I know, from having read up on them before coming out to do the interview, that fairy rings are due to the growth of certain fungi below the surface. The spawn of the fungi radiates out from the center at a similar rate every year, which is how the ring widens. The darker grass is due to the increased nitrogen produced by the fungus.
None of which explains the feeling I get from the place. Or the toadstools. The last time I saw one like that was when I was still in Brownies— you know the one the owl sits on?
"Do you have to believe in the fairies to see them?" Annie asks.
"Land's sakes, no," Betsy tells her.
She's this beautiful old woman, kind of gangly and pretty thin, but still robust and a real free spirit. I can't believe she's pushing eighty-two.
"They have to believe in you," she explains.
Annie nods like she understands, but the two of them have lost me.
"What do you mean?" I ask.
I'm not even remembering to take notes anymore.
"It's like this," Betsy says. "You don't think of them as prissy little creatures with wings. That's plain wrong. They're earth spirits— and they don't really have shapes of their own; they just show up looking the way we expect them to look. Could be you'll see 'em as your Tinkerbells, or maybe they'll come to you looking like those Japanese robot toys that my grandson likes so much."
"But the fairy ring," I say. "That's just like in the stories..."
"I didn't say the stories were all lies."
"So..." I pause, trying to put it all together— for myself now, never mind the interview. "What is it that you're saying? What do these earth spirits do?"
"They don't do anything. They just are. Mostly they mind their own business, just like we mind ours. But sometimes we catch their attention and that's when you have to be careful."
Annie doesn't say anything.
"Of what?" I ask.
"Of what you're thinking when you're around them. They like to give gifts, but when they do hand 'em out, it's word for word. Sometimes, what you're asking for isn't what you really wants."
At my puzzled look Betsy goes on.
"They give you what you really want," she says. "And that can hurt, let me tell you."
I stand there, the jaded reporter, and I can't help but believe. I find myself wondering what it was that she asked for and what it was that she got.
After a while, Betsy and Annie start back towards the trailer, but I stay behind for a few moments longer, just drinking in the feel of the place. It's so... so innocent. The way the world was when you were a kid, before it turned all crazy-cruel and confusing. Everybody loses their innocence sooner or later; for me and Annie it was sooner.
Standing there, I feel like I'm in the middle of a fairy tale. I forget about what Betsy has just been telling us. I think about lost innocence and just wish that it doesn't have to be that way for kids, you know? That they could be kids for as long as possible before the world sweeps them away.
I think that's why they came to me after Annie died. They mourn that lost innocence, too. They came to me, because with Annie gone, I have no real ties to the world anymore, nothing to hold me down. I guess they just figured that, with their gifts, I'd head out into the world and do what I could to make things right; that I'd make the perfect fairy crusader.
They weren't wrong.
The trouble is, when you can do the things I can do now, you get cocky. And in this business, cocky means stupid.
Crouching there on the rooftop, all I can find myself thinking about is another bit of fairy lore.
"The way it works," Annie told me once, explaining one of her stories that I didn't get, "is that there's always a price. Nothing operates in a vacuum: not relationships, not the ecology, and especially not magic. That's what keeps everything in balance."
If there's got to be a price paid tonight, I tell the city skyline, let it be me that pays it.
I don't get any answer, but then I'm not expecting one. All I know is that it's time to get this show on the road.
4
It starts to go wrong around the middle of August, when I meet this guy on the East Side.
His name's Christopher Dennison and he works for Social Services, but I don't find that out until later. First time I see him, he's walking through the dark back alleys of the Barrio, talking in this real loud voice, having a conversation, except there's no one with him. He's tall, maybe a hundred-and-seventy pounds, and not bad looking. Clean white shirt and jeans, red windbreaker. Nikes. Dressed pretty well for a loser, which is what I figure he must be, going on the way he is.
I dismiss, him as one more inner-city soul who's lost it, until I hear what it is that he's saying. Then I follow along above him, a shadow ghosting from roof to roof while he makes his way through the refuse and crap that litters the ground below. When he pauses under some graffito that reads PRAISE GOD FOR AIDS, I make my way down a fire escape.
I want to tear out the heart of whoever spray-painted those words, but they're long gone, so I concentrate on the guy instead. I can see perfectly in the dark and my hearing's nothing to be ashamed of either. The wind changes and his scent comes to me. He's wearing some kind of cologne, but it's faint. Or maybe it's aftershave. I don't smell any fear.
"I just want to know how you do it," he's saying. "I've got a success rate of maybe one in thirty, but you... you're just shutting them down, right, left and center. And it sticks. I can tell when it's going bad. Can't always do something about it, but I can tell. The ones you help stay helped."
He's talking about me. He's talking to me. I don't get the impression he knows what I am— or even who I am and what exactly it is that I can do— but he knows there's something out in the city, taking back the night for those who aren't strong or old enough to do it for themselves. I've been so careful— I didn't think anybody had picked up on it yet.
"Let me in on the secret," he goes on. "I want to help. I can bring you names and addresses."
I let the silence hang for long moments. City silence. We can hear traffic from the street, the vague presences of TVs and stereos coming out of nearby windows, someone yelling at someone, a siren, but it's blocks away.
"So who died and made you my manager?" I finally say.
I hear his pulse quicken. His sudden nervousness is a sharp sting in my nostrils, but he's pretty quick at recovering. He looks above him, trying to spot me, but I'm just one more shadow in a dark alley, invisible.
"So you are real," he says.
A point for him, I think. He didn't know until I just confirmed it for him. How many nights has he been walking through these kinds of neighborhoods, talking to the night this way, wondering if he'll make contact or if he's just chasing a dream?
I make a deliberate noise coming down the fire escape and sit down near the bottom of it so that our heads are almost level. His heart rate quickens again, but settles fast.
"I wasn't sure," he says after I've sat there for a while not saying anything.
I've decided that I've already said enough. I'll let him do the talking. I'm in no hurry. I've got all night. I've got the rest of my life.
"Do you, ah, have a name?" he asks.
I give him nothing back.
"I mean, what do people call you?"
This is getting ridiculous.
"What?" I say. "Like the Masked Avenger?"
He takes a step closer and I tense up, but whether I'll fight back or flee if he comes at me, I'm not sure yet. The cat anima left me with a lot of curiosity.
"You're a woman," he says.