The Stories

I saw a strange thing in the wood one night. A witch on a broomstick flying through the air. Or maybe she was just a woman. On a broom. With a pointed hat. 

    She wove through the trees low, flying toward a glow in the distance.

    I followed.

    She landed in front of the glow that had become a brightness.

    The brightness moved toward her; it swallowed her.

    My eyes adjusted to the light. Or, rather, to the fairies that gave off the light.

    The woman with the pointed hat who from time to time flew on a broom, sat on a stump that curved like a chair, nestling in as though it had been made for her.

    The fairies flew still in the air, or sat on the ground, or on the surrounding shrubs. Comfortable, but leaning toward her. They were waiting.

    She took a breath, and began to speak stories.

    About princesses and princes and witches and enchantments and sorcerers. About fairies.

    The fairies listened as though their lives depended on it. Perhaps they did.

    Maybe the stories were more than stories. Her face was serious enough, even through lighthearted beginnings that came after once upon a time... The stories were serious business. Maybe serious enough that they had to be told so that the fairies would live them out in order to create more stories, and on it would go. Unless the stories stopped. Maybe, if that happened, the fairies would fade away. No world should be like that.

    I faded away myself, then. I don't know what magic it was that sent me home. That put me in my bed. That covered me up, and made my eyes shut and my head dream.

    I went back to the wood a week later. There the woman, the witch-woman, flew. There the fairies gathered. And on it went.

    On it goes, I suspect. Or I hope. Or perhaps it must.

    It must. 

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