The Fairy Hunter

The room we were in seemed as big as the command deck of an interstellar cruiser. I had already been waiting for fifteen minutes and had studied the contract I was about to sign. Basically it was simple: I was entrusted with the command of an individual spaceship, and within three years, if I managed to locate for the owners at least ten fairies, the spaceship became my exclusive property. From the attached documentation, it appeared to be the latest type and equipped with everything needed to last three years alone in space. Not the lack of food, water, or fuel, but boredom was going to kill me in those three years. That's why pilots were hard to find for such missions. But I had been licensed for the solo shuttle for only three months, and I think my current state could best be characterized as unemployed luxury!

I thought I'd find easy rides around near-Earth because I really didn't like the idea of wandering the far reaches of the galaxy for years to satisfy the whims of the rich. But after three months, I was contacted by a lawyer who apparently knew my financial situation very well because he hit me right on the head with his pre-contract.

I was already tired of waiting when a door the size of a city gate opened and into the room came three guys accompanied by the lawyer who had picked me up a few days before.

"Mr. Tim Warren, I guess you've had time to study the contract thoroughly since you've been waiting. As you can see, it has no hidden clauses, and all we expect from you is to bring back ten fairies and this wonderful shuttle will become your property."

The three men accompanying him also sat down, and one of them placed a silver cage with a fairy in it on the table. She was gray and seemed to be dying, and seeing the look on my face, the man said as if apologetically:

"I know she looks like she's dying," he said, "and I think she's only got two or three days to live, but I’ve noticed that these fairies bring good luck until their last moment of life, so I brought her with me to help us and make everything all right."

I guess everyone knows what fairies are. Or at least has heard of them because no one really knows what they are. Many years ago someone captured a ball of energy in space, put it in a Faraday cage and brought it down to earth. For some reason, when the ball of energy or whatever it was arrived on earth, it turned into what people later called fairies. They looked like fairies from children's stories of old; they also had transparent blue wings, but they couldn't fly much with them. They didn't eat anything, but they were full of energy and seemed to liven up the house they were in.

Maybe it was just a coincidence, but then in just one year, the man who bought the fairy from the first owner for nothing became a billionaire. From there it was only a step to the legend that fairies bring good luck. Fairy prices skyrocketed; the problem was that they were hard to find. A wild hunt began throughout the galaxy, but no one knew where they could be found, and they were encountered by chance. Just as once there was a gold rush, now there was a fairy rush. All the more so because after about three years they were dying. Where at first they had a beautiful coloring and a contagious energy, after two years or so they began to turn more and more gray and listless. About three years after they were brought to Earth, they finally "died" and not a single hair remained.

Since serious contracts were still signed on watermarked paper, as if to somehow prove their seriousness the lawyer held out to me the stack of the four original contracts and handed me a gold pen.

I hesitated a long time with the pen over the place where I was to sign, and though I knew there was no way to back out, I felt too easily manipulated.

I looked up and saw in the cage on the table the little hands of the fairy who was holding on to the bars and looking at me with sad, seemingly slightly blue eyes, as if she had deepened all the color of old in those wonderful eyes.

"Sign, I did," I said and watched as all four of them sighed in relief a sign that fools like me weren't exactly to be found on every road. "I sign but on one condition," I added and saw their faces suddenly fall.

I pointed to the fairy cage and said:

"You kept saying she was dying so I'd like you to give her to me to take with me into space. At least for a few days while she's still alive to keep me company."

The owner hesitated for a moment but got a nudge from the man sitting next to him, so he pushed the cage towards me without a trace of regret.

I wish I were a poet to be able to describe the joy I read in the fairy's eyes, but as I am not, I can tell you only that I have never seen a human being so happy. If it were up to me, I would change the dictionary explanation for the word joy to a picture of her.

