290 - Parts One and Two

290. Parts the First and the Second of the Twelfth Moonly Letter, to be written by Heather to her brother Arley during the very first days of the Truelove Evergreen Moon.

Dear Arley,

I saw Cami the other day for a second and she said you would be home soon. She’s says you’ve done very well and no longer need any training, and needn’t live away from home any longer. I was very glad to hear this, because I miss you so. And so does Thistle. And Little Mauel, who is here by my side asking me what kind of cake I will bake for him this month says he misses you too.

As I told you, I spent most of last month observing Uncle Rich and Beau while they were trying to find a baby for Fiona. But that is not all that happened. There is something I kept back, because I had to tell you Beau and Uncle Richie’s story first. One morning, while I was sitting in a window seat there is in my kitchen,  watching in my mind how our uncle and my boyfriend had sailed to Epirus and were having breakfast among the waterlilies of the Acheron, the Leafies Vinny and Dolphus knocked on the glass of the window I was sitting by. I immediately opened it and they said, “We found her! Do you want to give her your approval before we send her to him?”

“Found who?” I asked in surprise.

“We got together, a whole bunch of Leafies from all over our forest and your garden, because we didn’t think anything good would come out of Hades. And we decided to beat the matrons to the draw.”

“The matrons?”

“How do you think the syndicate of child-givers get to have babies to give out?” Vinny asked me. And before I could answer, he said, “Those ladies one orders babies from? They spend most of their time searching everywhere for kids to give out. We see them at night in our forest, heavily cloaked and moving like phantoms, checking trees, clearings, mounds, even under piles of leaves, searching and  searching for newborn fay kids, so they can give them to fay folk that have ordered some.”

“I had no idea they did that,” I said.     

“Most of the kids they get hold of are born at night. Those that are born by day are more easily spotted by fairies who want children. You know, if a parentless fay kid under seven appears before you and you see it, you have a right to it and can carry it off. Of course, if it is a  day or a few days old, it can talk. And you should ask it if it wishes to be yours. And respect its wishes. But babies that have been born right in the middle of the night don’t usually talk yet. And they are not easy to spot unless you are really up close. So most of these go unclaimed.  And the matrons carry them away if they find them, and take them to folks who ordered a kid.”

“I didn’t know the matrons scoured the woods by night. I thought they grew the kids they give out in cabbage patches or among brussels sprouts or something of the sort.”

“No. They grab hold of any newborn fay kid they see, anywhere they see it. Before it can find itself parents it likes. That’s why ordered kids are sometimes a little strange, and don’t always seem to be part of a family, though there are many exceptions.”

“Not if it can talk,” said Dolphus. “Kids that can talk can’t be taken. That would be kidnapping. Not kids that are a day or two old or such. Those have escaped the matrons, and can choose their own parents.”

“And you have found one of those? For Uncle Richie?”

“Talk to her, and she’ll say she’s willing,” said Vinny. “She doesn’t look like the sort of child who wants to grow up feral at all.”

So, filled with curiousity, I allowed Vinny and Dolphus to escort me to Minced Forest. And there, in a bird’s nest, in a tree covered with yellowing moss, sat what looked like a little bird fairy, probably a week or so old.

“How can she have not been taken?” I asked the Leafies in whispers. Three or four of them had joined Vinny and Dolphus. They had been watching the bird baby for hours so no one would get to her before we did.

“She doesn’t show herself to just anyone. Days old babies know how to hide. And they are usually very cautious,” said Frankie.

 “And choosy. Be careful what you say,” whispered Vinny. “You don’t want to have to keep her for yourself.”

“Hello, little girl,” I said, letting myself be seen, “would you like to be my cousin? I’m from an almost always nice family.”

The little girl smiled and said, “You’re cute. I wouldn’t mind having you for a role model. But to be your cousin I would need a dad or a mum first.”

“My uncle would love to have you for a daughter,” I said. “He’s searching desperately for one and he’s a very nice man.”

“Tell her he’s a big spender who willl spoil her rotten,” whispered Vinny to me, but I didn’t do that.

“If he is like you,” said the child, “I might be interested. But shouldn’t I check your uncle out first?”

And the result was that she turned into a little hummingbird and flew westwards, to check Uncle Richie out.

And that’s not the all of it.

While I wa standing by the nest wondering what to do next, Grandma Divina suddenly appeared.

“Heather,” she said, “has your boyfriend returned? Are he and Richie back from where they went?”

“Let me see,” I said. “No, they are just done having high tea with Uncle Evenfall. And Uncle Evenfall has just become more than plain friends with the goddess Melinoe. And he is about to walk her dogs with her around the gardens of his ruins which are infested with his cats.”

