00 Away with the Fairies

Away with the fairies – Prologue
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There was a delighted squeal as pork fat hit the flames, the fiery dancers writhing to the popping beat. Someone had started up a drum and the rest of the camp devoured their first hot meal of the day to the ever changing timber. Horses stomped, goats bleated and amongst the headache inducing din, Mikhail finally realised he was home. The constant press of noise behind his temples was warm, and the insulting colour combinations of ramshackle caravans and clothing familiar. There was a new body here and there, and the occasional grizzled face was missing from the throng, but the laughter and music was the same. Tomorrow was Week’s End so there would be no turning in early tonight, he mused glumly. They’d camp, eat, dance and sing, then eat more while one of the story-tellers sent the children off to bed with a tale. After that was a mystery; he’d been too young to stay up last time he’d sat at these fires. He did suspect, however, that more dancing and eating would be involved.

          Offers to dance were politely declined as the night wore on – he was too tired, too full tonight, perhaps next week – and girls who’s hair he’d pulled when they were children looked disappointed, childish pranks forgotten as they’d grown. They unwillingly let him be, not understanding why he wasn’t interested, and he listened to his grandmother prattle on about his mother’s, cousin’s, promised’s, horse, nodding and making the appropriate noises at the right times.

          The dancing stopped, skirts stilling as partners looped arms and left the clearing to the children. Though far fewer in number and much smaller, the gangly, undersized members of the camp seemed to fill the make-shift circle, hushing each other with screams and yells. It was little wonder the elders tended to be deaf.  He sat up, however, when Lida made her appearance.

          She’d been in braids when he’d left, though she’d always cut them short in an attempt to fit in with the boys (long hair was a drawback, she learnt early on). There was certainly no mix ups now; dark locks, colour indescribable in the dim fire-light, bounced down her back despite the array of braids and beads threaded through them. Even if he’d still been second guessing, the story-tellers garb would have set him straight even if he was half blind. Sea-based colours swathed her unmistakably female form and, while the outfit was hardly revealing in its modest cut and lose trousers – Lida would never fully change – he was unable to look away. Yes, he mused while accepting his grandmother’s offer of tea, we definitely have grown up.

          If Lida looked his way he didn’t see it, and she gave a dramatic twirl as an old crone fed the fire with more fat. In the days he’d sat on the floor it had seemed like magic, and Mikhail marvelled at how a different perch rationalised anything. Still the children delighted in it, and Lida soaked it straight up.

          "Elder Ivan told me,” She began theatrically, her index finger pressed to her chin as if in thought and her hip jutting to the right. “That none of you want a story tonight, that you were all far too tired and far too sleepy for it.”

          Hands clasped together under her head, Lida mimed snoring as the children screamed and kicked their denial, their faces split with smiles. It only took a moment for their story-teller to join them, squatting down. “But I know better, don’t I?” Yes, of course you do. “And I just happen to know you want one of the most exciting, most gruesome, most adventurous stories ever!”

          A small girl, no taller than Lida’s thigh, tugged at her pants and the woman wasted no time scooping her up and pinching her nose with a grin. “Oh, and maybe a little kissy-kissy stuff too, hey girls?” Any boy worth his salt in the audience groaned loudly, and Lida’s smile reached almost fantastical proportions. “Oh, just a little. And I promise there shall be battles until you’re sick of them!”

          She set the girl down with a flourish, patting her before appearing on top of an upturned crate by the fire. Her hair covered her face as she gave a melodramatic bow. A few adults gave murmured laughter as the children grinned at each other, and Lida’s eyes seemed to glow as she peered at them all through the growing darkness. “We shall call this one ‘Away with the Fairies’.”