Flying to fairyland -- (Author) feetintrouble

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Author: feetintrouble
Timestamp: Aug 10, 2020 at 9:00 AM
Content: Here is an age play story about a little girl being taken on a pretend trip to fairyland. It is similar to one I wrote three years ago (The Magic Helicopter), because I love stories about being blindfolded and made to imagine things.
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It was my cousin Hannah’s seventh birthday, who was only a bit older than me, and I was at a party at her house with lots of other children. She had a big sister, Claire, who was eighteen; we liked her very much, but she loved to frighten us with tales about goblins, witches, werewolves, ghosts, visits from Krampus if we didn’t behave, and anything else she could think of; many were the times I had stayed there for the night, hiding under the covers wondering what might come into our bedroom if we were not good little girls.

For this party, Cousin Claire was dressed as a fairy, wearing her mum’s wedding dress, elbow-length white gloves, and huge wings; I couldn't see her shoes because they were hidden under her big dress. The children were all playing with whatever toys they could get their hands on: I was a shy child, and contented myself with colouring in pictures, mostly of fairies and cloud castles, in a book which Claire had given me as an “unbirthday present”. I noticed that every few minutes, she and Hannah would come in and approach one of the children, before blindfolding them with a colourful scarf, and taking them out of the room; they’d return a few minutes later, with a sticker on their chest saying “I flew to fairyland”. Although each child looked happy as they came back in, I was nervous about the idea of not being able to see anything while in Claire’s company, so I hoped she would not do this to me. As the end of the party was approaching, Claire swept in one last time, with Hannah in tow.

“Who hasn’t come to fly with me?” she demanded somewhat accusingly above the party noise and music, looking around the room, as if she had spotted a broken vase, and was hoping somebody would own up. “I have a spare sticker here; one of you hasn’t been in the sky with me.”

I looked away, concentrating hard on my colouring book, hoping to go unnoticed, but in vain: Claire had spotted me, and was heading in my direction.

“Ah, Jemima,” she said. “Come with me: as the littlest, it’s your turn to fly now, let’s get your eyes hidden away.”

I glanced up, and there she was standing nearby: in one hand she held the scarf, and with the other, she was beckoning to me, using just one finger.

“I don’t want to,” I mumbled; Claire always told me scary stories, and I thought this was going to be one like those.

“You don’t want to fly with me?” Claire said, tilting her head to one side. “It’s really magical, all your friends have done it, you don’t want to be the only one who’s left out.”

“I’m scared, monsters might eat me,” I whispered.

“There’s nothing to be scared of, you’ll be quite safe with me,” Claire said, taking a step closer. “My fairy magic will keep monsters away. Come here so I can blindfold you.”

I dropped my colouring book, and started walking backwards, only to find that she had backed me into a corner of the room with no escape. She was still advancing on me, stretching the scarf out, and holding it at my eye level.

“But I won’t be able to see!” I said fearfully.

“You don’t need to see,” she said. “My fairy magic will put the pictures in your mind.”

“Can’t I just close my eyes?” I pleaded.

“Nope,” she told me. “If you were to be naughty and peep, or open your eyes the tiniest amount, you’d see fairyland. If that happens, other bad fairies will take you away, and swap you with a changeling.”

I did not know what a changeling was, and hearing this did not do much to reassure me. At this point, Claire’s younger sister Hannah stepped in, perhaps sensing my fear. “It’s fine, it really is,” she told me, pointing to the fairyland sticker on her chest. “I’ve been to fairyland loads of times, it’s lovely.”

“Can Hannah come with me?” I asked, looking up at Claire.

“No she can’t, because I can only carry one of you at a time,” Claire said. “But she can blindfold you.”

The idea of being blindfolded by little Hannah instead of big scary Claire calmed me, so I gave the very smallest of nods. Hannah grinned, seized the scarf from Claire’s hands, and advanced on me with it, with a look of glee in her eyes.

“Gently now, Jemima’s scared,” Claire admonished her.

