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

  Carnegie Hall’s population of Libretto fairies did not feel the same way.

  While many instruments are played in Carnegie Hall, the Libretto fairies live inside the enormous piano that had been wheeled onto the stage for the concert. They remembered Baba Hudu’s last concert, the previous spring: those heavy eyes, that weary look, those meaty arms that he could barely be bothered to lift to the keyboard. He had plunked out a Beethoven concerto and then oiled his way off the stage, not even bothering to stay for applause.

  This time, however, the Libretto fairies planned to treat the audience to a rather different sort of Baba Hudu performance.

  The lobby lights lowered and rose again: it was eight o’clock, time for the concert to begin. The audience sat down and waited eagerly. Fifteen minutes later, Baba Hudu meandered out onto the stage, tolerated some clapping, and took his seat on the piano bench.

  The orchestra began to play.

  Baba Hudu closed his eyes and his body swayed slightly, as though he was asleep on a gently rocking train. He brought his hands down onto the keyboard. And then, just as he began to play, he let out a terrific scream and shot up off the bench.

  The audience gasped. The conductor waved his baton, struggling to keep the orchestra in tempo.

  Baba Hudu composed himself, brushed off the front of his suit, and sat down again. He began to play.

  A quiet, lovely part of the concerto came along, and Baba Hudu’s eyelids grew heavy again; his chins quivered with stately authority. He had just begun to play the sweetest part of the lullaby when suddenly he jolted up again and let out another girlish hoot. The orchestra members looked at each other in disbelief as they played on. The audience snickered and giggled.

  Angry now, Baba Hudu pounded out the next part of the concerto. What had been a lovely lullaby now sounded like a military march. As he thundered to a finish, the lid of the piano suddenly slammed down, barely missing Baba Hudu’s sausage-y fingers.

  If that wasn’t enough, Baba Hudu’s famous black hair flew right up off his head—as though it had been caught by a fishing rod and yanked away. The stage lights gleamed on Baba’s perfectly bald head as his toupee magically danced in mid-air above the orchestra.

  Then it fell to the stage—front and center, right where Baba Hudu should have been taking his bow—and lay there in an insulting, hairy puddle.

  Needless to say, the Baba Hudu debacle came to be regarded-as one of Carnegie Hall’s most adored performances.

  The Libretto fairies cherished the embarrassment of Baba Hudu. Inside their piano, they celebrated their coup for days.

  But when a fireworks show is over, there is always a long dark night afterward; the giddiness of the Baba Hudu victory did not last long.

  And now we get to the main part of our story.

  I’ve often seen one identical twin finish the other’s sentence and vice versa. It shouldn’t be a surprise: after all, everyone knows that identical twins are essentially one person split in two. And yet it’s still always a shock to see such telepathy at work.

  The case of Mirabelle and Annabelle Destinatus has astounded many people. Eleven years old, identical in every way, the Destinatus twins were already the most famous piano duo in the world. Mirabelle and Annabelle played in spectacular, unfathomable harmony and received standing ovations at concerts in every world capital; their matching red velvet dresses crisp and perfect and taut as paper, their black Mary Jane shoes shining under the spotlights, a single pearl on a lacy silver chain nestled in the hollow of each of their throats. They looked like Christmas cookies, like sweet holly berries, like angels, even; they were adored and complimented and coddled.

  “The Yin and Yang of Perfection,” sighed one newspaper headline.

  “The Destinatus Twins Are the Eighth Wonder of the World!” exclaimed another.

  Perhaps you’re seeing through these girls already, even if they managed to fool everyone else. Mirabelle and Annabelle were most certainly not Christmas angels; behind the facade, they were dreadful little attention-craving beasts. Spiders and strategy filled their thoughts, and battery acid gurgled in their shameless hearts—even though their fingers spun air into shimmering golden music.

  And here’s the unfair thing: the Destinatus Duo was on the verge of becoming more famous and adored than ever.

  They were about to make their first appearance at Carnegie Hall.

