Faery Tale (13 page)

I nodded, taking a sip of the sweet homemade elderflower liquor that Wendy had placed before me.

“Traditionally in folklore, when you enter into the faery world, you get trapped, lost. You lose sense of time, or you go mad. So my paintings, actually, are very akin to maps. They are flat, they are meant to be read in a linear way, there's geometry going on underneath, and so the eye travels along a flat plane. When people look at the paintings, it allows them back into faery land on a
safe
journey. They're a way to take you where I've been, and safely back again.”

“How do people get lost in that world?” I wondered.

Brian thought a moment. “Truly I think it's the faery glamour . . . people think that it's pretty and lovely, and safe, but it's
not
. It's dangerous. You don't realize it, but when you're in a faery place, or you're meditating, visualizing a journey into the faery realm, it's bringing you into contact with real things, with reality. What I'm doing is not fantasy, it's reality. I'm trying to reengage you on a deep level, to what that world is really like. And then, when you ‘come back,' you're experiencing the world in a much more open and connective way.”

 

Brian believed the trouble is that most of us walk around completely deaf and blind to the world around us. To begin to really engage with the faery world, we had to understand that we are all connected through our very own essence.

“We all have souls,” he explained. “And for thousands of years the earth itself was seen to have a soul, you know. If you can understand this, that we're all just made of this ‘soul stuff,' then you begin to see faeries are just made of soul stuff, the trees are made of soul stuff— you begin to understand how we, as humans, are connected to the faeries.”

I nodded, waiting for him to continue.

“Nature is wonderful, beautiful, mysterious,” Brian went on. “But people forget that nature is dangerous. They forget that you have to treat it with respect.You can't condemn a river, saying it's
bad
because it drowns people. But the fact of the matter is that a dangerous river can kill you. It's the same thing with the faery realm. There are energies out in nature that you just really have to respect.”

As I asked Brian more about the process of actually seeing a faery, he was able to shed some profound light on the subject.

“It's often thought that faeries use our own thought patterns to manifest themselves. For example, when a faery appears to a person, it will typically look quite similar to the creatures we see in storybooks. This is because if you were to see a ball of energy, would you really know it was a faery? No. So they try to ‘speak' our visual language. We see wings, and flowing dresses, and heads and eyes. The problem is, we think we're just making it all up.”

It was a tricky bridge the faeries must maneuver, in using our imaginations. It struck me that in Mexico, I might have succeeded in “seeing” a faery. It just wasn't a type of faery I found very desirable.

“Everybody thinks that faeries are on the margins,” Brian continued. “They talk about how faeries live in the 'tween places, between light and dark, et cetera.They're right, in a sense. Faeries are on the edge of everything. What they don't understand is that faeries are on the edge of the
beginning
of everything else that exists.”

 

Brian and Wendy assured me that something
does
change when you begin to acknowledge faeries, and they encouraged me to try it for myself. They might begin to give me gifts, Wendy explained, little things that I could come across that most people might just walk by but that meant something to me. I promised to keep my eyes open.

“So, given all your experience with the faery world,” I ventured, “do you think there could be a way for me to
prove
the existence of faeries?”

“No,” Brian replied. “But on the contrary, perhaps there's no way to
disprove
them, either. Just be aware of
everything
when you're trying to interact with them. You'll find it's often the most seemingly insignificant things that turn out to be the most important. And that's what fairy tales tell us all the time.”

“Look.” He softened, as though encouraging me to take heart. “There is no conclusion. Every ending is merely a beginning. Once you step onto the faery path, and you have, there is no way off. You can't go back, and you can't step off. Because they won't let you. So you have to keep going. You just have to stay open.”

 

As I headed back down the road toward Chagford, Brian and Wendy waved from the front of the house. Looking back at them against the stone wall, I felt like I could've been Mandy Patinkin or Andre the Giant in
The Princess Bride
, you know, in that classic scene where they get the miracle pill coated in chocolate and set off to rescue Princess Buttercup. Brian and Wendy, standing there side by side, were perfectly suited for a much younger (and far more attractive!) Carol Kane and Billy Crystal as they waved, wishing me luck on my journey.

“Bye-bye, Signe!” I imagined Wendy calling.

“Have fun meeting the faeries!” Brian chimed in.

(Under her breath to Brian.) “Think it'll work?”

“Her? It would take a miracle.”

I smiled to myself. This would take a miracle indeed.

 

Back at Cyprian's Cot, Shelagh served tea and we chatted about the history of the house. To my amazement, she told me it was built in the sixteenth century.

“Wow. That's incredible,” I mused. “With so much history under its belt, do you think this place could be haunted?” I asked, half joking.

“Actually, it's funny you should ask,” she said. “I've been at the house by myself at night, and walked past the living room and smelled the very distinct smell of pipe smoke. With no reason as to why I should be smelling it. But it's so strong, it's almost undeniable. And”—she glanced at me—“I've had guests tell me they feel like they're being watched, at night, in your room.”

Well, that was enough to freak me out.

“I did have a woman who came to stay here once, who claimed she could see and communicate with spirits. She told me there was definitely a presence in your room, and in the living room.” She must have seen the look on my face, because she quipped, “But she said it really seemed to be a calm, protective presence, more than anything. Not harmful at all. Really.”

That night I slept with the radio and the bedside lamp on. Faeries, I was getting a little more comfortable with. Faeries, I might be able to take on. Ghosts, no way. Not in this lifetime.

 

The next morning I nervously set out to drive the heinously narrow Devon roads to Scorhill where I would meet Jo, the woman I'd met in the pub my first night in Chagford.

