Cocot woke up with a start. It was too quiet.

No, it was supposed to be quiet.

"Good morning, Sarina," she said, greeting her stove. It was the only other thing in the chalet with a name, and pretty much her only friend. Who cared if it couldn't talk?

The field fairies (as she called them) couldn't talk, either, but Cocot knew better than to try and say anything to them.

She rubbed the stove as she passed by on her way outside. It was going to be a lovely day—despite a lingering chill, the sun was rising bright and clear. The pale mists huddling in the hollows would be burned away soon, leaving the day warm and cheerful.

During the night, the spinach and carrots had been nibbled, slugs were on the cabbages and something had crushed the leeks. She needed to build a fence, but didn't have any wire or woods pickets, not to mention all the tools were in the workshop. Maybe she could pick up a kitten from a farm and let it take care of the rabbits, then set out bowls of beer to drown the slugs.

She turned these thoughts around in her mind while she knelt among the neat rows of vegetables. Pulling weeds was actually one of her favorite chores. She could stay with the sun on her face, crouching between the plants, her hands and feet in the dirt for hours. Most weeds were actually edible, too, so her lunch would be ready soon.

She hummed and sang nursery rhymes while she weeded—Meunier, tu dors, ton moulin va trop vite—and peeled slugs off the cabbages.

After about ten minutes, the field fairies starting appearing.

Cocot watched them approach from the corner of her eye, careful not to make any fast movements. Field fairies loved flowers, so Cocot made sure there were plenty growing in the garden and the window boxes to attract them. Pale as moon moths, fragile and light as butterflies and smaller than her pinky finger, the tiny creatures fascinated Cocot. Their white, petal wings shimmered as though wet with dew, their bodies draped with silver lichen, their legs and arms long and thin as a grasshopper's and their ears stretched upwards so far past the crowns of their head that they looked like an insect's antennae.

Her spirit soared to float with the tiny fairies.

They had first appeared when winter broke, growing bolder as more flowers and leaves sprouted. They never made the slightest noise between themselves, but when Cocot hummed or sang softly, they hovered near to listen.

They also loved dandelion fluff. One day last week, she was laying in the grass beyond the forest, blowing the seeds to the sky and the tiny fairies suddenly appeared and went wild with delight. It was strange how they always waited for her to blow the seeds instead of harvesting it from the flower heads directly. They were more than large enough to do that. But they never did; they waited for her to give it to them.

Cocot rocked back on her heels, the sun warming her tilted face. This moment of happiness, of feeling good, was like a stolen piece of chocolate. It didn't really belong to her, but she couldn't resist taking it.

Since her mother had died at the end of winter, she had not been truly happy for more than a few seconds here or there. Now with her feet in the dirt and the sun on her face, she wished she could keep this moment, to stay this way for the rest of her life.

"You'll ruin your skin if you don't wear a hat," her mother would say.

"I'm so brown anyway," she whispered. "Besides, no one ever sees my skin, so why should it matter?"

She must have spoken too loudly, for the field fairies darted away, faster than shooting arrows.

"Tell me more about the tiny field fairies, Mother," she whispered to the empty air. She knew what her mother would have answered.

"Field fairies? What are those? What could I possibly tell you?"

"Tell me a story about them. Or a story of the great fairies, like the one where the young prince loses his way in the mountains."

"Cocquelicot, my sweet daughter! I know of no such stories! What wondrous paths does your imagination take you on?"

"No paths that you didn't show me," said Cocot, her eyebrows drawing together in frustration, playing through the conversation in her mind.

"I know of a good story about a fearless woman called Mère Courage, who lived in Geneva over a hundred years ago..."

It's possible that her mother genuinely had not known any stories about the field fairies. They were so timid and quiet, they might as well be butterflies and there were not many tales of butterflies, either. The great fairies were a different matter.

Cocot deposited the pile of lunch weeds by the door, dumped the rest in the compost at the side of the chalet, and then took the narrow footpath down the hill to a small clearing just past the stream. Her fleeting happiness was gone.

Her mother's grave was in the middle of the clearing, marked by a mound of rounded stream stones and a painted board. She brushed clean her mother's name, Fanchon, and lay a handful of forget-me-nots next to it. Sitting in a ball, she rocked back and forth, stacking and restacking the stones. Memories tore little holes in her heart.