  Several days before the big debut, the twins arrived at the hall for a practice session. The Libretto fairies found their home being wheeled out on the stage for Mirabelle; another gleaming Steinway was fetched from storage for Annabelle.

  Annabelle glared at the storage piano and then at Mirabelle. “I want your piano,” she said.

  “Too bad,” said Mirabelle, running her fingers tauntingly along the sleek curve of the Libretto fairy piano.

  “You always get the better piano,” snapped Annabelle.

  “That’s because I’m the better player,” said Mirabelle.

  Annabelle marched up to the Libretto fairies’ piano and gave it a swift kick. “A donkey’s a better player than you,” she said.

  Mirabelle’s face grew red. “Well, a pig’s a better player than you,” she informed her sister, and swiftly kicked Annabelle’s piano, leaving an ugly white scuff on the paint.

  Then Annabelle grabbed a Coca-Cola from a shocked worker at the side of the stage and dumped it inside the Libretto fairies’ piano.

  Several fights exploded at once: between the twins, who rolled on the floor and scratched and kicked each other, sending shreds of velvety red dress into the air, and another between the duo’s manager and the owner of Carnegie Hall, who in the end only agreed to let the Destinatus twins play because so many tickets had already been sold.

  It took three German piano specialists—flown in from Berlin at the last minute—to repair the cola-drenched piano. As the specialists worked, the twins—friends again—smirked in the wings. After all, they were the Eighth Wonder of the World.

  They could get away with anything.

  You have learned by now how attached fairies become to their homes and how vengeful they can be when those homes are threatened or defaced in any way. And the Destinatus Duo had made the Libretto fairies’ beautiful Steinway piano unlivable for days—and had almost ruined it for good.

  When the German workers were finished—the day of the big debut—the enraged Librettos convened on the keyboard to discuss an appropriate punishment for the twins. They agreed that it must make the humiliation of Baba Hudu pale in comparison.

  Suddenly a shadow darkened the keyboard; the Libretto fairies looked up to see two sets of ice-angel eyes staring down at them.

  “They’re so tiny,” said Mirabelle, squinting at the fairies. “I’ve never seen such tiny fairies, have you, Annabelle?”

  “Like little fleas,” replied Annabelle. “Just like those fairies at—”

  “—Royal Albert Hall in London,” said Mirabelle. “We sure taught them a thing or two.” She poked at one of the Librettos, who rewarded her with a sharp bite on the fingertip.

  “Ouch!” she cried, snatching her finger away. A nasty smile lifted the corners of her red mouth. “Should we—”

  “—teach them a lesson too?” Annabelle interrupted. “Yes, we should.”

  Then both twins sprang toward the keyboard and began to thunder out a wild Prokofiev duet.

  The lucky Librettos flew away just in time; the unlucky ones got quite bashed around by this attack of pinkies and thumbs and all of the fingers in between. When the twins finished pounding out the piece, they stalked around the hall, hunting the bruised Librettos—who had slipped through a gap in the floorboards and reconvened under the stage.

  “We know where you ar-r-r-re,” Mirabelle called, and the girls took turns spitting through the slats of the floor.

  It was five o’clock then. The concert was at eight.

  The Librettos had only three hours to plan their vengeance on the rottenest girls who’
d ever crossed a fairy’s path.

  Eight o’clock: the lobby lights raised and lowered. Ushers closed and guarded the concert hall doors against annoying latecomers. Two pianos shone on the stage, facing each other, their curves hugging like sleek black creatures in an embrace. Clad in velvet, Mirabelle and Annabelle glided out onto the stage; the audience burst into applause.

  “Aren’t they darling?” cried one woman to her friend.

  “Like china dolls,” gushed the friend. “Adorable.”

  Silence fell over the great hall as the Destinatus twins sat down at their pianos. Across the expanse of wire strings and wood and hammers, they gazed deeply into each other’s eyes.

  Without so much as a nod, they began to play at the exact same moment.

