Author’s note: This is first installment of a Twisted Fairytale from my fifth short story compilation, Ugly: Twisted fairytales.
Not sure which one she took—there are too many doors on this wall. Ever since the day we found this little nook in this village a couple of years back, Nui had been burning with curiosity. We come here often to collect the occasional teeth from under the pillow and look at these doors, but not as often as Nui would like to. With people having fewer children, there are fewer teeth to collect.
Okay, just in case you are confused, we are tooth faeries. She is a four‑and‑a‑quarter‑inch Fighter and I am a five‑inch Spellman. We are a team and we collect teeth together. Why?
Because, to pry out broken teeth from under the pillow, I have to cast the spells to prop up the child, move the pillow, place the coin and grab the tooth and then place the pillow and child back in place. (Not sure why they don’t just keep the tooth on the side‑table. It would be so convenient for us.) So, while I am using all my concentration for the spells, Nui stands guard to look out for any pet animals and keep them at bay.
Cats are especially nasty—stealthy, vicious and quick. Once, when my partner was out sick (a serious case of bird flu—her wings kept twitching like hummingbird’s and her voice sounded like a crow’s), a cat sneaked up on me. I found myself inside the cat’s stomach and it’s not a pretty sight. I had to tickle its intestine so that it would spit me out. Later, I had to shower for almost an hour to take off the muck from my hair. So, you get the drift…
So, all tooth fairies work in pairs to avoid such situations.
Between her and me, we have fifty‑seven villages to cover. You would think that we would be dying of overwork. But children are getting so rare now that there aren’t enough teeth to go around. In fact, most of the tooth fairies are forced to take up smithery or animal‑guard roles for smaller beings, like rats (desperate times!). Most of the teeth forges are now going out of commission too.
For any novices out there, teeth forges are where new human teeth are forged on order. Every end of the day, we submit the acquired teeth at the teeth forge. The teeth smith takes the measurements and DNA print and then forges new teeth to replace the old ones. The old teeth are recycled, of course. A delivery elf, then, submits the new teeth to the Great Guy on the seventh cloud to be dispersed as needed. All that is beyond our job role, of course.
Anyway, Nui and I are best friends, even though it is rather difficult. She has an adventurous spirit and a knack for getting into dangerous situations—like the day she decided to adopt a lost pup. He’s a Great Dane who loves catching anything that flies too close. It took us a couple of weeks and several trips to its stomach before it learnt not to catch faeries.
Her boyfriend—another Fighter fairy—doesn’t approve of the Dane. On second thought, he doesn’t approve of me either. He thinks I’m hitting on her. Initially, I told him, “Mate, I gave up on the day we became partners 93 years back.”
I had made a move on her on the first day at work and she gave me a black eye. Ever since then, I’ve stuck to being friends. But I keep that piece of information to myself. No need to humiliate myself when he doesn’t believe me anyway.
Well, his loss! Every now and then, he tells her to dump me, and she gives him the black eye instead.
Nui is the reason for being a tooth fairy worth it—it gives us an excuse to stick together all day. I think the Great Guy on the seventh cloud knows about it too and, hence, he hasn’t changed our pairing in all these 93 years—a rarity in our field.
That’s why, I let her drag me to look at these doors every time we’re in the village. They are inside an old building that belonged to a bunch of humans named ‘Karpenters’ once upon a time. They used to build things out of wood here. But a couple of decades ago, when a fire crashed a couple of walls and the roof, they deserted the place. Now, they say the place is haunted and no one visits it anymore, which suits us just fine. Every time we have an assignment in this village, we sit here for hours and look at these magical wooden doors.
How are we so sure they are magical?
Well, why would anyone place so many doors on the same wall, unless they all lead to different places? Deductive reasoning, you see.
Also, they are all different colours and sizes—some of them too small for grown up humans—and all of them are well‑worn. Some of them have claw marks all over them (Werewolves?) while one looks severely burnt (Dragons?). Nui loves to contemplate about where each door would lead us. Many times, she has asked me to come with her so that we could enter them together. I’m curious too but not crazy enough to try. With magic, you could never be sure where they would take us.
Author’s note: To be continued…
If you would rather read it all together in the book, Ugly: Twisted fairytales is available for free download here: Link
Photo by Ranurte on Unsplash
Short Stories 