Dust and Wings

The guilds were having an emergency meeting.

Edith Picklethwaite, 10th Field Fairy of the Tooth collector guild had had her wings stolen. This placed the entire fairy empire in a precarious position. “Order, order,” cried Chancellor Maben of the Dust-maker guild, “we need to move quickly and we won’t get anywhere with all this gabbing about.”

The din of collective voices faded to a respectful silence. In attendance were the chancellors of each of the 8 guilds, Edith, the victim of the crime, and two commanders from the royal guard. Chancellor Maben resumed her questioning, “How exactly did this happen Edith?” Of chief concern for her was the technology in the wing pack, which might reveal how the fairy dust powered not just fairy wings, but all of their magical contraptions.

“A barn owl, Grandmother, swooped me as I was doing my rounds it did,” Edith answered.

A murmuration of gasps and wheezes rumbled throughout the great hall. Owls, while predators, had made a pact with Fairies more than 700 years ago to cease hunting the Fae, and they had benefitted from this arrangement with inner tree heating and a regular supply of nesting material ever since. Why would they possibly have cause to attack the Fae now?

Chancellor Bittoven of the Light-weavers continued, “Think very carefully Edith, was this owl after you, or the wings?”

The room was silent, all Fairies in attendance listening carefully for Edith’s answer. For centuries, creatures of the Fae world had revered Fairies above all others, granting them dominion over the realm – in part because they were the only kind of Fae that had the power of flight. This power was seen as holy, an extraordinary gift from the Great Weaving. If the lower classes knew that Fairy wings were mechanical and contrived, the whole empire could erupt.

Edith’s brow creased. It was quite an effort for Edith to think too much and she wasn’t too keen on reliving the details of that night. She did remember that she had almost finished her shift. She had been to five houses already that night and was on her last job when it had happened. That job took her to Pickle street, which was Pixie occupied territory – so she was on alert to trouble from below, but hadn’t imagined she would be surprised from above.

After retrieving her tooth, she had launched herself out into the crisp night air to head for home. Two seconds later she was on the ground. A large force had come at her from above, she heard a snip, and all of a sudden she was falling. As she bounced off the soft grass below, and picked her aching body off the ground she caught sight of an owl curling away into the night - a glimmer of wings in its talons.

Think Edith, think…. What was different about this owl?

“The owl had a harness,” she cried. A rumble of concern rolled its way across the council

“Are you absolutely sure,” asked Chancellor Maben quietly.

Edith took a deep breath, “yes.”

More gasps and whispers bubbled over, as that could surely only mean one thing. Pixies. The grimy, tinkering, bird-loving scavengers of the Fae world, and source of constant rebellion in the Fairy realm had discovered the Fairy’s biggest secret.

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If Darcy had any choice in the annual family holiday, it would never, ever, be in a tent. And yet, every year, despite her protests, the family made the same old trip to Mystic river campgrounds.

Camping.

Perhaps more than anything in the world, Darcy hated camping. It was hot, full of flies, and there was no escaping the dirt - which her cousins traipsed into their flimsy shelter at least 8 times a day. It wouldn’t be so bad if Darcy could just find somewhere quiet to read a book, but she was constantly interrupted from her favourite pastime by aforementioned younger cousins who found sitting still more difficult than tying their shoelaces.

So today, Darcy had decided to wear her cousins out by taking them on a walk up river to Little falls. The trek was a 5km round trip up a winding trail and Darcy hoped that this adventure would give her a much quieter afternoon when they got back. By the time they hit the halfway mark, she was sure she had made the right decision as Billie, the youngest cousin sat down in the middle of the path, moaning about the heat.

“C’mon Billie, you’re the one that wanted to see the falls,” Darcy said.

“It’s too far,” he whimpered. “And I’m boiling.”

“Well I’m happy to go for a dip anywhere,” said Victor the oldest, who was two years younger than Darcy.

Darcy looked around. The quicker she could wear them out, the quicker she could get back to her book. She could hear the babble of water coursing somewhere. “Well, what if we go off the path and head down the hill? I think the waters close.”

“I don’t want to walk anymore,” said Macy, the middle cousin. “I’ll just sit here and wait. If you find water, come back and get me.”

Then she promptly sat down on a log next to the path. Darcy felt unsure about splitting up, but Macy was a stubborn kid and Darcy knew she wouldn’t be moved.

