Fairy Crosses

Entry for the Open Novella Contest, 2024

Prompt #36: "Fairy tales are real," and there couldn't be anything worse.

After the death of her husband, Charlotte seeks a fresh start in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia. She wants to do two things: work her mundane job and spend the evenings at her cabin talking to her husband's ghost. All her hopes and dreams stayed behind in Atlanta. Now, she just wants a quiet place to live alone.

Right when she settles into mountain life, she finds a quarter-sized stone outside her door with a black cross etched in its center. She brings it to a library where she learns about the fairies that left it there for her. Her research leads her to an ancient Cherokee hunting trail where winged, fairy-like creatures dance among blue ghost fireflies and sleep in the branches of oak trees centuries old.

Charlotte is sure that her discovery is nothing more than a vivid dream. But as her obsession with Appalachian fairy tales grows, she only finds more fairy crosses outside her door, along with startling evidence that the Faye still roam the ancient mountain valleys.

This is a story about magic and age-old legends, but even more about how obsession can offer relief from difficult circumstances, although at the price of true healing.

Coauthored by Rowan Carver and C.B. Mokedi

Cover made by OmletteDanish (SleepDeprivedArt on Etsy) and C.B.Mokedi