Short Story: Fly By Night

Short Story: Fly By Night

Squeezing through the half open window was Windlecup’s favourite way of entering a room. With a faint wisp of gold and silver dust in her wake, she rose, pirouetted, and gently settled herself down on the moss and silver birch sofa by a cup of steaming nettle tea.

Nettle tea was the most refreshing pick me up she knew, especially when they had been freshly picked and infused in warmed early morning dew drawn from the leaves of the Lords and Ladies that grew in perfusion nearby.

Wrapping her hands around the cup she took a sip and wearily sighed.

‘I don’t know, I think I’m getting too long in the…….’ She didn’t manage to finish as, Miribell, her roommate interrupted.

‘Don’t even think about it – and don’t mention the ‘T’ word’

‘Yes, but…’

‘There’s no ‘Yes but’ about it – you….are…. a…. tooth fairy and tooth fairies have to work at night. You knew it was a night shift job when you took it on.’

‘But that was eighty years ago.’

‘Eighty years is nothing, look at Mayleaf.’

‘You mean Mayleaf; the Molar Menace…..’

‘No, I mean Mayleaf; the fairy devoted to ensuring children grow up believing in the tooth fairy. She’s been out every night for twice as long as you have and you never hear her complain.’

Windlecup muttered something under her breath; Miribell chose to ignore it as an uneasy silence fell between them.

Windlecup continued to brood over her nettle tea without a word of thanks. Miribell waited for the next outburst which she knew was only matter of time in coming. It always did.

‘I want to be a fairy at the bottom of the garden’ was where Windlecup chose to take up the challenge.

Miribell suggested that she go and see Brindlesnap in personnel, in the hope that a practical solution would bring this I-don’t-want-to-be-a-tooth-fairy phase to an end, but not before adding a cautionary, ‘but you know what happened last time.’

‘Last time was different,’ Windlecup snapped. ‘I was on holiday.’

‘Windi, you slept the whole time. You couldn’t stay awake and you came back totally exhausted from the effects of the high pollen count.’

Windlecup wriggled uncomfortably into the sofa temporarily defeated and no more content with her lot.

The uneasy silence fell between them once again.

Miribell thought of getting up to maybe flit around the room with a dandelion clock but Windlecup hadn’t finished her nettle tea nor her bemoaning.

‘Do you realize, Miribell, that us Tooth fairies are the only fairies that offer an emergency call out service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year and 366 if it’s a leap year?’

‘Yes.’

Windlecup was not about to allow Miribell to add to her solitary response and carried on, ‘Off we go, no matter what the weather. Wind, rain, snow or shine.’ She took breathe before adding ‘Huh, Sunshine? That would be nice, it’s always dark! Not only that, but the little cherub, who on many occasions has yanked the offending tooth from their gummy little mouth well before its due fall out naturally, expects us to be there. This attitude of expectation is then added to by the cherubs parents who heap praises on their little darling for carrying out the act of self mutilation and then encourages them to put the bloody tooth under the pillow!’

Windlecup took another deep breath as Miribell calmly reminded her not to swear.

‘I wasn’t swearing. Have you seen the state of the bony remains we have to extract from the little darlings clenched fist which they insist on putting under the pillow along with their tooth’

There was a brief pause before she added ‘I had to bite the finger of one chubby cherub last week just so I could get him to release the thing!’

Miribell smiled and the tension eased, but a hint of understanding or agreement made no difference, Windlecup was only half through her nettle tea and nowhere near finished her chosen subject.

‘Another thing’ she continued ‘For the whole year parents blackmail their kids with the, ‘You have to be good if Father Christmas is to come’ line but not with the tooth fairy. Ohhh no. Little Tommy gets this tooth knocked out in a fight, which he probably started anyway, and he still gets to put his tooth under the pillow – and still expects us to turn up. What’s all that about I ask? We’re offering financial gain for acts of violence!’

Windlecup took a sip from her cooling cup before adding whimsically, ‘Do you think Santa has any jobs going?’

‘He only employs Elves,’ Miribell pointed out dryly.

