Thank you for hosting Give Me, A Fairy Tale at Mad Moose Mama today! Here is the prologue to Piccadilly Woo, a short story from the world of Give Me. I hope your readers enjoy this Halloween fairy story.
**We're VERY pleased to have you here LK~!!**
Donall James Cade Bausiney, Lord Tintagos, seventeen years old on his next birthday, pulled back his bedclothes and sat up, holding his breath, listening. Moonlight streamed through the open window of his room at Faeview, bright enough to go abroad tonight without a lantern. Bright enough to illuminate his mantel clock.
A quarter hour before midnight.
There it was again. Faint, but most definitely not borne of his imagination. Coarse laughter and the sound of pipes. Likely villagers from Tintagos, come up the hill to catch a glimpse of fairies on this All Hallow’s Eve. Donall crossed to the window, but there was no sign of anyone.
He’d gone to the nursery earlier to see the girls and listen to Nanny’s fairy story, as he had every year of his life that he could remember. Now that he was almost a man, he might beg off the annual ritual. But he wouldn’t disappoint his little sisters.
Ann would cry, and Victoria would give him that superior judgmental stare which cut to the heart, deserved or not. It was far more pleasant to join in the fun and produce the little presents he’d saved for them. Candies for Ann, a book for Victoria, and the length of blue ribbon for Nanny which he’d bought while away at school and kept in secret store for this very night.
It was Faeview tradition, and he meant to keep it. Someday when he was Lord Dumnos, he’d listen as his own son crept down the hall to delight his younger siblings with a so-called surprise Mischief Night visit to the nursery, and they would all listen to Nanny’s tale of the Dumnos war between the fairies and the wyrders.
Wait! There it was again. The revelry wasn’t coming from the grounds below the house. It was above him. Were they drinking, to be so recklessly loud?
Everyone knew that the servants went up to the roof on clear nights, even in winter. It was against house rules, but so long as they were circumspect the family pretended not to know.
“If they keep quiet enough that I can deny all knowledge of it, let them have this pleasure,” the earl had once said when Mr. Trenam, the butler, reported the infraction. “It does no harm and feeds their souls.”
It was the first time Donall had considered the needs of servants’ souls. He’d felt his own consciousness expand at the idea, and his opinion of his father had risen considerably. He put on his robe and slippers and walked softly to the back stairs at the end of the hall. He’d go up to the roof and warn them all to just be a little quieter so as not to wake the earl and countess.
He smiled as his hand brushed against the holy bread in his pocket. Nanny had made the cakes herself, square dry lumps of flour and water with salt crossed on the top – guaranteed to keep the devil and his disciples away on this most dangerous of nights.
When he opened the roof door, his fist clenched around the cake, crushing it into crumbs in his pocket. Those were no servants singing and dancing under the stars.
Those were fairies, he was sure of it.
They looked human, but their faces were painted in bizarre fashion. Their foreheads and eyes were purple, and their noses and mouths pale green. Their mouths, male and female, were as red as actresses’ on Regent Street. Donall saw no wings, but he knew in his heart what they were.
Two girl fairies danced together, spinning wildly, their feet barely touching ground. They laughed – cackled, really. Most unladylike. It sent a thrill through Donall’s body as he ducked and peered out from behind a gable wall.
“Aubrey, dance with us!” said one of the lady fairies.
“My pleasure, Poppy.” A man took both their hands and joined in. His hair was light as straw in the moonlight and stuck out at all angles, as if he never brushed it.
“Be quiet!” said another man fairy, a larger one with long and thick dark hair that put Donall in the mind of pictures he’d seen of American Indians. “We shouldn’t be here at all!”
“You’re not the king yet, Dandelion,” said Poppy. She moved to him so fast, Donall didn’t know how she did it. “Come, dance with me!”
Donall leaned out to get a better look and lost his balance. He fell over and cried out as he smashed his knee.
“Fly away!” Poppy said.
“Fly, everyone!” Aubrey joined in.
Donall hear the flutter of giant wings, though he saw none. He ran to the center of the roof where the fairies had been dancing, but they’d all leapt over the side of the roof.
At his feet something gleamed in the moonlight, and he picked it up. A cup made of blown glass.
“Ah!”
Donall looked up. The long-haired fairy, Dandelion, hung in the air, just beyond the roof’s edge, his eyes wide with rage. Donall hugged the glass cup close to his chest. The desire and anguish in the fairy’s expression only made Donall cling with more resolve.
The fairy pointed a finger at Donall and chanted:
“If this cup should fall or crack,
Bausiney’s End will meet its lack.”
And then he was gone.
The next morning, Donall showed the cup to his father. Lord Dumnos respected the old magic. He named the cup Bausiney’s Abundance and had a special glass case built for its protection. Once many years later Donall thought he heard his mother say that the earl had consulted a wyrding woman to get a spell to keep fairies away from Faeview.
But that couldn’t be right. Everyone knew there were no longer any wyrders in Dumnos.
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