Before the Autumn Equinox

September 20th, 12 noon

The wedding would be starting in half an hour. It was the last day of summer, tomorrow would be the autumn equinox, and the race was on to get everything completed before midnight.

I had everything coordinated. Fairy lights dotted the path the bride and groom would take to the altar. The mushrooms had grown all summer in a tall ring and now looked fantastic. Acorns were set stylishly amongst them, a nod to the princess. As long as no stupid hikers strayed from the path, we were good.

Suddenly, I heard someone calling my name, “Dottie! Dottie! The monarch escaped!”

Not the monarch! That thing had given us nothing but trouble. However, it was essential we have it. “Saddle up the hawkmoths, we must get it back!” I instructed. The messenger ran off.

I dreaded having to report this to the queen, but she was hurrying toward me anxiously and I knew it was unavoidable.

“Dottie, I heard the monarch flew away again. We need it for the post-ceremony. The hawkmoths will not suffice,” she said.

“Yes, your majesty,” I said. “The peace officers are on the job, your majesty, they will bring it back.”

“That animal has been a headache, but Princess Acornia and Prince Hickory must fly before midnight, it’s the only way.”

“You know migratory restlessness is strong in monarchs at this time of the year,” I said. “That’s all it is.”

She grabbed my arm, her fingertips digging into my bicep. “What if we can’t get them out?” Her mouth was a tight line and her brows knit together, nearly forming a straight line.

I took a deep breath because I’d wondered the same thing a million times myself. “Have faith, my lady. The hawkmoths are fast; they will secure the monarch. The wedding will go as planned and the couple will ride before midnight.”

“The weatherkeepers say there will be a frost before daybreak. And the sap drains at the equinox. If they cannot get out, we will have to wait another year.” She huffed before going on. “Fiddlesticks! Why it dragged on so late into the season is beyond me.”

I wanted to say it was really the opposite: a last-minute chance encounter between the princess and Prince Hickory with things moving incredibly fast, but I said nothing because it wouldn’t fix anything. Nor would it change the fact that we’d had less than twenty-four hours to organize this wedding and get everything set up. How we’d even managed to capture a monarch at all was still a mystery to me.

The queen soon wandered off to find someone else to complain to and I was not sad because I had so much to do. While I was overseeing the mixing of the punch, a peace officer approached me.

“The monarch is secure,” she said.

“Good,” I let out a sigh of relief, “let me see.”

The officer led me to the corral where the monarch was being kept. It was a large female, its orange and black wings fluttering against its bindings. The animal was spirited; pulling against the ropes and flapping hard in its attempt to escape again. I hoped it would be a safe escort for the princess and her groom.

“Easy, girl, easy,” I said as I walked up to the sticks of the corral fence. “Shhhh, shhhh,” I soothed. The animal quieted a fraction but still pulled tensely against the vine ropes holding her. She watched me with her large compound eyes and I looked back at her. Extending her proboscis, she gently tasted me. I could see her body relax a notch. That was good.

Just then, there was a loud crash in the fairy ring. Like the crash of a tree tipping over.

Or a hiker going off the path.

I raced away from the corral, the monarch throwing up her wings and lashing against the ropes, but that was the least of my problems now. It was nearly time to begin and we had a human crashing the princess’s wedding. This was very, very bad.

In the fairy ring, two human hikers, now fairy sized, were arguing and brushing themselves off. When a human steps into a fairy ring, they fall through, almost as though the ground were made of quicksand. However, it doesn’t suck them through like sand, rather, it bounces them off the walls of the ring, causing them to get covered in dirt, bruising them a little, and shrinking them in the process. Most humans are very disoriented when they land inside the fairy ring, but this pair didn’t seem to be.

“If we had just stayed on the trail, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” the woman human was saying exasperatedly to the man.

“It’s fine. We’ll make it back,” the other said, a plume of dirt clouded up where he brushed at his pant leg.

“It is not fine. We’ve been lost for hours and our flight leaves at eight tonight. We needed to be back at the airport by five. What if we can’t find our way out of this hell of a forest,” she argued back.