“Ok Victor, you stay with Macy. Me and Billie will go down and find the stream, and come back up to get you.”

There was the sound of fluttering above them, and Darcy looked up to see an Owl watching from a branch. That’s odd, she thought, given it was the middle of the day. The Owl blinked. As Victor moaned, Billie took off into the bushes. Darcy quickly followed. Within a minute she heard a ‘woohoo’ and a loud splash, and knew that Billie had found water. As she scrambled over an embankment she found the five year old playing around in the shallows. It looked safe enough, so she turned to head back and bumped straight into Victor.

“Uhh, where’s Macy?” Darcy asked in a huff.

“Still up there,” Victor said, moving past her and peeling his shirt off.

“I heard Billie shouting so I came straight down.”

Darcy rolled her eyes and headed back up the hill to get Macy, but when she reached the path, Macy was gone. At first Darcy wasn’t worried – perhaps she had turned back? So she walked a little way down the path to take a look. No Macy. Darcy had been no more than 2 minutes, and Macy couldn’t have gotten far in that time. She called out, expecting to hear a response. Silence crept through the forest. No birdsong, no cicada’s chirping, and no Macy. Darcy had a sinking feeling.

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Eoffyx yawned and kicked himself out of the sock he slept in. He really didn’t want to get up this evening, given all the noise of the human house during the day. But work was work and he had some new tinkering to do that might help the clan with the cat problem in their current house. He rolled off the slipper he used as a bed and made his way to the workshop, grabbing a grape to nibble at along the way. He could hear several muffled voices coming from the workshop, and wondered what all the hubbub was about. As he rounded the corner, he quickly realised. Halfway up the room in the middle of the space, was a pair of fluttering Fairy wings. No Fairy, just the wings. The glimmering objects strained against a rope that secured them to a bench below. Eoffyx was stunned, and hurried to find out the cause of such a wonder in the workshop.

“Bathelwyx, what have you done, what am I looking at here?”

“You, my good friend, are looking at a set of Fairy wings, properties of the Tooth collector guild - without the Fairy of course, ” Bathelwyx answered.

Eoffyx was mesmerised, unable to take his eyes off the fluttering objects, as they moved from one corner of the room to the other. Then his stomach lurched as the realisation hit him.

“Oh no, you’ve murdered a fairy haven’t you! Are you insane, what have you done, they’ll destroy us now, for sure.” While Bathelwyx was the first in command at Pickle street, he wasn’t very good at managing his temper around Fairies. Had he finally flipped?

“Calm down ole mate, we hasn’t murdered anything. Them wings are completely mechanical – see.”

Bathelwyx drew on the rope to bring the fluttering wings down, then reached into the hard middle casing of the wings and pressed something. The wings stopped their rapid beating at once and dropped to the floor.

“M, m, mechanical? They can’t be, how, what, how did you even know?” Eoffyx asked.

Bathelwyx laughed. “Funny story that. I wouldn’t have believed it meself if I hadn’t seen what I dids the other night. Me and the boys were down at the canals having a drink we was, chit-chatting we was, all quiet like, when we saw a Tooth Fairy zip past. Nose in the air all high and mighty like, takes no notice of us. Not the most coordinated for her kind I must say. She didn’t see us at all down there on the docks, but we saw her … flew straight into a street sign she did, fell down in a heap and what do you know, her wings fell off! Imagine me surprise at that eh.”

“W – what did you do,” asked Eoffyx.

“Well at first we didn’t know what to do,” Bathelwyx replied. “So shocked we was, at what we were seeing – so we hid and watched as she picked herself up. We thought she’d broken them clean off her back, but then she put the wings back on, just likes them human backypacks we sees children with, and flew off again. It was hard to make sense of it first, what had just happened, but then we realised them wings weren’t natural. They was made. Can you imagine, all this time … well, we knew this was giant big news, so we went straights to Shorty and made a plan.”

Eoffyx grimaced. Shorty was one of the chief traders in Pixie territory and was not exactly the kind of Pixie you wanted to mess with. Eoffyx ran his hands over one of the wings. It looked and felt just like a dragonfly wing. It was difficult to believe it was crafted – but there, in the middle of the gleaming, translucent masterpiece, was a well-hidden device. A device of some complexity, by the looks, with a translucent harness attached … perhaps made of the same material as the wings.

