A fairy will refuse a saucer of honey because the china is whole. The ones along the hawthorn hedges of Fjellrud want a chipped rim, a crack, some sign the dish has been through something, and a new plate set out for them sits untouched until the milk skins over. The reason, as far as anyone has worked it out, is kinship: they are four inches tall, and a battered dish seems to them a fellow traveler.
The encounter begins with a light in the leaves. Low on the blackthorn at the edge of the pasture, a rose glow comes and goes, steady as a coal being breathed on, and the mist behind it turns faintly pink. Then a hum, pitched like a wet finger on a glass rim. The fairy comes down out of the hedge on four veined wings, slender as a reed, pale moss green, with a tuft of dandelion fluff for hair, a foxglove petal stitched into a tunic and belted with spider silk. An acorn cap hangs at its hip, dented and stained yellow. It settles over the saucer on the mossy wall, large rose eyes steady and unhurried, and touches one fingertip to the honey. It does not mind being watched, provided the watcher keeps still.
A small chip marks the edge of its left wing, and it will tell the story of the chip to anyone who sits quietly, at length, in a voice like a spoon on a tin cup. The story is an argument with a wren, concluded in the fairy's favor. Fairies feed on nectar, honeydew and pollen, and they leave a little of the last behind everywhere: yellow prints along the top of the wall, a dusting on the saucer's rim, a gold track through the hawthorn flowers that shows which hedge they are working. People in Marsund follow the gold to find where the blossom will be best. A watcher who sneezes will find a pinch of pollen on a sleeve and a pair of rose eyes turned politely away.
The rules are few and firm. Nobody at Marsund sells the saucer, lends it, or washes it, and nobody says the word "little" within earshot of a hedge. Linnea Berg, who has kept the saucer on the wall behind her barn for forty years, turns it a quarter turn each evening so the chip faces the hedge. By the time the watcher's eyes have cleared, the glow has gone back into the leaves and the honey is gone, though the milk has not been touched. Linnea picks up the saucer, checks the chip, and sets it back. "Wash it and the whole hedge goes shy till spring," she says.
- Classification
- Winged sylvan sprite
- Habitat
- Hawthorn hedgerows and toadstool rings
- Danger
- Minimal
- Size
- 4 in tall, wingspan 6 in
- Activity
- Crepuscular
- Realm
- Fae and Sylvan Folk
- Binomial
- Lucipenna minuta
- Diet
- Nectar, honeydew, and pollen
- Temperament
- Curious, poised, fond of old china