‘Yes, but, I could of course apply to be a fairy on top of the Christmas tree,’ she exclaimed, momentarily excited at the thought, sitting up straight and nearly spilling the remains of her tea down her gossamer top.

‘You could. It would mean of course that your wings would probably get a bit dry and cracked. Remember the trouble Cinderfoot had when she was seconded to that store in Bristol. Her wings were like cracked leather by the end of the season and she’s still having trouble with her veins even now.’

‘Wasn’t that because they tied her on too tight and she couldn’t get to fly when the store was closed.’

‘It may have been, but that’s not the point. The point is that if you were to be a Christmas tree fairy then you’d need to get yourself a good book, lots of them, and a torch as you’d need something to read when you’re in the box for the other eleven months of the year.’

Windlecup pondered and then agreed, ‘Umm you may be right. Maybe, not a Christmas tree fairy then.’ She made a mental note to go and see Cinderfoot, remembering that she didn’t look good the last time she saw her.

‘Look Windi, I know you’re not happy about being a tooth fairy and I know working nights can be a bit of a drain, certainly in winter, but just stop and think for a minute.’

Windlecup placed her now empty cup on the buttercup leaf coaster and sank further into the sofa tucking her legs beneath her.

‘Just think back to when you decided to be a tooth fairy, think back to what it was that made you opt for the job in the first place. We talked about it for hours at the time. I remember you not really knowing what you wanted to do – except one thing – and that was travel.’

‘Travel, yes, but not in the dark,’ interrupted Windlecup

‘Maybe not, but you’re not always travelling in the dark. You’ve often told me how much you’ve enjoyed seeing a sunrise or a sunset depending on which way round the world you’re travelling. I remember you telling me about the beauty of seeing the sun appear above the pyramids, and only a couple of weeks ago you told me how you’d sat in that acacia tree watching the sun drain from the African sky over Kenya. Now, putting your pollen allergy aside, if you were a fairy at the bottom of the garden, all you’d be would be a fairy at the bottom of the garden. Same plants, same bugs same dreary existence day in and day out, flitting about from flower to stalk, making a slide out of a tulip leaf because there’s not much else to do and remember also, all those new affordable housing schemes going on you’d more than likely be living under the threat of redevelopment.’

Miribell had finally caught Windlecup’s attention and she wasn’t in the mood to let it go as she took a breath and continued, ‘If you were a fairy at the bottom of the garden type fairy you wouldn’t be able to tell me of the times you’ve skimmed oceans with schools of dolphins or recall how you flew high enough to look into the eye of that eagle and of how you were carried on his pinions. Just, look at what you’ve done and seen, you couldn’t have done any of that if you were a fairy at the bottom of the garden and what kind of a life is that, I ask?’

Verbally Miribell was in full flight and she was soaring, ‘I know that night flying can be tiring and hazardous at times and I know that having to carry a two pound coin vast distances is not easy…even I preferred it when we used to take a sixpence – there was something special about a sixpence – but that was then this is now, and in this day and age when it seems that people don’t want to believe in anything is it not a good thing to nurture the notion of fairies in a child’s mind when all too quickly Father Christmas, elves and fairies are replaced by the credit card of the consuming parent?’

Windlecup, listened, desperately trying to conjure up the next, ‘Yes, but’ argument. She had already thought of using the two pound coin line of reasoning but Miribell had managed to cleverly remove that from her arsenal. She found herself floundering, remembering the vast lush Nordic forest that she had flown over only that evening, recalling how she twisted and turned with the shear exuberance of flying through the refreshing pine laden air and now, as she sat comfortably on the sofa, she was still able to sense the faint scent of pine on her wings.

Windlecup hated it when Miribell talked sense. She knew she was right of course. She knew that being a tooth fairy was the best sort of fairy to be. What she didn’t like was not having the last word.

Not to be out done she dug deep into her subconscious bag of arguments against being a tooth fairy and with one last effort turned to Miribell, and looking her straight in the eye, she heard herself say, ‘There wouldn’t be another cup of tea in the pot by any chance would there?’