Can You Guess the Song? by Katherine Pym

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Faerie Land

Faerie Dust

Can you guess the song?

Violet Snodgrass unfolded her wings and flew from the narrow, bell shaped flower. Pollen laden stamens tickled her toes as she glided by. Sunshine warmed her head.

She fluttered over their fairy village, a field of wild flowers that bordered a cotton field. She laughed at the children who giggled as they tumbled leaf-to-leaf. From open flowers, fairies waved at her when she passed. She floated toward the pond and soon found her chums on an old tree stump.

“What are you doing?” she asked when her feet touched the mossy wood.

“We’re going fishing,” Thorn announced, his black eyes gazing at the still pond. Short tempered, his words could stab an unsuspecting fairy into sudden flight.

“We found this long stalk with shrivelled flower petals at the end.” Marigold waved it above her head. Her button mouth curled into a pert grin. “The fish will love the taste.”

Her voice carried over the pond. A fish jumped. Water splashed.

“We don’t eat fish,” Daisy said, her fair skin bright in the sunlight.

Thorn raised the flower stem like a battle-pike. “It’ll be fun. We shall conquer this pond, and enslave the fish.”

My daddy has plenty. My mama is beautiful.

“Our parents will be cross if we torment the shy beasties.” A cautious lass, Azalea’s namesake only flowered for a short time each spring. She must live her life carefully.

Leif shook his head. “We’ll only coax them to the surface and talk to them.”

Violet smiled at the gentle lad who loved to explore tree roots for the crawly things they provided.

“How will you do it?” Camellia, the sweetest of them all, ran her finger down the bent stalk that would be their fishing rod.

“From the lily pads. The fish live under them. Who’s coming with me?” Thorn flew to the lilies and settled on a pad. He sank to his knees and looked into the water. “Hey, there’s something down there, and it’s big.”

Everyone flew to the lily pads. Violet wondered what could be under the water, for they rarely saw anyone from outside their world, except when the big people planted or picked cotton, a gruelling job by the look of it.

Burr dunked the flower into the pond and waggled the shrivelled petals. Insects swarmed, then settled closer to the water. Suddenly, something big rose to the surface. His snout emerged to nibble the insects. He sank, again, to the bottom of the pond.

“Oh no! A trout,” Burr cried as if frightened. “They eat fairies.” He smirked and Violet frowned. His prickly wit annoyed her most of the time.

“I’ve never heard that.” Daisy took a step backwards, her heel on the edge of the lily pad.

Burr waggled his brow. “They do.” He pushed the stem deeper, wiggling it in front of the big trout.

Please protect me

I will be strong. I will not cry.

“You are trying to scare us,” Violet snapped.

“Ha!” Burr jumped up and down on the pad.

“Stop it. Stop it right now,” the fairies cried. “You’ll make us fall in the pond. Our wings will get slimy.”

He fell on his back, laughing and kicking his feet. Wilted petals floated in the pond. Insects danced in a cloud above the water.

The big trout’s snout broke the surface. He bit off the soggy petals and chewed. Burr jumped to his feet, his curly red hair in sharp spikes about his head. “Why did you do that?”

The fish gazed at them, his eyes sad. “Why do you torment me? I am the king of trout, and this pond is my castle.” He spat a bead of water. It arced and hit Burr on the nose.

He scrubbed his face. “That wasn’t nice.”

“Burr, you are not nice,” Violet scolded. She turned to the king of trout. “How big is your kingdom?”

He waved his fin and water rippled. “My kingdom is as far as you can see.”

I rise on the morning mist, and sing.

Violet fluttered into the air. The area lush with trees and flowers, a stream bubbled from the pond, a path that flowed beyond reach. A gate of treacherous rocks protected the entrance, with a big fish guarding all who would enter. Many waited at the gate, their tails swaying in the current.

She flew back to the lilies where the king of trout spoke in a low, rumbling voice to her chums. They sat on the pads and listened intently to his majesty’s wisdom.

Her eyes met King Trout’s. He nodded at her.

My wings will take me into the sky.

“My kingdom protects your kingdom from the pixies that live in the moorland beyond this pond.”

“And our kingdom protects yours,” Leif interjected. “We keep the bears and humans away so that you may live in peace.” 

Violet smiled. She remembered Dad telling her this one evening as they sat down to a supper of nectar and seed cakes.

The king of trout regally nodded, then he took a bite of swirling insects. He winked at Violet.

As if the fairies suddenly realised the danger, they jumped to their feet. Their wings buzzed and whirred. “Pixies are wicked creatures. They tease everyone.”

Fat tears dropped onto Camellia’s pale cheeks. “I want my mum and dad.”

“But we need their pixie dust to fly.” Azalea’s wings thrummed. Sparkling dust flowed from gossamer feathers.

Burr and Thorn stood with their wings tucked together; their fists jabbed the air. “We’ll protect you.”

King Trout banged his tail on the muddy pond floor, summoning his army. Soon, the water darkened with sleek bodies, side-by-side, heads-to-tails as they gave homage to their king.