I signed all the copies of the contract, put one in my pocket, and headed for the Astro port. The tech team walked me to the shuttle, and I found a convenient spot for the fairy cage, then asked for clearance from the control tower for takeoff. It was a busy time of day, so I had to wait a couple of hours before a time window was made for my shuttle, too.

But then in less than an hour, I was in Mars orbit. My little swallow was really moving well, so I decided to name her.

After setting the trajectory to beyond Neptune's orbit, when I was about to make my first jump, I turned to the fairy who seemed to be peculiarly gleeful as gray as she was.

I got near enough so that I could look her closely in the eye. It occurred to me that she was beckoning me to come even closer to her, so I pressed my forehead against the bars of the silver cage. I saw a slight concentration in her little eyes and the thought of "out" seemed to pass through my mind without my considering whether I had thought it myself or if the little creature had somehow passed it on to me.

But what did I have to lose by letting her loose in the cabin, so I opened the cage door. Instead of taking advantage of her new freedom, she came and pressed her forehead against mine and again I heard as if in my mind "out there"! And with her little hand she pointed to one of the shuttle's portholes.

"Please, please, please!" I heard it again as if in my mind and thought to myself, after all, what have I had and what have I lost?

I readied the airlock, balanced the pressures, convinced I had lost her forever. Instead I spotted her through the porthole very cheerful and bowing to me in thanks. I waved back, she waved back, and I returned to my duties. I wished I could somehow get her in before the first jump so I wouldn't lose her altogether, but there was still time, so I made up all sorts of games with the little fairy.

At some point after a few hours outside, I saw that she was changing color again just like a fairy fresh off the ground, and I thought to myself that the only good thing about the whole contract I had signed was that I had asked for the little fairy as a bonus.

Among fairy hunters, there are all sorts of legends, some true but mostly just myths ... I was going to say urban myths but since we were in space, they probably sounded more like stellar myths.

The most persistent of them was the one that said that the southern part of the galaxy had the most fairies. And that they were so curious that they'd come to your shuttle on their own; you didn't have to chase after them to hunt them down.

I decided to make a first attempt in that direction. I had fuel at my disposal and the eighty thousand light years to get there I could cover in four or five jumps at most. The truth is that the few days between jumps were the hardest, but with the help of the fairy and the games she initiated, I hoped time would pass more easily. Provided I could still trick her into coming on the shuttle.

I approached the porthole and when she saw me she immediately came closer because otherwise it seemed her favorite game was to make circles around the shuttle.

I stuck my head against the porthole glass and tried to mentally convey to her the thought "come on in!"

Since she didn't seem to get it, I pointed to the airlock where I let her out and she nodded delightedly. We made all the preparations and within minutes she was inside. She was acting like a little pet because she was clinging to my neck as if she would never leave.

Although we had two armchairs equipped with everything needed to best withstand the quantum leap, I was afraid to install the little fairy on her own in one of them. I programmed the shuttle for the jump and folded her wings as best I could, picked her up then pressed the jump button.

As usual during the jump, there is some rough shaking and you lose consciousness for a few seconds, but to my delight, when I recovered, I saw that the little fairy was intact. I let her fly around the cabin, then after a while I let her out into space again.

She was flourishing with each passing day, and before the next jump, I called her back faster to try to communicate telepathically or otherwise with her.

To my amazement, we got along pretty quickly with only the abstract words. It was a little harder but eventually we got it right. Finally she told me her name was Avaryana – if I understood correctly. Anyway we both liked the name so that remained her name in the end.

Eventually we ended up talking almost normally, not by sounds but by telepathy and the interval between jumps was something so wonderful I almost wished my interstellar journey would never end.

Finally I asked her why, when they are in space, they are in the shape of energy orbs that have been talked about for a long time on Earth, only they were called ball lightning, and when they reach Earth, they turn into wonderful little fairies.

"The explanation is simpler than you might imagine: the first of us when brought to Earth was taken to a room where there was a TV with a wonderful cartoon movie playing. And the main character in the movie was a fairy who performed miracles and good deeds. It seemed to her that it would be a good idea and that she would be loved more by those who owned her if she took the form of the fairy.”