Eoffyx had a sinking feeling. This WAS big news, because it meant the Fairies had been deceiving the rest of the Fae world for centuries. Fairies were revered as sacred, as royalty, and as such enjoyed the best of what the realm offered - while Pixies, Elves and other Fae wallowed in the leftovers they ‘generously’ discarded. And much of this was down to their ‘gift of flight.’

“Shorty didn’t just get us the wings,” Bathelwyx said confidently. “We figured out what runs ‘em, and we’s got some of that too.”

“What runs them?” Eoffyx asked absently.

“Teeth,” Bathelwyx replied.

Eoffyx just continued staring at the wings in a daze .

“Children’s teeth – or rather, the imagination stored in them from children – are you listening Eoffyx?”

“Hmmm, children.”

“So we got one.”

“Got one what?”

“We gots a child.”

Eoffyx’ eyes widened, and he was suddenly back in the room. “A human child,” he asked.

“Yes, just a young thing with a wiggly tooth. We checked. We’ll extract it this afternoon.”

Eoffyx was livid now. “You can’t be serious, humans will come searching! Dealing with Fairies is one thing, Bathelwyx, but humans, humans would destroy our whole world if they knew”

“But Shorty says…”

“Shorty hasn’t seen what they do,” Eoffyx cried.

“Where is it, where’s the child?”

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“We can’t just storm into Pixie territory,” General Fife exclaimed to the council of guilds. “We need to at least look like we have a valid excuse!”

“Well what then? Time is of the essence and we need those wings back,” remarked Chancellor Pontifern of the Magic and Mechanics guild.

“We also need to make the Pixies look bad - untrustworthy, so no-one believes them if they make this public,” said Chancellor Maben.

“What if they attacked us,” said General Fife.

“Attacked us? Well they will be attacking us shortly if we don’t get those wings back won’t they?” Said Chancellor Maben.

“No, no, I mean we STAGE a Pixie attack,” said General Fife. He stood up slowly and walked around the great table, hands drawn behind his back. “On the palace I think,” he nodded to himself. “It might do a little damage but that can be repaired, unlike our status if this gets out. Yes, I’ll use one of our operatives, rough him up a little and have his wings taken off so he looks like a Pixie.”

“We look nothing like pixies,” huffed Chancellor Pontifern.

General Fife raised his very full eyebrows at Pontifern, “A little dirt and some rags and you’d be surprised. Yes, he can create a harmless explosion at the entrance of the palace, we can arrest him then and there – no one will be any the wiser. Without wings, and a few cosmetic changes, everyone will automatically assume he’s a Pixie.”

The Chancellors looked at each other.

“Cast your lots,” said Chancellor Woodclove.

The guild representatives voted.

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The sound of giggling echoed through the forest.

“Again, again,” squealed Macy.

“In a minute,” puffed Daffyx, a Pixie from the Pickle street clan.

He and a fellow engineer Grex had been given the role of caring for the child, and it was exhausting. They’d tried singing, chess, pin the tail on the Pixie and all manner of entertainment, but this kid wanted dancing. Daffyx felt like he’d been skipping and twirling for the last six hours. He was done.

“It’s your turn,” he said to Grex, who was lying on the ground in a sweaty heap.

Grex lifted an arm, and let it flop to the ground again. “I can’t do no more,” she moaned. “I just can’ts.”

Daffyx looked at the sky. It was a little harder to tell the time in this forest world, but he could tell they’d been here for at least a day now, and evening was starting to creep in.

“How’s about we has some dinner aye,” he said to the child. “And then we can all turn in for the night.”

Macy was suddenly quiet, taking in her surroundings.

“Where’s my Mum?” she asked. “Where’s Darcy? I want my Mum.”

Daffyx and Grex looked at each other, as Macy started to cry. Grex peeled herself off the grass, stood up, and started to dance. Daffyx started to gather what was needed for a fire.

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It had been two days, and there was no sign of Macy despite an exhaustive search. Darcy couldn’t make sense of any of it, and the guilt, the sorrow pooling in her chest, knowing that she was responsible put her in a constant state of panic.

