The Defiant Fairy
Claudia Carbonell
© 2023 The Defiant Fairy is copyright protected by
Claudia Carbonell. This story nor any part of it can be shared, reproduced or
printed without permission from its author.
For my sister Adriana. This is for you, “Ruts!”
Every hundred years, Earth yawns, stretching its tectonic
plates and causing tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. It’s no wonder that during the century
of the highest seismic and tsunami activity in the history of your planet, a defiant fairy was born. Her
hair was scarlet like the lava flowing from the volcano on the Pacific island where she was born. Her eyes
paid tribute to the emeralds in her region, and abundant lashes lined them, weighing heavily when she
blinked. The arch of her delicate eyebrows would foreshadow the stretched temples of the inhabitants of my
kingdom whenever they mercilessly criticized her. You see, although the beauty of this creature was
unquestionable, the circumstances of her birth overshadowed it. Instead of being born in the fairy realm,
she was born in the world of Man.
Her father, of mortal nature, was the fairy of virility while her mother was the
immortal fairy of industry and commerce.
Years before the little fairy’s birth, this couple’s union caused much
controversy. It was frown upon for a prestigious immortal fairy to marry a mortal and, worse yet, to
procreate! Another mortal fairy like her father could emerge, and they were not welcome in my realm.
Aside from having limited days like Earth’s men, Male, the baby’s father, had
another human characteristic: he pursued other ladies. When he flew to the magical realm, he charmed
fairies, and on Earth, he courted women. His charm and sense of humor served him well. Since the world of
humans was more extensive and consequently more populated by females, he decided to settle there. He
justified his stay on the cemented planet with his wife, encouraging Man to conquer ladies’ hearts.
But Aurora, the fairy’s mother in this story, knew her husband’s true intentions.
So she decided to return to the fairy kingdom with her newborn in her arms, without
her husband, and fearful of facing double criticism for being abandoned by the father of her daughter and
because she was born where she didn’t belong.
“Look at Aurora! She should feel ashamed entering the realm carrying her
offspring without her husband,” muttered Ocacia, the guardian of twilight.
“She has return without Male because he no longer loves her,”
claimed Liana, the fairy of climbing vines that twine around in the arboreal canopy of the forests to suck
nourishment from them. She watched the new mother, whose spouse had courted her some time ago, with
distrust. “I don’t understand what he saw in her. I am more dependent. If he had married me, we
would be together because I would have never let him go. Besides, I would have given birth to our baby here,
where it belongs.”
My wand couldn’t stop jotting down the plethora of comments, and I wished to
deafen myself for I couldn’t bear the insults from these sharp tongues. So, I disobeyed one of the main
rules of my profession: never tamper with the integrity of a story by erasing portions of it. But I
did.
Forgive me! I crossed out so much gossip from this tale to save space in this limited space
and prevent you from becoming bored. However, I couldn’t erase the unfortunate events that unfolded when
the baby grew up.
With every rotation of the Earth around the sun, this fairy grew full of energy,
curiosity, and a desire to play with other fairies her age. However, their mothers forbade them from getting
involved with the little creature. Their justifications were that this fairy with scarlet hair and intensely
green eyes was born in the world of doom, from which our species had to escape to free ourselves from the
wickedness of its citizens and the destruction of our habitat. Furthermore, her father, who should have
never married her mother, had abandoned them.
Before the Earth had completed its tenth orbit around the sun since the birth of this
redhead, she exploded. She could no longer bear the criticisms, the hostile glances, or the rejection from
the other fairies. She became combative towards everyone, including her mother. The young fairy’s
magic wand absorbed the lousy temper of its owner and turned one of its rounded edges into a sharp point.
With it, she mercilessly attacked everyone! I often regretted my profession as a narrator because the
character’s behavior in this story, along with her wand, was torturous.
“Behave yourself, uh… daughter!” her mother pleaded.
“Of course!” You call me daughter because I still don’t have a name, and until I prove my worth in this cursed kingdom, I
will stick with the nickname ‘the redhead,'” and for you, “daughter!” The young fairy screamed until she ran out of
voice.
