When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae (13 page)

Libby kept her skeptical expression firmly in place, but on the inside, she realized she may have misstepped.

“So you see, he needs to be able to get online, Aunt Libby—”

“Yeah, Aunt Libby. You stop updating your MySpace and blog and stuff, you lose your readers, like, overnight. And then, pbbbbt—” He gave a thumbs-down. “There go your ad revenues.”

Ad revenues.

Libby sighed again. “I suppose it’s too much to suggest you get your own computer?”

“Sure thing, Aunt Libby, I’m working on it. But it’ll be a few more weeks.”

Must be the ad revenues weren’t exactly in the six figures.

“Pleeeease, Aunt Libby?” Maisey looked at her anxiously.

“Okay. A few weeks. On the condition that you’re working on getting your own computer.”

“Thanks, Aunt Libby,” he said, grinning. He wasn’t a bad kid. “I’m sorry I didn’t say anything—I forgot you’d said—”

Libby held the Squirt can at arms length. “And please don’t leave your stuff on my desk.”

Tyler jumped up from the couch and took the can. “Thanks, Aunt Libby,” he repeated, grinning a charming grin.

Libby didn’t smile back. She wasn’t in a smiling frame of mind. Story of her life. They’d figured out how to get around her. She was doomed and she knew it.

18

“Okay. I planted lamb’s lettuce,” Libby said aloud.

It was just past sunset. It had been another warm day and she could feel the currents of warm air coming off the earth. A cardinal whistled from the edge of Dean’s land and a car shushed by on the road.

Libby had decided to speak pretty much on impulse. Until now, she’d never initiated a conversation. So she had no idea if it would work.

Truthfully, she wasn’t sure if she
wanted
it to work. She was in a miserable spot and she knew it. If this little farming venture of hers turned out to be an utter failure, well . . . she didn’t know what she was going to do. Crawl back to Rochester with her tail between her legs and marry Paul, she guessed . . . and damn, that thought sounded awful, to put it that way—it’s not that they wouldn’t be married at some point eventually. She was sure they would be. She just wanted to make this organic farming thing work for her, in the meantime.

Because it meant a lot to her, this dream of hers to build a working, profitable market farm. She’d turned it over so many times in her mind. She’d become so invested in it. And not only because having crossed that certain point in her life, age-wise, and being divorced . . . it wasn’t that her options had started to look a bit limited. Because as grim as it was, knowing she’d never be young again, starting out all fresh again . . . there were ways to salvage it. So she was, like this, trying something on her own, taking a chance on something without depending on some other person to cushion her if she stumbled or to shield her if she suddenly realized she’d made herself too vulnerable.

See, she had married pretty young. All her choices—her college major, her career, even the decision not to have kids—they were all joint decisions.

She’d always shouldered only half the risk.

But not anymore. Not with this farm. Now the whole thing was on her shoulders. To carry off as gracefully as she could.

And so far, she wasn’t carrying it off very well at all.

Like picking tatsoi to grow. It had had looked like such a perfect idea on paper. Fast growing, nutritious. Met an established demand. Yeah, it had been perfect, except for the part about being a big fat stupid mistake.

Which left her standing in the evening chill, hoping an imaginary being would give her some more free advice so that she wouldn’t make another big fat stupid mistake tomorrow.

“Are you there?”

Clouds had been moving in from the west for the past hour. As they thickened overhead it hastened the growing darkness.

“I need some free advice. That doesn’t suck. Hey. That could be your marketing slogan. Free advice that doesn’t suck.”

“It helps if you’re relaxed.”

Libby turned around but didn’t see a thing. “Hello. Are you there? Would you mind—”

“And less . . . hostile.”

Argh.

She considered quitting, right then and there. Quitting everything. Just walk down to the house, Libby, phone Paul to tell him you’re wrong, he’s right. Put the place back on the market. Clean out half the closet, honey, I’m moving in.

She unclenched her jaw. “It’s hard to be relaxed when I’m talking to a disembodied voice. If you don’t mind.”

“Give us a moment.”

Us. Libby stared at the direction of the voice, trying to make out the form of a little person. Or little people.

After a moment there was a brush of movement in the darkness and there he was, standing about 10 feet in front of her.

“We don’t meet in a physical location so much as a mental one,” he said. “If you’re a bit more open, it’s easier for me to find the juncture.”

Well. It’s hard to be unhostile when the supernatural creature you’re talking to is talking nonsense. “I’m sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He was carrying a little staff, this time, and now he shifted it from his right hand to his left and thrust it against the ground. But not impatiently. Deliberately, like the gesture would help make a point. “Can you dream while you’re awake?” he said.

Libby felt her eyes narrow slightly. “Are you saying this is a dream?”

“No. But it has elements in common. So it helps if you’re a bit more relaxed.”

Yeah, well, this is helpful, she thought. After all, you’re here now, aren’t you. And I’m not exactly relaxed now, am I.

She caught herself. She needed to be cooperative.

She took a couple breaths from her diaphragm and dropped her shoulders a bit. There. Relaxing . . . if this . . . dream-thing could help her she supposed the least she could do was to play along.

“How’s that?” she said.

He didn’t answer, so she decided it was okay to move on to more important topics. “I’ve planted the lamb’s lettuce. I was wondering if there’s anything else—” Good grief. This was really too ridiculous . . . “Uh, if there’s anything else that, you know . . . I need to do.”

She waited.

“Yes,” he said finally. “The crystalline structure of the soil is distorted, which is causing certain . . . drainages to occur. You need to correct its alignment.”

