In a Child’s Eyes

“Audrey!” Helen Ayala’s voice rang through the forest that grew around her house. “Time to come in! It’s getting dark!”

Audrey, who was happily situated in those forests, pouted. “Coming, mother!” she called. She turned back to Bridie, wrinkling her nose. “I gotta go, my mom’s calling.”

Bridie giggled at Audrey’s expression and flew up, landing on her friend’s nose. “Awww, why do you have to go? Can’t you stay?”

“Bridie,” Caelan’s stern voice came from behind a the rose bush, “get off of Audrey’s nose. You’re making her sneeze.”

“Aww, no she’s not. I don’t mind,” Audrey assured the Fae woman, who was flying out from the bush and landing on a flower.

“You, young lady, should be off. Your mother is calling.”

Sure enough, Helen’s voice sounded again through the forest. “Audrey Ayala, I’m waiting!”

“I’m coming, mother!” Audrey yelled back.

“Why can’t she stay in the forest with us?” Bridie appealed with a pout.

“Yeah! I want to, pleease?” Audrey joined in with her friend.

“Audrey, you must answer when your mother calls. I am not your mother; I am not allowed to make these decisions. You are human; you sleep inside. Now go! We’ll see you tomorrow.” Caelan flew in front of Audrey’s face with her arms crossed.

Audrey sighed and stood up, brushing the dirt from her jeans. “Oh, fine,” she said, turning to run towards her house.

When she got to the porch, her mother had her hands on her hips. “Audrey, I have been calling for ten minutes!”

“I’m sorry mother,” murmured Audrey as she brushed past her mother.

“Not so fast young lady!”

Her mother’s voice was serious. Audrey froze, and turned around. “Yes?” she asked apprehensively.

“You have to start coming back home when I call you. Not ten minutes later, not five minutes later, but when you’re supposed to come in. Understood?”

Audrey nodded quickly.

“I don’t understand what you do in those woods all day. It’s not healthy for a girl your age to be alone all the time.” Audrey’s mother sighed, looking down at her daughter.

“Please, I like it…” Audrey trailed off, not sure what to say but hoping her mother wouldn’t forbid her to spend all that time in the woods.

Her mother sighed. “Oh, go on, get changed for bed.” With that, Audrey scampered away into the house.

The next morning Audrey got out of bed early, dressing in jeans and a T-shirt and running downstairs for breakfast. She smiled at her mother and grabbed cheerios and milk pouring them into the bowl. “Good morning Mommy!” She said cheerfully.

“Off into the woods again?” asked her mother.

Audrey nodded. “Yep,” she said in between mouthfuls of cheerios.

Her mother shook her head. “You started hanging out in those woods nonstop a couple of months ago. Before that you never did this.”

Audrey shrugged. “Sorry Mom,” she said, finishing up her cereal and putting her bowl in the sink. “I really like it out there.”

She ran out the door, leaving her mother shaking her head and turning to the sink to clean out the bowl.

“Whoa, it’s chilly,” she said, rubbing her arms. It really was very early. She made her way through the woods until at last she saw the familiar landscape of the faeries’ home.

“Hello? Is anybody awake?” Audrey questioned quietly, trying to peak under shrubs and in holes for her little friends.

“Hello, dear,” a musical voice came from behind her.

Audrey turned around. “Tige!!” she exclaimed happily. “Hi! Where is everyone else?”

“Sleeping, child. It’s very early,” Teigue admonished gently.

“I’m sorry, Tige” said Audrey, looking down. “Why are you up?”

“I was practicing the harp,” Teigue told her. Sure enough, there it was, sitting next to him. He looked just like the pictures of faeries that Audrey had seen; the man with wings sitting on a rose with a harp next to him in the dawn’s light.

“Could you play for me?” Audrey’s face lit up as she remembered the only other time she’d heard faery music. It had only been for a moment and she’d been hoping to hear it again.

Teigue smiled. “I suppose,” he said, picking up his harp. He stroked the strings once, tuned it, and then slowly began a slow ballad. The music was so beautiful that even nine-year-old Audrey fell into a trance at the amazing sound.

When Teigue stopped playing, Audrey felt like she was coming back to Earth from a completely different world, though the world she was brought back to was hardly one of the every day. She blinked, trying to clear her head.

“Audrey!” yelled Bridie, coming up to her and hugging her arm. Audrey giggled at the tiny girl barely able to get both arms around her arm.

“Hi Bridie, I’m back!” She grinned. “I guess you noticed,” she said, shaking her arm. Bridie let go and flew up onto Audrey’s head. “Hey, get off of there?”

“Back?” asked Bridie. “You’ve been sitting there listening to Teigue for the past half hour that I’ve been awake and probably longer.”

“Really?” Audrey blushed. “Sorry, I’ve never heard anything so beautiful before…” She shook her head. “I said, get off of there! It feels weird.”

She heard a snap of twigs and looked up; no faery would make a sound like that, they were too light and graceful.

“Mike!” she exclaimed, recognizing the face of the boy she knew from school. The young human boy’s eyes were wide, and he turned around to run.

“Mike, come back!” she yelled, jumping up. “I have to go after him,” she told Bridie and Teigue. “He’s a little tattle tale, he’ll tell someone!”

She ran after him, hurdling over the plants and dodging trees and roots as she saw him doing the same ahead of her. “Mike! Just wait, I need to talk to you!” she yelled again. She climbed over the fence, paying no mind to the fact that she wasn’t allowed to be this far out in the woods.

“Oomph!” She slipped while climbing the fence and fell on the other side. “Oww,” she muttered, rubbing her elbow. She got to her feet again, but saw with a quick glance around the she’d lost Mike in that fall. “Darnit,” she said, turning to dejectedly make her way back to the cove that the faeries lived in.

