Rain's Fairy Tale - Chapter One

                                          RAIN'S FAIRY TALE



                                                  The Call

         The large rotary phone on the on the kitchen counter jingled loudly to life.
         “That’s eight.”
         “Eight what?” A small voice returned.
         “Times the phone rang.”
         The little girl sprawled on the bare living room floor, wondered if her uncle's phone always rang so much. It had been silent the evening before when she had arrived at the ancient farmhouse and had remained so until just before dawn. She bobbed her head from side to side flipping her ponytail to the tune she hummed as she finished the picture she had traced, cut, and pieced back together.
         “Hey Uncle Terry, what’s this one?
         The picture was of a symbol in an old book, hand written in gibberish. Though she hadn't a clue what it meant, she loved it for its swirls and seemingly random placement of dots. It was far more interesting than the straight uniformity of the letters and numbers she was forced to write at school. She found printing the standard alphabet even more boring since writing it otherwise was now punishable.
           She loved her own style so much that her father had been called to conference on the subject the year before, the teacher warning that she would be retained if she insisted on adding curls and loops to everything she wrote. When that led to her writing in an entirely made up writing system, the principal was called in. She couldn't understand why everyone made such a big deal over how every little thing was done or why it was so important that her printing be exactly like everyone else’s. It was readable.
         “Huh? Shh, uh, I’m on the phone.” She listened and waited for the one-sided conversation to end, impatiently thumping the backs of her feet on the cushion next to him. He moved to the doorway and lowered his voice.
          “Yeah but I can’t now. I got my niece here.”
          The cord pulled tight, threatening to rip from the wall as he ducked into his room and closed the door. The irresistible possibility of a juicy secret drew her silently across the smooth planked floor in his direction. 
          “I know… I am… I just….”
         Something small and light thumped against the other side of the door.
         “What am I gonna do, take her out there with me? Even if I could she… all right. Soon’s I can.”          An exasperated sigh and a groan followed the clunk of the receiver being dropped into its cradle.
         “What am I gonna do?”
         Straining in the silence, ear against the bedroom door, she imagined him sitting, face cradled in hands as he often did when upset, and waited excitedly for the next clue. She loved a good mystery.
         The bed creaked, and the little girl slid back to her puzzle before the heavy boot steps reached the door. He walked slowly, hesitantly back into the room.
         Back on her belly, she kept her face down, thumbing through the book and swinging her feet in the air as if she hadn't moved. He lowered himself into a squeaky chair across the room and sat silently. She looked up when the feeling of being watched didn’t pass.
         “Uh…” His eyes darted over the floor. “Can you keep a secret Angel?”
         “Sure.” She answered in her most responsible grown up voice. He said my name. He never says my name.
         He hesitated, still searching.
         “I’m a really good secret keeper, I keep ‘em all locked up in a vault in my head like Scrooge McDuck, and nobody gets in and I never tell.”                    
         “This is a really big one… I’m just not sure….”
         “That’s okay. I have all kinds; little ones, medium ones, and big giant ones.” She spread her hands as wide as they would stretch. “I won’t even tell God.”
         His hesitation knotted her stomach. She coveted and treasured secrets above all else, even the smallest was worth more than the entire contents of any candy shop. The brightest of gems were the ones painstakingly kept by adults. His whispering and dodginess told her the mine she was about to inherit would put the Seven Dwarves to shame.
         He studied her face for what seemed like a lifetime, and then suddenly sprang to his feet.
         “Okay, um…” He turned in a circle looking around. “Where’s my hat?”
         “Behind the door.” She answered automatically, looking toward the doorway she’d just been eavesdropping from.
         He looked accusingly at her and headed for the room.
Outside, he fired up the rusty old farm truck and gave her one last look.          
         “You’re sure?”
         “Yep!”
         “Okay then.”
         She kept her face turned to the window to hide the triumphant Cheshire Cat grin as they hurried down the long straight stretch of rural highway that cut through endless fields of corn. The rickety truck slowed only to pass through his small hometown and stopped at the far end of the farmers market. Angel sat as instructed, peeling and unpeeling her legs from the cracked vinyl seat.