“The pixies will come soon,” his majesty calmly said, his snout and eyes surrounded by other noses and eyes.  

I am strong

I am safe with my daddy and mama at my side.

The bright sun dimmed as a cloud of chattering pixies rose in the sky. Their sharp teeth glistened, their beady eyes full of mischief, they swooped over the pond, menaced Violet and her friends.

Trout soldiers jumped out of the water, their jaws snapping at the pixies, who screamed and laughed. They swiped at the fish’s snouts, grabbed Violet’s and her friends’ hair and clothes. The trout spat pebbles at the pixies, who leapt out of the way with shouts of glee. Pixie dust rained on them, fell into the water and onto the grasses that lined the pond.

Fairy adults swept into the fray. They fought the pixies with their wands. Sharp petals poured over the pixies who brushed them away. “We like heather, not these spikey flower petals. Stop. Stop, we say.” They shivered and more fairy dust fell.

Shamans and priestesses held diaphanous veils aloft to catch pixie dust. When piles and piles of sparkling dust filled the veils, ready to drop off the edges, and into the pond, they lugged away their catch.

Violet’s father and mother flew over them, Dad’s arms outspread. “Halt!”

Mum smiled and nodded.

The trout and fairy realms grew tired and frail in the gathering dusk. Pixies floated above the pond. Fairies fluttered about the grassy verge, their breaths heavy from battle. The trout army sank beneath the surface, their ripples producing little waves onshore.

Violet sank onto the lily pad and smiled at her dad. Proud of him, she wanted to fly into his arms for a gentle hug, but as their leader, it would have to wait.

“This battle is finished. We will now go to our dinners of berries and perfumed honey.” With confidence and pride, her parents’ larger than normal wings took them away from the lily-pond. They led the way to their village in the flowers that surrounded the cotton field.

Violet’s wings took her into the air. They buzzed her past the villagers to her father where she took his hand.

He gave her a little squeeze and a wink. “Well done, sweet daughter. Well done.”

Did you guess the song?

Summertime by George Gershwin

Gold and My Family by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

  

 

http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/ 

 

                                                  Gold and My Family

In the late 1930s my father, Oliver Donaldson, and his brothers, Gib and Albert, made their living by panning for gold on two gold claims on the Salmon River, now called the Salmo River, south of Nelson, British Columbia. In 1980, Dad, my Mom, my husband Mike, our five children, and I went on a holiday to the Salmo River and the site of the former claims. We found the bottom two rows of logs, all that was left of one of the cabins they had lived in and the second cabin, which was still standing, on the other side of the river.

       Under Dad’s direction we all panned the river. The children were quite excited at finding gold to take home. We toured the area seeing the route Dad and his brothers had taken into town to sell their gold and to buy some staples and where they had hunted for deer and picked apples to live on. After the trip, Mike and I had vowed that someday we would return.

       In the spring of 1992, Mike, and I found ourselves preparing for a death and a wedding in our family. At the beginning of that year, Mike’s oldest sister Sallian had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and one of our sons and his fiancé had set a wedding date. For almost five months we visited Sallian, first at home and then in the hospital. I cannot describe the anger, sorrow, and frustration I felt as I watched what the disease was doing to her. She lost weight and the ability to look after herself. During her final month she was hardly more than a skeleton.

       For those same five months I experienced a mother’s delight and happiness as I helped with the marriage plans. I made the cake, watched my son pick out his tuxedo, found my dress, arranged for my hairdo, and planned a mixed shower of friends and family.

       Balancing my life while dealing with the opposing emotions was truly hard.

       Sallian died on May 25 at age 54. On June 27 over 300 people attended the wedding and partied well into the night.

       Like most people it took the death of someone close to me to make me realize how important really living is. I knew Mike and I had to do something adventurous with our lives, something out of the ordinary.

       That summer of 1992 we decided to leave life as we knew it in Spruce Grove, Alberta, and get a gold claim in southern British Columbia, preferably in the Nelson area. We sold our house and quit our jobs. For our new home we bought a used twenty-four foot holiday trailer. I phoned the Minerals Branch of the B.C. government. They sent us a map showing the separate gold claim regions of southern B.C. We picked out three regions, Salmo being one, and I called back requesting more detailed maps of the staked claims in those areas.

     On September 1, we began our journey west. Mike was pulling the holiday trailer with our half-ton truck, which had our all-terrain vehicle in the back. I was in our smaller four-wheel drive pulling a utility trailer with our prospecting equipment and other paraphernalia we thought we might need.

       It took two days of slow travel to reach the Selkirk Motel and Campsite on the side of the highway at Erie, about three kilometres west of the town of Salmo. We set up camp, hooking up to the water and power. We had until freeze-up to find a claim.

       Next morning we were up early and off to the Gold Commissioner’s Office in Nelson where Mike bought a Gold Miner’s Certificate and received two red metal tags, and a topographical map, and was given his recording form. We were hopeful as we headed back to the campsite.

