Matilda the Stone Fairy

My name is Matilda, and I used to be a fairy. A long time ago my people were many. We were small, beautiful, full of magic, and generally good people. But not all of us were good. Not all of us were fairies. Some of us changed when we became angry. It took a lot of anger for it to happen, but if we became angry enough a fairy would transform into an ugly raging giant. We called these fairies witches.

Our people had a queen. She was queen over all the fairies in the world. It was her wish to redeem the lost. These witches used to be our sisters after all. Killing them would be inhumane as would abandoning them to the wilderness to suffer in their rage. So scouts were chosen each year to hunt them down, and when I came of age I was one of the chosen. I was fast and nimble which was important for the hunt. But most important of all was my gift in magic. Magical power was crucial for casting the redeeming spell that turned a witch back into a fairy.

My best friend and scouting partner was Luanna. We had grown up together and were trained to hunt witches as a team. She was faster than me and good at flushing them out. She would drive them toward me with her battle cry, and I would use my magical talents to do the rest.

But the witches were clever. They lived in the caves in the hills. They knew that inside the stone they were safe from us. Because inside the stone, cut off from the celestial lights, a fairy lost her strength. So it was only during the day, when the witches came down into the forest to gather ingredients for their spells, that we could hunt them.

One day Luanna and I came upon a witch bent down next to a stream catching frogs along the water's edge. It was strange to see one alone like this as they usually travelled in pairs. One would gather while the other served as a lookout. I tried to warn Luanna, but she was always so headstrong. I saw a smile form on her lips. I wanted to call out a warning, but I didn't want to give away our position either. She took off and began to circle around. She was going to drive the witch toward me. It was a trap we had set many times before, but this time we were the prey.

When Luanna gave her battle cry the witch stood, but she did not run. Then the forest filled with the cackling laughter of a hundred witches. In either hand the hag held a stone. She was not hunting for frogs. She was preparing a spell. We were surrounded. When Luanna heard the laughter and saw the witch was not fleeing she stopped in midair. The fear I saw in her eyes, the same fear I felt in my heart, froze us both for a moment. That moment was all it took for the witch to complete her spell. When she slammed the rocks together in her hands, stone erupted from the earth and encased my friend in a rocky tomb.

I cannot describe the anger this murder put in me. I can only measure it by what I did to avenge her death. There were in our world other dark creatures, much darker than witches. The darkest of all was the phantasm, an undead remnant of an evil creature. These creatures were not natural and could not be redeemed. Their touch was deadly, and they killed without warning. They were the only creatures our queen allowed us to kill. The only way to kill a phantasm was to send it into the heart of the sun. We did this with a spell, one I had practiced many times. When the witch with the stones turned to kill me as she had Luanna, she saw my eyes glow with a violent light. I had become a singularity, a portal into the heart of the sun. Out of control in my rage everything in the valley was consumed by my spell, and that day thousands died in the sun.

On that day I changed. My fairy wings shattered. I grew to become a giant like the witches. My guilt overwhelmed me, and I became afraid. I ran to the caves and hid in the darkness, certain that when the queen heard of my sins she would send an army to kill me.

In the caves I was alone. The other witches heard what I had done and were afraid to be near me. My only companion was the darkness. I could feel its power flowing into me, and I wanted to get closer to it. So I climbed deeper into the earth. The deeper I went the safer I felt from the queen and her armies. I went far deeper than any fairy could survive. Still I wanted to find the source of this power. I wanted to escape my loneliness. I travelled down until I found the bottom, the great hall. It was filled with ancient witches' bones baked by the heat of the earth. Here I went insane.

I could not tell if it was years or decades or even centuries that I sat in the great hall blanketed in darkness. I was alone, but I gave voices to the skulls I found on the floor. The skulls became my friends, and they warned me of the queen's coming wrath. They told me the fairies had found a way to survive inside the caves without the celestial lights. They were hunting for me now, and I believed them. I started hearing scouts calling through the caverns. It was only a matter of time before they would find me. I would have to strike first, the skulls told me. All this time in the dark had made me very powerful. I could easily destroy the queen before she destroyed me.

So I listened to the skulls, I followed their advice, and I killed the queen. I emerged from the caves one night. It was a night when the sky was filled with clouds. The clouds blocked out the celestial lights making fairy magic weak. I made my way to the queen's tree and called out to her. When she emerged I struck two stones together, casting the spell that had killed my friend Luanna.

Without a queen the earth's magic was thrown out of balance, and all the dark magic I had stored within made me seem all powerful. Still I feared the other fairies. I feared they would come to avenge their fallen queen. The only way to protect myself was to destroy them all. So I went back to my cave and called down a rain of stones. For seven days it rained until all living things on earth were buried in the rubble.

