The May Queen
© 2007 Michelle Tocher, used by permission
[Images:"Thumbelina the Seamstress" by Arthur Rackham, 1932; "Thumbelina and the Spiders" by Margaret Tarrant, 1910; "Thumbelina and the Leaf Flag" by Charles Robinson 1911; "Thumbelina has to Spin" by H.J. Ford 1894]

4

Cora
Monday, May 15

What day is it? Monday. Moonday my mother would say in her thick German burr. I haven't removed my eye blind since Saturday. Now that I do, I see it's dark in the bedroom. There's moonlight coming in through the window, projecting a pattern of lace on the wall. Wherever I see lace, or frost, I see Mother. Mother's here.

I have no intention of getting out of bed. Actually, it's not a matter of will. I can't lift my weight. Neither I nor anything in my flesh knows how to deal with this solid mass that sits on my chest. I know what I should do. I should go on with life if everything is normal. Finish getting my plants in the garden. Make some soup. Feed Gerald. Let Molly get used to the truth. Live with her anger. Her questions. Her distance. Her departure.

But my mind is not willing and my flesh is weak. No cooperation is going to come from this body. It's hung out a sign: Do not disturb the beast.

I've never been like this before. I've always been so cheerful; water off a duck's back. I've got the gift of being able to ignore things, take what I don't want to hear and stash it away. What was that cruel thing she said? Beats me. Didn't register a word. Just put it in the cellar next to the beets, and all those other things I don't let get to me. Can it.

The door opens. I expect it's Gerald. He's been checking up on me, waiting on me, bringing me soup and canned fruit that I slurp without seeing. My body wants to eat. I don't. Gerald is waiting it out. He does that well, in his Indian way, though his step has gotten heavier on the stair.

But it's not Gerald who cracks open the door. It's his aunt Renata, otherwise known as White Snake. She's got to be eighty by now. She sticks her round, pocked face into the room and peers at me with her bright black eyes. She's missing half of one of her front teeth and she looks like a kid with those long grey braids hanging down under a purple bandana. Her medicine pouch swings between two long breasts. She shakes her turtle rattle, not waiting for an invitation, and moves into the room.

So Gerald has pulled in his medicine woman. He only does that when we're in over our heads. She looks merry enough, but when she's got that rattle in hand, she can be poisonous. I've only seen her a few times since Molly was conceived, back in 1971. Let's just say I don't make a habit of inviting her over for the ladies' tea.

Gerald is moving around in the hallway, but he doesn't come in. Renata feels her way through the shadows, and drags a chair to the side of the bed. I should be ashamed of myself lying here like an invalid. It's not like me to be dramatic — that's May's department.

White Snake sits and stares at the lace moonlight on the opposite wall. Starts singing in a low tone, shaking her rattle.

Then she stops.

Silence.

More silence.

I have nothing to say. The darkness has stunned me, swallowed me up. Let her try and pry me out.

"How long are you plannin' to stay in the dark?" she barks.

"I don't know. Until I can get up."

"Hhhmph. Well, it's no wonder you can't get your carcass out of bed, Mrs.-Bright-and-Sunny-Every-Damn-Day. Looks to me like the sun finally came down on your head."

I don't know what the hell she's talking about. My instinct is to go deaf on her. Can it. Stash it. Beat it.

"You probably need weeks — no, months — no, maybe years to catch up on your darkness. From the first time I met you, Cora, you were turning yourself inside out to keep everything light."

Here we go. Bring it on, White Snake. I've got lots of empty jars left that you can put that shit into.

"You hear what I'm sayin', Cora? Because I don't intend to beat around the bush."

More beets.

"You're a big pretender. Oh, yes, you are. Don't you deny me. I've been watching you for a long time. Now your big secret's out and everybody knows Molly isn't your own seed. You should never have tried to put a lid on something that big."

Now she's starting to get to me.

"But you did and now you're gonna have all kinds of shit flyin' out at you, 'cause all the lids are comin' off everything. You don't want to see that shit. So you hole yourself up in here. Maybe, you think, if you put a lid on yourself, nobody will be able to find you. But that's just plain stupid 'cause—"

"Shut up, you stupid bitch!" I yell. "Shut up and get the hell out of my room! You have no idea what it's been like for me raising a child who was never mine, and having a sister who is so fucking glamorous that she threw me into a shadow whenever she walked into the room! And doesn't she just love to rub my nose in it! You think I don't know darkness? Then you don't know shit!

