Belisama

Jack walks back in the trailer with a little box of gentle blue; larger than your usual eggs, richer too, he says. Says hen's eggs are for any old farming domesticate no matter how freckled brown and soul-wholesome they look, but the duck egg is reserved for the true children of the wilderness. Magical dawn-blue shells. I remember hearing once that folks in the middle ages would smash up their eggshells to powder 'cause otherwise witches take them and sail away. Mighty small witches they got in those parts, I remember thinking, and then I remembered Baba Yaga; fierce initiator of the Slavs riding through wolfish pine-needle teeth in her mortar and figured witches can be any damn size they want.

'You want eggs, Boo?' Jack calls out real gentle 'cause Boo was deep in her colouring and you didn't want to disturb that beautiful bubble expanding around her head like a halo of blown glass. Strawberry field girl, smile like a new moon. Jars of meadow flowers all around her little altar of personal peace; arterial spray poppies and cornflowers and the dandelion heads ready to Cinderella into a thousand wishes at midnight.

I'm busy stitching up a sleeve torn up bad on barbed wire. Red and blue checked squares sacrificed to sweet corn we browned up on the grill, watching Boo while Jack is cooing china blue babies out of his feral harem by the pond. She don't need an eye on her all the time as such, but sometimes she breaks the chain of her long dreaming and lifts up her contradictory body to go dancing by the river, and Jack's blood goes cold every time because she can't swim and the river means she is in a sad place. Sometimes she is up a tree and he hums to himself gettin' his hands in the greening vegetable soil of their patch because his girl is making a nest up there; talking to birds he'll never know the names of. The sky means she's happy as a woman can be trapped in the changeling baby brain of an old car accident that scythed her mind away.

Even her hair is a dandelion. So soft and corn-blonde wispy, like a breath would blow it clean away from her skull in Rumpelstiltskin reels of spinning gold, leaving just that valley of indented flesh where they took the smoking pieces out. She wears white dresses stained at the hem with smudges of bleeding grass, and no other colour. Jack finds careless summer shifts at the thrift, shed like snakeskin by girls ripening into autumn and buys them for her, armfuls of calm, cloud white.

'These are some coin of the realm,' I say, my mouth still working at the yolk explosion, my mind on Boo and soft colours of duck egg and cotton worn thin by limbs tumbling in sunlight. The eggs are lavish protein and I listen to the weary cells of my morning body say grace. Hallelujah.

Jack places a plate of eggs by Boo, her wrist is a swan's neck nodding over the paper for all ages to colour in by number. He jerks his head towards the door and I follow him with thread dangling off my arm into a sun slipping off the noose of early morning; roaring off the sides of the trailer, frying the grasses dry. We sit by the ashes of the night's fire and Jack twists the heavy metal ring he forged himself for their wedding round and round his finger.

'She's a little funny about food right now, can't tolerate a lot, but she loves the eggs.'

I have some vision of Boo pushing away plates of anything that ain't white and yellow. Anything that isn't her pale tranquiliser or her lover in the sky. Belisama, Jack calls her now, the wife of some old Celtic sun god; the Fair Shining One. He breathes in and looks hard at the ground and I get one of those psychic little earthquakes in me like I'm a rat or dog about to flee the streets.

'Good for the baby, duck eggs,' he says.

I go dead-sand hourglass still, like the whole of my being has to be suspended for this telegram to be pressed into my hand. Suddenly I've got a black hole where my mouth used to be so I decide to see how much matter it sucks in.

'You think I'm sick, huh?'

I think of Boo, half-brained honey-sweet thing, swelling like one of her dandelion heads. I think of her transcendent nun's face, and the heft of Jack's body that two seconds ago was as dickless as some tonsured novice. Thought that was how they lived. Thought they lay together in their doll's house trailer like smooth peg dolls, if I thought about it at all.

'It wasn't...like how you're thinking.'

'You don't know what I'm thinking.' Twisting the red thread hanging from my sleeve over in my fingers like I'm plaiting a thin dribble of blood.

'No, I do, see, I know what anyone who sees her would be thinking. But it wasn't like that.' He picks up a half-burned stick, pokes the ashes. 'She'd come down from one of her trees, and she was singing. She pushed her dress up and smiled at me, and her face, Natty,' he looks up at me then and his eyes are wet watercolour hazel. 'Her face was like...like a star had fallen to earth. She was so happy.' He stares off toward the riverbank, where the sadness lived. 'So happy.'

'Baby?'

Behind us there is a vague angel, weightless in prairie cotton, and Jack rises from that circle of sour and dead fire and holds her 'cause Boo just wants to reassure herself there is one solid thing left her in the world. And then I know where the grey pieces of that surgical valley went; to the hands of a man who molded them like butter, heart-shaped.


Written by: Natty Mancini
Photograph by: Karen Zhu

Origins

Items confiscated from a Fairy-American arrested for fixed-gear biking under the influence of gluten-free alcohol. Jaemin Riley, The Disassociated Press

If you're not sure, think it silly, or are one of those individuals who's been rigorously tuned by scientific reason and deductive logic to dismiss those things which might be called “magic” or “mystic,” then this account may not be for you. But if you give me a chance, I may convince you that fairies do exist.

