Her sisters visited, and taught her how to suggest flower from bud and fruit from flower they taught her the language of bees and the silent gestures of ants they taught her to spin rainwater into dew and fog into lacy frost with her spindle. She flew high above her wood and skimmed through its underbrush inches from the ground.
She made stews and soups in her pot, and collected rainwater in her jug from the notched boughs and the fattest wildflower blossoms. She suggested a clearing where the birds and animals tested strength and will, and suggested hollows and burrows for them to nest and tend their young. She suggested that the bluebells spread far and wide in the dappled sunlight.
She suggested the trees into bud every spring and suggested they drop their leaves for winter. In her wood Apple quickly learned that she could only suggest, unless specifically invited to do more. The fairies placed Apple in her new home, set everything right, gave her twelve kisses, promised to visit often, and flew away. “She’ll find a use for it,” Crone said vaguely when the others gave her curious looks, and they didn’t press the matter, for Crone was indeed wiser than all of them. Once the cottage was built they each gave Apple a present for her birth-day: a narrow bed a table and chair the secrets of fire, sleep, and flight a jug and a wash-basin a pot and a bowl to eat from a dress to cover herself and, rather inexplicably from Crone, a large, polished spindle. “She looks like an Apple,” Fall said to Harvest, who agreed, and as they both knew a lot about apples everyone thought the matter settled.īetween them they found a sweet little wood no one was occupying, with pine and oak and yes, even apple trees, and they suggested to the fallen branches and stones and mud that they come together into a cottage. “We’ll call her Apple,” she declared, “until she figures out who she is.” Time slipped past, and they had other tasks to do, but still they could not think of a thing.Īt last Dawn, who had been up for some time and wanted to nap, gestured to the nearest object. The twelve fairies looked around, trying to think of what this one, singular fairy could be. (When her trio had emerged from the breath of the sun and were asked what they were, Maiden had said “beautiful,” Mother had rolled her eyes, and Crone had said “wiser than you.”) “We have to call her something,” Crone pointed out. She was fifteen minutes old and quite astonished at existing. But no one else emerged for some time.įinally, they looked to Dawn, who was eldest, and she looked at the new fairy and sighed. They waited for some time - perhaps there would be more? For they had come in pairs and trios before, and Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter had practically exploded out of the same minute point of light. None of them had expected another sister. Thus, when a thirteenth fairy emerged from the breath of sun upon earth they were to a one confused. They were twelve, and between them they encompassed Dawn, Dusk, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Seed, Blossom, Harvest, Maiden, Mother, and Crone that is to say, they were complete.
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