Serial Saturday: "Fairies Under Glass" Part 8

Part 8

"Fairy Dust"

"What the heck?" Lewis gasped, as the figure morphed into the glowing ball of light again and hovered in front of him. He scrambled to his feet, never taking his eyes off the luminous orb as he followed it back to his desk. The light came to rest on the glass pane next to the bucket of dust. As soon as it touched down, the glow faded and Lewis could see clearly that it was the same figure he'd just freed from the staples--and now he could definitely see the iridescent wings sprouting from her shoulders.
She shied away from him, peering over her shoulder and pulling her skirt close around her legs. Soft brown curls draped down her back, and he could see the merest tips of pointed ear lobes sticking out from among the glossy cascade.

In this manner, they stared at one another, blinking in shocked silence. Lewis opened his mouth to speak, but the only word that came out was a hoarse, "How?"

She turned to face him when he placed his hands on the desk. She still shrank back defensively, but Lewis did his best to make sure his movements weren't too aggressive or threatening in any way.
At last, she stepped forward, and he could see her mouth moving, but the most he heard was more of those tiny chiming sounds.

Lewis shook his head. "Great," he muttered, "my once-in-a-lifetime encounter with an actual living fairy, and I can't even understand the language!"

The fairy tried again, but when Lewis didn't respond as he should have, he watched as she turne away to study the thimble-sized pail of dust.

The fairy scurried across the glass pane to get to the pail, and when she picked it up, her wings fluttered and lifted her into the air. Lewis was prepared for the sudden brightness, so he could watch her hovering around his hand, rather than shying away from the light.

He watched the slow circles she traced over the back of his palm as she didn't land, but just kept circling like a helicopter in a holding pattern. Anticipating her meaning, Lewis turned his hand palm-up. The fairy landed immediately, her small feet dancing on his skin.

Without much ceremony or preamble, the fairy poured out the contents of the bucket onto Lewis' palm. He stared, mystified, at the modest-sized heap of glittering dust. She "chimed" at him again, going through a pantomime of grabbing large handfuls of the dust and letting it dribble down the sides of her face.

Lewis squinted. She seemed adamant about showing him her ears, but the granules of dust were more like rough marbles or fine gravel in her hands.

"I don't get it," he grumbled, mostly to himself. "What are you trying to tell me?"

On a whim, he moistened a fingertip and picked up some of the dust. Sure enough, the fairy expressed delight at the action. She began clapping and flickering her wings and pointing to Lewis and miming something like dipping her finger into her hand and putting it into her ears.

Lewis, still puzzled, copied the motion, swiping the dust from his finger onto the skin just on the edge of his ear canal. The fairy calmed somewhat, and the tinkling sound started up again--but this time, Lewis noticed that there was something different about the tone. It sounded lower, and carried a more speech-like cadence to it. He picked up more dust and swiped the other ear as well.

That's when things changed completely.

Ring-jingle-tinkle-"--waiting for you to understand me."

Lewis flinched backward in surprise as the jangling of bells morphed into a delicate, airy voice speaking words he could understand!
"Whoa!" he gasped.

The fairy stopped at once and launched upward, fluttering her wings intermittently so they weren't constantly glowing. "Wait! You understood that!" she cried. "It worked! Oh, wonderful day! You know, I hadn't ever tried it, I could never be sure It would work--but it has! You have no idea what a relief this is!" The fairy alighted onto his desk and began pacing as she continued to chatter.

"All right, that means there's hope for all the others, then! You'll help me rescue them, and then maybe we can all return home again!" She stopped and squinted up at him. "What do we call you, anyway?"

Lewis wagged his head at the tiny, babbling figure. "My name is Lewis," he said. "What's yours?"

The fairy didn't respond directly, but frowned and stamped her foot on the desk. "Oh, fiddle-ferns! That's no good; you might be able to understand me now, but I still can't understand you."

Lewis met the fairy's gaze and gave a shrug. What else could they use to communicate? His eye fell on a few loose pieces of paper and a pencil at the side of his desk. He pointed, and when the fairy stared back at him in blank confusion, Lewis grabbed the pencil and wrote his name in plain block letters.

The fairy let out a long-suffering sigh. "Ugh, talking isn't the only problem," she said. "Don't you get it? We don't speak the same language! The same way the sounds of my natural voice are incomprehensible to you, these marks you just made?" she walked over to the paper and stomped across the letters. "They mean nothing to me. The only reason you can even understand what I'm saying right now as if it were your own language is because you have fairy dust in your ears."

Lewis stuck out his lower lip and huffed a harried sigh toward his forehead. He didn't need so much attitude from someone who stood all of six inches tall! "Guess it's my turn to pantomime," he muttered to himself.

Lewis pointed to the pile of dust, and then to the fairy.

She gave a soft chuckle. "Oh, you mean, why don't I just put dust in my ears, so we can talk to one another in our own languages and still be able to understand one another?" she shook her head. "Yeah, it doesn't work like that. The dust is intended for non-fairykind. To us, it's just... dust," she bobbed her small head.

Lewis pinched his lips into a frustrated scowl and eyed the innocuous substance cradled in his palm. If putting it on his ears enabled him to hear the fairy's language as his own, then would putting it on his tongue allow him to speak it?

