Dawn and the Tooth Fairy

Photo by Mikel Ibarluzea on Unsplash

This is a continuation of The Mysteries of Flight.
 
The plane ride was uneventful. Dawn spent the entire ride with her face pressed to the window in awe. She made occasional comments about the shape of the clouds and the play of the light, but Liz didn’t hear them. Liz had earphones in, and was glued to the in-flight movie. Flying was so much easier now that planes had movies. They took her mind off her fear of crashing. She still had to take several deep breaths though and remind herself that the plane was not a death trap. Was a family reunion really worth the anxiety? Once they touched down, she could breathe easily again.

“So now we’re on the other side of the world,” said Dawn in amazement as they walked down the ramp.

Liz laughed, “Just the other side of the country. Come on, we need to find our luggage.”

Dawn was blown away when Liz looked at a screen and determined where their luggage was. “That’s… that’s, but how does it know?” she gasped.

“So, you know those tags we put on our luggage at the last airpot…” Liz started while wondering if she even knew the real answer. But she got something out that satisfied Dawn, and then she had to explain how the baggage carousel worked. Liz was relieved when they got out of the airport and her brother Edward and his seven year old picked them up. She didn’t have to explain things anymore. Dawn already understood cars.

“Auntie Liz! I lost a tooth! Look at it!” He waved the little white tooth at her, “The tooth fairy was supposed to come last night, but dad says she was recovering from a broken wing and couldn’t fly. But she’ll come tonight. How much do you think the tooth fairy will give me for it?”

Liz exchanged looks with Edward, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s been a long time since the tooth fairy visited me.” 

They chatted about the tooth fairy during the drive to the cabin. Dawn had retreated into her usual silence. She was rather shy about meeting new people. She didn’t like admitting that she only had six years of memories. Liz thought Dawn was a little too touchy about her lost memories, but let her be. Once she warmed up to the family she’d open up. When they reached the cabin, Davey insisted on dragging Liz’s carry-on up to the room they were sharing. This was difficult, since he wouldn’t let go of this tooth. Edward eventually took over. Once the bags were in the room and the boys were out of earshot, Dawn turned to Liz.

“What’s a tooth fairy?”

Liz looked up from her suitcase in surprise, before realizing this was a very reasonable question. “It’s a kid thing. When you lose a tooth you put it under your pillow and the tooth fairy leaves money or something. My parents gave us a bag of those gold chocolate coins, which I realized later was kinda defeating the point.”

Dawn sat down on the bed deep in thought. Liz started unpacking, waiting for the deluge of questions that was sure to follow.

“Jill says fairies aren’t real. She says I’m not allowed to read anymore fairy tales until I have a firm grasp on reality.”

Liz sighed. Dawn’s social worker had a good thought going there, but there wasn’t much anyone could do about the rest of society. Until Liz had met Dawn, she hadn’t known how many unreal things she causally believed in on a regular basis. Well, this would probably be easier to explain away than the flying snakes. “And she’s right. No fairies. The tooth fairy is just a story made up for children. Like Santa Claus at Christmas.”

Dawn’s face lit up, “Oh! Jill says Santa is the mascot for Christmas. So the tooth fairy is the mascot for teeth?”

“Yes!” exclaimed Liz in relief.

“I think I get it now. Everyone just pretends the tooth fairy is real, because they think lying to kids is cute.”

Liz laughed and shook her head, “I guess that’s one way to put it.”

A sob came from the hall. Both of them turned toward the open door. There stood Davey, still clutching his tooth. He immediately turned and ran.

“Davey, wait!” Liz called out and ran after him.

Dawn followed, still puzzled. Davey’s cries brought Edward running and despite promises from every adult present that the tooth fairy really did exist and would bring him a one dollar bill - “Maybe even three!” - couldn’t console the seven year old. It wasn’t until another aunt herded a bunch of young cousins off for swimming that he calmed down at all. He was still very sad when they left, though. Dawn watched it all awkwardly and didn’t say much. Having just nearly learned about the tooth fairy, she didn’t see what all the fuss was about.

Edward glared at Liz as the kids left, “You have to fix this!”

Liz sighed, “Look Ed, I’m sorry. I should have closed the door. But when you put that dollar under his pillow, he’ll forget all about it.”

