After GCSEs, Mum said I had to get a job, so I started working in the cafe at the caravan site in Nanpean.a small village in inland mid-Cornwall (which as far as I’m aware has no caravan site) It was a shitty job for five quid an hour but at least I didn’t have to pretend to be polite to the customers: I was stuck in the kitchen all day doing the washing up. There was a weird smell and they had Pirate FMlocal commercial music station on all day – I swear I memorised the entire lyrics of Mr Blue Sky and Radio Ga Ga that summer – but like I said, better that than having to take the food out. The guests were all from up-countrypast Cornwall’s border – emmets,slightly derogatory word for tourists, literally meaning “ants” Dad would call them – and they weren’t even the respectable sort, the ones who could afford to stay in the nice places on the coast, so they all came to Nanpean and pretended this was the Cornish seaside holiday of a lifetime when they were really just stuck in their caravans in the rain for two weeks.
We never knew how many people were going to come into the cafe. If it was good weather we’d barely get anyone and there wasn’t much point in me being there, they could wash the plates easily enough without me. When it rained it was hell up.chaos A couple of times we got entire coachloads of German tourists – I think they got lost looking for TruroCornwall’s most major settlement – and we were flat out all day. But it was always sort of unpredictable. On the quieter days, they used to send me down to the shop in Nanpean village to stock up on supplies: I had to cycle back a couple of times with a six-pint bottle of milk hanging off each handlebar.
On one of those quiet days I was sent off to get milk – not twelve pints of it this time, thankfully – and eggs, but they hadn’t had any of those in yet. “There’s a farm over Trevarren way sells eggs sometimes, my lovely,”generic term of endearment, now more common than the stereotypical “my lover” said the old boyold man; “boy” is used for all ages who ran the shop, “have ee“you” in Cornish dialect tried there?” I tried ringing Sharon back at the cafe to see if she wanted me to make the extra trip but of course either one or both of us had no signal. She used to get teasy as an addervery irritable when we ran out of things, so I thought it was probably worth going.
The old boy gave me some vague directions to the farm. Trevarren wasn’t too far from one of the clay pits,China clay quarries, common in mid-Cornwall and my bike tyres were getting the white dust all over them, and the mizzlelight rain; considered part of Cornish dialect although it occurs across the UK had set in since I left; it was getting humid as hell, so I took my jacket off and tied it around my waist. I thought I knew the way, but it was some foggy, like I was out on the moors or something, and it turned out the farm was harder to find than I expected. After a while I saw a light in the distance somewhere and I thought that might be the place I was heading for; and if it wasn’t, I’d be able to ask whoever was there where I could find it.
I cycled on towards the light. It was lower to the ground than I expected: maybe a headlight on a car or tractor or something. I got close enough to nearly make out what it was coming from, when I hit my front wheel on something and went over.
It wasn’t too disastrous. I didn’t flip right over the handlebars or anything – I always used to imagine that happening – the bike just kind of jolted away from underneath me, and I grazed my hands a bit on the ground but it wasn’t too bad. My jacket came untied from around my waist, and the bottle of milk I’d got from the shop got a hole in it and started leaking all over the inside of the jacket, but that was the worst of it.
When I looked up, though, I thought I’d lost it. There were about a dozen tiny people all standing there looking at me. I’ve tried describing what they looked like loads of times, and never quite hit on it, but here goes: they were about a metre high, but not kids – they were all wrinkled, like old people. They had long, straggly hair and they were dressed all in rags, but the strangest bit about them was their faces: wide, with big round eyes, really bushy eyebrows, long noses that made me think of dogs. Their mouths were enormous, and they had these little spiky teeth, top and bottom. Oh, and sort of webbed feet, as I remember it. I’m sure nobody would ever believe it, but that’s what I saw.
Anyway, it sounded like they were trying to talk to me, although I couldn’t make head or tail of what they were saying; it wasn’t English, that’s for sure. In the end the one who I guess was in charge came right up to me and said “Here, you’m some ansum cheel!you’re a fine child; “ansum” is used liberally to mean something is good No piggy widden,runt of the litter; from wydn, meaning “white” in the Cornish language are ee?” He had a hell of an accent, like my granda.
The rest of them were crawling all around me by this point – a few of them had got hold of my jacket and were trying to lick the spilt milk off it. Deus genen-nei,“come with us” in the Cornish language; pronounced like “dees [rhymes with fleece] genna nigh” they were saying, over and over again like it was some sort of hymn: it was pretty entrancing, in a weird way. I was sure they were no good – I mean, they looked pretty horrific, and supernatural creatures usually make their intentions clear in their appearance, right – but I suppose I felt like I was compelled to do what they wanted. Looking back, I can see now: my mind wasn’t my own. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I knew they wanted me to go with them, and I was totally willing to do it, too.