At the same time the idea occurred to Lewis, he heard the fairy remark, "Or maybe, if the dust worked on your ears, then it might work if you were to put it in your mouth, wouldn't it?'" She tilted her head back to look up at him with a pensive expression. "What do you think?"

Lewis examined the dust. Applying it to his skin was one thing--but actually ingesting it? Another matter entirely! Was it only for topical use? Would it poison him if he got even a little on his tongue? Would it permanently alter his ability to speak at all?
"Only one way to find out," he mumbled under his breath. He daubed a bit on his fingertip and bravely licked it off.

The dust's texture vanished almost immediately, leaving the surface of his mouth feeling pleasantly soft and numb, as if everything had been blanketed in soft velvet.

Lewis swallowed a little and shrugged. "Not ba--awkh!"

The moment he uttered a sound, pain like nothing he'd ever experienced seized his entire tongue, paralyzing it like a lump of stiff, lifeless meat in his mouth. Lewis coughed, gagged, and actually began choking on his own tongue as the insides of his cheeks, the back of his throat, and even his lips tingled--but in the painful, pins-and-needles way.

The frantic yammering of the fairy as he raced for the drinking glass he kept beside the bathroom sink sure didn't help, either.

"Are you okay?" she asked, "Or are you dying? You're dying, aren't you; me and my dumb ideas, he's gone along with it and now he's dying! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Oooh, the human is dying and it's all my fault! How was I supposed to know the dust would be toxic to humans? I've never even met one before the Hunter came along! I'm so sorry! I'm sorry! Please don't die, please--"

"Fine!" rasped Lewis, having regained the use of his tongue after a couple glasses of water. "I'm fine! He choked. "I'm--not--dying!"

"Oh, thank the skies!" Sighed the fairy. "You really had me going! For a moment there, I thought you were--" She stopped mid-sentence and her wings glowed brighter than ever as she zipped across the room to hover in front of his face.

"Wait!" She trilled. "I understood you!"

Lewis could see the elation on her face as she took off on crazy loops all around the room in celebration.

"It worked! The dust actually worked! I'm talking to a human--and he can talk to me! Oh, I am just the smartest fairy ever! How infinitely clever of me!"

Lewis took one more sip of water and wiped his mouth the back of his hand. "For your information, the whole fairy dust on the tongue idea was as much mine as it was yours, you just didn't know it."

She made a rude-sounding noise and came to rest on the desk again. "Whatever the case, I think we should start a fresh discussion from the beginning, now that we can understand one another." She came to the edge of the surface and bent in solemn dignity. "Hello, valiant human, my name is Ashwyn, and I am in your debt."

Lewis sank into his chair, feeling the fatigue of the day setting in worse than ever. "I'm Lewis," he said. "Nice to meet you, Ashwyn."

"Likewise," Ashwyn answered. "Now tell me, Lewis--how do you plan on going about rescuing the others?"

Lewis frowned as Ashwyn walked over to sit on the edge of the thick picture frame. "Others?" he asked.

Ashwyn nodded. "The exhibit where you found me is entirely made of living creatures such as myself, captured by that horrible Hunter!" She folded her hands around her shoulders and shuddered.

"Mr. Schlimme?" Lewis prompted, even as the blinking digital clock on his bedside table reminded him that the longer he kept talking to his new friend, the less sleep he would have before the long day of classes tomorrow.

Ashwyn fingered the folds of her skirt. "I don't know his name. I meant it earlier when I said I'd never spoken to a human before. We just called him The Hunter or The Captor, because he never came to us without potions or traps and tricks we'd never even heard of, to incapacitate and capture us and keep us at his mercy. Please, Lewis," she begged, rising to her feet and crossing the desk to throw herself against his arm, "Will you help us escape, so we can return to our rightful home?"

Lewis looked down at the pitiful face: the wide eyes, the delicate features, the touch of her soft hands--
He groaned and rubbed his face. "Look," he huffed, "it's late and I'm really tired, and I've got classes in the morning tomorrow, so I need sleep! Can we discuss a rescue tomorrow?"

Ashwyn folded her arms and flickered her wings. She bent over to pick up a stray staple, holding it in both her hands. "I just hate to think of all my friends unable to move or breathe fresh air like I am." She inhaled and exhaled deeply to illustrate her point; Lewis even thought he detected a hint of pitiful trembles, as if she were just on the verge of crying. "But if you insist..." Ashwyn trailed off and looked slowly up at him.

Lewis was already digging his pajamas from the small pile of clothes accumulating on the floor of the closet. "I do insist, unfortunately," he admitted as he moved toward the bathroom to brush his teeth. "Make yourself a bed, you can sleep here if you like."

"Thank you!" Ashwyn called after him.

By the time Lewis emerged from the bathroom, Ashwyn had swiped one of his tee shirts and wadded it up in a nest-like fashion. Lewis paused to examine this small, lithe person.

Could he do it? Could he save them all at once? How many would he be able to rescue before Mr. Sclimme (or his weird bodyguard Adolf) noticed? Probably not very many--and then what? Where did these creatures come from, and why had it taken them so long to even conceive of going back? How did one expect to get them there, anyhow?

Lewis forced his eyes shut as his head hit the pillow. Just worry about one thing at a time, he thought as he drifted off to sleep.

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