"There now, that brought some color to your cheeks," says White Snake, slapping her thighs in triumph. "Now come on — there are some people I want you to meet. Pack an overnight bag. The car's waiting."

Miraculously, I rise.

I'm in the back seat of a car that's not mine. I have no idea where we're going. We left the city an hour ago. Gerald is sitting beside me with his hand over mine. He's got it resting on his left thigh. I can feel his hard muscle underneath his jeans.

He's not saying anything about where we're headed and I'm not asking. Renata is sitting in the passenger seat with her eyes closed. A woman who could be related is driving the car. We weren't introduced.

Gerald's got all sorts of family I don't know about and I don't ask. Whether or not they're blood relations is neither here nor there. They're all Indians and Indians have their own ways. I learned long ago to let them have their secrets, their ceremonies and rituals. I don't involve myself unless they involve me. What's important to me is that Gerald is with me and he always has been from the day we met in Winnipeg when he was working with his brothers on the house next door.

In times of need, Gerald's extended family tends to show up. They come out of the woodwork. It started a long time ago, when the boys were in their teens. They helped one another to build their houses and barns, and to fix things that were broken. They traveled in a pack, those boys. When Gerald and I moved to Toronto, everybody followed, wives and children included.

Now where are we going? That's what I'd like to know. Maybe Gerald and his relations plan to dump me off at the side of the road. They've had enough of me. Well, maybe I'm done with them, too.

May was not ever supposed to reveal the circumstances surrounding Molly's conception. Why the hell did she do it now?

Gerald was never in favor of the scheme. May couldn't care less one way or the other. "I'm doing this for you, Cora," she said. "You tell me what you want and I'll deliver it!" Like she was the goddamned Fairy Queen. She had no emotional connection, seemingly, to either Gerald or the baby.

Gerald squeezes my hand. Does he know what I'm thinking? Does he know where my thoughts are headed? Is he reassuring me, or trying to redirect me? I can see the red flags waving. Here Be Dragons. Whatever you do, Cora, don't be thinking of the wedding night. Why do I insist on calling the night of Molly's conception the wedding night? Because it was the night that followed the vow, that's why.

The vow that Gerald, May and I made. We agreed in writing that we would never tell the child the secret of her origins. We signed the paper by drawing blood and stamping it with our own thumbprints. That ritual was my idea, my way of claiming the child and warding off any future interference from May.

We had the ceremony out in the backyard, in the center of my herb garden. We put the paper in an envelope, folded it three times, buried it in a hole, and covered it over with earth. I always dig around the hole, but I've never dug the paper up. I thought about putting a fountain over the site but the earth refused. "Don't put anything on me," the soil seemed to say. To this day, there is nothing there but a bald spot, a barren patch of earth.

When we patted the ground with our six hands, we left them there for a moment while Gerald prayed. "May the child never need to know the secrets we have kept. May the child be content." Then he closed his eyes and he prayed some more. I never knew what he added, but I know now. He said: "Let the secret come out when the time is ripe. Great Spirits of the Earth, Air, Fire and Water, let the secret be a seed. Let this burial lead to a rebirth."

The hotel was booked for that very night. I arranged it myself. And then I burrowed deep into the earth.

The car turns off the highway. We head down winding roads and then we pull into a long tree-lined drive that leads to a farmhouse. It sits on a bit of a rise, hiding behind two big sugar maples and a few scruffy Manitobas, but in the rear it's exposed to fields and hills and a clear, starlit sky. Somebody's got a fire going out back.

"It just so happens," says Renata, getting out of the car, "that we're having a meeting of the Crones tonight. Gerald and Miriam, you can go into the house. Cora, you come with me. And call me White Snake from here on out."

The next thing I know I'm sitting around a campfire on a cheap lawn chair, wrapped in a Hudson's Bay blanket along with five other women who are over 60. They're passing around a bowl of Nuts 'n Bolts and taking swigs from a large thermos that is also making the rounds. "What's in it?" I ask White Snake.

"Chai," she says, "With a few special roots."

"Like what?" I ask.

"Orchid," she says. "Good for the genitalia."

