Welcome to this week’s installment of many micro stories, ranging in length from 100 words to 500 words.
With each story we hope to deliver a little whimsy into the lives of our readers.
WINTER FAE OFFERINGS
I stared up and down the natural fir tree standing in my cousin Luna’s living room. “I thought cutting trees was a bad idea?” She’d invited me to spend Christmas break, after my parents took their first vacation since their youngest (me) left the proverbial nest.
“Oh, I didn’t cut it. I dug it up,” said Luna, who’d recently embraced what she called “faerie witchcraft”. She draped strands of frost-nipped iris leaves over a branch like a 1950s decorator using silver tinsel. On the next branch, she clipped a bundle of dried ferns. The wide gaps between the branches allowed her to hang an unusual array of decorations: clusters of pine cones on twigs, unpainted groups of acorns, skeletal leaves, and sprigs of cockle burrs.
“Those are certainly earth-friendly ornaments.”
“And I can dig the tree up every year as long as I can lift it.”
“It’s your Yuletide: you decorate as you see fit. But I gotta ask: what’s with the dried leaves and things?”
Luna draped a long strand of dried grapevine along several branches. “I’m making the tree more home-like to the forest spirits,”
My heart jumped. “Forest spirits?”
She reached for a box of shiny glass balls painted silver, gold, and green, strung with natural twine. “Why yes, you know our Pagan ancestors decorated trees with offerings to the forest spirits.”
I wanted to argue our more recent Christian ancestors had introduced the Christmas tree as a reflection of the Tree of Life or the Tree of Jesse, but I knew better. “Except they decorated the trees outside, where the forest spirits belong.”
“Blake, don’t be so free with those negative waves. The forest spirits mean us well. They watch over the trees that supply us oxygen. With all the trees being cut down, they need all the shelter and support they can get.”
“What’s with the shiny balls?”
“The spirits also love shiny objects.”
In my experience the things that like shiny things the most also like making mischief.
###
Late that night, something thumped, jolting me awake. Something rattled and chittered. I sat up, grabbing my glasses from the bedside table and the weapon tucked under the bed before padding into the hallway.
Luna, in her bathrobe and a silver pentacle in hand, approached. “Blake, what do you have there?”
“Protection.”
“A shovel?”
“It’s got an iron head. One thing fae are vulnerable to.”
“You aren’t hurting them!”
“I can’t let them hurt you.”
We tiptoed to the living room. In the hallway light, the tree lay on its side. Shadowy forms scrambled into the corners.
Luna screamed, jumping. “My ankle! It bit me!”
I swung the shovel down. The blade hit something that squealed, scrambling into its shadows.
Luna switched on the room light. Small, gnarled-looking creatures skittered toward the walls, squealing.
“Don’t say ‘I told you so’. I can feel you thinking it.”
“I was thinking, ‘This is why you put lights on Winter Holiday trees.”
R.C. Mulhare was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, growing up in a nearby town, in a hundred year old house near a cemetery. Her interest in the dark and mysterious started when she was quite young, when her mother read the Brothers’ faery tales Grimm and Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry to her, while her Irish storyteller father infused her with a fondness for strange characters and quirky situations. Between writing projects, she moonlights in grocery retail. A two-time Amazon best-selling author, and contributor to the Hugo Award Winning Archive of Our Own, she has over one hundred twenty stories in print through dozens of independent publishers, with more stories in the works. She shares her home with her family, about fifteen hundred books and an unknown number of eldritch things rattling in the walls when she’s writing late at night. She’s happy to have visitors through her page at: https://linktr.ee/rcmulhare
If you enjoyed this story you can find it and more in the Hawthorn & Ash 2023 anthology.
Iron Faerie Publishing 