"Okay,” I said, “that's what happened with the first fairy, but why did the next ones take the same form?"

She looked a bit puzzled but eventually explained that all energy clusters can communicate with each other.

"By telepathy?" I asked.

"Not really telepathy, it's a bit more complicated, but sometimes I'll try to explain."

Once, sitting with her curled up against my chest, she asked me:

"Would you like me to be as big as you? I mean, be a normal girl?"

I was stunned, and for a few moments I couldn't even speak, but I think she immediately realized how much joy it would give me if she could make such a transformation.

"Well, how could you make such a transformation?"

"It's more complicated, but I'll try to explain, and where you don't understand, ask me."

She came close to my forehead and began to tell me that what we called fairies were actually flesh and blood beings, only they had the ability to split into seven different entities. Of these, only one was the main one and the rest were mere concentrations of energy that could take the form of fairies at some point but could not communicate. Because of this, they were called wild fairies, and they roamed the Universe, sent by the main fairies to explore, and pass on information to their senders.

With her small lips she kissed me innocently on the forehead and asked:

"Now do you understand how I'm going to do it?"

"No," I answered honestly.

"I'll call six wild fairies and take for you a normal form. Because the truth is, we feel better when we're complete, too."

She stepped out of the shuttle to "sound the alarm." I understood, but she probably said something else entirely.

In just a few hours around the shuttle, globular flashes of energy began to gather and when six had arrived, she beckoned me in.

I was violating all the spaceflight protocols that had explained to me how to do it as if I were a kindergartener: insert only one fairy, wild or not, lock it in a Faraday cage, and only then let the next one go.

But either I was very naive, or Avaryana had fooled me enough that I let all six of them in as a group, and after they went in, Avaryana asked me to turn my back because she wanted to surprise me.

I turned my back and heard all kinds of rustling and giggling behind me, and when she finally allowed me to turn around, I was simply stunned: the most beautiful girl in my life was standing there three feet away from me, naked and covered very thinly by her semi-transparent wings.

She looked at me for a while, delighted at the wonder and pleasure she read in my eyes. Then she asked, this time in a normal voice:

"Do you like what you see?"

I had no words to express my excitement, so I moved closer to her and hugged her to convince myself that she was real and not just a ball of energy. She was as real as could be, and I almost didn't even realize it when our lips met.

Finally when we both caught our breath, she told me:

"Actually, that's what I was going to ask you the first time I became your size: teach me how to kiss! That's because everywhere I went on all the TVs, I was watching movies of people kissing, and I thought it must be really nice since they do it so often."

"And is it?" I asked, paranoid.

"It's great, so I want more."

After we had exhausted the stock of kisses for about three days, we started talking again, this time easier because she could put it into words.

Seeing how delightful she had become, I couldn't help myself and finally asked her:

"And yet I would like to know how you are so wonderful? It's as if you were built exactly to my taste."

She giggled for a while and then hesitating, finally told me:

"For me, as a form of energy, I find it very easy to access the energy in your brain. So I saw pretty much what your ideal girl would be, so here I am! Just like you wanted me!"

Eventually she explained that somewhere out there is a planet populated only by fairies and where there are no males. In fact, as she explained to me, there aren't even different sexes. There are fairies and that's it, and breeding is done by some kind of division, but the subject seemed too complicated, so I dropped it. There are men, too, she told me, but like me, they are from my own planet, and they just happened to be there looking for fairies. The fairies held them on their planet, but they don't live very long either, and after a year at the most, they die too, just like fairies do on earth.

"And how do you explain the fact that you can transform either into energy or material form."

