#fridayflash: Stolen Child

Note: for those of you with A-Levels in English, yes, this was inspired by W. B. Yeats' poem The Stolen Child.

Sean was not like the other children in his village. For one thing, his head was unusually large compared to the rest of his body, but the children in the village were willing to overlook that fact. However, Sean never cared whether the other children were willing to accept him or not. He never wondered what they thought of him, and never asked to be included in their games.

Sean was hunting faeries. Or more accurately, he was hoping the faeries might hunt him.
Sean knew there was a place where the faeries would steal your soul if you fell asleep there, and there was nothing he wanted more than to have his soul stolen by the faeries.

It’s not that Sean was unhappy at home. On the contrary, he knew that if he joined the faeries he would miss his family very much. Even his sister. But the desire to be stolen by the faeries was stronger. Sean would spend most of his time day-dreaming about all the wonderful things he would do as a faerie. He would have magic, for one thing. He wasn’t quite sure what kind of magic, but he thought any magic would be good. Changing his shape, that would also be nice. And spending whole nights outside, singing and dancing with the faeries. One night he was sure he heard them singing just outside his bedroom window, but his parents insisted he only dreamed it. There was no such thing as faeries. Well, he was going to prove them wrong even if that was the last thing he ever did!

So he’d run to the fields every day after the school day was over (and once even before it ended, but he was caught and punished so he wasn’t going to repeat the experience, at least until he got better at getting away with it). He would look for places where faeries might be expected to roam, and then try to take a nap there. But it was hard falling asleep in the middle of the day, outside, when one expected to get stolen by faeries, so more often than not, he just lied there and pretended to sleep.
It never worked, though, and Sean knew it wouldn’t. Faeries aren't stupid. They know when you are only pretending, and they aren’t going to be roaming around the village in the middle of the day anyway. Sean was getting desperate.

In addition, he knew the clock was ticking. Faeries take children, and only children. Everybody knew that. Even Sean’s sister. So he had to act fast, because Sean was already 8 years old, and he didn’t know when exactly he stopped being a child.

His parents liked the fact that Sean was spending so much time outside. They thought it was far better than having him sit in front of the computer all day long. They didn’t know, of course, that Sean was going to get stolen by the faeries, or they might have thought being a couch potato was not such a bad thing after all. But Sean wasn’t going to tell them, and he hoped his parents won’t even notice his soul was stolen.

But when Sean was eventually stolen by the faeries, his parents did notice. He could see them, from his faerie-figure, glancing in concern at his old body, talking, asking, touching his forehead, taking him to doctors. Their Sean was no longer. Their Sean was with the faeries.

And life with the faeries wasn’t all as he expected it to be. There were still chores to do, even though stealing cherries was much more fun than tidying his bedroom. And sometimes he still missed his family, and the comfy bed in his room. Sleeping outside was fun at first, but as the winter grew nearer, the novelty was beginning to wear off, and he didn’t know how they were going to keep warm.

The faeries weren't concerned about winter, or about being cold. In fact, they weren't concerned about anything at all and only laughed when he asked them any questions. Sean was a little disappointed and even a bit scared when he realized they were very different from what he thought they would be. They weren't lively or kind or beautiful, but cruel, gloating, ugly.
But now he didn't care anymore. He was becoming one of them.

At first he used to visit his family from time to time, just to make sure they were okay, but then he got bored of them and started hovering over the beds of his school-fellows and the other children he knew from the village. He saw them growing up, and he was happy he wasn't.

There were things far worse than living outside with the faeries, he thought.
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.