What-The-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy

  “Bravo!” shouted Doctor Ill, so swept away that he slipped sideways on his muzzled mouse. Silviana tossed him a sunburst of a smile as she took her place at the podium.

  “Remember, if you will, the dark days of the past,” sang Silviana, as the bees transposed their melody into a minor mode. “Long ago, when the First Fairy accidentally arrived, she was as mysterious and clueless and unmotivated as a common butterfly in some common meadow!”

  At this, a few skibbereen came drifting in from offstage. Some were dressed as mouse-brown moths, some as monarch butterflies, orange as Maharajah. Thanks to the skill of a cunning costumier, one of them sported wings cut out of an old dial of plastic laminates originally intended to color the light cast upon an aluminum Christmas tree. Her costume wings were flashy, outsized, and ridiculous. But the magical effect was a winner. “Ooooh!” said everyone, several times in a row.

  What-the-Dickens began to applaud the spectacle. He couldn’t help himself. This is the best part of my life so far, he thought.

  Silviana started to narrate the natural history of the skibbereen, in a fluting voice that carried clear to the back of the chamber.

  “More than a century ago, a poor old lepidopterist — meaning a butterfly scientist, people; pay attention now — lived in the woods with his poor wife, whose name was Edith. One day the husband caught sight of what he thought was an unknown specimen clinging to a cabbage. He declared it a ‘true fritillary.’ Fritillary is the name of a certain sort of spotted butterfly.”

  Out from the wings came a skibberee acting the part of the butterfly expert. He wore a caped jacket and a sort of deerstalker hat, very Sherlock Holmes, fashioned out of an upside-down acorn shell. With a great deal of effort, he managed to balance before him a genuine magnifying glass — the real item — sized for human use.

  This made his face look huge.

  When the scientist looked directly at them through his lens, What-the-Dickens screamed along with the rest of the audience. It was like being spotted by a predator. Skibbereen are never seen! He began to understand the panic of being noticed.

  It was kind of fun, and terrible, too, both at once.

  The butterfly expert turned away and pretended instead to search for butterflies. Most of them fled in terror, but a single one trembled delicately in place, allowing the inspection to proceed. This was the gaudy one with carnival wings.

  Then out came the scientist’s wife, Edith, played by a skibberee lass in an apron cut from a white paper napkin. Somehow, on her tender shoulders she balanced the better part of a plastic face torn from an abandoned toy baby doll. The head was about eight sizes too large for the body that barely managed to hold it upright. The effect was decidedly monstrous. But this, perhaps, is how humans appear to skibbereen.

  The eyes of the doll-wife stared glassily ahead as if listening to the narration.

  Silviana continued. “The scientist had a problem with his overbite. His diction was lousy. His tongue curled and spittle lashed everywhere. Did his wife, Edith, hear him say ‘true fritillary’?”

  “No,” the audience clamored.

  “Did she hear ‘tooth fertility’?”

  “No.”

  “Did she hear ‘true virility’?”

  “No!” shrieked the audience. They seemed familiar with this exchange, and were eager to respond.

  “What,” said Silviana stagily, “did she think he said?”

  The audience roared. “Tooth fairy! Tooth fairy!”

  “I have no doubt!” agreed Silviana, and continued. “Over tea that afternoon the wife took up her pen, and she scribbled a story.”

  Edith Monster-Babyface now swept up from the floor a jay’s feather, brilliantly blue and black, and she mimed dipping it in an imaginary bottle of ink and writing words across the floor. “The wife called her story ‘Tooth Fairy Magic.’ It was all about how a sweet little tooth fairy collects baby teeth and pays for them in cold hard cash, something of which the family was in short supply.”

  “Imagine!” the skibbereen said with a laugh. “A tooth fairy! Ha-ha!”

  “The wife read her story aloud to her lepidopterist husband. He said, ‘Edith, you’ll turn our children mushy in the head with such nonsense!’ The children, however, clapped with glee.”

  From the opposite wing, extras playing the couple’s children plowed onto the stage and sat down around Edith Monster-Babyface. They swayed back and forth in time as if in thrall to her rapturous tale.