Many things bothered her about the kingdom where her parents were born: the
discrepancy between the immortal fairies and the mortals. Both sides constantly bickered. Mortal fairies
claimed equal rights to marry immortals and be treated equally. The mistreatment they suffered, especially
those born without wands, was severe. Many of them were cast down to Earth as if they were a contaminating
virus, and the situation for those born with wands was no less unfortunate.
They were forced to compete with others to prove who had the most astounding magic.
But perhaps the most offensive thing for the redhead was that if fairies didn’t prove their gift, they
were denied the privilege of having a name.
At dawn, the young fairies flew to the Earthly Preparation Academy, where they
received instruction about the functions of the human world they would one day share their gifts with. The
most discussed topic was the students’ abilities. They were all brilliant. The Discernment Guardian was
a handsome, eloquent young elf who knew how to humiliate the redhead so subtly that she repeatedly thanked
him for his disguised criticisms which appeared as compliments. The Joy fairy was the most popular and
beloved by all, although our protagonist secretly despised her. The Nature Deity, adorned with all the
attire of Mother Earth, was pure beauty and color. Melody, the music fairy was a snobbish fairy who
deafened everyone with her opera and stared at everyone sideways. Worse of all was Hututú, the
guardian of the Amazon forest. He was an intermittent grouch. He had the faculty of appearing and
disappearing as he pleased. Inside his pointed hat, he hid a court of tiny fairies who emerged from their
hiding place to entangle themselves in the redhead’s wavy hair.
“I’ve had enough harassment
from all of you!” the fairy yelled in front of the class on the day she turned fifteen in Earth’s
calendar. My wand got stuck in its own ink for the first time due to the astonishment caused by this young
creature’s loud voice. She approached Hututú, removed his hat, and threw it out the
window.
She then turned to the guardian of discernment and slapped him twice before saying,
“This is payment for all your disguised offenses. And to the rest of you, I warn you, from now on, better not mess
with me!” Her wand discreetly slipped under her right wing and pricked her, forcing her to fly away
immediately.
Upon arriving to the cave where she lived with her mom, the mother of the guardian of
gossip was suffocating due to a lack of oxygen while recounting the scandal caused by her friend’s
ill-mannered redhead daughter. Her little gossip sprout had taken the trouble to order her wand to announce to all
her friends’ moms about the unpleasant spectacle created by her classmate.
“Get out of my house!” the redhead yelled as soon as she laid her intense
gaze on the mother of her worst enemy. The old fairy left in distress and, within minutes, spread throughout
the kingdom the terrible behavior of the fairy, who would forever be nameless, according to Gossip’s
mother. She even approached me to publish her prediction.
The young fairy grabbed her curly mane and pulled it hard. Her hair weighed on her as
much as the criticism of the kingdom. Her wand, far from consoling her, stung her once more. This time, on
her right hand.
“I’ve had enough of you! Just like everyone else, I can’t stand you
anymore!” With these words, she took her terrible wand and flew far away from her home. Her
mother’s face was as pale as when her husband told her he would live on Earth until the end of his
days.
I followed the redhead, grumbling about my obligation to pursue my protagonists and
narrate their stories to the citizens of your world. This one had driven me out of myself, and I must confess, she scared the life out of
me!
She flew to the top of Mount Osaires,
where a volcano rested from all the accumulated molten rock from Earth’s depths.
“Here, you will melt in the lava!” shouted the fairy, throwing her wand
into the volcano’s crater. My wand convulsed and stopped working. So, I had to rely on memory to recount
the subsequent events.
The fairy descended to the foot of the mountain. A flock of sheep grazed on the
grass. She sat down to observe them, and her gaze became calm like the seven-colored river of Caño
Cristales in Colombia, intensifying the tone of her eyes. She stood up and took on the task of shepherding
the sheep while caressing their curly fur. She asked the shepherd of the flock for permission to perform her
job, which consisted of herding and shearing them.
The second task was done once a year and involved removing the wool from the
animal’s skin. The shepherd trained the fairy in all her duties, and he felt relieved from his work. She
performed these tasks in the mornings and afternoons.
During sunset, she flew to a cotton field to witness the most beautiful magic: seeing
the sunset kaleidoscope’s reflection in the plants’ snowy flakes. She returned to her cave at night,
feeling exhausted from so much work. But instead of resting, she stopped beneath her mulberry tree at the
entrance of her cave to observe some filaments unraveling, descending from the branches, and cradling
brilliant buds that shone under the moonlight.
