Boy From The Fairy Tale

The glass palace shattered into a million pieces behind him as he limped away down the snow-frosted road in the sunset light, clutching his shredded garments about him.

The road was bleak and long, with only a few stout little thatched huts tucked into the thick green pine trees covering the roadside, but the huts were few and mostly miles apart. The good woodland people took the strange young man in, mostly for just a night, sometimes for a day or two, but he never stayed very long.

Behind closed doors at night, with the firelight casting long strange shadows on the rough walls, the parents would talk of him in hushed tones, with awe in their voices, bordering on fear.

"Did you see his eyes?" Mother would whisper in the darkness. "His eyes look as though he's got a terrible sadness, the very weight of the world. But he's so tender too; a fallen angel." And Father would mutter something about fairy folk, how they steal mortal babies away from their families and raise them. "And that's what he looks like," Father would whisper softly, so the sound wouldn't carry through the walls to where the young man slept. "A fairy child bewitched and yet mortal, never belonging entirely to either world, and so roaming lonesome and alone their whole lives, trying to find their true people, their true place."

The young man was always courtieous, almost painfully so. He rarely smiled, but when he did it was so beautiful, yet so full of sadness that it made your breath catch in your throat, and you had to look away, or else cry. When questioned about who he was or where he came from, he seemed to close up like a flower, tight within himself, and his deep, hypnotically beautiful eyes, so full of misery, became mirrors, reflecting your questions back at you so that you saw nothing of him. So he always answered them when they asked, but somehow the answer never gave them any more knoledge of the boy than they had known before. After a few questions however, most people gave up, for there was something about him so other-worldly, so tender, so deeply, achingly hurt, that all you really wanted to do was wrap your arms around him and give everything in your being to protect him and ease his pain.

But alas, no one could do that.

And so in the frostbitten morning before the sun was fully risen, he would leave his benefactors of the night, walking out into the crips, cold morning with his bundle over his shoulder and a slight limp, his close shaven head tucked downwards, and his eyes with their long black lashes like stars cast to the ground, as if to shield him from the scrutiny of the world.

The day stretched on to infinity as he walked slowly onwards, past the endless miles of green-black trees, towering over the road and letting in only a murky, dim light. His bundle was light, but he hunched forward as though carrying a great weight. He stopped around midday to eat a loaf of bread that the last farmer's wife had given him. He remembered her eyes, so soft, so motherly, so concerned. He felt like a traitor for not being able to answer her honest questions in return for the food, shelter, and hospitality that she and her husband had shown him, but in order to live, he must forget his past. He must pretend that he had been born today, with no past, and no future. Only the present.

But no matter how hard he tried he couldn't surpress the visions. They weren't so bad if he kept moving, kept staring at the huge black trees and the stony road ahead of him. But when he slept at night, safe in a farmer's house or in a hayloft, they came to haunt him, and then there was nothing he could do to rid himself of his past. It caught him unexpectedly, like a ravenous wolf and shook him until he screamed from terror and old pain made fresh again, memories that he had pushed away springing horribly to life again, so real and alive that he felt he was drowning in them, there was no escape, until at last he would jolt awake, drenched in sweat, gasping and crying, and then he would lay awake with the cold night as his only comfort until the red eyed dawn slithered up to chase away his deamons for another day.

Night fell and the little cottage glittered in the distance like a mother's smile, drawing him onward as though he were a moth flying toward a candle. He followed the worn little footpath that lead from the road up to the door of the cottage, but stopped a few yards away from the door, suddenly transfixed. In the golden-lit window of the cottage, a tall young woman was bending over a table, setting down two plates and two glasses, her long golden hair catching the light of two candles glowing cheerily on the table. A small, wry smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, and as he watched her, she said something to someone that he couldn't see, and then threw back her head and laughed, tossing her hair back like a wild mare, her neck rippling with laughter in the candlight. Slowly, he moved towards the door and knocked.

