Fairies

By Amethyst Turner

Lovely creatures

Circle my arms

Like miniature stars

Beautiful things

Take over the sky

Like flames in the night

Gorgeous sights

Pierce my heart

Like points of a dart

Amazing visions

Fly above

And send their love

XXX

Amethyst couldn't feel her toes. Her fingers ached with cold and frost bit her nose like an ugly, rabid animal. She curled her legs into the body of her t shirt, but a chill still crept up the back of them, cruel and light as a spider.

She clenched her muscles tight, trying not to shake. Her insides seemed to be vibrating, something restless awake in her guts.

Across the room, she could just barely make out the outline of the lady, Owl, as her father called her, curled in on herself on the couch. She shook as well, a constant vibration, unstifled in her sleep.

Amethyst slipped off of her bed, giving a violent shiver as her feet touch the floor, wood that reminded her of dipping her toes in frigid water. She stepped onto the rug and placed her blanket back on the bed. Her entire body became consumed by a cocoon of cold, her tongue going numb in her mouth. She felt, suddenly, trapped on the island of the rug in the cold, dark room. Even if she screamed, no one would come.

XXX

Headache stabbed through her like a sharpened knife the moment she surfaced from the land of dreams. Melissa felt sick with it, dizzy and sweating like she really was losing blood. She started to sit up, but her hangover pushed her back into the pillow with a smug wag of its finger.

Trent had his body spread out all over the bed like he was a liquid that had been spilled on the mattress. Melissa could feel his leg hair on both of her knees. She watched his chest cave in and spring back forward like a balloon pressed in by a pair of fingers. He breathed steadily, shallowly, untroubled.

Melissa found herself thinking about Daniel, his voice asking, "Do you like him?" She touched his cheek, finding it rough to the touch like the bristles of a hairbrush. She thought about the recognition dawning in his eyes that day at the diner. She thought about how that first night, she had been too drunk to stand, yet he took her to bed.

"Yes," she said out loud. "I do." But a stifled voice hidden inside said, no, you don't.

XXX

When Owl awoke, she stopped breathing right away.

There she was, the so eagerly anticipated daughter of her lover. Amethyst Turner. Owl felt as thought she was in the midst of an imaginary creature, a fairy or a nymph. She let out her breath slowly, fearing that the child would wake when she felt the rapid beating of her heart.

She was soft as cotton, Owl realized, as if she was a little cloth doll. She had her hand resting on the girl's bare stomach, her legs wrapped around Amethyst's tiny ones. Her lips grazed the child's hair and her stomach was pressed against her back. She couldn't see the girl's face because her golden hair covered it like a veil.

How had she gotten here? Owl had fallen asleep alone and shivering.

Now, though, she was warm all over. How could such a little thing give her such an enormous heat? Owl could feel the girl's ribs on her thumb.

Now that she had the child, Owl never wanted to let her go. She wanted to keep her, raise her, take her away from this place that made her so thin and sickly and cold. A girl so soft and sweet deserved far, far more than this.

XXX

"Who's that?"

Stop asking me, Daniel wanted to snap. I'm not going to tell you. He had been drawing her in art class for close to a month now and yet, his classmates could not seem to contain their curiosity over who she was. It was Andy today, leering over him like a vulture circling a corpse.

"Answer me," Andy demanded. He was a big kid, tall enough to cast a terrifying shadow over his classmates on the playground, tall enough to make them answer him when he said answer me.

"Just someone," Daniel muttered. He went on drawing. In the back of his mind, he thought maybe Andy was like a wasp: if he just sat still and ignored him, he would go away.

Unfortunately, Andy was more persistent than a bug. "What's her name?" he demanded.

"I don't know."

"She's not in our class."

"I know."

"Then where's she from?"

"I think she's an angel, actually."

Andy burst into uproarious laughter.

Daniel felt a little wave of anger lap against the shore of his mind. Finally, he had admitted what had been on his mind since the beginning of the year, and what did he get? Laughed at, that was what. "She's real," he muttered under his breath.

