The Incident
I remember the incident as if it was yesterday, even though it was over six years ago. I didn’t understand the true significance of it then, but looking back at it, I certainly do now. Maya and I had a little fight. I don’t really remember what it was about, but when she was four years old, most of our fights revolved around food in one way or another. Possibly she wanted a piece of chocolate or a biscuit before lunch and I wouldn’t give it to her. Or, perhaps, she refused to eat one of the healthier meals I cooked that day. Could be that the food on her plate was touching, or ketchup dared spill over her chips before she was ready to dip them in individually. It could’ve been a number of silly little things indeed. Well, silly to me, not so much to my daughter.
As a grown-up, I didn’t really understand the significance of a precise order when it came to plating the food, or the outstanding value of chocolates, biscuits and lollies in childhood nutrition, but when I finally met Maya’s little fairy, she assured me of its utmost importance. Still, I must admit that it doesn’t make much sense to me, despite protestations from my daughter and all the fairies, but I am willing to listen.
“Did you just say fairies?” you probably said. You may have even scrunched up your whole face in disbelief. Well, yes. Fairies are real. There I said it. Fairies are just as real as you and me. Not only fairies but many, many other magical creatures that I thought were fictional are, in fact, living among us right this very minute. In fact, there most certainly is a fairy who lives inside your very home.
It is true. You don’t believe me? Well, you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have believed me either. But the day of the incident, was the very day that my daughter Maya found out about her own fairy. And until recently I had absolutely no clue about any of this. And, truth be told, I wasn’t supposed to know at all. There is a reason fairies choose to stay hidden. However, as fate would have it, my daughter’s fairy was young, fearless and had a heart of gold. One fine day, she snuck out of her tiny home in the wall of my daughter’s bedroom in broad daylight. There and then, Maya found herself face to face with her magical namesake. Yes, my daughter’s fairy was also called Maya. And that was not a coincidence in the slightest.
After our fight, Maya was confined to her room, which was the standard punishment at the time. I must’ve yelled, “Time out!” and she ran upstairs in tears, while myself and her dad had our entirely healthy and utterly bland and boring adult lunch alone, arguing over why and how our daughter turned out to be so stubborn (I blame him entirely, of course).
Maya Fairy could not bear to hear her human cry. So, every time my daughter did, she would come out of her little nest, be it day or night, and try and help in any way she could. The very first thing they teach at the fairy school, where they receive their training, before they become fully fledged house fairies, is that you must never ever do that. Fairies are only supposed to come out at night to do their work. Apart from the risk of being discovered, there have been a few unfortunate accidents over the years involving fly swatters, as it is quite easy to confuse a fairy for a fly out of the corner of your eye. However, Maya Fairy came out of the wall in broad daylight on a regular basis. She did try to remain unseen, of course, especially by myself and my husband, and for the first four years of my little girl's life, she just about managed to do so. When my daughter was a baby, Maya Fairy didn’t bother hiding from her at all; every time I wasn’t in the room, she would come out to play. She was only a child herself, after all, and she so wanted to play. But when Maya first started to talk, the fairy realised that this was probably a bad idea. Apparently, once, when my daughter was about one year old, she told me all about her fairy friend, but she was too little and I couldn’t really understand her babbles. But Maya Fairy could, and did, and knew straight away that she needed to follow the rules from then on. So, she largely stayed out of sight and as time went on, as little children tend to do, my baby girl forgot all about her fairy. Maya Fairy made a promise to herself that during the day, she would only leave her nook in a real emergency. But, over the years, her definition of an emergency stretched further and further and eventually included even minor distress.
Maya was alone in her room (or so she thought), bawling her eyes out. That was when Maya Fairy heard her sobs and didn’t have it in her heart to stay out of it. Rightfully, my daughter felt like she had been treated unfairly and that we, her parents, just did not get her. And I must confess that we really didn’t. So many fights and quarrels could’ve been avoided between the two of us, if only I had known how to listen. If only I could understand her language. Now I realise that adult language is indeed very different from that of a child. Perhaps, it is because, as I eventually discovered, children themselves are magical creatures. And they don’t even know it.