Our concept of fairies, like so many things deemed magical, has become warped and disfigured over time. The horrendous actions of fairies have been skewed by fiction writers of the past and present to conceal their true, fiendish nature. For example, Tinkaret, or Tinker Bell, the mad kidnapper of lost children; or Sióg na bhfiacla (original Gaelic), The Tooth Fairy, clepto connoisseur of human molars and bicuspids. These new characterizations were created primarily to ease the integration of dwarf folk into society after the great dwarf massacres of 1609, which is interesting because dwarves aren't necessarily magical and fairies aren't necessarily small. However, the kind portrayal has had more ill effects than good as many dwarves are forced to work demeaning holiday and birthday performance jobs. Recently, a resurgence in distrust and fear of the dwarfish folk has been fueled by Peter Dinklage's role in the television series “Game of Thrones.” Many dwarves have deemed his performance incredibly empowering. That will be the only mention of the series, hand to God.

Fairies, or “good people” as the Irish refer to them, originate from the Celtic Islands – Ireland primarily. The Irish call fairies the "good people" because they're absolutely terrified of pissing them off. Fairies are spiteful little monsters. According to Irish historical documents, fairies have been known to cripple, maim, and curse for the most insignificant of transgressions. They mock families who have lost infant children, they torture the elderly for watering their flowers too heavily, and they've even killed a few people. Fairies, the real ones, are no joke. Some believe that the confusingly adorable, sarcastic character of the Irish evolved from being forced to cope with the surreal circumstances of living every waking moment in fear of offending these action-figure-sized (though not necessarily) beings who exist beyond the realm of normal observation. Such a life would drive anyone to drink, and probably worse, but the Irish are a resilient and clever people.

In recent years, reports of fairy-caused chaos are scarce. Fairies have seemingly disappeared, and are known contemporarily as cute, miniature angels that make orphan dreams come true. Though, every so often you hear of an individual who has suffered stranger-than-fiction tragedies for no apparent reason - obvious fairy meddling (not debatable). According to some, the long time lack of fairy meddling is due to the majority of fairies attempting to assimilate into common society. I wouldn't claim to understand the how and why of it, but I suppose such is the nature of magic – unfathomable, and certainly unfalsifiable.

Before discussing fairy integration, some fairy characteristics:

C1. Fairies are extremely territorial. This includes music, culture, and geographical locations.

C2. Fairies enjoy mocking mortal culture, but one should never mock theirs - hypocrites.

C3. Fairies do not handle criticism well, i.e., “fairies are not wrong, ever.” - every fairy.

C4. Fairies dress funny. Funny hats, goofy shoes, fairies just look funny, which is why it is often difficult to take them seriously.


1958, Bobby Fischer wins the United States Chess Championship, and the robust melting pot that is the United States is beginning to find some semblance of harmony – a suitable environment for fairy integration ground zero. The first attempt, a child prodigy named Theodore Kaczynski, is accepted to Harvard at the age of 16. Ted excelled in the field of mathematics and would even go on to teach at the University of California, Berkeley. Ted, the first man-adapted fairy, was to be a success, but then things went terribly wrong. Like some inverted Frankensteinian experiment, Ted suddenly went rogue on society. Ted, or the "Unabomber" as he will be forever remembered, was eventually captured, and the inherent anti-social nature of fairies would eventually be numbed via better cultural acclimation programs, but the first fairy-humanity merging attempt was, by all accounts, a tremendous failure. Luckily, only a few people lost their lives. In response to these events, the Fairy Federal Emergency Management Agency (FFEMA), a secret sub-agency of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was created specifically to manage fairy-caused chaos. The agency consists of two middle-aged men who write a great deal of Tolkien fan fiction.

By the 1990's, fairies were starting to find their footing. The punk/grunge “scene” provided the perfect environment for new Fairy-American citizens to begin anew. Fairy-Americans found camaraderie and comfort in the new anti-establishment movement, and they've been here ever since.

Today, we know Fairy-Americans as Hipsters. Yep, that's where they came from, and all of that Kerouac, hip cat, jazzy bullshit had nothing to do with it. Are all hipsters assimilated magical creatures? Of course not. Some of them are just posers, or remnants from that great time in the 90's, but they all fit that fairy character mold pretty snugly. Though, if you're not sure if your company is fae or mortal, try the following: Abruptly interrupt the potential candidate dressed in a vintage care bear t-shirt, suspenders, lensless specs and a unicorn stickered fedora (C4) who is probably carrying most, if not all, of the items above, and is uninformatively discussing, a place/band/activity you've never heard of (C1) by asking, "What's so great about it?" When they mock you for not knowing, and begin their tired diatribe against mainstream culture (C2), calmly claim, "That is utter horse shit." Now, right before they snap back at you with rants concerning your ignorance and irrelevant allusions to works and authors they've read about on Wikipedia (C3), yell, "Fairies don't exist!" And slam your beverage down on a hard surface three times fast. They will either shrivel up and die, or wander off in a confused state of horror. Regardless, terrible conversation ended. Cheers.

Written by: Hunter Hirsch

Photograph by: Jaemin Riley