Elven Lullaby
My little sister was four when she had her first epileptic fit. I remember how quiet it was when I walked into the room, how she was vibrating on the floor like a ringing cell phone on a table, how her eyes seemed fixed on nothingness. How after that it was a blur of me screaming, calling 911, the hospital room, Mom crying. My life changed then. Before it was just me, Mom, and Leah. After that afternoon I felt like I barely knew Leah anymore. Leah was so sweet, but she was different, like if you looked at her, you would think she had Down’s syndrome or something, and when she opened her mouth, she always said something you never expected.
Like the day I was talking to her after reading her the stories from Anderson’s Fairy Tales. She never heard enough of elves – she was a little obsessed. I told her stories about elves, and she believed every word. Mom didn’t know, really – she was scared to lose Leah, because she had already miscarried two times, and I had almost died in the hospital when I was born. Mom loved us so much that she was very protective, especially of Leah. If Mom found out Leah believed in elves just as much as somebody could believe in anteaters or New York City, she would freak. She’s all for real-life stories about kids who did great things and saved lives. Those were the stories I grew up with. I hated them. I didn’t want Leah to have the same experience. So one night I whipped out the forbidden fairy tale anthology, and she was – well, it became our escape, from her fits and her special doctors and babysitters and therapists. I didn’t really know what I was escaping from, but I was hooked, too. When we finished the gigantic book, I got others from the second-hand bookstore down the street. The fantasy was so much better than our lives, it was worth every horrible day, just to know we could go home and have a story waiting for us.
I had just finished Leah’s bedtime story, Cinderella – again. I closed the book with a dramatic, “and they all lived happily ever after, the end.” I turned off the lamp, tucked her in, and right before I left, she said,“Mandy?”
“Yeah, Leah?”“The elves sang me to sleep last night.” Her voice had a noticeable lisp to it. It made her seem even younger than her six-year-old self. “Oh really?” What was she talking about?“Yes. I opened the window, and right before I fell asleep I heard a lot of elves. They were singing me a song to help me to sleep, because I was afraid that I’d start shaking again. They made me not scared.”“Oh, sweetie, that only happens every once in a while. And if that ever happens, we’re right next to the hospital, you don’t need to worry.”“I know,” she snapped, which was unusual, “but I was really, really scared. And the elves knew, so they sang me a lullaby.” I could tell she really believed what she said. I kissed her goodnight – what could I say? ‘There’s no such thing as elves?’ It would have made her mad, which might have hurt her, I don’t know. I didn’t know anything about my sister except that she was innocent and didn’t deserve epilepsy or anything else that happened to her. Leah brought up the subject of elves singing her to sleep a lot, but only around me. “Mandy, they only do it when you’re really scared or sad or angry. It helps you.”“Leah, listen. If there are elves out there, they’re not singing you to sleep. They have jobs and stuff, and they live in…” I was making this up, trying to make it seem like they were far away.”…they live in Germany.”“No they don’t!” Leah was indignant. “They live out in the forest in the back yard! I know because I went and saw them!”“It was just a dream, Leah.”She started crying then. I tried to calm her down, but it didn’t work. Leah started shaking.“Mom! MOM!” Mom wasn’t there, she was out on a date with some guy from her work. So even though it was illegal, I dragged Leah into the car and drove the two miles to the hospital. Luckily it wasn’t any more worse than usual. Mom was called, she showed up a half hour later with this Tom guy, and everybody was freaking out. It turned out that Leah was fine in the end. It was just a minor fit. I did get fined for driving the car, which was stupid, but I didn’t care. I had been there for Leah, which was more important than money. A week later we had another conversation about elves.“The elves sang to me again,” said Leah matter-of-factly.“OK.”“They told me to follow them into the forest,” she said as if it was the most normal thing in the world. She asked my advice: “Do you think I should next time they sing?”“Oh, Leah, don’t you remember the stories? Some elves are good, and some are bad. What if these are bad elves? They might hurt you.”“But they are good elves because they sing me lullabies.”“They might be tricking you.”“No.”“Yes.”“No.”“Yes. If you want to go to the forest, you have to let me come. And we can’t go in the nighttime.”“Why not?“The Boogeyman would get us, of course.”“Oh,” she said, believing me without argument, and it seemed as if we agreed with each other. The next morning Leah wasn’t in her bed, or anywhere else. I didn’t stop Mom from calling the police, but I knew where she was. It was a clearing in the forest we called it Fairy Hollow, and when we both were younger, we’d play there for hours. I ran faster than I had ever run before. Leah was there on the ground. She looked like she was asleep, but when I went and put her head on my lap, she was stiff and stone cold. I went to the forest a week later, because I just needed to get out, out of the house without Leah, out of my life without Leah. I felt like going to where she died would make me feel different, resolved, and sure she was gone. I wasn’t really sure, I just knew I needed to. Like it was something I could do to reverse it, all my pretty stories that I had spun, lying like the Pied Piper, leading her to her death. I came to the clearing, and the weird thing was that there were flowers everywhere. I had been there a week ago, and there were no flowers. But there were roses, lilies, daffodils, baby’s breath, jasmine and a million others, covering the entire clearing. It smelled amazing. It covered all the death and ugliness and sadness in a rainbow coat. I had no idea who had done it. I sat down and cried and picked some flowers and ripped them up because I was feeling so strange. This was so weird. How would anybody know where she died? I was the only one that knew anything. Even though the flowers were a show of respect, I guess, I didn’t like it at all. It was as if someone else had loved Leah, and that was strange to me for reasons I wasn’t aware of. But really, I knew who it was. I was just kidding myself. The elves had sung to her, and she went to them, and had a fit out in the clearing. The elves had sang her last song. I pulled out a piece of paper and a pen and wrote, ‘are you real?’ I left it at the foot of a tree. The next day it was gone, and so were all the flowers but one. An oleander. I looked up its meaning on the internet: ‘Beware.’ I burned all my fairy tale books in Fairy Hollow, but it didn’t make any difference. I hated myself. I hated myself for telling Leah about the elves, and now I hate myself even more because they weren’t stories, they were real. If I ever come across an elf, I’ll kill it just for being real. Sometimes, when I feel scared or alone, I can just barely hear them singing a lullaby to me. And I’m going to keep on muffling my ears with my pillow, because maybe if I can’t hear them, they won’t be real anymore. I’m going to keep lying to myself, because from what I can tell, everything I thought was fake is real now. And I hate it.