“Not after this, he won’t! I forgot two nights in a row already. He’ll never believe in the tooth fairy now.”

“Yeah, and now he’ll tell the rest of the kids too. There’s going to be a lot of unhappy children before the day’s over,” grumbled another uncle, planting himself in a chair.

“Why do they need to believe in the tooth fairy?” asked Dawn. All the adults look at her as if she’d suggested they eat the kids.

“I’ll explain it later,” sighed Liz. She turned to Edward, “You could include a note from the tooth fairy maybe, and add glitter or something to make it magical?”

The grumbling uncle suddenly jumped up, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it! Ed, get your camera! We’ll take a picture of the tooth fairy!”

“How?” asked Dawn, but everyone else was nodding.

“I’ve got pictures of butterflies I could photoshop for the wings,” mused Ed looking happier. “And if I shrink it down enough,   no one will be able to tell the difference. Not a seven year old, anyways. Who’s going to be the tooth fairy?”

“Liz,” said the uncle.

Liz looked at them and then shrugged, “Okay I guess. But I don’t have a skirt.”

“I do,” said Dawn. She still didn’t get why everyone was so upset about this, but she might as well help out.

A few minutes later Liz was in the wooded backyard wearing Dawn’s jean skirt and trying to pose like a fairy. She didn’t look like a fairy. That’s how Liz’s mother fund them when she and her husband pulled up. After explaining why they were  attempting a photo shoot, Liz’s mom shook her head, “That’s not going to work. Look, we passed a formal clothing rental on the way up here, why don’t you go down there and pick out something?”

Liz frowned, “A tooth fairy in an evening gown. That’s not much better.”

“No, no. Like a prom dress. Something puffy and sparkly. Get going, before the store closes.”
“I can’t afford it.”

Her mother smiled, “I can!”

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” said Liz as they piled into the car. Dawn shrugged at her and didn’t say anything.

The people at the rental store thought that dressing Liz up like a tooth fairy was an absolute ball. They went through several sparkly dresses, and had a lively debate over which one was most fairy-like. Dawn spoke up once to say she liked the green dress best, but this was dismissed as not very “toothish.” A blue knee length dress with a very puffy skirt and lots of beading was finally chosen. By the time they had a dress, Edward got a text that the kids were on the way home from swimming. So the rental folks let them take pictures out in the back parking lot.

“Your photoshop skills had better be good,” Liz told him as once again she tried to pose like a fairy. It went better this time. They returned the dress after they were done and hurried home, making a stop to pick up dinner.

Dawn didn’t speak again until they were getting ready for bed, and first she made sure the door was closed, “So, every family dresses someone up like a fairy that doesn’t exist to make sure kids… don’t think too much?”

Liz rubbed her eyes, “No. We’re the only family I know that’s done this. The dressing up part that is. The whole tooth fairy thing that everyone does… It’s just for fun. It’s fun for the kids. I loved the tooth fairy coming. Even when I was older and suspected it was just my parents. It just makes childhood happier.”

“Huh,” said Dawn, but didn’t ask anymore questions.

In the morning Davey waved the picture that his dad had “caught” of the tooth fairy and all the young cousins were suitably impressed. Childhood innocence had been preserved. Dawn stayed thoughtful and quiet. When she hadn’t said anything by lunch time, Liz took her aside.

“Is it bothering you that much?” she asked behind a closed door. “It’s not a big deal.”

Dawn gave her a look, “Do you know how hard it is to tell fact from fiction while everyone else is just lying without a second thought?”

“Kids grow out of it! They’ll look back on this and think it was so fun that their parents made photographic evidence for the tooth fairy.”

“I suppose,” said Dawn doubtfully. “So, you’ll actually tell them someday that all the adults were lying about that?”

“Yeah. I mean, they figure it out eventually.”

Dawn mulled this over for a bit and then sighed, “I’m glad I’m not a kid then. I couldn’t handle it.”

The Mysteries of Flight

Photo by David Kovalenko on Unsplash

Liz took a deep breath, trying to banish images of the plane diving to meet the ground. Would crashing in the woods, or the sea be worse? Were they even flying over a significant body of water?

“So, where are they?” asked Dawn as they stood in line at the airport.

Glad of the distraction, Liz turned to her friend. Dawn didn’t always say much, but since this was her first time flying, she was bound to have questions. Lots of questions. Maybe answering them would keep her mind off her own anxiety. “Where’s, who?”

