The Faerie Cotillion

The Faerie Cotillion

This is the very first “boy story” my oldest daughter remembers me telling her. At the end is her version. She is nine.

When I was a boy….I had two older brothers who delighted in tormenting their younger siblings. Not an unusual set of circumstances I know, but torturous to me and my younger brother, Jason. Being tickled until we cried or held down while one of the older boys nearly dribbled spit on us was a pretty common occurrence. As might be expected, Jason and I banded together and tried our best to escape the harsh treatment that only older brothers can dish out to their own when the parents are away. Some days we got lucky. Some days not.

One day, when the teasing was particularly unreasonable, Jason and I retreated to the hillside just past the barn. It was a peculiar place at a bend in the river, over hung with thick, slow sycamore trees and a wet cascade of sandstone cliffs. The sun rarely shone full force on this steep slope and the ground was always wet. In the winter, amazing ice formations covered a low overhang of rock. The light danced blue off the thick columns transporting us to a cold, sere northern clime, full of mystery and magick. The summer was less fantasy and more foreboding, with a slick moss-covered plunge from the rock face to the river below waiting on anyone so foolish as to attempt the heights above the bend.

But this summer was different. A long dry spell had withered the moss and made once slick rocks a potential hand hold for young nimble fingers. Jason and I climbed away from the pestilence of older brothers and found a gap in the stone we had never seen before. A bare wedge of rock opened up into a shallow shelf full of shadow normally obscured. As we rested in this make-shift cave, we heard a faint musical sound from back in the shadows. Being young and convinced of our own invulnerability, we crawled into the narrow crevice, looking for the source.

Eventually we passed a point where the sunlight vanished and absolute darkness took over. For those of you who have never been deep in a cave or had some other chance to experience absolute darkness, all I can say is the disconcerting feeling it brings is nearly overwhelming. All references you are accustomed to disappear and you are stripped of defenses and reason. We held firm to the cool rock under our fingers and pressed onward toward a faint glow at the back of the tunnel.

We crept slow and quiet toward the light as it became clear we were closer and closer to the music deep in the mountain. One final crawl toward the edge and we could see below, a dance like something out of a story book. Just a few feet below us was a group of ….pixies(?) dancing a complicated series of steps to the high, lonesome sound of flutes and drums from out of the shadows. Perfectly formed young ladies of the smallest stature, we watched their whirls and bobs in the flickering torches, barely daring to breathe. Barely knowing what to think or even who we were.

From out of unseen corridors came equally small men in green coats and hats, with an arrogance and command that equaled the dainty refinement of the pixies. I can only believe these wee men were leprechauns. I know…I know. We were as stunned as you. And our actions eventually betrayed us, for as the Faerie folk below us danced in ever-increasingly complicated patterns, I leaned a bit too far forward and fell headfirst into the swirling cotillion below.

The second my hand touched the pile of gold coins they were swirling about, the lights went out and a reek of sulfur assailed my nose. I groped about blindly for some solid link in the mad confusion and noise, finally latching onto my brother’s hand just a second before landing in a pile of leaves with the sun shining down on us, gasping and blinking in the sudden light of day.

Eventually we found our way home and continued to dance the fine line of sibling abuse versus burgeoning adolescence. But from that day forward, Jason and I had a bond. Something special had passed between us and we were more than brothers, more than what biology had dictated. Some impossible to define essence was shared between us and we were forever changed because of it. Forever bound, also, by the small and ancient gold coin I had managed to palm in the deep darkness of the pixie cave.



This is what Jenna remembers of the story….” When Dad was a boy, he went out with Uncle Jason. As they were out, they went exploring. Dad and Uncle Jason found a small hole in the ground. In that hole they found a fairy and leprechaun party. As they were watching, Dad fell through the hole and all of the fairies and leprechauns left! The lights went out and Dad was left there sitting in a pot of gold! Cool, right! So that’s the story of how Dad saw the leprechauns and fairies.



The End.”