“What?” said Grandma. “Evenfall is probably doing this to keep Richie from flirting with her.”

“Maybe. But I think he really likes this lady. They seem to have more than deaf cats and mute dogs in common.”

“Whatever! You never know with Evenfall. He is very secretive about his affairs. Richie and Beau are strolling too?”

“They’re walking home. There’s…this little hummingbird singing along with Uncle Richie. Grandma, that is a little bird fairy baby I sent to him. She might like him and want to be his. I don’t think he has found anything in Hades, and this kid looks nice. Friendly and so.”

“What? But I just sent Rosendo to him!”

“Who is… Rosendo?”

“My hairdresser spotted this parentless little boy fairy. He can turn into a pink flying squirrel. Not my hairdresser, the pink child I came to an agreement with.”

“I’m seeing him,” I said.”I can see all this because I can know everything Beau does if I want to, and I can know everything he knows.”

“Ah. It’s the same with your Grandpa and me. But to spite me, he rarely does anything interesting. That’s why he plays so much golf. And chess.  To bore me to death, so I won’t  be watching him. So two kids are now sizing up Richie? Darling, we have to interfere. We can’t let them get away.”

 And Grandma and I appeared before Richie and Beau.

“I got here first!” cried Madam Grandma the Lady Celestial.

“You are here too?” Grandma Divina asked her sister.

“You thought I woule be at home twirling my thumbs?”

Yes, she was there. Right behind Uncle Richie.

Uncle Richie stopped humming and the flowers that had grown because of him, autumn flowers, mums and fall daisies and alyssum and petunias and nemesias and last roses and more,  vanished and  it was evergreens that demanded our attention, holly everywhere, bushes of it, and there was mistletoe hanging from the pinetrees.

“Don’t  either of you move!” Grandma Divina yelled at the hummingbird and the squirrel. “Stay put!”

And they did. 

“What have you brought with you from dusty hell,  my madcap nephew?” asked our paternal grandma of our mother’s little brother.

“Nothing, Auntie. No luck! A prophecy spoken to be rid of me. That’s all I got. Hades failed me. ”

“What is in that hamper, Richie?”

“Oh. Leftovers from…lunch? Breakfast? Brunch? What was it Beau?”

“There’s more than that in it,” said Beau. “And in your coat pocket too.”

Beau was beginning to understand what was happening. Likely he was reading my mind.

Uncle Richie glanced at one of his coat pockets and  saw a little blue lizard was peeking out of it. Very gently he drew it out and showed it to us.

“You stay put too!” said Grandma Divina to the lizard. “And whatever is in the basket stays put too!”

And Uncle Richie drew out of the basket the jar filled with water that held the little green seahorse that had settled on his shoe while he was picnicing among the waterlilies in the Acheron.

“Is this possible? Four?” snapped Madam Grandma the Lady Celestial.

“Yes,” said Grandma Divina. “Sister, it’s exactly what it looks like. Which one is your candidate?”

“Esmeraldo,” said Grandma the Lady Celestial, pointing at the seahorse. “I immediately saw he was the best being to be had anywhere near Hades.”

“And who supports the lizard?”

“I have come on my own,” said the lizard softly, “but I can withdraw quietly if I’m not wanted.”

“Of course you are wanted!” cried both my grandmothers’ at the same time. “All four of you! Are there any more? Is this all there is?”

“I think so,” said Beau, who had been looking around.

“If there is anyone else, now is the time to step forward!” shouted the Lady Celestial. “We’re finding parents for all of you. And now, no more nonsense! Turn into yourselves! ”

And the four little creatures turned into cute tiny tots.

“Oh! Wow!” said Uncle Richie, understanding what was going on. 

“Now, ask these kids one by one if they want you for a father or have been disgusted by you,” said Grandma the Lady Celestial.

“Don’t you call my boy disgusting. He’s feeding the whole island,” said Grandma Divina.

“I do have to ask you one by one,” said Uncle Richie to the kids. “But I want you all. I’m an excessive person. I like to have a lot of everything. I hope you won't break my heart shunning me.”

“I like the way you hum,” spole up the little fairy who could turn into a purple hummingbird. “Me, you don’t even have to ask.”

“This is a bold little girl,” said Madam the Lady Celestial. “Well, that might not be a bad thing.”

“But I do have to ask! To make it formal,” said Uncle Richie to the child. “Would you like to be my daughter? And if so, seeing as you can speak, what is your name?”

“I do want to be your daughter. And my name is Hum,” said the little fairy. “I will be the eldest, because I am a week old, and I don’t think any of the others is this old.”

