Sorry for the wait! This chapter is on the longer side and there are A LOT of moving parts, so forgive me if the writing gets clunky at times. I definitely have to go back and edit at some point, but I'm just relieved that I can finally move on to the next part. I have a feeling you guys will really like what's to come if I haven't lost you yet. Thanks for hanging in there and see you soon (I hope)
It started with the banana.
Or rather, it ended with the banana, and started with a bunch of little things. Things that Orla had thought peculiar, sure, but never of much note when it came to Mr. Smith, as everything he did was of the peculiar sort.
Nonetheless, there came a point in which Orla could no longer ignore the notion construing in the nooks and crannies of her mind, and as it were, that point could be placed on the exact coordinates of where one Ian Alexander MacKenzie lay ill in his infirmary bed.
Nurse Redford had squirrelled the boy away for the better part of two weeks by the time Orla had been well and truly exiled from the hospital wing. The Matron had insisted visitors of any sort would delay Ian's improvement as he already struggled for sufficient rest as it was, though really, she was just growing sick of Orla's obsessive, teary-eyed visits.
Despite the little time Orla had been afforded with her brother, the specificities of Ian's poor state had not failed to burn a brilliantly clear picture in her mind's eye.
His skin had grown pale like the moon, but rather than craters, his face was decorated with red blotches, sandpaper to the touch, and particularly rough in the crooks of his elbows and knees. Sweat covered him like morning dew in a way that was entirely contrary to the coming autumn cool, though he certainly shivered like the husks of leaves beginning to pile up in the courtyards. And in the manner of food, Ian was solemn to keep it down at all. Last Orla knew, her brother had been subsisting on little more than bone broth, and that was if he didn't spit it back up.
The longer young Ian's sickness endured, the more she began to believe it would never end. Hoped it would never end, rather, as an end was bound to be of the final sort. The kind that took her mother and father prior. And Orla wasn't sure her own end wouldn't soon follow.
Of course, Martha had been the first to hear of Ian's symptoms. The girl had kindly offered to go down and inspect Ian herself, to volunteer her assistance with the treatment, but Orla knew better than to send her to the Matron with such intentions. To so much as question Nurse Redford's judgment would be to put one's self in the line of fire (and firing).
As such, Martha had precious little to work with in the way of diagnosis, though she felt fairly confident in ruling out consumption, as Ian's lungs didn't seem to have any issue. A flu of some sort was her next best guess, which Orla took some comfort in, though secretly, Martha wished she knew more about the Spanish Influenza than just what Stephanie Meyer had written about Edward Cullen's vampiric beginnings back (or rather much later) in 2007. In any case, she guessed the pandemic was still a few years off (or so she hoped).
All the same, Orla couldn't just leave the whole thing be. Not with her brother's life at stake.
At first, it had been the Matron's name that had incurred all of Orla's abuse. For days on end, Martha heard complaint after complaint of That pigeon-livered wench! and Who is she to keep me away?! accompanied by extensive, though largely futile, play by plays of anything Orla could recall happening to Ian the week he'd taken ill.
But Matron, as stern as she could be, and as wrong as she could be, knew Orla's grief quite like her own (she'd lost a husband, after all), and kindly took to sending the miserable girl updates on her brother's condition throughout the duration of his stay in the infirmary. In one such report, Nurse Redford had even offered to allow Orla a whole week off to 'destress', should she desire it. That was about the time Orla figured things were getting well and truly dire.
Ian's illness was inexplicable, and with each passing day, Orla's desperation for some cause, some explanation, grew in much the same way as her brother's conditions—deadly. Because these things did have causes. None natural, so it seemed, but supernatural…Now that's where Orla next projected her scorn.
It had to be the Fae.
Orla spent days turning over everything she knew about the damned creatures, hoping, praying, that some bit of information would jump out and help her to identify the faerie among them. But first, if she were truly to try and conduct a one-man faerie hunt, Orla knew she'd be needing something in the way of protection.
Though Orla didn't require the whole week Nurse Redford had offered, she did allow the Matron to excuse her from one day of work. With that day, Orla set out to town, scouring all jewelers in the area, and even some of the black and silversmiths, for iron trinkets.
Lapidaries, by and large, were unhelpful, scoffing at her request for iron pieces (which they insisted no self-respecting jeweler carried), and pointed her to their more 'suitable' (and incredibly more expensive) gold necklaces and bejeweled rings. Neither of which were useful in the least.