She took my hand and raised it to my eyes:

"This hand of yours, although it looks very material is actually a very condensed form of energy. In the Universe, everything is energy. But with us, the Universe has been more generous and has taught us to move from one state of being to another. Or maybe that was our evolution. Maybe we too were energy monkeys millions of years ago, but we managed to become fairies and not humans. If you want, I can teach you to turn into energy, too, but I don't think there's any point because if we're energy, we have no senses, and wouldn't it be a shame if we were to stop kissing?"

I agreed with her, kissed her again, and caressed her maidenly breasts that seemed to pop with the desire to see as much as possible around them. I played with them and remembered a joke about this fixation of Earthlings:

At a party, a lady with a little cleavage picked up the guy she was dancing with:

"May I ask why you're staring at my breasts?"

"Excuse me, ma'am, but they started it!"

With all my grief, I finally remembered that I have a signed contract and will eventually have to stick to it. I explained what it was about, and she nonchalantly waved her hand.

"Let's go to my planet first, and I'll get you as many fairies as you want because the truth is, they like to travel and see new places, too."

I frowned and said:

"To tell you the truth, I don't think I'd like a beauty like you to fall into the hands of some lecherous old man who enjoys her charms just because he has money."

"That wouldn't be a problem either,” she told me. “You'll carry only wild fairies who can't turn into girls my size. They'll stay little fairies and that's it. You've fulfilled your part of the contract and we're left with a perfect shuttle that we can take all over the universe. Because this universe is full of wonders."

"There may be many wonders in the Universe, but I want to tell you right now that none of them can outdo you,” I told her and concluded that fairy or no fairy, this being is still sensitive to compliments.

Upon the next jump, we arrived at her planet that didn't even have a name. It wasn't until I climbed down from the shuttle that I realized the planet was just like many other planets I had visited.

Avaryana took me to the capital where thousands of full-sized fairies were carelessly wandering around. At one point, I also met a man about my age and stopped him. He looked ashen-faced and his eyes were sunken into sockets.

"Oh, new kid on the block," he greeted me and then introduced himself. "I'm Robert and if I'm lucky, I have about three months to live."

"Well, why?" I asked, utterly dismayed at his appearance.

"Because the world is unfair, and I am part of the world."

We sat down on a terrace with Avaryana beside us, and I began to explore the thought that maybe I could unravel the riddle of their early deaths.

"On this nameless planet, the Planet of the Fairies we call it, there are 64 men from Earth. With you there are now 65. We all came to capture fairies and get rich, and instead we were the ones captured because a man sells for an astronomical price. For the price of a fresh man, you can buy anything you want on this planet, so you can see what a quest we're on. They let us walk around like we're free. Except that we belong to someone, and they've confiscated our shuttles."

He rolled up his sleeve and showed me a tattoo on his hand.

I turned to Avaryana and asked her:

"Is this how it's done here?"

Slightly embarrassed, she nodded approvingly.

"They're not all as good as me, even if they're all called fairies. But I promise never to sell you even if someone offered me the whole planet for you."

Robert drew in his breath and said:

"When I was a child, my great-grandfather told me a Japanese story in which a fisherman in search of fish arrives on a very remote island. To his surprise, all the people there had only one eye, so our fisherman thinks he will give up fishing and lure the one-eyed man to his island and show him to the world for money."

Said and done, so he tried to lure him onto his boat and visit his island. “I'd be glad to come,” said the one-eyed man, “but I'd be honored if you'd meet my family first. You would give them great pleasure.” When he got the fisherman home, he locked him in a cage and showed him off for a penny to those eager to see such a curiosity. That's pretty much what happened to us, I think.”

We parted with him, but I was still thinking of his gray pallor. I couldn't remember where it came from, but it looked very familiar.

On the way I had an idea, so I asked Avaryana:

"I'd like to visit my shuttle if I could!"

Avaryana stopped as if struck on the head and turned me to face her, and her eyes instantly filled with tears:

"Tim, please tell me you're not leaving me! Please tell me you don't want to!"

I ignored the fact that the street we were on was crowded and turned her to face me and kissed her deeply, the same as when I first kissed her. Then I asked her:

"You said you could read my mind! So did you find any hint of a thought that I wanted to leave your side?"

