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Display a printable version The Fairy Cake Bake Shoppe
I nodded, mouth watering over the selection of richly frosted cupcakes. True to their names they were decorated in a manner appropriate to a "Fairy" shop with little flowers and small marzipan fairies hiding amid the delicately tinted butter cream foliage. "I'd like the blue one with the silvery sprinkles," I said, pointing to the one in the front which reminded me of cornflowers and had a fairy wearing a morning glory cap and skirt. "An excellent choice." From her dimples it looked like the lady often sampled her own wares. "Would you like some tea with that?" "Coffee, thanks." I pulled out a couple of bills and left them on the counter as I took the mug and plate to one of the small tables. The armchair had a needlepoint pillow on it stating, "Magick Happens!" As I sat back with my snack I noticed that there was a heavy wooden, I don't know what you call it, dish rack which had a ton of fairy memorabilia on it for sale. Fairy dolls, fairy wands, fairy neckties and fairy tea towels. And in the other chairs were needle worked pillows with "I heart Fairies" and "I brake for Fairies" stitched on them. It was a bit more than a tea shop and I guess wasn't unexpected in Park Slope, Brooklyn. In the current economy a person had to have a gimmick, and this British tea shoppe with its fairy theme should do well. In fact, I was tempted to phone Sarah, my sister-in-law, to see if she would consider having my niece's ninth birthday party here. Jody and her private school friends would probably be delighted by the whole set up considering how their hippy dippy school had all sorts of weird festivals celebrating the solstice and such. After I finished eating, and it was good right down to the last crumb, I had a peculiar feeling. Not that the food was spoilt or anything, but I just felt lighter, happier. As a New Yorker and a corporate lawyer in one of the top law firms, I considered it my responsibility to be down to Earth, nose to the grindstone. I kept to the motto that if you couldn't blind with brilliance then you'd have to bury your advisories with bullshit. But I felt like singing as I walked along the pavement with my feet barely touching the ground. The late afternoon air filled with motes of light, and I breathed in the smell of autumn leaves dashing around my ankles. For once I didn't worry about leaf mold hitting my sinuses; instead I wanted to rake them into a pile and jump in, just like I did as a kid growing up in the country. I practically danced through the door of the brownstone which I'd bought two years ago. The next day I went in and had a lavender iced cake, with little candied violets and tiny sugar fairies hiding in the icing, along with oolong tea from a blue willow pattern teapot. Sitting there with my cake and sipping tea, I felt swept away by waves of pleasure. Life was good! The noises from the street outside seemed melodic, as gentle as Pachelbel's Canon. I had them fill a box with a dozen fairy cakes; I'd glut myself that night and bring the rest in for the partners at my law firm tomorrow. That should earn some brownie points, or fairy points as the case may be, I giggled to myself. That night I turned in early, it was only two a.m., and as I lay between the soft 800 count Egyptian sheets, I sighed in pleasure having had another two fairy cakes since my afternoon's tea. One of the perks of working from home in the evenings instead of the office was that it was still billable hours even though one was dressed in pink flannel pajamas, pig shaped slippers and pigging out on pastry. The air around me felt fresher, and the colors of my framed oil paintings, though painted by lesser known impressionists, jumped out at me. For a moment I wondered if there wasn't something mildly hallucinogenic in the cakes causing my euphoria. I'd never done anything stronger than pot in college, and then in law school I didn't have the time for that kind of self indulgence. And I still lacked the time to for dating, much less starting a family. I shook my head, what was getting into me? I didn't mind my lack of social life. My brother and his air headed wife were all the family I needed. I put away my guilt over how they lived in a rented ranch style house in Queens while I had an entire brownstone all to myself. They could have afforded more if they hadn't had my niece and spent all their money on sending her to private schools. Well, I'd splurge for her to have a tea party at the Fairy Cake Shoppe. She'd love it. I had reserved a livery car for the break of day as I needed to be at the office very early to give final changes to the word processing department on a contract that was to be signed later in the morning. From the instant the alarm went off, I knew it would be a bad day. Everything was out of focus and blurring. I stumbled to the bathroom and looked to see if I was