A Fairy Tale

Once upon another time—one distant from the one you’re reading this from—little nine-year-old Kamchi stood outside an arboreal dell and wondered about fairies. Her teacher, Mr. Krumple had taught her class that fairies were real. He even showed them photographic proof. Two small English girls had taken several pictures of frolicking fairies back in the World War I days. Little Kamchi studied the pictures. They looked legitimate and she felt the thrill of  an important discovery. Mr. Krumple told their class that even Sherlock Holmes certified the authenticity of the photographs. He was a famous detective. One of the smartest men to ever solve mysteries. And since he believed in these magnificent, ethereal  creatures, so should we.

The fairies, Mr. Krumple said, lived in hidden places known as arboreal dells and they only appeared when summoned. And when you wanted to call them, you recited a spell.

Now, Little Kamchi lifted a folded piece of paper from her back pocket and opened it.

She spoke the magic words, “Al Gablam. Forthescam. Pongiet.” Her teacher had taught them all how to spell and pronounce the invocation. 

She stepped into the arboreal dell she’d found after almost two weeks of dogged exploration. She’d been unclear what exactly an arboreal dell looked like.

But this place was what she’d imagined it would be.

She sat on the grass embankment to wait for the fairies to appear.

A slight incline at the location made it seem like a grassy, elevated island in the middle of the dense forest. It was a calm, cozy place hugged by a perfect circle of leafy trees.

Little Kamchi sat in the grass. Dappled shadows projected around her from the sunlight shining through the soft filter of oak leaves, maple leaves and pine needles. Birds sang without alarm. It was the perfect place to find fairies. 

Little Kamchi’s naive excitement simmered and bubbled. She suddenly understood exactly how those British girls felt. The suspense was exquisite.

After an hour without any fairies appearing, she wondered if she should say the incantation again. Maybe they hadn’t heard her. She repeated the words with greater insistence,

“Al Gablam! Forthescam! Pongiet!”

After another hour passed with still no fairies, Little Kamchi reluctantly gave up and hiked home. She felt discouraged and disappointed. Why had Mr. Krumple lied to them? She began to have serious doubts about those two British girls and the unsceptical gullibility of Sherlock Holmes. What a dumb bunch of chumps.  

At school, before the first bell, she asked her schoolmates if they had tried Mr. Krumple’s fairy incantation. Nobody admitted to it. “Are you kidding?” said Jimmy Slotnik. “Nobody believes in that junk!”

“Did you?” Susan Wilkes asked her with a superior smirk.

“No. Of course not,” Little Kamchi lied. She didn’t want to appear foolish. How could she have been so irrational and gullible? Fairies. Pfft. As if.

She opened a textbook, relieved that no one would ever learn of her foolish attempt to summon  fairies at an arboreal dell. It was so silly and absurd and just plain dumb!

The bullying would have never ceased.

Meanwhile, back at the Arboreal Dell, Pretty Askatoon, the Queen of the fairies, addressed the crowd. “We had a close call yesterday,” she said. “That damn incantation has been getting around again. So the convocation voted and changed it last night.”

A smattering of tiny applause. Fairies applauded by fluttering their wings and fanning the air like humming birds. It sounded like the gentlest zephyr in the world.

“We decided it will now be, Ah, Bidiga. Florkenshine. Siphtoon. Blumph! If a human ever appears at the Arboreal Dell and recites that line, we must come out of hiding and present ourselves.”

Old Muckus raised his gray hand. 

Pretty Askatoon said, “Yes, Mr. Muckus?”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are we beholden to stupid nonsense words like that? Wouldn’t it make more sense, and keep us safer, if no incantation could summon us? I don’t see any point in revealing ourselves just because some dumb asshole starts speaking gibberish. It’s a tradition that endangers the whole damn colony. I don’t know why we have to keep our end of the bargain. That whole invocation deal never made any goddamn sense to me! I propose we do away with stupid magic words altogether!”

The crowd of fairies applauded, flapping their gossamer wings like minuscule fans of tissue paper. 

“Yeah!” affirmed Young Glumbody. “Why the hell do we even do that anyway? It never made any sense to me either!” 

“Yeah! We just wanna live in peace and avoid the stupid humans. Fuck magic words,” said Angry Ashden.

“Please, please!” beseeched Queen Pretty Askatoon, trying to restore calm.      

And the meeting descended into chaos. 

The Arboreal Dell jingled and tinkled with invisible, wisplike rancor, insults and infighting. 

Even the birds in the surrounding trees were no longer calm.  

Meanwhile, Little Kamchi turned her attention toward the facts of algebra.  She never returned to the arboreal dell. And she never confessed her foolish, embarrassing quest to find fairies. To anyone. Ever.