The other women laugh. They're all wearing headgear. The one to my left is sporting a fisherman's hat and smoking an Export A. She's got a long horsy face and she hacks when she laughs. She's introduced to me as Mabel the Fable, which makes me wince because Mabel was the name of my younger sister who died in her crib. Beside her is a small-boned woman swaddled in blankets and shawls. She peers out at me like a child in a bassinet and grins wickedly like she can't wait to see the tricks that are going to be played on me. Jesus Christ it's like the spirit of Mabel is actually here. The woman beside her is wearing a triangular red kerchief that is standing straight up on her head and making her look like a garden gnome. Next to her, between me and White Snake, is a fleshy person with big lips and round eyes. If her skin were green I'd call her a toad.

I must be dreaming. I wouldn't write any of these characters into one of my books. Nobody would believe me, least of all teenagers who haven't seen how weird life can get. Wait — I'm missing stuff. "What did you say their names were?" I ask White Snake. Mabel the Fable, the little one is Priscilla the Pea, the gnome beside her is Nia Niece, and the toad is Glory Bee. Now they want to know my name.

"Cora Underwood," I say.

"Jeez, how did you come up with a name like that?" Nia Niece beams at me with her bright red cheeks and her unwrinkled skin. You can buy one of those gnomes down at Walmart for $19.99.

"I didn't come up with it. It's my husband's name."

"Wow." She raises her right hand. "Hail, Core, Queen of the Underwood."

"Hail!" the others echo.

I have no idea what they're on about.

Silence falls on the group. They stare at me as if I'm the stupidest person on earth. It dawns on me that Core is the Latin name for Persephone, Queen of the Underworld. Holy Mary Mother of God, do you need to know mythology to be in this tribe?

I decide to turn the tables on the garden gnome. "Why are you called Nia Niece?"

"Nia is my niece's name," she says, blinking her startled eyes. "She's the dancer I should have been. The more I think about her, the more I eat."

"Nia will change her name when she moves on," grunts White Snake. She continues. "The Crones meet every Monday that falls on a phase of the moon. This is the first quarter, and it just so happens there are three moon days this May. Kind of a special month. We're glad you're here, Cora. There's nothing we like better than fresh blood."

I look at her aghast. "Blood?"

"The Crones want to hear your story!" Nia exclaims.

"Huh?"

"The story that's in your blood," peeps Priscilla the Pea. (Is she sweet? I think not.)

"Starting from where?"

"From the beginning," says White Snake.

"You mean, from when I was born?"

"No," grunts Glory Bee. "We don't what to hear all that crap."

"Tell us a real story," says Mabel the Fable, hacking and adjusting her tackle hat.

"Yeah, like a fairy tale!" chirps the garden gnome.

"I don't know any fucking fairy tales," I snap.

"Oh, yes you do," says White Snake.

I turn to the old woman. "Do not even mention Thumbelina."

"That's the one," says White Snake, taking a swig from the thermos.

"That's not my story! It's May's story and she thrust it on Molly and me — Christ, Renata, you know that I'm not gonna go there."

"That's the only place to go," says White Snake. "The story you avoid is the only one worth telling to the Crones."

"We wanna know what bit you in the butt," croaks Glory Bee.

"Just tell it," whines Priscilla from her bassinet.

White Snake shakes her rattle. "How does it start now? Lemme see ...There was a woman who wished for a child ..."

"No!"

"Nooooooooooo!" they howl. "Owooooooooooooow-ow-ow-ow-woooo!" they bay at the quarter moon. The wolves answer back from the high hills. And so the tale begins.

May
Monday, May 16

It's a quarter after one in the morning, according to the kitchen wall clock. It would seem that the meaning of time departs before time actually stops. I sit here at my glass table, staring at my reflection. I'm experiencing too much discomfort to sleep. I pretend to be fearless, but I'm not. And yet, while there is no doubt that I'm headed downward, I am quivering with excitement. Reality is even quirkier than I thought. It's all inside out and upside down and the path of descent is really an upward trail to the sun.

