A Fairy’s Tale

If I tell you a story, will you go to sleep after? No more snacks or trips to the bathroom. You have to promise. Crossed fingers don’t count, it’s a promise anyway. You can’t fool me.

Okay, listen. Sorry, yes. Once upon a time, in a land far far away, up in the mountains lived a fairy. She wasn’t the kind of fairy that sits around on mushrooms or swoops in to sew for a god-daughter. She’d always been a fairy. You could tell by the wings that rose like stiff lace from her shoulders, and the fact that she was four inches tall. Most fairies lived in forests, not up mountains, and that was exactly the problem for this fairy.

Hush, darling, I’m getting to the important part. Don’t you know that in order to learn the heart of a story, you need patience? You must be able to hear your own breaths if you ever want to find the pulse of a tale. Listen.

And the fairy was very lonely, for she had no friends. She had lived with her mother and father on the mountain, but they had gone and she had lived for a long time by herself. She was still almost a child, because fairies live so very much longer than we do, but for us her lonely childhood would have seemed a very long time. The mountain was cold for a little fairy by herself, and when it snowed she huddled in a crevice between her favorite stones and imagined that the flurries of white were warm. She had no friends, and so she had a very good imagination instead.

Of course, you can have both imagination and friends. It’s just much harder to live if you haven’t got either.

The fairy had enough one day. She was tired of wedging herself in a crack in the rocks and pretending she wasn’t shaking with cold. Living alone and lonely was exhausting, and she wasn’t going to do it anymore. The mountain was very tall and very steep, but the fairy was determined to start flying. Her little lace wings held her up as she hopped and skipped from one crag to another cliff. She took a leap off an edge and beat her wings until they blurred in the thin air, and she drifted until she settled on her tiptoes and jumped off again. Finally, after long days and long nights, the fairy reached the bottom of the mountain.

I don’t know what country the mountain was in. Sweetheart, it’s a story, so probably it’s in a country that doesn’t exist on this planet. While I’m telling the story it exists in your head, and that’s the place you should look to find it.

The fairy was so glad to feel the crunch of gravel and the satiny shush of dust on her feet that she walked after she left the mountain. She walked through a valley and a plain, and she swam across the river. The water was cold and bright against her skin, and she thought in a lovely delirious blur that she’d never felt anything so beautiful and pure. Once across the river she was in a field. She walked through the field and found herself in a meadow. At the edge of the meadow—her breath caught—she saw the furry edges of trees bristling on the horizon. The fairy loved walking. The grasses brushed against her feet like friendly cats. But now she was impatient, for she knew that fairies live in the forest. So what do you think she did next?

No, even if you could guess the answer would be the same. Some stories change shape to fit around you, but this one has its shape already. If you close your eyes you’ll be able to see it better.

She tried to fly. Running wasn’t fast enough. Only wings could take her to where she knew friends were waiting. The fairy leaped upward and felt the air catch under her wings, and then she sank back down to the ground again. Her knees folded under her, and the little fairy crumpled on the grass. She didn’t understand. What was wrong with her wings? Stumbling, she pushed herself to her feet again, and she walked across the meadow. She almost didn’t notice the grass brushing against her feet, because she was so worried about her flying. She entered the forehead with a creased forehead and an anxious stare. She almost tripped over someone, who let out a cry and asked who she was.

“I’m a fairy,” said the fairy.

“Yes,” said the stranger, unfolding wings from her shoulders. “I can see that. In fact, I’m a fairy too. My name is Lianet. You look upset. What’s your name?”

“I don’t know,” said the fairy. “I never needed one before. I used to live on the mountain alone, but now my wings don’t work.”

“Ah,” the stranger smiled. “Wings only work on the mountain, in the cold. When you hop down from on high you have more space to fly in, and the frozen air can keep you aloft. Lacy wings like yours won’t work in the forests or the meadows, the fields or the valleys, over the river or through the plains. Sometimes to fly for a minute you just have to climb a tree and jump.”

I know you’re very tired, and so we’re almost at the end. Do you think our fairy will give up the glory of flight to live in the forest, where the trees crowd one another and the squirrels chatter at everything that moves? Yes, I think so too.

The fairy thought about it for a while, and then she shrugged. Her lacy wings rippled in the air with the movement. There are worse things, she thought, than jumping out of trees with new friends. She could be flying alone. And so the fairy lives in the forest now, with a new name and a new friend. Sometimes she climbs to the very top of the tallest tall tree, and while she’s there she can see the very tip of the mountain where she used to live. Then she jumps into the air and lets her wings carry her down. She knows that there will be somebody to meet her at the bottom.

Good night, love.

The Storyteller at the Market

The storyteller is wedged between the trinkets and the magazines, tucked between tables piled high with watch springs and tattered pages. You could walk right by him if it weren’t that you’d have to walk through his story. It’s hard to see until you’re in it – nothing glows or glitters or anything. There’s a queer feeling to it. It’s sort of a drop in the pit of your stomach, a stopping-suddenly that spreads over your skin. Otherwise it’s hard to tell it’s happened. You just edge past the gaudy tarnished frames and the drawings of cats, and suddenly you’re someplace else. Sometimes it’s the middle of a broad meadow, green curling grass laid out around you and a forest clustered against the horizon. Sometimes it’s dangling from a turret, spinning gently in the window as the castle looms below you and its grey stone juts against the cold air. Sometimes it’s just sitting in a living room, folded into a plush rocking chair with its weave rough against your cheek as the voice of a grandmother and the smell of a fire fill the air.

Usually it’s fine to just walk in. Just last week I stepped into a story that swooped and dove on the back of a dragon, scales burning my thighs and flames blistering the air. The storyteller nodded to me when I got there – we’re familiar by now, he’s seen me there so often – and went on, the dragon just pausing a moment in the air as he recollected his thoughts. He often doesn’t even notice. You get there and you’re just suddenly part of it, huddling in the corner of a great lofty cave as the dwarves hack into the ground with chisels and spades.

When I was there on the dragon, the story went on so long I started to notice my fingers going numb. It was very hot on the dragon, of course, but after long enough your body starts to notice the market just as much. When I left I was tingling with cold but flushed all over, blisters rising on my knees. We flew right into a storm, and there the dragon left us. Then there was a while being nestled into a cloud and talking to a man on a pegasus, buffeted by the sweep of wind from its wings. We never did find the treasure, but I had a very distinct feeling that it was gone entirely. Somehow destroyed – a tragedy, I suppose. Then again, it’s just a story – or so you tell yourself, anyway.

You haven’t been really, so you wouldn’t really understand. You ought to visit more often. The storyteller is welcoming of visitors. He’s really very friendly. That is, if you get a chance to talk to him, the man, outside of the story. It’s harder to do than it sounds. He wraps himself in tales and hides inside them, rubbing their softness against his cheek and showing their spines and bristles to outsiders. He’s a lovely man, though, and makes a fair living off his stories at the market. Well enough it serves him, even just once a week. The market doesn’t meet more often, and it shouldn’t. Perhaps it would be all fine if it were just for the baubles and chains, but it’s well enough that you can only visit the storyteller’s realm only so often. Otherwise people would crowd into his stories more often, they’d be there every day. He’d have to tell stories with every breath he drew and every thought he held. Once you’ve entered the stories and got used to being there, it’s hard to leave.