The search party had moved on from the site of the disappearance, but today Darcy had come back - to see if there was anything, anything at all, that might help. The site had been well trampled from the search party. Little was left of how things had looked before, save for some crushed grass and a handful of shrubs. ‘If I were Macy, what would I be doing up here while I waited?’ Darcy thought.

Macy was a brave little thing. She wasn’t scared easily, and would’ve felt completely comfortable up here on her own. She wouldn’t have wandered off deliberately either. It was far more likely that she had followed a trail of ants along the path, or tried to catch a squirrel up a tree. Darcy looked up. And old gnarled Oak sat on the edge of the path, its branches at least 10 feet up. Macy couldn’t have climbed that – but there was some movement in the foliage. Darcy squinted in the sunlight that refracted through the leaves and saw the silhouette of an Owl. Was it the same Owl, in the daylight? Again?

“Hello,” said a small voice coming from the Owl. “I know you’re looking for a child … I, I, want to help, but I need to know you won’t hurt me.”

Darcy’s heart lurched upwards. No, I’m hallucinating she thought. She shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and then slowly opened them again. But the Owl was still there, and to make matters worse, a tiny face was peeping out from behind it.

“Can you understand me, I mean, I’ve studied your tongue, but I’m not proficient by any means,” the face said.

Darcy just stared. Definitely. Hallucinating.

There was a very long pause as the two took each other in - and then, with a big sigh, the figure started to ramble.

“Ok, here’s what you need to know, I’m real, I know where the child is and we have no time to waste, lets go.”

The Owl took flight, with the small figure sitting aloft and flew to the next tree, 20 metres away. Darcy took a deep breath, and then stepped out to follow. What else could she do?

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“They’re storming the village,” Bynx cried as she ran into the workshop.

Bathelwyx was already prepared. He knew that the morning announcement of a Pixie attack on the palace would be a fine excuse for the Royal guard to enter Pixie territory. Shorty had expected as much too and had already sent instructions. The Royal guard would enter every home and workshop today - but Pixies knew a few things that fairies did not, and that included some exceptional hiding places.

“Let them come in,” he said loudly, for the benefit of the intruders. “We’ve got nothing to hide.”

He had a stern look on his face but was smiling on the inside. Pixies had several talents that Fairies hadn’t bothered to learn about, one of which was their ability to pass through the Weaving. Pixies had two places in the fabric of their world where they could unstitch the Weaving, and pass through into other worlds. Usually, they used these places as a way to hide contraband goods from the Fairy guard. Today, these places were used to hide the wings, and the child they had borrowed. The guard would never find either.

Bathelwyx was hoping the child had lost its tooth by now though. If they could make the dust to power that contraption, it could change everything. But Eoffyx was right. It was far too dangerous to keep the child. Fae enchantments would only keep humans away for so long and history had shown what humans would do if the Fae were discovered. There were few houses Pixies camped out in that had children in them – children tended to take more notice of things than adults, so it was risky – but maybe, if the Pixies were patient, they would find a tooth before too long, before things escalated further.

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“Wait,” Darcy puffed as she scrambled through the brush. “You’re going too fast for me.”

The Owl was perched on a branch ahead and the figure seemed to dismount.

“It’s ok, we’re just about there.”

“There, where’s there, and why do you know where Macy is, and who are you, and why am I following you and who took Macy!”

“Ohhhh, kkkkk. I uhhhh, think its time we had a break and I uuhhh explain things as best I can,” the figure answered.

“Yes," Darcy whimpered, her mind going in a million directions at once.

The figure spoke to the Owl in a strange tongue, filled with the sounds of clicks and whistles, and then scrambled down the tree to face her.

“Sooooo, my name is Eoffyx,” said the small creature, standing a safe distance from Darcy’s feet. “I am a Pixie from the Pickle street precinct. 2nd Engineer under Bathelwyx the 8th.”

Darcy just looked at him blankly.

“Right, aaah, so my team, or some members of my team, ahhhh, borrowed your human child, well, more like, took the child on an adventure aaah, under the completely misguided illusion that said child would share her loose tooth…. With… Them,” Eoffyx cringed. Yes, that sounded perfectly reasonable.

“Teeth, I don’t understand, her baby teeth?” Darcy said.

“Uuuh, yes, you see…."