“The winged serpents. They can’t be in this building, there’s not enough space. Do we have to take a car or something to get to them? I don’t think they’d like cars. Are there carriages?”

Liz blinked in confusion. Dawn was a reasonably intelligent person; they’d met in a math class at the community college and had hit it off. Dawn was much better at math than Liz. But sometimes talking with Dawn was a lot like talking to a four-year old. It wasn’t her fault, of course. Losing all your memory as an adult would do that to anyone. “There are no such thing as winged serpents,” said Liz, starting with the easy part.

Dawn frowned, “But what other animal would we be flying on? Brandon says dragons aren’t real. Besides, you wouldn’t be so upset if there weren’t snakes involved.”

Liz suppressed a shudder. Flying snakes would be so much worse than regular ones. She’d faint dead away. “I’m scared of flying and snakes. Two separate fears. There are no flying snakes. We are getting into an airplane. It’s a machine, made by people. They’re made out of metal and, um, fiberglass.”

Dawn was silent for a moment as they inched up in the line. Her forehead was creased in concentration. “Metal doesn’t fly,” she said at last. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“Yes,” said Liz tersely as headlines declaring Passengers Perish in Explosion and Airplane Wings Weren’t Screwed On Tight flashed across her mind. She took several deep breaths. She could feel Dawn watching her face. “I’ve flown before and survived. We’re both going to be fine.”

“I think we should go by winged serpent,” said Dawn. “They’re intelligent. I had a very nice conversation with one last time. Besides, if we fell, they’d catch us.”

“Um. I think that was a dream,” said Liz as gently as possible. Dawn was always trying to remember something, anything, from the days before her memory vanished. It was painful to see her latch onto the wrong thing. “You must have been reading some fantasy book and had a dream about it. Snakes can’t have wings. Only birds have wings.”

Dawn’s face clouded, but then she pounced on the last thing Liz had said, “Butterflies have wings.”

Liz laughed, “Okay, and some insects too. But not snakes. They’re reptiles. Reptiles don’t have wings.”

“What about pterodactyls?”

“Extinct,” said Liz as they moved forward. Dawn pressed her lips together and Liz wondered how many counter-arguments she’d come up with. She smiled fondly at her friend. It was going to be an interesting flight.



Written for Verge.
For more of Dawn's story see Blank Slate and Out of Reach.

Out of Reach

Photo by Md Mahdi on Unsplash

Dawn swung the wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, somehow still amazed at it all. Here she was, somewhere in her forties (probably), but only able to remember the last twenty-six years. Most days she still felt like a teenager. What she imagined a teenager felt like, anyways. Everything before twenty (probably) was a resounding blank.

But despite that, she was married, running a household, and raising teenagers (who arguably knew more about the world than she did). How had that happened? She pushed the wet clothes firmly into the dryer and patted the machine. It still seemed magical and unknowable to her.

Vanessa stomped in and dumped clothes on the floor, “How come Darcy gets to sleep?”

“He’ll do his laundry later,” Dawn said automatically. “The washer will be stuffed as it is.”

Vanessa grumbled as she sorted her clothes into different piles. She did not think her brother’s date to the high school dance was a good enough excuse to stay up late and get out of chores. Dawn had given up explaining that Darcy had done most of his chores during the week and would be finishing the rest later. She wondered if she’d been this crabby as a teenager. Had she even had a brother to argue with over petty issues? She pushed the thought away. It didn’t do her any good to chase questions she couldn’t answer.

Vanessa finished and headed back to her room. Listening to her footsteps, Dawn let out a sigh. She’d give anything to remember her past life. The footsteps came to a sudden stop.

“Mom?” Vanessa’s voice had lost the grumpiness and sounded small.

“What is it sweetie?”

“How do you know if you’re hallucinating?”

Teenagers ask weird questions and Dawn had thought she was done being surprised by the things they came up with. Apparently she’d been wrong. “Hallucinating? What?” She asked as she followed Vanessa into the living room. She stopped and stared and wondered if she was hallucinating. Darcy had been napping on the couch, and he was still sleeping, but now he was floating about six inches above the couch with strange golden designs hovering about him.

