{"id":41,"date":"2011-05-18T19:48:32","date_gmt":"2011-05-18T19:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/?p=41"},"modified":"2023-11-04T15:06:32","modified_gmt":"2023-11-04T15:06:32","slug":"the-dirty-fairy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/?p=41","title":{"rendered":"The Dirty Fairy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

I chased my dreams in the woods behind the house. I would run for hours amongst the trees.<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

My mother said, \u201cI never should play with the fairies in the wood.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I asked her why, she said, \u201cThey drink.\u201d Her voice was a stone.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Daddy?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike Daddy,\u201d she said. Mother\u2019s voice fell into dark water.<\/p>\n

But all summer long, I chased my dreams in the woods behind the house. I would run for hours amongst the trees. Mother didn\u2019t notice; she was too busy looking after Daddy.<\/p>\n

Summer was almost over, and it seemed like my chance was gone. We had to move houses because there had been complaints. But on the last day I saw a gleam of light in the dark wood\u2019s shadows.<\/p>\n

I stalked the fairy so quietly. I know how to be very quiet. My teacher often said that I was the quietest girl in class.<\/p>\n

In one swift movement I caught my fairy. He wriggled in my hand.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t expecting a male fairy. In my head I\u2019d imagined a beautiful girl fairy with fluttering wings and a gossamer gown.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been looking for you for a long time. I want us to be friends,\u201d I said. I was determined to make the best of things.
\n
\nBut instead of listening to me, he started talking about something else. He wasn\u2019t interested in me at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could have been the King of the Fairies,\u201d he said. \u201cThat Ophelia. She thinks that I\u2019m not good enough for her. But I know things. I should have been her king.\u201d<\/p>\n

I doubted that, his clothes were in rags and he looked half-starved.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing is that they never really give me a chance.\u201d His tiny hands punched the air. \u201cThey don\u2019t like me.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stoked his tangled hair gently. His eyes focussed on me. \u201cI really love you, you know. I wish you\u2019d been a changeling. I would have done things differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then the fairy began to cry. I could smell the sweet smell of mead upon his breath.<\/p>\n

The thing about fairies is that they are very small; I could hold him so easily in my hand.<\/p>\n

The fairy started to sing. His tiny voice scratched into my head.<\/p>\n

I held him very tightly in my hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey, be careful. Don\u2019t hurt me.\u201d He looked a bit worried. \u201cLet me go. I can give you fairy wishes. I can make all of your dreams come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

He couldn\u2019t escape. I squeezed tighter and tighter, until, at last, he lay still in my hand.<\/p>\n

I let him fall from my hand and he slid into the leaves on the ground.<\/p>\n

I went inside to help Mother finish packing.<\/p>\n

I was glad. He was a dirty fairy.<\/p>\n

Originally published in Everyday Weirdness (2009)<\/em><\/p>\n

Deborah lives in London with her partner,Chris, and her two lovely, yet distracting, young children. Her fiction has appeared in Nature’s Futures,<\/em> Cosmos <\/em>and Odyssey<\/em>. She blogs at Deborah Walker’s Bibliography<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I chased my dreams in the woods behind the house. I would run for hours amongst the trees. My mother said, \u201cI never should play with the fairies in the wood.\u201d When I asked her why, she said, \u201cThey drink.\u201d Her voice was a stone. \u201cLike Daddy?\u201d I asked. \u201cLike Daddy,\u201d she said. Mother\u2019s voice …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,3],"tags":[1340,1337],"class_list":["post-41","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-fiction","tag-fantasy","tag-fiction","entry entry-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139737,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/139737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloredlens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}