Work Text:
Our story begins at the top of a hill. There is a church, as churches are often built on hills, and a lonely girl in the pews. She lives next to the church, in a large house with a heavy door. The knocker is too high for her, as are the ceilings. Not even her father can graze his fingertips on the arches of the hall. The lonely girl, named Lily, likes to tap dance in the echoes. You’ll often find her checking corners and darting between mirrors, trying to catch the ghosts out.
Churches are built on hills because it places them closer to heaven. Their spires reach like arms into the sky; searching, longing. Lily sits with her knees together, tapping along the strict hem of her skirt. The vicar’s drone passes one sentence to another and Lily’s eyes stray to the windows. The stain glass casts a pool of blue across the heads of the congregation; Lily wants to reach up and touch it. In the sunlight, the dust glistens and dances and Lily dreams of the pond at the bottom of the hill, under the broad shadow of the willow tree.
Hundreds, even thousands, of years ago, there lived a kingdom in the willow. It was a kingdom of fairies, with a king and a queen. The queen was inquisitive and challenged her husband, but the king did not like this. One day, he declared her every word dishonest and accused her of treason. Until she could be trusted, she was to be silenced indefinitely. She was banished to the bottom of the pond, where her breath would be forever held. She fought against the water which sucked her down, and ventured to climb the long stalks of the lily pads. But when she did surface and breathed once more, her throat was seized in excruciating pain. She clawed at her neck and her chest, where her lungs burnt, and collapsed on the lily pad. The king turned her into a waterlily, pure and white, as a cruel reminder to anyone who dare defy him.
King, queen, and curse long forgotten, a new people have prospered in the pond. They have forgotten what lives at the surface, as the fairies of the Willow have forgot what lives in the pond. They regard the stalks warily, because everyone knows the stories of those who dare to climb them: they never return. And for a hundred years, no has even touched the stalks.
Except Phil. Phil is the size of a fingernail, though if you asked his friends, they’d say he was tall. He moves with a gentle gait through the water, never causing more than a stir of grass to his side. He likes to lie atop the carpet of moss, staring up into dappled light, where the great lily pads float and form patterns and pictures. It takes a little imagination; mostly they look like lily pads. He likes to venture out of sight and tease his palm over the waxy stalks, brushing each he passes. He thrills when they wobble slightly, momentarily wavering from the briefness of his touch. The sky – as he knows it – ripples and fractures, and for that moment it’s as if he could see through into whatever exists, far, far beyond.
Once, a boy fell from the sky. Phil had wandered and seen as the surface cracked and shuddered and down sunk a small, curled body. He’d watched in wonder, and dread, as the water pulled the body down...down...down... to settle only steps from where he was standing. Sand jumped back where the body crumpled, and the fog of algae flurried. Then all was still. A snail passed, indifferent, and the mare’s tail and milfoils curtained around him. Phil waited, determined not to blink. He advanced slowly, and when his toes pressed into the freshly settled sand, he saw the set of wings, folded, and draining of colour, against the boy’s spine.
The boy couldn’t use his wings. They dragged as he sat up. Instantly, he started to cry. His small body heaved and sobbed as he felt over his chest, rubbed his eyes. Phil, only a child himself, was upset too, but he knelt beside the boy and tilted his head to offer a smile. The boy halted his tears. He had kind, but terrified, eyes, and Phil wanted to comfort him. Though he was desperate to question him, Phil had the good sense to wait. So he signed his message of comfort, but the boy only frowned; he didn’t understand. He strained his neck and pointed to his mouth, but Phil didn’t understand that. They stared at one another in loss.
Phil assigned him the symbol for angel and took him home. For weeks he shivered and sobbed, and the pond fairies ogled and gossiped. There wasn’t a question of returning him, for that meant climbing the stalks. No one could communicate with him, and no one knew how to make his wings stop hurting. They were about the height of him, silver and silky, though they lost their shine and began to flake. The younger children would jump on the trail of them, and only two months later they appeared skeletal and broken. Phil gave him his bed and made a new nook in the mud. They lived in alcoves carved into the pond walls, held up by pebbles and softened with hornwort. At first, the boy hesitated to leave the spot he’d landed, always returning, staring hopelessly, and searching, up at the sky. But as the days passed, the boy grew fond of the mellow glow and muted sounds. Especially, he grew fond of the pond fairy who’d found him. His name was the first sign language he learnt.
