- To Free the Fairies -

Arcan pulled the covers up to his neck to combat the gust of wind wafting into his bedroom. The curtains swayed back and forth in the breeze, casting an army of shadows to march across his wall. Garrisons of branches swept across the ceiling, while ghouls in the shapes of leaves flew over his sheets.

“Just one more page,” he told his mother, batting his six-year-old eyelashes.

“Just one more,” she repeated. Her ruby hair fell into her face as she turned the page, so she ran slender fingers behind her ear and smiled at her son. She turned the page and cleared her throat, steadying her grip on the flashlight. “And so Miles the Brave ran his paws over his whiskers, opened his compass, and walked through the dimly-lit city streets. The Tower of the Lion stood in the distance, disappearing into dark clouds that swirled around the buildings of Delexandria. ‘I must be brave,’ he told himself. ‘I must face the Emperor of Lions. I must free the fairies.’”

Arcan jumped when he heard the sound of shattered glass from downstairs. He looked to his mother, eyes wide. She gently closed the book. 

“Arcan,” she said, staring at the doorway. “Do you still have your gem?”

Another loud bang sounded from below them. Arcan ran his fingers along the smooth edges of his gem. “I still have it,” he told her. He always knew what it meant when she asked him. It means that he’s home, Arcan thought bitterly. It means I must go somewhere else. Wherever I want. Just not here.

“Good. Now you just stay here while I go downstairs.”

“No, I don’t want you to leave. Just stay and read to me.” 

Arcan could hear his father’s curses from downstairs. He must have used his magic again, the one where he puts the crystals into the glass bowl and they turn to smoke, wafting through his lungs as his father exhales and smiles. It’s called meth, dumdum, his friend had told him, but to Arcan it looked like dark magic.

He’s killing the fairies, Arcan told himself.

His mother walked out of his bedroom. He heard clanging pots, shattering glass, and a wailing cries from his mother. He clenched his fingers around his gem. Heavy footsteps slapped against the stairway. His mother emerged first, running into the bedroom and slamming the door. The lock clicked and she turned, tears running down her face.

“Everything is fine, Arcan. Do you still have your gem?”

A rash of rosy red spread across one of his mother’s cheeks. He did it. He hit her again. Mother says it’s bad to hit but father does it all the time. “I still have it.”

“Good, Arcan. Good.”

His father’s shrill yelling sent shivers up his legs. “Margerie, you open this damn door right now!”

“Arcan, when daddy comes in I need you to run outside, okay? I need you to take your book and this flashlight and I need you to read outside. You use your gem and you go somewhere else, you hear?”

“But I want to stay with you,” Arcan told her. The door shook violently as his father banged on the opposite site, cursing at his mother.

His mother looked back to the door and yelled, “I’ll call the police, Hank. I’ll give you up. I swear it. You leave us alone and go to your brothers. I’ll call the police. I’ll call the police.” She repeated the words, wrapping her hands around Arcan’s ankles. Her nails dug into his skin.

The wood began to splinter as his father shook the handle and kicked the wood. When he crashed through the door, Arcan’s mother jumped out of the bed. “Arcan, run. You run outside and read your book, you hear me? Run!”

His father stumbled into the room, reeking of a dozen different smells, of smoke and sweat and those beers he brought back each night. His father swung his arms at Arcan and nearly knocked the book from his hands. Arcan ran down the stairs, hearing nothing but his feet on the staircase and his mother’s weeps from his bedroom.

The wind whistled through the doorway as Arcan ran outside, trying to balance his gem and the book and the flashlight. The clouds swirled over his house, promising rain and wind and all the things that Arcan hated.

He heard the traffic from the city, hovering over their farmhouse like ominous gargoyles. I could run to the city, he thought. Grandma would know what to do. She would make it all okay.

When the rain poured from the sky, Arcan pulled his shirt over his book. He looked up to his bedroom window and saw his baseball shattering the glass. He scanned his surroundings.

He could run through the cornfield, but he was scared of the dark and there could be monsters lurking in the stalks. He ran to the outhouse instead. Throwing back the flimsy door, he kneeled in the corner. Raindrops played gloomy music on the tin roof. 