The smiths were far more reasonable, and though they had no jewelry per se, they did have knives. Iron knives. For a price (one Orla rather not think of), a smith was able to melt down one of his dozen pocket-sized daggers and fashion it into a rather handsome, if nondescript, ring. She donned it the moment the money had passed from her hands and into the smith's, pleased by the placid heat it gave off, still warm from the shaping.
The Fae had few weaknesses. Iron was really the only one across legends that could be said to disable the Fair Folk, though it varied from tale to tale exactly to what extent it functioned, and more importantly, to what effect.
Some stories claimed iron was strong enough to brand faerie flesh, and if administered by way of a dagger to the heart, enough to smite the daemon entirely. Other tales believed it to be more of a nuisance, and like garlic to a vampire, did little more than ward off the síth. But the most powerful of the Fae, the noble faeries, were likely to have but an aversion to iron, no stronger than that of a child to their vegetables.
This troubled Orla to some degree. Sure, there were other charms against the Fae, of which she kept up with equal diligence as her ring-wearing—clothing turned inside out, bells muffled by cotton and shoved down her pockets, Saint John's wort stamped in her left boot, a four-leaf clover in her right—but none which provided her with any real sense of security.
The truth was that the Fair Folk were more powerful than they were gentle. Perhaps their language could be considered a weakness of sorts as they were incapable of telling lies, but such an inability did not mean the Fae were bound to the truth. Rather, omission, distortion, and deception honeyed their tongues in a manner that did not require truth to have a mortal thinking exactly as they wished. And that, Orla thought, spoke to their true darkness.
They were an ancient race. Immortal, in fact. Or close to. The Daoine Sìth, or in plain English, the Good People, were perhaps best known for the length of their lives, said to inhabit an invisible Other Realm that layered upon, though didn't quite touch that of the humans. They were of a middle nature, somewhere between Man and Angel, and of wickedly intelligent spirits. Their bodies were pliable and could shine with light like a coalescing cloud at daybreak when they shifted shapes. As such, the creatures could dematerialize in the Mortal Realm and reappear in the Otherworld at pleasure and with little regard to witness.
In matters of the Otherworld, very little is known. Not that mortals have yet to enter it, as there have surely been plenty. Rather, an exit from the faerie dimension comes with great costs as time spent in their land, in their hills, and amongst their cities never seems to correlate with time in the outside world.
There are many legends that tell of men who enter faerie residences and stay one night while a few years, decades, centuries, even, have aged the friends and family they once knew on the other side. Perhaps most famous is the tale of King Oisín, one Ian surely knew quite well for how often Orla recounted it. The details now made her queasy.
So it goes, young Oisín was visited by a fairy woman by the name of Niamh of the Golden Hair, a daughter of a sea god. The two were soon married and returned to her home, Tir na nÓg, one of the Islands of Young in the Land of Faerie, where Oisín was promptly crowned king. With each year their union produced another child until they were three stronger than they had been before.
After these three years, Oisín wished to visit his old comrades in bonny Ireland, and so Niamh gifted him her shining white horse with a warning to never dismount it. Thinking little of her condition, Oisín rode to as far as Ballinskelligs Bay when a clap of thunder frightened the poor mare, and the King was thrown from its back. The exact moment King Oisín's feet met the earth, so did the 300 years which had unwittingly passed him in the Faerie Realm return in full force. Within moments, the mighty king turned gray and old, and in a few moments more, nothing remained but a pile of powdery ash where he once stood.
But sometimes it wasn't the time in the Faerie World which troubled mortals so, but the wonders which it contained. The Leanan Sidhe were notorious for taking human lovers. Favored were the painters who could capture spirits in strokes, musicians who could summon tears with their melodies, and poets whose tongues were perhaps even more honeyed than that of the Fae. Artists, in any case, of whose passions could grow fat on the majesty of the Other Realms.
Entertained and lusted and cajoled by their faerie lover, the mortal hardly notices that as they feast on the beauty of the other realms, they themselves are feasted on in spirit and life force, drained of their talents, and finally unceremoniously deposited back into the Mortal Realm. Returned, the humans grow mad, unable to function properly in the mundane while the unknowable teems, known, in their minds but never to be seen again.
Something similar happens with faerie food, too. Their morsels are like ambrosia to the gods, not in that they kill mortals who try to feast upon them, but in that they might as well.