Oh, brother. “I’m not sure what that means. Sorry.”

“The crystalline structure of—”

“I heard you. But I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” She considered adding “and I don’t do crystals” but remembered that she was supposed to hold down the hostility.

“Boil a peck of horsetail in five gallons of water for three hours. Cool the solution.”

“I don’t underst—”

He had turned around and spoke, now, over his shoulder. “Then sprinkle it on the field. Two thirds on the beds, the rest on the fallow section. That should do it.”

“Hey, where are you going? I’m not sure that’s enough information. Please, I mean, I have some more questions.”

It looked like he’d crouched down into a sunken spot on the ground but now she could see him again. “Horsetail, the plant. Not horsetail from a horse.”

“Where am I going to get—I don’t even know what—”

“Check the ditches.”

“Ditches?” But she couldn’t see him anymore, again, and this time he didn’t answer.

♦ ♦ ♦

Tyler was on her computer when she got in. But he was with the program—he jumped right up and gave her back her seat.

She Googled horsetail. It didn’t take long to sort it out.
Equisetum Arvense
. Also known as bottlebrush. Relative of the fern, descended from treelike plants of the Paleozoic period.

She paged through the photos on Google images. Some of the plants in the photos looked familiar.

“Okay if I get back online?” Tyler was with Maisey in the kitchen when Libby passed on her way to the basement. She nodded. She had several peck baskets stored there, picked up from a garage sale—she’d planned to use them to display produce if she ever joined a farmer’s market.

A peck. Obviously pre-decimal fairies, she thought to herself as she scanned the metal shelves lining her basement walls.

♦ ♦ ♦

Filling a peck basket with horsetail is harder than it sounds. Horsetail leaves aren’t exactly leaves. More like long, flimsy, scrawny pine needles. And she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to tamp them down, either.

Obviously she’d get to “a peck” a lot faster if she didn’t.

In the end she compromised. She tamped, but lightly.

The little man had steered her right when he said “ditches,” though. She found the plant growing thickly in the drainage ditch along the road, up by Dean’s property.

19

“What is that SMELL?”

Maisey and Tyler were back.

Libby would have preferred to prepare her fairy brew while they were out, except that the stupid recipe had the “boil three hours” step, and it was a rare day that the two of them were gone that long.

She glanced at Maisey. Obviously the girl wasn’t going to unwrinkle her nose until she got an answer. And Libby would have hated for it to get stuck like that.

“It’s for my soil.”

“Oh.”

Tyler was pulling stuff out of a paper grocery bag. “Is it a fairy recipe?” he asked.

Libby didn’t answer. Which, of course, they took to mean “yes.”

“Wow!” Maisey said. “So you
have
talked to them again!”

They took Libby’s non-answer as a “yes,” again, and started chattering at her, both at the same time. “When did you see them?” “Was it the same one as the other times?” “What did they say? How come they want you to cook that stuff up?”

“It’s really not that big a deal, kids.” It was at a full boil now. She turned the burner to medium-low.

“Aunt Libby! What are you talking about? It’s ha-yuge!” Tyler shook his head. “You’re like—it’s like, you’ve been chosen, man. It’s like being one of the Prophets or something, man. Modern day prophet.”

Libby put a slice of bread in the toaster. “Yeah, right.”

“Really, Aunt Libby!” Maisey chimed in. “We’ve been talking, and you know, these fairies might have an important message for the world, or something.”

Libby turned from the toaster and looked at them. Their eyes were wide and earnest. And young. She shook her head. “No. That’s not anything like what’s happening here. Whatever these—this phenomenon is, it’s not like that, at all.”

“Have you told Paul about it yet?” Maisey asked.

“No. I told you, I haven’t told anyone else, besides you two. Well—” she thought of Dean, but changed her mind.

“Who else?” Maisey said. “Mom?”

“Um, I haven’t spoken to your Mom since before she took off with Pineapple Man.”

The toast popped up.

“Grandma?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Dean!”

Argh. Libby wondered where there was an on-line course somewhere, “Lying for Beginners.”

“Yes, it was Dean. It came up while I was staying there after the ice storm. But kids, this is not a big deal.” She put her toast on the plate. The crust was black and smoking slightly. One of them, Tyler or Maisey, kept turning the dial too high. “Look at my toast. I believe I’ve asked you two—”

“So then, it’s okay to talk about it with Dean, if he knows.”

“No! That’s not a good idea.”

“Why not? He already knows. You just said!”

“That doesn’t mean—” Libby hesitated. Her real problem was a bit difficult to articulate. Something about disliking the idea of the three of them talking about her. What else might they say? Why did Maisey think she had to be friends with the guy, anyway?

But if she made a big deal about it, she’d be . . . making a big deal about it. “Don’t you have better things to talk about?”

She got no answer.

So she scraped the burned bits off her toast, buttered what was left of it and went up to her office.

Turned on her computer and waited for it to boot up, munching on the toast, trying to swallow the uneasy feeling in her gut.

No. It wasn’t so much that Maisey and Tyler and Dean would be talking about her—about what was happening to her.

It was one thing to have seen something unexplainable. That happens all the time, right? Look at people who see UFOs. But now it was different. Now Libby was actually looking for them, trying to talk to them—and then following some crazy instructions they’d given.

She’d crossed a line.

Right?

She didn’t think she was crazy. She didn’t feel crazy. She didn’t feel different from how she’d always felt. Which was part of the problem. It would have been easier if she’d felt different—special. Or like she’d been singled out for something, like Tyler had said—if the clouds had parted and a booming voice had announced she’d been chosen to bring a Message to All Humanity.