Bluebells

"Fairies have to be one thing or the other because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time." 

- J.M. Barrie

Transcript

It’s not that you were a sentimental person, you were just easily distracted. During any kind of serious cleaning or organizing project, you’d find yourself reminiscing about ticket stubs and receipts and little trinkets that were past their prime. You’d always have to assess if you’d held onto things for the appropriate amount of time, whatever that was. Cleaning out your office was the worst for distractions. You found yourself scrolling through old project drafts, drawings, and stories that never came to fruition. You thought about if you should pick any of them back up, bring them back from the dead. Some of them you wanted to someday, but some of them you knew you couldn’t. This was their final resting place, a lonely graveyard where they were to be looked at by no one but you, and so you always felt a need to give them the time they deserved. Not all of the projects, and sketches, and outlines held good memories, but you gave them all a bit of time to think about what could have been. Ideas once full of whimsy and excitement, now reduced to hundreds of 8.5 by 11 inch pages of partially erased text. When you get to the one you’ve been dreading,  you have to give that one its time too, and inevitably you are reminded of why you had stopped working on it and confined it to this tomb of ideas. As you pour over the hand-drawn storyboards, you remember the horror of what your life had been like when you were sketching them out for the first time. Tears and bruises and pain, all distilled into the faded grey of graphite dragged across the paper, weak and unsteady, before the line became firm once more, growing dark and full of resolve as you made your decision. Your final choice.  Then, at last, when you feel like you’ve mourned properly, you close the folder. And you finally realize that you’ve held onto this one long enough. The trash isn’t ceremonial enough to be it’s final resting place, so you walk to your fireplace and you toss in the folder. The one you had labeled only with the words: The Podcast Inside Your House. 

Our world was never exciting enough for you, so you painted a better one. In gouache or oil you conjured a place where the sunset was always just a bit more pink, the water more blue. In your world, the grass always was greener. So when you told me that you’d found a place that looked exactly how you wanted it, where you didn’t have to change a thing, I had to see it for myself. 

The entrance to the ‘Fairy Forest’ as you called it, was marked by old trees. Both of us arm in arm couldn’t reach around the trunks. For whatever reason, when our part of the world was logged only decades ago, this grove had been spared. The trees marked the boundary perfectly, covered in dark green moss and bright blue lichen, with roots and branches twisting just the way they should in a fairytale.

I’d seen the paintings you’d brought back from here, and you were right, you hadn’t changed a thing. In fact, I hate to say it, but your work had somewhat failed to fully capture the otherworldly beauty of that forest. The ferns were massive, the leaves lush, and though it was late in the season, there were enough blooms and blossoms to put any spring I’d ever seen to shame.    

As we walked through the forest we talked but only in response to the woods. We’d ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at every cluster of flowers, every beam of sun-dappled light landing perfectly on the underbrush below. Walking through there, talking but not really, and thinking only about how I felt in the moment, I had the thought that maybe I should spend more time with you. But as we kept walking, I started to notice something strange. There were little patterns all over the trunks of the trees. 

Our spell was broken, as for the first time I spoke out in a tone other than wonder. “What is this?” I asked. 

We both leaned in closer still to the closest tree, our faces nearly touching. I realized that the patterns were not carved out directly, but rather stippled into the bark. It was like the tree had its own poke-and-stick tattoo, though what it was I couldn’t say. The dots connected closely to form swirls and abstract patterns. It looked like something written in runes or a language I didn't recognize. 

We looked at the Fairy Forest with new eyes then. Past the glamor and sunshine, the patterns were everywhere. I thought that maybe they were some kind of insect burrows until I noticed them along the rocks as well.

As I studied the forest floor closer I noticed that there was something strange about the foliage too. There were plants that didn’t quite belong. Small blue flowers were clustered in gaps between the thick underbrush. They rose up in little cones, with tiny blooms drooping down. Those flowers are called Bluebells, both in our part of the world, and across the ocean, but here they aren’t really bluebells. They’re a different flower called grape hyacinth, that we named after the ones picked by our European ancestors. True bluebells don’t grow here, in the new world, or at least they aren’t supposed to. But as I leaned down to examine those I saw the petals bow outward rather than forming one small cone. These were true bluebells. At least that was what I thought until a wasp landed on one and something strange happened.

I realized that these flowers were bigger than they should be as the wasp crawled inside. Then as the blossom snapped shut around it, betraying a thickness unusual for simple flower petals, I started to think that perhaps this was something else entirely. 

You and I watched with bated breath as the wasp struggled against its organic prison, the petals reminiscent of animal flesh. We watched as the struggle lessened, and then stopped entirely. Then when the petals opened up to reveal their prize, I gasped. The bug had been transformed into something wondrous. It had cobalt wings now, and they were fuller than before. The wasp's segmented body was also smoother, the bumps and skinny connective points leveled out to give it a humanoid figure. Then it blinked its newly green eyes and took flight. 

“Come watch this,” you told me, and when I looked at your face I noted the distinct lack of surprise. I realized then that you’d seen this before, that you knew there was something deeply strange, maybe deeply wrong about this place. Yet you'd brought me here anyway.