          He spoke quietly to a grain and feed merchant as they filled the truck bed with large burlap bags. It had never occurred to her in the city that burlap bags were used for anything other than sack races at school. She rolled her eyes wondering if this was the big secret. At last, he shook the man’s hand and left without paying.
         They drove on silently past miles of hay fields toward the mountains. She squirmed in the springy seat kicking her dangling feet and trying not to hum the song stuck in her head anymore. Angel’s patience held just until they left paved road.
         “What’s in the bags?” The words gushed from the wide-eyed little girl, as curiosity now demanded center stage.
         “Supplies.” He smiled and glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, clearly expecting the outburst.
         “For who?”
         “That’s the secret.” Her uncle said, raising a mysterious eyebrow in her direction.
         He explained to her as they went that there were many different kinds of people in the world. “Regular” people like them who live in apartments and houses with things like electricity and cars. People who drive to stores and buy things with money. Some carrying their own set of beliefs, some believing in nothing, and others not knowing what they believe.
         “The world is full of anger and violence and few people in it know that they're ever safe.”
         He told her about native tribes in the jungles of Africa and South America, living hidden away where change and modernism couldn’t reach them.
         “Their traditions and way of life is passed down unchanged. They live free in their secret world. In nature where people belong.”
          He told her about monks, the Amish, and hippy communes.
         “Then there are others; secret groups of people no one knows about. They live here,” He gestured to the forest around them. “Safely tucked away, believing things the world wouldn’t understand. That makes it dangerous for them. They don’t want to live in unsafe places where people kill, do drugs, steal from each other, and believe in nothing. Do you understand?”
         She thought over all he had said and decided it mostly made sense.
         “Yeah. We’re going to see them aren’t we?”
         He nodded with a now anxious glance, before his tone turned gravely serious.
         “You can never say a word. Not a hint of a secret… or someone might find them. They’ve been hidden away longer than anyone knows. Moving from place to place when people get too close. They were found once and almost all destroyed. Some survived; took their sacred books and split up. They went in different directions and started over. There’s a group here that came with a family before this was even a state. They claimed enough land to be sure they’d stay hidden and they’re still here helping each other.”
         Deeply immersed in the story, Angel caught herself holding her breath when she attempted to speak. She loved stories, the wilder and stranger the better. Most anything involving oddity captured her attention intensely. Angel let out the breath and sucked in another as quickly as possible before releasing her next question.
         “How?”
         He chuckled at her reaction and dropped a white knuckled hand drop from the wheel as some of the tension gripping him seemed to dissipate.
         “Well, they help each other build houses, they help him farm his land, he gets them supplies they need and mail from the other groups.”

         She fell asleep sometime after gravel gave way to a rutty dirt pathway, and woke to the baying of six large hounds. They were being tied to the roof support on the porch of a cabin by a gritty old man. His face deeply lined and weather-beaten, reminded her of a pair of chaps she’d seen once in a museum. They had been needlessly labeled “authentic” and she recalled thinking they looked as though they had been worn by the first cowboy ever to ride and passed thereon to every generation since. By the time they were retired, the leather was cracked and worn to nothing in some areas. The history stated that they had been last worn by a, “most unfortunate man” who “didn’t make it” through a record-breaking snowstorm.
         That’s this guy for sure.
         “He’s a little rough around the edges… doesn’t see many people up here.” Her uncle assured her as she slid out. “But he’s a good guy. You can trust him. Now go on in and meet his girls if they‘re around.”
         Overhearing the last part, the old man grumbled. “They’ll be out back by the crick.” He nodded toward the back left side of the run down structure.
         Whoa what a freak. I bet this guy never leaves his house. Hope we don’t gotta stay here, the roof's gonna fall on us!
