My best friend, Kim and I went Fairy Hunting on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. Did we find a Fairy Kingdom full of singing, dancing, feasting, and wild delight? Did we explore crumbling castles and dance on Fairy Bridge and disappear into a magical world?
YES!
While backpacking around Scotland with Kim, pre-internet in 1995, we were determined to see a real fairy. Kim and I had met each other when we were cast as fairies in a Midsummer Night’s Dream in LA, so we were sure that if anyone would get to see a real fairy, it would be us. We were gallivanting around Edinburgh when we passed a little shop that matched ancestral names with tartans, and on a whim, I said, “Let’s go find my family tartan!” I have a Scottish grandmother from the McClure Clan. We entered the shop and a small elderly man resembling a large mushroom, told me the McClure clan came from the Harris-McLeod clan, and our castle was on the Isle of Skye. Off to Skye we went. Back then, you had to take a ferry to Skye, and it felt like we were crossing to another world, a world of magic.
When we arrived on Skye, it was raining so hard we couldn’t see the road. We found a room to rent at an inn, climbed a narrow curving stairway to our beds, and were thrilled when we found a bathtub, but not thrilled when Kim climbed into the hot water without noticing it was bright green. We asked the innkeeper what was happening and she said not to worry about green water, it was just the peat moss. I skipped the tub and opted for a hot shower instead.
The next morning, we put on our raincoats, and made our way to the castle, Dunvegan. We walked the hallways, imagining the centuries of ancestors who walked there, ran through the walls, fell in love, prepared for battle, and wept with loss after the battles… We stopped to look at a framed piece of torn dirty fabric on the wall, that had been mended several times with thick red thread. The plaque next to it read “Fairy Flag.” A little old lady with hair like a dandelion puff floated up to us to tell us the story. She told us that back in the 4th century, one of the chiefs of the clan fell in love and married a fairy. They even had a fairy baby, which explains so much about my love of dancing and glitter. She said the fairy had sewn the “Fairy Flag” with silk from the Middle East, and I imagined fairies wearing golden slippers with upturned toes gifting my fairy ancestor with the fine delicate silk, maybe folded on a velvet pillow. The fairy sewed the flag and imbued it with magic to protect the family. The clan carried the “Fairy Flag” into battle for centuries, which explained its dilapidated torn condition. The woman told us that even in WW2, the family carried a photo of the flag in their wallets as protection. We asked her if there were real fairies around the castle. Her eyes twinkled with delight as she nodded and said in her rolling accent, “Of course! The wee ones dance every night on the Fairy Bridge.” (It sounded more like, “Of couddse, the wee ones dance everdddy night on the Feddddy Bdddidge.”)
Kim and I walked out of the castle and deep into the surrounding wild woods, exploring every details of grassy hills where fairy kingdoms are known to exist, looking closely underneath polka-dotted vibrant mushrooms. We even stepped into mushroom rings, one at a time, holding hands in case one of us disappeared into Fairy World, a world known to be filled with music, dancing, feasting, and all sorts of pleasures and delights, which actually wasn’t any different than our actual world. It is said that time runs differently in Fairy World–if you step into a mushroom ring and end up in a Fairy Kingdom, you might be gone for twenty years but it will only feel like a day. I know exactly how Fairy Time runs because that’s how it felt to be with Kim.
That night, we waited for the rain to stop so we could go to the Fairy Bridge and see some dancing fairies ourselves, but we both fell asleep, cozy under the puffy blankets at our inn. When we woke up, the air was shimmering with that light that only happens after a hard rain, when the raindrops on leaves, stones, and spider webs catch the light so it looks like the world is dripping in diamonds.
We went to the Fairy Bridge, but alas, we didn’t see any dancing fairies, unless you count the two starry-eyed wanderers spotted leaping across the charming stones. If we couldn’t find the magic, we made it ourselves. We passed crumbling castles and blue lochs. Kim excelled at making faces that resembled our idea of what a friendly loch monster might look like. We climbed stairways that ended in the sky, attached to nothing, and sat on the steps with our arms around each other, looking for any sign of magic.
Now that Kim is gone from this world, taken by suicide, I like to imagine she’s in a Fairy Kingdom somewhere, wearing a crown and carrying a long stick as a magic wand, maybe riding through a magical forest on the back of a purple dragonfly. I imagine she is singing, dancing, feasting, and bathing in one sun splashed glittering raindrop. I like to pretend I am still holding her hand from this world, making sure she doesn’t disappear.
“Come Away, O Human Child, To the Waters and the Wilds, With a faery, hand-in-hand, For the world’s more full of weeping, than you can understand.” (Yeats)