He aimed his flashlight at his book, navigating to where his mother had left off. Miles the Brave is about to meet the Emperor, he remembered. He’s about to free the fairies.

Arcan reached into his pocket and felt for his gem. He ran his fingers along its edges, thinking of all the places he would rather be when his father grew angry. The rain grew louder and the wind shook the walls of the outhouse. 

“Sleep,” he heard a voice whispering. It couldn’t have been his mother. It was too deep and raspy to be hers. And there was no way it was his father’s. It was too soft and croaky. “Sleep Arcan, and join us. The fairies are waiting for you.”

Arcan closed his eyes, lost in a trance from the pitter-patter of rain and whistling of the wind. He heard the pages of his book begin to flip back and forth. The walls of the outhouse sounded like they were shaking but Arcan dared not open his eyes until the voice returned.

“Arcan, open your eyes. You’ve made it.”

When he blinked and looked around him, the outhouse looked the same as before. His book had fallen onto the ground and his flashlight lay motionless. He wrapped his fingers around his gem and stood. He pushed open the outhouse door. 

His farmhouse was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he walked out of the outhouse into a busy street. Cars zoomed by him and honked. A sea of umbrellas were bouncing down the sidewalk, shielding the mass of people walking in the dark. It was then that he noticed their faces. They didn’t resemble his mother, or father, or any human he had ever seen. They had thick and orange fur like Mrs. Rosewood’s cat, and their whiskers moved up and down in the wind.

When he noticed his own hands, he nearly dropped the book. His fingers were now paws, and his skin was fur just like the others that walked by him. I’m Miles the Brave, he thought. Arcan strained his neck and followed the skyscrapers to the top of the sky. The clouds churned around the buildings, consuming their peaks.

 The mysterious voice returned. “Yes, you are Miles the Brave.”

A dark figure walked out from an alleyway and smiled at Arcan. He wore a dark and wide-brimmed hat and walked with a carved stick. Blood red letters were inscribed across the wood. The mysterious man wore a dark trench coat and stared out from eyes below bushy brows. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a very long time,” the man said. “Delexandria is running out of fairies and you’re just the one we need.”

Arcan’s jaw dropped. “This is Delexandria? This is the world of the fairies? But how? Where are they all? And does that mean… that he’s here?” If this really is the world of the fairies, then the Emperor of Lions must be here as well. 

“My name is Oesis,” the man told him. “I am the gatekeeper of this world, and ever since you were born I’ve been waiting for you to visit us. The last fairy has been captured. The Emperor of Lions is keeping them all atop his fortress. His addiction has grown worse. He now eats three fairies a day, and soon the world will be without magic. That would be a sad day indeed.”

Arcan lifted his shoulders and took a deep breath. “What do I need to do?”

“You must take this compass and follow it north. The Emperor knows you are coming, Arcan. He’ll do anything he can to make sure you don’t reach his gates. The streets may change. Buildings may rise in front of you, but none of it is real. You will be tempted, but you must continue due north. If you do this, and only this, you will reach the tower of the Emperor.”

“And then what? What do I do when I’m there?”

“The Emperor’s only weakness is his heart. He cannot help but weep when he hears a sad story, and our world has run low of sad stories. But you, Miles the Brave, Arcan the Strong, no matter your name, it’s your story that counts. You must make the Emperor weep.”

Arcan bit his lower lip. “And then what? What do I do when the Emperor has wept?”

“While he’s weeping, you run up the staircase until there are no more steps. He keeps the fairies on the rooftop. He’s clipped their wings so they can no longer fly. He herds them up there like helpless sheep. But fairies have something that we don’t.”

“Fairy dust?”

Oesis smiled. “Fairy dust. The problem is that fairies cannot use their dust for evil. They are only capable of good. You, however, are capable of anything. You are an outsider, and so you aren’t bound by the rules of our world."

“I’ll do it. Whatever it is, I’ll do it!”

“You must collect their dust, from every single fairy. The Emperor will be very angry when he sees what you’ve done, but the dust from a thousand fairies can change anyone’s heart. You must collect their dust and throw it at him. Only that will free them. You are running out of time. You must go now.”

Without warning Oesis vanished into thin air. A compass sat where he once had. Arcan bent down, placed his book on the concrete, and picked up the compass. He took a deep breath and walked down the road. 

