Losing Touch With the Ethereal Home World

The new strategy that the fairies came up with was to tell Raymond, the Wizard of England, to maintain a friendly and patient approach with Princess Stephanie who was still on Earth with its corrupt influence and dark hold on her heart. Raymond was instructed to do his best to monitor her and send back frequent reports to the higher world. He was still their only link to her and it was feared that she might cut him off as well if he tried to pressure her too much or threaten her to return home.

Meanwhile they would look for a suitable fairy candidate just in case it should be decided that one should be trained to descend to Earth in pursuit of the wayward princess, despite all the dangers that came with this. It was no ones’ fault that Princess Stephanie Goldmaracynthia Bell, the firstborn and heir to the Higher World Crown had ended up on Earth. She had been summoned by a practitioner of witchcraft.

Thérèse and Julian Sayer were the couple who had adopted the anonymous infant whom they named Carletta. They ran a children’s playgroup and that is where they found her one day. Simply abandoned. Searches for the identity of her real parents were unavailing because of course, they didn’t exist in this world. They thought about putting her into Foster care but in the end they arranged to legally keep and raise the child themselves. She developed into an adorable, though somewhat mysterious young girl – one who later became a clever thief, though one would never have guessed it, given her charm and innocent energy.

But the Sayers also had two other children, David and Jane. By the time Carletta was twelve, David was ten and Jane was two. Raymond seemed to be making progress with his letters to the wayward fairy and even convinced her to stop stealing. But it was when the family moved to the centre of London where they opened up another, larger playgroup that she stopped contacting Raymond. He eventually got hold of her new address and kept writing to her. His letters piled up but Carletta no longer even opened them. 

Sometimes she looked at herself in the mirror and thought, ‘why Stephanie? Why don’t you speak to that beautiful world? Why not learn to return there? You’re a Princess! What are you doing here on Earth?!’ Another, darker voice would then respond with a shrug and with an indifferent, ‘probably one day. I don’t feel like it today though.’

Sometimes, while in an excited and curious mood, she would try to reach out to that superior world and to her Royal, Higher World Mother and Father, but with no intention of reforming herself and she would soon get board and sometimes begin to doubt everything to do with it. 

Speaking to the higher world meant that she would have to change her heart. She would need to develop an inner ‘letting go’ together with an openness and willingness to listen and cooperate with that voice. She would then need to learn how to return to her home world. She had always told herself that she would get round to it one day, but in the meantime, Earth took an ever firmer hold on her and deep down she began to see herself slipping away from that ethereal world and experienced a new sense of self and identity forming and taking deep roots inside her. This other self finally took over and ridiculed the notion of a higher world and her being a fairy princess so much so that she eventually lost all belief in it. 

She was obviously just an ordinary girl, though perhaps slightly autistic? She was very gifted and intelligent as well as being quite reclusive. Her real parents must be out there somewhere, in this world, having abandoned her. Then she fell for a crazy old man’s story that she was a fairy. No, it was time to grow up. She was just a human being with a rather messy background.

It was when Carletta was twenty and still completely closed off to the higher world and its ceaseless but vain attempts to call her home, that she was working at a mundane job as a waitress at the Duck and Waffle and began to long for the good old days again when she was a daring criminal. That was when she had felt most alive. Her friends Jennifer and Lizzy had persuaded her at one point to be a beauty or fashion model because she was so good looking. But that line of work simply didn’t satisfy her. Her thrills came from challenges and not so much from vanity and drawing attention to herself.

She refrained from stealing from those whom she thought of as ‘good human beings,’ but reasoned with herself that there were forms of justified crime and that she would probably have what it took to do the most daring thing she had ever yet attempted. She would begin stealing from and crippling the notorious and feared Blithson criminal gang. With her shrewd ways and dogged dedication, she might, singlehandedly become their biggest nemesis. She needed an outlet for that drive for daring acts and the excitement that came with this.

She had studied the gang with meticulous care before going on to make her usual, impressively detailed plans and waited for a Saturday night to make her first strike. 

While she was planning this, her friends noticed how much more cheerful and happy she was. Although they would never have guessed what she was up to, she was happy because she felt ‘in her element’ while attempting the dangerous and the illegal.

She would make an impression. She would show off and steal from them while they were still awake. 

Her level of criminal expertise was on a par with theirs and probably even higher. This would be frightening but thrilling at the same time. 

She put on her motorcycle gear and fitted black plastic wings to her shoulders, as a way of throwing scorn on that old idea of her being a fairy, but also just to make some light-hearted fun of a childish notion. She was the girl who used to believe with every fibre of her being that she was some magical, Twinkle-toes, Disney fairy and Princess. 

It was 8:40pm on a Saturday when two armed Blithson gang members saw a figure in black riding at top speed towards them like a pouncing panther looming out of the shadows.

“Yo, biker! Slow down!” shouted the first one. Was this one of their drug dealers? Or weapon dealers? What the hell?!

They both readied their guns. Or was this rider from their bitter rival, the Robinson gang?

The figure in black with the large wings threw a homemade device which exploded as soon as it hit the ground. It was a dust and grit bomb. 

They cried out in alarm and pain. The rider then swept past while gracefully and almost effortlessly snatching their weapons and also a bacon roll from one of them which he was in the middle of eating. 

She then revved the engine all the way up again and took off after throwing a notice down which read, ‘Catch me if you can, losers.’

Feeling furious and taken completely by surprise, they groped about in pain and rushed to report the incident to Derrick Harrington, their boss. This rider was lethal and had struck fear into both of them. But they would see about that.

After shouting at them and showering them with a dozen insults and curse words, Derrick called a meeting that very same night to discuss the gang’s next move and how they should set in place a retaliation plan. This was after they had tried in vain to chase after and find her.

He concluded the meeting that night by saying, “John’s on first watch with Gale, prepare to rebuild the weapon and gear arsenal, invest in a new drone. I want as many as we can control with the numbers we have. Small ones; camouflage is the key word here. Rider is unknown but he’s probably not from the Robinson crowd, though I would like to verify that…”

“I think the rider is a she,” one of them said.

He shook his head. “Well she needs a name. Code name for the winged rider is Black Angel. Are we all good with that?”

“Yes boss!! Let’s go get her! Oh yeah man! We gonna bring her down!!” And they all cheered loudly and passionately, like men preparing for a war.

“Make her sorry she ever laid a hand on the Blithson gang,” Derrick scoffed as he snapped a new magazine into a semi-automatic rifle. 

But their new enemy had been listening to their entire conversation and retaliation plan because she had managed to attach a tiny recording device to the man whom she stole the bacon roll from. Her explosive had temporarily blinded both him and his companion.

If they were out to kill her, she just might decide to take them out first. Black Angel, the Blithson gang’s formidable ‘Angel of Death’ would either find a way to turn them over to the Police or she would set out to eliminate them herself, one by one. But she also knew there were serious risks in store for both her and her dangerous, aggravated new targets. 

While deliberating on her next move, a text came through on her phone. It was from her twelve-year-old stepsister Jane and read, “Hi Carletta! So I just got given a book about fairies! Do you want to come over tonight and we can look at it and read it together? Please!”

Carletta felt annoyed and sighed, shaking her head. But she decided she wasn’t yet in big danger since her enemies didn’t know where she was. She would put family first and be kind this time. She would do as her younger sister asked.

“Sure Jane. I’ll be home in a bit. Love, Carletta.”

With a sense of unease and growing worry, she decided to buy a strong drink before going to see Jane and would pretend to be as interested and excited as possible while looking at the new fairy book with her.