Free On Agate Hill by Lee Smith Page B

the ground and fast.
    Mary White likes poetry too, I said. We are memorizing Wyncken, Blynken, and Nod right now. So does Uncle Junius, I said, not entirely for spite remembering all of a sudden how he used to stride up and down the parlor reading Robert Burns My love is like a red red rose thats newly sprung in June, and Tam O Shanter and My hearts in the highlands wherever I go. I cannot imagine him doing this now.
    Aunt Cecelia looked at me and pushed her face together. Go change your shoes, she said. Virgil is down there with the wagon, we are leaving now!

August 17, 1872
    Dear Diary,
    Now we have seen a magic lantern! Which showed a running horse. And eaten snow pudding from cut glass bowls while a little negro boy waved a fan over the table to keep off the flies. Then walked through the streets with two sissy daughters while the big town clock struck three. Aunt Cecelia fell asleep in the wagon and snored all the way home while Mary White and I played Twenty Questions. I was Pandora and Annabelle Lee.
    Once here we ran to the Willow House, we were so glad to be back. We would HATE to be town girls!
    Oh yes. We have found another Fairy Ring in the Big Woods on the way to Mama Marie and Aunt Mittys house.
    Do I want to be taken off by a demon lover, like Madeline gliding past the sleeping dragons with Porphyro to his home oer the southern moors across the fairy sea? Or do I want to BE one, like the snaky Lamia or La Belle Dame Sans Merci who walks by the withered sage where no birds sing?
    This is a hard decision.

October 19, 1872
    Dear Diary,
    Fall is here with a chill in the air and Mary White lies very sick. I know why but can not tell it. Four nights ago was another full moon and so we went to see the fairies hunting as we had tried to do twice before. You only get three tries , Mary White said. She knows all the fairy rules.
    The first time we went it was July, hot and stormy with more and more dark clouds sailing across the moon and sure enough it started thundering when we came to the path. We got back to Agate Hill just as the first fat drops started landing all around us in the lane. Luckily little Junius had not woke up as he sometimes does when it thunders, so we crept back to bed and watched the storm from our window up under the eaves. We love the lightning.
    The second time, fairy conditions were perfect. A hot still August night, and we went early. We sat on our rocks like rocks ourselves while the silver light came down through the leaves and shone on the water.
    But then I heard something back in the woods. Mary White do you hear that? I asked.
    Hush, I see them, they are coming! she whispered.
    I strained my eyes at the silver pool but saw nothing. Then the noise in the woods got louder, branches crackling and a dog barking furiously, until here came three deer pursued by a big black dog. They all jumped across the stream, their white tails flashing, to disappear as fast as they had come.
    Oh damn it! Mary White said. Now the fairies are gone too.
    So last night was our last try.
    I had stayed awake watching a big yellow moon rise up over the river hills, then when it hung like a lantern in the sky and the whole house was deathly quiet I poked Mary White. Mary White! I said. She lay on her side in deep sleep clutching Robert E. Lee. Mary White!
    She sat up like a jack in the box. Oh is it time? And I said it was, and we pulled on our shirts and jackets and bloomers and tiptoed past little Junius and headed out barefoot as always into the heavy dew.
    Oh its cold, isnt it? Mary White said as our feet sank into the grass.
    We better go back for our shoes, I said.
    But she shook her head and said, Its too late. We had best not risk it. Mary White talks in an old fashioned way when ever she talks about the fairies, it is almost like a fairy language. So on we went down the lane holding hands with the moon so bright it cast shadows behind us three times taller than we are.
    Look we are giants! she said, and I