Fairy Houses

Prose - 2024 Alumni Creative Writing Contest Winner - Second Place

The sun danced between the leaves of the carrotwood tree as a barely perceptible breeze failed to keep the heat at bay. But Quinn didn’t mind. The warmth made her feel free. She knelt on the dirt of her front yard and fished a smooth rock out of the soil. She tossed it in her pocket and brushed the dirt off her denim shorts. Quinn then continued scouring her front yard for sticks, leaves, bits of wood, and blades of grass. 

She wandered closer to the carrotwood tree and picked up a leaf the shade of an emerald. As Quinn looked around at the vast expanse of leaves covering the ground, she realized she was running out of room in her pockets. She gathered the edges of her tank top and turned them up to create a basket, which she filled with the most vibrant and un-torn leaves she could find—fresh enough that they hadn’t begun to crumble. After a final sweep around the yard, Quinn settled down beside the tree’s trunk and dumped out the contents of her shirt to sort her stash of foliage according to size and shape. 

As she did this, footsteps tapped toward her accompanied by the pitter-patter of paws.        

“Hello Quinn.” Their neighbor, Ms. Laurie—who today was sporting capris and a polka-dotted blouse—was out walking her golden retriever, Roofus. He leapt around at the sight of Quinn.  

“Hi.” Quinn hurried over. She didn’t want Roofus to run through her leaf piles and mess them up. 

“How are you?” Quinn asked politely as she reached down to pet Roofus, who was wagging his great strong tail and barely holding still enough for her to pet.

Ms. Laurie sighed. “I’m ready to get home, I’m boiling in this heat. Aren’t you dying out here?” She fanned the back of her neck which was kept free by a bobbed haircut. 

“No, I like the heat.” Quinn scratched the dog behind its ears then tried to find that special spot down by its tail to make it thump his leg. 

“Well don’t stay out too long or you might burn,” Ms. Laurie said before she and her dog continued down the sidewalk.

Quinn returned to her leaf piles and began sorting the sticks she had collected. She hummed quietly to herself as she separated the thick from the thin. Then she picked out four of the thinnest twigs she could find and a leaf sized to her liking. With great precision and bated breath, she set out to puncture the four sticks through the leaf’s edges. 

A car pulled up along the sidewalk, and Quinn could hear more footsteps pounding up the sidewalk. 

“Hey, there.” Mr. Johnson gave Quin a wave on his way inside the house.

Quinn nodded up at him. Mr. Johnson was one of her parents’ friends from church. They had helped him a few months prior when he was replacing his windows. Quinn had come along too but she was too small to help. So instead, she’d sat on the staircase and doodled with colored pens as the adults clambered around her with power tools and big sheets of glass. 

At one point, when the adults were all outside and Quinn was left alone, she’d gotten bored of her coloring and imagined she was a prisoner in an old, dusty tower containing only stairs all the way up. She’d gripped the wood balusters and twisted herself about with a languished flair when she felt one of the balusters twist loose beneath her grasp. It didn’t come out, but Quinn could feel it wiggling in its socket. 

She didn’t tell any of the adults and wondered if Mr. Johnson had noticed his broken stairs yet. 

Left to her own devices once again, Quinn had successfully gotten the sticks through the leaf, which she then stuck firmly into the dirt. She then took two smaller leaves and laid them on top. It would make a perfect bed. 

Quinn twisted about from her seat on the ground and selected a smooth pebble. She placed it beside the tiny bed and dubbed it a table. 

She then took some leaves and tried to weave them together to make a tiny rug. It was tedious work and the grass hardly stayed woven. 

As she did this, a car pulled up in the driveway and another guest approached the house. Quinn looked up to see one of her mom’s friends, Ms. Renee, emerging with handfuls of fast food bags. 

“Hi, Quinn. Is your mom inside?” She asked as she fumbled to get the door open. 

“Uh huh.” Quinn nodded.

Ms. Renee disappeared inside the house, then reappeared not long after to retrieve a large bundle of water bottles contained in plastic from her car. 

Quinn fumbled with her rug for a moment longer. Just as she decided it was good enough, her mom emerged with one of the bags of fast food and a water bottle. Her thin brown hair was kept back in a braid and the old t-shirt she wore was drenched in sweat stains. 

“Here sweetie, get something to drink.” Her mom kneeled down and opened the water bottle for Quinn, who gulped it down before diving into the chicken nuggets contained in the bag. 

“What’s all this you’ve got going on here?” Her mom asked.

Quinn wolfed down a nugget. “I’m—” chomp chomp “—making fairy houses.”

“Oh, well it’s looking very nice.”

Just then Quinn’s dad called from inside the house, “Honey, what are we doing with your collectibles?”

“Hang on, I’m coming!” Her mom called back. She turned back to Quinn, “Make sure you try to stay in the shade, okay? It’s getting hot out here.” 

“Okay.”

Quinn’s mom grunted as she stood back up then headed inside. 