“Audrey, are you alright? You’ve eaten hardly anything,” Helen Ayala looked over at her daughter who was eating lunch. “Is anything wrong?”

Audrey shook her head ‘no’, picking at her sandwich morosely.

“Hun, do you want to go into town with me to pick out some new clothes for school? How about that?”

Audrey shrugged. “OK,” she said, getting up from the table. “I’m done.”

“Alright then, let’s go.” Her mother briskly threw the picked-at sandwich out and placed the plate in the sink. They got into the car and made their way into town.

Normally Audrey loved to shop, but right now she couldn’t get rid of that sick feeling in her stomach. She half-heartedly tried on some outfits for the impending school year, but she couldn’t get past that fear the Michael would tell people about the faeries.

“Sweetie, I’m going to go into the bank now, be a good girl and stay right here, OK? Can you do that darling?” Audrey’s mother looked down at her. “Are you alright with staying out here alone?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” she said, taking a seat on the bench outside the bank.

“OK, I’ll keep an eye on you through the window.” Audrey’s mother disappeared into the big building and Audrey settled down on the bench, looking around. She jumped up when she recognized one face.

“Mike!” the young girl called. “Mike, I have to talk to you.” She ran over to him and lowered her voice, trying to ignore his arrogant look. “About what you saw.”

“What I saw?” he laughed, pushing Audrey backwards.

“Yes,” she said urgently, going back towards him. “You have to keep it a secret.”

“A secret?” he rolled his eyes. “Go away. I’m going to be famous because of this. Don’t blame me if you’re too stupid to take the chance make a famous discovery.”

“But the faeries!” Audrey exclaimed, eyes wide and angry. She turned to see that her mother was making her way over to them. “They’ll lock them up!”

“So?” Mike pushed Audrey again, causing her to sprawl into the dirt. “Go away.”

Audrey got up and brushes herself off angrily. “I’m warning you! I won’t let you hurt them!” she exclaimed.

He laughed. “What are you going to do? You’re just a stupid girl, you can’t do anything to stop me.”

Audrey’s eyes widened and she pulled her arm back, delivering a hard punch right in Michael’s smug smile… just as her mother exited the bank.

“And go right up to your room young lady. I can’t believe you did that! You do not solve your problems by fighting. Upstairs! Your father and I will discuss your punishment, but for now you’ll be upstairs for the rest of the night.” Needless to say, Audrey’s mother had not been happy about the fact that Audrey had punched Mike. She was standing there now, with towering anger, as Audrey meekly made her way up to her room.

Once she was up to her room she opened her window, trying to signal to her friends. She waved her arms wildly and even got out her flashlight and shone the light over the woods. Still, none of her friends arrived.

After a while Audrey just sat on her bed, her chin resting in her hands. What could she do? She was confined to her room and couldn’t go and warn her friends that humans would be coming after them. Bridie and Caelan and Siofra and all of her other friends would be locked up, put in a tiny box among all the experiments and would be poked and prodded and it was all her fault…

Tears in Audrey’s eyes, she finally fell back onto her bed and drifted into an uneasy sleep.

When she woke it was dark outside. With a glance at her clock, she saw that it was almost midnight. She felt a sudden inspiration, and opened her door a crack to look into her parents’ room. The light was off. She slipped out of her room and closed the door as quietly as possible. She lightly made her way down the stairs, carefully skipping the stair that creaked.

Audrey had never snuck out before, and while she was terrified she was also strangely excited. The only secret she’d ever kept from her parents was the fact that a group of faeries had formed a colony in their back woods, and they wouldn’t have believed her about that anyway. Finally, after what felt like forever, she was out of her back door and into the woods. She gulped when she realized that she hadn’t brought a flashlight, but she still did her best making her way through the woods. She’d been down this path so many times that she only tripped a bit.

“Caelan? Reenock? Sheefra? Tige?” she whispered as loudly as she could, as she attempted to be both quiet so that her parents wouldn’t hear her but loud so that the faeries would.

“Audrey?” the regal voice of Rionach came through the darkness, and suddenly there was a light where the Rionach made a light. “What are you doing out this late?”

“Earlier, there was this human boy, Mike, and then I went into town, and I saw him in town, and he said that he…” All of Audrey’s thoughts came out in jumbled, barely- distinguishable words.

“Shh, shh, slow down dear. Now start from the beginning.” Rionach’s voice was soothing.

“Earlier, while I was here,” Audrey was slower this time, “there was this boy, Mike, who saw us. I went after Mike, and he said that he’s going to tell people about you, that it’ll make him famous.” She stopped there, looking down at Rionach, wondering how someone so tiny could still look so much like a queen.

Rionach nodded. “Thank you for coming out and telling us, Audrey. We’ll have to leave, of course.”

Audrey looked down, trying to stop tears.

“Audrey,” Rionach said, flying up so that they were at eye level, “We will all miss you. You are a very special girl, never forget that.”

Audrey nodded, wiping away her tears. “Will I ever see you again? You and the others?”

“I don’t know,” Raionach said gently. “But Audrey, we will always be with you. And you have your own magic, inside you, though you don’t know yet how real it is. I promise you, this is not your last encounter with the Little Folk.” Rionach smiled sadly. “But we must get ready to go now. Go, back to your home, child. Go to sleep. We thank you for your help.”

Audrey’s eyes were blinded by tears, but it was so dark outside that it didn’t matter. She tripped and stumbled her way back to the house. She muted her tears while finding her way upstairs. She tripped on the stairs and caused a loud “THUMP!” For a moment she held her breath, praying that her parents hadn’t been woken up.

To her amazement, they hadn’t been. She got up carefully and slipped back into her room, crawling under the covers and doing her best to wipe away her tears.