This photo is dragged from the archives from a trip to Spain a million years ago. As I recall it, having spent a lovely morning in Parc Güell, our objective became to get lost in Barcelona. My thinking has always been that you see more of a place when you’re hopelessly lost. It ‘s a strategy that also happens to play to my strengths.
The downside of this approach to tourism is that I couldn’t tell you where we ended up. I do recall the lovely park that we happened upon at the perfect time. The kids were hot and knackered and minutes from total melt-down when someone pitched up and started making giant bubbles. My children spend a happy while playing among the shimmering orbs, which bought us enough time to figure out how to get back to the car and home for much needed ice-cream.
What follows is, as ever, entirely unrelated…
Janet collapsed back into the long grass. Above her the spell glittered in the afternoon light, poised to be carried on the breeze to its destination. This one had really knocked the stuffing out of her. It was a source of some worry that casting was becoming harder.
She frowned up at the colours dancing over the surface of the spell. A tough casting was often a sign of faults in the fabric of the spell. There was nothing wrong with this one, though. Not that she could see, anyway. In ages past she would have had another fairy take a look. A fresh pair of eyes was always a help. It was always difficult to spot flaws in your own creations. Each piece of magic was a tiny, renewable, sliver of soul-stuff sent into the world to heal the wounds and wear of billions of beings living their lives. Finding imperfections in your own spells was hard. A skill that Janet had had to work on.
A second opinion wasn’t possible now. There were so few of them left. Once World Wardens had been everywhere, working their magic in harmony with a young world full of vigour and promise. The possibilities had been boundless and together they had been more than enough. The world had thrived.
But that had been before the Blight. It had taken so many of her brothers and sisters. Good fairies who had served the world well for eons. She didn’t understand the Blight. No one did. Not fully. What she knew chilled her to the core. Some metaphysical darkness took them. Changed them. The Blighted lived a horrid half-life confined to shadows. Their magic, when it came at all, was a weird, corrupted thing that brought no peace to the world. Blighted magic was selfish. It delivered joy only to its caster and none other.
She shook off the dark thoughts. For all Janet knew thinking like that was how the Blight took hold of a fairy. The downward spiral of its lullaby should be resisted. She looked up again at the perfect globe of her spell. Against the vastness of the sky it was tiny. A speck of hope against a sea of indifference. Could it possibly be enough? It would have to be.
Janet dragged herself to her feet. Flexing her wings she took stock of her surroundings. A final scrap of woodland in a jungle of concrete and tarmac. A last bastion of nature. And yet life still thrived here. Leaves rustled under the hooves of a passing deer. Beneath the ground a sett of badgers slumbered, peacefully awaiting the evening’s hunting. The air was alive with buzzing wings. The world had not given up, and while that was true neither would she.
Magic thrummed through her veins as Janet summoned her power and cast another spell.
Brandon Lim 