I live on the busiest streets, selling matches for a copper a bundle like so many other kids like me.  We don’t make much, but it’s something.  I’ve been saving my something for a long, long time now.

Today I stray from my normal streets, crossing the city under the cloak of early shadows.  The overly large shawl I wrap around my shoulders is the warmest thing I own, and the years it’s known have not been kind.  Still, it holds together and protects me from the biting pale morning.

On the southern side of town, if you go under the cobblestone bridge and turn right at the leather shop, there’s a little forgotten street called Thimbleberry Way.  Even in the cold of a barely started spring, the street is cheery with hints of color.  Painted window boxes hang off their buildings with barren soil, ready for flowers to be planted inside.  The street is made with flagstones of different earthen shades.  Rich browns, clay reds, burnt yellows, pine greens.

Someday, this is where I will live.

On either side of the street, just starting to open up their wares, stand the Thimbleberry shop carts.  Not one of them look like another.  There’s one made of woven branches, selling chestnuts and pine nuts and hazelnuts in bunches.  The best you’ll ever find.  Some people say they were brought from the fey world, because ours can’t make nuts like that.

I pass by a cart built from red cherry wood, with a wildflower meadow carved into the side.  It is full of silken flowers, each one so delicately beautiful and detailed, I could swear they were alive.  Next, I pass an old rustic cart that smells like campfire, selling little iron hooks and pegs and fire pokers so pretty you’d never forget to stoke your fire.

Then there are two carts, one on either side of the street, and they are owned by two sisters.  One is made of smooth mahogany, selling shiny daggers with jeweled handles, while the other is made of twisted oak, selling shoes that look like they belonged to forest folk.

I pass them all, though I look lovingly at their wares as I go.  Someday, I will have a strange little cart, and I think I will sell brightly colored marbles.

Ahead there is a sleek little cart made of pine wood, hundreds of ribbons tied around the handle.  The owner is a kindly old man whose hair is the color of fluffy white clouds.  His eyes are dark, dark, dark; I think they once used to be brown.  When they catch the light, I see them twinkle like a night sky.

His cart holds thousands and thousands of buttons.

Big buttons, silver buttons, and tiny, tiny square buttons, along with every kind of button above, beyond, and in between.  Some have four holes, some have two, some have a tiny ring on the back.

I say good morning to the button man, and he pulls a little box from under his cart as I sit on the street beside him.  He says, Mornin’ chickadee. Which is what he’s always called me.

I say, Morning, Mister Button. Which is what I’ve always called him.

I pull out my right arm from my shawl, showing him the rip on my sleeve that goes from my wrist to my elbow.  He whistles as he opens his box and asks what the other guy looked like.

I smile and tell him, pointy and sharp and a lot like a nail.

The button man pulls out some silver thread and pokes it through the eye of a needle.  I watch a few people wander down the street as he starts mending the tear.  All my clothes have little X stitches in different colors, some of them holding patches in place.

The first time I wandered down Thimbleberry Way I’d had a terrible rip in my shawl, and the button man had asked if I would sit a minute so he could fix it.  When he’d finished, he looked me in my eyes, straight to my soul, and said, it’s okay if it tears again, come to me and I will always sew it back.

He’s very quick with the needle, and only squints a little to see his stitching.  Someday, I’ll buy him a pair of spectacles to wear.  Good ones, with frames of twisted silver.

He double-knots the thread and snips it with a fine pair of iron scissors.  I feel the thread with my fingertips and walk over to his cart as he puts his things away.  Someone walks by holding a new pair of brown and green shoes, they look like they’re made of leaves.  I plunge my hand into the buttons and reach as far down as I can, wondering how long the ones at the bottom have waited to be seen.  My hand comes back up with a fistful, and I open it slowly.

There’s a coin with four holes drilled through, a button from a soldier’s uniform, a large circle of wood with floral designs burnt into it and two holes in the middle.  There’s a button made from a seashell and a button made from stone, but I let them all fall from my hand as I pick up a button made from a pearl.  It was a large pearl, carved to look like a lily, with a small hole poked sideways through the bottom for sewing it on.

I take it to the button man, and he smiles at my find. Add it to my tab, I tell him, and tell me where you found this one.

He pulls out a different box from under his cart, where he puts all of the buttons I pick out.  Someday, I will buy them all.

But he sets it beside him and lets me hold the pearl button while he tells me about it.  He has a story for all of them.  Whether they’re true or not is anyone’s guess, but I believe they are.  He’s old enough to have lived them all, and he’s got a very good memory.  I bet he could tell the story behind every tear he has mended for me too.

The button is smooth in my hand. This one, he tells me, was from a chest full of pearl buttons I found in a dragon’s lair.

I glance up just in time to catch a twinkle in his eye. The chest was studded with sapphires, sitting in a pool of diamonds.

I wonder if I will ever find dragon treasure, and I ask, What did you do with all of the diamonds?