“We’re seeing the same thing?” squeaked Vanessa. “Like he’s floating in a hamster ball.”

“Yes…” said Dawn faintly. There was something familiar about the designs. Something like a memory danced just out of reach. They both stared, mesmerized, hardly daring to breathe, as if a sudden sound or movement would send Darcy flying away. (Impossible, something inside her whispered. It would take conscious effort to get him to fly and he wasn’t exerting any.) The golden designs shifted and tilted in intricate swirls. She couldn’t take her eyes off them. They twisted one way then the other, seemingly at random and yet… “Look, there’s a pattern,” she murmured and reached out.

“Mom!” gasped Vanessa, clearly worried. “What if you hurt him?”

But she wouldn’t. This, whatever this was, she knew it. There was a pattern in the twists and turns, and with a brush of her fingers she sent the pattern spinning in a different direction. For a moment, a new pattern formed, then the golden swirls dissipated. Darcy plopped back onto the couch.

“Ow!” he sat up, rubbing his head and then caught sight of his mom and sister. Vanessa stared at him opened mouthed. Dawn stood with her hand still outstretched. “Um, guys, what’s going on?”

Vanessa opened and closed her mouth several times, but couldn’t answer.

“Mom?” Darcy looked worried. “What happened?”

Dawn stared at her hand. For just a moment, when she touched the golden designs, her world had been clear and right. No unanswered questions. She’d understood everything. All that was lost now. “There’s something I’ve forgotten,” she whispered in bewilderment.

Blank Slate

Photo by Charlie Harutaka on Unsplash

If you could start over with a blank slate, what would you do?

Dawn shudders at the essay prompt as it beams down from the blackboard. The other college students babble incessantly, spinning imagined lives into being; filling the air with chaos and drowning her in mindless speculation. She hurries from the room before the professor officially dismisses them, gulping for breath. Outside she can breathe again, but her only thought is a vision of herself, forcibly erasing the prompt from the blackboard. How can she write such an essay? Eight years ago I woke up to a wretched existence in a hospital bed as a blank slate.

Waking in a strange room with machines she didn’t have names for and questions she couldn’t answer was bewildering. Fate had left her unconscious, floating in a battered sailboat, with no clues to the mystery that was herself. No parents came forward with relieved tears to claim her. No worried friends appeared to connect her with her past. No memories resurfaced to solve the mystery of herself. There was only the nurses, the doctors, the social workers, to put herself back together again. Never once in eight years has anything seemed familiar.

Sometimes she thinks her favorite dream is a memory. If only it was! If only she had just one memory. But this one is just a dream. In the twilight, she walks down a worn path with her father to a small wooden sailboat. Look, she says to him, I can sail to the end of the river and back. She doesn’t know how old she is in the dream. Young though; maybe a teenager, eager to show off her skill. Her father is just as eager to be shown. His smile grows with every step. It almost could be a memory. The feel of her father’s hand in hers; the sparkle of stars in the water; the gentle caress of the night breeze. It all feels real. But it’s not. Because when they enter the sailboat, she holds up her hands and golden light spills out in intricate patterns and that is how she guides the boat through the water. They sail at impossible speeds, passing slower vessels, passing cities, all the way down to the mouth of the river. There they turn around, laughing with delight. In the east, the sun rises and the dream ends.
If she could will herself into the world of her dream, she would. In that world her slate is all filled up, except for a little bit at the end, still waiting to be written. But reality is all around her as she walks through the buildings of the community college where she’s trying to cobble together something that looks like a life. She takes a bus to her next class: sailing. Her breath catches at the river. It makes her heart ache even more for the dream of what never was. This sailboat is fiberglass and modern, not weathered wood. The ropes (lines, the instructor said) are awkward in her hands. But something about it feels right.

I named myself, Dawn, she writes, after a memory that never happened, in the hope that someday, my slate will be filled.

 *

In fantasy, there's often a character who has amnesia who's trying to figure out who they are. Sometimes they're even stuck on earth, even though they're from a magical world. I've always wondered how would this character handle being told magic isn't real? Assuming they can still talk, they know the meaning of words and would know the word magic meant, but since they can't remember anything, would they remember that magic is real, while seeing all evidence to the contrary? Obviously, this question will never be answered. But it did lead to some interesting backstory for Dawn, who will eventually have a grand adventure to get her memories back.