You're Never Alone

Flora calls to invite me to the kitchen. “Sorrow, there’s something here for you.”

The woman is sitting in the kitchen, crushed, staring at the burned remains of her apple pie. She has been emotionally delicate since before the birth of the baby and having a baking fairy mess up her attempts to cook for her family doesn’t help.

Fortunately, this is my specialty. I slide up next to her and inhale the delicious perfume of her despair and depression. “Flora, you’ve outdone yourself today. Maybe you should try to give her a day off every so often.”

Flora shrugs. She is transparent, but she always seems to have a powdering of flour on her body and her hair. She’s less than three feet tall, a bundle of energy with a happy disposition. Like most fairies, she doesn’t bother with clothes. We have no need of them amongst ourselves, and the people rarely notice us. It’s as though they have software in their brains that prevents them looking straight at us; their glance moves past us like a dog avoiding his reflection in a mirror.

The woman is pouring out emotions almost faster than I can scoop them up. I know that’s a good problem for me to have but imagine sitting down for dinner and seeing a whole feast that you must finish by yourself. Of course, I could stop as soon as I’ve fed enough, but that seems careless. I want the woman to survive to feed me again tomorrow. If she is overcome by despair, she may not make it. So I continue, although at a much slower pace, to vacuum up her spilled emotions.

Clutter is dancing in the dust, causing it to drift and form clumps, combining with dog hair and fragments of paper and fluff from the tumble dryer. I don’t care for Clutter; he is constantly trying to make things seem worse for the woman and the man. He’s the smallest fairy in the house, nut brown and constantly moving, always kicking up the dust. I ask him to stop, but of course he never replies. He likes to pretend we don’t exist. When he first arrived, he told us his name, and for a while he and Flora were friends, but his single-mindedness drove everyone away, and now it’s as though we don’t see each other anymore.

As quickly as I take away the emotional fallout from the woman, Clutter upsets her more. For a while I fight a losing battle, but we need to do something to break the chain of disasters the woman sees. I can sometimes influence the woman, and I do so now. I fill her mind with thoughts of getting out of the house and relaxing in the sunshine. She walks out of the kitchen door and into the yard. Flora and Clutter can’t follow us out here, so she takes a deep breath and starts to calm down. I suggest she sit in the porch swing for a few minutes, and she complies.

I sit down, leaning against the wooden wall of the cabin. I hear Wallace’s voice in my ear. “She belongs inside the house. The baby will miss her.”

I’ve never seen Wallace. I don’t even know if he has a body at all. He was here as soon as the cabin was built, before the rest of us arrived. He lives in the wood of the walls, floors and furniture. The rest of us need humans to survive, but Wallace only really cares about the house. He gets angry with Flora when her interference with baking risks a fire breaking out. Wallace would die if the cabin burned down. His friends are the creatures who make their home in the wood with him – ants, moths, beetles, mice, and so on. You’d think he’d be at odds with them, but they seem to be a community, cooperative owners of the wood.

“Why do you care about the woman and the baby, Wallace?” I ask in surprise. “They don’t matter to the wood.”

Wallace laughs softly. He never speaks loudly. “The woman created the baby, and the baby needed more wooden furniture. Also, the woman takes care of the wood. I like having them here.”

I go back into the house to check on the baby. It’s still sleeping soundly (in its new wooden crib) in the kitchen. Clutter is kicking up the dust under the table, ignoring me. I put my foot out and trip him up. He falls to the floor, cursing at me. “Ah, so you do see me, Clutter!”

His face scrunches up, and he glares at me like a tiny James Cagney. “Piss off, Sorrow. Go and bother the people. I’m creating art here.”

I’m still pleasantly full of the woman’s negative emotions, so I don’t respond to his aggression. “Explain it to me, Clutter. What is artistic about bundles of dust?”

Clutter stomps away, muttering about Philistines. I see him moving dust bunnies around in the bedroom for a while, then he disappears in a haze of detritus.

I stay and watch the baby. If anything happened to it, both the man and the woman would have food for me for days. Flora comes over to chat. We both get bored between opportunities. Flora is only busy when there is baking going on; luckily for her, the woman likes to bake most days, and Flora helps. Sometimes Flora helps her make beautiful baked goods, with aromas that make the man and the woman very happy. At other times, Flora messes with the ability of the yeast to rise, or the temperature of the oven, or the woman’s memory so she doesn’t put the right amount of ingredients in.

All of us are descendants of fairies from thousands of years ago. We have a rich history that dictates our behavior. The ancient Romans recognized us, and so did the people of the Middle Ages. In Europe and Asia they gave us different names and personalities. Some prayed to us or put out gifts to appease us. Our roots may be in Africa, like the humans, as nature spirits. Wallace is different from the rest of us – his people made the transition from the forest to houses, but he may still be a nature spirit in the truest sense.

