A Fairy Story, James Gerard [a court of thorns and roses ebook free txt] 📗

The Suffering of Solange

 Solange softly wept in a lofty cell and longingly stared at a far away meadow.  Although the serene scene was filled with yellow and red and blue and violet wildflowers, the sight could not replace the darkness in her broken heart: For the mellow meadow where she and her fairy friends used to live, work, and play was destroyed long ago.

 She groaned and moaned as voices humming lovely melodies of home sweet home were like that of the mythical sirens of the seas.   But sadly, Solange knew they were just whisperings from memories.  The memories of how she came to live in the cold cell, however, spoke loudly from the darkness all around her.

 Though it brought deep and sorrowful pangs of emotional pain Solange clearly remembered the beginning of the darkness.  Such darkness had been hidden just beneath the promise of a brighter and better future.

 The proclamation of a better future came from King Midir and Queen Findabhair.   In front of the entire assembly of the fairy kingdom they spoke of a new human king who sought to bring the kingdoms of the fairies and humans together in a new spirit of cooperation.  Solange and all her fairy friends were giddy with excitement: For the only time they ever saw the humans was at a distant.

 With smiles on their faces and in their hearts they would watch as the humans gathered up the sweet and succulent and nourishing fruits and vegetables.

 Solange and her friends would also hear the distinct bellowing of hardy laughter and the whisperings of conversations of thankfulness for such bountiful harvests of delectable food.

 And as always, the humans both in their duty as prescribed by the Creator and from hearts filled with love made sure to gather the finest of the harvest into bushels for their fairy friends to eat and enjoy.

 When the king and queen spoke about the new cooperation Solange and her friends believed they would begin to work with their human friends side by side.  This very thought had made all very, very happy.

 On the morning when the new human king was scheduled to appear in the land of the fairies, Solange and her garden fairy friends celebrated.  They danced and sang with one another.  They hugged each other as well as with their friends the wiggly worms.   Buzzing around on backs of bees Solange and her friends also soared through the air happily alongside their animal fairy friends riding on the wings of turtle doves and red Robbins and all sorts of birds of different feathers.

 Solange happily sighed remembering how her friends the air fairies flittered about the beautiful day as her friends the light fairies shot bursts of bright light up into the crystal blue sky.  Water fairies in their excitement brought up flashy fountains of water from pools where tinker and sky and summer and winter fairies swam and splashed about in the cool depths.  Fire fairies flew all about lighting torches along the path where the new human king and his lords came clip-clopping in on strong and sturdy stallions.

 Then she sighed in sadness.  Without warning, chaos erupted.

 Horns blasted.  A stampede of giant humans came thundering in.  Mighty nets were cast all at once.

 Solange remembered darting away in an instance.  But all seemed hopeless as she looked up and saw a net come crashing upon her.   Suddenly Cambria, one of her animal fairy friends, called out and sent a dove soaring in for the rescue.  The net fell on its back giving Solange just enough time to escape capture.

 Scared and crying, all she could do was helplessly flitter in the air as more nets were cast.  Then, just as the net was about to trap her in its web of string, Leena, an air fairy, came flying in.  Leena grabbed Solange and delivered her from capture.

 She hurried Solange off to a mighty oak tree in the distant.  There, Leena put her in a cavernous hole hewed out by the tap-a-tap-tap of a woodpecker’s beak.   And to Solange’s surprise, Leena launched herself away and back to the frenzy.

 Minutes later Leena returned with a tinker, Loxie.

 Solange trembled and wept not understanding what was going on.  Paralyzed by fear all she could do was watch Loxie tinker around with the twigs that made up an abandoned nest.  In a matter of minutes he built a barrier.  Then, just like Leena he too darted away.

 Solange cupped her ears as the memories of deafening claps of thunder rumbled through the air on that dark day.  She closed her eyes tight to escape the memory of blinding bolts of lightning flashing furiously.  She wondered if her thunder and lightning friends were fighting back, but realized it was not the nature of the fairies to commit acts of violence—the frenzy had to have been a creation of the humans.