         Angel was careful to keep a distance from the decaying building as she wove her way through a thick labyrinth of blackberries bushes that encircled the sides and back of the building. Nearing the end of the simple maze, she wondered why they wouldn’t just mow them down. When the sounds of voices and splashing drifted to her ears, she ducked behind a mass of thorny brush and crept slowly forward, imagining what kind of family a man like that could have. They could be people eaters!
She found three young girls within a few years of her own age with sunbaked skin under thin cotton dresses. Purple wildflowers were woven through their long unkempt hair. If not for the mud caked up to their knees, she might have mistaken the gracefully moving girls for fairies.          They laughed and spoke quickly in a mix broken of English and a seemingly complex and unfamiliar language. She watched their mouths form sounds she had never heard, trying to place the accent. It was hopeless, even being from a city full of different languages, it sounded to her like a mix of all languages and some she wasn’t entirely sure were human sounds.
         “Who we spyin’?” A small voice whispered in her ear.
          Startled, Angel lost her balance and tumbled over. Gawking as one of the small fairy like girls, almost undetectable in knee-high grass, stood to nearly her own height.
         “How’d you do that?”
         “I can fit anywhere,” The girl told her proudly. “And I can sneak anywhere. Dad says I was a ferret before.” She was thin and every bit as wild looking as her sisters.
         “Wanna pick berries with us?”
         “Um yeah I guess.”
         Angel followed her around the other side of the brush and joined the others.
         “So how come you’re here?” The girl asked as they joined her sisters.
         She jumped again when the answer came from behind. “Came with Uncle Terry.” The group had been snuck up on by an older version of the other four.
         “How many of you are there?”
         Looking around uneasily, she expected an army of the clones to materialize.
         “Just us five.”
         The fifth appeared to be the eldest. Apart from size, there was not a distinguishing characteristic among them. All had the same tangle of wavy sun-bleached hair, angular features, and eyes as green and reflective as light shining through emeralds. Their simple dresses were all varying shades of red, with ties on each side that held the skirts up just above the knee.
         “Wait,” She lifted a hand in confusion, sure she would have remembered hearing about these cousins. “Uncle Terry?”
         “Yeah, everyone that comes out here’s Uncle Somethin’. Hardly anybody does, but they’re all Uncle Somethin’s.” One of the girls explained.
         “What does that make me then?” She asked uncertainly, hoping the answer would mean acceptance.
         “What’cher name?”
         “Angel.”
         “Where have I heard that before?” The youngest asked the others.
         Oh no. She braced herself for the inevitable teasing that would follow.
         “It’s the one with the one god.” They began answering. 
         “Like people with wings.” Another explained.
         “Christianity.” Informed the eldest.
         Angel turned and began walking quickly away. It was enough to endure the jokes at school with the kids she had grown up with, but coming from strangers was more than an eight year old can take. Her mind instantly flooded with memories of schoolyard teasing. She could hear the voices of the cruel kids in her ears as if she were surrounded.
         Where’s your wings Angel? Why don’t you fly away and see your dead mom Angel? If you were an angel God wouldn’t have killed your mom. You’re not an angel, angels are pretty. You’re an ogre!
         Even in a city ripe with diversity, she had been alienated. Between the jealousy of her father’s success and her social awkwardness, she had always been an outsider among her peers. With the sudden realization that even hermit children were no different than the hateful lot of the city, Angel, as always, wanted to hide. She felt stupid for thinking they could have liked her. No one had ever liked her.
         “Hey, where ya goin’?” They called after her almost in unison.
         She shook her head and kept moving, head down, as she had done countless times before in situations like this. Angel had learned early on that self-defense only led to physical confrontation. Don’t stop. Don’t cry. Crying was a sign of weakness. One she would never give in to.
         The youngest grabbed her hand in both of hers and yanked her to a stop. Angel tensed and shut her eyes tight against whatever was to come next. When nothing happened she opened the tentatively.
         “Wanna help us with our chores?” They stood smiling as though Angel hadn’t moved at all. “We gotta pick berries and fill up the grain barrels.” She smiled looking down and wiggling her mud-caked toes. Something in the earthiness of the girls eased her tension, though she was careful to keep her guard up. Things were rarely what they seemed. “We kinda forgot about the berries when we got to the crick.”