I looked up at Claire’s smiling face, seeing Hannah go behind me, and the scarf appearing in my vision, getting bigger and the colours bolder, before turning black. I could feel it being wrapped round my head, covering my eyes completely, and the ends being pulled. Hannah might only have been a little girl, but she carried out her task well: I could not see a thing.

“You make sure you tie that blindfold nice and tight, Hannah; Jemima’s not allowed to cheat just because she’s scared,” I heard Claire saying. Hannah did as she was told; by now the scarf was extremely snug over my eyes, so it was more comfortable to keep them closed. “Jemima, can you see?”

I moved my eyes up and down, left and right, but everything was black, no matter where I looked. Somehow, this made me feel safe, even though I couldn’t see Claire.

“I can’t see anything,” I mumbled.

“Good; that means the magic will work nicely.”

“Why can’t I see the colours on the scarf?” I asked.

“That’s part of the magic.”

“Shall I spin her round?” asked Hannah, and my heart leaped at the idea of being made dizzy, and not knowing where I was.

“No. Just take her hand, and we’ll lead her outside,” Claire said. I could feel myself being led onwards, past the sounds of other children playing. Although I knew which way the garden was, it seemed like I had to walk a really long way to get there. We arrived in the quiet garden, away from the sounds of the party; I could feel the soft ground of the lawn under my flip flops, and the grass tickling my feet, and Claire told me to stand still. Although I knew what the garden looked like, I found it very hard to imagine that I was actually standing in it.

“Now then, Jemima,” came Claire’s voice, which was softer than the brisk way she usually spoke, especially when bossing us children around. “I’m going to hold you in my arms, and using my fairy wings, I shall fly you up into the sky with me.”

“You’re not going to drop me, are you?” I asked fearfully; there had been times she had picked me up before, and pretended to drop me.

“Of course not, my magic will keep you safe,” she said, the firmness starting to return to her voice. “But you have to stay blindfolded: peeping is not allowed, or the magic will stop working. Is that clear?”

I nodded.

“Let’s get you into my arms, you can hold on to my dress if you want to,” she said, and I could feel myself being picked up, and cradled in her strong arms, like she might have done when I was a baby. As she said, I held on to the fabric of her dress with one hand.

“Up we go, Jemima!” I felt us jerking upwards, and a small breeze, which must have been her flapping her wings. “We’re going up and up, the garden is disappearing below us; there are lots of fields, hills, and tiny little animals and houses a long way down. I think I can see the sea in the distance as well!”

Claire saying that she could see the sea suddenly reminded me that I was blindfolded and couldn’t see anything; for a moment I had actually forgotten this. But even in the total darkness, I felt more calm now, and as Claire kept on telling me more about where we were going, I began to relax.

“We’ve travelled much higher now, right into fairyland, high up in the clouds,” she told me. “And now it’s time for you to sit down, and have a piece of cake!”

“Can I see?” I asked.

“No, of course not,” she said. “I told you quite clearly that you have to stay blindfolded, or the fairies will replace you with a changeling. I’m going to put you in a chair now, but don’t try to get off it, or you’ll fall back down to the ground, and it’s a very long way down.”

She lowered me down a little, and I could feel her placing me in a chair, which felt as if it was moving slightly, hovering in the clouds as she said. I dangled my legs, pointed my toes and reached down as low as I could, but the ground was nowhere beneath me that I could feel. As I relaxed my feet, my heart leaped as I felt one of my flip flops falling off.

“Oops, that was silly!” came Claire’s voice, sounding amused. “Your poor little shoe, it has a long way to fall.”

“Is it lost?” I asked; I had a terrible fear of losing things.

“You never know, it might land in our garden,” she said. “We’ll look for it afterwards. Right now, you’re so high, you’re just about to touch the sky,” she said. “Keep your hands down, lift your head a tiny bit, and you’ll feel it.”

I did as I was told, and I could feel something flat pressing against the top of my head; the sky was more firm than I had imagined.