He smiles a little and looks up at the street. I paid them to someone to tell me how to find an elusive little place called Thimbleberry Way.

I’m glad you did, I tell him, and I hold out the button to be dropped into my box.  I would pay a pool of diamonds to live here, if I had them.  To live here, to have my own cart, and to buy a pair of good spectacles with twisted silver frames.

It’s time for me to go.  I don’t have diamonds, but I don’t need them to find my way here.  I have matches to sell, and a pile of coppers to make bigger.

The button man waves as I leave. See ya, Chickadee.

Thimbleberry Way fades behind me as I go back to the busy streets.  It’s okay if it takes me forever.  I’ll have more stories by then.  Maybe someday a little matchgirl will find me; an old woman with cloudy white hair and a strange, colorful cart.

Maybe I’ll tell her about hoarded treasure made of copper pennies.

It’s one in the morning, and I’m sneaking down the silent dorm halls.  This whole place was once an estate with a sprawling manor house, left to settle into old age and refashioned into a boarding school.  By now I remember which floorboards won’t squeak underfoot.

The staff have turned in for the night.  Even Allie, the young janitor.  She is always the last to call it a night, though if she was awake I wouldn’t be worried.  She’d just give me a conspiratorial wink and pretend she didn’t see anything.  She used to be one of us.  A founding member of these secret hours, they say, who somehow fell in love with the school’s charm and stayed on as staff.

I tiptoe around the last corner, finding a small group already gathered at the basement door, waiting for me to come with the skeleton key.

I’ve been more responsible with this key than I’ve been with anything else in my life.

We all wait until the door has been opened before someone lights a candle.  Some of us are still in our uniform, while others are wearing pajamas with blankets over their shoulders as capes.  We tiptoe carefully through the large laundry space and around storage boxes, heading for the farthest corner where there’s a small window well high in the wall.  Through it, we can see the night sky.

We sit in clumps on the floor, sometimes a big group, sometimes a bunch of little ones.  Tired teenagers, with dark circles under our eyes that deepen in the candle light.  Here it is still and dark and forbidden.  Here we are a secret community.

Here, we tell stories.

All kinds of stories.  Scary, funny, sad, and adventurous, sometimes ongoing stories that span over weeks.  Someone is usually able to smuggle down tea or cookies, and nearly everyone brings a blanket or two.

There is something about the night, the way it wraps us in shadow and quiets our surroundings.  There is something about the way a candle flame flickers from the breath of a story.  The night enchants us, and we are careful not to break its spell.

Tonight a girl whispers her fears, and we all find ourselves nodding in agreement.  We’re scared, we’re tired, we’re not sure what we’re doing.  She seems to gather strength from this, and she thinks for a moment before speaking again.

“Once upon a time…”

The whispers around us fall to a hush.  It is a rule; if you wish to tell a story, all you have to say are those four words.  Tonight, she tells a story about a young girl who was given a job she wasn’t good at, but faked it really well.  One of her friends scoots closer, and when she starts to falter in the story, offers a suggestion.  Maybe, although this girl may not know her job, she’s good at figuring out the other people that work there.

And perhaps this girl gets caught up in a conspiracy that’s way over her head, but by now, isn’t that what she’s used to?

We’re all involved now, and the story becomes a living thing in our midst.  The girl’s name changes every other minute, the conspiracy is never fully clear, but the story is about how she becomes a constantly confused hero.

And I think, at least for tonight, that’s the hero we all want to know.

Some nights, especially before exams, we make poetry and songs out of our homework, pulling it apart into tiny, doable pieces.  Making it funny and light and easy to remember.  Sometimes a made-up ditty gets hummed during a test.  Some of the especially funny ones get passed down from graduates, spawning a seeming never-ending supply of tunes that get stuck in the teachers’ heads.

Most of us are terrible at telling stories and making poems, but we all have things to say.  And sometimes, it’s easier to say it at night, in flickering candle light, to a group who may think the same way, in the form of a story or a rhyme.  We’re not supposed to be good at it, and there are no grades to fear.  Sometimes it’s funnier to say it wrong.  It can be easier to remember when it got messed up.

Some nights, we dissolve into helpless laughter, and we have to break it up and return to our rooms before a staff member wakes up.

Those are the best nights.

Tonight, it is sleep that pulls us back to our rooms.  One of the girls nodded off during the story, and two others volunteered to help her stumble back to her room.  We blow out the candles and carry away the stumps, taking evidence of tonight with us.

I am the last to leave, locking the door behind me.  It’s just a basement, with laundry and boxes and the occasional spider web, but to us it has become a trove of memories that get us through our classes, our exams, our semesters inside this school.

Sneaking down the quiet halls with the key tucked safely in my hand, I find myself taking a detour through the classrooms, pausing every now and then by a window.  Moonlight fills the grounds, outlining the old trees that surround us.  I imagine runaways peeking out from between the branches, fairies dancing through the grass, talking animals meeting at the fountain.