How many hours had she spent in front of Sarina while her mother told her about the great fairies, the ones who stood as tall as humans, but lived under the hills; feasting, dancing and making enchanting music? The stories had stopped about the time Cocot turned ten, her mother slowly forgetting them. The warnings hadn't stopped, though. The warnings had continued till the end.

"Never go to the hills when the mists are about, and never follow the sounds of flutes or revelry. Promise me, Cocot."

The words echoed in her head.

Cocot had promised her mother not to go many times, but she hadn't meant it. She ached to hear music and would follow any that she heard. But not too far. It would be dangerous to follow fairy music too far.

Lingering at her mother's grave was pointless. Unlike Jean-Baptist, when her mother had died, she had vanished entirely. Fanchon only existed in Cocot's mind, and her heart, of course. She crawled to her feet, wiping her pants and cheeks.

The weeds she had collected for lunch were wilting in sun next to the chalet and her stomach turned. She was as sick to death of eating weeds and garden vegetables.

What she really wanted was fresh bread. Bread crisp and warm from the oven with melting butter spread all over it.

Or crêpes! She groaned in frustration. A pile of golden crêpes with sugar and crème double would be like heaven.

To make them she needed eggs, oil, milk, and flour; as well as cinnamon, cream and cheese to dress everything up properly.

Mouth watering and chest heaving, she chopped an onion, dandelion leaves and some nettle sprouts to make soup for lunch, which she forced herself to eat. The market in Bulle was a four hour walk away and was in three days' time. She had quite a list of items she needed, since the weather had been bad on market day the last several weeks in a row. The flour had run out a few weeks ago and potatoes were a thing of the distant past.

She could go to one of the nearby farms. That would be about an hour's walk. She dipped her spoon up and down aimlessly in the thin broth of her soup. They might have extra candles and dried pasta, too, so she wouldn't have to carry so much stuff home when she finally made it to market. The day was bright and sunny, it would be safe to walk through the woods....

A few quick minutes later, she was locking the chalet and whispering her charm to the door. Basket in hand and a determined frown on her lips, she was ready to go. There was nothing to fear in the forest during the day. There was nothing to fear when the sun was shining brightly.

She had to repeat it several times to herself. To bolster her courage, she sang "Frêre Jacques" and "Les Petites Marionettes" at the top of her lungs for a quarter of an hour. The narrow, dirt lane she was following came to a sharp bend and she paused.

There was a shortcut to one of the farms that her mother had showed her. Instead of continuing on the dirt road when it veered towards the bottom of the valley and towards Lessoc village, she could go up the hill through the pines and raspberry brambles on an unused trail.

If she dared take it.

She remembered her mother had a difficult time finding the trail the one time they came this way. Fanchon had paced back and forth muttering, "Where are the stairs? They were here last time, I'm sure this is the bend. Cocot, sweetheart, do you see the stairs?"

Cocot hadn't seen any stairs, but there was a line of pine tree roots lying intertwined with one another on the steep hillside that made step-like pattern. The ground was clear of undergrowth except for moss and toadstools, and nothing but dead pine needles covered the roots and dirt.

"Are these the stairs?" Cocot had asked.

"Oh, my. Look at that! Well done, my poppy. It has grown over and changed so much since the last time I came through."

Then, like so many conversations with her mother, it ended with a warning.

"Coquelicot, only during the day, understand?"

Cocot finished the verse—Trois petits tours et puis, s'en vont—the puppets spin three times and then take their leave, and she paused at the foot of the trail.

"Why only during the day?" she asked herself.

Seeing them now, she could imagine that the mossy roots were stairs—genuine stairs that the forest itself created for the fairy folk to walk upon. The great fairies would climb the hill without a care or worry to weigh them down. This was their forest, after all. At least, her mother had told her many years ago.

She took a step upwards, listening to the birds singing and wind sighing through the leaves and pine needles. Another step. Speckled sunlight landed all around on the moss and ground and on her arms.

"No, I won't be afraid," she said.

The stairs led her up, into the forest.

*** What will Cocot find in the forest? Or will she make it through to the farm with no incidents? The sun is shining, after all... ***