Together, they tended to a bud of frogbit, and by spring they were good friends. Now, years later – both slightly taller than the average height – Phil has grown restless. Neither friend nor family can do anything to quell his inquisitive mind. He can’t understand why the boy who came from the surface seems so reluctant to return to it; to even talk about it. What could be fearful about the place his angel had lived? Phil paces, tugging and twisting himself into bog bean, to pickerel weed, as his angel plays with the minnows and stickleback fish, feeding them quietly from his hands. He watches, drawing in the sand, as Phil busies himself building an astronaut’s suit. On the day he finishes the helmet, Phil waits until night falls before carefully dressing and sneaking out. He intends to return, but even so he delicately skims the back of his angel’s wings, just lightly, where he’s asleep. The algae is thick in the water so that the path disappears both in front and behind him. He continues on towards the stalk he’d selected; sturdy, and easy to wrap his arms to. He’s adjusting his helmet when a burst of water rushes into him and his angel appears, sweet face serious and decisive.
Phil had practiced; reaching as high as the length of a frog leg. But that isn’t very far, and by the height of two frog legs, Phil’s exhausted. His arms ache and the muscles in his legs twitch with complaint. Clinging by one arm, he signs down to where his friend is going red with effort. He’s considering trying another day, as the image of his mother swims into his vision, when a small hand circles his ankle and squeezes. Immediately, the work is easier. The stalk sways, precarious, and the pond floor looms beneath them. They move in slow tandem, and suddenly the lily pads are ginormous. Phil won’t look down, only up. His heart thumps erratic.
The moon is a strange and glorious thing when Phil sees it. His feet slip on the lily pad and he stumbles into its flower, only to stumble back in fright and awe. There’s more, calm and majestic, and- oh, what’s that? A breeze tumbles into him, invisible, though he tries to grab it. His eyes follow where it seems to snake and there he’s met with a dense wall of flora, leading up, up – everything is humungous – to a waterfall of green, held by nothing but shadows. The air makes him feel off-balance. Giddy, he flaps his arms.
His angel surfaces behind him, scrambling for purchase on the lily pad. It feels different to hold hands, up here. They sit, and stare, and Phil stares at his angel. He glances to his wings, damp and wilted. Phil hesitates to move at all, but his angel stands and stretches. There’s a springtime sweetness in the air, he can smell it – flowers – and he can hear the birdsong twittering between the fading stars. (Greenfinch, sparrow.) Spinning on his heel, he pauses. The birds sing louder. Carefully, he opens his mouth.
The night is clean and cool on his tongue. His lungs awaken and the first breath scurries in, delicious and spacious. He starts to laugh, and Phil’s heart falters. He’s never heard such a sound. His angel shuffles closer, resting his forehead on Phil’s helmet. He speaks his name. He stutters, so repeats it clearer. Phil’s eyes form perfect reflections of the moon. Daniel. Dan- The dawn warms around them. Phil mirrors the shape of the word in his throat; he can’t open his mouth. Desperate, he grabs his helmet, and Dan assists, lifting his hands to cover Phil’s. Water gushes around them as he eases the helmet from his head. Dan bites his lip, and Phil feels for the strength to part his mouth.
He wheezes, and is suddenly gripped in searing pain. Dan watches in horror as Phil panics, clutching his chest which feels like daggers on each intake of air. A terrible, low sound of anguish leaves his throat and he keels over in agony. Dan hushes him and strokes the wet strands of his hair, but the pain only worsens. He retrieves the helmet and awkwardly manoeuvers it back into place, but the water is gone. He plunges them into the pond, but Phil writhes in his arms. Fat, icy tears roll onto Dan’s cheeks, and after a moment’s hesitation, he hops from frogbit to crowfoot, racing to shore. Phil drifts with the waterlily at the disturbance, confusing hot water springing to his face.
The morning was mocking. Dan whispered to Phil which flower he could smell, which bird he could hear, but the soft trace of his fingers did nothing to relieve the tension in Phil’s brow, how his eyes squeezed shut and missed the daylight. Dan dried and his skin prickled with heat. His hair felt scratchy against his forehead; the pollen was itchy and the bumblebees buzzed buzzed buzzed. Wide-eyes had greeted him from the branches, tip-toeing into the night, flanked by firefly. His mother ran out at the commotion and gasped upon seeing her son. They heaved the lily pad to the bank, but no fairy could cure Phil. Failing anything permanent, his mother cast a spell of numbness to last the night. They carried Phil inside the hollow and Dan sourced the softest woolly hedgenettle for a blanket. Even so, Phil trembled.
His mother stays with him by Phil’s bedside, mournfully caressing his broken wings. Dan asks why it hadn’t hurt him the same. She tells him that when he disappeared, his father had been heartbroken. The Willow assumed he’d run away for good, and if not that, he was dead. Dan tells her he had simply fallen. All the Willow know that a fairy fallen won’t return; that’s the rumour that keeps them at bay from the pond. His father died of a broken heart, consumed by regret. Dan isn’t just the lost prince; Dan is the king now. Dan begs: I have to help him. The queen holds him closer and bends to kiss his curls.
