She never answers when I call but sits alone and mutters or goes amongst the old ash trees and whispers to the leaves. I can’t decipher all she says, the words are never plain, but the music of their pattern is always much the same.
She plays with mud and twigs and lays them out repeatedly in one ornate design. Like hieroglyphs, they seem to have significance, but she will never write her name. Her teachers and her parents are much disturbed by her. They say she’s on the borderline of a broad and complex spectrum that I don’t understand. I ask, in jest, if she might be a special rainbow child. No-one smiled. I’m here as the au pair and I just let her play.
There’s avoidance in her eyes. She simply won’t obey. That much is very clear. They want her analysed, pinned, defined and measured. I know she’s wild, but I have secrets I’m not prepared to share.
She chases hawks away from mice. She calls the birds to comb her hair and lets them hide in there. When she sleeps the owl hoots twice to let the forests know, the fox creeps from its lair and sidles past my fireside chair to rest all night contented, dreaming at her feet. The family is completed.
She’s turbulent. She’s troublesome. She’s stubborn and she’s free. She’s very gifted too, but she won’t let them see. I know it’s very strange indeed, a little fae for sure. She’s always been my own sweet child, there’s no changing that.
We have to make a plan and spin it very soon. We have to get away from here.
I must discuss it with my cat before the next full moon.
Onandon 