You might say I lived the first half of my life on moon time. I just flew around doing everything I could possibly think of — never finding my soul. There was no place to settle, and besides, I had no right to settle. I stole my sister Mabel's pelt and came in under false premises. I grabbed love and paid the price. Broken heart. Short life.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. But I could no more have my prince than the little mermaid could marry the man she saved. He was all caught up with another girl. Andersen knew the plight of fairies in this world. They begin, like the mermaids and selkies, in the sea, wild and carefree. But when they leave their skins on the beach to join the human race, they find themselves perpetually on the outside. And God forbid that they should be beautiful, childless or unattached. There has never been any way for someone like me to get in through the door. Not that I have ever wanted to belong. I never wanted the kind of settled life that Gerald and Cora have with their lovely changeling. Now isn't that a great big fat lie. I'm starved for warmth and intimacy. It's broken my heart being on the outside. I've clung to the story that I don't belong on this planet. Why? Because it has allowed me to fly around and take up as much space as I damn well please.

But I want to know the truth that lies under the story I've told to survive. I'm getting down to something. It's not altogether terrible. The Lord of the Underworld waits for me at the bottom of the sea. Come on down, May, he's saying. Take off your clothes. Come to bed. Lie with me.

I'm not fighting Death.

I feel compelled to get up. The atmosphere is shimmering. There's something alive in the air. I go over to my bookshelf. The two lower shelves hold children's picture books. I have to wedge myself in behind the sofa and push it away to get at them. I slide down the back of the couch.

My storybooks run the full length of the wall. Molly has never seen most of them. They're just for me. I've got lots of old fairy tales — Andersen and the Grimm brothers are my favorite although Japanese fairy tales have a lot of magic in them and some French fairy tales, too, only they were overly adorned by the salon ladies. I like the old magic, tried and true, tales that don't require lavish fairy godmothers to turn pumpkins into coaches (although the French have a flair for style — I can't deny that.) But in all that wand-waving, they failed to recognize that a pumpkin can only become a coach because it's a coach by nature. A godmother's magic is to know the hidden essence of things, and turn things into what they really are. As I told that lovely young man who was hidden behind the folds of his initials — I specialize in disenchantment.

My stomach is fluttering as I sit in front of the bookcase. I took some pain killers awhile ago (can't remember how many) and they're chipping off the sharp edges of the stone in my belly. I gaze at the books, the sedimentary layers of my life. Travel and geography on top. Shamanism and ancient history underneath, supported by poetry and literature (I don't much like the word fiction). Biography lies under literature-reflecting my recent quest for interesting life stories. Alas, it seems the more popular someone becomes, the more boring the biography. I now prefer memoirs of ordinary people who are truly strange.

Finally, running along the two bottom shelves, I behold my coral reef of fairy tales. The best fairy tales haven't yet made it into the picture books because people don't understand them. It's going to take time for us to embrace the full cast of characters that make us human. I've never had any trouble understanding fairy tales. I've had much more trouble understanding why humans don't.

The sinking has begun. There's a god under the waves, down there under the sedimentary layers of my life. I lean against the back of the crimson leather sofa and pull an afghan down from its broad shoulder. It's crocheted in a snowflake pattern, in fibers of ivory, red and black silk. My Italian friend Marisa made it for me when I was pregnant with Molly. She named it The Queen's Shawl after Snow White's mother who wished for a baby girl with hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow and cheeks as red as blood. I got that wish. Only Molly couldn't be mine, and Snow White's mother died.

The air is breathing, or is it water? I'm on a deep sea dive. Dying will be my ultimate scuba experience. That's why I'm called to Hawaii, to that lovely kahuna, to peel off the stories of my life.

My eye falls on a little book of Thumbelina postcards I bought at least a dozen years ago. I never gave them to Molly. I thought, enough with Thumbelina, it's become a fixation. She was in her twenties, for godsake. It was time to pack up childish things. She had begun to look at me suspiciously, as if to say, What's your angle, May? Stop calling me Mole. Took her a dozen years to confront me. Good for her, I say.

I pull out the cards and stare at the cover. A picture of Thumbelina all wrapped up in her flower.

Postcards from the place where it all comes to rest.

"Release her," I hear the King of the Underworld say.

Molly
Monday May 16

I got up this morning full of resolve. I'm not going to stuff the hole in my heart with some guy. I need to find my own happiness on this earth and stop looking to find it through someone else. My whole rib cage is aching, though. My heart got all swelled up with the dream of being with Eric and now it's a shriveled thing, leaking air.

