The Fairy Paintbox or Why Can’t We See Fairies Anymore?

By Jon Jacks

In a dark room, Missy’s master Isaac has captured a section of the rainbow.
He claims it contains every colour there is.
Missy is busy mixing paints, hoping to capture every tint.
But now she’s seen a boy that no one else seems to see.
And paints have begun magically appearing in her paintbox.
Paints that are impossible to describe.
Because the colours shouldn’t exist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Jacks
• Release date: Nov 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005727222

Jon Jacks

While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

Book preview

Chapter 1

With their great beaks that curl down almost to the floor, and their immense, gawpingly bulbous eyes, it’s hard to believe that these bizarre creatures may be our only hope.

If you can afford their increasingly exorbitant fees, they’ll willingly come visiting your home on even a night such as this one, avoiding those poorer unfortunates who, ivory skinned and already wraith-like, lie out in deserted streets they’ve been exiled to by family and friends.

Above the roof tops, I can make out the bloody red glow and brightly flickering petals of flames soaring high into an otherwise pitch-black sky, fires that are supposedly under some form of control but are nevertheless as fearfully contagious as the plague they’re supposed to address.

Naturally, the coachman had been eager to return to the countryside as soon as possible. He’d furiously grumbled whenever our journey was delayed by yet another complaint from the servants carrying out and loading up the master’s equipment that the boxes were too heavily overloaded. When it had been kindly suggested to him that he could have a bed for the night and depart in the morning, he’d stared at every one of my friends with wide-eyed horror, as if seeking out signs of the very first boils upon their pallid skins.

I’d been placed under even greater scrutiny as he’d held the carriage door open for me, visibly wincing as I’d said my tearful goodbyes to my friends with a hug and the odd kiss to the cheek or forehead. Similarly, he’d made no effort to help me board, despite the ungainly way I had to clamber past all manner and size of box so tightly stacked inside that they filled most of the available space.

What passes for my seat is a cramped space hardly big enough for me, my own comfort given only a secondary thought by the men who’d crammed as much as they could in here.

Then again, who can blame them, or fault them for their envy?

This is my chance to be saved.

While the chances are they and most of my friends will be dead by the time I return.

*

Chapter 2

As soon as he feels able, the coachman whips his team of horses into a faster pace.

These are the poorer streets of Cambridge, so he has no qualms about riding down anyone foolish enough to linger for too long in his way. The doctors rarely head out this far from the better areas, leaving any treatment of the dying to the far more brutal body collectors, who simply throw them onto the piled carts. With nothing more than a neckerchief tied about the nose and mouth to protect them from the malodorous air, each collector is fully aware he’ll receive equally callous treatment whenever it’s his turn to be hoisted up on top of a stack of corpses.

The cobbled surface violently throws the coach from side to side, the boxes I’m crammed amongst threatening to bury me as they creakingly slip and slide. Despite this, I’m glad most of them are in here with me rather than piled on the roof, where I can’t keep an eye on them; after all, I probably owe my life to the value my master puts on his precious equipment.

Would he have asked me to join him out in Lincolnshire if he didn’t need me to oil and polish his prisms and mirrors?

I doubt it.

He’d left days earlier for his mother’s house, taking with him his most essential contraptions and books. This follow up journey had only come about because he’d decided to make the best use of his exile to his family home and conduct some fresh experiments.

I’d overseen the packing, and yet I can only hope everything’s even more firmly secured than I’d intended, for I hadn’t counted on a coachman driving his team as if fleeing hell.

He’s not prepared to spare his horses.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries to keep up this frightful pace all night.

*

As the sun begins to rise, we’re still on the move, but thankfully at a speed the horses can more ably cope with.

No longer hell-bent on killing his horses to save his own life, the coachman has placed his wellbeing completely in their care, for he’s now dozing placidly even while remaining seated upright on his plinth.

He may even have given the team a rest at some point during the night; I can’t be sure, as I must also have fallen asleep not long after we’d left the outskirts of the city.

Craning as far out of the carriage window as I dare, I see that we’re out in the countryside. I can only assume we’ve left Cambridge far behind us as, of course, it’s now completely out of sight.

It’s surprisingly chilly, added to which my clothes are damp. As the coachman has been sitting in the open air all night, he must be suffering even more than I am, despite the thick cloak he’s tightly cocooned himself in.

The dampness rises off the land in a thinly veiling mist, diffusing the colours, making them greyer than I suspect they must be in reality. Where the mist is already beginning to disperse, I can make out patches of much brighter tones, hues that somehow possess a curious