The man wasn’t listening though, he was looking around, turning his head slowly this way and that, taking in the wedding decorations. I couldn’t help smiling a little smugly to myself, I had worked very hard on them. He’d obviously never seen anything like it before.

“Uh, Celeste,” he said, his voice a little shaky, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

“Max, what’re you-” she said, but then also looked around and cut herself short. “What is this place?”

Then they spied the fairies standing around watching them. It would be the same as every time: they’d wonder at our long noses and tall, slender bodies. They’d get really concerned if they saw the queen or princess, who had skin like bark and limbs like, well, the limbs of a tree. I hoped we could get them out before that.

There was also the wedding, of course.

This fell on me because I was the queen’s assistant and planning coordinator. It was a new title though, and I’d never had to deal with the humans myself. But I decided to just go for it.

Whereas humans are upwards of six feet tall normally, after falling through a fairy ring, they shrink to less than one inch, and I, as a fairy, was about one inch tall, so I stood over these humans now. They both stared with mouths gaping and eyes wide as I approached. I did my best to appear non-threatening; we were, of course, a peaceful forest.

But the woman screamed.

Which made the monarch go mad and start banging around in her corral a short distance away. I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose, something I only do when stressed. I suddenly realized today really was not going well. I wasn’t sure how it was all going to get pulled off by midnight, it must have been almost twelve fifteen already. The wedding was scheduled to start at twelve thirty.

And because of that, wood fairies were arriving in droves at that very minute. The stick folk were arriving. Brownies of all shapes and sizes. There were the Jack-in-the-pulpits with their bright red berries. And, oh goodness, help me, the spiders were walking in. I already knew humans were arachnophobic as a whole. This would not go well.

Both the man and the woman eyed the spiders and screamed, turning to run away from the center of the ring.

“Officers!” I yelled, but they were way ahead of me. Peace officers on hawkmoths were already moving into position, blocking the humans’ path out of the backside of the ring.

“Halt!” the captain of the peace officers commanded.

But the humans did not halt, instead, they turned and ran away from the large moths and the spiders gathering on the edge of the fairy ring. This led them straight to the corral where the high-spirited monarch was tied.

Bother, I thought as they both jumped right in.

The monarch beat her wings and pulled against her ropes. The humans, who don’t fear butterflies like they do spiders - and really should get their priorities straight - ducked under her and hid beneath her flapping wing. The monarch thrashed around wildly, pulling at her ropes and crashing around in the corral. I couldn’t see the humans behind her.

That is, until the peace officers attempted to approach on the far side of the corral. Then, to my disbelief, they untied the ropes holding the monarch and began attempting to beat the hawkmoths away. Sensing her freedom, the monarch flapped her wings once, twice, thrice, and was gone.

This left the humans unprotected and completely surrounded by the peace officers now, and though they meekly tried to fend them off with the remaining ropes, the man and woman seemed to know they’d lost. They huddled on the ground, yelling at the officers to stay away.

“The monarch!” I yelled and a few peace officers took off after it on the backs of their hawkmoths. I already knew it was hopeless though, the animal had been highly excited and would have flown as far and hard as she could with her freedom.

What would the princess do now? Dormancy was almost upon us. Their union might be completed with the ceremony, but the opportunity for germination would be lost if they were not able to travel to Mexico to overwinter this year. A collective grumble of disappointment that matched my own rang out from the bystanders.

The humans were still crouching in the corral, the peace officers hovering nearby. In the absence of the queen, they were looking at me, waiting for an order.

Wearily, I pinched the bridge of my nose again and sighed. I strode over to the corral. “Humans,” I said, “I am Dottie, assistant to Queen Oakley.” I bowed low. “You seem to have lost your way and stumbled into our fairy ring.”

“I told you we were lost,” the woman, Celeste, chided.

“We’re not lost,” Max replied argumentatively.

I raised an eyebrow. “You intended to step into the fairy ring?” I inquired.

That left them at a loss, their obvious answer being ‘no.’ They said nothing and looked around at their surroundings again. Many more wood folk had arrived for the wedding, which by my calculations, should have started ten minutes ago. The humans were eyeing the creatures of the forest with suspicion and fear, particularly the spiders.

