I was walking to the library when this story occurred to me. It's about a character who waits a long time for his story to begin.
I
wear a coat of dust that long ago obscured the color of my body and whatever
brightness my eyes retain. It used to be
different.
***
In
the days of magic, I patrolled seven leagues of woodland under the shadow of
immense oaks that groaned in the night like old men. I ate berries, and roots,
and mushrooms; avoiding the mice and voles that squeaked to each other in their
timid languages, though my nose told me that rodents were good to eat. Some
lingering delicacy flinched at the thought of chewing wiggling flesh. I think I
was a prince before the spell drove me into the forest. Or at any rate, a man.
There were many of us in the shadowy forest: strange beings waiting for our
stories, or for entrance into other people’s stories.
There
was I, of course, a keen-eared creature in my furry coat of reddish gold with a
chest of white, and my black nose often lifted to smell the north wind. There
were solitary cottages made from stones where old woman gathered sticks to
light their fires. Once I saw a snow white raven who sat beside a frozen pool,
weeping tears of blood that struck the ground with hissing heat and melted
through the snow.
For
many years I waited. I didn’t know for whom, but when the moment came, clarity
would burst into my life. At the end of the story, I would regain manhood and
be free.
***
But
while I waited, the world changed and the forest shrunk.
I
don’t know why people began to scoff at magic. It would not have mattered,
except that they seemed to fancy that because they had laughed at it, they understood
it, and could dismiss it. Who would reject the wonder of a world filled with
the unearthly? Perhaps magic is too immense, too wild, too unpredictable and
yet predictable. No human fully understands it, or can understand it, but only
recognize it. It carries, too, a burden and a demand on our wills. It is a realm
of honor that demands suffering and patience. Much patience.
In
the end, as I cowered in my den beneath the out-flung roots of the very last
magic oak tree, a voice called to me. She was one of the old women who used to
gather sticks throughout the forest. Her ankles were swollen and she smelled of
smoke and bacon grease. Peering out at her, I remarked, “I thought that all of
you were gone.”
“All
but me. I’ve waited many years for a traveling beggar lad to offer to carry my
bundle of firewood. Then I would have told him how to slay his monster.”
“Are
all the monsters in the world gone?” I crawled out to join her.
“I
doubt it.” She sniffed, wiping her nose on a corner of her ragged yellow shawl.
“But my advice has lost its value. Nowadays, monsters don’t take their strength
off every seventh night and hide it in the nest of an eagle.” She sat down beside
me, groaning as her knees bent, and scratched the fur behind my ears. For a
little while we were silent. The rotting tree above us stank of damp and filled
the air with heaviness.
She
sighed. “Your spell, too, is nearly gone.”
“What?”
My head shot up. “Do you mean that I will be a man again?”
“Of
course not. That cannot come to be without an adventure, a sacrifice, and an
execution. I mean that you will become a fox.”
Snapping
at a fly, I pointed out, “I already am a fox.”
“Only
in body. That cannot last.”
I
stared at her. Nothing existed for a moment except for her eyes. They were the
soft color of brown leaves, and filled with so much certainty that they were
pitiless.
My
belly pulsed as if starving at the height of winter, and my paws shook. The
sound that came out of my mouth was the bark of a fox. I swallowed and choked down
the sound before I managed to say, “I
do not call that justice. I have waited, possibly since the world began. Now
you tell me that there was no reason?”
Sitting cross-legged beside me, her
ragged skirts fanned out in the dirt, she pulled the yellow shawl tighter
around her shoulders. “I don’t know.” She reached out to pet my head again, and
I snapped at her fingers. She retreated with a shrug. “Maybe what you have done
here has already been worthwhile. Have you helped anyone? A traveler, a fellow
creature?”
“No,” I muttered. “They were not
meant for my story.”
“That might have been your mistake.”
She rose, a slow process full of groans and a few curses. Dead leaves fell from
her clothes. “I came to tell you that you have a final choice. Which would you
rather keep, mind or body?”
“Mind,” I said, without thinking.
She smiled, her woodland eyes
suddenly gentle, and placed her palm on my head.
***
That was a long time ago. What am I
made of, now? I am not sure. I’m an antique. A good luck charm in the shape of
a carven fox with painted black eyes. I cannot blink or move my paws. My life
is spent on three feet of shelving above a faux stone hearth inside a building
called the gift shop. The perfumed women behind the counter sell prints of spreading
oak roots, and knights with foolish faces. There are also wooden furniture and
hand blown glass vases.
Usually I sleep inside my shell. Years
at a time. The mind I chose to keep is not much good, encrusted as it is with
dust and despair.
***
One day I am roused by a grating
melody. The notes beat time in my brain and I became aware of the two humans behind
the counter. One of them is the irritating young woman, the one who is always
whistling under her breath. Her freckled neck bends over a large book, and as
she studies it, fingers tapped the pages in time to her jerky tune.
“Do you really think there’s any
point in that?” the other girl tosses her head, creating disorder among the
pink disks that dangle from her ears to her bare shoulders. “You’re going to
have to drop-out anyway.”
The irritating girl doesn’t look up.
She says, “It beats playing Angry Birds,” and underlines something with a
pencil. There is something special about her, about the pressure of her pencil
on the page, that speaks of strength.
This
time I study her more carefully than before. She stands with feet rather far
apart, rocking back and forth on her heels, and her stomach bulges outward
underneath her blouse. A child is coming.
There
is a spark about her. This girl, I thought, might laugh at magic, but she would
also try to understand it.
The
effort of watching changes the feeling in my brain. It keeps me awake all
night. The next day I watch also. On the third day, a strange feeling of warmth
and cold at once, like a north wind in my face and a fire in my wooden belly,
strikes me so forcefully I gasp. The intake of air fills my dusty lungs with an
audible hiss and I realize that I am breathing.
The
girl, who is talking to a customer, whirls around. She stares at me, and I
stare back. When I blink my painted eyes, she drops the hand blown glass vase
she had been praising. Shards of blue-green glass fly everywhere behind the
counter. “My god,” she exclaims, then turns to apologize to the lady who has
been complaining about the exorbitant cost of the souvenir.
My
paws tremble, but I try to hold myself still. I must wait until the customer leaves.
Not
all the magic in the world is gone.
END