feverish. My eyes were practically gummed shut, and indeed there were two high spots of color on my pale cheeks. But worst was where the insect or whatever had bitten me. Perhaps it had been a spider? But no, my memory insisted I'd seen something with wings. Where the bite had happened there was now a small lesion. It didn't itch, but it was black and painful. I put a band aid on it and then wrapped it in gauze. I took some ibuprofen and washed my face. I was a junior partner and one didn't call in sick on contract days. And if you ever wanted to make partner, no sick days were allowed at all. I couldn't see straight enough to pull on panty hose and after ruining two pairs, I found an appropriate black pantsuit still in its dry cleaning plastic wrap. By sheer will I forced myself to get dressed. I had to stop once to throw up, but nothing was in my stomach and after a few minutes of dry heaves, I rinsed my mouth and finished dressing. It was almost time to leave though my eyes kept swooping in and out of focus making it hard to see. Still, I could do this; all I had to do was get to the car, then everything would be fine. My briefcase was packed and ready to go right where I'd left it last night, on the table next to the front door. I grabbed my house keys just as the car service drove up in front of my building. I pulled the door shut behind me, slowly weaved down the steps, and that was the last I remembered. I didn't know how I had wound up in the Sahara, in fact I didn't know if it was the Sahara, but my body was on fire, my mouth felt full of sand and so a reasonable assumption would be that I had been kidnapped and moved to some very hot and dry place. But the smell was of antiseptic and there was this beeping. Something had lodged itself in my nostrils, and I tried to remove it only to find that my arm wouldn't move. I forced my eyes open to see a hospital room. There was a nurse standing beside me with a tray filled with instruments and paraphernalia like bandages and scissors. I tried to say something but I couldn't. There was a tube taped to my mouth. I tried to move to gain her attention and nothing. She was unwrapping the arm that had been bitten. I watched as she removed the oozed encrusted bandages. The skin was black underneath where there wasn't a fluttering of iridescent wings, like so many miniature, almost microscopic, butterflies just like the thing which had bitten me. There had to be hundreds of them, all biting and fluttering and ripping off tiny morsels of my flesh, and below where my hand used to be was…nothing. Mercifully I fainted. The next time I awoke I was relieved to see my brother by my bedside. The look on his face wasn't reassuring, though. He looked like hell. Like the way I felt. "Water," I tried to say it. My lips were cracked and my mouth so very dry. My head moved a bit, and I tried to lift my hand. He looked round at me. "Darleen?" I nodded. I swallowed. I wanted him to know I was thirsty even if the words wouldn't come. He reached over and hit the button by my head. I assumed it was for the nurse. The look on his face was of panic. What could be so bad? I looked down at the stumps where my arms had been. I tried to scream but a croak like that of a frog crept from my swollen and crack lips. Again, the blackness swallowed me whole. Days and nights blended into a bleak, meager existence. It had to be winter now, judging from the ever soft grayness of the sky in my window. People came and went. I kept my eyes closed when they changed my dressings. I didn't want to see those things nibble away at me. I knew they had reached my elbows and knees. I could tell by the rasping feel of them as they licked away at my skin and all that lay beneath it right down to the bone. Mute with horror I listened to my brother Paul, and sister-in-law Sarah, make pleasantries attempting to ease my anguish. I stared past them at the walls, the ceiling or through the window. When they removed the respirator I wondered why they had been so cruel as to let me live and I wondered what they were--so small, with teeth like little pins scraping away at my tissue. The doctors and nurses spoke of flesh eating bacteria, but they hadn't seen them and I had. Tiny iridescent wings and little bodies with breasts and genitals, often covered by gossamer scraps, but sometimes not, I tried not to stare as they munched away at me. I tried. My co-workers sent flowers and cards when it became obvious that I would survive. My secretary visited, trying to keep the look of pity and disgust from her face. Things were fine in the office. Yes, I was dispensable. This point was made even more clearly a few days later with the letter from the Human Resources Department. Somehow they had twisted my infirmity around to be dereliction of duty, voiding my employment contract and relieving them of having to make proper compensation to me. It was a low blow, even for them. Of course I would sue them for this