When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae (17 page)

“Don’t worry about it,” Libby said again, patting her back like a mother pats a six-year-old with a skinned knee. “It’s not that big a deal. Really. It’ll be okay.”

Over her shoulder, a notice popped up on her computer screen.

She had three new emails.

She didn’t read them. Just deleted them.

She had other things to do.

She drove to the hardware store, bought a half pound of roofing nails, went out back, and used her hand trowel to bury them in her growing beds.

Like ignoring her inbox would make it go away.

25

“Whoa, Aunt Libby, you are totally
viral
.”

“Thanks,” Libby said.

Tyler had been maneuvering around the ’net for a good 30 minutes by then. Libby’s neck was getting stiff from standing behind him, so she’d moved to the love seat against the far wall of her office.

Maisey was still watching, though, draped over Tyler’s shoulder.

“He means that in a good way, Aunt Libby!” Maisey turned toward Libby, an anxious look on her face. “He means you’ve spread all over.”

“I see.”

“Yeah, it’s like an infection. Only not a
bad
infection.” Alex, this time. Sitting on the rug, legs wrapped around each other under her skirt.

“How many sites so far?”

“That’s two more,” Maisey said. So it brought them up to about sixty-five, then. Sixty-five websites proclaiming that Libby Samson was
the
psychic phenomenon of the new millennium.

Needless to say, Libby had abandoned the idea of legal action. At least for now. What was she going to do? Pay a lawyer two hundred an hour to write “cease and desist” letters to sixty-five fifteen-year-old bloggers?

Plus Tyler had volunteered to ask them to quit talking about it . . . although Libby had noticed that the more sites he uncovered, the less confident he sounded. “It’s viral,” he said as he added another URL to the file he’d created. “It’s all over the place.”

“What are their names?” Alex asked.

“Their names?” Libby thought she meant the names of the bloggers who were writing about her.

“When they appear to you, what do you call them?”

Ah. She meant the fairies. “I don’t call them anything. I’m not sure they have names.”

Alex’s eyes fixed on her, gleaming with interest. “Have you ever asked them?”

Libby sighed. She couldn’t blame Alex. She supposed she’d be curious, too. After all, this wasn’t about fairies, was it? It was about whether humans are really bound by the mundane, the laws of physics, the plain Jane everydayness that for most people passes for life. By mortality. Which made Libby living proof, to this little slip of an orphan, that there was something more out there than rocks and dirt, and the endless grind of the seasons always taking, taking, taking.

“No. I’ve never asked them.”

“You should.” Alex leaned forward. “Can I go with you, sometime? When you meet with them?”

“I’ve already asked,” Maisey cut in. “She won’t let you.” Pre-emptive strike. She’d seemed a bit funny around Alex today. Libby supposed her niece was going to make darn sure that if anyone went along to see the fairies, it was going to be Maisey.

Libby watched as Tyler selected a new URL to copy. “I don’t actually ‘meet’ with them. I go up there and work, and if there’s something they want to—if there’s something I need to do, that they can help me with, they show up. That’s all.”

“Well, could we go with you? We could help you work,” Alex pressed hopefully.

Libby shifted in her seat. “It wouldn’t matter. I don’t think you can see them.”

Maisey and Alex both gasped appreciatively, waiting for more. So she told them about the time Maisey had given her the phone message.

“He was
right there
?” Maisey said.

“Wow,” Alex said.

Tyler had swiveled around in his chair. “You could, like, give workshops in how to see them,” he said.

“Oh, Ty, that is a
great
idea!” Alex beamed first at Tyler, then at Libby. “It would be awesome, and think how great for mass consciousness and everything—”

“Forget it. There’s no way. And I don’t know how to see them. I just do.”

“You should ask them!” Alex said. “They could help you. And you should ask them their names,” she added quickly.

