Clap to Save the Fairies

Mimi Silverstein

When I was in the third grade, I read every single book I could find on the Second World War. I made it through Anne Frank’s diary, a biography of her best friend Hannah, and about ten different historical fiction novels. The assistant librarian was a woman named Mrs Fragala, who refused to speak to anyone who didn’t help out in the massive gardening project she was conducting in the center of the elementary school campus. She called it “The Habitat,” and anyone who did help out was rewarded with homemade cookies. I would strain the soles of my tiny feet depositing an armful of books onto Mrs. Fragala’s desk, and she would check them out, mercifully ignoring the red stickers on the spines that marked them for sixth graders only. 

Perhaps it was from all those World War II books that The War Game, as Rory and I creatively named it, got its start. This game could only be played at my house, as I had an enclave, a tiny clearing in the trees and shrubs lining the perimeter of my side yard. The three of us ­--- me, Rory, and my sister Kylie --- would bring a blanket and stuffed animal each, and build our shelter. We would call my dog, Snowy (War Dog, of course), into the safety of our shelter. She, ignorant of the raging battles of World War III, would bound into the open yard, leaving me to run out into the torrential downpour of bullets and save her. Our father (in the game, all three of us were sisters) was a general in the Allied Army. Our mother had died, and Rory, blinking until wet tears crawled down her freckled cheeks, led daily prayers. I was a hunter, leaving our shelter in search of squirrels and sparrows to peg down with my twiggy slingshot. And then the bomb showers would come, and we would race inside and up the stairs, and crawl wet and shivering under my bed, listening to the pounding on the windows. Only on Friday nights did the constant threat of bombs and death disappear, when the general called a truce, and we would giggle our way back outside to join the barbecue. We ate our favorite mac ‘n cheese on paper plates back in the shelter.

The War Game was waiting for us every Friday after school, and we pulled it over our heads with the white dresses, covered in mud stains, that lay waiting in the alcove, the proper garb of the general’s daughters. Other games followed us with the seasons. When we were mice in the school production of Cinderella, Rory put on a flowy yellow dress and the role of Cinderella, mimicking the lines of the towering sixth grader Jenny, who played the lead. She brushed her tight, yarn-like curls over and over again, imagining she had Jenny’s golden waves. I stole an apron from the kitchen cabinet and pretended to be a kind third stepsister, a secret friend to Cinderella. There was one game, though, that outlived all the others. We found it in the small wooded area next to the soccer field at recess, or under our pillows, or perched on our shoulders. We called it simply Playing Fairies.

It began on an October afternoon, as we waded through a swamp of ruby leaves on the way home from school. My best friend Lindsey and I began to see the fairies. They were everywhere, dancing on the power lines, slipping into backpack pockets for a ride. I would catch a glimpse of fluttering wings out of the corner of my eye, and whirl around to tell Lindsey. The next day at school we told Rory what we’d seen, and the three of us delved into a period of intense research. There were so many books about fairies: Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg, Peter Pan, the Rainbow Fairy books. The authors of those books were fairy leaders, humans who befriended fairies and could even travel to Neverland. We became fairy leaders too, each of us finding a fairy to be our special companion. Rory and Lindsey cycled through fairies, Lindsey’s often dying horrible deaths at the hands of nonbelievers.  My fairy was always Rani, the water fairy. Rani was three inches tall, with wide blue eyes that matched my own. Her favorite food was watermelon ice, and she stretched and pulled water droplets into a thousand different shapes like it was Play-Doh.  We traveled to Neverland from the grove between the three tall oaks at recess, or on sleepovers we would bury ourselves in our blankets and go to Neverland for the night, recounting our adventures over pancakes the next morning.  In Neverland, Rani and I played in the mermaid lagoon. As I waded into the shimmering pool, my legs began to fuse together, lilac scales replacing my skin.  I felt the power of my tail propelling me through the clear water, saw my mermaid shadow painted on the coral below. Suddenly, another shadow, dark and enormous, replaced mine. I shot through the water and surfaced behind a jagged rock. Holding my breath, I pressed my body against the side of the rock and peered out. Captain Hook’s pirate ship, sitting like a dark cloud on the surface of the water, glided past. In my bedroom, Lindsey and I played fairy tag.  I leapt from my bed, over my headboard, and into the pile of stuffed animals that lay waiting like a ball pit, dodging the Christmas trees Lindsey was shooting at me (that day she was a holiday fairy, she changed it all the time). I created a wave and pushed it at her, knocking her off the bed. She lay on the floor, sopping wet and laughing loudly.             

Soon enough, every girl in our class wanted a fairy of her own. Alyssa asked for an M & M fairy, while Mallory cried because she couldn’t see the fairies sitting right in the palms of our hands. We sprinkled pixie dust all over them. It showered over their heads and caught in their eyelashes, and they saw the fairies too.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

When winter came, we tramped around in our snug purple snow boots, our fairies sitting cross-legged on the pom-poms atop our winter hats.  Sleet crushed pixie dust under its weight, and we heard one girl say it: “ I don’t believe in fairies.”

Every single time a child stops believing in fairies, a fairy dies. There’s only one way to save the fairies, and that’s to clap.  This is indisputable fact, it’s right there in Peter Pan.

We pressed our fuzzy gloved hands together and clapped to save the fairies. Later that day we went ice skating. I taught Rory how to step-step-glide without slamming onto her back, and showed off with little hops above the ice. Our fairies shook the chill off their wings.

As spring began, with the tulips clawing their way through the snow, a horde of girls and boys surrounded Rory on the playground. “Fairies aren’t real,” all the heads of he hydra hissed in unison. “Say you don’t believe in fairies.”

“I don’t believe in fairies,” Rory whimpered, softly pressing her hands together, the faintest of claps.

“I don’t believe in fairies,” the heads mocked. “Say it again.”

Tears clung desperately to Rory’s eyelids. All the heads laughed, their mouths wide open to reveal perfect sets of glistening teeth.

As if she were a puppet and the puppeteer had just dropped the string attached to her neck, her head dropped, and she chewed out the words, “I don’t believe in fairies.”

Every day the monster cornered Rory on the playground. Her faint claps grew fainter, and day by day everyone’s fairies disappeared.

Elizabeth never talked about how her flower fairy was making all the daisies and buttercups sprout this spring. Mallory stopped sobbing angrily; she was no longer alone in her blindness.

One day in early June, when the spring grass was flattened by sneakered feet into fields of summer carpeting, Lindsey, Rory, and I stood together between the oak trees.

“We’ve been thinking…” said Lindsey.

“We had this whole talk about it...” said Rory.

“And we think maybe…”

“ We shouldn’t play fairies anymore.”

I imagined my two best friends, sitting together in Rory’s bedroom without me, a stack of fairy books in front of them. I imagined them taking each one and pushing it under the bed. Maybe next time I went to Rory’s house, I could duck under her bed and rescue them all. I had a special shelf in my closet just for fairy books.

“Okay,” I said. I scraped at the ground with my foot. Some dirt came up, some pebbles. No pixie dust.

On the walk home I spotted a squirrel on a power line and squinted to see if a fairy was riding on his back. I searched all my pockets and shook out my sneakers. It was two and a half blocks from my elementary school to my house. Every time I took a step, I clapped.