Gunnig’s Lost Children — a story of elven and fairies
Chapter 1
It was three am. All throughout the night the silence was deafening, and not a mouse was stirring. The night wind whistled shrewdly through the air, tipping lightly the bin by the wall.
I watched and waited. From my window upstairs, I waited. It had a habit of rolling the bins all the way to the local church cemetery. It would painstakingly pile up the metal tins high; stacking them to the brim of the sky. Before it tipped them over, sending the thundering bang of crashing metal riveting through our bones.
I remember vividly the first time it happened. Lily had come over and refused to be persuaded to leave though we had discussed that she was not permitted to stay over, for fear that my father discovered her. Elfin and Fairies were forbidden from relating. But Lily was different, and stubborn.
The next bin rolled down the street. From off Mrs. Kathwraite’s lawn down the school, before crashing into the clutter in the cemetery yard. I counted twelve bins.
When you are born an elf, you immediately are conferred with a tag-name. A sort of nickname by which you will be forever referred by. You must never address yourself by this name, save in the most embarrassing situations when you desire to be left alone. My name was Wullah, because my mother had passed at my birth. My father says she had let out a loud sigh as she breathed her last. He swore she meant to say ‘wullah’. So Wullah I became.
The town of Gunnig, was predominantly Elfin and popular because of its cemetery. Every year, a record sixty elfin new-born would not see the morning sunlight. Wrapped in yellow satin, by the wailing mothers, they will be stuffed with embalming fluid, and shoved into white porcelain vessels meant for burial.
As gruesome as the ritual seemed, it was of utmost necessity that it was done. For fear that they might live again. Be reborn as caterpillars. A local myth, if you ask me.
“You’ve got to stop watching it, you know”, Lily remarked from behind the wardrobe.
I jumped with a start. Lily had slipped into the wardrobe when everyone was asleep. Defying every rule in our home with her intrusion.
“I’d almost forgotten you were in there, Lily. You must stop this. My dad will have your wings pinned, Lily.”
She laughed and pouted, yet from the corner of her eyes, I noticed a twinkle of fear. A fairy’s wings were her joy.
Just then another bin begun its downward descent. Three weeks ago, it had pushed down two hundred and forty-seven of them before sunrise.
“Have you figured out why it does this? What is wrong with it?” Lily asked
I continued to stare out of the window.
“I think we should give it a name… something, err… witty. Like Gusty the Litterbin wind.”
I snickered. That was a funny name.
“Do you think we can talk to it? “I thought out loud.
“I feel if we could get across to it, we could understand it.”
“Maybe you should… you know” Lily replied, “we fairies live so far below we can’t be bothered. Heck, we have no litter bins”, she squealed.
“SHUSH LILY! It’s pretty late!” I barked under breath; my gaze fixed on the swaying of the trees.
Unknown to us at the same time, a few feet beneath the sodden dust of the cemetery, an awakening was happening, A feint creaking within an old burial vessel sounded in the deep. Sending an echo throughout the earth’s crust.
Gusty was up to something. These random night perils were not of no consequence.
When I woke up, Lily was gone. Fairies were so dainty. Almost invisible till you heard them, and then you couldn’t take your eyes off them. Your captivation absolutely entranced by the radiant hue of their wings, or the fluorescence of their eyes, or the shimmer in their fair skin. You could never be too certain what manner of trance you had unfortunately waded into, but you were captured. And there was no exiting it.
Lily had arrested my naïve heart before anyone could warn me about fairies. I think my father, and Gregory must have spotted it somehow. For that night, I was schooled through the age old elfin — fairy pact forbidding relations between our kind.
I sat up on my bed, now fully awake, and then I saw it… Staring right at me through the window, it was mother! Or a form of her! Cold blood surge through my spine. I wanted to bolt — but I couldn’t. My feet wouldn’t.
I managed to let out a scream. She seemed to have been caught off-guard by it. Letting go off the ledge she jolted backwards and fell. I heard the loud thud, and then a flurry of feet. She was gone before I could peek over.
