Return to New Arden

The shining ones

"Are you one of the shining ones?" I ask the little girl on my doorstep. She is dressed in a tutu and fairy wings. Her mother gives me a funny look but the little girl just giggles. I hand out sweets to her and then more to the werewolf and ghost who cluster behind her. The children compare their catches glad that I have not given them apples before their parents usher them away.

They walk down the path together as the next group arrives. I repeat my question to every little one dressed in wings. They don't really know what I mean but it doesn't matter. What I'm referring to is a piece of history long gone in my life when I was not much older than they are.

My name is Mable Potter and I live in New Arden. Most of the children down here think I'm the village witch. My house is certainly picturesque and when Halloween comes I like to dress it up with carved pumpkins and the like. I even have a black cat named Pushkin but he's as old as me and all he likes to do is sleep.

When I was a child I lived in the mountains behind New Arden in a tiny town called Applewood. There are one or two other towns up there like Frogs Hollow but Applewood is the largest. I lived in a real cottage with two sisters and my mother. My father died in the war.

We didn't have computers or television in those days we had to entertain ourselves. Applewood was a wonderful place to live, there was a lot to explore in the fields and the forests. Behind our house there was a small grove of trees that seemed to grow in an almost perfect circle. It was my favourite place.

I was the artist in the family and I was always carrying around a sketchbook. Mostly I drew landscapes, sometimes people and one strange year I started drawing fairies. You have to be very patient to draw a fairy, they are shy creatures. I would sit still and wait sometimes for hours until one would alight in the flowers in front of me. Sometimes it would only be there for an instant and then it would be gone. I would quickly sketch all that I could remember.

While I was growing up I lost my interest in sketching, I fell in love and got married but it didn't work out and I found myself back at my mother's house. It was then that I rediscovered my love of sketching. I couldn't see the fairies any more, they are more visible to children, but I still had all the drawings. I began to turn them into watercolours and then one thing led to another and I published them in a book.

I think everyone thought that this book would vanish pretty quickly but it took off and I moved down to this house in New Arden. It was like I got a second chance at life. I'd written a number of them when a writer by the name of Henry Kettlewood turned up on my doorstep. He was a funny person. He was convinced that my fairies were real and I could show him where they were. I kind of laughed at him but I agreed to show him my family home.

I took him up to my mother's place and then walked him along all the forest trails I had loved as a child. As we walked we talked and I learned more about him. Apparently his wife had died and he had been to many mediums trying to contact her. I don't know if she got back to him but the process had made him curious and he wanted proof that another world existed.

Henry had a thing with him called a camera and he was determined to snap a shot of a fairy. I asked if this would hurt the fairy and he laughed at me. As the days went on he was starting to get more and more frustrated.

Eventually I said,

"If you want to see them, you'll have to leave your camera behind."

Then I took him to the grove at the back of our house which he thought was funny because it was so close.

"Now, sit very still and try to remember what the world was like when you were a child."

I had no idea if this would work, but we sat in the dusk with our memories. Eventually there were little flashes of light all around us and small forms appeared and began to dance. Neither of us said a word. We just watched.

Henry left for the city after that, but he returned to the mountains many times and he always took me with him. He never got a picture of a fairy but I drew many more for my books. We got married a few years later. I think all in all we had a magical life partly because of the fairies.