boots, and dropped them on the floor. Some brown clumps fell off onto the rug. Edie’s mother looked horrified.

  “Horse manure!” she cried, burrowing her hands into her pillowy hips. “Strip that bed down right away, and when you’re done, take those boots into the basement and run them under the faucet.”

  Edie, who was ten, did as she was told. When she came back upstairs, her mother was rocking away rather aggressively in Edie’s rocking chair. She tapped her fingers on the wood armrests as Edie made up the bed with fresh sheets.

  “Now you listen to me,” her mother said. “You’re spending far too much time at the stable. First it was twice a week after school. Then every day after school, and then on weekends too. And now, going in the morning before school and wearing your boots to bed? It’s too much. The last straw, in fact. Your father will be aghast.”

  “So don’t tell him,” Edie advised. “And anyway, you said that I could go as much as I wanted as long as I got good marks.” This was guaranteed to stump her mother, for Edie was excelling in her classes.

  Her mother stopped rocking. “It’s not good for a child to have so little sleep,” she countered. “Especially a young lady.”

  Edie climbed back into bed.

  “Not everyone needs ten hours of sleep each night, plus an afternoon nap, you k
now,” she said slyly, for that was exactly the sort of schedule her mother kept.

  “What a mouth!” said her mother, standing up. “I’ll rinse it out with soap; oh, yes I will. Just wait until your father hears about this.” She marched to the door. “Don’t let me catch you putting your boots on those clean bedclothes. Go straight to sleep.”

  And she shut the door behind her.

  When Edie could no longer hear her mother’s footsteps in the hallway, she got up and placed her riding boots next to her bed. That way she could literally just step right into them on her way to the stable in the morning. She was already secretly wearing her riding clothes under her pajamas. Edie was the sort of girl who hated wasting even one extra second on anything.

  The clock on her bedside table said 10 p.m. Only another seven hours and fifteen minutes until Edie would be in the stable, a block from her house.

  It took a while to get comfortable, wearing all of those clothes, but eventually she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

  It was dark when she got there, as usual; during winter in New York City, the sun doesn’t rise until later, when half the city’s inhabitants are already rushing to work or to school. Edie could barely make out the familiar sign swinging above the entrance:

  The Claremont Riding Academy consisted of a small, sawdust-strewn indoor ring and a vast, rickety stable on many levels; the horses walked from floor to floor on spiraled ramps. You could have a lesson in the ring, or, if the weather cooperated, you could take one of the horses for a trail ride in Central Park, which was just blocks away.

  A soothing calm filled the stable early in the morning. Usually there was the sound of sleepy school horses chewing hay in their stalls, their buckets tapping gently against the wooden walls; occasionally one of them would stamp or neigh, but these were nice noises and Edie liked being in a pocket of the country hidden away in a big city. The horses had reassuring fairy-tale names like Winifred and Gandalf and Bruno.