I don't want to think about him any more; then is then and now is now, and I've got other things to do. I'm making a list.

I'm going to take a course in creative writing.

I'm going to become a vegetarian.

I'm going to learn to cook (vegetarian).

I'm going to take a trip somewhere sunny and warm, in the fall, after the newsletter has been put to bed.

I've already done the summer issue. I'm working on the fall. It's exciting — I'm creating a whole new direction for the newsletter. I met with Sharon today and presented my ideas in the boardroom. Walter, the hospital's graphic artist, helped me do the layouts and I spread them out over the table. Sharon, who is almost as tiny as I am (neither of us has cleared five feet but she's a redheaded Aries with a surgical wit) was impressed. Sharon cuts to the chase— it's all about outcomes with her. "What's your vision? What will be the impact?" Once she decides that something can fly, she takes her hands off it. She trusts me to write, direct and produce this newsletter and she recently increased the budget (and my salary!) to reflect a rise in readership.

So, to my idea. A new look, more of a magazine format. A color cover and cartoons for levity. She loved the approach. The new magazine will have more humor, more life stories, more color, and it will be presented in themes.

"So what's the fall theme?" she asked after we'd poured over the plan.

I drew out a mock-up for the fall cover. An impressionist painting of a glittering, sunlit pond.

"Palliative care," I said.

"You're going to introduce the new format with palliative care?"

"Why not? It says it all — we're going to new depths. It's not just about technology anymore. It's about people and their lives and how technology and medicine serve them."

"Gotcha. Brilliant," she said. She checked her watch. "Yikes — I've got to go."

I gave her my list of editorial ideas, but she was already on board and out the door.

I cycled home feeling great. I don't need a man in my life. I've got a fabulous career. I may have a complicated mess for a family but my work keeps me focused. I don't have to think about anything else.

That's grand.

Worth celebrating, in fact. When I got home, I called my friend Sandra to see if she wanted to go and have a beer. But she wasn't home. I've got to expand my social circle. Something else to put on my list of things to do while I'm busy building my life.

At 10:15 in the evening, the phone rings. It's Dad.

"Hi, Moll," he says. He sounds different.

"Where are you?" There's static on the line.

"In the country. We're staying overnight out here." He gives me the number so I'll know where they are. Then there's a pause, and he says, "Molly, what ear are you listening with?"

Dad's a funny guy. He doesn't speak often, but when he does you don't always know what he's driving at.

"My left one."

"Okay. Now put the phone to your other ear."

I follow orders, but I don't hear too well out of my right ear. What is he testing my hearing for?

"You got it on your other ear?"

"Yeah. What's this about, Dad?"

"See, now you got two mothers, Molly. One for each ear."

If he were anybody else, I'd ask him if he'd been drinking. But Dad doesn't drink. He once said Indians are spooky enough —' they don't need any more spirits in them than what they've already got.

"I thought I'd call and tell you that because you'll no doubt be hearing more from both of them. And it wouldn't be a bad idea to open your ears."

"Right, Dad. Thanks." My tone is flat. If he wants me to open my ears, he should have started talking to me a long time ago. "See ya."

As I put the phone down, I suddenly remember the dream I had last night. I was standing on a beach. The ocean had thrown up a pink and ivory spiral shell. I picked it up and I put it to my left ear, hoping to hear the surf. Nothing. Then I noticed another spiral shell by my right foot, polished, brown, and speckled. I put it to my right ear and listened to them at the same time. Then I could distinctly hear the waves pounding on the shore. And the sea was speaking:

Now hear,

Now hear,

Now hear.

That's weird. Especially considering that the thing that bugs me most about my meeting with Eric is how the cardinal out-sang me — and I didn't even know its name.

Cora
Monday, May 16

The wolves have stopped howling and they've given me the floor. The fire rages before me: cracking, hissing, spitting.

No one understands me and I don't seem to be able to make myself understood. It was the same with my mother. She made all that delicate lace for what? To wrap herself up in her coffin. The world had gone beyond lace.