I imagine telling their story, perhaps of how they tried to sneak into the school to learn.  Perhaps the old walls of this manor whispers to them in its shadow. Perhaps the school books are hiding secrets for me to find.  I think I’m not in such a big hurry to go to bed anymore.

I think I’m starting to fall for this place.

I dream I’m standing in a field of flowers, smoky blue petals filling the ground for as far as my eye can see.  They are like the ones that grew in my window box when I was a child, the ones I imagined to be filled with magic.  I used to feed them with wishes and convince myself that they became a deeper shade of blue because of them.

There’s a golden steam trickling through the field, passing just in front of my toes.  The sounds it makes is the kind of music I imagined fairy music would sound like.  Soft and crisp and impossible.  The sun is getting close to the horizon, warm and rich and deep, deep, yellow.

A gentle wind picks up and millions of petals fly into the air, up and up until they are little blue sails lost in the sky.  I wonder if each of them are a wish I once had.

I hold out my hands and feel the kiss of fading sun and summer breeze.  It is here that I decide to pretend it isn’t a dream, because if it isn’t, I can stay here forever.  But dreams have a way of being dreams, which is to say, fickle and changing.

The wind stops and petals are falling, drifting down like soft snowflakes, landing in my hair and in my hands and into the golden water at my feet.  There is a wonderful smell in the air, like roses and lilacs and strawberries.  I close my eyes for a moment to smell it.

When I open them things have changed again.

There are thin tendrils of smoke rising into the air, coming from every petal in the stream. They are smoldering. They are hissing.

They are bursting into blue flame.

Every flower is catching, threads of smoke unfurling into the air.  I’m in a field of blue fire on green stems.  I’m watching them burn without being consumed.

Something cold touches my feet, and when I look down I see golden water has flooded the field.  It is rising, swallowing up the stems and leaves, reaching for the flowers, but stopping before it reaches their flames.

And I am standing in ankle deep water, overwhelmed with the sight before me.  Blue flames spotted amongst a still sea of gold, as far as my eye can see, wild and peaceful and brilliant.  The edges are blurring and I know that I’m waking up, so I stare at a flower in front of me, framed in gold, and try to commit the details to memory.

I’m rising from the field, nearing a morning that is worlds away, but doing so gently with a smile on my lips.

Waking is merely another change.

It could be the best one yet.

 

A jester, that’s what he was.

An entertainer, a joker, the court’s companion.  It was his job to make things lighthearted and entertaining.

He stood before his mirror, preparing for another gathering of the court.  His outfit was red, and he wished he’d gone with the black instead.  Or any other color for that matter.  The red was too bright, like the blood that stained the hands of every member at court.

Sometimes he saw his own hands stained with red.

He reached for his feathered hat and when he looked again in the mirror, it wasn’t himself–or even his room–in the reflection.

Instead he saw the children.

He saw the blonde-haired girl, only a few years older than the two little ones she shielded with her own body.  Her eyes were both fierce and afraid.  And there–behind them he saw the copper curls of a boy, his face frozen with terror.

And there–

There where his reflection should have been, he saw the oldest boy.  The one that had stood in front, hands shaking while holding his head high.  His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

There was no need.  The jester knew the words that had been spoken.

“We are not our parents, yet you condemn us for their mistakes, you plan to spill our blood.

No matter we were ready to heal.  To forget. 

Know this, we do not die willingly.  

Know this, we do not forget.

Remember well, we wait for you.

Darkness shall be your reign.”

He turned from the mirror before he could see what happened next.  Moisture lined his eyes as his memory showed him anyway.  The red pools on the floor, the small bodies limp and lifeless, the empty eyes that stared at nothing.

He had been forced to watch.

It was mere minutes later that they had called for him to lighten the mood.  To make a joke.  To make them forget the blood that clung to their skin.

And like the coward he was, he’d obliged.

His hands shook as he placed the hat on his head.  It had been a year ago today.  Not that anyone seemed to remember.  There was to be a frivolous party for the court.  Like it was a day for celebrating.  Like they felt like laughing.

Like that boy’s words didn’t still echo through the halls.

The jester straightened his tunic.  He’d had enough.  Red had been that terrible day, and red would be his clothes tonight.  He would not forget, nor would he cower as before. Quickly, he wiped away his tears and gave his reflection a savage smile.  Tonight the stage was his to command.

They demanded a show.  A show is what they would get.

The children will not have died in vain.

The labyrinth is in flames.  My dress is catching on every branch and corner, tearing at the hem as I run deeper in, my head ducked below the smoke.  My eyes and lungs are burning like they’ve caught fire themselves.

My sister would have called this brave.  She loves the idea of defying danger in favor of a goal.  To want something bad enough that not even death could hinder the progress.  I do not scoff at such things anymore, not after all we’ve been through.

