The Saga of Grammy Lisa: “Good Witch” and Hearer of the Unheard
Pixies and Tomten and Wards, Oh My!
Season 1, Installment 3
Damien turned from the sink at Lisa’s startled squeak, concerned, “Are you ok?”
She nodded, still bent over to get the milk, frantically trying to figure out what to do. Deciding quickly, Lisa took the milk out and closed the door to the fridge, careful to prevent Damien from seeing the little creature. “Yah, I’m fine. Just got startled. Can you get Severin in the high chair, please?” She just was not ready to try to explain this to anyone since she didn’t even understand it herself yet.
Luckily her husband wasn’t curious enough to poke at it and went about the complicated process of getting the squirmy toddler in full octopus mode safely strapped into the old, but carefully maintained high chair in the dining room. Lisa tried to calm her breathing as she poured the milk and then gingerly opened the refrigerator to put it away, nervous at what she might find.
Sitting on the shelf between steamed broccoli in glassware and a slightly open package of blueberries was a tiny, fully formed human with dragonfly wings dressed in something akin to steampunk or goth style, but made out of bits and pieces that you might find around a yard, like cobwebs, moss, and shreds of bark. Her blond hair was short and tousled with a slightly wilted daisy, nearly the size of her head, stuck off-center on top of it. She was currently munching on a blueberry, holding it with two hands like a softball.
As the refrigerator door opened, the tiny creature jumped up and tossed the entire rest of the blueberry into her mouth (quite a feat that involved her seemingly unhinging her jaw like a snake and left Lisa watching the blueberry dramatically, but effortlessly, bulge down the creature’s throat as she swallowed) before letting out a delicate burp that she covered with her hand. “Excuse me!” Lisa heard in her mind, the voice sounding strangely like windchimes. “Didn’t know when you’d be back so I grabbed a snack. I’ve been trying to get your attention for days! When the crows said you heard them and today I saw you talking with the pets I figured it was time to try something more obvious.”
Lisa was at a loss. If she replied Damien would hear her. She was surprised he couldn’t hear the creature now. She wasn’t particularly quiet considering her size. Lisa felt Charlie’s head bump against her calf, and in her mind she heard him reassure her, “He can’t hear us, just you and Severin. He’s too old, remember? If you want to talk with that pixie,” the word dripped with distaste, “after dinner might be a better time. And if you think loudly enough we will hear you. Which, by the way, is something we really need to work on. Leaving the property with you so,” he paused, searching for the right word, “...open would be a very bad idea.”
Nodding, she carefully thought as loudly as she could, “Ok, after dinner then?”
Charlie flinched and the little creature covered her ears, wincing dramatically, “Not so loud!” the windchime voice echoed urgently with Charlie’s in her mind.
Lowering her thought volume, pondering aside at that actually being a thing, she tried again, “Is this better?”
The pixie relaxed and nodded, “Yes, much! I’ll find you later,” before fearlessly jumping off the fridge shelf and flying out into the living room. For all of her fearlessness, Lisa noticed she was quite careful to stay out of the reach of the cats.
Dinner conversation was mundanely focused on Severin’s antics and Damien’s work, although it was hard for Lisa to keep her anxiety in check. She was sure what she was experiencing was real, but how on earth could she manage to explain it to Damien or the kids? And what on earth did that pixie in the fridge want with her? The way she had swallowed that blueberry whole like a snake had freaked Lisa out something fierce and Charlie didn’t seem pleased with the creature, or maybe it was just pixies in general, she wasn’t sure. At least it felt safe and natural to trust Charlie which had become a lifeline for her in just a few hours.
“Are you doing ok? You seem distracted tonight,” Damien asked gently as she was cleaning Severin up from dinner so he would be ready to go when Rosemary got there.
She smiled at his concern. He always took such good care of her. “It’s just been a long day. I’m fine.” It was true, but missing so many details that she wished she knew how to tell him.
Damien smiled back and gave her a hug just as Rosie showed up, a perfectly timed distraction. By the time their daughter had left with Severin, Lisa’s distraction during dinner was forgotten and Damien wound up lost in his favorite video game like he did every night.
Once Lisa was settled on the couch with Charlie purring in her lap, Barnum softly snoring with his head on her foot and the TV on a true crime show for background noise, it didn’t take long for their uninvited guest to reappear. Flitting in from the hallway, she alighted on the top shelf of the bookcase by the couch, feet dangling in thin air, leaning forward a bit to look down at the human, and safely out of easy reach of the cats.
Lisa glanced surreptitiously at Damien, but he was engrossed in his game trying to figure out a traffic snarl in the city he was building. She thought quietly at the pixie, so quietly Barnum didn’t even stir, “He can’t hear you, but can he see you? He can see Charlie.”