You’d packed your Plein Air kit; Gouache and paper, and you unfurled it on a flat rock. I noted then the rainbow paint stains across the surface. You took a brush and dipped it into a burnt orange palette cell. Then you dropped the thick paint onto a pattern in the rock below. For a beat, nothing happened. Then the smallest creature began to emerge from the hole, a tiny bug with wings of sienna and a gray body that matched the rock it had hatched from.  It flew away before I could get a closer look. 

“Don’t worry,” you said “I know how to get them to come out.” You started setting up your kit. “They like to watch me paint.” 

I felt strange then. I was seeing something I didn’t understand, but also something that I knew I didn’t want to. I’d stumbled upon the unknown; the supernatural. That was something that I’d never completely dismissed nor believed in, but there was no denying that I was in the thick of it now. This place was not right, and these creatures, beautiful as they may be were not something that I wanted to see.

“We should get out of here,” I said. “Now,” but you were silent.

My heart started racing as you started laying down a layer of light blue on your paper, and your audience emerged from the trees. They came from everywhere, big ones this time, the size of butterflies. I could get a closer look now, and the bodies were almost human; fairies. 

“I don’t like this,” I said, But I’d said those words before and I knew you didn’t listen. 

“You’re witnessing a miracle here.” You said, as more of the creatures started fluttering around us. One of them alighted on your palette and began drinking from the sap green with a long tubular tongue. 

“Don’t leave now.” You said. “We haven’t even gotten to the best part!” 

But I’d heard those words from you before, and this time it was my turn not to listen. 

I thought of all the things I could try to say to get you to leave, but I’d said them all before, albeit in less strange, but no less dangerous circumstances. Instead, I said simply “I’m going home.” 

“Fine then.” You said. “But wait, one last thing.” There was always one last thing with you. You got up and walked over to a flowering bush, and I realized with escalating unease that it was a rose bush. That didn’t belong in the forest.

You plucked a single pink rose and held it up to me. “Can I at least get a kiss before you go?”

I told you no, and felt myself shaking off the last bit of wonder at this place. I felt only fear and dread at whatever was happening. “We shouldn’t be here,” I said.

I started planning my route out. There was a swarm of the creatures hovering around us now and I was scared they wouldn’t let me leave. I tried to plot a course through them, back the way we came, but before I even took the first step I heard you gasp. 

Your finger was bleeding, the rose you'd tried to sway me with had jabbed you with one of its many thorns. I watched the blood drip down to the ground. I watched the dirt start to shift. Out of the earth came a new creature. This one was bigger than the others. It had blood-red wings and a dark brown body, and it moved faster too. As it flew to the others I got the sense it was telling them something in whatever language they spoke, and the other creatures hung on its every word. 

Then, without warning, they swarmed you. 

There were so many that I couldn’t see what was happening, but I heard you scream like I’d never heard you scream before. I watched in shock for only a second, and then as your blood started pooling on the ground I ran. 

As I listened to your screams fade I tried to make myself feel better. I thought of all of the bad things you’d done, not just to me but to other people. I thought of the times you’d put yourself and our friends in danger. And I also thought selfishly about how I could finally get away from you now, the temptation of always going on one last adventure removed once and for all. 

I thought for sure that I was going to die. Only when I hit the ancient trees at the entrance did I start to think that maybe I’d outrun the creatures in that wretched place. I looked back then, to make sure I’d lost the fairies, and I noticed something I hadn’t before. The runes were all over the trees at the entrance, and I could swear they hadn't been there before. A constellation of the fairy burrows covered the trunks entirely. Worse still, they covered the trees outside the Fairy Forest too. As I ran they lessened, but it was clear that they were expanding beyond their home. The trees before the start of the fairy forest looked sickly. The leaves nearest the trunks were turning yellow or brown, and the bark was coming off in chunks. I didn’t understand how I could have missed that so completely on the hike in. But when I flagged down help I had my answer. 

Back in the real world, time had moved differently than it had for us in that strange place. We’d been gone almost two months. 

I told them where to find your body. But while the police looked for your corpse, the missing pieces of it made their way back to me. Had I been able to sleep that night, the tapping on my windowsill would have woken me up. The full moon and the streetlamps outside gave more than enough illumination to see what was tapping on the glass. Fairies of flesh and blood and bone waited for me outside.

I wrote you that stupid letter then, the one you always wanted. The one you always hoped I’d send those years we lived so far apart. Only it wasn’t a love letter. Well, not just a love letter anyway, it was a hate letter as well. It laid out everything I’d ever wanted to say to you but hadn’t. Then I opened my windowsill just enough to shove the letter out. Bloodied hand and footprints covered the letter as the creatures examined it. Then as they started to bore into the paper I shut off my light. 

I could only hope now. I hope that I wake up tomorrow after the sun rises, and not in the middle of the night to tiny glass hands parting my flesh. I hope that you, in whatever form you’re in now can understand that letter. I hope that these new fairies will be satisfied with wings of paper and bodies of graphite rather than flesh and blood. I hope that you’ll accept my words of goodbye as the one last bit of me that you can have. 

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the podcast inside your house! To hear every tale of terror as they are released, subscribe to our show on your podcast app or on Youtube or follow us on Facebook and X. Until Next Time; tread lightly the next time you go walking down memory lane, it’s easy to 

get lost there.