Isobelle Carmody - The Wicked Wood

For Bet

who read me the Brothers Grimm and gave me the world.

If life were a fairytale, you would be the swan mistaken for an ugly duckling.

NMcN

by Cate Kennedy

By Nan McNab

by Catherine Bateson

by Maureen McCarthy

by Victor Kelleher

by Kate Thompson

S trictly speaking, this is not a story about my early years, which were for the most part uneventful. Nonetheless, without some knowledge of a particular childhood episode, the real story cant be fully appreciated.

So, in brief: I grew up as a kind of orphan, my mother having died in childbirth, and my father having disappeared soon afterwards. It fell to my grandmother to care for me, though care is perhaps too strong a word. When I think of her now, words like stern and unbending spring to mind. As I recall, she had just one redeeming feature: she told me bedtime stories or, to be precise, stories about the faerie folk drawing her cast of characters from A Midsummer Nights Dream .

Her nightly tales always began in the same way. There are faeries at the bottom of our garden, she would say, and give a snicker of cool laughter.

I laughed too, though not because I shared her wry amusement at those hackneyed words. At the age of six or so, I saw them as the literal truth. There were faeries at the bottom of our garden, down in the wild untended part beneath the ancient pear tree. I hadnt seen them exactly, but Id heard them the furtive rustle of their footsteps in the leaf mould, the whirr of their wings amongst the foliage. So why did I laugh at my grandmothers opening words? Out of nothing more complicated than joy. It delighted me to think of those tiny beings flitting effortlessly from bloom to bloom.

My favourite amongst them was Puck, the trickster. He was my hero, a creature lighter and less definite than air. Oh, I loved the other characters too: Oberon, with his brooding jealousy; Titania, with her wandering eyes; Mustard Seed and the rest. I even adored Bottom and his friends, whom I wrongly believed to be half faerie, half animal. But out of them all, it was Puck who won my heart.

Alone in my room at bedtime I often opened the window and called to my favourite, using his other, more worldly name: Robin, Robin Goodfellow, are you there?

As a further enticement, I would close my eyes and picture the faerie light which, in my imagination, sur- rounded him like a halo. Sometimes, at the edge of sleep, I felt its shimmering phosphorescence fill the room, and in a last instant of wakefulness I glimpsed Pucks likeness out beyond the flame.

As you can see, I had become obsessed with Puck and his kind, and by rights my grandmother should have done something about it. At the very least she should have told me the brutal truth: that in ancient stories about the Faerie, they are not pretty and beguiling. More often, they are terrible creatures, fearsome and amoral in their dealings with humankind. But she alerted me to none of this. In truth, as long as I didnt get underfoot she hardly noticed my presence, and left to myself, I developed the odd fancy that if only I had wings if only I were able to fly I could somehow enter their magical world and become a faerie of sorts myself.

When you are six, making a pair of wings is no easy task. It took me a while to create something moderately satisfactory out of coloured tissue paper stretched across flimsy loops of bent wire.

I put them to the test on a blustery day in early autumn. Having tied them on with two lengths of string, I made my way to the bottom of the garden. Overhead, the giant pear tree shook and swayed noisily, but I had climbed it before, so I didnt hesitate. Careful not to damage my wings, I began clambering from limb to limb, up through the roaring foliage to the crazily swaying top.

From there I had an unobstructed view of our suburb, with its tree-lined streets and well-tended gardens. Seen through childish eyes, it had the beguiling appearance of an ancient forest, a more than fitting place for Puck and the other faerie folk. And for me, too, once I had passed through that invisible membrane which separated us. All I had to do was trust my winged self to the void, which I knew in my heart would bear me up.

Of course it didnt. As I released my hold and stepped free, I barely had time to think: Im doing it! Flying! I will see the faerie light, I will ! Then I came crashing down through dense foliage, jolting from one branch to another... until, mercifully as they say, I lost consciousness.

The generously spreading branches of the old tree saved my life, for I was still more or less intact when I reached the ground and lay spreadeagled amongst the tendrils of bindweed that had once been the setting of my fantasies. I wish I could say I dreamed of Robin Goodfellow during the hour or more that I lay there unattended his glowing face stooping over mine, his wings brushing my lips with faerie-like concern but I had no such vision. He didnt come, nor would he have shown concern had he existed.

In any case, none of that mattered anymore, because when I awoke in hospital, I had suffered more than just broken bones and internal injuries. Something else had happened. Young as I was, I sensed it immediately. The world had changed somehow. It had become flatter, duller, less than it had been before.

Typically, it wasnt my grandmother who confirmed my fears, but the surgeon. I remember him as a kind, patient man. In straightforward language, he explained how a branch of the tree had gouged out my left eye. I would be partly blind for the rest of my life.

Now heres the good news, he added with a smile. No one need ever know, because we can give you a false eye that looks exactly like a real one.

He produced such an object from the pocket of his white coat. It was a wonderful thing made of glass and ceramic, with the depth and sparkle of a living eye.

Theres better news yet, he went on. We can teach you to move your head rather than your eyes. In a month or two no one will realise you have a false eye. It will be our secret, one that need never leave this room.

What he forgot to mention was that our secret would also be recorded in my medical records. As things turned out, that was an important omission.

The real story I referred to begins nearly fifteen years later, soon after I had finished my formal training as a midwife (a natural enough career for someone whose mother has died in childbirth). Like all young trainees, I was required to serve an internship of sorts in a rural community, and I had already given some thought to where I would like to go.

Before I could make any applications, however, I received an offer from the midwife at a place called Little Earth. Her name was Gretel Andersen. She explained in her letter of offer that she was nearing the end of her own career and, having read my file, she was confident I was the person she needed.