Rachel's Secret
Chapter One: A Friend for Rachel
The sun smiled sleepily on the drooping petals, encouraging them to wake in the early morning's dawn. Each flower obeyed lazily, sending cascades of dewy water falls rushing to the ground below them. Tiny fairies began emerging as each flower home transformed and came alive in the new day. Soon, there could be nothing seen but the quick beating of wings as the fairies joined the flowers in animated life. Soft laughter reached toward the heavens as breakfast was made and cleaning was done.
The day started no different than any other for Rachel. She did her chores and waited to be sent out to play. She didn't like to play like the other fairies, and often spent her entire day away from them. Too young to go to the Fairy Academy, she had no worries of homework as her older sisters did. She wasn't a boy so she didn't have the Genie Genius to attend, either. Her only true job was to play, something that Rachel didn't have an inclination to do on a daily basis.
As with each new day, she cringed inside when she noticed another group of young fairies coming toward her. She recognized them and knew that they wouldn't really want her to join whatever their offer of fun was for the day. It was a routine, a game that was played among her age-mates, and nothing more. They even had a name for it. Rachel had heard them use it. It was known as "Get the Ice Princess to Play". Rachel thought the game a baby game and she despised that no one really wanted to get her to play at all.
"Rachel," Trixie hollered, "you wanna race bumble bees with us?"
Rachel did not answer. Before she could have uttered her one word response, the next fairy in the group blurted out her request for playing together.
"What about dew drop fishing?" asked Trina sweetly, daring Rachel to respond with her eyes. "Or maybe petal jumping?"
Rachel only stood and waited for the third fairy to have her say. She didn't let the quivering that wanted to creep into her chin or the crystal clear tears form in her eyes. She had done that before and it had only gotten her teased more relentlessly. She had learned to hide that which seemed to fuel the taunts of the other young fairies. She even learned not to talk to her mother about the dread that filled her each time she had to speak to anyone else other than her family. Her conversations were always overheard and her well meaning brothers and sisters always ended up fighting to try to help her out. Rachel didn't want anyone fighting for her, but she desperately wanted someone to play with her in her way. She wanted just one of the other fairies to go with her out of the sunlight and into the shadows. None ever wanted to nor did they ever offer to do what Rachel wanted in exchange for Rachel playing one of their games.
"She won't play those baby games," Tanya said knowingly. "She thinks she's too good to play with us!"
This was the comment that always started the taunt that Rachel hated the most. It wasn't true, but she had no way of proving it to them.
"Rachel, Rachel,
Pretty as pie,
Cold as snow flakes
In winter's sky
Rachel, Rachel,
Frost for a sigh
Can't be bothered
With you or I!"
The three young fairies laughed delicately as they sang their musical chant, and Rachel felt her face warm despite her desire to have no reaction at all.
"Um, would any of you like..." Rachel stammered, but before she could say more, all three fairies flew off. Echoing giggles wafted back to her ears and Rachel finally let her tears escape.
There would be a few more groups today that would do the same thing to her before she could slip away to her secret world if she didn't hurry. It was the only place that she felt she belonged. No one there was hard to talk to and no one taunted and teased her the way the other fairies did. Instead, they taught her of their world and she brought them stories from hers.
What Rachel did not know was that today, another fairy had been watching the teasing game. She was only a little younger than Rachel, but just as unpopular. She was different and there was no hiding her difference. Her skin was darker than any other fairy and she had eyes of coal black. She bore no wings upon her back nor did she share the grace of the other fairies. No one else, not even her mother, had such looks. To top it off, she was only half fairy. She was just as desperate for a friend as Rachel was. After witnessing the cruelty shown to Rachel and seeing the magical tears fall unbidden down the little fairy's face, Binnie decided to see if Rachel would be that friend that she so wanted more than anything else in the world.
Rachel startled when Binnie tapped her shoulder and smiled at her.
"If you're here just to be mean," Rachel said between sobs, "go ahead and leave me alone!"
Instead of running away at Rachel's words, Binnie wrapped her arms around Rachel. "I want to see where you go each day. I want to go there, too." she said softly. "Maybe wherever you go and whoever you play with will play with me."
Rachel didn't answer at first. She was too shocked. Such a beautiful fairy, even if she was a little bigger than anyone else among the flowers, surely had friends to play with, things to do. Then, she noticed the chocolate skin and the tear-free, sad eyes. And finally, she saw that the fairy holding her had no wings.
"If you really want to come," Rachel started shyly. "What's your name? And why don't you have wings? And how come your skin is so dark and your eyes?"
"I'm Binnie, and it's because I'm not a full fairy. I am too small to be like my father's people and I am too large and do not have what my mother's people have either. If you don't want to play with me, it's ok. Nobody does, but I was sort of hoping you would want to anyway."
