Magic Falls Part Seventeen

“You….what?” I ask, totally off-guard.

“mercy we want mercy”

“I…who from? From me?”

“yes from you mercy from you we beg darrenoneill we beg for mercy”

They seem to now have completely shrunk in front of me. The two aspects of them that I could see earlier, the two perspectives, have now deadened. The glamour is no longer there, and now I just see some small, desperate fairies making brainwashed children dance.

There aren’t too many children. Five..no, six. But they’re crying and exhausted, all of them. And underweight visibly.

“Let them stop.” I say, feeling my own anger rising in my voice.

“we…i…we cannot for long we need them to – “

“LET THEM STOP!” I roar at them, lost in my own fury. “They’re children!  They’re exhausted! Let them stop, now!”

They hesitate again, but when I take a step towards them, they cower back.

“we stop them we stop them we stop them we do as you ask we stop them”

As if their strings have been cut, the children drop to the ground, exhausted.

I walk over to them.

“no we stopped them you must speak to us now not them leave – “

“Shut up,” I say, ignoring them. “I’m speaking to them first.”

For the first time since I woke up in there, there are no other noises other than gasping and whimpering from scared, exhausted children.

“Kids….hey, kids,” I say.

Some of them look over at me.

“This is going to be okay, I promise. Okay?”

They look scared.

“Is one of you Andrea Whittaker?”

A little girl with brown hair raises her hand. I walk over to her and kneel in front of her. “Hi there,” I say. 

“I’m a friend of your daddy’s, and I’m going to take you home to him as soon as I’ve finished with the people who took you, okay?”

She sniffs and looks up at me with reddened eyes. “I want to go home.” She says, flatly.

“I’m going to get you home as soon as I can. All of you,” I say looking around at the others. “We’re going to be out of here very soon, so just sit still for a few minutes. Can you do that for me?”

To be honest, from the state of exhaustion they’re in, I don’t think they could go far.

“They need water,” I say to the fairies.

“we….we will….”

“I’m taking them away from here.”

“NO!” they scream at me this time, and they attempt to push their glamour harder, turning themselves into enormous demons staring down at me.

I stand and look at them, and start making my way towards them, challenging them. The glamour doesn’t last, and they shrink in on themselves like they’ve deflated, their snarl caught in their throat.

“Why me?” I ask. “Why did you want to talk to me?”

“…..”

“You want mercy, you want to, what, negotiate?” I say.

“neeeee-goa-teeee-aaate”

“Then you start by explaining the deal. And if I were you, I’d start fast, because I’m about to walk out of here with the children.”

“no not the children please not the children please not - "

“What do you need them for?”

“……we hunger”

“You feed on them?”

“….no we do not feed on them no we feed….. we feed from them…..feed from their work their effort their dancing we feed”

“And when they can’t go on any more?”

“we......we find more”

I turn back to the children as I continue to speak to them.

“Then what makes you think that I’d be in any way interested in negotiating?”

“the war is coming and we know what you lost what you will lose”

They say it slyly, creeping towards me. I stop, frozen, thinking about Nina.

“Don’t you dare.”

“we know what you lose what you lost and we can help we can help you save it”

I think. I wait.

“all we want is the children that is all just them just enough just to feed just to be remembered”

“No.”

“please all we want is to be remembered magic is falling it is falling and we fall with it if we are forgotten please just mercy when they tell your legend - ”

“You don’t get mercy. You feed on children.” I’m scared of what I’m giving up. I’m scared of walking out of the deal. But I have to. “You don’t get to be remembered.”

I walk to the children, and I take Andrea’s hand, and I tell the rest of them to follow me. Now the glamour has fallen, I can see my way back to the circle… or at least to a circle. It may be ill-judged confidence, but I can feel their panic rising as I walk away from them.

“you will die but you will die after her after she dies screaming after your child dies”

I hold the children’s hands, and we stand in the circle.

“Nobody will ever use this circle again. And every circle I find, I’ll destroy,” I say, my anger at them refusing to fall. “You know who I am. You know what I am. You tried to threaten me, and I can take that. I even know that you feed on children because you’re desperate, because you’re hungry. And I may not be able to blame you for that, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t try to stop you.”

“no please we did not mean it please stay just leave one just leave one just one child please just leave one”

“You want my help to be remembered. To survive. To feed. That’s all you want, isn’t it?”

I can feel the circle letting us through now, beginning to send us back to Bretton.

“yes all we want is to survive please just leave one child please let us survive please let us feed”

“No.”

“but you will kill us if we cannot feed on the children we must feed on them we must”

“You don’t get them. You don’t get it, do you?” I say, as their world begins to fade from site and I can begin to see the trees around the circle back in Bretton again.

“This is a war and you aren’t on our side.”

And then we’re back in Bretton.

And Jack is there, and he runs over and he holds Andrea, and she holds him, and I feel so exhausted right now.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” he says to me.

“I…” The rest of the kids make their way out of the circle and gather. “They need help. They need to go home.”

Something about Jack is bothering me. Why does he look so different?

“I came every day,” he says holding Andrea. “I didn’t give up.”

God, I’m tired. Why does Jack have a beard? He didn’t have a beard earlier.

“Jack…how long was I down there?” I ask.

“….you…” he looks at me, and everything begins to swim. 

"....how long?"

“You were down there for three months.”

I pass out.