  The butterfly thing that was neither a true fritillary nor a tooth fairy struck a pose in the middle of the stage. Eventually stagehands, remembering their cue, pushed out from the wings a box of kitchen matches standing on its end. It had been painted over with a clockface, though the numbers were all helter-skelter. (1:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m., 6:45, 4:00 b.m., 9:15½, 8:70; 7:00 p.m.; 90.9 FM; 26:10, and back around to 1:00 a.m.)

  “And when Edith read her story,” said Silviana, “the lone skibberee, the First Fairy, the foundress of our species, listened to it. From whatever realm of faerie she had accidentally blundered, she had to make herself up anew in this new world. So she listened hard. And she began to evolve, because stories work their magic that way. They build conviction and erode conviction in equal measure.”

  The gaudily winged creature went and stood behind the clock, as if listening, while Edith Monster-Babyface mimed reading her tooth fairy story with many broad and sentimental effects.

  “In time,” continued Silviana, “Edith sold the story to a children’s magazine called Saint Nicholas. Thomas Nast, who first drew Santa Claus to look the way he does today, illustrated the piece. He pictured the Tooth Fairy as a simpery airborne dance-hall girl, conducting a campaign of dental hygiene with her sidekick, an androgynous flying toothbrush named Tickles.”

  Here Silviana herself cut a few figures, looking inane and attractive. She danced in tandem with a skibberee who had a toothbrush tied on his back. The bristly head of it, painted with a pair of goo-goo eyes, towered above her. The audience nearly wet itself with delight.

  “Slowly, the notion of a tooth fairy took hold. Tickles the flying toothbrush, however, proved less popular, and he was quickly retired.” The toothbrush walked offstage in a huff, and Silviana returned to her podium.

  “In human legend, the Tooth Fairy possesses a very low-grade magic. But its inspiration — our ancestress — the creature considered by the scientist to be a new specimen of spotted butterfly — was, magically speaking, rather talented, too.”

  Skibbereen the room over were withdrawing handkerchiefs from their pockets and blowing their noses. This was the good part.

  “You see, the figure skulking behind the clock had been known in the hidden other world as a skibberee. Through no fault of her own, this nameless skibberee, the First Fairy, the mother of us all, happened to mutate, in that lighthearted, civilization-threatening way that species do. The mutation caused her to lose her protective coloring — her invisibility — and to be lodged, without hope of return, in the tide of human affairs, otherwise known as Our World.”

  Silviana flung her arms out wide to emphasize Our World.

  “The world at large; and it is large.”

  Huge applause for the world at large.

  “Newly shipwrecked in our dangerous world, the mutated skibberee had few instincts on which to draw. She was scared, naïve, and suggestible. When she heard the story of the Tooth Fairy, she believed it was all about her.”

  The butterfly-skibberee behind the clock stepped out into the spotlight and clapped her hands to suggest sudden revelation.

  “The lone skibberee paid as much attention as her raw nervous system could manage. Having arrived from the Magical Beyond while in a state of pregnancy, she produced an egg sac. In just a few generations, what remained of her original skibberee proclivities had been reshaped by the species’ self-determination as Tooth Fairies.

  “And so, ladies and gentlefriends, was our kind established. Our job was spelled out for us. Our
civilization chose to fulfill its mission: to work hard and to thrive. Aided by our natural love of secrecy, magic, and good cheer, we skibbereen have found ourselves a duty and pledged ourselves to our task.

  “Please rise and join in singing the Tooth Fairy Anthem.”

  What-the-Dickens, amazed at the power of great theater, was swept to his feet. Though he didn’t know the words, he listened with tears in his eyes as his kin and kith, his own beloved kind, bellowed their national carol. The audience sang along with Silviana, Edith Monster-Babyface, the Honor Guard, the butterflies, the children, the lepidopterist, Tickles the Toothbrush, and the actress playing the First Fairy.

  Mine eyes have seen the glory

  of a wobbling baby tooth.

  If you poke it with your tongue enough,

  you just might knock it looth.

