The fairy didn’t open his eyes again for half a day. Just a while ago, he had been happily sipping nectar in a vast field of flowers — how had he ended up in this predicament? Instead of the sweet scent of blossom, his nostrils were filled with ominous smells: dry grass and a musty reek of mould.

The fairy blinked his heavy eyelids. Each time he opened and closed his eyes, his vision grew a little clearer. Dingy stone walls – this was undoubtedly a human dwelling. Meeting that human woman hadn’t been a hallucination after all.

It must have been night because the room was dark. The only sound was the crackle of the fire, and there was no sign of anyone. Still, it didn’t hurt to be cautious. The fairy held his breath and scanned the room.

He was trapped inside a birdcage hanging from the ceiling. Withered leaves and grasses hung from the walls, and glass jars of various shapes and sizes were arranged on the shelves of a cabinet. Inside the jars, snakes, frogs and snails floated, preserved just as they had been in life.

‘A witch! She’s insane…!’

The fairy quickly realised the danger he was in. Fairies had never cared much for humans, but he had been warned about collectors and witches since childhood. If you wanted to live a long life, they were the ones you had to beware of above all else.

“I’m not the least bit afraid of witches! If my only choice was to live with all of you forever, I’d rather be alone in the northern forest!”

Just half a day ago, he shouted those words as he left the Eastern Oak Woods. Now, he wanted nothing more than to go back and slap himself. No fairy caught by a human had ever made it back alive.

After confirming that the witch wasn’t in the room, the groggy fairy sat up. Thankfully, his wings were unharmed. However, the bars of the cage were far too narrow for him to squeeze through, and the door was secured with a massive lock that he couldn’t lift, even with both hands.

What would happen to him now? Would his wings be torn off and his eyes plucked out? Or would he end up floating in a jar, preserved alive like the frog over there?

As the fairy flitted anxiously around the cage, suddenly—

“Here we go—!”

With a strange, spirited cry, the door burst open. The fairy quickly folded his wings and flattened himself against the cage floor. Footsteps drew nearer and nearer.

“Is it dead?”

At the woman’s nonchalant voice, goosebumps prickled up his back. Maybe he should just play dead. The fairy squeezed his eyes shut tight.

But it seemed that wasn’t enough to fool the witch. She grabbed the cage with both hands and shook it violently. The fairy’s frail body tumbled and rolled across the hard cage floor. Unable to stand it any longer, he sprang to his feet.

“Hey, you crazy witch! I’m going to die in here!”

He managed to shout bravely, but right in front of him was the human woman’s enormous head. Startled by her bright red eyes, the fairy flapped his wings in alarm, only to crash into the top of the cage and fall back down.

The red-eyed witch gave a chilling smile as she watched.

“You’re not dead, are you?”

Muttering to herself, the witch turned away. She moved from the cage to a desk by the window, which was covered in old, yellowing books.

The fairy glanced at her profile. In her faded black dress and dirty wooden clogs, the woman looked much younger than the witches he’d heard about. Then again, witches were said to be terrifying no matter how young they appeared — she could easily be a hundred-year-old hag in disguise.

She picked up a book in one hand and dragged a chair over to the cage with the other, grunting with effort. The fairy quickly clung to the bars and shouted.

“Are you a witch?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

She replied curtly, setting the chair right in front of the cage and sitting down. She opened a book on fairies, supposedly written by her grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother. Her sixth-great-grandmother had been an excellent fairy hunter; back then, there were plenty of fairies even in the northern woods. She’d caught and studied hundreds of them, recording her observations in detail.

‘There had to be something in here about ‘fairy essence.’ ‘

Marli flipped through the pages, searching her memory for anything she’d read before.

With every flutter of a page, the color drained from the fairy’s white face. He couldn’t read a word, so the only thing he recognized were the illustrations—most of which were horrific. Anatomical diagrams of fairies, severed heads, and worse.

Growing desperate, the fairy blurted out,

“What are you planning to do with me?”

“Are you stupid? Of course I’m going to use you as an ingredient.”Top of Form

After scolding him, Marli buried her head back in her book. The frightened fairy released his grip on the bars and pressed himself as far away from her as he could—not that it made much difference, since all he could do was huddle against the far side of the cage.

“Ah.”

At last, Marli found the page she’d been searching for. Alongside an illustration of a male fairy, there were detailed notes on extracting and using their essence. She quickly read through the instructions on extraction.

[‘Fairy essence’ is best harvested not through new or experimental methods, but by using the most obvious and commonly known approach. As long as you properly manage the male fairy’s environment, extraction can be repeated as often as needed…]

“Hmm?”

Had she missed something?

Marli scrolled her eyes back up and reread the previous passage.

[A fairy’s body is so similar to a human’s that they are often called ‘little humans.’ Therefore, extracting essence from a male is far easier and more practical than obtaining a female’s core.]

Further up. And up again. She flipped through the previous pages, searching diligently, but nowhere did it say exactly where or how to extract the essence. The book only referred to methods as “obvious,” “common knowledge,” or “what everyone knows”—assuming anyone reading it would already be familiar. There wasn’t a scrap of real help for any future witch who might inherit these records.