She shook her head and said:

"No, no way, but I'm still scared. Without you I'd be as good as dead. I'd turn to stardust and nothing more."

"Avaryana,” I reassured her. “You're the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. I'll never give you up unless I die!"

"Then I'll make sure you don't, so come to your shuttle."

I arrived at the spaceport and boarded the shuttle with Avaryana beside me. I needed two things from there because I remembered where else I had seen Robert's gray pallor: a pilot who had returned to earth with his radiation shield destroyed in a collision.

I dismantled the compass and radiation counter on board the shuttle and walked out with them. If the compass acted like an inert iron and stayed in whatever position I put it in, the radiation counter started squealing like crazy when I took it outside.

It was so loud that Avaryana went into the shuttle to shut out the deafening noise. I got into the shuttle, too, and with a broad smile I told her the great news.

"We have uncovered the riddle of the death of humans on your planet and of fairies on Earth. What surprises me is that no one has figured this out yet because it's pretty basic."

"Please explain," Avaryana said curiously.

"You fairies are energy, and you feed on energy. Earth is surrounded by two Van Allen belts that protect the earth from harmful radiation. Fairies feed on cosmic energy, and if it doesn't reach them, it's only natural that eventually, once their energy reserves are depleted, they will die."

Avaryana has assimilated the information, I saw this on her forehead where a thick stripe appeared, a sign that she is thinking deeply.

Finally after grasping the information she asked:

"Well, what about the people on our planet?"

"For exactly the opposite reason: the Van Allen belts that protect living things on Earth are generated by Earth's magnetic field. Your planet had no such magnetic field to form such protective belts. That's why you can thrive and feed on cosmic energy. But people are dying of what is called radiation sickness."

She thought about that and then asked me:

"And can't that be fixed?"

"Yes, and very simply!"

"Tim, you know I love you very much, but I don't think you are so brilliant to solve a problem that has been around for hundreds of years."

I smiled mischievously and asked:

"How long do fairies last without being powered by cosmic energy."

"Two, three years at most then they run out."

"The fairy sales people would then have to have every buyer of the fairies sign a contract that every year they would take them beyond the Van Allen belts for at least a month or as long as it takes for them to replenish their energy supply."

"That would be perfect!” Avaryana clapped happily.. “But with people, how can we do it?"

I shrugged as if solving the problem was within anyone's grasp:

"The wall of my shuttle is two inches thick and perfectly shields me from all specific radiation. What if your specialists materialize a few hundred hectares of such material and place it on top of cities built only for humans. And there they would have just about everything you'd find in a normal city on Earth: housing, shops, restaurants, clubs, and everything else they need. They would be protected from radiation, and the fairies could spend a few days and have as much fun with it as they want without being in danger. Some might even like it."

Even though I was confident in the fairies' ability to mobilize after the plan was explained to them, in less than a month the planet was swarmed with Earthlings' towns. Those who were in too serious a condition still died, but most escaped and made a miraculous recovery aided by fairy energy treatments. Interestingly, none of them, even when offered freedom, were eager to return to Earth.

At one point, I took ten wild fairies on board and made the trip to Earth to discharge that obligation.

After I had relieved myself of my burdens and explained to them what they needed to do to keep them alive, Avaryana repeated to me:

"This Universe is full of wonders. We will have to visit it to see as many of them as possible."

"As I have already told you, there may be many wonders in the Universe, but I want to tell you right now that none of them can beat you."

She smiled delightedly and then sat down in the main command chair because in the meantime she had learned to drive the shuttle like a professional pilot.

THE END

Bio: "I am a member of the Union of Romanian Writers and I live in Brașov, a city in Romania near Bran Castle, the place where the legend of Dracula was born. I have published over 40 books, mostly science fiction, but also fantasy and detective stories."

E-mail: Sergiu Somesan

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