dirty trick, but I knew the caliber of their attorneys, and by the time they finished burying me in red tape I will have lost my brownstone and had sold all my oils. Then one day the lady from the Fairy Cake Shoppe showed up at my bedside. It was spring. I hated spring because I had lived to see it. Hated my life; this life of being a torso without limbs. I didn't know how she had found me and asked. "Why dearie, your sister-in-law, Sarah, found the box of Fairy Cakes. She's one of us, you know." Her blue eyes widened. "But that's between you and me. She hasn't told her husband about our kind." You'd think I'd be intrigued. After all there was nothing to occupy me except to fantasize creative and sadistic forms of revenge again my old firm. I'd had the staff remove the television and I didn't want to have people hovering either, trying to cheer me up, or remind me how lucky I was that the infection hadn't reach my heart. I didn't want to hear them, because they didn't know. Others might be lucky, I was just waiting until I had the chance to off myself and put an end to this unfortunate life. In spite of myself, I asked, "Your kind?" She nodded and continued. "I only put the best ingredients in my cakes, but sometimes, the magic in my bones leaks out and gets into my cooking. It gives them that extra little bit of lightness, you know. And then the magic gets into the people eating them. And the little folk, just can't resist. Especially when the person already has some magic about them." She had my attention. "The little folk. You can see them, too." "Aaah. I knew it. You do have the gift. Your sister-in-law suspected it." "The gift." "You can see the wee ones." "The cakes, your cakes, after I ate them. I could see things, everything changed." "Yes. I should have stopped you from taking so many away. You see when our kind eats them we become sweeter, and sometimes we get so sweet that we attract the little folk. And they can't help but have a taste." She blushed. "Little folk, wee ones. Fairies?" I hadn't laughed in months, but I wanted to now. "The fairy cakes made me tasty to fairies?" She took out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. "I'm so sorry." Suddenly life was good again. "You're sorry! YOU'RE sorry. Just wait until I finish suing you, THEN you will know what sorry is. You knew this was a possible side effect of eating too many fairy cakes. Where were the warning labels, huh? Nowhere in the shop did it say, danger, fairies are real and they get real hungry. "I'm going to take you to court lady, and you won't have a pot to piss in by the time I'm done with you. You'll never bake again and put another innocent person at risk from the fey." I was yelling at the top of my lungs and the nurses were crowding around the doorway, scared to enter as I began to froth at the mouth. The old baker's eye's teared up. "But I've said I'm sorry." I smiled. It was my special smile the one I get when I can almost feel the jugular of my adversary ripping open and spouting beneath my teeth. "Sorry's a beginning. What I want is reparations. And if you know what is good for you you'll reach a settlement. If the Fey are real and magic's real, you will reach an accord with me if you know what's good for you." She blushed and nodded. "Anything you want, dear. Just please don't take away my business." I sat back against the pillows and waved my stumps in joy. Oh, yes, I had her now. "So, get me a meeting with these wee folk." I chuckled. If I still had hands I would have rubbed them together. Well, well, if magic was real, we'd see what could be negotiated. I had a purpose again. It shouldn't be too hard to bone up on ancient laws and put my case to the fairy court. My Scottish Gran had told many stories: of how you could find a fairy mound because a huge thistle would grow there to keep mortals away; how they would steal mortal children, leaving brainless changelings in their place; and how they'd dance in a fairy circle of mushrooms when the night was dark, but no, not stories at all. *** Unfortunately, nothing went smoothly after that. "And then," sob, "he said," sob, sob. I just couldn't get the words out. It's impossible to talk and cry at the same time without blowing your nose, and I had no hands with which to accomplish that task. Sarah tried to help but at this point I was a mucus covered, hysterical, hiccupping mess. I can't remember ever crying in my entire life, not before then. It wasn't something my parents approved of. Sarah put her arms around me and rocked me before getting some tissues and helping me blow my nose. After a few more tissues I could breathe again and talk. "It was awful," I said, my voice still shaking. "I've never felt so soiled." Sarah asked in a tiny voice, "What happened? Were you…molested?" I stared off into the distance. The male nurse was supposed to be helping me with occupational therapy. He'd been putting socks over my leg stumps in preparation for