The Fairy Whisperers

Highs and Lows

I don't know how long we had been lying there laughing when Alice asked me if we had any water with me. I did. I had put on my hunting straps and secured some water to them. She told me to drink all the water and I obeyed, still laughing. She had some too. And she stood up and tried to pull me to my feet but I was too heavy and instead I pulled her back down. She fell on top of me and we both laughed. I started to tickle her and she laughed so hard she started to twitch and spasm until she rolled off me onto her back and we lay there in exactly the same position we had been in at first.

By some miracle I was finally able to stop laughing and it was like my senses were slowly coming back to me. I could remember why I was out here again, we were looking for a magic horn. I looked at Alice, she was still glowing and beautiful, but the fairy wings were gone. When I sat up I felt a bit dizzy, like all the blood was rushing from my head back to the rest of my body. But then my head stopped spinning and everything was clear and dull again and not at all hilarious.

Alice was sitting up too now.

"What just happened?" I asked, feeling like I had just come out of a strange dream.

"It's the flowers. Wasn't that amazing."

Now that I had come back down to the real world, it was unsettling to know I wasn't fully in control of my faculties even just for a little while. As a hunter that knowledge was more than unsettling, it was terrifying.

"I didn't like that, if that's what happens when you eat plants, I'm never going near one again."

Alice rolled her eyes.
"You were laughing your head off just a minute ago. You just don't want to admit that eating plants can be fun."

"Alice, I'm a hunter. I have to be alert. Always."

"Jane, we aren't hunting. we're looking for a horn."

I didn't know if I should envy how care-free she was or be terrified. Could all non-hunters really afford to be so undisciplined, so thoughtless?

"Even so, you brought me because you knew I could look after you. I can't do that if I feel all light and fuzzy from your little flowers. Now we've drank all the water I had brought for the whole trip. Maybe we should go back."

She stood up and dusted herself off.

"I don't know what they teach you in your hunting troupe, but I don't give up on a mission that easily. I don't need you to look after me, I need you to help me search once we get to the cave."

I stood up and began to shake my head. I wasn't looking for any trouble. I was about to tell her I want to go home, but she interrupted me.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'll be good from now on, I promise. Please come with me."

My resolve melted. I couldn't refuse when she asked me so sweetly. So I let her lead me through winding pathways to the mountain face. I suppose we didn't really need the water if we were going to be walking the whole way.

Along the way Alice surprised me yet again by pointing out a few tracks.

"Look, unicorn tracks!" she said pointing a short distance ahead of us. Looked over her shoulder and saw that she was right. A unicorn had crossed right over the path we were on. But it was long gone by now, the tracks looked a few days old.

I asked her how she recognised them.

"Wow, you hunters really don't think we know anything, do you?" She saw the alarmed look on my face when I thought I had insulted her but then she smiled to let me know she was only joking.

"I'm training to be a knowledge keep," she said. "That's why I can read maps and know about plants and animal tracks."

Just as I had gone into accelerated training when it became clear that I had the strength to become a hunter, non-hunters stopped training altogether and went into different career paths when it became clear that they could not. Alice would have been training with the researchers and scholars at the training library. They were the keepers of all the knowledge at the settlement and used hides from animals to make thin skins and for drawing maps on. They were masters of preserving things, and had samples of all sorts of things stored away in dug out tunnels safe from the elements. The job suited her. She was smart and inquisitive if maybe a little flighty.

She asked what career I would have chosen if I hadn't been a hunter.

Even the finest bred of the tribe have a choice to do something else, but  I had never really thought about it, not even when I was young. I was never sure why anyone wouldn't choose to be a hunter if they could. I didn't know anyone who ever had. Everyone in the settlement mattered, but hunters were the most esteemed. They provided for the whole tribe, furthered our race and bred the new generations. All of our parents were hunters.

"I don't know," I said honestly.

She continued to press me but I had no answer. I knew I was meant to be a hunter. I couldn't picture my life any other way.