Maybell and her Younger Days

I really have been talking to Maybell over the last two years and I ask a
simple question and she takes on from there. I started of course with what
I thought would be 'important.' Just in case she was going to leave at the
end of that summer. She didn't leave and now I am not sure that she ever
plans on going back to Great Britain or if this Dog's Plot is where she
wants to live out her life. She keeps that to herself and perhaps Effie.
(I think some times that Effie may be her youngest daughter)

So I asked Maybell: what was the worse time in the Fairies history?

She hesitated and thought for what seemed was forever and it WAS a few
days. Then she came to me and answered as if I had asked her the minute
before.

(I have to add here that sometimes when Maybell talks to me I think we
also have a psychic communication because I swear I can "see" the pictures
of what she describes.)

"Wall, Georgie, I do suppose the hardest times were well before I was bern
and agin when I was just about as old as ye see me be'in right new.

That awful man from Peudiskaz (what Maybell still calls Germany). He
brought machines that flew and tore apart our land and the human
buildings. He wanted to destroy and take it all. Buet that wasn't the
worst of all times. Worst was long before I was bern to me Ma and Da.

Ye have to understand, Georgie, fist that there were a time when your
people and Nature Folk could speak and see each other, jest like ye and me
and Effie cen all see an talk to each other.

All that stopped a long, long time ago. A time so long ago that not even
ye humans talk much about it or teach much about it. There are no Fairy
folk or human folk with memories of all of it. Just scraps. When it was
over everything had changed. Humans had changed. They stopped being Nature
Spirits themselfs."

What Happened Maybell, I said, what could have happened all those years
ago that would change everything?

"Them monsters came. They chenged all the old ways. As the times went on
they kept burning and killin Humans and the places where the Fairy Folk
lived until we none of us weren't afraid to talk to the other. Me Ma was
bern befer they left but even she din't remember when every folk could
talk to every other folk."

I asked Maybell to tell me what her Ma told her. Maybell fluttered her
wings and looked a little sad before she spoke again.

"I need to think some before I talk about those days, I still do miss me
Ma. She was a real queen, not a'tall like poor old Maybell. She knowed
great secrets and could call all the folk tegether all over our lands. And
they would come. From everywhere. She made the best foods, for all of her
chiltren. I do guess, I need to sit and remember her for a little bit
before I can remember her stories about the very old days as her Ma told
her. The time before the humans were afraid to see us."


Well, she did remember her Ma (and her Da) and the stories about the very
old times in the lands we call Great Britain. We talked. As I write to you
about all of this early talk, it is hard to believe that anything more
could be in a book about Queen Mab, our Maybell, but I need to remember
that all of it happens before she is even "bern." Perhaps soon I will
write more. I need to decide which to tell you about first Maybell's Ma or
the devastation of the Island from the "Great Roman evasions."