I stayed in my cave for many days after the storm. No fairy armies came to punish me. Even the witches who had lived there before were gone. The loneliness tearing at my heart sent me down into the great hall again hoping to speak with the skulls. But the skulls said nothing to me. I reached out to the darkness, but it was no longer there. The power was gone. The room was cold. All was quiet.

So I left my cave and wandered the valleys. They were hardly recognizable now under the undulating piles of stone. But I walked. And as I walked I forgot. And as I forgot, my fear began to leave me. It took centuries, but eventually my insanity left with my fear. And with my insanity gone I began to long for the world I had lost.

One day as I wandered across the stones I came to a familiar valley. It was the valley where I was born. All fairies are born from trees, and I knew from the shape of the land exactly where my mother tree stood. So I went there, wanting to see her again. I used my bare hands to dig back the stones. It took many months, but eventually I uncovered her and found that my storm spell had turned her into stone as well. I looked at her for many days after the work was done, my memories of childhood welling up inside me. I saw everything I had lost and everything I had thrown away. I wanted to apologize, but my mother couldn't hear me anymore. So I fell against her trunk and wept. And for the first time in a thousand years I fell asleep.

When I awoke the next day I found something amazing had happened. The place on my mother's trunk where I slept had turned to wood. Wherever I touched the stone on her body she turned to wood. I climbed up into her branches and made my way toward the door of my house. I wanted to look inside. And the closer I got to the opening the smaller I got. I began to shrink. I became smaller and smaller until I reached the doorway and was small enough to enter.

The inside of my house was empty. There was nothing left here from my memories. There was however something new, something I didn't remember. There was an impression in the wall shaped like the inside of a mask. It was my face. The eyes were cut out. They were black holes. When I put my face into the impression and looked through the eyes I saw another world. It was your modern world. I was looking into a little girl's bedroom, a little girl who reminded me of Luanna.

Luanna spoke to me from the other side of the mask. She knew my name. I would speak back, but she could not hear me. Still I talked to her anyway. It took away my loneliness. Often she spoke about her mother. She was adopted, and her mother did not treat her well. She was told to stay in her room. Her meals were brought to her door. She wasn't allowed to go outside and play after school. Her mother called her mean names and never held her. The more I learned of this woman the more obvious it became to me that Luanna had been adopted by a witch. I wanted to hate her mother. I wanted to destroy her. But all I had to do was take my face away from the mask to see what my anger had done to my world. If I could help Luanna would I do this to her world as well?

The answer came one evening as Luanna was asleep. I kept my face pressed inside the mask watching her, afraid for her. Many evenings I had done this, worried by the sounds I heard outside her door. There were curses and angry laughter. Sometimes things would shatter. A glass would be broken, or a piece of furniture would be hurled against a wall. Then the witch would stumble and fall, and there would be more angry cursing. This night the hag found the door to Luanna's room and threw it open. She began hurling insults at the girl who awoke with a fright. Luanna huddled up in the corner of the bed next to me, but her mother grabbed at her feet and began dragging her from the bed. She cried out my name. And when she did the prison I was trapped in released me, and I was there in the room with them.

"Let go of Luanna, witch," I said, and the old hag froze in fear.

Luanna scurried over to me.

"What are you doing in my house?" the woman asked, staggering towards me. She slurred her words as she spoke. "And who are you to call me a witch? You don't know me. You don't know what I've been through."

"If you are a witch," I said, "this will show us." And I cast the redemption spell. The hag shrank with a squeal that turned into a squeak. It had worked. My spell had turned her into a fairy.

Luanna was amazed and pulled at my hand. "Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm Matilda," I replied.

"You don't look like her."

How did she know what I looked like, I wondered. Then I saw the small stone statue on the nightstand next to her bed. It was the queen. She had been turned to stone. She had been my prison. At her feet was an engraving of my name. I had not destroyed the world. The night I thought I killed her, I had walked into her trap. The queen had sacrificed herself to save the earth from me and the darkness I brought out of the depths. It was the only way she knew how to redeem me.

"What have you done to me?" the fairy asked.

"I turned you back into a fairy. Probably the only one left in the world," I replied. "You have been cruel to Luanna, but you have a chance to redeem yourself now. I doubt you were the only witch on earth."

The fairy began to weep. "But what about my daughter?"

"What is your name?" I asked.

"Brenda," the fairy replied.

"Brenda, I doubt I will ever be a fairy again," I said. "So I will make sure no harm comes to her. You go out and redeem our sisters. I will care for her."

And that is what we did. I raised Luanna as my daughter, while Brenda brought the fairies back to the world.

THE END