There was one thing, though: the bleddy jacket. See, I got that thing from Seasalt,overpriced clothing shop for middle-aged women that draws on a sort of gentrified surf culture and it was always a big joke among my mates because Seasalt is the kind of place that your mum would shop at, your gran even, and this jacket cost me fifty quid and it wasn’t like anything else I wore at all but I liked the colours. (I never told them I’d bought it in the Foweytown in east Cornwall, stereotypically inhabited by rich people branch, not even the Truro one; they’d have taken the piss out of me for years.) So even though I was – well, piskey-led,said of lost travellers; we say “piskey” in Cornwall rather than “pixie” the saying is, and I can see why – I was fixated enough on that jacket to grab it off the ground before following them, and I was going to put it on because it was absolutely henting downraining very hard by that point, but the inside of it was all milky, so I somehow had the bright idea of turning the thing inside out so the milk wouldn’t get on the rest of my clothes. So I pulled out the sleeves and put it on so the fleecy bit was facing outwards, and then I looked up, ready to follow the little people, and then – they were just gone. Vanished, all of them. And that was when I realised it probably wouldn’t have been the best idea to follow them to wherever the hell they were trying to lead me. But as I said, it was like a strange compulsion: like magic, I’d say, if this wasn’t the twenty-first century. Because who believes in magic in this day and age, when we’ve got smartphones and wifi and blockchain and whatever else? Although there’s still never any signal in Nanpean, to be fair.
This was a few years back now, mind. There were always a few bizarre things going on back home, mostly stories your mate told you that never seemed like they could be true, but none of my friends ever had anything this weird happen to them. After I moved up-country for uni a couple of years later, I never heard about anything like it ever again.
Comments
Archived comments are included below. My replies have not been archived.
n° 1 (archived from archiveofourown.org)
2021-02-14EEEEE thank you so much, this is utterly delightful! I absolutely love it. I've actually spent a decent amount of time in Cornwall, I'm afraid I'm one of the dreaded summer tourists...I try to behave myself though!
(I will admit that I've been in the Seasalt in Fowey, I have a thing for their stripey t shirts, even though they're expensive.)
I especially loved your description of the piskies, and the references to the lore surrounding them - especially your narrator putting their jacket on inside out, that was a great touch.
Thank you so much again, this was such a wonderful gift!
n° 2 (archived from archiveofourown.org)
2021-02-14Oh, I love this. The mundane details merge so brilliantly with the fae elements.
n° 3 (archived from archiveofourown.org)
2021-02-16Fantastically creepy and well paced! It read a bit like an episode of The Magnus Archives, but with a more folklorish bent. I especially loved the description of the piskies, and them getting hold of the narrator's jacket and trying to lick the spilt milk off it - so weird and unsettling! Thanks for sharing! 👌
n° 4 (archived from archiveofourown.org)
2021-02-17I loved reading this. I love British folklore and was super excited to see someone had written something with it! Thank you!
n° 5 (archived from archiveofourown.org)
2021-02-23I love all the details and the language!
n° 6 (archived from archiveofourown.org)
2021-05-08Hi from Concrit-X!
This was a fun read, a modern bitesize fairytale. I found the opening evoked a mixed sense of nostalgia – for working part time during school, and for the Cornish holidays I've spent exploring rural areas with no signal, as well as the towns and beaches. The details about the clay pits, drizzle and humidity help make it immersive even without a lot of purple prose about the landscape, and the narrator's chatty and fast-paced tone keeps things moving along nicely. The line about sometimes cycling back with 'a six-pint bottle of milk hanging off each handlebar' conjured a vivid mental image.
'I thought I knew the way, but it was some foggy, like I was out on the moors or something, and it turned out the farm was harder to find than I expected. After a while I saw a light in the distance somewhere and I thought that might be the place I was heading for' – minor point, but the close repetition of 'some', 'something', 'somewhere', feels like it slows the pace slightly. Would the flow still feel like what you were after if it read, e.g... 'as if I was out on the moors, and it turned out the farm was harder to find than I expected. After a while I saw a light in the distance and I thought that might be the place I was heading for' ? Similarly, 'maybe a headlight on a car or tractor or something' – the 'maybe' is enough to communicate uncertainty without 'or something', and if the latter is part of establishing the voice, too much repetition can draw enough attention to it to slightly break immersion.
I wasn't familiar beforehand with the folktales about piskies, so the way they surrounded and compelled her was well creepy, and when she mentioned that 'there was one thing' that put a hitch in their plan, I was curious to see how the jacket would affect things – and then when they vanished, it was quite sudden, and a relief. Turning the jacket inside out seemed to have been important, and left me wondering 'why did that work?' It was clear that she'd had a stroke of luck in managing to do the right thing to escape even without knowing enough to do it deliberately, though it wasn't clear where or why they were trying to lead her, since it wasn't clear to the narrator.
