Charles de Lint - Seven Wild Sisters: A Modern Fairy Tale

Still for the red rock girls,

Anna Annabelle and Her Julieness,

but also for Nora:

May she find her own joys

up in those red rocks.

Charles de Lint

For the rolling hills of southwestern Virginia that I see right outside my studio window, where stories like this one happen every single day.

Charles Vess

heres those that call it ginseng, but round here we just call it sang. Dont know which is right. All I know for sure is that bees and sang dont mix, leastways not in these hills.

Their rivalrys got something to do with sweetness and light and wildflower pollen set against dark rooty things that live deep in the forest dirt. Thats why bee spiritsll lead the sang poachers to those hidden sang beds. Its an unkindness youd expect more from the Mean Fairyyou know, the way he shows up at parties after the works all done.

Course theres spirits in the hills. How could there not be? You think were alone in this world? We have us a very peopled woods, and Ive seen all kinds in my time, big and small.

The Father of Cats haunts these hills. Most times hes this big old panther, sleek and black, but the Kickaha say he can look like a handsome, black-haired man, the fancy takes him. I only ever saw him as a panther. Seeing yourself a panther is unusual enough, though I suppose its something anybody who spends enough time in these woods can eventually claim. But I heard him talk.

Dont you smile. I dont tell lies.

Then theres the Green Boyyou want to watch out for him. He lives in the branches of trees and hes got him this great big smile because hes everybodys friend, thats a certain fact. He loves company, loves to joke and tell stories, but one day with him is like a year for everybody else you left behind.

See, some places, youve got to be careful on how the time passes. Theres caves round these parts that can take you right out of this world and into another, but the days go by slower there, like they did for Rip Van Winkle. I met an artist once, he was gone twenty years in this world, but only a few days had passed for him on the other side.

What happened? He went back. Thats another caution you need to heed. Places like that can take a powerful hold of you, make you feel like everything in your life is empty because youre not breathing magic.

Theres wonders, no question, but theres danger, too, and thats not the only one. You listen to what Im telling you.

Old Bubbas been seen more than once in these parts, but you stay clear of him. I know theres some have claimed they got the better of that old devil man, but if you bargain with him, I believe youll carry a piece of his darkness inside you way into forever, doesnt matter that you got the best of him once.

I suppose the one I know best is the Apple Tree Man, lives in the oldest tree of the orchard. Do you know that old song?

Jimmy had a penny,

he put it in a can.

He give it to the night

and the Apple Tree Man.

Singing, pour me a cider,

like I never had me one.

Pour me a cider,

give everybody some.

Ive known him since I was younger than you, but he hasnt changed much in all those years. Hes still the same wrinkled, gnarly old fellow he was the first time I met him. The time is right, maybe Ill introduce the two of you.

Fairies? Oh, Ive seen them, all right. Not every day, but theyre out there.

First time, I was just a little girl. They were these little fox fire lights, dancing out there in the field like flickerbugs. It wasnt any snakebit fever that let me see them, though I did have the venom in me from a bite I got earlier that day. I could have died, lit a shuck right out of this world and theres me, no more than twelve years old, but the Apple Tree Man drew the poison right out of me with a madstone soaked in milk.

Him and the Father of Cats, they saved my life, though only the Father of Cats wanted payment, so I owe him a favor. If I cant pay it when he comes asking, then one of my descendants has to. Trouble is, I never had any children. Im the last of this line of Kindreds, so far as I know.

Anywise, instead of dying, I got me a big piece of magic that night. It was hard to hang on to for a time, but I know no matter what else I experience in this world, scraps and pieces of that magicll be with me forever. I dont question that.

You get on in years and it can be hard for a body to tell a difference between things that happened and things you thought might have happened, but I know better. Theres a veil, thin as a funeral shroud, that divides this world from some other. You do it right and you can walk on either side of it. The world you find on one side or the other, the people you meet, theyre all real.

I reckon its been seventy years, maybe longer, since the Father of Cats came out of the forest and made me beholden to him. Im getting on now. Im not saying my time is come, but its getting there. Year by year. And I guess Id just like to see him again. Pay my debt before its time for me to move on.