  “They’re absolutely reading each other’s minds,” exclaimed an awestruck woman, but everyone was too transfixed to shush her. No one had ever seen anything like it. The twins appeared to be in a trance; never looking at the keys or their music, Annabelle and Mirabelle stared only at each other and played in perfect tandem.

  In fact, they didn’t even seem to notice the Libretto fairies climbing up the sides of their piano benches.

  First came the pinches, which had worked so nicely on poor Baba Hudu, and the fairies made those pinches extra hard this time—guaranteed bruise-leavers—with lots of hard little twists.

  Neither of the twins even blinked.

  The Librettos were baffled. They pinched even harder, on the soft white undersides of the girls’ arms and the warm backs of their necks—and didn’t even get a twitch in response.

  Mirabelle and Annabelle had been scratching and pinching and tormenting each other for so many years that they had grown completely impervious to pain.

  The Librettos switched tactics.

  They crawled onto the music sheets propped up in front of each twin, rolled themselves up to resemble black little dots, made a wild mess of the notes on the scores—and gleefully waited for the sour notes to come.

  Those bad notes never came.

  The Destinatus twins were playing their entire performance from memory. And then, at the exact same second, the twins swatted the unneeded music sheets to the floor.

  It was time for drastic action. The Libretto fairies began to chant.

  Slowly, the pianos began to turn away from each other, as though by magic, breaking the twins’ concentrated gaze. Annabelle and Mirabelle didn’t miss a beat; they simply stood up and played on the pianos as the instruments swung around the stage. The astonished audience clapped right in the middle of the performance, more impressed than ever.

  “It’s like a magic show and concert all rolled up into one!” shouted an old man, growing almost too excited to remain in his seat.

  The twins finished their piece in perfect unison and, flushed with triumph, ran to the center of the stage. The audience stood up and shouts of “Bravo! Bravo!” filled the room. Annabelle and Mirabelle curtsied again and again.

  Just then, the twins looked down. A young Libretto fairy—a baby, really—lay on the floor, still dazed from its fall with the music sheets. The girls looked at each other and nodded. Annabelle lifted her shiny Mary Jane shoe and brought it down, right on top of the fairy.

  Squelch.

  The lights flickered and dulled and suddenly the hall went black. The audience gasped. Then a single spotlight beamed down on the stage, drenching the Destinatus Duo in a harsh, blinding white light. The girls squinted and covered their eyes. Not knowing what to do, the audience began to clap again.

  Suddenly the twins put their hands over their ears and began to scream, their faces screwed up in great pain. Tears streamed down their cheeks—and just like that, Mirabelle and Annabelle ran off the stage.

  The Destinatus Duo has never performed in public again.

  Even the sweetest puppy will act like a dangerous wolf if provoked. The Librettos usually reserve their magic for practical jokes. But like all fairy breeds, they can wield powerful spells. When Annabelle cruelly killed one of their ilk, the fairies used the strongest one at their disposal:

  A curse that turns a person’s greatest desire into a nightmare.

  What did Mirabelle and Annabelle crave most in the whole world?

  Adulation. Adoration. Applause.

  But after the Librettos finished with the girls, applause no longer sounded like clapping. It sounded instead like the most awful noises in the world: bombs falling, women screaming, babies crying from hunger, fingernails on chalkboards—and that’s just the beginning.

  It’s a shame, in a way, because the girls really were quite talented. But since their debut at Carnegie Hall, they have only played for each other, sequestered and nervous, without praise or compliments—and far away from the glow of any stage.

  Fairies can always see what you really are. Take note.

  Music and Fairies

  Music plays a very important role in the lives of all fairy breeds, not just the Librettos. The earliest recorded fairy sightings describe great fairy feasts with wild dancing and raucous music, not unlike the celebrations Daisy saw in her backyard fairy ring.