         “Anyways,” Interrupted the eldest. “I’m Ena,” Pointing a finger at her sisters in order from the just smaller than herself to the youngest, “This is Tatsna, Imber, Sane, and Lilla.”
         “We got a brother and three sisters too.” Added the sneaky one.
The way they took turns speaking reminded her of twins finishing each other’s sentences, and though they were identical in looks and a couple of them couldn't  have been much more than a year apart, none of them could have been the exact same age.
          “They went away to the others.”
         “The others?” She thought of aliens and remembering the looks of their father, considered human sacrifice.
         “Yeah, didn’t Uncle Terry tell you about the others?”
         “Yeah, kinda.”
         She remembered her uncle’s story about the group separating and settling in different places. Are these the people he was talking about? They’re weird but they’re not jungle people.
         They passed the afternoon filling baskets with a variety of wild berries from around the yard and vegetables from their garden, while asking a battery of questions about Angel's school and life in the city. They had never seen either. Her own questions went unanswered as they rapidly changed subjects when she tried to or was about to ask anything about them or what her uncle had told her.
         Angel and her uncle spent the night in the empty bed of his truck and left early the next morning.

         “Where’s their mom?” Angel asked on the long trip down the mountain.
         “Gone honey. Just like yours.”
         “What happened?”
         “Uh,” He sighed heavily under the weight of a memory and stared down the dirt road into a distant past. “Their mother was from another settlement in the east.”
         “But wait,” She interrupted. “So they’re not the secret people you told me about?”
         “Johnson and the girls?” He chuckled. “Nah, but their mom was. He’s the landowner. They live out in the woods there. Anyway, he needed a wife, someone… it’s complicated.” He frowned, looking for the right words to make an eight year old understand without saying too much. It was a look she had gotten used to as her ever-curious mind constantly turned out questions no adult expected from a child so small. “Um… it’s better if most of them marry people from other groups so they don’t end up marrying their brothers and cousins. Get it?”
         Angel nodded and rolled her eyes at how carefully he had chosen his words. Most children her age may not be familiar with the term, but the subject inbreeding was common knowledge to anyone her age who watched television. They lived in the wrong part of the country to see much of it, but everything could be seen on the forbidden cable channels and animal planet.
         “Okay, so she was raised from a baby there back east in a big family and sent out here when she was about seventeen. One day she found out the family that brought her up wasn’t her real family.”
         “She was adopted?” Angel turned in the big seat, sitting on her feet to watch his expressions and gestures as the story got more interesting.
         “Yeah kinda. Anyway, she met their dad and they ended up married and living in the cabin. They wor…”
         “How come?”
         “How come what?”
         “How come they lived in that old cabin instead of with the secret people?”
         He sighed, patience holding, and glanced quickly at her. “Cause they just did. Do you wanna hear this story or not?”
         She crossed her arms and flopped against the back of the seat impatiently.
         “Okay, so they worked the land there together and started a family. They had nine kids you know about and one more no one talks about. The last was a boy. He died when he was just a couple days old.”
         “How come?”
         “I don’t know.” He shook his head sadly and shrugged. “Sometimes those things just happen.”
She studied his face as he looked quietly off into the distance, taken back to some place in time that she couldn’t imagine and wondered why he had never married or had any kids of his own. Come to think of it, she had never known her uncle to have a girlfriend. All his time was spent puttering around the farm and writing letters. Angel was about to begin interrogating him on his lack of personal life when he picked the story back up.
“When they lost the baby she got real sad. Started thinkin’ maybe it was her fault. Maybe it was somethin’ wrong with her that came from her parents. After a while, all she could think about was where she came from and how she ended up with the people.
         “How'd she end up with ’em?”
         “Turns out her mom went to a clinic, had her, and went out a window. Left her behind without a note or anything. They looked for her for days but couldn’t find her. Just happens one of the women working there was the daughter of one of a landowner for one of the groups nearby. One night when she was there alone, she took her home and said the woman came back for her. She found her a family who loved her and raised her. They never told her where she came from until she was older. When that baby died, she needed to know who her mother was and why she left her.
