Scareship_Issue8

“The Edge” copyright © 2012 by Charlotte Nash.
N
ight is coming; it is time to fight.
I try to hold still while ten nymphs weave steel wire
into my sneakers, but I'm cross-legged on the floorboards
and getting a cramp. I shift, and fairies hauling arrow buckets
whisper past my ear, their wings spilling rainbows on a ring of
textbooks and Milo-crusted cups. All day, the Folk have turned my
pages and tested me, as they did when I went to high school in the
city. But much has changed. I’m older, on a uni study break, and
this farmhouse is not the city, not yet. Once, it was an island in
miles of scrub. But the suburbs grew right to the doorstep, and the
Folk came with the sprawl. Now, while one side of the farmhouse
hears traffic in the distance; the other faces the scrub, the
billabong, the cool valley air...
...and the reason for this armour.
A green man barks orders to the sprites and dwarves, his leafy
arms a-dance. Tommyknockers poke the floorboards, thinking of
tunnels and going underground. A gnome stands on an upturned
basket and tugs a breast-plate across my chest. He ties on old boot
laces to make it fit, then frowns at a standard, teacup-sized gnome
helm. He throws it back and casts appraisal at the laundry bucket. I
give him a stare, mouthing no. I’m not doing the Ned Kelly thing.
But his face is lined with fear, something I've never seen.
I relent and accept the spear the gnome pushes into my hand. I
put my thumb in the middle, thinking I could break it in half. My
Gran—well, everyone’s Gran—says the Folk are what makes us
people; that they are magic in the mundane, that we need them to
survive. And sometimes, they need us too. Folk battles are nothing
new but they tell me this is different. They're at war with
something bigger. Something they never met in Europe. Things
that lived before there was Europe at all.
The creatures.
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