Often, it was said that humans who have eaten food in the Land of Fae can never return, but Orla thought this to be rather clearly false when matched up with other tales. It wasn't that they couldn't return, it was that there would be no human meal which could fill their bellies, refresh their palettes, or warm their spiritsquite like that of the Fae ever again. A single berry of Fae origin was enough to render all mortal food to sawdust on the tongue. And similarly, mortal food was of no great desire to the Fae, though they could manage on offerings of honey and nectar if they must.
Of course, most of this information was irrelevant to Orla's purposes, as she would be avoiding entering the Faerie Realm at all costs. Things which truly pertained to her search were those which concealed the Fae. But of course, the Fair Folk had a way of tricking the mortal eye.
Glamours. According to some different tales, the use of glamour was not restricted to simple illusions or tricks, though they could easily do as much. Fairy gold was particularly notorious, appearing as coin when paid, but soon thereafter revealing itself to be leaves or petals, or something similarly worthless.
No, the Fae were capable of creating grand mirages. Whole, hallucinatory castles, fashionable clothes and glittering jewels where there were none before, and of course, to disguise themselves as mortal or animal was child's play among them.
And so Orla knew her eye alone would be no match against the Fae which she sought. And if convincing enough, Orla wondered if perhaps her iron, too, would be rendered worthless to a glamour which could replicate mortal flesh.
Could a faerie possibly glamour themselves so thoroughly so as to remain ignorant to their own true form? Would their tongues sour, too? There were interesting implications to either question, that was to be sure. It should they be true, it could mean that a fairy, once clothed in human skin, might be able to both lie and consume mortal food without harm to their original forms.
It was a curious thought, and one which immediately conjured an image to mind.
She watched in disgust as the chewed wad of pear rolled off of Mr. Smith's tongue and onto his plate with a queasy plop.
Despite Orla's disgust at the memory, what stood out most keenly was the teacher's own plain confusion at the situation, not to mention her own.
"Have you no' eaten pears afore, sir?"
"I suppose it's been a century or two since my body could stand them…"
Centuries. He'd said centuries. Orla reeled, trying her best to recall what had happened earlier in the confines of their brief, yet telling, interaction.
He was examining the cabinets with some concern, as if he were unsure if he were welcome to open them or not.
It was with that thought, one of many she'd turned over in the sleepless nights following the purchase of her iron ring, that Orla had leapt from her bed, careful to not startle a sleeping Martha, and snuck her way down to the kitchens in nothing but the linen of her night gown and the still unfamiliar weight of the iron on her finger.
Orla stood alone and barefoot in the vast darkness of the kitchens. She cursed herself for not bringing a candle with her but found the moonlight to be a sufficient guide as she crept closer to the cabinets Mr. Smith had been examining that morning so many weeks ago.
They were cabinets, sure enough. Nothing amiss to Orla's standards. Perhaps he'd been examining the, admittedly, poorly painted doors. Or could it be that he had taken issue with the coloring? Or maybe—Orla squinted—he'd been inspecting the haphazard strokes that seemed to spill onto the more filigreed bits of the metal handles…
Metal handles.
Orla pressed her fingers to the hand hold and felt the coolness seep into her touch. With a quick motion, she snapped her ringed finger against the handle. A dull clink sounded from the clashing metals.
It could be iron, Orla mused. All the usual doorknobs around Farringham were brass, but the kitchens were strictly servant territory, so there was no need to splurge on the more expensive, decorative alloys as they had elsewhere. Orla reminded herself it could also just be steel, though somehow, she seemed to doubt it.
Coincidences existed, she reminded herself. After all, she'd given three other reasons for why he might've been so unsure of touching the cabinets, though a mere distaste for the craftsmanship, or unfamiliarity with kitchen rules, seemed ridiculous to even Orla's searching mind. And of course, there was the other thing. Centuries. Not years, but centuries. It could've been hyperbole, but then, why had Mr. Smith excused the slip by blaming his tiredness?
It wasn't adding up.
What else did she know about John Smith?
Frankly, she'd seen very little of Mr. Smith over the two months since his and Martha's arrival at Farringham. Their interactions were limited, favouring tight-lipped smiles and passing head bobs of acknowledgement in the corridors. But it was just like that with the staff. It had never bothered her much before as her purpose had always been to look after Ian, not to get friendly with her superiors. Now, though, the distance frustrated her as her desperate attempts to recall anything of note in regard to Mr. Smith came up remarkably empty-handed.