There's so much more to me than May's stupid little story of Thumbelina, which she used deliberately to needle her way into Molly's heart and undermine our bond. But while we're on the subject, there's more than one version to the story and I've got mine. So maybe it really is time to tell it. I've been hijacked and taken off-planet to this bizarre place, so why not enjoy the ride. Five weird old faces are looking back at me through the fire, waiting for me to speak, completely willing to hear whatever I say. I suspect they'll challenge me. Well, bring it on, I say. I'm not afraid of wolves.

"Well, come on now," the toad croaks. "We haven't got all night."

They laugh boisterously. I guess they do.

"You wanna hear my version of Thumbelina? Okay, I'll tell you. But don't you start thinking it's a story about a poor barren woman who goes to a witch asking for some remedy for her infertility."

"It's hard not to," says White Snake plainly. "We know all about May giving you the baby."

"I'm telling you, that's not my story! My story has to do with the mouse who lived in the field and stored up her barleycorn to survive the harsh winters. She understood what goes into making good seed and probably provided the witch with her barleycorn in the first place. That mouse worked her little fingers to the bone making beauty for a world that had lost its sensitivity and wouldn't recognize a delicate thing if it bashed into it."

"Who are we talking about, exactly?" Mabel the fisherwoman inquires, extracting a cigarette from her pouch of Export A's.

"We're talking about my mother. She was that field mouse. She and my grandmother made the finest lace in Belgium. Lacemakers are a special breed, you know. They're private and they don't need to make a big deal of their skills, but you ought to see them at work. They can take any old rag, pull it apart and make it into something so beautiful it would take your breath away.

"But I'll tell you something. When Antwerp fell in 1914 and my grandmother saw her husband, sons, brothers, and friends shot before her very eyes, she couldn't make anything beautiful out of that. She became a suffragette. Rode a bicycle to Amsterdam to join other women at the International Women's Congress of 1915. Those women made a declaration to the men of the world. They said: You men want to kill one another, fine. But we won't keep the home fires burning while you're out there blowing one another up for no good reason. Don't expect us to work in your factories and bandage the wounds and tell our sons to buck up. We won't do it!

"But of course it was futile. Nobody listened to women back then. After the wars, lace was good for one thing and one thing only — to cover things up. Like the snow on a grave. Silence the memories. Lace had become associated with pretty teas in parlors, and pretty ornamental figurines who never told the truth."

The women around the fire are silent. As well they ought to be. But then, Priscilla, that annoying little pea, pipes up: "What does that have to do with Thumbelina?"

"Be patient, for Christ's sake. Those homespun arts were important, you know. You think that little fairy child could fend for herself in the wild world? She tried. She made herself a shelter in the field, but when winter came and blew it away, she nearly froze to death. It was the mouse who gave her safety and shelter. She taught her to weave and spin and she hoped that the tiny girl would find a husband who would look after her so she could continue to make delicate things. Try to find a husband these days, who will put the virtues of beauty over the vices of war."

Well, you got a point there," says Nia, blinking hard. Apparently, even the gnome kingdom doesn't provide good husbands.

"Well, my mother thought she had found that kind of husband when she met my father. Charles Galloway was a dashing British fighter pilot. Mother met him in 1931, when she was working for a haberdashery in Brussels. He fell in love with her movie star good looks, and her passionate, outspoken nature. He managed to survive the Second World War, but after, he couldn't settle down. He'd come home, stay for a few months, and then fly away again. When I was ten, Mabel was born. My father was smitten. That baby was the only thing in the world that could ground him."

"Mabel, you say?" The fisherwoman starts hacking.

"You should stop smokin' those coffin sticks," Priscilla squeaks.

"Go on with the story," says White Snake. "We're getting to the interesting part."

"My father never had much interest in Dee and myself, but Mabel, oh well. I don't know what it was, but he rocked her in his arms and sang to her and said to my mother, "Elspeth, you outdid yourself. This one has wings! I'm going to teach her to fly." My mother would look up from her tatting and grin, proud as a post. Finally she gave him the child he wanted — and he would stay home. Well, it looked like he might."

Jeez Louise, I'd like to stop there, but White Snake is goading me on, nodding and tapping her moccasined feet.

"In 1948, my father moved us from Brussels to Canada, where we lived in a cold, clapboard house in Winnipeg, near the Red River. One morning a few months after we'd settled, he went to Mabel's cradle and found her lying there stiff and blue under her coverlet. He was devastated. He stayed for a few months, but couldn't face Christmas. He flew away — never to return. He never saw the child that followed a year later, the one my mother hoped would bring him back, the one she called May. When May didn't bring him back, my mother started calling her Mayfly, hoping she'd fly off.

