Dreams and Shadows - By C. Robert Cargill Page 0,47
I thought we were going to see fairies. Fairies don’t do bad things.”
“Oh, I’m afraid they can and do. That’s what I’m telling you. Not all fairies are good creatures; they will do you harm quicker than you can say their name. Some will lead you astray in the night, while others will swallow you whole and spit out your bones. They are masters of disguise, whether concealed in the wood or dressed as a hapless beggar. You might have met dozens of them over your life and never known it. Beautiful women, handsome men, unwashed bikers, and stray dogs: I’ve seen fairies assume all shapes and sizes to get what they want.”
“So they’re bad?” asked Colby, now a little scared.
“Not all of them. Only the unseelie ones.” Yashar leaned in a bit while maintaining his pace. “Unseelie means ‘bad fairies.’ ” Then he smiled. “Some, on the other hand, want nothing more than to do good in this world—to shower you with attention and gifts of food or love or hard work. They are sometimes pleasant little creatures of daylight and daffodils, brimming with goodwill, wishes, and a desire to leave the world a little more magical than they found it. We call those seelie.”
“How can you tell the difference?”
“You just have to know the difference. Fairies are like people, they each have a job, a purpose in life, and after a while you just figure out which are which. Some you can tell right away. Others are much sneakier.”
“Oh. Do you know the difference?” asked Colby.
Yashar smiled reassuringly. “I do.”
“How?”
“Years of practice.”
“So you’ll teach me how to tell the difference?”
“I will,” said Yashar.
“How are we gonna find them?”
Yashar pointed along the side of the road. “You see these trees and the growth surrounding them?”
Colby nodded.
“Well, if you keep your eyes sharp, you’ll notice every so often a small break in the woods upon which not a living thing grows on the ground. Those paths are walled in on both sides by lilies and lilacs, bluebonnets and sunflowers. They start and they stop, with no rhyme or reason, as if someone began walking on them from out of nowhere then disappeared back into the nowhere. Those are called fairy paths, and they are roads that will take you to the fairies. There is a magic to them, and when you learn to read the ambient magic in the world, you will learn to feel and hear them as well as they can be seen. A fairy path is the first sign that they are near; small dips in the universe that bridge our world to theirs.”
“They live on another planet?”
“No. They live on ours. But they live in a place normal people can’t see, in the nooks and crannies of the mind, in the places most people wouldn’t think to look.”
“But you know where to look, right?”
Yashar nodded. “And so do you.”
“I do?” asked Colby.
“I gave you the sight to see them and the instinct to know where to look. You’ll see what I mean soon enough. I can hear the tinkling of such a trail close by.”
Colby exploded like a popcorn kernel in a hot oiled pan. “We’re almost there?”
“We are,” said Yashar.
“We’re gonna see fairies?!”
“We are.”
“How much longer?”
“Moments.”
“IcantwaitIcantwaitIcantwait.”
“You can wait.”
“I can’t wait.”
“You’re going to have to. We still have a small bit of walking to do. But I can feel them close.”
“How do you feel them?”
Yashar stopped, turned to Colby, and then took a knee. He put both hands on Colby’s shoulders. “Calm down for a second.”
“I’ll try.”
“Take a deep breath.” Colby breathed in an overexaggerated breath of air, exhaling loudly. “Now again.” Colby breathed in again. “Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?” asked Colby, a little unsure of what he was looking for.
“That tickle. Over to your left.”
Colby thought deeply, his mind wandering over every muscle in the left side of his body. He shook his head. “No.”
“It feels like a little tug, as if a string is pulling a small part of you in another direction.”
Colby calmly thought, his eyes growing wide. “YES! It feels like . . . like . . .”
“Something is over there behind the trees, right?”
“YES!”
“That’s your senses telling us something is near. Your mind has been awakened to the world most people don’t know exist. Soon you’ll be able to distinguish between the tickle of something and the tickle of something specific.”
“Like what?”
“Like the difference between someone you know and something you don’t.”