       According to the maps the Salmo River was all staked so over the next two weeks we checked rivers and creeks in the area with little success. But the Salmo River kept calling us and we returned to Dad’s former claim and the remains of his old cabin. Just past it we stood on the bluff looking down on the river as we had done twelve years earlier with my parents and our children. The memories came flooding back: the walk to the river with each child carrying a pie plate to use as a gold pan, finding gold only to discover that we had nothing to put it in, one daughter coming up with the idea of sticking it to bandages, camping near the river.

       But we didn’t have time to linger. We were working against the weather. Mike went over our maps of the Salmo River again and this time noticed that there is a small portion on the curve of the river near the old cabin that was open. Because the claims on either side formed rectangles it was missed by both of them. We found the posts of those claims then hurried to Nelson to confirm that the piece was available. It was.

       It was possible to lay one claim over part of another but the first one had priority for that section enclosed in it. There wasn’t time to stake it that night so we had to wait until morning. We rose early, went out to the river and put one of Mike’s red tag on the post of the claim to the east of ours. Mike took a compass and orange flagging and we began to mark off the distance, tying the flagging to trees as we went. At the end of five hundred yards Mike cut a tree, leaving a stump about three feet high. He squared off the top and I nailed up our final tag with the information scratched by knife point onto it. The claim was five hundred yards by five hundred yards and was called the Donaldson.

       We hurried back to Nelson and handed in the recording form. We were ecstatic. Not only had we located an area on the same river as my father, but we actually had part of his old claim. We went to the river and found a clearing for us to set up camp the next spring. Mike took his gold pan and headed down to the water’s edge.

       I followed and sat on a large rock. As I watched the water flow sedately by, a deep sense of relaxation settled over me, the first I had felt since the beginning of the year. It helped me begin to deal with the fact that I had witnessed Death at work.

       Sallian was the first one in either of our immediate families to die. I had seen the tragedy of death strike my friends but didn’t understand how devastating it could be until it happened to me.

       We spent the winter in our trailer in Vancouver visiting with my sister, my aunt, and some cousins.

       Near the end of March we drove out of Vancouver eager to get back to our claim. We pulled our trailer in and set up a campsite was in the middle of tall pine, birch, spruce, and cedar. We could just barely see the mountain tops to the south. The mountains to the north were higher and made a lovely backdrop to the trees. In the morning I walked through the bush to the river. I sat on a large triangle-shaped rock and watched the water drift by. A partridge drummed in the distance. Birds sang in the trees. I took a deep breath of the cool, fresh air. It was a good place to be.

       It rained just about every day for the next couple of weeks. We sat under the trailer awning and listened to the drops hitting the canvas. Sometimes the awning sagged with the weight of the water and we had to empty it. Sometimes we let it overflow, creating a waterfall.

       Rain or shine it became my morning ritual to go to the river before breakfast. I loved to sit on my rock and stare at the water. Because of the rains and the snowmelt in the mountains the river level was rising each day. Soon I was watching logs and other debris rush past in the torrent. The water dipped over some boulders, and created a backwash when it hit others. The force of the water was mesmerizing.

       One rare sunny day we went for a walk down the road past our camp. I carried my camera. A short distance from camp we saw spring water seeping out of a hole under a large rock in the embankment beside the road. Mike reached in the hole to feel how big it was and found a bottle of wine. It had been opened at one time and then put in there to keep cool. Mike set it back.

       We followed the long, hilly road as it wound its way through trees and past cow pastures. On our way back we encountered a herd of deer. They did some scrambling to get into the bush while I did some scrambling to take pictures. They were faster than me. We reached the spring and Mike decided to set up a water system. He went for a pail and a hose. When he returned he put one end of the green hose into the hole and soon water began to trickle out of the other end. He let it run for a while to clean the hose then filled the pail. Mike carried the pail back to camp. We had fresh water for our camp.

       There was always activity around us. We heard rustling and cracking in the bush and it wasn’t unusual for a deer to trot through the clearing at any time of the day. Birds sang, a woodpecker occasionally tapped on a tree, partridge thumped, and trees scratched and rubbed against each another in the wind. All day and night there was the thundering of the boulders as the whirling river water rolled and bumped them against each other.

        As the days warmed the air became filled with the scents of pine and cedar, sweet wild flowers, and the intertwined fragrances of the bush. Colours sprang up, from pink roses, white dogwood and hazelnuts, and purple and yellow flowers, to the bright green of the ferns. Butterflies flitted throughout the clearing and there was the buzz of flies and mosquitoes and the drone of bees. The few rainy days were humid and the clouds never stayed long. Sometimes the moon at night lit up the clearing and we sat by the camp fire in the soft light.

       With the rains and spring run-off over, the river level began dropping. I sat on my favourite rock and watched the slower, shallower water flow by. The roar was gone. In the peace and tranquillity I was able to think about death. As best I could, I acknowledged that many of the people I loved would probably die before me, though I found it harder to actually accept the fact.

       Mike and I spent time digging dirt from around rocks in the water and working it in the pan. We found enough small flakes to keep us trying.

       But soon our adventure was over and by summer’s end we were back in the real world. We never did find much gold but then, for me, it really wasn’t about the gold.

       Since then I have written two novels about gold and people’s quest for it.