Fairies.html

THE AMANA FAIRIES
submitted by Melinda Verwicke

Cedar: A small country cemetery near the Amana Colonies is appearently the home to another colony of sorts, a colony of fairies. Melinda Verwicke, of Marion, tells us that for some years she has been visiting with the tiny people domiciled in the cemetery, and has been given permission by them to now report on their existence to the world. Our magazine is the only publication to date who has decided to publish her account.	A rare photo of Sprucifdeph, seated atop a skull awaiting reburial in a renovated grave. The picture was taken by Verwicke in 1994.
I work for a Doctor of Chiropractic in Iowa City, a healer, and she gets some strange patients-lots of New Age types, you know. I don't, or at least, didn't, believe in all that stuff, but a job is a job, you know? In 1981, I had numerous conversations with a woman who I can't name. This lady would come in for her appointments and while waiting in the lobby for the doctor, she would giggle and laugh about "talking to the fairies". Personally, I thought she was a little crazy, and so I just kind of humored her. She'd come in on Thursdays and I'd say, "how are the fairies this week?" and she would tell me about their troubles and how they were getting along...it was like a little soap opera for her. She knew all their names and everything. A pretty detailed fantasy life, but, I thought, whatever makes you happy. She said her grandfather had introduced her to them when she was a child in a tiny abandoned cemetery where they lived not far from the Amana Colonies. Her three times great-grandfather was buried there and I guess that was the connection. She thought that the fairies might have originally come to Iowa with the people who settled in the Amana Colonies, but the Fairies didn't talk to her about their history, she said. That was sacred to them and they witheld the information for their own protection. I was in a bad mood one day, things were not going too well in my private life, and I was really short tempered. The fairie lady just sort of made me mad the way she prattled on and on about the little people, and I finally just said, "Look, there's no such thing as fairies, and if you keep going out to some little graveyard in the country and talking to them, someday you're going to get locked up!" She didn't take my outburst well, and I felt awful for maybe ruining the one thing in her life she got some joy out of, even if it wasn't real...I mean, I have my own fantasies, but they involve real people, like Robert Redford. The next week she came in and didn't say a word, brought this tupperware dish and dumped the contents on my desk. It was a bunch of tiny tools, little scrapers, borers, hammers, and crescent shaped knives-none longer than a half an inch. All of them were scarred from frequent use, not like the kind of thing you'd see in a toy shop. They were worn and nicked, but well cared-for and oiled. The knives were of such a keen edge you could only really appreciate how sharp they were by looking at them under a magnifying glass. She invited me to go with her and meet the fairies for myself. My first trip to the cemetery I had to wait a long time before I saw the first tiny head pop out from behind one of the crumbling stones. Melinda introduced me to the little red haired waif. Her name was Sprucifdeph, and she told me that I was surrounded by fairies, but they were invisible until they chose to be seen by humans. Over a thousand faires lived beneath the graves in this tiny grove, and in their tunnels time does not exist. They come out at night to frolic amid the stones, and during the day they guard the bodies of the dead, calming them in their eternal slumber. A large part of their work is the care of the tombs, preserving the bones with natural ungents and fortifying the graves against collapse as the coffins rot. Occaisionally a body will have to be disintered and a new casket constructed; the handiwork of the faires in their carpentry is fantastic. Since my first introduction to the Fairies, my friend Melinda has died. I arranged for her to be buried in the little cemetery herself. I keep up my conversations with the fairies and visit with them at least once a week, paying repsects to Melinda with fresh flowers, knowing she is in the best of care.
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THE AMANA FAIRIES