 Solange dove into the dry and brittle twigs of what was left of the abandoned nest and curled up in a ball.  Shaking violently she desperately desired the cozy comfort of her friends, but it would not be so. Loxie never returned.  Neither did Leena.  She would never see any of her garden fairy friends again or any other fairy with any other skill.

 Solange was forever alone in what was now a cruel and cold world.

 As she stared at the mellow meadow she never understood why the birds of the air and the animals of the fields and the insects swarming everywhere had suddenly become her enemy.  Where once they lived together in peaceful harmony they now, just about every second of the day and night, tried to break through the sturdy barrier Loxie had built to take her life.  With beaks and teeth and claws and paws and stingers and tongues they terrorized her all the time.

 Solange had pleaded over and over again with the bees for help, but again figured the humans must have done something so horrible to them that it just made them plain mad and mean. 

 In between the attacks Solange stuck out her hands to capture drops of dew dripping off pointed leaves or from rain running down channels of the old oak tree.  The only food available was gritty green moss growing on all sides of the lofty cell.  In taking of such food and water, Solange believed she had found the reason why all the bees had changed.

 The water and moss had a bitter taste.  Suspecting the outright violence from her one time bee friends had something to do with the nectar they slurped up from flowers that now made very bad nectar, she figured that had to be the reason why.

 Then, as she had done many a time in the past, Solange wondered why King Midir and Queen Findabhair had agreed to break the rules of the Creator and meet with the humans.  If the purpose was for cooperation as the king and queen had said, then for what?   But she knew she was just a simple garden fairy and did not understand such reasoning.  All she knew is that whatever happened to the nectar of the flowers and pureness of the water and the freshness of the moss was very bad.  But it did not matter.

 What mattered to Solange is that she missed her friends.   But where they were, she did not know.  And even if she did there was nothing she could do about it.

 Loxie had built the barrier so strong she could not break through it to escape.  And even if she could, with no pixie dust to power her wings she would be easy prey for the birds and insects and furry creatures as she tried to climb down through the channels of the bark.

 Looking through the gaps in the barrier a fresh wave of tears poured out of the eyes and flowed down the cheeks.  She wondered if a thousand springs had passed since the beginning of that dark day.  She wondered if another thousand springs would pass before she would ever see one her fairy friends ever again.

Leena's Escape from Danger

 On yet another dreary day, the stormy sky filled with gray and black and gloomy clouds, Leena shivered in the freezing cold.  She crouched up in a tight ball trying to stay warm yet the cool current of cold air would not allow it.  Its bitter bite was torturous.

 As usual all Leena could do to escape the reality of the cold was to close her eyes and weep.  And while the thoughts of where her other fairy friends were just barely took the mind off the bitter cold, the thoughts could not help escape the long days of loneliness.  Her heart ached for the love of fairy friends, but the absence of such love left deep and desperate thoughts of despair. 

 Even when she conjured up visions of happier times with her fairy friends those thoughts did not help escape the loneliness either.  Visions of she and her fellow wind fairies creating soothing summer breezes, cool crisp drafts in the fall, gentle wisps of wafting wind in the spring, and growing gusts of gales in the winter did nothing to mend her broken heart.  She viewed such visions as nightmares dreamed over and over and over again in terror filled nights.

 And as she had done for what seemed like thousands of passing springs, Leena spent this day huddled in a crag in a cliff of a cell that was her home and stared at the horizon.  But as long as she stared she could not spot the oak tree or the happy home where she once found happiness with all her fairy friends.

 She assumed that thousands and thousands of miles were flown on that horrible day.  It was a flight to escape the madness that fell upon the fairy world.

 Thoughts wandered back to that horrible day where the beginning of her life sentence of misery and loneliness started.

 To this very day she could not figure out why the humans did what they did.

 All she knew is that when the humans began to scream and fling their mighty nets all about she instinctively took flight.  She found herself soaring up into the sky where a loud scream was heard.

 She stopped and looked down.  A net was falling onto many of her fairy friends.

 Swiftly swooping down Leena locked her eyes on Solange and plucked her friend out of the air and held on tight.

 Leena recollected that just as she was about to clear the falling net it nipped a heel and sent her and Solange tumbling through the air.