The grass is lovely as Lily pulls her socks off, skipping down to the water’s edge. With her back to the willow, she wriggles her toes and closes her eyes. All had appeared well, but the birdsong is frantic, and the leaves rustle with whisperings. A lone pond skater darts out, agitating the water. Noticing a caterpillar crawling up her leg, she scoops it onto her finger and holds it to the bridge of her nose. She implores it to tell her what’s wrong. The caterpillar twists beneath her finger, unresponsive. Thinking hard, Lily takes to her feet, brushing her skirt.
As a little girl, she’d been convinced of fairies. Maybe she’d seen one, spying down on her from the boughs of the willow, and ever since the tree had given her hope. How she loves the tree, and all its possibilities. Returning, breathless, she presses her lips to the miniature sail and shyly places the boat on the pond. Maybe, just maybe, she thinks, and though she doesn’t like the size of her hand, or her shadow, towering over this tiny world, she can’t resist giving the boat a nudge, marvelling at how much better it looks here than on a shelf. The water tickles her wrist and she shakes it free. She doesn’t return to the top of the hill before she faints.
Seasons pass, and Phil lies witness to colours he could never have imagined; to scents, to sounds, to blackberry juice. Dan’s hands, blood thrumming through his veins, introduce him to stars, to corncockle, kingcup. To yarrow, foxglove and forget-me-nots. Ladybugs, beetles, and swans. Winged-creatures that make him sad because where Dan crouches, his own wings droop toward the deck. The small copper, the small white; holly blue and meadow brown. Damselflies, dragonflies, mayflies. Spider webs caught in the dusk between Queen Anne’s lace. Phil is dying; his heart is slow. Dan steers though he doesn’t have a destination more than the sea, nor any direction more than the sun. Phil tries to speak, by hand or mouth, but he’s too weak and Dan doesn’t understand. The water carries them and Phil cloud-gazes.
Threadbare branches guide them to river. Winter leaves bleed over its surface as the water shallows. There’s a smell of salt and a white noise, somewhere distant... The wind knocks through their bones and Dan staggers against it for Phil, whose skin is sallow with sweat. A crow smudges black across the grey. Phil’s limbs are weighted but Dan arranges them on his back. The clouds sink low, erasing each sharp edge and angle. Phil is incoherent and faint as he sips meekly from the air. Still each breath cuts torturously into him. Dan follows in human footprints, surveying the horizon until the sea swells, beautiful as it is endless.
The waves are deafening, colliding violent and formidable with the shore’s spears and shields. Dan trips over shell and shingle, spilled guts of seaweed and net. Taking rest by a rock pool, he hugs Phil tighter; he dangles limp between his knees. A crab glares at them from across the simmering water; below, a starfish stirs. If rumours are to be true, his mother explained, the sea witch could save him. Phil’s breath condensates before Dan, fragile in the heartbeat it takes to be swept up by the wind. The sea laps at the land, inching nearer. What now?! Dan cries, letting his tears skate down Phil’s spine. He buries his head and Phil’s fingers quiver to reach him.
It is then that one, two, grey rocks open their eyes. Dan startles, but the seals are patient. Perhaps they aren’t even observing him and his friend. They are, after all, not even the length of one of their whiskers. Yet the sense of recognition pierces Dan. The two seals shift toward the shoreline, where froth hurries to welcome them. They turn back, expression dull and undefined. Dan’s weeping subsides; the sea beckons.
Rain begins to slant into Dan’s vision. He walks without feeling and allows himself to be swallowed. His world spirals and he is nothing more than a grain of sand, a lost feather, flotsam, when all in one heaving breath the sea calms. His ears hum from inside the belly. Peeking open a single eye, he discerns his surroundings. He’s cradled by a pair of hands: pearlescent fingers. Phil is gone. Leaping to standing, he peers through the gaps. Phil is nestled in another palm, accelerating forward at a pace that appears motionless. Quite forgetting his situation, his body flushes in alarm. However, there is no pressure to hold his breath, nor a force holding it for him. Tentatively feeling over his neck, he discovers the gills transformed there. Leaning into the hands that saved them, Dan blinks across to his friend – to Phil – who for once slept soundly.