  Music played by fairies may sound odd to human ears; at the very least, it often sounds nothing like what we consider “music.” Some people who have returned from fairy realms (and survived to tell the tale) describe it as “shrill” or “rhythmless” or even “horrid”; yet others recall it being the “most beautiful sound” they’ve ever heard.

  Fairy instruments range from the very simple to the extremely complicated; some are provided by nature: a seashell used as a horn or a rolled-up leaf made into a trumpet. Yet most are highly wrought handmade inventions that defy explanation, and the noises they emit are unlike any we hear in our daily lives. One child rescued from a fairy ring said that her fairy captors played a lullaby to make her drowsy. When asked to liken the sound to one in the human world, the little girl said it was sort of like the lowing of great whales; it was a “terribly lonely sound.”

  Dwarves often play something akin to gigantic organs deep within their mountain lairs; the powerful reverberations from the organ pipes are often mistaken for earthquakes by humans on the outside, and dwarves’ performances have been known to wake up even the sleepiest volcanoes.

  Be careful when listening to fairy music: while it can be the treat of a lifetime, like fairy food, sometimes it is used to cast irreversible enchantments over humans. If you find yourself at a fairy concert and your eyesight begins to dim or you feel any numbness in your hands or feet, put your fingers in your ears immediately. These are signs that the music is putting you into the fairies’ power.

  Many fairy breeds are great appreciators of human music. In eras past, they have been particularly drawn to certain instruments rarely played today, such as the lute. If you play the guitar, which is distantly related to the lute, a hidden audience just might be listening to you practice.

  Fairies in Your Kitchen

  In the fairy world, music and food always go hand in hand. Fairies love feasts and food, but most of them hate to cook for themselves, as you’ll see in the next tale. They can do it, of course, but once in a while, they like to help themselves to humans’ cupboards. It’s sort of like going out to dinner at a restaurant or shopping in a supermarket—except it’s free.

  The following commonplace items are very popular:

  Oatmeal or any cereal made from oats (a staple of their diets)

  Vividly colored fruits, such as ruby-red grapefruits, blood oranges, lemons, blueberries, and blackberries (the fairies drain the colors and use them as dyes for fairy cloths and other fabrics)

  Cornflakes (a very popular snack)

  Whole milk or cream (used for bathing)

  Pretzel sticks with salt (I’m told that they hang them up like salamis in their kitchens and shear off the salt as needed)

  They also adore these more exotic but still findable items:

  Lemongrass (which they tear apart and weave into blankets)

>   Flaxseed (used to make breakfast cakes)

  Poppy seeds (widely eaten, but also used to make beaded necklaces)

  Crystallized ginger (the ultimate fairy delicacy, served at fairy courts)

  Pomegranates (used in large fairy feasts, with each fairy getting one plump seed)

  Fairies like trinkets that resemble animals, making gummi bears, animal crackers, and goldfish crackers popular. They also enjoy cereals like Lucky Charms and will steal all of the colored marshmallows from the box.

  They sometimes take Velveeta cheese too; they never eat it but instead use the rubbery substance as a building material.

  Here’s a short list of human foods that fairies hate:

  Skim milk (they think thinned milk is a sacrilege)

  Gorgonzola cheese (they abhor the stink of it)

  Peanut butter (trolls are not the only ones with an aversion to it—who knows why?)

  Vinegar (imagine being a tiny creature and getting a strong whiff of vinegar)

  Pepper, especially white pepper (most breeds are wildly allergic to it)

  It’s best to hide these items in the back of your cupboards or refrigerator.

  Incidentally, cakes never fall in the oven on their own accord; fairies take great pleasure in stomping on them when no one is looking. It’s the joke that never gets tired.

  I’m sure that you’ve heard the old saying “A watched pot never boils.” Indeed, humans do seem to get extremely impatient while waiting for water to boil; fairies know this and it amuses them to throw ice into heating pots of water while your back is turned. This of course slows the amount of time it takes for the water to boil, and if the mischievous fairies are lucky, they may be treated to a tantrum on the part of the watching-and-waiting person.

  On the Temptation of Spoons