The heat is rolling over me in waves.  There are no flames along the walls beside me, but I know they are closer with every step.  Today, I don’t think it matters how badly I want and want, death does not seem to consider what I’m thinking as I run towards its open arms.

My mother would have called this foolish.  She loves the idea of careful consideration and precaution, and would never wish to see us in unnecessary peril.  My sister and I were the reason our mother’s hair went gray so quickly.

I’m choking, smoke coating every inch of my throat despite my head ducked low and the cloth wrapped over my mouth.  I can understand why I’m the only one who ran in to the maze.  This feels like foolishness.  This feels like death.

But I do not turn.

I did not run in without thought.  I’d weighed this decision within seconds, but I would not have changed my mind if I’d been given years to think it over.  My sister would have run in beside me if she knew the way as well as I.  Even my mother did not try to stop me as I ran by her.

There’s a fork of ways before me, and I hesitate for just a minute.  I used to know this tangle of paths like the pages of my favorite book.  The walls were once wings that folded overhead to keep me safe. Now they are strange and skeletal in a haze of smoke and flickering of flames.

I cannot think about how the fire is destroying the labyrinth, I cannot consider the pain I will feel if I live to see it destroyed from this.

I’d come here as a small girl; frightened, separated from family, and running from terrible, terrible people.  The stone pillars and walls had been pure soft white, like they’d been covered with daisy petals.  The leaves on the hedges and trees had been fresh, bright green, their trunks and branches of twisted wood in rich reds and grays and browns.  The vines that covered everything had bloomed in every color, their petals littering the ground and blowing in the breeze.

Sparks are falling amidst flakes of ash.  I can feel stabs of heat where they fall on my skin and burn.  I’m getting close, I’m nearly there, if only I had air to breathe.  I try to scream, to call out, but all I manage is a coarse whisper of a sound.  The smoke takes hold of it as soon as it leaves my mouth and smothers it.

I stumble into the center courtyard.  I can barely see the large tiered fountain directly before me.  The trees that rise up around it loom as dark shadows in the orange-tinted smoke.  Again, I scream.  I know, above all sounds, this is the one I can make loudest.

The fountain is steaming, its water gray with ash and soot.  It is terribly hot here, and it presses on me until I’m not sure I can expand my chest to breathe without breaking a rib.  Tears are blurring my vision, but I see movement in the shadows to my right.

I am surrounded by fire and death, but at the sight of the emerging shadows I feel extraordinary relief.  They are all there, their skin half-scaled as if the shift could never quite manage to hide everything they were.  The two little ones run to me, a boy with scales tinted green and a girl with scales tinted pale blue.  Their faces are smudged from the falling ash.  I take their hands and look at the third figure.

His scales are tinted black, and today they blend in instead of starkly contrast our surroundings.  His eyes are flickering with the memory of who he used to be, of what lies trapped now inside the body he wears.  He never could figure out the maze of paths that surrounded his home from down here, so used to navigating by air that the ground swallows him up.

My dragons.  The ones who fought off the terrible people so long ago, back when they had beautiful wings and sharp teeth and wicked claws.

“I’ll get us out of here.” I tell him, and they all follow me closely as I plunge back into the labyrinth.  I do not have wings or claws or teeth, I do not have powerful strength or sharp cunning eyes.  I can barely see enough to keep us on the right path.  My throat is all but closed off.

Still, I will not leave them behind.  Not when they need me.  I did not feel brave running in, but I could not quite feel foolish either.  This burning labyrinth is my home, my home, my home, and it is killing me to see it die this way.  It is an unbearable sight, one that I would have born watching from the outside.  But these dragons.  These dragons.

They are my heart.

And I would not leave them in the fire to burn.

Today I locked the front door for the last time.

I don’t know why I took the time to lock up.  I’m the last to leave, and I won’t be back.

My older brother was the first to leave, with bright eyes and a bounce in his step.  The road held so many promises for him, and he was going to chase them all.  He left because he could.  Because he wanted to.

Father was the next to leave, he said he’d get us everything we’d ever wished for.  He promised he’d come back.  I watched him leave us as the sun rose in a sky of coral pink.  I watched from the doorway with a fast sinking heart.

No one ever comes back.

My little sister left a year later.  Her friends were going to do it together, and she snuck out at night to join them.  Her note said she would try to find our father on her way, and remind him to come back like he’d promised.  It was maybe the only thing she could have said to soften the blow of her absence.

Mother did not leave.  She said she would never want to.  I think if father hadn’t promised to come back, she might have considered it, if only to be with him again.  I buried her by her favorite tree, and her grave is the hardest thing to leave behind.

I walked backwards down the road until the house disappeared from sight, and now I am wandering down the well trampled path before me.  A slight breeze disturbs dust from the road, and I hear it sigh and settle again.

Items start appearing on the side of the road, discarded and abandoned.  I stop to look at them, and I try to see how much I can piece together about the traveler who dropped them.