“Thank you!” said Uncle Richie dropping to his knees and there were tears in his eyes. “I have an eldest daughter!" he cried, choking a little. "Who is next?”

“Me, I think. I’m almost five days old,” said the boy who could turn into a seahorse. “And I want to be your son, and my name is Esmeraldo Greengem, but you can call me just Gem.”

And he and Uncle Richie shook hands on it. And Uncle Richie was crying very visibly, and reached for a handkerchief.

“And do you want to be my child, sweetheart?” he asked the little fairy  girl who could turn into a blue lizard.

“Yes, and I would be so happy to be that. I thought you might not want me, or I would have asked you in Capri myself. I’m not very confident, though I am three days old and look old for my age.”

“This one is a blue fairy. Of the intellectual kind. Like my Gen’s Mabel. You have an aunt who will want to be your godmother, dear,” said Grandma Divina.

“Gen is not yours,” said Grandma the Lady Celestial. “But I don’t think you want to go into that now, do you?”

“Branna is a sort of intellectual too. She is an astronomer,” said Uncle Richie.  “Oh, will she be delighted when she sees all these kids! And she thought we would never have any!”

”Get on with it, Richie!” said Grandma the Lady Celestial. “Snap it up, and ask the littlest one!”

And Uncle Rich asked Rosendo, the flying squirrel baby boy if he would like to be his fourth child and second son, and Rosendo, a plump and smiling little creature, said he did. He was a very happy-go-lucky, barely two days old baby who smiled a lot. 

Part the Second

Dear brother, I send you this letter with a second part, rushing, so it will reach you before your return, so you, who work in information, can do so with a knowledge of things here. Mom’s messenger pigeon, Aldegundus,will carry it to you, for he is quicker than any of mine, and that is why you will find with it a sheet full of kisses from Mom. We are all very happy knowing you will be back, but she is positively exultant. I have never seen her happier.

Our Uncle Richearth’s child-seeking affairs have not ended as I told you. They have become more complicated, though for good, I think. Our uncle had our grandmothers and Beau and I accompany him to his house. He wanted us to be present when he showed Branna what he was bringing home with him. He feared she might faint and insisted he would need help, because he had no idea what to do when someone fainted, except go hysterical and shout for help. But it was Uncle Richie who fainted, not Brana, when he saw how happy she was, smothering her children with hugs and kissesand he suddenly hollered, “I’ve given my wife everything anyone needs!” and fell to the floor in a faint, like the man who had made the effort of running the first marathon. And Beau had to revive him and hoist him up while Grandma The Lady Celestial scolded, “Stop it, Richearth! Stop acting up! You are not to steal the stage every second!” And Beau thought it would be best to take him outside, to the garden, so he could breathe fresh air. And Beau did that.

Well, the case is that what Brana did was quite the opposite of fainting. She became hyperactive and began to make her home’s nursery larger, throwing down walls with a mallet and speaking frantically of adding closets and painting the walls with her kids’ favorite colours, pink, blue, violet and green. Our grandmas called Uncle Gen, and he arrived immediately with a team of workers and Brana relaxed a little and left things in their hands, and Grandma Divina also called Alys Possun, the great painter and occasional interior decorator, who filled the nursery with murals and trompe-l’oeils. I hope I got that last word right. Each wall celebrated one of the four elements, and our grandmas began to sing an old song I hadn’t heard since I was a baby myself.

Fire, water, air and earth

Are my elements since birth.

Fire in my heart throbs,

Fire in my hair glows,

Water through my veins flows,

And In my eyes it doth repose.

My voice is air and in air flies,

Speaks, laughs, sighs and replies.

Earth dwelleth in my bones,

Browns my skin to golden tones.

Now, watch me leap and twirl and prance,

All four caught up in life´s dance.

They got me to sing with them, and Hum joined us humming and thus singing, we turned the only crib there was in the nursery into four, each with its peculiarities, Hum’s being a lovely nest of purple morning glories that would open when she woke and shut when she fell asleep, Gem’s a shell-shaped bed with a sea-water mattress, Azuline’s a lovely light blue porcelain crib with a forest of delicate bluebells painted on it, and Rosendo´s a bronze bed with a splendid sun and its long rays, which would have been the envy of Louis the XIVth.

And when the nursery was ready and we were all congratulating ourselves on the great work we had done – my final touch was to add gold and silver guardian fairy medals to the cribs – well, they called our uncle Richearth shouting out the windows, so he would come in and see it all. And through the door of the children’s suite entered, as if a curtain had been raised, the three Eumenides, leaving us speechless, which made them happy, and behind them, Uncle Wildgale and Mathilde, and their two girls and three dragons. And there was more, because behind those who had come in came  Atty and Catsheba and the Atshebies and Pedubastis, their guardian fairy.

