Dancing with Faeries

Being told you come from God, you speak to God and yet you are God so constantly does not weaken the words to meaninglessness. Rather, it solidifies what my people know and what I am certain of.

The beings were tall and sinuous, with an almost luminescent quality to their skin. Their eyes were bright, as if lit from behind by a brilliant white flame, and their clothes were wonderfully opulent, ribbons and corsets and colourful vests and beads shimmering beneath the lights of the chandeliers above.

Nataniel felt so mundane before them, dressed only in the grey-striped pyjamas he had climbed into bed in. As they swirled across the wooden floor, changing partners regularly in their oddly graceful dance, he remained watchful, silent and a little confused. Was he dreaming, or had he woken up and not noticed his journey here? Not only that, but everyone was dressed so brilliantly. He felt very out of place in his pyjamas. Would they throw him out for being underdressed? What about his age? He was only fourteen. Was he allowed here? There was an orchestra on a stage behind the dancers, conducted by a tall, thin man dressed in a coat with tails and a long stick in his hand. His arm movements were vigorous and grand, just like the music being produced by the orchestra.

All the men wore suits and vests, shoes shined so that they could reflect a person's face like a mirror, while the women's dresses were covered in lace and ribbons, their hair styled to flow about their shoulders in waves, and their hands and wrists covered in rings and bangles.

Nataniel could not help but notice how tightly the women wore their corsets, their waists shaped with a smooth, but very unnatural curve. They looked very hourglass-like in shape, as if their insides had decided to implode on themselves, drawing the skin around inwards with them.

When the logical part of his mind told him that luminescent beings could neither exist, nor dance with such grace, he decided he must have been dreaming. But he did not wake himself up. Here, he was able to take a moment away from the real world and smile and just enjoy what he saw for what it was worth.

These people had neither wings, nor mischievous faces, but Nataniel called them faeries nevertheless. They existed only in his dreams, mutually exclusive to his real life, and every night he would visit them, and sometimes even find himself dancing with them. He felt uncomfortable standing before such well-mannered, well-dressed beings in only his pyjamas, but they did not seem to notice or mind.

Something particular he noticed about the room was the way it rose so high, held up by towering pillars made from marble, and the tall windows along either side, displaying the outside world so perfectly. He made his way over to them, wobbling about sleepily. He looked outside upon a city. The tower he resided in now was high up, and everything below him seemed miles away from this height. The city was lit up brightly, decorated—perhaps there was some kind of festival or celebration on. And in the distance was another tower, lit up like a beacon, the flaming cauldron burning at its peak.

Nataniel was definitely in the world of the faeries now. It was joined on, and yet was also parallel to his own world—the City of Castore. And here, in his dreams, he would spend most nights dancing and celebrating whatever it was the faeries were celebrating. This was not the first time he had been here, and he hoped it would not be his last.

“Hello?” murmured a soft voice from behind him. He turned around and saw a pale girl, her hair almost white and her eyes a soft, snowy blue. She looked his age, maybe thirteen or fourteen, and wore a soft, green dress with a ribbon around her waist and flat, comfortable-looking shoes. She smiled at him.

Nataniel was surprised. Normally people—in Castore, at least—looked at him with disgust. His face was marked with tattoo-like bruises, that when looked at from certain angles, looked like an old script of some kind. These were the markings of a Blessed and a Cursed. He had been one of the last people blessed in the waters of the Tyndibar Well, by the Architect no less. It had not been met with the usual pomp and circumstance. Rather, it had been done rather quietly, with only a handful of Blues watching as the water had been splashed across his forehead, creating swirling, tattoo-like marks across his face. That had been thirteen years ago, and he had been marked ever since. Twenty years before, the taint had been created by the death of one man in the Tyndibar Well.

“Hello,” he replied, after a long pause. He was shocked at how she seemed untroubled by his unusually high voice, the lankyness of his form or the fact his eyes were pure white—though he was by no means blind. In fact, she warmed towards him, her smile growing wider, sweeter. She held out a delicate hand.

Unsure, Nataniel tried to smile, though he thought it may have turned into a grimace, and took her hand. She pulled him along onto the dance floor as the song changed, a round of applause ushering in the next song. He had never been taught how to dance, though in dreams, he was capable of anything. He placed one hand about the girl's waist, and another into her raised hand. There was a murmur from the conductor, and then the music began, along with the dance.

One, two, threee, one, two, three, he thought in time with the music, and his feet moved. As he turned about the floor, he noticed that some people wore strange, glittering masks, shaped into animal faces or grotesque human expressions. He felt rather odd now as he was not wearing one. This may have been a masquerade ball, and it seemed bad enough to intrude upon it in his pyjamas, let alone without a mask. Despite his worries, he continued to dance though, his movements liquid and sure. He looked away for a moment, wishing he was wearing more than his pyjamas, and when he looked back into the girl's ghostly light eyes, he realised he was suddenly wearing a suit and a silver vest, and that both his and the girl's faces were masked. Hers was humanoid, with swirling shapes extending from the corners of the mask, while his was made of feathers, giving an owl-like quality to his expression.