“What are you going to do to us?” the woman asked. “What are you going to make those spiders do to us?”

“Do to you?” I repeated. I could sense the spiders dancing their legs up and down, starting to get offended. That never helped matters. “I just need you to eat some of the mushrooms so you can go back to your world,” I said.

But it was the wrong thing to say. You never could tell with humans.

Suddenly, they both jumped up and ran, jumping over the corral fence as they went. There wasn’t a straight shot out of the mass of wood folk had gathered for the wedding, and they zig zagged around the wood sprites and fairies staying well away from the spiders. I could see it was coming down to having to use the eight-legged folk to assist though, between their long legs and silk that could bind, we sometimes used them in a pinch.

“Arachnids!” I ordered and, immediately, a group of wolf spiders shot into action. They swiftly overtook the running humans, who put up a brave fight but were no match for the spiders, which towered over all of us. They were quickly wrapped in the spiders’ silk and deposited at my feet.

“What now?” the captain of the peace officers asked.

I sighed. “We must move forward with the wedding. The humans will have to wait.”

At that, the two humans began protesting, but they had been exceptionally difficult thus far, and we had other matters that needed tending to first.

The wedding was beautiful. Princess Acornia looked as fresh and beautiful as ever. Prince Hickory looking stately and sharp. I pursed my lips at the thought that he was a season older than she. What if he became unable to germinate by the time spring came? We’d just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best.

The humans remained mostly quiet during the ceremony, but at one point did put up a commotion while almost escaping from their bindings. However, the spiders quickly resolved the situation with their long legs and another layer of silk.

Queen Oakley approached me afterward while the happy couple was being congratulated by the wood folk.

“The humans are still here?” she asked, surprised, looking down at them sitting nearby.

“We needed to get the wedding under way,” I replied. “They weren’t cooperating and ran off into the woods when I tried to explain about the mushrooms. I couldn’t have them getting lost, so the spiders helped. Would you have had me do something different?”

“No, the ceremony needed to take priority. Once they take the mushrooms, they’ll be back in human form and no longer our concern.”

“It’s just getting them to listen,” I said, looking down at them. The woman, Celeste, was looking at me attentively. The man was whispering in her ear.

“What about the princess and prince?” I asked, changing the subject. “They will have to stay, I suppose.”

“This is not my first last-minute wedding with a missing monarch,” the queen replied, sighing heavily. “We will send them with an entourage on hawkmoths and hope they encounter a monarch so they can get to Mexico. Nothing changes for the spring if they make it; either way they would have had to find a new ride back.”

“So, there’s still hope for germination?” I asked.

“There’s still a little hope.”

Suddenly, the woman piped up. “We’re going to Mexico. Or, at least, if we can catch our plane, we will be.”

“Celeste,” the man hissed, trying to shush her.

“Listen, Max, if they can help us get out of here and out of the forest, we can make our flight. It won’t hurt us to help them get their…seeds…to Mexico. Don’t you think that’s a good compromise?”

My eyes lit up, but then I thought of something.

“That’s very kind of you, but they must leave before midnight. They must go before the autumn equinox.”

“Our flight is at eight. Is that too late?” Celeste asked.

I looked at the queen. It would be taking a gamble by sending the princess and prince with humans, but it was a gamble sending them on hawkmoths to search for another monarch this late in the season as well.

The queen was nodding her head. “That could work,” she murmured.

With some discussion, it was decided the newlyweds would travel with the humans. The humans ate of the mushrooms. Then, they picked up the prince and princess and placed them gently into their pockets.

Peace officers led the humans out of the forest on their hawkmoths, and they did indeed catch their flight, I later learned. The following spring Princess Acornia and Prince Hickory returned, fully germinated.

But that night I didn’t know the end of the story yet. What I did know was that around midnight, dormancy struck me hard, just as it did many other woodland creatures. I was satisfied we’d completed our task for the end of summer and, through all the difficulties, the wedding was a success. Unable to keep my eyes open, I laid down under the queen’s namesake, the oak, and took a long winter’s rest.