Then I read the link on piskie folklore, and had a lot of 'oh' moments, about inside-out clothing, milk, and lights in the fog on roads travelled alone. Taking children just seems to be what fae in general do, without the piskies having a different motivation from the rest? I've read a few fae folktales, about travellers stuck in their realm, changelings, etc, but not a huge amount. So, that's two ways this has the potential to be a fun read for different readers: as an intro to this topic, with the link for more information (as it was for me), or as a story where those who already know the lore can mentally cheer as they read about the protagonist stumbling across the solution.
At this point, it's left me curious to know more about the aftermath and the road not taken. The story does work by covering as much ground as it covers, and leaving me wondering about what happened, so these last bits of feedback could be taken as either confirmation that it read as intended, or as thoughts on how to develop it, depending on what you're going for here.
She says 'I’ve tried describing what they looked like loads of times, and never quite hit on it, but here goes' – who was she describing them to? She says her friends never went through anything that weird, so she seems to have told them about it at the time, and this is a few years later. She doesn't seem to have found out much beyond what she could infer from direct experience, as she didn't hear about anything that weird from her friends, and then 'never heard about anything like it ever again' after going to uni – but she mentions the phrase 'piskey-led' while recounting the story, so she probably figured out the context of things that didn't occur to her originally when she wasn't expecting to run into magic in real life? Anyway, this reads like the style of narration that makes it feel like she's talking directly to the reader to tell her story. In-universe, I'd guess she might be having a stab at writing it down, or talking to someone new?
It could've been interesting to see more of her immediate reactions after the piskies disappeared, and to see whether the encounter changed her outlook on life, beyond 'she now knows magic is real and doesn't expect anyone else to believe her'. When stories show a character's behaviour changing before and after a supernatural event, even in some small way, it can contribute to making the plot feel meaningful and satisfying by showing how it affected them. E.g., whether they get wary about certain things when they used to be carefree, or get curious enough to dig into the mystery by taking more risks and developing new interests; whether they gain a sense of perspective on mundane things that used to worry them, and take things in stride more easily, in a way that other people notice, or whether they fixate on things they used to take for granted, thinking 'I might have disappeared forever and never had the chance to do this again'. Details like what happened when she went back to the cafe, whether she went back to find the road to the farm in good weather, etc, could be a way to show off that sort of character development if it's something you'd want to include, even though they're mundane enough that the reader can make assumptions if the story skips past them. Did she start to make a habit of wearing something inside out when travelling alone, like in the folktales?
It could also be fun to find out a bit more about what sort of fate she escaped, since she's left wondering. Sometimes this sort of story has a survivor research their close call until they learn about someone who disappeared or died, giving them a glimpse of what might have been. Or sometimes they make use of what they learned by helping someone else later on. Of course, a story can be purely 'this weird thing happened through bad luck and I escaped through good luck and it was unlike anything else in my life, which hasn't been much impacted' – in some ways that feels quite realistic, that stuff just happens sometimes.
The summary promises a mysterious story, which does the job, I'd say. If it included a specific detail about what kind of weirdness she runs into, that could still make it more eye-catching. Looking at just the summary, 'I never heard about anything like it ever again' almost implies that she heard about this kind of weirdness once, but not again – when the story is more that she never heard about it happening to anyone else she knew, at all.
I hope this feedback helps! I'm really missing Cornwall now, which you can take as a compliment... (I mean, it's partly lockdown making me miss travel, but it's definitely the writing too.)
n° 7 (archived from archiveofourown.org)
2021-05-08Hi. Reviewing this for Concrit-X and I'm already excited. I love British folklore stories so I'm really looking forwards to this one.
The summary grabbed me immediately. I'm immediately intrigued by the voice, the weirdness, and the social context of the character moving away from Cornwall and how that'll affect them.
I love the character voice from the get go. I was a bit confused about the timelines initially, so I googled Pirate FM and now I'm listening to it as accompaniment for the story. I might be hooked, it's quite alarming. That first character roots us so completely in Cornwall – I remember that wet holiday to Cornwall when I was 8, but we were in a tent in the rain for two weeks. Anyway. Lovely description of a very relatable summer job. The image of the milk bottles hanging off the handlebars is brilliant.
Lovely use of dialect. There's enough to make it very local, but enough context that it's clear what you mean. "Teasy as an adder" is such a lovely sentence.
Love the description of the moors and the weather. Again, your character voice is just so good. I know what you mean, but the phrasing is unique so I feel like I know the character too. "They were all wrinkled, like old people" is great.
I love the Piskies. I nearly understood their leader, but I didn't have a chance with piggy widen – I learned something today.
The fixation on the jacket is great, and I grinned at the first mention of Seasalt. I love the bit about people taking the piss, and not being able to admit it came from the posh branch of the posh shop, because it's just not cool to act like you're a tourist.
Henting down is a great phrase and one I am going to borrow.
It was just a delightful story that I can absolutely imagine hearing down the pub, that really benefits from your use of local dialect.