Fairy Stories & Other Tales

In the high country of forest-hidden land—the one that passes as a portal between the realms of mortal and immortal—a royal faerie sat upon a throne of Fae glass, and through a tiny lens that spoke of stayed destiny and inflicted grief, she surveyed the worlds.
Cold she had been in demeanor and in body for time beyond memory, but that was mere water to the ice that pierced her when through her lens memory broke and she saw a man she had known of old. Surprise came as it should, for the Fae queen was used to permanence when death was rendered by her hand. Cold fingers tightened around the arms of her glass throne, then pushed off, only to have her body caught by wings.She would meet him and find out his aims. ‘Tell me, Laodius,’ the queen began when she stood before him, ‘how came you back to the realm of the living?’ At the question the man looked up, and a small smile played upon his lips. ‘My queen,’ he said, and inclined his head, ‘Though, perhaps the bond between crown and subject break…

The bees made honey that morning, but that was not unusual, for that was what they always did.The rabbits ate their greens and dug new paths to their warrens, as they always did.The birds gathered worms and chirped, and this too was according to the usual state of things.
And then there was Ellis. Ellis was a wanderer.And she never did anything always; there was, she thought, far too much time for always. Each morning was something new and different.There were new things to eat (and even when there wasn’t, there were new ways to eat them), new paths to take, and time to walk or run or scratch or holler or stare at the changing colors of the sky.To say hello to old friends and make new ones—all this was difference.For to Ellis, there was far too much time for always. Each afternoon, Ellis saw a different warmth and a different life.Sometimes there were naps.Sometimes there was work.Sometimes the rain poured and turned one’s bed into mud.Other times snow was cause for helping a neighbor bee…

A warm breeze blew.Hot.Lazy.And then, quite suddenly: angry.A dull anger, at first, as if a languishing heat.But anger is such that it gives way to vent, and air to heat begins to burn.And as the breeze became a wind, it roared and with it came the flames.
Why had it come to this, the trees, the brush, the fields, and all who had once taken shelter in their summer-dry cover wanted to know.And the breeze itself could hardly construct an answer, save that to drift gently by had seemed too great a bore, a torment not to be born.And so it was for want of some excitement that it had begun to rage.To burst, taking down all within its path, to see the breakdown, to witness and relish destruction. And so it burned. Until it came upon a bank that met water flowing as lazily as the breeze had once done. Try as the breeze might, as feverish as its torrential flames licked, the water would not burn. Its energy wasted, and its anger all but spent, the breeze began to blow less hot, and it was not long …

The saint felt a disturbance and looked down at her alter to see a man weeping.

     His hair was long and windswept and greasy.  His face pockmarked and dirty.  His clothes were black faded to dull gray, caked in splatters of crusted mud.  Brown stains that looked like dried blood and others of mustard and olive - probably vomit - had streaked their way down his shirt as though in uneven pinstripes.  Hands lined with dirt clasped one another, long uneven yellow nails digging into the backs of them.  His shoes were tattered, once perhaps maroon, the soles coming off from the toes to the arches against the floor as the man flexed his feet.

     His soul, though... that was pure white.

     Why he wept, the saint did not know.  That was the business of the Almighty.

     Even so, the man had peaked the saint's interest.  It had been a long time since she had performed a miracle.  The time was ripe.  She bent an ear to make sense of the sounds that came softly off the man's lips.

…