The cars vanished just as Oesis had. In their places were a thousand women that looked like Arcan’s mother. “This way, dear Arcan,” they whispered from all different directions. “I’ll read a story to you, just follow me this way.”

Arcan shook his head and blinked. “Go away,” he shouted. “I’m headed north, not with you.”

The women screamed and burst into a thousand droplets, coating the roadway in water. Next appeared dozens of carts full to the brim with striped candies and glazed chickens roasting on spits. I’m so hungry, Arcan thought. Just a bite perhaps, to fill me up for the journey. Arcan looked down at the compass. The needle shifted away from North.

“No, I can’t,” he told himself. I’m headed north.”

Arcan pressed on, denying each new vision his attention. He said no to the woman with puppies, and he ignored the images of his father threatening to discipline him. “I’m going north,” was all Arcan said. He held the compass with both hands until he came upon a monstrous tower. Layers of fog hung around it like the rings of Saturn.

He cautiously walked up the steps and couldn’t help but gaze at obsidian exterior of the tower. When he walked through the enormous entrance, he heard the Emperor speak.

“Who dares enter the Tower of the Emperor?”

Arcan cleared his throat. “It is I,” he shouted. “Miles the Brave.”

A thunderous laugh echoed through the hallway. “Then come to me and we’ll see how brave you are.”

Arcan walked through the chamber until it opened up into a cavernous room. Dusty chandeliers hung from chains a dozen stories above him. Gargoyles were standing around the room as if they were watching his every move.

As Arcan walked further through the Tower, the figure of the Emperor came into focus. The Emperor’s mane nearly buried his face. He held a sword with a blade nearly twice the size of Arcan. 

“I have a story to tell you,” Arcan said.

“I’ve heard that a thousand times. Let me guess. You wish to free the fairies? A thousand men have walked in here with a thousand stories, yet my fairies remain. Speak now if you must, but know that it is for nothing.”

Arcan spoke. He told the Emperor about a girl and a boy that met in a field. He told about how the boy picked her flowers and held her hand and told her stories. He told the Emperor about how the boy found crystals, and placed them in glass and they turned into fairies that coursed through his body and escaped out of his mouth. He mentioned how they had a son and she said it was the light of her life.

He told the Emperor the story of his parents, a shimmering sun that set and never rose again. By the time Arcan was done, the Emperor was spread across the stone stairs, weeping uncontrollably. Arcan wanted to comfort him, to put a paw around his shoulder, but he knew the fairies were waiting.

When he emerged out onto the rooftop, a thousand dim lights flew towards him. The fairies had tiny, pale faces that hid behind translucent hoods. The light shimmered inside them. It used to be brighter, Arcan thought. He saw where their wings were clipped.

“Hurry, he shouted. I must collect your dust or we won’t be able to escape.” The fairies swirled around Arcan and sneezed dust into his shirt, which he held with both hands to make a makeshift bucket. “Take me to the Emperor!” he shouted. 

The fairies lifted Arcan up from his underarms and flew him down the staircase. The draft from outside whistled through the spiral staircase as Arcan neared the weeping Emperor. When Arcan saw him again, the Emperor looked furious.

“What have you done!” he shouted, slamming his sword onto the staircase with a clank.

“You’ve been feeding off them for too long,” Arcan told him. He reached a paw into his shirt and grabbed a handful of fairy dust. He threw the sandy material at the Emperor, who cried with pain. As he fell over, his heart beat violently in his chest.

“You’ve done it,” the fairies shouted in unison. “You’ve freed us.”

The fairies began to fly around Arcan in all directions. A bright light shone from his fur, and grew in intensity until it blinded Arcan. When it disappeared, there were no fairies to be seen. All that remained was the wooden walls of the outhouse.

Arcan stood and stretched his legs. He walked out of the outhouse and peered upward at his bedroom window. He saw candlelight flickering across the walls, and imagined his father sitting in a chair with a cigarette, packing his glass bowl with more crystals.

He’s going to kill them, Arcan thought. If only I could stop him. Arcan clenched his fists and narrowed his brows. I may not be Miles the Brave, but I still have some more fairies to free. He walked through the doorway.