Don't Eat The Blackberries

For as long as I can remember, I have believed in Faeries.

It all started with my mother. I don’t remember much about her, but I do remember she smelled like wildflowers and campfire smoke. I remember a halo of black hair around her head and the sound of songs I couldn’t understand. I remember screams and crying and the sound of glass breaking. I remember waking up to find her gone and my father taking down all our family pictures.

I was never allowed to play in the forest behind our home after that. When I cried and pleaded, he finally told me there were creatures living amongst the trees—the Faeries. He said my mother had eaten some of their food and now she was trapped there with them forever.

He built an iron fence as tall as he was to keep them out and to keep me in. I used to stare through the gaps, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. When my father caught me, he yelled and told me to stop looking for her. He said once someone ate the Faerie’s food they were lost forever to the forest. He said she didn’t want to come back. He said she chose the Faeries over me. I cried for three days after that.

When my eyes dried, I badgered my father into teaching me how to see the signs they left behind. Eventually he relented and showed me how to recognize the mushroom rings growing in the grass, the way the wing sang through the treetops, and the flicker of movement in the peripheral of the eyes. I never saw them, but I always knew the Faeries were there.

“There are only two rules,” he explained. “The most important is don’t go past the fence. But if you happen to find yourself on the other side, always remember: don’t eat the blackberries.”

I don’t recall exactly when, but sometime after my mother was taken a blackberry patch sprang up on the other side. It was a bit down the hill, where the grass was depressed in the earth, just out of arms reach. When my stomach was empty and growling for something to fill it and there was nothing in the cabinets, I would sit on our side and stare at the bright, dark fruit. The breeze would waft the sweet smell toward me, and my stomach would grumble louder.

Anytime the growing bush came close to touching the fence, my father would go out and hack it back. He tried to kill the patch with poison and even tried burn it to ash one year, but the green leaves always valiantly reappeared as the snow melted. His hatred had little effect as the little white flowers bloomed and defiantly turned into blackberries year after year.

It was a lonely life, but I always obeyed my father. I never went past the fence. Even when he was angry, or would sleep all day, or forget to make dinner, I stayed on our side of the yard—until one day, I didn’t.

The day I finally crossed the fence was a day very much like any other. The sun had risen high in the sky while my father still laid on the floor, smelling of vomit with an empty bottle in his hand. The cupboards were bare, and I was hungry and tired of being hungry.

It wasn’t the gnawing hunger that broke me. He had promised the day before that he would bring home groceries for us, but once again he came home with nothing but more bottles and a foul temper. I wasn’t just tired…I was angry. I wanted to punish him, and the thing I knew he hated the most was that blackberry patch.

I scaled the creaking, rust eaten fence easily enough. It had loomed so tall when I was a child, but now it was only about a foot taller than me.

When my bare feet dropped down onto the cool grass of the other side, I flinched, half expecting to be swarmed by vicious Faeries. But when I slowly opened my eyes, nothing happened. The wind still sang through the trees and the bright blackberries still beckoned.

I scrambled closer, glancing side to side like a hunted animal. I reached out with a shaking hand and plucked one of them from behind a leaf. It was firm and cool between my fingers.

My father’s words echoed in my head, “Don’t eat the blackberries.” But warnings and rules mean very little when you’re alone and starving. I brought the berry close and parted my lips.

The burst of sweet, fresh flavor in my mouth was exquisite. For a moment time stood still and I could swear I saw through space and time. It was the best thing I had ever eaten.

I gobbled them up like a greedy monster, shoveling as many into my mouth as would fit. The sweet juice ran down my chin and I didn’t wipe it away. In my ravenous state, I no longer cared about anything—I didn’t even care if the fairies came to drag me away. One more blackberry was worth whatever fate awaited me.

I leaned forward onto my hands, my fingers digging into the soil, looking for any stragglers who might have escaped my notice. Suddenly my fingertips pushed up against something smooth and hard. A chill came over me, although I didn’t understand why. My probing fingers hooked into an opening in the smooth surface, and I slowly pulled the object out of the dirt.

The bleached bone contrasted starkly against the dark earth. I pulled the skull fully free of the ground and stared into the empty eye sockets. The two black, gaping holes stared back at me, blank and unseeing.

I didn’t recoil in horror or hurl it away, but rather clutched it to my chest. In that moment, I swore I could smell wildflowers and campfire smoke. Understanding clicked into place in my mind.

There are no such things as fairies.