"But May wasn't about to fly. She was determined to stay and grab what pleasure she could from life. My mother fell into a slump and started tatting her burial shroud. When May was six years old, Mother died of pneumonia. You want me to go on?"

"Yep," says White Snake like she can't wait to get where I'm headed.

"Well, you get the picture. Everybody's in mourning, and there is May, happy as a lark. Doesn't miss Momma-couldn't care less. Gets to have things just the way she wants. We hire a nanny for her named Polly Pringle who takes her off traveling like they're great friends. Compared to Dee and me, she had the perfect storybook childhood. Then, in her late teens, she meets some rich guy in Russia who gives her a small fortune so she never needs to work. And on top of all that, she's so blindingly glamorous you'd wish to hell her sun would set and never come up again!"

Now I have got the Crones' attention. They're gaping at me like baby birds hungry for their mother's goopy pre-digested food. I can't hold back, though I wish I could, because here the food is a little less well-digested, you might say, having to do with me and May and the surrogacy. The Crones know the basic story, but they don't know about the ceremony in the garden, and how we buried the secret. And how Gerald and May made Molly. So I tell them all that, and how May stole in every chance she could with her picture books and her inferences that Molly was living with boring old moles. Then, when I'm really on a roll, I get into Mayfly imitations.

"'Oh, but don't you worry, Molly Mole — you won't be a mole forever. You'll leave this hole just like Thumbelina did. You'll find your wings and become one of us — just you wait and see!'"

"She didn't really say that!" cries Priscilla the Pea, wide-eyed.

"You're damned right she did. I would take May into the kitchen and say, "May, you're supposed to keep a lid on it," and she would grin and cover her mouth and blush and say, "Oh, I'm sorry," and wink at Gerald like they were the actual husband and wife and I was the intruder. Over the years, Gerald became more and more quiet and introverted. One secret led to another which has led to a whole burial ground of secrets that have been kept from me."

"What I don't understand," says the garden gnome, leaning forward in her lawn chair, "is why you made the pact in the first place. Why not tell Molly about her roots? What's so bad about having two mothers?" It would take that sort of fool to put her finger on it.

"Because May and I are different — that's why. I could never compete with her. If Molly knew who her mother was, she'd never want me. Oh, don't look at me like I'm some kind of idiot. Molly only ever had eyes for May. I was Mom. I enforced rules and cleaned diapers and did homework while May flitted round the world. The brighter May got, the darker I became. That's just the way it went. All I asked her to do was keep her damned mouth shut. But she couldn't. You never give a limit to someone like May. She'll chip away at it until it gives, which is exactly what she's done — and now, I'm the evil one and my daughter will hate me forever! I've been completely taken over, don't you see? If I were to let out my real rage, I would sever all bonds!"

"But why did you do it in the first place?" the garden gnome persists. "Given what you've told us about May, pairing her with Gerald seems like the most foolish thing you could possibly have done."

"Yeah," says Priscilla from her bassinet. "Why not a clinic instead of a hotel room?"

"You can't properly conceive a baby in a clinic! Things have to be done the natural way! And anyway, stop asking me these stupid questions!"

"Sounds to me like you set your sister up," the toad grunts.

"Stole her light!" says the gnome.

"Nasty bit of business," pipes Priscilla the Pea.

Mabel the fisherwoman tilts her head and fixes me with a bloodshot eye. "Don't you know you can't pull the wings off a flyer?"

The lure on her hat flashes in the firelight. It's a cockchafer, for sure.

Michelle Tocher has been described as "an enchanting storyteller" with a deep understanding of fairy tales and their relevance to everyday life. Her books include How to Ride a Dragon: Women with Breast Cancer Tell Their Stories (Key Porter Books, 2002), and Brave Work: A Guide to the Hero's Journey at Work, which she co-wrote with Anna Simon. Formerly President of a Toronto communications company, she has spent nearly twenty years spinning yarns that demonstrate the power of the mythic imagination.. She recently finished her first novel, The May Queen. You can read more about Michelle Tocher at her website michelletocher.com