“They are so white and soft,” she would invariably repeat whenever she
entered her home. “Perhaps my gift is related to these buds,” she whispered, almost as
intelligible as an inappropriate idea.
One night, she decided to collect hundreds of these buds. My wand had already
recovered from the panic caused by the redhead when she threw her wand into the volcano’s crater. I had
lost my voice from insisting so much that I would never dare to do something like that to her. I followed
the fairy into the dark cave, and suddenly, the broken voice of a grieving woman immobilized me.
She said, “What are these hours to come home?” I heard stomping against the
rocky ground. I assured you it was a jump of terror the young fairy gave upon hearing her mother’s
sudden voice.
“Yes, Mother, I had a long day at work. You should be used to it by now,”
the redhead replied.
“You’re not working! You’re just wasting your time. Instead of using
your magic wand to find your gift, you insist on wasting every day caring for sheep, an unworthy occupation
for you,” scolded Aurora. And if she had known about her daughter’s feat against her wand, the
reprimand would have been even worse.
“Surely, since you’re the immortal fairy of industry and commerce, you think
your daughter, who enjoys shepherding lambs, diminishes your goddess status. Well, you know what? I love
sheep.”
“Do you also enjoy watching the cotton crop?”
“I visit those crops during the evening to relax. Besides, how do you know that?”
“Well, well…” her mom replied.
Don’t think I’m crazy for assuring you that I noticed sparks of fire flashing
in front of me. If they didn’t come from the head of the angry redhead, then from where else?
“Aaah! Who told you?” Yelled the redhead.
Few things make me lose my temper, but this
brawler’s deafening scream made me jump. A stalactite pierced the top of my head and miraculously
didn’t split open my skull. My wand conjured my invisibility blanket for me to wrap myself inside and hide a
ray of light emanating from its tip, illuminating the path where the young fairy was heading. Meanwhile, as
I massaged my head to ease the pain and removed pieces of porous rock from my scalp; I wanted to know if
you’re enjoying this story because it’s been quite intense! Indeed, my blood-stained fingers
confirmed it.
Her mother took a while to respond, stammering: “Uh… Your friend Go, Go, Goss,
Gossip… um, her wand took it upon itself to watch over all your activities and report them. The, the
young fairy, fulfilling her duty, communicated it throughout the kingdom.”
“I will get rid of that ugly wand, I swear,” her daughter affirmed. To
avoid looking at her face, I kept my gaze fixed on a formation of stalagmites resembling extinguished
candles.
The fairy ventured further into the cave and placed the mulberry tree’s white
buds and various branches inside a rocky hollow. She lay down next to it on a cotton bed, and when she fell
asleep, happily, I thought, “Why do I have wings?” And I flew away.
The following weeks were quite chaotic for everyone, as our governor, the Enlightened
Master, took a long time to make an important announcement. Yet, Gossip’s wand had outpaced him to it
and had already informed the entire region. The most important competition in the kingdom was about to take
place: the wand contest. The owners trained their wands to make the best creation. The one who executed the
grandest design would win the opportunity to fly to the moon and see the world of Man from above. This
competition took place every hundred years, and the 120 award-winning fairies of history claimed that from
above, planet Earth looked like a shiny head emerging from a dark hiding place.
Our character took great pleasure in contemplating the buds that lived on the
mulberry tree under the moonlight and the cotton flakes under the sky at sunset.
Oh, how dazzled she would be to observe her birth planet from another star! However,
she would be the only fairy born with a wand who wouldn’t participate because she had eradicated it.
What have I done? She pondered. Well, even if I had it with me,
my wand only served to torture me. Although the purpose of her reflection was to calm her down, she longed
for her wand. Every evening, she simultaneously observed the cotton field and the summit of that volcano
where she had launched her best friend. Tears were stuck inside her humongous eyes and burned them.
When the wands had nearly depleted
their magic, and their owners were left breathless, the long-awaited day of the wand dexterity contest
arrived. Our unnamed fairy was nowhere to be found.
“I finally did it!” I exclaimed aloud. I lost sight of the ill-tempered
one. However, I felt guilty about leaving this story unfinished. So, I headed to the pasture.
