almost taste the sweeteness in her mouth. She was about to take the glass, when someone suddenly took hold of her from behind and began dragging her back off the quilt, away from the tree. She let out a shriek.
"Stop!" she shouted, "you're ruining my new dress!"
She looked to Homer for help. He seemed not to notice. The circle of people on the blanket seemed to be closing , her place among them disappearing. She could hear the sounds of their polite chatter fading away. A moment later Rebecca found herself sitting on the ground with two strange girls holding her arms.
"What are you doing?" Rebecca demanded.
The older girl looked shocked as if she had seen a ghost. “Auntie," she said shaking her head, "We have to leave!"
"Why?" Rebecca demanded.
The younger of the two girls leaned down and held something for Rebecca to see. At first she didn't recognize it. It was silver and black with all sorts of buttons on it. Something told her it was a camera. There was a screen with a picture on it, a picture of an old woman sitting on the ground.
"It's a picture I took just now of you sitting under the tree," the girl said, "You're alone. You're all alone, Auntie!"
Rebecca remembered now. She was an old woman, not a young girl. These were her great nieces. She had come to save the older girl from the tree, but she herself fell under its spell. She raised her arms, and the girls helped her to her feet. The three of them stood there watching the picnic beneath the tree's branches.
"Are they ghosts?" the younger girl asked.
"No, they were people once, people I knew. Now I don't know what they are."
"If they're ghosts," the older girl said, ""They look like happy ones."
"It was a wonderful age to grow up in," Rebecca said.
As they stood there watching the picnic in silence, Rebecca could not shake the feeling that it had been a wonderful age. It had been a glorious age. And having tasted it again, her heart nearly burst out longing for it. But she knew there was still danger for her nieces to remain there. So with a heavy heart she led them back across the field to the road and back up the road to her house.
Rebecca ate the meal she prepared quietly, listening to the girls' chatter. She could feel their excitement, but she could not shake the sadness that had come over her. The girls talked about the tree and how they were going to tell everyone about it. Rebecca listened to their ideas, their stories about what they saw. She smiled and nodded, but she knew that in the end no one would believe them. No one had believed her.
After the meal when they were cleaning up, her nieces sensed that something was not right. They tried to cheer Rebecca up by telling her how good her pan-fried pork chops were. Between giggles they told her how much the other women in the family envied them. Again Rebecca smiled and nodded, but for the first time she could remember the praise for her pork chops was not sweet. She realized she had heard it before many, many times.
After the girls went to bed, Rebecca opened the cupboard above her coffee machine. In the back of the cupboard, she found an old jar with a peeling label. She unscrewed the lid of the jar and took out a wrinkled piece of paper. It was exactly as she wrote it all those years before. She had changed nothing of the recipe that her aunt had given her. She placed the paper in an envelope and sealed it. On the envelope she wrote "Christine".
When she finished Rebecca looked around the house she had lived in since childhood. There were reminders here and there of that past age- faded black-and-white pictures on the wall, the lantern on the corner table her father once used, her mother's pots and pans still hanging on the kitchen wall. These were real things that she could touch and feel. But now she saw they were only leftovers. She could still taste the meal from where they came. She could still hear the laughter and the voices. But she knew that it was over. It had been over for quite awhile.
Now there were strange dishes on the counter. There was a refrigerator humming in the kitchen where the ice box once stood. There was a television set over in the corner where she used to listen to the old radio. There were chairs she had never seen before and a wallpaper pattern on the wall she didn’t remember choosing. It seemed to Rebecca as if a different age crept in while she wasn't looking, an age that she knew she lived in, but which she now for the first time realized she really didn't understand.
She put on a light jacket and stepped outside the side door.The moon was overhead now. The night seemed to have settled into a quiet familiarity. The crickets were chirping. Somewhere off in the distance she heard a coyote cry. Rebecca knew she could live out the rest of her days in this place, in this house her father built. She had always thought that way. But now she also realized that the idea of doing that seemed somehow stifling to her. She turned and saw her niece's bike lying in the driveway.