When Maya Fairy heard my daughter cry, she grabbed her pouch with magical dust and set out to help. I am sure you’ve heard something about fairy dust, haven’t you? From the many, many fairy tales and books, and paintings, and movies and the like. I always imagine that someone somewhere must have met a real fairy and eventually shared it with the world. Very naughty. Although, I suppose I am doing the exact same thing right now.
Not everything you’ve heard about fairies, however, is actually true. Just like in Chinese Whispers a lot has been distorted somewhere along the way. What is true is that fairies are little creatures, humanlike in appearance. They are no more than four centimetres tall, about the length of a matchstick, but vary greatly in size, shape and colour. They have wings that can seem transparent at first, but in reality, contain the whole spectrum of colours within them. The tint of a fairy’s wings changes according to their mood and general condition. If a fairy is sad, for example, the wings immediately acquire a distinctly blue shimmer. As a fairy gets more and more angry, the wings turn more and more red. And if they are poorly, the wings become an unpleasant greyish yellow colour or even vomit green.
Those wings help fairies fly, of course, but they don’t always choose to do this. In fact, many of their kind, especially back home in their fairy cities and villages, prefer to take long strolls along tree branches where they live, on the very, very top of the tallest trees. It is believed that walking promotes health and well-being in fairies, just like it does in humans, and a healthy fairy is a happy one.
Maya Fairy was as careful as ever when she made her way out of the wall and onto the fuzzy mint carpet, hiding behind the pale pink legs of my daughter’s bed. Maya crouched on the floor, hugging her knees and crying. Maya Fairy approached, always making sure to stay out of sight. She had to use her legs and tiptoe towards her human because when fairies fly, they do make a bit of noise. It is a bit louder than the sound of the flapping wings of a butterfly, but much quieter than those of a bird. Human children are much more susceptible to this kind of sound than adults, who most often can’t hear it at all. You probably have heard something like this – a gentle flapping in the air – but when you turned around there was nothing there, so you assumed that you had imagined it. I assure you, you did not imagine it. In fact, that was most definitely the sound of a fairy checking up on you.
Maya Fairy quietly crept along the wall of my daughter’s room, but she needed a solid plan. In order to help her human, Maya Fairy needed to sprinkle some dust directly on top of her head, where her soft spot was when she was a baby. The fairies call it the magic whorl. Fairies normally do this at night when the child is asleep, in order to make them see incredible dreams and keep their minds and bodies healthy. The soft spot may have hardened a long time ago, but that very spot always was and remains the direct portal into the mind of a child.
However, even when a child was awake, a good sprinkle of dust would do the trick. Maya was resting her back against the wardrobe when her fairy noticed that there was a little round door handle only a few inches away from the magic whorl. Her plan was to jump high with the help of her wings, hoping that my daughter’s sobs would mask their flapping sound, and land directly on top of the baby-pink knob with tiny daisies painted on it. She gathered up all her strength and blasted herself high into the air. As luck would have it, at that exact moment, Maya decided that she’d had enough of crying, and abruptly stopped. Maya Fairy was already in the air and passing my daughter’s right ear when the room went quiet, but for the light flapping of her large wings. Maya heard it immediately, of course, and swiftly turned to her right to see what the source of the intruding sound was. Her nose hit the flying fairy directly in the midriff; the impact folded the tiny creature in half and swept her off her wings. The poor thing had no other choice but to grab onto my daughter’s nose in complete and utter shock. And there they were: my daughter, her mouth open wide, eyes crossed, not daring to blink, staring at whatever creature had landed on her face. The fairy, panting and terrified, was holding on to Maya’s nose for her dear life. The room fell completely silent for a second or two, until my daughter began to scream.