a practice round with prosthetic legs. He caressed my thighs as he put the socks on. At first his manner was professional, but then, not so. I gulped more air, forcing the memory from me. "This bastard told me that men got off on women with stumps. There's websites and everything. He said if he took photos of me, there would be a lot of money…" And I broke down again. I'd always thought of Sarah as a sentimental dingbat, but she surprised me with her grit. "Tell me his name, I'll get him fired. And you are coming home with me. Right now." I nodded and rested my head on her shoulder. "I want to go home." "I know you do, but all those stairs with your brownstone? At least our place is all on one level, and we'll convert the den into a room for you. You can learn to use your new limbs as an outpatient. And then, when you can walk again, you can go home." She didn't know that I'd already put my brownstone up for sale. It was too depressing to talk about. I tried to keep my spirits up, tried to believe in fairies and happy endings, but it was just too hard. There was still the pain from the phantom limbs. It felt like someone was using a taser on my legs and my arms; sometimes it would hit all at once, but sometimes it would alternate between my legs and arms, sudden nasty electric jolts of pain. Sarah and Jody did everything in their power to make me more comfortable, getting me the ancient tomes of law I asked for and helping brace them so I could use a mouth stick to turn pages. Eventually, I had enough training to be able to use a simple prosthetic claw to help me study. And study I did, because now my life depended on it. I wasn't going to live like this, in a world where magic really existed, why should I? But if I was going to win my case, I'd need to know a new set of laws, one for the Court of Fey. Miss Lansbury's source for fairy paraphernalia was a group of Pagans living upstate in the Catskill Mountains. They were based in a town drenched in fairy lore. The group made their living selling cute little bumper stickers and needlework pillows out of their adorable little Victorian cottage craft shops, redolent of specialty candles such as bayberry and hot deep dish apple pie. It was true, the Catskills were haunted. Once you looked you could see fairy circles made up of toadstools all over the place for the Fey to hold their nightly dances. And even better there was a fairy mound, an entrance to their world, right in the middle a field on the outskirts of the town. Not only was the mound there, but the entrance was protected by a very large thistle bush—just like in the stories of my childhood. It was close to midnight and Sarah had me bundled up in blankets in my portable wheelchair as we watched Melody Coltsfoot, a bucktoothed woman with henna tinted hair, set out an intricate pattern of stones, while liberally splashing mead on the ground around her. "I can't believe I'm doing this." I whispered to Sarah. "But Darleen, you've spoken of nothing else." She adjusted the blanket over where my legs should be for the tenth time. "You have to have some faith. Melody says what we are doing is very dangerous, but you insisted you were ready." "I know," and I tried to hold back a sob. My entire life was riding on this not being some sort of hoax. It was difficult relying on the kindness of people I barely knew, like Melody, a witch from the local coven who had volunteered to do the summoning. I didn't know why she had to go through all sorts of pro forma crap with the laying out a set of stones and putting out mead for the fairies, but I meekly kept my mouth shut and watched her do it. She was my only hope and I didn't want to screw it up with my cynicism. Not having arms or legs had taught me a certain amount of humility—I was completely dependent on others now. The witch completed placing yet another layer of stones into the pattern and then took a thumbful of smelly ash mixed with even fouler oil and made weird designs on my forehead. It was freakin' weirdness after that because just like after eating the fairy cake the world around me exploded into a sensory carpet ride. I'd read about hallucinogens in witch's brew, stuff that would make you think you could fly. However, I now knew all the accounts were wrong, that stuff really could make you fly, I was sure of it and much more. I was seeing a world around me that had always been there but was invisibly to the normal eye. Tiny motes of light, like fireflies on speed, darted around us. There was one light which grew proportionally bigger with each flicker. Its pulsations made it grow brighter and larger. It freaking reminded me of the Glenda the Good Witch's entrance, but this dame wasn't all sweetness and light. As she loomed larger I could see a face that was perfection along with a figure that would put Tinkerbell to shame. My mouth dropped open. "Mortal, dost thou search for me?" My mind, normally nimble quick and ready to take out