Lessoc Fountain - a fairy-creature tale

Ch. 27 Snail-Shell Tea

The ghost of memory faded in and out of focus in her mind. "Soufflé, why do the raspberry brambles need the moonlight?"

"What did you say?"

She repeated the question.

"They don't," he said, shaking his head. "Why do you ask?"

"Because the fountain tried to swallow the moon and there was once a great fairy who called me a black huntress, but I couldn't really understand him."

"Child, drink your tea. You must drink the whole pot this morning. I'll wait here until you're done."

One snail shell full after the other, Cocot downed the entire pot. She would have gone out to see what was beyond the chalet, but Soufflé sent her to bed.

"I'm afraid to sleep. The roots were holding me down."

"Sleep is the greatest restorative magic that exists. Ask the mother of any youngling," he said and would not allow her to argue. "Go on and sleep. I will stay nearby."

She pulled the covers over her head, and he whispered, "We will see if Fanchon's magic can counteract a curse set with pixie dust."

***

Cocot sat up. She was in the rocking crib. It was dark and her mother was painting a page in the cookbook by candlelight. A finished portrait of a young boy was propped up in the nearby easel.

"Go back to sleep, Coquelicot. I have to get these pictures done before my memory fades and falls away like autumn leaves."

Cocot started to cry and fuss.

"Hush, hush, sweet baby. There's my little darling." Her mother picked her up and carried her to the table to sit on her knees. "One day, this book will be yours. Your magic is not like mine, or how mine used to be. I think these spells will work with your magic, though. They depend on the earth and plants and the moon and the sun. You will create your spells from the strength of the woods and heat of the day instead of the flowing magic in your veins as normal fairy creatures use."

Cocot tried to put her mother's thick braid in her mouth and chew on it, making her mother laugh. "Ah, I know you are too young to understand or remember, but I am forgetting." She stopped laughing or even smiling. "I am finally as I wished to be all those years ago when I first shed my fairy life for a human one. Two drops of fairy magic kept me forever different from my love. Now that they are gone, I am fully human and slowly forgetting every memory of the fairy life I once had. It is hard to lose yourself and know you are losing yourself, but to not know what it is you have lost."

Fanchon stood to put Cocot back in the crib. She sat on the bed to rock the baby to sleep.

"One drop to transform you. And my very last drop changed to crystal, hard as stone and useless." Fanchon held up a silver locket at her neck. "Fortunately, I know some witchcraft that uses the Earth's magic. It helps me. I am writing all I remember in letters and leaving them in the armoire for you to read later, when you are able. You will have my keys—every key opens a different door. This cookbook will contain all the spells I can still remember, but most important of all; you must never abandon the chalet. Always lock the doors and say the charms. Lock the doors and say the charms every night and every time you leave. This is your home, forever."

Her mother rocked the crib gently and sang a tuneless lullaby until Cocot drifted off to sleep.

Cocot woke up with a sudden jerk. She was alone and confused. What was real and what was a dream? There was the faint, musty odor of autumn leaves and also lavender soap in the chalet; the perfume of her mother's hands and freshly washed hair.