St. Eubrie: 626 Cedar St - Natalie Baylor (788 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 2 on 24 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by goferforhire <goferforhire.at.yahoo.com> (View user info) at 2006-08-06 19:20:45 EDT
Natalie Baylor can imagine falling in love, but whenever she does she gets this feeling in her throat like she just swallowed the pit of a peach but it's too big to go down. She tells all the boys at Tanner Elementary that she loves them very much, but if they smile at her she starts to cry. It's not a deep cry, though, it's more of a light sob. Almost a dry heave.
When she was 6, she got lost in Redcrown woods and it took her parents a little over three days to find her. When they caught up to her, she was hugging a tree and crying and she kept muttering to herself about the fairies. Her parents told her she had an active imagination, her teacher told her it was cute and she should bring one to show and tell and later, when they got up the money for it, her shrink (Dr. Lonson) told her she was just trying to make up for her poor social skills. Those are somewhat biased versions of the story though. Natalie Baylor tells a very different tale.
626 Cedar street isn't very close to the woods. Her only friend at the time, Mary Smallwood who was hit by a car a few years later, had invited her over for a very small birthday party at her house on Pine street, so Natalie pedaled her little three-wheeler down Peach avenue, turned down Pine and was almost ready to go when she heard a sound coming from the woods. She was a well-behaved girl, so she almost didn't go at all, but it was a very strange sound. It was almost like crying, but it was more adult. As far as Natalie Baylor knew at the time, adults didn't cry.
She parked her house across the street from Mr. Penn's house shouted loudly to whoever was listening that Natalie Baylor was going into the woods and followed through. It took her a while to find the source of the sound. It was nearly nighttime when she did, too. The sound was coming from a tree- a very tall, very thick and very messy tree, but it was distinctly a tree. Natalie wasn't the kind of girl to climb trees, so her response was to yell at it until it explained itself.
"Mr. Tree!!" She shouted six or seven times until she got its attention, and when it stopped crying, she found the courage to ask, "Why are you crying, tree?"
The tree was slow to respond, and the voice that emerged was somewhat un-treelike in nature. It was neither the sound of bark grinding together nor sap running down wood nor leaves brushing against eachother in the wind. It sounded more like a girl or a woman of somekind. Natalie thought it sounded like her sister, but she didn't have one so she didn't know what that meant.
"I'm crying because God has been killing all of the fairies." Said the tree, "Father McGuinty prayed to God and told him to, and so all of the fairies are being killed."
Natalie was confused. "Why would Father McGuinty do that to the fairies?" She asked the tree.
"A long time ago, Father McGuinty loved this forest very much. He used to come here all the time to talk to me, and we spent many hours together. One day, he spent too much time with me and he started to think maybe he didn't love me anymore, so he stopped coming altogether. Over time, he's built up such anger against me that he's commanded his God to kill my forest, one fairy at a time."
Natalie thought for a moment, and asked, "Why does Father McGuinty not love you anymore."
There was a rustling sound from high up in the tree, and a surprisingly small face popped its head out from between some of the branches. Natalie was too young to guess, but if when she thinks about it she thinks the girl had to have been somewhere between 16 and 21, because she was very dirty and adults don't get dirty, but she wasn't smiling and children all smile when they're in trees. The face whispered to her-
"I told you, he used to love this forest very much. He visited me every day, told me he loved me and the forest, and promised to help me. I have a very important job. I'm supposed to take care of the fairies. If I don't they'll die. I *needed* the father's help, I loved him and he gave me whatever I wanted, but one day he told me that the Bible says that fairies are the work of the devil and that what we'd done... it doesn't matter. He thinks he doesn't love me but he's wrong. Once you've loved the forest, you always love the forest, no how much you want to hate it."
Natalie backed away from the sweating face with the gritted teeth and the piercing green-blue eyes and pointed towards pine street.
"I need to go." She said quietly but with authority.
"Wait," said the face, "I want you to do something for me. I want you to go into the forest and find the tree where Father McGuinty carved our names into the trunk. I want you to look at it long and hard and see what it says, and I want you to tell him that when you go back to town, can you do that for me?"
Natalie thought long and hard, but she eventually agreed.
Here, Natalie will tell you that she got lost looking for the tree, but children are terrible liars. She won't tell what the tree said, she won't tell what the fairies look like or what the girl in the tree did that was so horrible, but she will tell you that the fairies are very real. She believes it, too.
Father McGuinty tells his sunday school students that 'whenever two or more of you are gathered in his name, there is love.' He even says that God *is* love. Natalie Baylor just sits there and listens with her bottom lip twitching and thinks about the fairies and what they told her to say to him. She hasn't gotten around to it yet, but it's a reasonable assumption that when she does, there's a tree in the forest that's going to be very interested in his response
User Reviews
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-02-19 13:12:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2006-11-01 19:46:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Maltese (user info) at 2006-09-05 13:23:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm +2ing all your posts as a sign of good faith. I just want to show that there is no animosity between us. Friends?
Submitted by DCWoody (user info) at 2006-08-17 07:12:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hey, these are good.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-08-09 01:28:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Permission to email you?
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-08-09 01:23:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice.
Submitted by Genko (user info) at 2006-08-08 18:10:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
There's certainly overlap in our stories, but I'd like to see what exactly 'praying to kill the fairies' turns out.
Maurice would be crushed to hear of any type of scandal perpetrated by McGuinty. While he detests McGuinty's unwillingness to speak out against the evil in the town, he also sees the father as his only source of guidance. Losing that guidance might put him over the edge.
Also, what's Natalie's home life like? Does she have parents? Are they around? What does she do all day?
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-08-07 23:43:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO.
I like faeries.
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2006-08-07 23:40:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Gofer: you want to collaborate on some RedCrown woods stuff, email me. The.GodChicken.at.gmail.com
Submitted by Genko (user info) at 2006-08-07 23:38:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good plan. This McGuinty fellow is a disgrace to the frock.
So, how to proceed?
Submitted by goferforhire (user info) at 2006-08-07 15:33:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
for those who say I broke the rules, wait for me to continue before you prejudge. I thought it was pretty clear the fairies weren't *real* per se as much as just so imbedded in Natalie's imagination that they might as well be. If it's not clear now it will be if/when I move on with this
Submitted by sicosemen (user info) at 2006-08-07 12:23:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very nicely done.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-08-07 01:21:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was fucking unbelievable, you bastard!!!
Submitted by UnderOathMeal (user info) at 2006-08-06 21:32:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
nice.
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-08-06 20:50:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
OOOOOH GOFER BROKE THE RULES.
But this was really good, and it's not a comp per se, so you still get a +2, little bro.
Submitted by Maltese (user info) at 2006-08-06 20:49:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This
Submitted by Maltese (user info) at 2006-08-06 20:49:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
post
Submitted by Maltese (user info) at 2006-08-06 20:49:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
was
Submitted by Maltese (user info) at 2006-08-06 20:49:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
classic.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-08-06 20:39:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Remember the guidelines, ESPECIALLY rule #1.
Submitted by KindaNews (user info) at 2006-08-06 19:46:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very interesting, but proof read.
Nice change of pace.
I would say a 1.75, but I'll round up.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-08-06 19:44:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This town is no different from most towns in the world. . .
Submitted by awesome_face (user info) at 2006-08-06 19:42:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Seems we already have stories crossing eachother.
This father sounds weird. Either way, this town has some messed up people.
Submitted by Genko (user info) at 2006-08-06 19:26:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Awesome. I'm excited to see how this plays out. The Father is a character that I'd like to see developed amoungst all of us; seeing as he's probably got some of the darkest secrets of all.