         She left one day to go see the woman who worked at the clinic and try to find her mother. While she was gone, she got sick. The people don’t ever get sick. They’re not around people who carry virus’s everyday like me and you so when she got sick there was nothing anyone could do.”
         “What if I’m sick and I don’t know it yet?”
          He smiled. “Don’t worry about that.”
         Angel wondered where they could be living that would keep them far enough away from people to avoid being seen or getting sick. She imagined them watching the little farm from caves overlooking the rest of the mountain. When imagined winds shifted and blew up in their direction, she shook the thought from her head.
         “How come he didn’t get a new wife?”
         “Sehm says he’ll never marry again.”
         “Wish my dad said that.” She confided, thinking about the woman her father replaced her mother with.
         The problem with Maya wasn't so much that the little girl didn't want her mother's place to be taken, as it was that the woman who did embodied everything fairy tale stepmothers were, and worse, she had come with a clone.
         “I don’t think your mom would have wanted him to be lonely.”
         “He wasn’t. He had me.”
         “Well, he wanted you to have a mom again. And a new sister.”                                        
         “But they hate me, and I don’t like ’em either.” She crossed her arms and glared out the window. He looked over at her and chuckled.
         “Stubborn as a mule, just like you’re dad.”
         Am not.

         Angel went home the next week and wrote stories about orphans being adopted by wild fairy people and living happily ever after. She drew pictures of lambs ganging up on wolves in sheep costumes, and spent hours decorating the frames of her mother’s pictures in her room. She went to the library to research ways to contact her mother’s spirit, but was disappointed to find nothing on the subject. When the librarian looked at her like an alien and attempted a lecture on letting go, she vowed never to set foot in a library again.
         A few Saturday mornings a month, Angel went alone to a small cemetery near her apartment. She pulled the weeds from her mother's grave, placed a single purple rose to rest against the marble head stone, and spoke softly.
         “You died four years, six months, and eleven days ago. I don’t know if you know that. Is time different where you are?” She paused a few moments as a family walked somberly by. People made her feel self-conscious, even outside the graveyard.
         “Could you ask God to make me a psychic so I can see you? I miss you so much.” She whispered, fighting back tears. She breathed deeply and carefully smoothed the folds of her dress to recompose herself.
         “Dad’s doin’ good. I’m doin’ good in school. My teacher says I’m a better writer than the other kids in my class., but I don’t think so. I like drawing better. Like you. I met some new friends. Their mom is dead too. Maybe you could hang out with her then when I go see them again, then it would be like we’re all together.”
         “Hey Angel!”
         Oh no! She looked over her shoulder to see three kids from her class standing on the iron fence near the front gate. She had gone early this week in attempt to avoid the torture of her classmates. Her mother's death had painted a target on her forehead, bringing a seemingly endless barrage of harassment.
         “Bye mom.” She rose quickly and headed for the back entrance. She couldn’t get away fast enough to escape the taunts that drifted from behind.
         “Why don’t you just fly up to see her? Or is that where she really is?”
         “Bet they won’t even let you in to see her anyways ‘cause you’re too weird.”
         “Freak!”
         Once she was out of sight, she ran for home as fast as her small legs would carry her. For the next thirty minutes, she buried her head in pillows to drown out the cruel words that echoed up the drainpipe from the street below. Through it all Angel refused to cry. She never cried.

         On Mother’s day, she made a chocolate birthday cake, filled it with strawberries, covered it with sprinkles, and put four small candles on top. While her stepmother and stepsister were out she and her father lit the candles and sang happy birthday in honor of the one her mother had missed. They bought two purple rose bushes, one large, one dwarf and planted them together on the grave. She fell asleep in his arms as he told stories of her mother before she was born.

This is the first chapter of my book. For more, follow the links on my fan page  http://www.facebook.com/pages/AD-Williams/144605525657982