Drawtober 2025: Candlelit Messenger

Dearest Maggie,

Before you yell at me, as I suspect you want to do, please know that I only took Apples because I had no other means of conveyance and because I knew you would be much angrier if I took the entire carriage. If everything went as I planned, the dear creature is waiting for you with old Mary Stymes and her husband, none the worse for wear and probably enjoying some of Mary’s apples.

Hulspeth Moor is much as it was when we were last here two years ago. The cottage hasn’t changed much either, though the ivy and clematis have entirely covered three of the windows. The grounds keeper took “light touch” literally when you gave him his instructions, it seems. I can’t help but think that Grandmama wouldn’t want the place to sit so desolate…Still, I will only be here tonight. I just needed somewhere to wait for the Faelights to appear.

Mags, do you remember when we were children? We used to sit out in the back garden at night and look over the fields for those drifting lights. Will o’ the wisps, some folk called them. Grandmama called them Jack’s Lanterns, but you and I knew the truth. They are the lights the Fair Folk carry with them when they walk the roads between.

There are not so many faerie sightings on the moor as there were when we were children. I think the creatures have changed their patterns of movement since the war—not even Hulspeth escaped unscathed—but all my research tells me that the roads here still skirt the edges of Faerieland.

By now, I’m sure you’re shaking your head at me for foolishness, but this part of my plan is actually rather straightforward. You would laugh—

Next Day, Morning

I feel like I’ve drunk dandelion wine and danced all night, I’m so tired.

But it’s done. I’ve done it.

I have what I need.

I was sitting in the back garden writing to you by lantern when I saw the light I’d been waiting for. The lights of trooping fae are all clustered together, you remember, and I was looking for a light by itself. When it appeared, I’m afraid I quite dropped my pen.

It bobbed out of the forest near midnight, a flickering orange and yellow thing fluttering over the ground. I have never moved faster than when I spotted it. I snatched up Father’s butterfly net and sprinted out of the back gate and onto the moors. I had found those slippers you wore to the Summer Lady’s ball all those years ago and managed to cram my feet into them, so my footsteps were near silent in the tall grasses. My fingers started cramping from the cold, but I didn’t need them to do much more than hold onto the net’s handle as I ran.

The net came down on the creature with a satisfying whap. I heard a tiny shriek as it hit the ground, but I didn’t hesitate to check if the messenger was alright. I bundled up my prize and started back across the moors.

And that, dear Mags, was when I learned just how much the Queen’s messenger was giving to talking.

“Let me go, you clod-ridden creature! I am a messenger of the Queen herself! I shall peck out your eyes and scratch out your heart!” I ignored it all, of course, but it was very loud. The little thing kept beating at the canvas but was fortunately too small to make much of a difference.

Back at the cottage, I brought the net and a small lantern into the kitchen. I had closed up all the windows and the chimney flue as precautions. By the flickering lantern light, I set the net down and then darted my hand inside. Something sharp came down on my fingers, drawing blood, but I still managed to wrap my hands around the bird and draw it out.

I had expected something grander, to be honest. An owl or a nightingale bedecked in moss and starlight. What I found instead was only a bluebird. Her dusty blue and orange feathers were puffed up with fury, and she wore a little lantern atop her head, the candle inside somehow still lit. Tied to her leg was, of course, the message I was after.

She squirmed as I untied it, trying to scratch and peck at me and berating me the whole time.

“Stop that!” I ordered her, for the knot was quite tight.

“I will not! I am a messenger of the Queen herself, on an important errand, and I will not let a mere mortal nothing interfere!”

“If it was so important, she would have sent something more fearsome than a bluebird.”

In response to this, of course, she merely struggled and scratched me some more. My hand is, I’m afraid, rather worse for wear now. But I did get the message off, and then I stuffed the tiny, furious bluebird back into the net, which muffled her obscenities at least a little bit.

It was exactly what I had been looking for. An invitation to the Faerie Queen’s All Hallows Masquerade. The invitation unfolded as I unfurled it, becoming far larger than the scrap that had been tied to the bird’s leg. The ink glowed with a silvery light—moon ink, I suspect—and a shower of gold butterflies emerged, dancing in the air for a moment before popping in showers of gold like soap bubbles. Mags, in the past two years, I have never felt anything close to the relief that flooded me with that invitation in my hands. I have a chance now. A real chance to get back what I lost. I have only two weeks to find my way to her palace, but it is more than I have had in so, so long.

Please do not judge me too harshly for what I know you think is foolishness. In my shoes, I know you would do the same.

Blue—for that is what I’ve decided to call the odious little creature—is still chattering obscenities at me from the kitchen. I put her in Grandmama’s old parakeet cage for the moment. I cannot decide what to do with her. If I let her go, she’ll most likely fly straight to the Faerie Queen and inform her that I’m coming. But I refuse to simply leave her here, even as heartless as I am. More than likely she would starve in that cage, and I cannot condone that, even if she did peck at my fingers until they bled.

I am going to sleep now, Mags, at least for a few hours as I am quite exhausted. Tonight I depart for Dogmore. I will leave this letter on the mantelpiece. Hopefully, you will find it.

Your Sister,
Penelope