“Is the man coming back tonight?” asks Flora. Her world consists of the kitchen, so she assumes that I know more about the comings and goings of the homeowners.

“I think so,” I say, “the woman was making the apple pie for him. The one you ruined.”

Flora sniffs. She doesn’t like being criticized for her interference. “It’s what I do,” she mutters, like a teenager offended at being corrected, “and you benefited from that.”

I smile at her. She is after all my only real friend. Although we are very different, we take comfort from our relationship. “Thank you, Flora. That was magnificent. The woman’s feelings were intense. I wish you could sense how they smell and taste.”

Suddenly, Wallace whispers to us. “There is danger coming!”

The kitchen door opens, and the woman stumbles in, followed by three unknown men. She is panicking, adrenaline rushing through her as she prepares to protect the baby. The unknown men look around the house and find no other inhabitants.

“Sit down and shut up,” one of the men barks. The woman sits on a kitchen chair by the crib.

“What do you want?” she asks. “Take whatever you need.”

The same man leans toward her. “I said shut up!” he says angrily, his nose no more than an inch from hers. She cowers and nods at him, dropping her eyes to the floor. I smell fear and despair.

The men move around the house, carelessly moving and breaking things as they collect items of value. One of them knocks over a heater, which starts to char the living room rug.

“Danger!” moans Wallace. He is a wood fairy. Any damage to the wood hurts him physically.

The men smell the burning and laugh. “Looks like we don’t need to worry about fingerprints,” says one. “We can do whatever we like. What do you think, lady? Want to have some fun?”

The woman shudders and terror wafts off her body – a sharp sour taste.

“Stop them, please!” says Wallace. The living room rug is starting to smoke.

This house is our home. Putting aside our differences, we all try to help in some way. Clutter senses the immediate danger, and runs around, chasing the dust and litter away from the heater. The baby stirs, and I calm him down. Wallace slams the living room door to contain the fire and deny it oxygen.

Flora, however, takes the greatest risk. She starts the oven baking at full temperature. The oven door is still open, so the men feel the heat immediately. One of them shuts the oven door and turns it off. When he moves away, Flora turns it back on again.

The woman is confused, but she sees that the house is on her side and gains a little strength.

One of the men opens the door to the living room, and Wallace slams it shut again. Another opens a window to let the smoke out, but Wallace shuts and jams it. The third opens the kitchen door, and Wallace leaves it open.

The woman speaks, her voice shaky. “This house is haunted,” she says. “The ghosts don’t like visitors.”

The men all stare at her and start to laugh. Wallace slams the kitchen door violently and the wood in the walls creaks loudly. The men look at each other, less certain.

“There’s money in the cutlery drawer,” says the woman. “Take it and leave us alone, and the ghosts won’t harm you.”

The men stand there, looking at each other. None of them wants to show weakness to the others. Now I push some of the depression and despair that I gathered from the woman earlier. Each of the men feels a sudden pang of sadness and a desire to be gone. One of them goes to the drawers, opening them until he finds the silverware. Under the tray he finds a few bills hidden for emergencies. He grabs the money and nods to his associates. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to stay here. Let’s go.”

He sneers at the woman, then walks to the door. It moves back and forward gently, inviting him to leave. As he exits, the other two look at each other. The one who had threatened her before towers over her, reaching out to her. Wallace closes the door again with an ominous crash. I push more negative emotions on both men. Flora lights up all the burners on the stove. The men both turn and leave as though someone was chasing them.

Once we know they have gone for good, Flora turns off the stove. Wallace opens the doors and windows. Clutter, exhausted from his efforts to keep the fire from catching, goes and lies down in the bedroom.

The woman puts her head in her hands and weeps. I feed off her emotions (after all, the battle depleted my reserves) until she starts to recover. Then I cause the baby to stir, so she moves to check on him. Once she knows he is safe, she takes a jug of water into the living room, rights the heater, and pours the water on the scorched area. Then she picks up the phone to talk to the man.

Flora and I hug each other in delight. Wallace thanks us all, over and over. He would have perished if the house had burned down.

* * *

When the man returns to the house, the woman is sitting in the bedroom, holding the child. He looks at the damage in the living room, and the items destroyed in the house, then he goes to embrace his wife and child. The woman tells him everything that happened. “I think the house may really be haunted, but the ghosts were trying to help us. Or maybe the house itself wanted to drive them away. I feel so safe knowing there is something here protecting us.”

The man shakes his head. This is not something he can say to the police or the insurance company. “Let me do the talking when the police arrive,” he says. “You just agree with what I say.”

When they have gone to sleep, we get together for a traditional fairy celebration. There is singing and dancing. Even Clutter joins in. “This is our purpose,” says Wallace “to protect this house and its contents, whatever and whoever they are. Today, we fulfilled our purpose.” Flora wipes a tear from her eye. But her emotions can’t feed me. I just reach out and ruffle her hair, spilling a fine layer of dust on the floor for Clutter.