There’s a piano up ahead.

It’s been shoved off to the side and onto a slope, its bench fallen over a few feet away.  I’m surprised it was taken this far before being discarded, until I get closer and see the history it bears.

There are several initials carved into the base in large clumsy letters, and there’s a faded ‘for Jason, love mom’ engraved just above the keys.  I run my fingers over scratches on the sides, and I spot rings on the top where drinks had been set without coasters.  This instrument has known a lot of life.

I pick up the bench and set it upright on the slope.  It is unbalanced here, and I have to be careful not to fall when I sit on it, but I place my fingers on the keys and quickly forget about the discomfort.

This piano was made to be played, and it has been without someone to play it for far too long.  I mean to only play a couple scales, but as soon as my fingers start running up the keys, my heart fills with other notes and I cannot stop.

I play with the wind for a little while, rising and falling with the gusts of air.  The keys are not really in tune, but that does not matter out here.  The wind does not notice, it just likes to hear the sounds swell and flow in its current.

I play with the sunset, finding sounds to match the colors as they splash across the sky then fade into something new a minute later.  I am breathless from keeping up, and I am still playing off the memory of color well after it is dark.

I play with the stars, and I do so for a very long time.  There are deep notes for the darkness and airy notes for the light and many, many combinations of the two I want to explore.  The stars are in no hurry, and they let me take my time finding their different sounds.

I play for the travelers that pass every once in a while.  Sometimes they stop and ask for certain songs, sometimes they just listen in silence, sometimes they continue walking but with their heads turned to listen as long as they can.

Somewhere in all of this, my heartstrings have gotten entangled with the piano’s strings, and I don’t want to tear them apart.  I think music is not something travelers often hear as they walk this road.

I think perhaps that should change.

There is much ahead of me, but I’m in no hurry.  For now, I think I should like to stay here.

The world could use a bit more music.

 

Do you hear it?

There is a sharp wind singing through the air.  It tells of cold months only just begun.  It warns to be ready with chopped firewood and stored food.

This place was made to endure, but that does not mean it is not filled with pain.  Today the morning frost lingers, the ground has become chilled to its bones.  We gather closely around our hearths, whispering of the summer past, thinking on the cold months now upon us.

Listen.

The birds have fallen silent, most of them fleeing to a softer place than this.  The ones that remain sit on barren branches, watching.  They do not turn their eyes from what is to come.

The howling of wolves rise at night, a chorus of gathering hunger.  Together, they are savage.  Together, they are protected.  Together, they await the coming cold with barred teeth.  They do not love the winter, but they do not fear it either.

Listen.

I was made to endure, but that does not mean I am not full of pain.  My footsteps have grown to be firm, my skin has grown to be tough, and my heart has grown to be strong.  The ice that falls here does not pierce me like it used to, but I do not turn away from feeling it.

There is a softness that I have grown inside me.  I guard it closely, with the ferociousness of a mother bear.  I do not wish to become the relentless cold, nor do I wish to be frozen by it.

It is not such a terrible thing, to be made to endure.  I only wish to use it to protect that which was born under the summer sun.

Listen.  Listen.

I was raised in the midst of a thousand hopeful dreams.  I have seen the forces that would destroy them as swift as the autumn frost.

If they are to stand a chance, I must keep my senses on guard and my weapons at the ready.  It is not an easy state to be in; to be hardened enough to keep cold dark fingers from reaching inside, but soft enough to encourage things to grow.

Then again, I was not made for easy.

Listen.

The sharp wind is warning us to prepare.  The birds that remain are watching.  The wolves of the night are crying out in hunger.  There is pain ahead of us all.  This place is bowed under the weight of knowing such things, but it has not broken.

It has built me to endure.

 

A cheery bell announces my entrance to the candy shop. Gaia looks up from counting money behind the counter and smiles at me. Today she’s wearing the softest looking sweater with dark blue jeans. Her light brown hair is escaping from a braid, showing off a couple peek-a-boo streaks of color.

There is a gentleman already browsing inside, so I look at the caramel apple display for a bit.

“Can I help you find anything?” Gaia asks after a few minutes. Now that she’s come around the counter, I can see she’s wearing yellow bee socks with her converse.

I nod and ask about her licorice. She shows me her selection and we start discussing the flavors. The shiny red pieces are my favorite, but there’s also purple and yellow and blue and black. Gaia laughs when I wrinkle my nose at the black licorice and insists they’re the best kind. She would know, she argues. After all, she made them herself.

She shows me her new batch of lemon drops, the peppermints, the gum balls. Her eyes are sparkling as she shows off her chocolate selection. I nod and admire her work and ask her about her day, but we do not talk about buying anything.

She knows I’m not here for the candy.

The gentleman finally comes to the register and buys a bag of taffies and a box of chocolates. I watch him from out of the corner of my eye while examining a barrel of rock candy.

