This story is by Carmella T. Penny and was part of our 2024 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.
WARNING: This story contains descriptions of child abuse.
Faeries aren’t born innately evil or good. Faeries associated with the Seelie court don’t have to stay good, and faeries associated with the Unseelie court don’t always turn out bad.
But nobody ever told me that.
Well, except one time. But I didn’t listen . . .
I was a mere faerling, the equivalent of four or five in human years, and it was the evening of the autumn solstice, when the Unseelie faeries come out of their summer hiding places and run amok in celebration of death and darkness.
As a Witch Faery, all I knew was that I couldn’t show fear, no matter how scared I was of the bigger, tougher Warlocks, the Witch children who might turn you into a frog—or a toad, if they slipped up—and the ghouls that didn’t deign to speak to me, but might pass their hollow, hate-filled eyes over my small, wispy form.
I was almost home, flying at a crazy pace over the stone path that wound in spirals towards the door of the Witch’s castle, when I felt a pain sear my delicate infant wings, sharp as the stab of a serrated knife as I was jerked around. My assailant was an adolescent Witch faery, much like myself, with the jet-black hair and smoldering eyes that characterize most of us.
“Let me go!” I screamed with all the hellish rage I could muster, writhing in agony as every twist of my flexible spine sent my wings flaking over the pavement like falling leaves.
“Before I’ve had a chance to tie your limbs up like a ribbon?” he laughed. “Where’s the fun in that?”
My shrieks were given no more notice than were the millions of other cries that saturated the night air like the blood soaked my dusty gray tunic. Not one man, faery, or animal, stood by to witness my plight or lift a hand to protect me. I was as vulnerable to the torments of this demon of a Witch-faery as the night wind was to my screams.
Finally, he threw me against the hard stone of the ground in disgust, and I remember the pasty moonlight glanced off his sparkling white teeth as he sneered, “You’re a weakling. You need to grow up.”
He flew away abruptly, and I hurried to my feet, flames shooting through my calves and thighs as I laboriously dragged myself up all sixty flights of the castle and tripped into bed, sobbing with shame, fear, and pain.
It was then that the soft glow filled the room, a white comfort that dried my tears with tender warmth and stroked my injuries with the soft coolth of snow. An angelic voice spoke.
“You don’t have to do this. Give up your apprenticeship in the Witch’s castle. You can go back to being a mere Night Faery and never get hurt again.”
I couldn’t see her because my eyes were blurry with dizziness and salt, the tears slipping through the dimples of my cheeks.
“I am a weakling,” I sobbed. “I will become so tough that I will gain the favor of the Witch and become a better Witch-faery than he is.”
I felt something like a cool breeze smoothing my body, straightening out my mangled wings and limbs and drying up the blood.
“Just remember, once you pass a certain point, there’s no turning back.” The light faded to nothing, as though it had never been there, and once again I was alone in the darkness.
There’s a reason hardly any Unseelie faeries do turn to the light side. I was proud and aggressive. Years passed and I moved rapidly from being the terrorized to being the terrorizer. I became known among the other Witch-faeries for being the strongest and the most vicious.
And I was, without a doubt, the Witch’s favorite. I spent long hours in earnest study and exercise, finally assuming the position of her errand boy and guinea pig.
I never saw my tormentor again and I couldn’t remember what he’d done. I think the trauma made me force myself to forget the specifics, because I could later recall that I’d been toughened up, much like I toughened younger boys as I grew older. But the details were intangible.
Now I’m thrice the age that I was that fateful night, and it’s another autumn solstice. Death hovers menacingly in the air, in the brittle crunch of the lifeless leaves, in the harsh chill of the ungiving wind, in the blackening dark of the midnight sky.
I’m eager to prank fae children and seduce some hot young Night faeries, but the Witch is summoning me. So I head towards her laboratory, muttering to myself.
“I need you to test a portal I’m working on,” she greets me. “It’ll take you to a place very far away. But you can get back quick as a flash, just by walking back through.”
I run through the glowing orange frame, eager to be done with the job, and blink with surprise upon finding myself in the Witch’s courtyard. Oh well. I sprint off, and before long, I’ve found a vulnerable, very young Witch faery to beat up on, and seeing the terror on his face is delightful.
I’m unleashing all my energy and ire onto the faerling when I get distracted by a white glow moving through the sky.
I glimpse a tiny white foot dash across the ray of light, and I realize that it’s a moonbeam. Imagine if I got a moon faery to romance with! I catch the tail end of the moonbeam and race frantically through the whipping wind, trying to catch up with the Moon Faery. I follow her as she slides down the end of the moonbeam over a windowsill. “Greetings, lovely,” I address her in a low murmur designed to set her heart in motion.
Instead, she flits forward, ignoring me completely. We’re in a turret room, furnished with only a washstand and a cot, over which a skimpy blanket covers a small child.
Then she opens her mouth and her words I will never forget:
“You don’t have to do this.”
Has she said that to me before? Just now? Or centuries ago?
Suddenly, blinding memories rush back to me. A little boy tremoring in his bed, the soft white light through his window, a comforting voice like music . . . How could he have forgotten?
Was it—no! I stare, dumbfounded at the gracious dignity of the faery as her delicate hands caress the shaking lump of the boy in the bed, smoothing soft fingers over his cheeks and extinguishing blood and tears.
“Give up your apprenticeship in the Witch’s castle,” she says to the child under the blanket. “You can go back to being a mere Night Faery and never get hurt again.” When the little boy shakes his head, she turns towards me. “This is the boy you just beat in the courtyard below.” The reproach in her tone makes me want to die a thousand deaths.
“No,” I murmur. But it is. A young faerling, a Witch faery like myself. I tried to toughen him up a little. That was all.
It can’t be.
It is.
“This child, this Witch faery that I just—beat,” I falter. “That boy—it’s—it’s—”
“Yes, Venefican,” she says. “It’s you. That little boy over there is just as much you as you are.”
“No,” I say. “No, no, no.” How is it possible? But it is. The room is eerily familiar. The courtyard scene. I beat this boy. I called him a weakling; I told him he needed to grow up.
That portal must have been a time-traveling portal, not a realm-traveling portal. Had the Witch lied to me? Or maybe she just made a mistake.
My mind is spinning. I can taste guilt like the salty iron of blood on my tongue, and I hate myself for what I have done.
“I really did hope you would change your mind and give up this life,” the Moon Faery says.
My knees buckle, bruising my thighs against the stone floor. I’m grabbing a blade from my belt, tearing open my tunic and pressing the dagger point to my heart. “I can’t live with what I have done to the innocent,” I breathe in despair. “If there ever was a point of no return, I must be far past it. I only hope I will die quickly, that I may be relieved of this guilt.”
But now her hand is silky cool against my cheek, slipping under my sweaty chin and lifting it towards her pearly luminous gaze. “Venefican,” she whispers, and the tears run down my face. “Mend your ways. Find the children you have hurt and help them. You are not past the point of no return if you can feel remorse. You don’t have to do this.”
This time, I listened.
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