  It’s an awfully gory story,

  but I’m telling you the truth:

  That tooth is coming out!

  Leave it somewhere we can get it,

  You will find you don’t regret it.

  We will pay you, cash or credit:

  That tooth is coming out!

  The room erupted in cheers. Pink balloons, fashioned from prechewed bubble gum, were released from the ceiling. Ticker tape — made from the raveled edges of newspapers — fell everywhere. Silviana took a half a dozen bows. From his private box, Doctor Ill himself tossed the star a bouquet of violets wrapped up in party ribbons. “It’s the best thing I ever saw,” wept What-the-Dickens in joy.

  “Get used to it,” said Pepper, who wasn’t clapping. “It doesn’t change at all, month by month, year in, year out. It’s our history, for good or for ill.”

  “Is it true?”

  Pepper shrugged. “It’s true that this is what we tell ourselves. Is the history accurate? Who knows? How could we know one way or the other? Does it matter? It’s a pretty enough story.”

  The crowd was chanting, Free the tooth! Free the tooth!

  “Can I meet Silviana?”

  “In your dreams,” barked Old Flossie, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “She doesn’t condescend to notice the likes of you, laddio. Besides, you have an appointment with Doctor Ill. Pepper is to take you to his den at once.”

  She blew her nose loudly. “I do love to be reminded of our duty,” she said, and cuffed Pepper on the shoulder. “And so should you, Pepper. Now get going, you, and don’t keep the good Doctor waiting.”

  “Are you asleep?” whispered Gage.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I was,” said Dinah, sitting up. “Were you?”

  “I thought I was telling you about the Duty Pageant, but perhaps I was just thinking about it. My eyes were closed.”

  “I thought I was listening about it,” she replied, “but maybe I was kind of dreaming about it.”

  She shook her head. Everything was clumping together in her mind and getting mixed up. Brittney and Juliette out in the fitful world, and the raging winds at work, and the flying of skibbereen through the night: it made her confused.

  She tried harder to organize what she could be sure of. That was her best talent, after all.

  Rebecca Ruth and Zeke are here asleep.

  That was about it.

  “Look: Zeke and Rebecca Ruth are both out like lights,” she murmured, pointing to them.

  Rebecca Ruth lay hunched, her little behind slightly elevated under her knees, her face turned to one side. In her sleep she clutched her stuffed lamb in a stranglehold.

  Zeke, beyond, was entirely lost in a mess of blankets, sleeping so still that they couldn’t even hear his breathing.

  “Well, if I was asleep, I’m not asleep anymore,” said Dinah. “Is the wind dying down? Maybe the quiet woke me up. You might as well tell me what happened to Pepper. I like her. Why is she called that, anyway?”

  “Why are you called Pepper?” said What-the-Dickens, as they walked back up staircases into the tree trunk.

  “You do ask a lot of questions,” she commented.

  “Pepper,” he said. “Why Pepper?”

  “I’m trying to tell you. Don’t be a thistlehead. To understand where the names come from, you gotta understand our culture. That little pantomime — who knows if any of it is true? But here we skibbereen are, side by side with a bigger, treacherous world. We keep to ourselves as much as we can. We don’t steal and we don’t borrow: we pay for what we take.”

  “I’ll pay you if you tell me why you’re called Pepper.” He was teasing her. This was teasing. It made him feel gingery inside. Or maybe peppery.

  How amazing to feel calm enough to feel peppery or gingery. Is this what it means to feel at home? he wondered.

  Pepper snapped, “Stop grinning like a hoptoad with a big old fly rolled up in his tongue. I’m telling you. Now listen: Every colony of skibbereen gets its own system of naming. We borrow our names from the first set of words we see — but we change them. Undertree Common was founded, let’s see, two plus one plus one plus two more years ago. More or less. Give or take. That’s when the highway was going in, see, and this bit of woods was cut off from human foot traffic.”

  “Why here?”

  “Rural skibbereen often use highway cloverleafs for their settlements. Out of the way, conveniently cut off, yet centrally located — all at once. While barreling by at forty miles an hour, what human nudnik could spot the odd skibberee? In cities, I’m told, it’s a different story — colonies in water towers at the top of skyscrapers, in abandoned subway tunnels, etc. But I’ll never know much about that. However good I do, that’ll be way beyond me.”

