The Fairy Must Die by Maia Cornish

That fairy must die. She has fluttered her last wing, sprinkled her last dust, hidden in the bushes for the last time. I’ve made my mind up, that fairy must go.

She’s been nothing but trouble, ever since I first discovered her. I was younger then, just out of nursery school, and thought she was cute. But when she brought her relatives to my garden, the trouble began.

First, she brought her old uncle with his crooked wings. He clattered against the greenhouse windows, rattled around in a plant pot, and fell into the pond where the toad almost had him for dinner. I waded into the mucky water, but my socks filled up with slime and duckweed, and mum dunked me in the bath when she got hold of me. She blamed dad for not watching “your precious Stephanie” as she called me when she was angry, and he blamed mum for not keeping the kitchen door shut. I’d never heard them argue so badly before.

At first, I thought it was my fault, but when the arguments got worse, I realized it was the fairy to blame. I tried to tell mum and dad about her but neither of them believed me. Mum thought that fairies were sweet, magical creatures wearing flowers in their hair and with rainbows in their wings, but they’re not. Oh yeah, they might look like that in books, but by the time I was eight, I’d seen through it all. The arguments got worse every time that fairy came.

Over the years she’d brought her brothers and sisters, cousins, grandparents, friends, and neighbors, and it was always the same story. Like the time she brought her teenage nieces. I knew they were up to no good as soon as I saw them swinging on the poppy heads, giggling and whispering. When they found one that rattled, they shook out the seeds and gorged on them until they were so giddy they couldn’t fly. That interfering fairy came to rescue them, with a horde of fairy friends, hiding them beneath the garage eaves until they sobered up enough to go home.

OK, I’ll admit it looked like fun and I shook a seed pod into my hand to lick up tiny black seeds but after I’d gobbled down six or seven handfuls, I felt dizzy too and dad had to carry me to bed. I lay as still as I could to stop the room spinning and listened to him and mum arguing. They were yelling and throwing things, and when mum came to check on me, she forgot to turn off the light. Dad came in later to switch it off and I just lay still until he’d gone. He was carrying a pillow and rug, so I guessed he would sleep on the sofa again that night.

I learned the word ‘thug’ when the fairy brought her young cousins and left them to play. That’s when I noticed the dark side of fairy life. I watched as they pulled the petals out of a dandelion and started play fighting. At first, the boy cousin danced around the girl, jabbing at her with his yellow sword while she flew into the air and tumbled about above his head. Before long though she broke a thorn off the rosebush and threw it at him like a javelin. It stuck in his knee and he howled, which made her laugh a lot, and she went for another thorn. He dived into the pond and filled a bluebell flower with water and threw it at her. It just got worse from then onwards. Soggy flowers, broken stalks, trampled seedlings.

I knew trouble would follow. Sure enough, when mum saw the garden, she said nothing, but that was even worse than her screaming and shouting. I hate it when mum goes quiet like that, and so did dad. He tried to cook dinner that night, clattering pots and pans around, as if there was nothing wrong. He even opened a bottle of wine and poured mum a glass, but she just pushed it away and turned up the TV. Dad sat in the kitchen on his own and finished the bottle.

By the time it was my birthday things had got bad. The fairy would bring someone to our garden and no matter how cute or funny they seemed to begin with it always ended up going wrong. Mum barely spoke to dad anymore. He didn’t come home the night the fairy left her grandfather in the garden and he dug up all the seedlings mum had been growing into lettuce. We didn’t even have dinner that night. Mum drank all the wine by herself and dad still wasn’t home when I put myself to bed.

The last straw was when she brought her neighbors over. They headed straight for the cobwebs strung over the kitchen window and started knitting. Before long they’d made a net and hung it over the kitchen door, so Mum got it tangled in her hair as she came out to hang the laundry on the line. She freaked out, screaming, and thrashing around, trying to get the cobwebs out of her hair. Those fairies even made her cry!

Now it’s gone too far, and I’ve got a jam jar ready to trap the fairy. Mum will know what to do with it. I’d ask Dad but he isn’t here anymore. He’s moved out and lives in a block of flats with no garden. No fairies to cause trouble. No wonder he looks happy again. Mum says she will get him back though. She’s tidied the garden, cooked a special dinner, and asked me to be on my best behavior. I can’t risk anything going wrong. I miss my dad too much and want him home.

So that’s it. The fairy must die. Maybe then we’ll have one of those happily ever after endings I keep reading about in fairy stories.

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Maia Cornish, following her Celtic roots, has travelled to every continent apart from Antarctica (yet). Her short stories and poems have been inspired by the people she’s met along the way. Maia is a lover of all things weird and wonderful, and puns. You can follow her work at https://maiacornish.wordpress.com/