We both wait until the door has shut behind him before turning to each other again. Gaia is grinning from ear to ear.

I follow her into the back room, and she pushes a wheeled shelf away from the wall. She presses her fingers against a knot in the wooden panels, and something behind them clicks. Four panels swing open as a hidden door.

“Have fun.” Gaia whispers, and she shuts the door behind me with barely a click.
The path before me is lined with bookcases.

The first time I saw it, I cried from the beauty. Books and books and books, as far as I dared to venture. I never thought it was possible.

It certainly wasn’t legal.

There are five owners of the Forbidden Ink. Gaia usually runs the candy shop in the front, always keeping an eye out for someone in desperate need of the books they keep so carefully hidden.

I walk in deeper, smiling at the first couple of shelves I pass. They were the first I looked through, and I still remember how each title sprang out at me and demanded to be taken. I take a turn to the right and then to the left, running my fingers lightly over the bindings.

Someday. I tell myself. Someday I will read them all.

I take another turn and find Carena, re-shelving books while humming an old piece she once played for me on the piano. She’s wearing a blue polka-dot dress and Mary Jane heels, and when she sees me her eyes light up. “Good afternoon! I just put on the kettle, would you like some tea?”

There is something about her voice that reminds me of misty autumn nights, quiet Sunday afternoons, and cozy winter evenings. Words fall from her mouth like snowflakes on a still winter day.

Clear and soft and beautiful.

We walk through a row of shelves to a small sitting room. There are armchairs facing each other and a coffee table that holds mugs and coasters and teabags. Along the wall is a stove with a steaming kettle. We sit and have tea and Carena tells me about the mystery books she just finished. I pull out my notebook to jot down the titles.

I have seconds on tea and she asks me about my week and it is a while before I return to the labyrinth of books, feeling warmed inside and out.

The air smells like books and vanilla and jasmine tea. I pause among the poetry and look for something to take home with me. Something simple and complex and short and deep, all bundled within paper and ink.

I’ve found a pocket-sized volume that calls out to me when my eyes catch on a maple leaf butterfly. Each wing is brilliantly blended from red to orange, looking for all the world like it belongs on a tree. It’s crawling along a shelf, lost and bewildered.

The butterflies don’t normally come out to the poetry section. I nudge it gently onto my small volume of poetry and carry it away.

Soon the bookcases have delicate vines trailing up their sides and tiny crocus flowers peeking out from between floorboards. Potted saplings start appearing in openings where shafts of light filter in. Butterflies start fluttering out of shelves with wings of glass, of leaves, of feathers and smoke. I lower the maple leaf butterfly to a group of potted lavender and let it crawl off.

“Well hello!”

I turn and grin. Asena is exactly how I’d picture a forest nymph. Short, soft hair that curls at the ends like the tendrils of a climbing vine, a green shirt with a belt at the waist, and a layered gypsy skirt of earthen tones. She’s wearing a flower crown, which also carries a few resting butterflies.

“Hello.” I say. “One of your maple leaves got lost among the poetry.”

She walks over to the lavender and stoops to examine the returned butterfly. “Oh dear, they’ve been doing that recently. I think it’s the rose tea Carena just got. Can’t blame them for loving the smell.”

I can’t help but think that if Asena ever grabbed my hand and said ‘come with me on an adventure’, I would follow her without hesitation. She looks like she would know exactly where to go to find dragons or castles or sea creatures.

Talking with her was like sinking into an old legend, surrounded by magic.

And knowing I’d always make it back home.

She shows me her newest plants and tells me about the stray bluebird that she’d adopted. I show her the pocket volume I’ve picked and she tells me which poems are her favorites.

I ask her to tell me about another world before I go, and she eagerly begins to talk about a land of starlight and moonbeams, of fairies and magical glens, of beasts of nightmares and creatures of light.

When she finishes, it is as if she had grabbed my hand and run off, taking me there and back again and leaving me with memories of adventure.

I wander through the bookcases, leaving the plants and butterflies behind. The book-bindings here are made of leather the titles are written in golds and silvers.
I’m amongst the fantasy books now, and I am scanning the titles for a book I spotted the last time I was here.

“Can I help you find something?”

I look up in time to see Celeste poke her head around a corner. Her hair is layered and long, with little braids scattered throughout and tiny white flowers woven in. She’s wearing a teal blue blouse with a leather jacket and dark jeans.

Her eyes are full of things yearning to be made.

I try to tell her the title I’m looking for, but instead I end up telling her what I remember about the story and how it made me feel and why it meant so much to me. She’s nodding like I’m making sense when really I feel like my words are spilling out in a mess, like the way puzzle pieces tumble out of a newly opened box.

Celeste leads me to a bookshelf and we search the books together. I fall into silence as I look, and suddenly she is the one with words tumbling out. She’s telling me about constellations and music and the way our brains process memories. I pull out the book I’m looking for as she tells me about the way people talk and what their words usually mean.

