The fairy laughed. “Not at your neighbor’s house, silly. I mean the world next door to this one.”
Gracie nodded. She vaguely understood. “How did you get here?”
“Why, through the Seam.”
“The Seam?” Gracie was even more vague about that (just because a person turns six doesn’t mean they have to know everything), but she decided to ignore it. “Are you a kind of angel, then?”
“No, no, no. Angels don’t do beer. They’re into the fine wine and cognac, angels are. They tend to be seriously sophisticated — and if you want my opinion, seriously snootered-up and pucky-wucked. You’ll never catch an angel at a kegger, believe me.”
“My Sunday school teacher says beer is the Devil’s drink.”
“Ha! Shows how little she knows about that old boogeyman. For her information, and yours, the Devil drinks Shirley Temples.”
“Really!?”
“You can take my word for it.”
“Hmm. That’s funny. But you, Beer Fairy? You’re the fairy for beer?”
“Put two and two together, did you? Let me state it this way: if a substantial quantity of beer is being consumed, you can usually expect to find me flitting about the scene.”
“Does nobody see you?”
“Yeah, when they drink too much they do, although they don’t remember it later. Or if they do remember, they aren’t brave enough to admit it.” With a soft whir, the fairy flew up then and landed on Gracie’s shoulder. “So, what do you think of beer, little lady?”
Gracie screwed up her face. “It made me sick.”
“That’s right. You drank too much too fast and you’re way too young.”
“When people drink too much beer do you help them?”
“Oh, if they’ve become pleasantly glad and dizzy, I might take steps to ensure that no real harm befalls them, I might enhance or even participate in their celebration; but should they happen to turn aggressive or nasty or stupid, which isn’t uncommon, I’m more likely to kick their butts. Believe me, kiddo, there’s not a tough-guy beer guzzler alive whose butt I cannot kick.”
“Are you gonna kick my butt?”
Gently shaking her head, the fairy smiled. “No, Gracie Perkel. You’ve been kicked quite enough today. I’m here to satisfy your unusual curiosity and to reveal to you the origins and mysteries of beer.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say that you’re a special case. Now, are you ready to take a little trip?”
“A trip? Where? How? My mommy…”
“Don’t worry. We’re going far away, but we’ll be back before you know it. Here. Hang on to my wand.”
Ever obedient, Gracie grasped the wand between her thumb and index finger, but it wasn’t easy to hold on to, it being not much bigger than a tadpole’s tail. Nevertheless, she felt herself being pulled upright from the bed. Whoa! Easy now! With increasing speed, her body was rising toward the ceiling.
“Let’s blow this pop stand!” shouted the Beer Fairy — and from the yippee and wahoo exuberance in her voice, anybody could tell it was one of the Beer Fairy’s favorite sayings.
11
For a scary moment, Gracie was sure her skull was about to be smashed like a cantaloupe against the ceiling. She imagined her mother entering the room later and discovering, in addition to the pool of barf, Gracie’s splattered brains all over the floor. But then, inches from a head-on collision, there occurred a poof! noise, she felt a strong rush of air, and the next thing she knew she was suspended somewhere in the atmosphere. At least, that was her impression.
“What happened?” Gracie asked, in a voice as shaky as a wet chihuahua at a fireworks show.
“We passed through the Seam.”
“What Seam?”
“What Seam? The Seam between the Earth and the sky, between the it and the is, between the fire and the smoke, between the mirror and the reflection, between the buzz and the bee, between the screw and the turning of the screw, and so on and so forth. You get the picture?”
As a matter of fact, in terms of getting the picture, Gracie was between the huh? and the huh-uh. If she neglected to say so, it was because she was too busy straining to see how far she’d fall if she lost her grip on the Beer Fairy’s wand. And at that moment, she realized that she was already on the ground, standing amid a waving, seemingly endless expanse of tall, golden-brown grass.
Opening her teeny toothpick arms wide as if to embrace everything in sight, the Beer Fairy announced, “This is where it all begins.”
Puzzled, Gracie merely stood there, the grass enveloping her, the seedy spikes at the tip of its stems rubbing against her elbows like the beards of affectionate billy goats. (The grass was up to her armpits, and had she been five instead of six, it might have reached her neck.) The grass was almost crackly dry, yet Gracie could sense the moist heart of the Earth throbbing in it. Was that what the Beer Fairy meant about it all starting here?
“This is a grain field,” the sprite explained. “A field of barley, to be specific. All beer gets its start as grain. Some pretty tasty beer is made from wheat; Asians brew an acceptable beer from rice, though it’s not my cup of tea, and there’re Africans who resort to millet for a brew that’s dipped warm out of buckets on village market day — neither better tasting nor less filling, I’m afraid — but the worldwide grain of choice for making beer is good old barley.” She performed a loop and landed on a stalk top, which bowed ever so slightly from her cottony weight.
“My uncle Moe says beer’s made outta hops.”
“Your uncle Moe is full of you-know-what. Or else you misunderstood him.” The Beer Fairy thrust her wand toward Gracie. “Come along. With that in mind, we’d better get to our next stop.”
“Are we blowing this pop stand?” asked Gracie.
The Beer Fairy laughed a fairy laugh. “You’re okay, kiddo. You’re all right. Now, treat yourself to a good long look at this barley field as we lift off. You can appreciate its rustic beauty, I’m sure, but you could never guess what history or what forces lie hidden in that common crop.
“Barley grains found near Al Fayyūm, Egypt, have been shown in laboratory tests to be 5,000 years old. That’s 4,994 years older than you, little miss. Whether barley — originally just another species of wild grass — was actually domesticated in Egypt way back then, or was imported as livestock feed from more agriculturally advanced northern cultures, is a subject scholars can debate until their glasses fog over. A more interesting subject is how the Egyptians figured out a way to convert that donkey chow, that camel fodder, into an intoxicating beverage in the first place, an inebriating liquid refreshment so wholly perfect that it’s endured and spread and has grown ever more popular through the ages.
“For whatever reason, the ancient Egyptians weren’t satisfied with mere survival. They wanted to be remembered forever, which is why they built the pyramids, and they wanted to ensure that they’d be sufficiently glad and dizzy during their lifetime, which is why they invented beer.”
“Did the Egypt people invent you, too?”
“Ha! You are the inquisitive one, aren’t you? No, they invented me only in the sense that your mommy and daddy’s love invented you. But that’s another story. Right now, we need to go.”
That suited Gracie fine. The mention of her parents made her think of home, and that talk about ancient Egyptians had made her miss Uncle Moe. Such thoughts were threatening to spoil her big birthday adventure. She need not have worried, though, because as they rose above the farmland, there was another poof!, another whoosh of wind, and in a wink she and the Beer Fairy were out of the sunlight, out of the sweet country air; were, in fact, indoors somewhere, inside a room that was chilly, smelly, and darn near as vast as a barley field.