  “What are you, a historian? I’m asking about your name. Your name. Pepper, Pepper, Pepper.”

  “Shut up. I’m telling you, okay? At the time that the settlers discovered this available tree trunk, they also saw in the underbrush a few discarded pages of newspaper advertising. Hawking the wares of some local pharmacy. So our colony harvests its names from the words we find in that bit of text. So our names are things like Intyfresh, Clea, Spirin, Olga, Flossie, Doctor Ill, Outhwash. But they derive from human words like mintyfresh, clean, aspirin, Colgate, floss, pill, and mouthwash. Me, I’m Pepper, derived from peppermint.”

  He liked it. He liked her. “What about Silviana?”

  “She broke the rule and named herself.”

  Sort of like me, thought What-the-Dickens, but didn’t say so. “Are there many skibbereen in the world?”

  “Whether humans know it or not, the truth is there are lots more than one Tooth Fairy. Dozens of tooth fairies work in any given sector during any given season of tooth decay. Most of them are nameless, harmless skibbereen stationed at their division headquarters. They do their jobs; they go home to sleep and dream of teeth; they get up; they brush and gargle; they go back to work.”

  “It sounds wonderful to have a real mission in life. A home, a family, a vocation.”

  “Wonderful might be the word some would use. But not everyone. Not me.”

  He raised his eyebrow.

  “Oh, what would you know? You’re a natural born idiot. Most of the skibbereen never get more than a few feet from their native colonies. In their whole lives, What-the-Dickens. The lowers are born together in a heap. In a heap they work like slaves together, and together in a heap they die. Only if you get to be an Agent of Change do you get out at all. The world is a honey of a place, full of intrigue and novelty. But skibbereen have to stay hidden if they want to stay alive. Being abroad without a license is a big no-no.”

  He didn’t quite get the concept of being born in a heap, but he could hear the feeling in her voice. “So that’s why you want your license so much.”

  “Now you’re catching on.” She lowered her voice. “Life here is just fine if you got no curiosity — and most of them don’t. But some of us do, and getting licensed to do active duty is a must. I’d die of boredom otherwise.”

  “You’ve got a personal name — Pepper. Isn’t that a sign of something?”

  “It’s provisiona
l. I could easily lose my name and go back to being known by my job title.”

  “I want to be an Agent of Change too,” said What-the-Dickens. “Will you teach me?”

  “It’s not up to me,” said Pepper. “And anyway, ain’t you listening? We don’t work in pairs. Got it? If even one of us is ever accidentally seen by a human, we do our best to imitate a mutant wasp or a butterfly. Often we end up being sprayed with Raid or Flit or the like. We have to be free to live alone and die alone, to preserve the safety of the colony. We have to pretend we got no names, no lives, no futures. We have to be nobodies.”

  What-the-Dickens said, “Well, I come with a lot of practice feeling like a nobody. I’ll fit right in.” He grinned at her, but in truth he was feeling very like somebody just at present.

  “Don’t get too comfy here,” she warned him. “We’re not good with strangers. The truth is, we’re a funny little race of critter. We’re neither bird nor mammal. I doubt we have butterfly ancestors, but we’re not an idiotic little fairy tale come to life, either. We don’t know what we are. We only know what we do. That’s about all we can count on.”

  “What did you mean when you said we were born in a heap?” Maybe he could learn something about his origins now.

  They had reached a broad door that had DOCTOR ILL painted on it in shiny silver letters. Pepper looked this way and that; the corridor was empty in both directions. “We mustn’t be late,” she said. “Everyone’s super-punctual around here. Even a clock has teeth, we’re told, and time has a bite all of its own. But if you shut up and stop asking so many questions, I’ll rattle off everything I know about the subject. Which ain’t a lot.”

  She sketched in the natural history of the skibbereen as best she could. In short order What-the-Dickens learned that his sort was usually hatched in dollops of seventy to ninety at a time.