Of course, en route to the stone circle I got into a car accident. Someone came around a bend on the single-lane road going about fifty miles per hour. Realizing in a panic that he wasn't going to slow down or even acknowledge my presence, I jerked the wheel as far left as I could to avoid the head-on collision—slamming my precious rental directly into a stone wall. He kept on driving. Hands still shaking, I arrived at Jo's to find her waiting near the road and made myself, for the time being, ignore the fact that the driver's-side mirror was now dangling from a wire.
And on the second day, God created car insurance
. Summoning a smile, I let Jo take the lead as we made our way up the lane toward the entrance to Scorhill moor.

Jo was an energy healer, which meant, like Raven, she worked to heal people's ailments through the practice of Reiki. She believed that our world was filled with energies that existed beyond normal human perception, and that everyone could interact with this energy, if they wanted to. Jo first became aware of energies—which she broke down further into faeries, stone circle guardians, and the like—by spending time on the moor while she was first studying Reiki. At first she was only aware of energy she could feel coming from rocks, and she noticed that when the wild Dartmoor ponies were pregnant, the expectant mothers would often sit in the ancient circle of stones just before giving birth. Eventually it evolved into what she said was an ability to discern different types of energies—and on Scorhill she believed she often felt the energy of faeries.

The wind whipped across the broad moor. Covered in tall yellow grasses, the gently rolling landscape was scattered with ancient thorn trees with dark, gnarled trunks, each one framed against the spring blue sky like its own private Rackham painting. As we neared the crest of a small hill, I spotted my first ancient stone circle. It wasn't hard to see why Jo felt this was a magical place. If I closed out everything else—the rushing of the chilly wind, every errant thought spinning around in my head—and took it in like a piece of art, the circle—with its jagged stones still thrusting up from the earth in irregular fits and starts—was telling a story about relationship to the land.The moor felt vast, haunted, desolate. The sky composed the rest of the world, nearly crushing itself down upon the grasses. Whatever had drawn the ancients to this site still seemed to linger, despite the tremendous passage of forgetfulness and time. The rocks tied heaven to earth, cradling the power of the universe within their thick, stony fingers, if only for a moment before it dispersed wildly, out across the massive moor.

What I imagined were once towering stones had been worn down by wind, water, and time to leave what stood before me that day—twenty-three standing granite stones and several fallen ones formed a circle about ninety feet across. It almost seemed to be built into a dip in the land that physically drew me in as I approached. I looked at Jo, who was standing at the edge of the circle, as if waiting to go through. As I approached she turned to me. “I like to ask permission before I enter.”

“Permission?”

“Yes. From the guardians of the circle. I feel like there's a male and a female spirit, somehow still here—I don't know . . . perhaps they were invoked during the time this circle was in use, or invoked in the building of it. They were probably made offerings when ceremonies took place here. I can still feel their presence.” I hadn't considered this before, but regardless of whether the idea seemed far-fetched, there was something beautiful about it, something respectful, and I preferred it to tramping clumsily into an ancient wonder unannounced.

“But how will I know when it's all right to enter?” I asked.

“You'll just get a feeling. Something inside you will say yes. Sometimes you might almost feel there's a hand at the small of your back, gently pushing you in.”

“What if I get a no?” I wondered.

“Trust me.You'll know if it's a no.” Closing her eyes a moment, she entered. I stood at the edge and gave it a try.

May I have permission to enter?
I waited, trying to quiet my mind, but felt nothing aside from my own impatience. Still I waited a moment longer before stepping gingerly inside.

It's believed that Scorhill Circle was originally made up of seventy standing stones, which would have made it the densest stone circle on Dartmoor. Now that I was standing in the midst of the circle I felt something very distinctly. It was almost like a slight drop in pressure. I also felt sad, curious and sad. I sat down in the grass, along a furrow in the ground. I wanted so badly to be able to imagine what this monument would have looked like, to see the people who'd used it, to know what they used it for. Artifacts gathered from the vicinity of the circle dated anywhere from 8500 to 700 BC. That was simply too much history for me to wrap my head around, and I felt lost in it. We sat there, each in our own space within the stone for what must have been several minutes before quietly rising and continuing along the moor.

“The interesting thing is that this stone circle seems to align with that huge granite rock.” Jo pointed to a faraway hill. “So you can imagine that you could always use those rocks as a guide to find the circle.” She pointed to another far hill where a similar huge stone was perched. “I think that rock acts as a sort of energetic battery pack for this stone circle. It sits up there in the sun, and this circle is tucked away on the moor. Of course, the stones were taller before the stone cutters got to them.”

“Stone cutters?” I was astonished. “But who would touch those? I mean, how
could
they?”

She gestured to a number of damaged stones that lay in the vicinity. “It was easier to harvest these rocks when people needed stones to build their houses. Also, the circles were considered to be pagan places—so there were some who wanted to destroy them. There were men who went around hauling up the rocks and inserting them back in the ground upside down. I've been to some of those circles, and I can't stand to be in them. The energy feels completely wrong, like there's just pools of chaos now.”

We made our way out over the moor where we came to a slender, rushing river, which Jo told me was the River Teign—it ran from the moor all the way down to the English Channel. Jo pointed out the remnants of ancient stone hut circles, occupied during the Bronze Age, most likely. I'd never in my life witnessed human habitation this old. Down the river, we came to a huge boulder with a perfectly concentric hole that ran through it, down into the water. “This,” she explained, “is the Tolmen Stone. It's believed that if you drop through it, it cures arthritis, but it's been used by people here going back centuries. In ancient times it was most likely involved in cleansing rituals of some sort, as the hole could represent coming through the mother's womb and a rebirth of sorts could take place.”