“That’s the sky,” she told me. “Now sit still, open your mouth, and I’ll give you a slice of cake.”

I opened as wide as I could, like at the dentist’s, feeling the scarf pressing round my face all the tighter as I did so. The cake was delicious: it tasted like chocolate sponge with icing. Did Claire manage to carry Hannah’s birthday cake up into the sky with her, or had she kept it there, offering it to the other children one by one?

“Now, it’s soon time for us to go down,” Claire said.

“But I don’t want to!” I said; even though I couldn’t see anything, I was actually starting to relax and enjoy myself. “I want to stay in fairyland, like the child you told me about, who was taken away by the fairies!”

“I’m glad you remember that! But we can’t have a changeling at the party instead of you. Now, I can fly you back down; or, there’s a much more exciting way. I’ll cast a magic spell; you can stand on that chair, and jump off it, and you’ll go down quickly but safely. Would you like to do that?”

“But you told me I’d fall if I got off the chair,” I said.

“The magic will protect you,” she assured me. “Let’s get you standing on that chair.”

I could feel her lifting me to my feet, again feeling the chair wobbling beneath me. As I stood up, with one shoe off and one shoe on, I started to feel nervous again: I realised that I hadn’t actually said yes when Claire had asked me if wanted to do it, like grown ups often do when they make something sound like a choice, when it really isn’t.

“I am going to count to five,” said Claire, and for a moment she sounded like a grown up warning me that I would be punished if I didn’t do as I was told by the time she got there. “When I get there, you are going to jump. It’s a long way down, but I promise you one thing: you will land safely in the garden, where Hannah is waiting for you. When you do, you still have to keep the blindfold on: the magic takes a bit of time to wear off, and you must not see anything until it has completely gone. Is that quite clear?”

I nodded.

“Good girl,” she told me. “Off we go, then: one… two… three… four… five!”

I jumped; I felt myself going down and down and down. This was the scariest thing I had ever felt, like jumping off the edge of a cliff. It felt like an eternity before my feet touched the ground; but suddenly I landed, with my heart pounding, feeling grass under my one bare foot, and catching my breath after going down such a long way. I reached down and felt the grass around me with my hands, as if to reassure myself that I really was safely down.

“Stay there, get your breath back,” said Claire. “And no peeping! Ah, here’s Hannah,” she added, and I heard Hannah greet me cheerfully.

“Hannah, help Jemima to find her flip flop, she dropped it while we were up there,” Claire said. “But she has to stay blindfolded, so tell her if she is warm or cold.”

“You’re freezing,” Hannah told me. “Follow my voice, and come this way!”

I crawled in the direction I heard Hannah’s voice. She seemed to be leading me on a very strange route to find it, making me turn one way and then the other, but eventually I felt my sandal under my hand.

“I think the magic has worn off now, so I’ll take your blindfold off,” I heard Claire saying. “But the daylight will be very bright, as you’ve been in the dark for so long, so keep your eyes closed until I say.”

I did as I was told, and felt the scarf around my head loosening, and falling away: the light through my closed eyelids looked red. When I was finally able to open my eyes, I looked around for any sign of fairyland: there was nothing to be seen, apart from the garden, which I knew well. I looked up at the sky, and tried to imagine myself up there. Did it really happen, had I been up there?

Later, when the party was over, I asked Hannah if I really had flown, as Claire had said that Hannah was out in the garden with me.

“I wish I could tell you, but I was blindfolded as well, so I couldn’t see if you actually flew,” said Hannah, with a little smirk.

“No way!” I protested. “Come on, Claire’s your sister, you must know what really happened.”

“Claire hasn’t even told me,” she persisted. “She’s taken me to fairyland loads of times, but she’s blindfolded me every time, telling me that if I ever see it, then the fairies really will take me away, and replace me with a changeling. I might be one anyway, for all you know.”

I looked at Hannah, who was smiling slightly. Was I looking at the cousin Hannah I knew and loved, or at a small fairy without wings pretending to be her?