There were the little details she'd filed away, sure. Useless things.
Like how John Smith was a morning showerer, lecturing all his early classes with water, rather than pomade, in his wild, spiky hair. And there was that awkward habit of his, opening doors for people while they were still uncomfortable distances away. And perhaps the most unnerving of his qualities was that faraway look he'd get at times. Orla took care to recognize the haze when it occurred as it was coincidentally when he grew the most accident-prone (though really, the subsequent messes were more of her concern).
Jenny had teasingly dubbed it his left-the-kettle-on look, but Orla'd always thought it was more than that. She rather thought it was like he had been hollowed of something vital and stuffed full of hay. A strawman biding its time, warding off the crows.
As she continued to sift through her memories of the teacher, there was a particular moment that came to mind.
Because they had spoken another time, hadn't they? After the kitchen incident and just before Ian had taken ill. Orla, having been so preoccupied with her brother's worsening condition, had forgotten entirely about when she'd cleaned Mr. Smith's classroom for Martha.
"Ah!" He startled Orla out of her thoughts, pulling a perfectly yellow banana from his drawer.
And there'd been some long rambling explanation to follow, something about finding it in his pocket? Orla's face must've been the perfect picture of confusion, because he'd grown embarrassed soon after.
"But now that I'm saying this all out loud, I'm beginning to question whether pocket fruit was the proper way for me to repay you…"
Odd, odd, and odder. Orla had been so taken by the banana at the time so as to excuse the peculiarity of the situation. It was strange, though, that he insisted she be repaid for helping him. But given her theory, that too could be explained, for the Fae were just as particular with their debts as they were their words.
The Fae didn't even like thank yous, as they didn't believe them to be expressions of gratitude, but rather, an acknowledgement of some service performed. So why did he feel the need to 'repay' her help from the kitchen the day they'd met? Had he thanked her? Some slip of the tongue which had indebted him?
It didn't make sense. None of it. Because Fae tongues don't just slip. On a whole, the Fae were particular, precise, and meticulous. But from everything Orla had witnessed about Mr. Smith, he was messy. From his classroom, to his mind, to his wild hair, John Smith simply didn't fit the bill. He was too, well, human.
And yet, there was still something that bothered Orla. Deeply. Hollowed out her stomach and made it ache with a raw and searing guilt.
Because she'd given Ian that banana.
And worse, he'd eaten it.
Orla combed nervously through the grass, searching for flowers she could tug up and chain together, each too-tight knot twisted into the fat stems an acute representation of her frayed nerves. Her rump had grown numb against the base of the knotted tree roots, and she'd talked so long that pomegranate clouds were beginning to obscure the setting sun.
Fairy tales had rules. Witches were evil, forests dark, and struggles bloody. Simple. Motionless. In that manner, whole worlds could be captured in a word, the brief labels serving as the sharp, predictable outlines. There were clear beginnings and decisive endings. Every character its purpose and every prop its function. And looking neither left nor right, and without the slightest trace of astonishment, the hero pursues his goal.
But this wasn't a fairy tale. It was Orla's life. No strongly colored villain nor highly specific task to overcome. Just the daunting, nebulous, and frankly messy reality of the concrete world. And God, did it terrify her to not know how it would end.
To Martha's credit, she'd been a keen listener. And though her face largely remained a careful articulation of blankness throughout most of the story, there'd been moments when her shoulders tensed and her eyes grew dark and foreboding, words like 'dimension' and 'shapeshift' and 'dematerialize' rousing the most peculiar looks, like she was biting her tongue.
It'd been hard to convey the true gravity of the situation, what with Martha's lack of legend, and Orla's patchwork of memory. Organising the past few weeks of her life and the intense fear which had dogged them into a single narrative had exhausted Orla more than she cared to admit. As such, the silence that followed her condemnation of Mr. Smith had been a relief of sorts.
I've said my piece, she reminded herself. It's up to Martha if she wants to believe me or no.
"Okay, let me get this straight," Martha spoke after a long, long time. In the time it'd taken the girl to process the account, Orla had made three daisy chains, and was now working on braiding them into a crown.
"You think Mr. Smith is a centuries-old fairy who, at some point, lured me into the Land of Fae—"
"Och aye," Orla interrupted. "It's why ye act so queer. Ye donny ken how to act in the mundane world anymore."