We chat for a while, and I forget what it is that we say but I remember what we mean.

Celeste reminds me of a lighthouse glowing in the night, of a fairy glen under a bright summer sun, of a scribe’s office with papers scattered everywhere.

When I finally pull away, my thoughts have settled into new places of belonging.
I hold the two books close to me as I take the roundabout way back. I am not eager to leave this place, and I linger among the shelves of scripts and screenplays. Behind one of the shelves I hear typing, and I peek around the corner to spot Kairi in front of a computer.

She’s wearing an asymmetrical blue dress with a fitted white jacket. The desk is clean and white, holding her computer and a vase of blush roses. Her fingers are dancing over the keys, keeping beat to a jumpy tune I cannot hear. I watch her for a minute before she blows a stand of pink hair out of her face and spots me. “Find some good books?”

I hold up the two I’m carrying and she nods with a grin. But of course she knows I found some good ones. That’s the only kind they carry. She waves me over and pulls out her sketchbook, opening it to show me her newest concepts. There are characters, inventions, and designs filling the pages, everything I could never imagine on my own.

I think she’s from the future.

Kairi makes me think of lightning and crystals and stars. When I listen to her talk I feel like she’s telling me the secrets of the universe. I tell her about my week and she tells me about new ideas and dreams for tomorrow.

When I leave her to her typing, I feel like I could try anything.

I feel like trying would be worth it.

I knock on the hidden door and wait for Gaia. She wraps my books carefully and I buy them along with a caramel apple. The bell rings once more as I leave the candy shop and walk home in a crowd of people. People who haven’t just come from a forbidden bookstore. People who didn’t just travel and wonder and have a cup of tea with friends.

I think of Gaia, waiting for someone in desperate need of books to walk into her store.

Waiting for someone starved of stories.

Waiting for everyone in this crowded city.

There is a lake in the middle of the sprawling enchanted forest.  The only visitors it gets are woodland creatures, a handful of fairies, perhaps an old wizard or two.  Every once in a while, on the days where the air is dimmed and the world wilts, a desperate adventurer arrives looking for direction, or hope, or answers.

They always stop at the lake somewhere along their journey.

It is for us to listen, to help, to offer council.  We ask them for news, or stories, or perhaps something new we haven’t seen, and in return we send them on with what they need.  Some do not listen, most do not understand our council right away.  It is only when another comes that we find out if we were listened to, in the end.

They call our lake the Oracle’s Tears.

The Seeker’s Pool.

The Whispering Waters.

They write our lake into their legends, they speak of it in their poetry.  They call it whatever it meant to them.  They name it as the place they sought when the world grew dim and their path crumbled beneath them.

I call it home.

I was born in the inky depths of its waters and grew up cradled by its waves.  I played with the fairies that danced on the surface, I listened to stories about heroes and villains and the people caught in between, and I wished upon the stars at night that they would wake me if a traveler came to us after dark.

I wanted to be the one to speak with the next adventurer.  There were so many questions I wanted to ask them, and there was so much kept inside me that longed to be shared.  We all knew the stories; there were so few, and there was so much time for them to be told.  It left us with no one to listen but the fairies, and fairies do not have the interest to listen to anything longer than a sentence.

I had all these words with nowhere to put them.

I was old when the stars finally awoke me, piercing farther through the water than they usually like to so that I would stir from sleep.  An adventurer had come, and I could greet them.  The waters were still and silent, dark and drowsy, and it caressed me like a tired mother in the dead of night.  Not another creature stirred within the water, and I remember feeling more awake than if I were a child playing with fairies as I swam to the surface.

He was a child, kneeling at the water’s edge with the weight of a kingdom on his shoulders.  His eyes reflected starlight as he watched me rise from the surface.  I did not expect my adventurer to be so young.

What brings you here small one?

His hands were trembling in his lap.  I think the forest bent forward to hold him.  I do not know how to do this alone, he whispered, and I have lost my way.

All my life I’d considered what questions to ask, but never had I thought it would be this. Why you?

He looked away for a moment of thought, and when he turned back I saw a weariness that comes from hard decisions. There was no one else, and so it must be me.

The trees shivered, and a wind picked up as if to wrap around him like the arms of a loved one.  Even the water rose from its slumber and lapped at the shore near him.  He’d said there was no one else.  How had it come to this?

Tell me, I said softly, tell me where you’re going, and what waits for you there.

Moonlight glinted off the water’s surface, lighting the boy’s face as he told me his story.  The wind played with the strands of his hair, the trees lifted roots around him to sit on, and the nocturnal woodland creatures crept out of the shadows to lay next to the place he sat.

We know what it is to feel alone.  We sense it in this boy, and none of us can ignore him.  None of us can part from him while he feels this way.  It is the way of the forest and the lake, to never abandon the lost and lonely.

