The Faery's Tale: The Legend of Iski Flare, #10

By Georgina Makalani

The faery has followed the ways of the forest for an eternity.

There were times she did what she thought best, times she went against the forest's call.

Have her actions helped the forest in the long run? Or has she created a greater danger to the world she tried to protect?

This is the faery's tale, the story of her watch over the children of the forest and what she would give to protect them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Georgina Makalani
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645034691

Book preview

Faeries do not have names. They are faeries of the forest before they are anything else. Yet they know each other, understand each other and are more individual that the peoples of the world would understand. This faery, in her dress with small blue flowers, or at least it did have once, liked to watch the people. Not just to see what they might do to the forest, what harm they might bring, but because she was interested in how different they were to faeries.

The people insisted on living inside buildings, separate from the world around them. She could never be that far from the trees, even if many of those houses were made from trees. She had to be amongst the forest, touching the trees.

There were the other creatures who watched the people too. Those who feared, and those who were to be feared. Some creatures wanted to use the people; some wanted to use them to find the faeries. These creatures were not always as easy to evade as the faery wished, and at times she was sure that if the creatures had left the peoples alone, they would not have become the creatures they were.

The faeries worked for the forest, for the good of the forest and as was required by the forest. Always. There were times that the forest required children to be moved, and always for good reason. Children who should have remained where they were put, could also become problems for the faeries and the forest. There were some who lived with the faeries for a time, learning to grow, learning the magics of the forest, and then there were those they should not have saved, or moved.

Such ideas did nothing for the young couple she watched now as they moved through the forest, content and happy; enjoying the autumn leaves, the spring growth, and the summer sun on their skin. All in a short walk from their cursed village. The thought of the snow and cold made the faery shiver. She hadn’t visited the town, she wouldn’t touch the curse, but she had watched from a distance, from a branch in a tree for too long. These children were special, she knew that, she understood that and despite the call to return and to do as she should have been doing to protect the forest, she couldn’t leave these children alone in the forest.

They were searching for something, always searching. But what they searched for they already had. And too often she wondered what it would be like if she took their hands and dragged them away to some distant forest, to a cottage they longed for. To a life they wanted and she knew they may never have.

She knew they shouldn’t enter the cottage they found, shouldn’t interact with the old woman who appeared kind and friendly. They had been rumoured to find the witch from the moment they were born, and yet didn’t recognise the crone once they found her. But they had been sheltered for far too long.

The forest tried to call her away, and yet she couldn’t leave them. She wasn’t sure she could save them, but the forest had promised so much more; and now it appeared that they wouldn’t even survive their time in the trees. Such a waste.

It was a relief when she watched them walk back into the snow. All too quickly they were headed back to the cottage again, the smell of rot held the faery back and she wondered that they couldn’t detect it, given how connected they were to the world around them.

The faery startled at the sound of movement, screaming, and the fear in the girl’s voice. When had she stopped watching, when she had drifted away, thinking only of the forest? There was something about the girl, something different, something that glowed around her.

The faery smiled at the idea as she watched them run, the boy’s legs pounding almost too fast for girl. She was falling, her hand still tight in his, and the blood running down her arm from the cut of the old witch’s blade. Before she thought that it might be a bad idea, the faery leapt into the path and pulled the girl away inside a tree. If she had fallen, the girl would never have outrun the evil. No matter how old she was, Edris was filled with the youth of others.

The faery held her in the tree, a finger to her lips and yet she continued to call to the boy, urging him on, willing to be lost as long as he was saved. The tree returned the feeling, sharing her words with him, urging him towards the village, pushing him away from the witch and yet he knew she wasn’t with him.

The girl sucked in a sob as the boy hid behind the tree, staring at the old woman, deceptive in her appearance in the doorway, grumbling that she had lost what she had spent so long trying to hold onto. The remains of the child she had drained days before stuck out of the garden, his legs a strange withered branch amongst the bright flowers.

The faery could read the loss on the boy’s face, the hurt,