Faeries

• Penelope Burfitt, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2008

The faeries were wild that night, Sara could feel it. She could often feel things like that, but when she mentioned it to her Mother she would only brushed her away with a ‘Really Sara, at your age!’ or in company she gave a nervous tinkly laugh, said ‘What children come up with these day’s!’ and hurriedly poured the tea, attempting to pass over the matter with a few well chosen words. Until recently Sara had never understood it, other girls of 7 could talk of faeries, and ,although she knew that what they talked of and what she talked of were different things, she was not sure her Mother understood that and so was puzzled that any talk of faeries was hushed up. Her Mother’s excuse always seemed to be the same, ‘you're too old for make-believe!’ Sara knew this, and was puzzled her mother should bring it up. Sara never make-believed! It seemed it was just one of her Mother’s strange mannerisms, like continually flattering big fat old ladies at tea parties, who really, when all was said and done, had nothing about them that deserved flattering. She had once heard Aunt Deride say that mother was trying to ‘move up the ladder’ even though Sara had never seen her Mother climb a ladder in her life. Anyway whatever ladder it was Sara was sure she didn’t want anything to do with it if it made mother act so oddly, especially now that Sara herself was so sick.
That night she knew they were calling her; she could hardly resist hopping out of bed immediately and running to the garden to go and dance with them as she so loved to, yet she lay there determined to stay where she was to please Mother.
Suddenly, a realization hit her with such force that she sat bolt upright; As Mother was changing so was she forcing Sara to change! To hush up any sign’s of abnormality that was part of her. To make her the perfect upper-class child! Suddenly she wanted to escape, to escape the pretense and false laughter, to escape the expensive doctors and spooky medicine bottles that lined her wall, to escape any hint of society, and just dance with her friends until it all the problems washed away and she was left her REAL mother. The smiling, laughing, lady in washed out dresses and crazy sunbonnets, who always believed her no matter what. She was so weary of it.
Yet as she slipped out of bed she glanced up hoping against hope that she would see Mother besides her bed, watching over her as she used to, but the room was bare, nothing watched over her except the empty medicine bottles.
As she slipped out of her bed she could not suppress a joyful cry at being able to dance with her tiny friends forever. But still she wished that someone other than the bottles and God could have been with her as she left.