Catch A Pixie

Laura Beegle

They crouched behind the daffodils and watched the small human.  Zannie flew towards the boy, his transparent wings a blur of motion and his heart racing with fear and excitement.  His younger brother, Kezim, had dared him to fly close to the human, land, and taunt him before flying back to the safety of the flowers.  Kezim and the other pixie boys watched from behind the daffodils, grinning.

The small human looked up from his trucks.  He thought he heard a faint tinkling sound and it seemed to be getting louder.  He reached for an old glass quart jar his mother had given him for the sandbox.

Zannie was too eager to beat the dare and didn't notice the boy's movement.  He looped around, landing right beside the human.  He made a rude gesture with exaggerated motions, so his friends could see them.  Triumph filled his heart as he prepared to launch back into the air and back to the flowers.

But, just as he started to take off, the wind pushed down on him, hard.  Then, with a sudden thump, the wind stopped.  Zannie found out a split-second later when he crashed into the top of the glass jar.  He bounced off the side of the jar and landed painfully in the dirt.

A big, ugly face peered down at Zannie, distorted through the glass.  The boy reached for the jar's lid and, with a speed that spoke of many such captures, he quickly turned up the mouth of the jar and screwed on the lid.

Zannie was tossed about inside the jar and nearly caught one of his delicate wings on the vicious steel barbs that now protruded down from the top of the jar.  He yelped in surprise and landed on the bottom of the jar.  The boy stood up, carrying the jar in both hands, and ran for the house.

"Got you now!" crowed the boy.  "Just wait until I show all my friends!"

The boy hurried into his dwelling, all flashes of color and big movement to Zannie's warped-glass view.  When the jostling finally stopped, Zannie looked around, feeling slightly woozy.  It was dark and very foreign looking.  The boy's face grinned down at him and a terrible force struck the side of the glass, knocking Zannie from his feet.  The force came twice more and the sound was so loud, Zannie thought he might never hear again.  The boy took his hand away from the glass and ran off to some other part of the dwelling.

"Mom!  Mom!" he yelled.  "Can I invite Tom and Joey over?"

The rest of the conversation was lost to Zannie's ears.  A few seconds later, the human boy came darting back into the room and stood over Zannie again.  He grinned and said, "my friends are coming over, little fairy, and they're going to be so impressed!  My very own fairy.  Hey, do you have magic dust?  Can you do magic?"

The words were very loud and hurt Zannie's ears, but he stamped his foot in anger and screamed, "I'm a pixie, not a fairy, you... you... stupid human!"  The boy tilted his head towards the jar, frowning.

"I can't hear you," said the boy.  "Talk louder, little fairy."

Zannie let forth a string of curses that would get him into big trouble if his parents were around.  He folded his wings down and made a rude gesture at the boy.  Then he crossed his arms over his chest and sat down, sulking.  The boy tapped on the glass again, but Zannie refused to move.

"Hmph," said the boy.  "Well, I don't need a chatty fairy anyway."

There was a distant bell sound and the boy grinned and ran from the room.  Zannie slumped against the glass wall.  He wasn't going to escape.  His brother and friends weren't coming to rescue him.  He was going to die here, at the mercy of this ugly human.

Just then, Zannie caught movement out of the corner of his eye.  Something small and dark was moving at the edge of the surface Zannie's prison was on.  Zannie stared, trying to make it out when a low, rough voice sounded from behind him.

"In something of a pickle, then," said the voice.  It wasn't a pleasant voice,  but it wasn't as loud as a human, either.  "And, a little far from home, aren't you, pixie boy?"

Zannie looked towards the voice and a small, pudgy face with heavy eyebrows smiled through the glass at him.  Zannie sighed in relief.  The face belonged to a hobgoblin, his thick, hairy arms resting on his hips in tiny fists.  The moving shapes materialized into three more hobgoblins.

"Please help me," said Zannie, standing up.  "I'm not supposed to be here.  It was just a stupid prank, a stunt, to buzz the human, but, well, it went wrong."

The hobgoblins laughed with a sound of small rocks grating together, but it was a kind laugh.  "That we can see, boy.  My name is Gorthos."  He gave a small bow which Zannie returned.  Zannie was a little worried, though: hobgoblins were collectors, they carried off items from the human realms that caught their fancy.  Pixies didn't think much of their taste, because, while their fancy sometimes included shiny things which pixies approved of, it also included the absolutely boring, like socks, mittens, and pens.  Zannie was a little afraid they were here to add him to their collection.

The hobgoblins were climbing onto the others' shoulders, two on one side of the glass prison and two on the other.  The started turning the spiked lid with an awful noise.  Zannie covered his ears.  They got the lid open and tilted it to one side, allowing enough room for Zannie to fly through, if he was careful.  He hovered up slowly and slipped through the opening.

"Now," said Gorthos, still holding the lid open.  "Fly over there and bring me that fluff."  He pointed at something fluffy and white beside the prison.  Elated at being freed, Zannie swooped down and scooped up the fluff.  They stuffed the fluff into the jar with a few well-placed shoves and it fell silently to the bottom of the jar.  Gorthos and the others chuckled and resealed the lid of the prison.

"Why are you doing that," asked Zannie.

Gorthos chuckled again.  "Just like you buzz humans for fun," he said, "we like to confuse them.  Move things when they aren't looking.  Take things and hide them for years then bring them back.  Convince them there's no such thing as pixies."  He had a twinkle in his large, dark eyes.

Zannie laughed and nodded.  The hobgoblins started to walk back the way they came.  Zannie gave his belt to Gorthos for his collection as thanks for freeing him.  He then zipped up into the air, heading for the sunlight, elated to be free again.  He was almost outside the human dwelling when he heard the boy say, "but he was right here!  I swear, I had a tiny little fairy in the jar just a minute ago!"

"See," said a different human voice, "I told you there were no such things as fairies."