Here’s a bed time story for you (just you).

I have lived here in the woods for centuries, and seen so many children come and go.

When they leave, they leave as adults, too old to play with faeries, too wise to believe in us at all. What they believe in, instead, is in retaining the attention of whoever gave it least. I wonder sometimes if they don’t spend their whole lives wasted in trying to recapture the interest of the people who didn’t listen in the first place. Always you see, they’re all looking for something clever enough, funny enough, to make the arched brow turn and look. Some of them end up as singers, forty years writing love songs. After a while the longing becomes a habit and they forget how to speak any other way than to a certain audience.

Why am I telling you this?

There were once three brothers. The eldest, after a childhood running through the forest, giving into sin and playing tricks on his peers, followed in his father’s footsteps and became a priest. A crowd of church goers who secretly believed themselves holy could satisfy his craving.

The second, who I watched bring little birds back to life only to squash them accidentally when he hid from his mother’s mania, become a doctor. Finally, he could have authority over sickness.

The third, the prettiest of the three who charmed his way all through life, was offered the role of the devil incarnate. He took it, of course. There was no one, you see, whose attention he so desperately wanted as those who had yet to cede to temptation.

I loved all three brothers, in their way, and understood their choices and loved them all the more. Until one day, there were fewer children in the forest, and I heard a whisper among the trees.

They said the priest held certain rituals from which no one ever returned.

Now, I had known the eldest brother, he had been a sweet tempered boy. Trees are liable to spread all kinds of rumours. Not out of malice, mind, just for something to do.

So I decided to see for myself. One day the children said they would go to the midnight mass, so I asked for them to take me with them, but to keep me a secret.

Well. What I saw broke my heart. There he stood, that once delightfully naughty little boy, throwing virgins off a cliff in some bid to impress the self appointed saintly watchers, some group of elderly men, who thought the world an evil place and therefore in need of blood and sacrifice. The ritual horrified me. So I took the children with me and ran back, and called the devil, who appeared before us with a satisfied grin:

« Oh, Scarlett you’re incorrigible » he said with a wink.

« Not now, » I said, « I didn’t call you for that. »

« Shame. What then? »

« I need you to build a net between the cliffs and the underworld, so that the children can be saved, and find a way to tell your brother never to mess with other people’s lives again. »

« With pleasure. Hell’s been full of kids recently. What does he think my place is, some parking lot playground at half term? »

So the devil set about stopping his brother from sacrificing virgins in a bid to make the world a better place.

After saving them, he made all of the children thrown off a cliff enter the priest’s room in the middle of the night and stand, watching him sleep.

That is, until the priest woke up and screamed.

 « Why couldn’t you listen to us? Why didn’t we matter? » they said.

The priest jumped out his window to escape what he’d done—those voices weren’t ones he’d been wanting to hear.

Well, as you can imagine, then the devil took the priest for a spin in the underworld, and I never saw the two brothers again.