For my second fantasy short story I had several ideas. I finally settled on this story of a young elf who is allergic to pixie dust, a basic ingredient of the magic that elves depend on. I really wasn’t trying to create a new world with this story. I just wanted to give hope if I could to the millions of children out there who suffer from allergies, especially children who have peanut allergies like my son.
A Problem with Pixie Dust
Copyright 2009 by S. Thomas Kaza
Leen sat on a branch in an oak tree watching the children across the lane arrive for the party. He knew most of them. Many of them he played with at the park. Some were his friends. All of them carried presents wrapped in brightly-colored paper, tied with gold or silver singsong strings that would play a tune when you untied them. Mileander Maple, one of the most popular girls in town, stood at the door with her mother welcoming her guests as they arrived. She wore a smile and a green and orange dress that her mother made for the occasion.
Leen sighed. Everybody was going to the birthday party. For the last few days that was all the other elfkins talked about. At first he thought it wouldn’t bother him if he couldn’t go, so he pretended it didn’t. But now that the day had arrived, and he could see the other children skipping up the lane, now that he could hear their excited voices and the music coming from the open windows, now that he could smell the honey cakes, he realized he would give his knife with the jade handle for the chance to go. He felt like he was the only one in the whole world not going.
“Leen!” he heard somebody calling his name.
He climbed higher into the branches of the tree. He did not want to be found. When he looked down through the leaves he could see his aunt coming up the lane, touching every tree as she went. He knew there was no way to hide. His aunt, Illeanor, had the Sight. She would know he was there, even if she could not see him. Still he stayed very still and tried as hard as he could to make himself part of the tree. She might miss him. When she reached the tree he was hiding in, Leen closed his eyes.
When he opened them, his aunt was sitting on the branch next to him.
“Why are you hiding?” she asked.
He frowned and looked across to the house where the birthday party was just beginning.
“I know you want to go,” she said, “but you can’t. I thought we agreed that I would take you to see the dwarves. Don’t you want to see the dwarves?”
He did. But he wanted to go to the party even more.
She coaxed him down. Soon they were walking on the forest path toward the river. She stopped here and there along the way to look at flowers and untangle the plants growing along the path.
“Come on, now,” she said to them, “There’s plenty of sunshine for all of you.”
Leen picked up the cap of an acorn. He used it to whistle a song he made up the other day. After he finished, he tossed it aside.
“Illeanor, why am I allergic to pixie dust?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, “Why is it some elves are born with five fingers instead of six?”
“But I could go to the party if I had five fingers, couldn’t I?”
“The question you should ask is why Milleander Maple’s mother w
ouldn’t promise your mother to keep pixie dust out of the party?”
Leen thought about that for awhile. His parents and family always went out of their way to keep pixie dust out of their homes. But other parents sometimes didn’t even try. They didn’t seem to care Leen was allergic to the magical dust.
“Will I have to go away someday?” Leen asked.
“What do you mean?” Illeanor asked, her face becoming concerned.
“Milleander Maple told me that when I grow up I have to leave Elf Town. She said there’s no way a grown elf who can’t stand pixie dust can stay in town.”
Illeanor put an arm around his shoulder.
“That’s nonsense,” she said, “I think she is just upset you’re not coming to her party.”
“Unh-unh,” Leen said, “She told me that she really didn’t want me to come to her party. Her mother made her invite me.”
Illeanor laughed, “That’s ridiculous. Trust me, little girls say those things when they get upset that someone isn’t coming to their party. I was a little girl once, you know.”
Leen knew that. A painting of his aunt and his mother as children hung on the wall at his home.
“Let’s forget about the party for now,” Illeanor said.
When they reached the river, there was a boat and a steersman waiting for them. The boat was long enough for about eight to sit in it, but only wide enough for one person at each seat. Leen sat near the middle. Illeanor