Libby stood up. Enough was enough. “It’s not like that. It’s not—” What she wanted to say was “It’s not the relationship I want to have with them.” But there was really no point in going into it with the kids. So she didn’t. “Look, I have to get some work done. You’ll have to finish this later, Ty.”

And she shooed them out of the room.

26

She really needed to get that doorbell fixed.

That’s what she was thinking to herself as she went down to see who was banging on her door at 8:30 on a Saturday night.

The stoop light was on because Maisey was out with Tyler and, probably, Alex. The three of them were always together lately, it seemed.

Libby opened the door.

A boomer-era couple stood on the stoop. Him, closely-trimmed graying beard, Imagine World Peace baseball cap. Her, tall. Really, really tall.

Libby opened the door. “Can I help you?”

“We’re so sorry to bother you,” the woman said. “Are you Libby Samson? We’re looking for Libby Samson, the woman who talks to the little people.”

Argh. Not again. “I’m—I do apologize, but I’m busy right now.”

“Oh, Libby!” The woman stepped toward Libby and Libby reacted, as any normal person would, by taking a step backward. Big mistake. They followed, and the man followed the woman, and then they were both inside Libby’s house. Both of them looking around as if they expected she would have fairies in cages, or slumped over empty mead goblets around little rough-hewn tables in her kitchen.

“I’m so pleased we found you,” the woman said as she peered into the living room. “We’ve come all the way from Vermont—I told Danny we could find you!”

“She’s an intuitive,” Danny said. “Gifted.”

“You have a charming home. Charming.”

Yeah, right. Pigsty, more like. “Look,” Libby said. “I don’t mean to be rude—”

“May we sit down? We won’t stay long, we have a hotel in town. We came so far—”

“It would have been a seven hour drive,” Danny said, nodding. “Then we hit awful traffic outside Albany. Huge accident.”

“Huge. I had to purify the scene.” The woman looked at Danny. “Danny wouldn’t let me get out, though, I had to do it through the window. Sometimes the emergency service personnel don’t understand.”

“Jade doesn’t like being told what to do,” Danny said.

They had made their way to Libby’s living room. Danny sat down on the couch while Jade began looking through the rental DVDs stacked on an end table. “Oh my!” she said, holding up a copy of
The Matrix Revolutions
. “You watch these things?”

Maisey and Libby had watched it the night before. Repeat for Maisey, but Libby had missed them when they came out—Paul wasn’t big on movie theaters.

“You’ll lower your vibrations, you know,” Jade said, giving a sharp little shake of her head. “This stuff—it’s one of my big things—”

“It’s part of The Work,” Danny helped explain.

“Would you mind—I could use a glass of water—do you have good water here? The water in town is atrocious. You’re on a well, right?”

Libby returned from the kitchen with two glasses of water. Jade sniffed hers with a thoughtful look, took a cautious sip, then nodded. “It’s fine, hon.” But Danny didn’t seem thirsty—he set his glass down on the end table.

Fetching the water had given Libby a chance to regroup. They had lit on the couch now, both of them. Time to be firm. “Look,” Libby started. “I’m not sure why you’re here, exactly, but I was right in the middle of something, and I don’t have time—” she was trying to get her next
Skin Tones
feature written, to be precise, and it wasn’t going well.

“Yes, I understand, we can come back tomorrow,” Jade said. “We just wanted to introduce ourselves, really.”

Tomorrow?

“Oh, tomorrow! I’m not sure tomorrow will work for me, either, really.”

“We’ve just gotten back from Findhorn,” Danny said, and Jade and he both nodded.

Findhorn. A few weeks ago, the name would have meant nothing, but Tyler had filled Libby in. Community on the coast of Scotland where, in the 60s, some people had communicated regularly with fairies. So the stories went.

“It’s important to us that the experience be authentic,” Jade continued. “The energy there—”

“Jade is really good at picking up on energy. Sometimes it even affects her physically, doesn’t it, J?”

“I got a very strong reading that this is where the new portal would be.”