“What is the meaning of this?” Grandmother Madam The Lady Celestial demanded, while Grandma Divina waved and cried out “Helloooooooooo!”

And for an answer to his aunt's question, Uncle Richearth entered the room last, with a lovely though disturbingly transparent baby in each arm and said, with a frightened face but a resolute voice, “These are Crown of Roses and Goldenstar, and yes, I fear they are dead. But I am keeping them anyway. Any way!”

“Yes!” cried Branna, “Yes, we are!” And she rushed for the babies as if someone might snatch them from her.

“Don’t call them dead! They are little ghosts, but spirits like us, after all,” protested Grandma Divina, while Madam Grandma the Lady Celestial shook her head and muttered, “We do exagerrate, don’t we, Richie? Never enough.”

And Uncle Wildgale said, “Since Branna was always asking us to give her one of our daughters, and begging Atty to cede her a couple of his kids, and since neither he nor I would ever do that, well, we began to feel like we were being stalked by her. And so he and I went to see the matrons and Atty threatened, though a little late and untimely, to sue them for having let Jocosa order kids for him if they didn’t solve his brother’s problem once and for all. While he was doing that, the Eumenides appeared in Lucina’s office, and said they had already emitted judgement on this particular case and that they had ruled in Richie’s favor. They informed us and all those present that they themselves had taken the trouble to find suitable children for him. They had recalled another case they had been consulted about. There were in Hades two babies that had become estranged from their parents, mortal tourists who one night, just like many others, and being in their yacht, had exceded themselves in their devotion to Dionysus and failed to notice that their three year old twins’ baby carriage was floating off in the direction of Anthemoessa. The sea goddess Ran wanted to claim these children, on the grounds of their parents’ nationalities. But the kids had entered into the territorial waters of the Anthemoessian Sirens, and had been claimed by them when they reached shore. The Eumenides had advised the  Sirens to give Ran a bag of gold coins, for she was famously avaricious, and recommended the goddess to take this and forget to press further for the tots. The sisters decided this under the conviction that Hades was a better place than Ran’s underwater dungeons. Ran had mumbled something about this being a hometown decision, but took the bag and left.

“We know you are fairies and these twins the ghosts of mortal kids, but we found this merry young man so uncharacteristically depressed, and taking into account that his wife was once a vampire, we thought giving him these children would not be a mistake. After all, a boy who resembles a golden star is not an inadequate child for an astronomer, and a girl who loves roses, queens among flowers, could be right for a planter. You are not going to be afraid of these poor creatures, are you, fairy people?”

And Alys Possun, as temperamental as usual, frowned and began to rant, “They’ve ruined my masterpiece! I’ll have to start from zero!”

But Madam Grandmother the Lady Celestial said that the ceiling was a little bare and that maybe he could do something there.

“For the Estrellito, okay. But what about Miss Roses? Shall I make her share the earth with Azuline? No, I don’t think so,” said Mr. Possun, who firmly believed roses were no company for bluebells because they did not look good together.

“I don’t mind at all!” Azuline offered immediately.

“Hush, child! It’s foolish to cede territory,” said Grandma the Lady Celestial.

“There’s no need for sacrifice, dear. Mr. Possun is very clever, he’ll come up with something. Can't you see that he is a genius, Azuline?” Grandma Divina told the little blue fairy.

And encouraged by Grandma Divina’s words of praise and inspired by the suggestions of Grandmother the Lady Celestial, Alys began to paint stars in the center of the ceiling that shone like lamps of gold, because that is what they were, and he created planets overgrown with red roses and others with rings of yellow roses. And Uncle Gen hanged two elaborately wrought silver and gold cribs up there and at first we feared they would look like those plants some people hang from ceilings but, though I know it sounds strange, the whole scheme worked and resulted very interesting.

“It looks like more is more,” said Uncle Gen.

“I hope you won’t take to howling here nights and keep everyone from shutting an eye,” Madam Grandmother the Lady Celestial warned the baby twins.

“What is howl?” innocently asked the poor little ghosts, fresh out of the sepulchrally silent fields of asphodels.

“Allow them to remain in their ignorance, Mother,” advised Uncle Gen.

But Uncle Richie said his kids could howl all they wanted to, and began to howl himself. But there was no need to make anything soundproof, because the twins were more interested in getting to know their brothers and sisters and cousins than in molesting anyone or paying any attention to their weird father.

And soon I will be able to wish you a Merry Christmas in person, Arley.