Eoffyx launched into a long and laborious story about the first tribes of the Fae, how the Fairies were given the gift of flight by the Weaving, how they had claimed supreme power with this story, and how this had recently been discovered to be a huge deception, what the wings actually were, and that his team of tinkerers were now were on a mission to create their own wings and usurp the fairy’s powerful hold on the realm, bringing equality to all Fae kind. Except, maybe Trolls.

“The mechanism is powered by teeth?!” Darcy asked incredulously.

Of everything she had just heard, that had to be the weirdest.

“No, no, not teeth exactly, it’s the imagination stored in the teeth … children have very powerful imaginations, and that power is stored in your teeth, and it’s that power that gets extracted and made into fairy dust – we all knew about fairy dust, just not the wings you see and….”

“So Tooth fairies are real?”

“Well, yes of course.”

“And they have appointed themselves the authority because of these pseudo-wings?”

Eoffyx sighed, “unfortunately, yes. I do hope that makes sense, I mean it doesn’t excuse ahhh, borrowing the child, which is why I’m taking you to her, I didn’t know they had taken…”

“No, it doesn’t excuse it,” said Darcy. “I’m just relieved she’s safe.”

“Completely,” replied Eoffyx. He took a deep breath. “And its time for you to take her home. You won’t believe what you see, but just follow.”

Eoffyx walked up to a tree with markings carved into the base. He ran his fingers down the gnarled bark until he seemed to find something – a thread of some kind. Slowly he pulled what looked like a crochet hook out of a pocket and started picking away at a line of bark, clicking and whistling at the same time. Then all of a sudden, he pulled the bark apart, as if it were fabric, and stepped straight through it. Darcy blinked, looked up at the owl, and then at the tree again.

“I won’t believe what I see, he says,” Darcy grumbled. “A pixie flying on an owl is fine, but now I won’t believe things.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. As she did, a tiny hand reached out of the gnarled bark and pulled her through.

On the other side of the Weaving, Darcy was in the same forest, but the light was slightly different, dimmer, tinged with a soft orange hue. It was evening here. About ten metres ahead of her was a ring of small stones, and perched on top of one of those stones, giggling and playing with two very exhausted looking Pixies, was Macy.

Darcy‘s feet barely touched the ground as she rushed towards her cousin, and the Pixie duo scuttled away like bowling pins as she pushed past. “Macy!” Darcy gave her cousin a big squeeze.

“You’re squishing my dinner,” Macy mumbled into Darcy’s shoulder.

“Oh, at least they fed you then”

“Oh yeah, you wouldn’t believe all the yummy stuff they make here, and the silly games they play, which we’ll have to try at camp, and did you know they speak to all the birds, and that the trees tell them things, and that they live in the walls of human houses and make things from our stuff?”

Darcy let Macy ramble on for another ten minutes as they made their way back to the tree. Eoffyx watched her and Macy reconnect as he briefed Daffyx and Grex on the next steps.

“You two can head back to Pickle street and report in. Bathelwyx understands what has to happen next, but he’ll need to know the child got away safely so that he can stop with distracting the guard.”

Grex and Daffyx just listened with glazed over eyes.

“And then you two can go to bed.”

The two instantly perked up, and gathered their belongings. Eoffyx walked over to the tree, and pulled apart the bark for Darcy and Macy.

“I’m sorry, for the trouble we’ve caused,” he said quietly. “Perhaps our troop can make it up to you in the future?”

Darcy nodded, and listened intently as Eoffyx gave her instructions for the way back.

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Having passed through the Weaving for a second time, Darcy and Macy were back in their own world again. All they had to do was follow the Owl back to the trail. Darcy followed diligently, and Macy trailed behind, continuing her ramblings about her recent adventures. Darcy half-listened as she walked, until Macy coughed, and then went silent.

Darcy whipped around to find Macy looking down at something in her hand. Her loose tooth had finally come free, now, on her way home. Darcy felt around in her pockets, and pulled out a five-dollar note.

“What’s the going rate for teeth these days, “ she asked Macy.

“Two bucks,” Macy grinned proudly, showing off her fresh gap.

“I’ll give you a fiver for it.”

“Deal.”

The two made the exchange and Darcy beckoned for the Owl to come down. As it perched on a stump, Darcy tucked the tooth into a seam of the harness.

“Take this to Eoffyx,” she whispered.

The Owl flew off into the forest, and the two girls slowly trudged back down the trail.