Rachel watched and listened as Binnie talked. It didn't escape her that Binnie looked down as she spoke or that her voice had the same uncertain note that Rachel knew must be in her own. It was the cry of the truly lonely and the painfully shy. She only waited a minute as her mind thought of the possibilities and her heart soared with hope that Binnie really wanted to be her friend. No one had ever wanted that before, and Rachel was afraid to miss her chance at having her one dream realized.
"There's a plant near here that has lots of leaves you could climb down," Rachel told Binnie.
Binnie quickly asked Rachel to take her there. She was not sure if Rachel would change her mind and didn't want to wait around to find out. Binnie thought that if they left right away that there wouldn't be time for Rachel to come to her senses. That had happened to Binnie before and she didn't like the way it felt. She hoped that Rachel wouldn't do that to her as well. Her coal eyes glistening in the sun, she followed Rachel and jumped from leaf to leaf until they were far below the plants above.
Binnie was a little frightened of the place that she saw below her. Darkness was the only thing that seemed to exist and the deeper that she went, the darker it became. After what seemed an eternity to Binnie, she hopped off the last leaf and felt her feet land on a soggy, smelly mat. She didn't know what it was, but she tried to step off of it as quickly as her feet had found it.
Rachel laughed. She remembered her fist time below and knew that Binnie would soon discover the dampness was necessary just as she had. She stopped using her wings, folding them neatly behind her and walked to Binnie to lead her farther into the shadowed stalks. The sun was barely able to be seen, but Rachel had long ago learned to see quite well from the bottom of the garden.
Rachel thought that she should probably get all of the scary things out of the way as fast as she could. That way, she reasoned, Binnie would not jump and scream at every turn. Her friends didn't like screaming so much and they didn't like that the fairies were so afraid of most of them. None would harm the fairies as they each had their own job to do and the fairies provided them with several things they needed for it. If the fairies didn't open the flowers each day for the sun, their land would be a desert. Their families would die of thirst. Some of her friends depended on the dew drop waterfalls to help grow their food. Others depended on the thieves that came to steal the food from them. It was all a circle and each needed the other for survival. Still, the most of the fairies feared the shadows and everything inside of them.
Pulling Binnie, whose eyes were finally adjusting to the darkened environment, she took her first to see Molly, the old yellow and black striped spider who kept such a lovely web. When Molly's web was in sight, Binnie was too frightened to scream. She began to rethink her budding friendship with Rachel. Everyone knew that spiders ate fairies or anything else that dared disturb them. They just were not nice creatures at all and Binnie wondered what trick Rachel was up to. Maybe this was why Rachel never had anyone to play with. Maybe she fed her friends to the spiders.
"Mornin', Miss Rachel," came a gravelly voice from deep in the web. " I see you've brought someone! I knew you'd find a friend someday. Would you girls like to stay for some tea?"
Binnie could not move and did not resist Molly's arms as they helped her to have a seat upon the web. She was even more shocked to see Rachel dab her feet on a mat that she hadn't noticed before but had walked across and begin to jump from strand to strand of the web. Molly's harsh laughter brought her back to the present and she found her voice enough to scream as Molly came closer and closer. Binnie shut her eyes tight, unwilling to watch the way she would die. She stopped when Molly only tapped her leg with one of her many hairy legs and handed her a cup of steaming dew drop tea.
Binnie saw the cup was the shell of a fallen acorn and decorated with a silky and sticky handle. She took the tea, which was a rare treat for fairies as young as she and sipped it suspiciously. Maybe, she thought, spiders just added poison to tea and that was how they tricked everyone into becoming their victims. She didn't want to be rude and she had already broken the funny handle, so she decided that a little sip would not harm her much. It was heavenly, a taste as sweet as the nectar that had been used to make it. The fragrance wrapped her in its softness and invited Binnie to drink deeper, but she waited to see if anything would happen to her first.
By this time, Rachel also had an acorn cup of the wonderful treat and Binnie watched as she down it almost at once. Then, Rachel asked for a second cup. As Molly refilled her acorn, Binnie decided that it must be okay to drink and began to enjoy her special treat. She decided too that if Molly wanted to eat her, she could as long as she got to have a second cup of dew drop tea.
When the girls were finished, Rachel jumped up and tried to help Binnie up, but her backside was stuck to the web. Molly rushed over and cut her free and smiled.
"You will learn, small one," Molly said gently. " When you come to visit me, you must use the oil. When you do not, my web will try to hold you. More than one little fairy has been hurt in a panic that way."
"I'm sorry," said Binnie, hoping Molly was not too angry with her. Molly's words slowly sank into Binnie's brain and she realized that many of the fairies that told stories of nearly being eaten by a spider might have come from such beginnings. Hadn't her own thoughts come dangerously close to the same conclusion?, she thought wryly.
Binnie gazed at Rachel with awe as she skipped along the garden floor after her new friend. She had always believed the tales of danger that spiders were to fairies and yet she had just met one that defied all of her knowledge of spiders. Even as she wondered where her friend would take her next, Binnie's heart made the decision to follow Rachel wherever she led. She had never had such an adventure and the day had barely begun.