the worst blood suckering attorneys out there, was frozen in awe. My original plan of intimidation wouldn't work--I had proudly thought that I had swum with the sharks and barracudas for the past nine years since getting my law license. Now I knew they were nothing more than lambs pretending to be wolves. I was in the presence of real cruelty. One look told me that she had sent her fairies to punish me, and that this was not some frolic of their own that had rendered me limbless. I had to change tactics and quick. I would have sunk down to my knees and covered my face, but the best I could do was cast my look to the ground and cry, "Mercy! I beg you mercy, My Queen." I had no idea if she was a Queen, Duchess, Lady of the Universe, but I was in deep shit without a shovel. My old law professor used to say if you couldn't dazzle them with your brilliance then baffle them with bullshit. But there wasn't enough bull in the universe to strike a deal with this creature. One look at her soulless eyes and I knew I had seriously underestimated her. She finished growing at about a yard of height, and I dared to sneak a peek. She was beautiful but hideous in her raw savagery. "Thou art the one who took sweet Anna-lily from us." Yep, deep, deep doo-doo. "Forgive me, my Queen." I didn't need to work the tremor into my voice. I was ready to pee myself. Anna-lily had to have been the fairy that I'd slapped that night. "Bring her forth." With a snap of her fingers a tiny procession of glowing fairies, about the size of mosquitoes zig-zagged out of the sky and landed on the arm of my wheelchair. What was left of the fairy wasn't pretty. I really needed a microscope to get a good look, even to see if she was breathing, but her skin was grey and dull. "I quake with shame and guilt, your Highness." The fact that the little shrew had bit me first and had gotten what was coming to her, through my slap, wasn't a good defense here. "But I, too, have suffered a loss." I waved my stumps at them. "No doubt it was a just punishment for harming one such as yours…" Unfortunately, the lights were approaching; the hungry little cannibals probably wanted the rest of me for daring to summon their Queen. The Queen smiled, and that was even scarier because her teeth all came to points and the gums were blood red. "Yes. You were justly punished. My sweet subject is useless to me in this condition. So why have to come here to me?" I'd studied ancient laws in preparation for this. I just hadn't realized I was up against a creature without mercy, something a thousand times worse than the most draconian judge. "Reparation, your Holiness. I seek reparation. It's unfair that you have lost one of your fairies while I have only lost my arms and legs." "What do you propose," she said, the smile becoming sharper. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life." I thought back to the stories of the changelings and prayed that my theory was right. My head spun and I gulped air to keep from passing out. "Though the fey are immortal, you chased the spirit from my subject." "Exactly. Take mine in her stead." If you can't beat them, join them. *** Going from high heels and business suits to strategically placed tufts of fairy linen and petals was quite a transition, but the new body beat anything I was ever able to keep in shape as a lawyer. And I suddenly had a social life. Fairies are a sex mad, happy go-lucky lot, and in the nirvana of my new existence I never felt the cold, didn't care if I slept on a cobweb, and having a few food orgies on human flesh didn't gross me out like I thought it would. Best of all, I'm gonna pay a little visit to the Human Resources Department at my old law firm… Hmmmm. Mortals--much tastier than fairy cakes!
Story by April Grey, Copyright 2010 |
| Last updated on 2/15/2010 11:57:37 AM by Jennifer Brozek |
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With artfully draped lace café curtains in the front windows, small doily covered antique tables and overstuffed chintz armchairs, the Bake Shoppe simply oozed quaint; however, it was the seductive smell of fresh cupcakes which drew me in. As I stood by the large, old style glass display, the proprietor, T. Sullivan Lansbury explained "Fairy Cakes are our British term for cupcakes. They can be of any sort of cake, but they do tend to be a bit lighter than your American cupcakes."
April Grey lives in NYC with her husband and son. Over the years she's worked in publishing, theatre and law. Currently, she is proud to be working as an ESL teacher. Her short stories have appeared on-line in Every Day Fiction, Everyday Weirdness, Flash Me Magazine and Chaos Theory: Tales Askew. In print her work can be found in Northern Haunts, and later this year in Everyday Fiction's 2010 Anthology and Terrible Beauty, Fearful Symmetry. When not writing or teaching, she loves to make art quilts. She's delighted to be included in this issue of Edge of Propinquity.