Martha shot her a pointed look and Orla quieted. "—-and brought me back. Except for some reason, he's glamoured both me and himself into thoroughly believing he's a human, though sometimes he slips up because I guess old fairy habits die hard? And somehow he's managed to, what? Poison Ian? Curse him?"
Though Martha spoke with a flat, sort-of disbelieving tone (and a generous amount of air quotes), Orla sensed she was overcompensating. Yes, there was something there. Something that was troubling her greatly. Orla didn't know what it meant, but it made her hopeful that maybe she'd gotten through to the girl in some way. Shaken her.
"No, not poisoned or cursed. Not intentionally, anyway," Orla clarified, hoping that if she aired on the side of generosity when interpreting Mr. Smith's intentions, that maybe Martha would be more willing to hear her out. "Though I admit, it's taken almost everything in me not to murder the man once I got the idea in my head."
Martha did not look pleased by the mild threat.
"No," Orla continued levelly. "I think the banana was a bit of fairy food he'd forgotten in his pockets from before the glamour. And I told ye, once a human eats fairy food, the human stuff tastes like ash. Doesna matter if its fresh off the lamb or straight from the fields, it's all spoilt once ye get a taste. An' since he ate that banana, Ian hasna been able to keep anythin' down, ye ken. So don't try and tell me that's a coincidence!"
"It's a coincidence," Martha said firmly. And Orla believed that she believed it.
"An' everything else? He said he was centuries old!"
"Hyperbole, a joke, exhaustion? There are so many other explanations. Just ask him yourself," Martha concluded.
"The iron, then? Why was he starin' at the cabinets like tha'?"
Martha threw up her hands in exasperation. "I don't know but that doesn't make 'fairy' my first guess! Anyway, I've seen him touch iron."
"'Course ye have," Orla nodded. "He's good as human right now. I don' think it would affect him through the glamour if it were powerful enough. But survival instincts like that don' just disappear because ye've forgotten ye're Fae, I imagine.
"It's like a duckling that imprints on a human," Orla offered the first example that came to mind. "She may think she's a person, but that doesna mean her wings won't flap and her flippers won't waddle and her beak won't quack."
Orla didn't mind that Martha was questioning her accusation. In fact, it rather helped to go over the points and offer her defence now that Martha had the broader picture of her suspicions. Either way, Orla wouldn't be backing down. Martha could believe what she wanted, but Orla knew something was different about Mr. Smith.
And somehow, the vehemence of Martha's refusal was the singular most convincing aspect of the whole charade. If Martha really didn't believe her, she'd be drafting a letter to the nearest asylum on her behalf, not entertaining the supposed lunacy. No, Orla knew Martha wasn't entirely unconvinced.
"So why'd he spit out the pear?" Orla tried again, with some genuine interest in how Martha would twist that particular detail. The same reasoning that applied to Ian applied here, or so Orla thought. Though Mr. Smith's glamour could withstand mortal food, that didn't negate the fact that it might've shocked his system on first taste.
Martha took in a deep breath, exhausted by the debate, and seeing clearly now that Orla wasn't just going to back down. Of course she wouldn't. Her brother's life was at stake, and from her viewpoint, that was Mr. Smith's fault.
And in that moment, all Martha could think about was that ridiculous video the Doctor had recorded for her, and how of all the rules, if she'd just followed number 5, "Don't let me eat pears. I hate pears. John Smith is a character I made up, but he won't know that. I'll think I am him, and he might do something stupid and eat a pear", that maybe, just maybe she wouldn't be in this mess. As if she'd ever be that lucky.
"I don't know Orla? What do you want me to say, really? He's just like that," Martha said meekly.
Before Orla could properly retort, there was the sound of heavy footsteps crashing through the woods and towards the two girls.
In no time at all, a panting Jenny stood before them.
"What, Jenny, what is it?" Martha said through a thick layer of concern.
The girl folded in on herself for a moment, attempting to catch her breath, and extending to her full stature only when her face lost some of its exerted flush.
"It's Ian."
Special thanks to TheGuestAlikai for your continued and amazingly kind comments! I appreciate them dearly.
And Guest for your incredibly thoughtful review! I'm so glad the darker undertones are coming through (and though I'm certainly not the first to touch on that particular aspect of the Fae, I feel like more people need to know that fairy lore is fucked up and amazing!). Also glad to hear the Scottish accent is bearable lolll