“She’s not here,” I said, “so I’ll continue another story.” However, amidst the
flock of sheep, I noticed the appearance of a scarlet flag waving. I pleaded to the wind, “Please
don’t let it be the red-haired fairy; don’t let it be her.”
You guessed it right! It was her. The breeze tousled her hair like a banner.
She was kneeling, crying at the top of her lungs while holding onto one of a
sheep’s legs. “The shepherd broke it because it tried to escape for the second time!” she told
me. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my invisibility blanket, and now she knew I was following her. More than
the fear of being slaughtered there, I was surprised by how this young fairy treated the animal’s
fractured leg amongst the crowd of sheep. She had already stabilized and wrapped the leg with cotton-filled
gauze.
I had barely closed my mouth when a buzzing sound above my head forced me to look up.
It was a blackened and sharp wand that threatened to stab my head. “Why do arrow-shaped things insist
on attacking me?” I yelled, flying away from the menacing weapon.
“You’ve returned!” the fairy shouted upon recognizing her wand. No
wonder it carried the same ill-tempered tone as its owner. The volcano had forged it amidst the boiling
lava, and its tip was dark and sharper than ever.
With its back, it slapped its owner while unleashing a series of buzzing that only
wands could understand, although mine refused to decipher them.
“A thousand apologies, wand! I ask that you heal this sheep’s leg, and
let’s go to the wand contest.
I want to win to silence a few of the inhabitants of this kingdom,” the
wand’s owner pleaded. The wand faced its owner, turning around and stopping an inch away from the center
of her forehead.
“Don’t be naughty, let’s compete. Let’s win. Let’s silence
everyone in this magic realm” her master begged. The wand didn’t emit another buzz and instantly
disappeared with her.
“Take me to the grove before
King Harper’s palace,” I commanded my wand. “That’s where the grand event would take
place.” Upon arriving, all the participants were lined up on the grass before the king.
“Begin!” the district official urged, starting the competition.
In her highest voice, the fairy of music demanded of her baton, “Wanda, compile
the most famous musical pieces from Earth in the order I’ve indicated.” The wind intensified in
the forest as soon as the magical Wanda began the symphony. Everyone’s ears were saturated with the
magical sound, energizing their limbs to move to its rhythm.
The next participant was Poetry, who placed the audience, including the king, inside
a cave. There, her wand in the shape of a pencil materialized the most remarkable books in human history.
They belonged to anonymous writers who never dared to write their works. Her wand extracted every novel,
poem, essay, and story from these living and dead unpublished authors and planted them into the congregation’s
minds. Everyone was astonished by having experienced the full range of human emotions exquisitely
portrayed.
Next was Art, Poetry’s twin sister. Since they did everything together, it was
not surprising that Art took the same concept as her sister and transformed a cavern into an art museum,
displaying the works conceived in the minds of unknown artists, never brought to light. The eyes of the
audience were then filled with beauty, color, and radiance which far exceeded the beauty of our magical
realm.
The wand in the shape of a knife, belonging to the kingdom’s chef fairy,
delighted the palates of the audience by offering them the most diverse feast ever served.
The wands of the other fairies continued to stand out with their magic. The last
contestant was the red-haired one. All eyes were on her.
After taking a deep breath, the young fairy raised her dark wand with its tip towards
the sun. It started to pulsate and tremble and convulsing. After a while, it developed a prominence in its
back, and from there, it released a massive wooden piece of equipment.
It was so big and heavy that it
pierced its tail. Also, it wasn’t pleasant! I felt deep sorrow for the tree used to create such device. My
wand couldn’t describe it. I meditated a lot to decipher it for you in the best way: a monstrosity made
of oak with horizontal and vertical beams. The wand slowly descended, spun, and landed on one of the rear
crossbars. Anyone could say it was proud of its work.
Followed by a long pause, the audience burst into uncontrollable laughter. The king
was getting out of breath from chortling and crying out loud simultaneously. The Enlightened Master, who was also giggling, began
patting the old monarch’s back to prevent him from choking.
The redhead flew away from there. The tone of her face matched her hair. She arrived
at her cave crying and lamenting.
Her emotions were many: humiliation, anger, and disappointment. The biggest one was
the desire to make her wand disappear!