The sea parts clumsily and Dan rouses. The hum is sharper in his skull, and they have slowed so that Dan can see the tiny, speckled fish, shying backwards. It’s so dark, Dan can’t decipher plant from animal. It feels as though a hundred eyes stare at them: a cacophony of chatter shadowing their wake. Jellyfish slide in and out of the murk; a seahorse slinks into a crevice. Then the fingers open and Dan is left suspended. Phil joins him blearily. He barely catches the flicker of tail abandoning them.
Dan extends his arm. Phil smiles, tired, but familiar again, and envelopes Dan’s hand in his. The ocean is overwhelming as it digests their presence. Its greatness weighs down on their skeletons, bleakness all-encompassing. Their ears throb with the pressure; all that can be heard is the shared pulse booming along their veins. Dan knows they are waiting, when suddenly they’re engulfed in the throat of one deep, awful moan. It vibrates, coiling, around them, growing so loud it’s though their ribcages would split. Light vanishes; snuffed at every source. It’s a darkness Dan has never experienced, nor Phil. The water freezes and they freeze with it. A whirlpool licks at their feet and Phil squeezes Dan’s hand firmer.
HshhhhI know why you’re here.
A flash of wet body.
I hear...through the water. HshhhhYou seek to break the curse.
HshhhhThe curse...of the Willow king.
Dan shrinks from the thunderous voice. It circles closer, though Dan cannot isolate the mouth. A long, long tentacle whips in and out of sight.
She whose voice cannot be trusted shall be silenced. She who should hold her tongue shall now hold her breath.
Bubbles flee the witch’s movements. At the mercy of the sea, Phil lurches and collides with Dan’s chest. They press into one another, noses touching.
HshhhhTo break this...you must be true. Express a truth else...Phil...can never return.
The words echo. There’s a mighty expansion of breath. The water ripples and settles; the witch looms above them, awaiting answer. Phil holds Dan at arm’s length. His eyes bloom with sorrow and regret, his angel reflected in his tears. He thinks of his mother, of the Willow queen; he thinks of Dan, and the harm that could befall him. Phil doesn’t trust the sea witch. He grazes fingertips up one sodden wing, brings his thumb to hover along Dan’s lip. Dan stares, hypnotised and confused. Swiftly, he kisses him. Dan reaches after the kiss, opening his eyes to see Phil signing: save yourself.
Dan refuses, shaking and shaking his head. He’d stay with Phil; he’d live, speechless, in the ocean forever if they failed. One truth, and he could free the one person he cared about. But Phil gestures desperately. For Dan, it was easy; it was obvious. Sighing, he draws the image of I love you.
Phil gawks long after Dan’s hands. Does the water warm? The sea is faint upon his back. The confession strikes him by the heart, ricocheting splinters of joy, grief. Believing Dan to have relented, for this to be their goodbye, Phil offers his angel one last smile and mirrors his words: I love you. Dan beams, thinking himself oh-so clever – for this is Phil’s truth. The gills retract from Phil’s neck.
Phil flounders. He can’t breathe; he needs to breathe. He gurgles hideously, eyes wide with terror. The water caves as the witch winds down, deep, deep into the darkness. It’s all Dan can do to keep Phil with him; gravity drags against them, inciting a whirling storm of bubbles. Tears prick Dan’s eyes. How the sea witch tricked him. The curse had lifted, but thousands of feet below surface, Phil would now drown. A speck of life within the vast blankness, Dan tries to swim. Phil reddens and slips into his unconscious, absent and empty as where he sags. Dan feels smaller than ever, the weight of his friend turning lighter and lighter. Dan never wanted to be king; he’d never wanted to be responsible.
His lungs burn. He’ll never make it to surface in time. Silently screaming, the burning intensifies. Every muscle tenses; his eyes clench. A bubble forms from inside his mouth and expands out from his silence. It grows up, up, and around them, securing them safe from water. This was the power his father had told him about. He collapses into his friend, hoping, praying, maybe, just maybe...
The bubble pops; they fall. The waves catch them and carry them to shore. Dan wraps Phil in his arms and struggles over the rushing, rolling pebbles. Groaning aloud, gasping, Dan fails to realise he’s flying when his wings stutter to action. Wrecked and feeble, they cannot sustain flight for more than seconds, and can only raise them mere centimetres from the ground. He crashes, bloody knees, scraped and bruised, where the sand is still wet. The sea withdraws; the two seals watch. The Willow fairies dive one after another into the pond; the lily pads shake violently. Lily wakes, feverish, dazed, to her father, crying into his handkerchief. She calls to him and he chokes on his breath, grabbing her hands to kiss them. He vows to listen to his daughter more often.
A man on a beach stands back from the water. He coughs, naked and forgetful. He sees two seals on a rock; he hears ringing in his ear. He must be hallucinating, for there looks to be a fairy, right there – right there – in front of him.