As Quinn set to work on her fries, she began gathering the thicker sticks and placing them upright in the ground around the furniture in a circle. Then she collected the biggest leaves and some long blades of grass and tied them together at the stems. This fashioned a tent-like structure which she balanced on top of the sticks to form the roof. 

Quinn observed her tiny structure. It was nice, but it needed more. She took another stick and punctured it through a small leaf to fashion a flag for the house, which she stuck outside the front door—which was actually just a gap in the sticks.

In her concentration, Quinn didn’t notice the next guest approach until he was almost at the door. Cliff Lehman, another family friend, walked right in the front door with his arms full of large, used cardboard boxes. The one that Quinn could see best had “Cliff’s clothes” written on it in felt pen. 

Quinn could hear her dad from inside, “Hey Cliff, thanks for coming! How’ve you been?”

“I’m doing alright, you guys still need boxes?” Quinn heard Cliff ask. 

“Oh yeah, all kinds of boxes, thanks. You wanna help us in here? We’re almost done with the kitchen…”

As her dad’s voice faded away, Quinn decided her fairy house would be incomplete without a moat. She dug out a ring around the house and poured the remaining water from her water bottle in. Some of the water absorbed into the ground but not all, and Quinn laid down a plank of bark across the moat to reach the front door. 

From behind her, Quinn heard the garage door groan as it opened and Quinn’s dad strolled out. He wore the same cargo shorts and dirty Nike sneakers that he always wore when performing manual labor and his t-shirt donned matching sweat stains with Quinn’s mom. 

“Hey, kiddo! Stay right there for a sec, I’m pulling the car out.” He climbed into their red minivan and pulled it out into the driveway, next to Ms. Renee’s car. He popped the trunk, then disappeared back into the house. A moment later, he returned carrying a large cardboard box labeled “kitchen” which he set in the back of the van. 

Quinn turned back to her project. Though she had intended to create a village of fairy houses, Quinn wasn’t ready to be finished with this first house just yet. She bordered the moat with pebbles and picked the flattest rocks to lead up to the doorway as a cobblestone path. But still it wasn’t ready. Quinn gathered up some small pale flowers that had drifted over from the neighbor’s tree and sprinkled them over her house. Then she looked around the yard for anything to add more color and spotted a few dandelions sprouting at the edge of the yard, which she plucked and arranged outside the front door. 

She was so busy arranging her flowers that she didn’t hear the footsteps of Ms. Laurie making her way back from her walk. 

She didn’t hear the patter of large paws coming up the driveway. 

She didn’t notice the danger until Ms. Laurie came up and asked her dad, “Hey Mark, how’s the move coming along? You guys are out of here on Monday, right?”

Quinn barely had a moment to react before the golden retriever bounded right toward her.

Going straight through her fairy house.

“My house!” Quinn’s lip quivered and she pushed the dog off of her. She stared down at the cracked twigs and squished petals which were now smothered into the dirt. The flag had been snapped in two and what had once been a moat now more closely resembled a lake. Her tiny cobblestone path led nowhere in particular.

Quinn’s mom, who had just come outside with another box, hurried over. “Oh, sweetheart, did Roofus run over your little house?”

“Oh no, I’m so sorry!” Ms. Laurie apologized. Then she giggled, “He’s just so happy to see you!”

Quinn didn’t say anything. She just went back inside her now almost-empty home. The adults had been hard at work packing it all up for weeks now. The house looked larger now than she had ever seen it.

Her mom followed her inside a moment later. “Hey baby,” she whispered. She came up to Quinn and rubbed her back. “You hanging in there?” 

Quinn nodded. 

“I’m sorry about your fairy house. Did you enjoy making it?” 

Quinn nodded once again. Her eyes welled with tears.

“Oh, sweetheart . . .”

“It’s not fair!” Quinn cried. “I loved that house! I spent all that time working on it and now it’s gone. I wasn’t ready to be done with it yet.” 

Her mom knelt down and hugged her. “I know you weren’t, darling, and I’m sorry. You know Roofus didn’t mean to destroy your house.” 

“I know,” Quinn blubbered. 

“But that doesn’t make it any easier, does it? But you know, building that house wasn’t for nothing—even if it’s not there anymore—because the time you spent working on it will help you to build another one. In fact, I bet you’ll build a whole city of fairy houses in our new yard. And you wouldn’t be able to do that if you didn’t have the practice of building this one.”

Quinn sniffed. “I’m still gonna miss the first house.”

“I know, and that’s okay, baby. Missing the first house means you loved it very much. And if you have all that love inside of you, there’s no reason you can’t love the next house you’ll make very much, too.” 

Quinn thought about this. It seemed to make sense. She wiped her tears away. 

Her mom placed the back of her hand to Quinn’s forehead, “Now, you’ve been outside in the heat long enough. Why don’t we have a popsicle and then you and I can take this. . .” she whipped a felt pen out of her pocket, “and doodle on the boxes what’s inside of them? That way they’ll be easier to unpack when we reach our new home.” 

Quinn gave a soft smile. “Yeah, okay.” She followed her mom through the nearly-empty house to the fridge which was still stashed with a few goodies.