“I’m going to annihilate you!” she threatened, following her dark wand
throughout her home. Exhausted, she threw herself onto her bed and buried her face in the cotton flakes,
crying. She turned her body and faced the cocoons. A ray of sunlight filtered through the cave entrance and
made them shine.
She got out of bed and picked up one of them. It looked like a fibrous elongated
pearl. Eager to release her frustration, she pulled on a filament and kept doing so. It lengthened and
lengthened. She continued pulling those strands, saying, “I will forever remain nameless and
purposeless.”
Meanwhile, her wand pushed the oak monster, centimeter by centimeter, until it was
positioned in front of its mistress. By then, both of the fairy arms were entangled in the threads. To free
them, she released the entire filament spool atop the wooden monster, and one end automatically inserted
itself into a hole in the upper beams of the frame.
The wand hummed, spun several times in the air, and released a burst of sparks from
its lower hole, causing the beams of the gadget to move.
The monster’s movement was zigzagging, intertwining the threads until they
formed a thread that thickened and widened and ended into a solid piece.
“Divine monster, you’re making fabric!” shouted the redhead so loudly
that she deafened the Gossip wand several meters above, pretending to be a stalactite. The foe’s wand
carried the news throughout the region. By then, the prize had been awarded to the only participant without
a wand. It was Mother Earth who demonstrated all the wonders she achieved when free from chemicals made by
Man. Without a wand, she was living magic.
Meanwhile, I remained amazed in my heroine’s cave, watching her feed her loom
with cotton, wool, and flax fibers. Once she had a good supply of fabrics, she started collecting bark from
maple and oak trees. She asked Poetry to lend her its feather wand and used it to trace her designs on the
bark. Bravery offered its sword for the fairy to cut the fabrics.
“Now, how will I sew my designs?” she wondered. Her wand had that
perforation where the loom’s threads were released, more open than before to hear her better. In one
leap, she placed its opening between one of the loom’s holes where a silk thread passed, and she got
threaded. The wand danced with the thread in the air and flew straight to her mistress’s chest. I closed
my eyes because I thought the wand would pierce her chest. It pierced her dress’s bodice. The wooden wand
transformed into metal and changed its dark color to shiny silver.
“You’re a needle!” exclaimed the fairy excitedly. With it, she
hand-sewed a whole luxurious collection of dresses for the young fairies. Every time her needle’s tip
glided through the fabric, it let out gleeful giggles of absolute happiness. It pleased her so much that
once she finished sewing the garments, she threaded herself with threads of different colors and jumped onto
the loom’s top beam, eager to get her mistress’s attention.
“Don’t tell me… I know what you want,” assured our protagonist. She
flew off and quickly returned with Art. This fairy traced images of the kingdom’s residents on each
garment, and her needle wasted no time threading the colored threads onto them.
That’s how all the mothers and companions who didn’t want to interact with
the redhead were immortalized. But she confronted them this way: “I don’t need to receive my name
from you.”
My name is Adriana, and I am the fairy of fashion design. She turned her face to her
mother and said, “Mother, I need to go with you to my Land so we can start a company together. It will
be for girls’ clothing, and we will call it Only for Princesses.”
Aurora’s eyes lit up as much as they did during the two happiest events of her
life: when she met Male and as soon as she laid eyes on her newborn daughter.
“Thank you, my daughter, for allowing me to join your organization. To make it
something great, we also need the collaboration of Poetry and you, Narrator,” she continued, addressing
me. “The talents of both of you will be part of our business, whose goal will be to immortalize this
fairy realm. In this way, there will be no distinction between mortals and deities.”
King Harper, the Master, and the other fairies applauded. Gossip, the fairy of music
with discernment, and the other past tormentors approached me with smiles and pleading looks.
“Don’t even think about asking me to omit your misdeeds! I already wrote all
of them,” I scolded them.
With her wand turned into a needle, she flew to a distance where the entire kingdom
could read the message woven in golden thread in space. It said: “This is the happy ending of a great
story.”
I must confess that since then, I no longer complain about my role as the Narrator of
my kingdom because now I have the deities of industry and commerce, as well as the one of fashion design, to
showcase my work to you. I only ask that you read my stories.