“Thank you,” he replied, pulling out a seat for her, reminding himself of the proper, gentlemanly ways he had been taught. He lifted up her hand, and bent over, leaning in to kiss the back of it. But as his lips touched the soft, warm skin, he slipped away from the world, like smoke blown away in a wind or a candle snuffed by a soft breath, emerging in his bed, still in his striped pyjamas.

For a moment, he felt an odd rush within him, as though his body was catching up with reality. Finally, he felt this odd sensation stop and he smiled. Elenor's face was still stuck in his mind, and he hoped he would visit her again tomorrow.

There was a very high chance he would, too. The only times he did not visit the parallel world of the faeries was when he was terribly ill, or so tired that he did not have the strength to do anything, even in dreams.

Nataniel had never had parents. He was bereft of a mother who shared his name, or a father who shared his features, but he did have Byron and Delilah, and they had brought him up well. They were not in any way related to him. Rather, they were strangers off the street that had offered to take him in after he had been Blessed—and hence, Cursed—after his parents had given him away in exchange for what was said to be a rather large sum of money. He had never met his parents, never known their names, or even cared to search for them. Anyone who was willing to trade their child for money deserved to never meet that child again.

Byron had been a hopeless romantic, dreaming of one day meeting the most beautful, wonderful woman in the world. His one true love, and the one he was destined to be with. He had found that in Delilah, who shared the same hopelessly romantic dreams. And because of that like-mindedness, they had been together for well over twenty five years, and showed no signs of ending it soon.

Byron had brought Nataniel up to be a gentleman. If ever Nataniel found a girl he could love forever, just as Byron and Delilah did, he would be opening doors, making dinners, working about the house and dancing the night through. That was if he ever found a girl who would love him forever. Unfortunately the tattoos on his face that marked him as a Blessed, and the milky colour of his eyes made him not exactly desirable. If he spoke to anyone, they would generally escape, screaming, for fear that he would turn into a monster and kill them. This was all folly, of course, but superstition ran too deep in the Castorean's psyche for it to just disappear overnight.

Not only was it bad luck to talk to someone marked by the waters of the Tyndibar Well, it was also unlucky to step on their shadow—or anyone's shadow, for that matter. It was unlucky to touch the tattoos across their face, which could apparently lead to being cursed yourself, and it was also a common superstition that to even associate with a Blessed was to mean that you worshipped evil and wished for the downfall of Castore.

As far as Nataniel could tell, the only superstition of the many prevalent that held any truth was the one that said lighting a lantern outside one's door would keep the monster's away. As a matter of fact, it was not just superstition—it was proven. None of the Cursed could stand the light of the sun or that of a burning flame.

Nataniel threw back his blankets and changed into his clothes for the day. He wore a plain white shirt and brown trousers. He quickly threw a cardigan over the top though. The air held some chill about it. He made his way downstairs, where he noticed that both Byron and Delilah had gone out—Byron to his job as a carpenter and Delilah working on her daily list of errands that needed doing.

He had a breakfast of eggs and toast and returned to his bedroom, where he seated himself at his desk and pulled out a sheet of white paper. He wanted to draw what he had seen last night in his dreams, and the beautiful figure of Elenor. He paid particular attention to her soft and kind face, careful to pick the perfect shade for her eyes. Ice blue.

He had always considered himself particularly skilled at drawing, and though to everyone else, his drawings were mostly fantasy, the faeries he drew and the landscapes he created were real enough for him.

He used an apple green watercolour for the girl's dress, and a very light grey to create the patterns made by the lace at the foot of her dress. Unsure what colour to use for the girl's skin, he left it blank—perfect and untarnished. That was how she was in his dreams, and that's how she would remain.

What if she was real? he thought excitedly. What if I could go and meet her, and feel her smooth skin and... his mind trailed off into wild fantasies, almost as magical as the dreams themselves—but the dreams were always much clearer.

He felt his heart beat faster in his chest, racing with excitement. She had been beautiful, and the more he thought about her, the more he began to obsess over her. He entered some kind of trance as he continued to paint, adding more and more detail to the picture. He painted the glass windows, and the world outside the ballroom. He painted the other dancers dressed in their rich, glamorous clothes, and, of course, him, in the background, standing next to Elenor, dressed in the coat and vest, his mask covering his eyes. The mask also covered the Curse markings. In way, just as she was perfect, in this image, so was he.

He emerged from his trance-like state, awakened by the sounds of Delilah's return. He rushed about, placing the still wet painting into his drawer, hoping it would not smudge, and drew out a fresh sheet of paper, beginning the sketches of a cat upon it, just as the door opened up behind him. He was in such a state of surprise, he found himself out of breath.

“Ah well, I suppose we can expect that with a budding painter in our midst. Come downstairs when you're ready. I've just bought some bread from the bakery up the road and I think it will make some excellent lunchtime sandwiches.”

Nataniel dropped his head onto his desk and drew out the picture of the ballroom once more. He sighed, relieved. No damage had been done to the picture on its way to being stuffed in the draw. This was, most definitely, the best drawing he had ever done, and he was proud to call it that.