He finished his story and waited for me to speak, watching intently with a shard of moonlight in his gaze.  I was a guide, a creature of the lake.

A creature of the Oracle’s Tears.

The Seeker’s Pool.

The Whispering Waters.

He knew the legends, the poems that speak of this place.  He was here for direction, for hope, for answers.

It was for me to listen, to help him, to give council.  To send him on his way with what he needed.

He needed so much.

I was at a loss for words.  All the shared wisdom and knowledge and stories did not prepare me for a boy that took on the world because no one else would.  There was only one thought in my head, and it grew and grew until I could not contain it.

I dipped a hand into the waters that had watched over me all my life.  I looked at the trees, the woodland creatures, the moon and the stars, and I asked for one last wish to be granted me.

A creature of night rose and sent its shadows stretching to me.  The trees shook and sent their leaves twirling through the air.  A fog lifted from the surface of the lake, sparkling in the moonlight like diamonds, like magic.  The wind rose and picked up the shadows, the leaves, the fog and the moonbeams, mixing them and sending them spinning around me.

I looked up and saw a sky of shooting stars, streaking into the night with trails of gold dust in their wake.  I think the dust got caught in the storm around me.

The wind fell, everything in it dissolving, and I was standing on the shore in clothes made of shadows.  I was standing, standing on feet and legs and shoes made out of a granted wish.  I was unsteady, uncertain of the ground and empty air.  The world seemed more precarious from land.  Precarious and fragile and full of possibility.

I helped the boy to his feet. You will not do this alone, we will share this burden.

His shoulders loosened, as if a kingdom had lifted from them, and he lifted his head high.  Something in me ached at the sight, at the boy who should not have needed to come here.  I took his hand and vowed he would not be a tragedy.

To the poets and writers of legends, listen.

When you tell of our journey, remember how it began.  Tell them how a kingdom was falling, and no one would step forward to help.  Tell them it should not have been this way.  Tell them to learn from this:

I would not let him go alone.

It was an accident, really.  I was walking home with my backpack slipping off one shoulder, filled with homework and deadlines and heavy, heavy books.  The spring air had warmed just enough to coax leaves to open from their buds and grass to poke out from the ground.  I was chasing my thoughts into circles, never resting on one long enough to get anywhere.

There was a bee in my path, crawling slowly over the ground, its wings limp and tired.  Something about the way it looked weighed to the ground tugged on me, so I grabbed a short stick to pick up the weary bee and took it home.

I set my backpack down on the floor with a heavy thump, keeping my eyes on the little bee to make sure it didn’t fall off.  My mother was in the kitchen, and I announced my presence by saying “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt us”.  She still jumped when she turned around, but she merely told me to be careful of the stinger as she left the kitchen.

I set the stick and bee on a small plate and dissolved a bit of sugar with a little water.  Carefully, I placed a spoonful of the sugar-water next to the bee, then carried the plate back outside.

I did not know what path I’d begun.

Here’s the thing: bees do not forget a kindness.

As the days stretched longer and the air grew hotter, I found more bees crawling near my house.  I started carrying a small jar of sugar water and a dropper with me, to give them just enough strength to fly again and continue their work searching for flowers.

I started filling our long-abandoned birdbath with a shallow pool of water for them, scattering a handful of small rocks so they had a place to land and drink in the midst of their long day.  After reviving a weary bee, I sometimes carried it to the birdbath and set it on the edge, in case it wanted a good long drink before it flew away.

I began to notice how few flowers grew nearby.  It was no wonder the bees often grew faint under the hot sun.  I rode my bike to the store and asked after flowers that bees might like.  My allowance scattered across the store counter and I carefully balanced my purchases in one hand as I steered my bike home with the other.

I planted purple clover around the birdbath, started thousands of daisies along the garage, and lined our backyard fence with lavender.

My father expressed surprise at my sudden interest in gardening, but offered me the use of his old garden tools. “It’s good work, to garden.” he’d said, pulling the box out of storage. “Give it all you got.”

My mother loved the flowers, telling me she’d often wished she had the time to plant some.  She would join me from time to time when she had a few minutes to spare, the two of us sometimes working in silence, sometimes chatting about our day.  She bought me a new pair of gardening gloves after a particularly hard day of weeding.  I think it’s a little piece of a dream she thought she’d never have.

The bees recognize me now.  Hundreds of them.  They gather around me when I come out to fill their water, and they like to land on the backs of my hands when I’m gardening.  They follow me when I go out for walks, and I swear they come to me in swarms when I’m feeling upset.

Over time, my friends have met the bees and learned not to fear them.  It has taken a couple years of getting acquainted, but now my friends have started planting flowers of their own.

I had not planned on becoming a caretaker of bees.  All I know is this: that I was walking home from school with a backpack full of work, that I saw a bee struggling and weary, and that I decided to help.

Here’s the thing: I’m glad I did.

Listen to me.

Bees do not forget a kindness.