"What, do you believe in fairies too? Ooh, does the wittle baby have monsters hiding under his bed?"

"Stop teasing me," Daniel whispered. He could feel his muscles getting tense, ready for a hit. Andy was known for punching, hard, and getting away with it by saying he was just playing around.

He was too late to stop it, though. Andy had already attracted a little cloud of classmates, small enough that the art teacher didn't notice, but large enough that Daniel's face went red when they looked at him.

"Fairy boy," said Andy. "That's what we're gonna call you. Little fairy boy, are you gonna cry? You gonna cry, fairy? You gonna cry now?"

Andy swept Daniel's paper off the table and onto the floor. He stomped on it, leaving a dirty shoe print across the girl's face. Then, as if deciding enough damage hadn't been done, he ripped the paper in half with his shoes and cackled with delight. Daniel slid off his stool.

"Fairy boy, are you gonna tell on me, fairy boy?"

"No," Daniel muttered. He went to the teacher and asked to go to the bathroom so he could cry without anyone laughing at him.

XXX

Richard couldn't believe how thin his daughter had become. When had she turned into such a sharp conglomeration of flesh and bone? Her body was full of sharp edges and startling points: the tips of her elbows, the bend of her knees. Richard tried not to look.

Amethyst hadn't spoken to him all night. She simply nodded and shook her head, shivering all the while. He felt consumed with pity looking at her, naked and quaking in the lukewarm water flowing from the tap. He sat down on the edge of the tub and gave her hair a quick ruffle. Her back arched as if she were a frightened cat. "You cold, Babe?" he asked.

She nodded and looked away from him. She pulled her thighs to her chest, wrapping her arms around her bony legs as if trying to leech the last bit of warmth from her fleshless body.

"Sorry," he said. "All the hot water's gone." Richard remembered how, when he was a little boy, his siblings and parents would always get to the bathroom and shower before him at night and when he finally got in the tub, the water would come out icy cold. He remembered how when he ran to his mother, almost crying with rage, she smiled at him and went to heat up a pot of water for him on the stove.

He supposed he could do that, but he wanted to get this done as quickly as possible. Plus, they didn't have pots.

So he watched her shiver while he scooped handfuls of water over her matted hair and dirty skin, scrubbing away the stains of fall and early winter. She shivered the entire time, refusing to unfold herself and allow him to clean the rest of her body. All he could get to was her hair, her back, and her arms.

After a minute or two, he gave up and began draining the tub. "Get up," he said. "Here, I'll get you a towel."

His daughter looked at him, pale lips pressed together.

"What?"

"Can you leave, please?" she whispered.

Richard felt a pang of . . . well, what was it? Not anger, certainly, not sadness or even betrayal. This hurt a little worse because it reverberated through him with hollow notes of guilt sounding in its wake. Regret. Regret that things hadn't gone the way they could have.

"No," Richard said. He took the fluffiest towel he could find and held it out to the girl. "Stand up and I'll dry you off."

She shook her head, the motion made frenzied by her shivering. She held her toes in her fingers, crouched over herself. "No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"I want to do it myself, please."

Richard could feel himself reaching his boiling point. "Get up," he demanded. "Get up! What are you doing? I said, get up!" He stood up and grabbed her by the wrists, forcing her body to uncurl from its cocoon, and lifted her onto the bathroom floor. She kicked her feet, squealing in protest. The moment he set her on the bathroom floor, she curled up again.

"Amethyst!" he snapped. "Why are you being like this? Just get up!"

He could hear her shallow little sobs rising. "I don't want you to touch me," she enunciated through her tears. "I want to do it myself."

Richard thought he might cry, too. He threw the towel into the crying mass of her and said, "Fine," before he left to find something to drink downstairs.

XXX

His fingers
They focus on her
Touches
He's Venus as a boy

He believes in a beauty
He's Venus as a boy

-Venus As A Boy by Bjork