Charlie answered as the pixie was opening her mouth to respond. She glared at the cat as he explained, “If he turned and looked unexpectedly, yes, he might see her if she didn’t hide quickly enough, but his mind would interpret her as a figurine or knick-knack as long as she stayed still. The human brain is very determined to only see what it understands. You’ve seen those studies where they have a man walk across the screen in a gorilla suit and no one notices because they are too busy focusing on what else is going on. It’s basically the same thing. In fact magic, in general, tends to work that way.”
Lisa understood the first part well enough, but not the bit about magic. ”Um, what do you mean magic works that way?” she thought at him. As a sudden afterthought, she added, “And why when you talk about magic do you keep bringing up scientific studies?”
The pixie cleared her throat with annoyance, sounding a bit like a bell being dropped. “Excuse me, but this has nothing to do with what I need to talk to you about.”
Lisa blinked and nodded, reorienting herself, manners kicking in even if the pixie was lacking in them. “Sorry! First off, what’s your name? I’m Lisa.”
With an overly dramatic roll of her eyes, the pixie responded impatiently, “Of course I know you are Grammy Lisa. I live here and I hear the tiny human name you that all the time.” She jumped up to stand on the top of the bookshelf, “You have already named me, but since you are insisting on standing on formalities, I am Gremlin,” she said with a flourish and a picture-perfect curtsey.
Lisa was already lost. “Wait, what? I’ve already named you? Gremlin seems like an odd name for someone like you.” It struck her suddenly, the creature said she lived in Lisa’s home and whenever things went missing for no reason around the house Lisa had always jokingly blamed it on a gremlin. “Are you the reason things go missing around here?”
“Ding, ding! The human gets it!” As an aside to Charlie, “They do get slower on the uptake with age don’t they?” The cat didn’t deign to reply.
“But don’t you have an actual name?” Lisa asked in confusion.
Looking more than a touch hurt she replied, “You know me as Gremlin so to you I am Gremlin. My common name is Dandy if you must. Isn’t Gremlin a good enough name?”
Charlie jumped in to salvage things before Lisa unknowingly committed another faux pas, “As I said earlier names have power. She is afraid you might take that name away.”
Starting to feel a bit put upon herself, but taking his cue Lisa responded, “Gremlin is just fine and so is Dandy. I am not trying to offend, I didn’t even know cats could talk or magic existed six hours ago so please be patient with me.”
The pixie threw a confirming glance at Charlie who nodded. Gremlin’s eyes grew as wide as saucers in her face (literally, it was disturbing to watch) before she got herself under control. “Well, that does explain things! I knew you couldn’t hear us until recently, but I had no idea you didn’t remember anything. That could make things more complicated.”
“If you are not going to allow me to explain things to my human, then you probably should at least explain why you chose now to make a fuss, creature,” Charlie’s patience seemed very thin when it came to pixies, or at least Gremlin specifically.
The delicate creature sighed and seemed to deflate, slumping back down to sit criss-cross applesauce. Lisa half expected her to go flying around the room like a deflating balloon instead of sitting, she was so cartoonishly expressive. Gremlin ordered her thoughts and explained bluntly, more to Charlie than to Lisa, “The wards are no longer strong enough. The tomten are being drained.”
That got Charlie’s attention instantly, “Drained? Why are you the one telling us this? Why haven’t they come forward?”
“When was the last time you saw a tomten?” was her snippy reply. “Their whole schtick is hiding and keeping to themselves.”
As the child of an immigrant, Lisa knew tomten were Scandinavian house spirits, that look an awful lot like garden gnomes and do tasks around the house under cover of night. She interrupted, trying to keep up with the conversation the best she could, “But then why would they tell you?”
A dark shadow passed over Gremlin’s face and she tried to repress a shudder, “They didn’t. I found a drained one.”
A bit of compassion for the pixie leaked through in Charlie’s response, “I am so sorry. You didn’t get too close?”
Gremlin jumped back up indignantly, “Of course not! I might be a pixie, but I’m not stupid! They must have kicked him out for their own safety. I found him wandering the yard in broad daylight. I’ve kept track of his location since then. Luckily for him, but not so much for the rest of us, even in that state part of him knows enough to not pass the wards.”
“Wards? Wait, do you mean the wards I placed around the property?” Lisa asked incredulously. Pagan energy work was one of her “things” and she had very detailed and extensive wards placed not just around her house, but around the entire property.
“Well, of course! What other wards would I be talking about? If there were any others you’d know,” Gremlin paused and asked nervously, beseechingly even, obviously wanting reassurance, “You would, wouldn’t you?”
Lisa had no idea how to respond.
Season 1, Installment 4
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