Okay. Libby was now getting 20 or so emails a day. So she was getting used to the lingo. But the thing with emails is that you can hit the delete key. Having these two in her living room—that was something else, entirely.

“I’m very sorry, but tomorrow—”

Jade had begun rooting through a canvas bag she’d brought in with her. “I have my tape recorder here, somewhere . . . ah, here it is.”

Oh, no.

“Look. I’m terribly sorry—”

Jade was unwrapping a microcassette.

“I’m sure you’ll understand, I, uh . . . I have to check with them. First. Before I involve anyone else in The Work.”

It wasn’t a lie, exactly. She was making it up as she went, of course. But she’d make it truthful later—all she had to do was mention these two to her little man, next time she saw him. “I hope you can understand?”

This was encouraging. Both Danny and Jade now looked up at her.

“There are, ah, certain protocols that they’ve given me—well, not yet. But you can understand, there would need to be. Protocols. And, ah, so, before I bring on any helpers, I need to, like—”

Jade nodded vigorously. “Of course, dear! Of course. You’ll need to rebalance all three of us, won’t you? And integrate our energies. I understand completely.”

Libby pressed her advantage while the momentum was in her favor. “And, uh, we’re right in the middle of a very delicate, ah, rebalancing right now.” Translation: the fairy has said it was time to start work on her fallow land. Which covered a lot of ground, pun intended. So she suspected it was going to be fairly involved. His instructions tended to be a bit elaborate, sometimes. “It’s—” she thought quickly, “it’s at the point relative to the solstice—” Still not a lie, but a bit of color, right? “Over the next week, well, it’s—”

“Danny. This is what I was picking up. Remember last night when we were packing? And I said it was—”

“You felt chilled all of a sudden, I remember.”

“Yes! I knew then, something was—I even said, I wondered if we should postpone the trip, didn’t I, Danny?”

Libby looked at her watch. It was after 9:00. Pity Danny hadn’t listened to Jade’s intuition the night before. “Look, I’m so glad you understand. Tomorrow really isn’t—”

“Oh, my dear! We understand completely,” Jade said. “There is that psychic we’d hoped to see out by Lily Dale, Dan.”

“And I have some preparations I need to do tonight.” As in: if she didn’t get this stupid
Skin Tones
feature written, it would be hanging over her head all day tomorrow. Not fun.

“Oh! Of course.” Jade dropped the cassette recorder back in her bag and stood up. “Come on, Danny. Let’s get to our hotel and try to reach that psychic again. You’ll have to meet her, Libby, she channels animal spirits. Horses, mostly. The stories they have! Horrible. I’m glad you aren’t keeping animals here. Oh, and we’ll do our essences.” She turned to Libby again. “Are you doing essences?”

Essences? “No, sorry.”

“You’ll have to do them. The little people will tell you how, I’m sure. They’re probably preparing to tell you.”

Libby nodded.

“Come on, Danny.”

Libby walked behind them to the door.

Then watched the rear lights of their Prius as they rolled slowly down her driveway.

They reached the road, and she saw Maisey’s car pull up and wait until they pulled out of the driveway so that she could get by.

“Who was that?” she said a moment later.

“Jade and Danny. Here to talk about fairies.”

“Oh. Aunt Libby . . .”

Libby really wished, now, that she hadn’t come down on her and Tyler so hard. “It’s okay, Maisey, it’s no big deal. I’ll be able to get rid of them, I think. At least nobody else really knows where I live.”

“Yeah. Aunt Libby, about that—”

Oh, no.

She waited.

“Tyler was online today, and I guess someone’s organized a meet-up.”

“A meet-up.”

“In Dansville. You know, so people who—people who are into all this can, like, get together and stuff.”

“Oh, no.” Libby felt headachy all of a sudden . . . calm down. Calm down. The last thing she wanted to do was get mad at Maisey again. “Well, they’ll be in Dansville, right? They don’t know where I live.”