Fairy Ring
A flash fiction piece in which the narrator stumbles across the titular calling card of the Fair Folk.
The moment I saw the little white toadstools, I knew what it was. The soil was damp and rich, still dewy from the recent rainfall. The grass within the circle was lush and tender, darker still than outside of it, and remained entirely untouched by the cattle and deer, as if there was an ill humor about it that they dared not inspect. But the smell of the luscious aroma sat earthy on my tongue, and I found myself transfixed, unable to look away.
As a child, I’d been warned of the Fair Ones. How they would circle and steal a youngling for little more than cruel amusement. Or curse an elder farmer’s fields to barrenness as penance for a mistimed word. But though the warnings rang clear in memory, and even if I often still wore a tunic outside-in when crossing the wood, I would have thought myself above such tales. At least, until now.
Old Gran Hodgins had lost her very youngest to the underhill folk some four years past. And so had Lady Guinevere, a decade earlier. Even Mad Mac had his fair share of stories about strange disappearances or odd happenings to the children from his own town, as well as of the next three over, often as they were. It was told and known, unquestionable, that when the fey showed their faces—features just inhuman enough to captivate, and entrance, and enthrall—folk were snatched up without a trace. Went willingly, so they said. Without so much as a hair out of place on their heads.
And here, fool that I was, I had found myself beyond the reach of the trees, with my tunic worn neatly right side out, and not a drop of clover’s honey to offer in exchange for safe passage. There was no sound of a chiming bell, nor the crisp drawling notes of a fiddle, but that meant little when one found oneself crossing through the realm of the fey. The very fact that I had laid eyes on the rim of white, against green so rich it nearly pained the eyes to look upon, meant that I was already most certainly being watched, and would be shadowed by mischievous steps until I was inevitably led astray.
Breath held tight in my lungs, I tiptoed closer. But my thoughts were far from any missing neighbors or lost children. The fae had always remained tantalizingly out of reach, and curiosity burned hot within me, just as my mother before me. Now standing within the ring, I glanced about, lungs burning in anticipation, waiting for a change, a shift. Some tangible difference. But none came. The grass was still soft beneath my bare feet. The breeze kept up, tugging at my clothing. But otherwise, nothing gave any notice to my presence.
Nothing except, perhaps, a low hum. Barely perceptible past the orchestra of woodland song. With a tilt of my head—there, deep in the distance, far into the heart of the woods. I could almost swear I heard the low thrum of a freshly rosined bow, dragging long and slow against tightened strings.
But as I dug my feet into the cool, damp earth, the wind died down, and so did any sound I thought I may have heard upon it. Glancing down, I could no longer see the toadstools, nor the patch of emerald grass, all of it now the same shade of mottled green as the rest of the hill like it. And I was left to consider that it must have just been my vivid imagination, after all.
At least, until a small tinkle of laughter sparkled through the air, the very moment my back was turned. But surely, even that was nothing more than a trick of the wind.