She opened it, still glowing with laughter. Her eyes were serious above her smile though, the deep, wise eyes of an old woman, or else a very, very young child. When she saw him she stopped smiling.

"Hello ma'am." He said in his quiet voice, ducking his head slightly as was polite. "I'm a poor travelor, and I was wondering if perhaps you'd be so kind as to feed me a meal and put me up for a night in your barn. I can take care of your animals or do any other chores that need doing." He couldn't stop staring into her eyes, they held his attention like two tiny planets, complete and whole and shining with intelligence and hidden thoughts.

The woman paused, a slight frown creasing her brow. She seemed to be weighing him, measuring him. But then she smiled and stepped aside, rubbing her arms with her hands in the cold coming in from the door.

"Yes, you can stay the night and get a good supper from us. It would be a crime to let a poor soul sleep outside on a night like this. You can bed up in front of the fireplace, and I'm sure we can find a few chores for you in the morning."

He stepped greatfully into the warm room, with fire and candlight dancing off it's log walls, and let the woman take his bundle and ragged cloak and hang them near the fire. Then she told him to sit down and that she would set an extra place at the table. With that, she bustled into the other room, her red dress whisking out behind her, and he heard soft murmuring, as of a quiet conference taking place. A moment later, a tall, solemn-faced man with dark hair came in and looked him up and down, then nodded in silent greeting and sat down at the table opposite him. The woman came back a moment later, carrying a stool and an extra plate for herself. She disappeared and then a moment later came out bearing the food, a thick stew and some coarse brown bread. She sat down, and for a moment there was a long, strained silence. Then the man bent his head and mumbled a few words of grace, and the meal began.

The fire had burned down to coals and he lay quietly in front of the hearth, wrapped in two thick blankets the woman had given him, listening to the soft pop and hiss of the embers whispering together in their soft red language before they admitted defeat and became ashes. His eyes reflected the last flecks of the light, and his last thought was soft and gray-blue like smoke, and sweet with a strange kind of peace.

But then the visions came.

High up, so high up. Gray vallies and craggy windblown cliffs all around him, standing on the summit of rock, overlooking the purple moutains in the distance, the mist-sprinkled hills rolling out beneath him like a velvet cloak.

He was freezing cold and through the chill wind whipping his face he could hear a voice, echoing eerilly above the rocks and wind. It was calling his name, screeching, moaning, pleading. All at once he spun around and there she was, holding out her arms to him, her eyes lost and wild, her skin as ashy gray as the rock beneath his feet. The veins in her arms stood out sickly blue, like rivers on a map bulging suddenly to life.

"Please." She said, whispering now, the wind dying suddenly to a terrifying calm. "Please...just one more time. Just once more. I'm dying, can't you see? Just one more time, that's all I ask. Just one more time." She smiled then, a horrible, decaying smile, a smile on the verge of death. She came closer.

He was shuddering. He tried to turn away from her hypnotic blue eyes, but they were the only thing about her that was even remotely as she has once been, and they riveted him so that he couldn't look away. Slowly she reached for his hand, and as she touched him, he saw his flesh turn to ash, wrinkle and fall from his bones in fluttering gray pieces, he screamed in horror and tried to pull away from her, but her grip was like a vice and she was staring into his eyes, trying to pull something from his very soul. His flesh was falling all around him in gray piles and he was screaming and screaming, but she kept staring into his eyes like a deamon, and then she was screaming too, screaming words, "You! You did this to me! See what you've made me become! See!" and she was right. Her words made him shake to his very core, like a leaf in a hurricane, and he cried scalding tears of shame that fell onto her bony wrists like arrows.

"Oh God!" he screamed, tearing at his face, tearing at her clutching hands still holding onto him, ripping at his body...

"Oh God!" He woke up screaming, his body drenched in sweat, the vision grotesque and livid before his eyes. He didn't know where he was, the darkness clawing at his eyes, trying to dive down his throat and swallow him whole. He thrashed wildly, in his panic trying to jump up, get away, anything. But a pair of thin, strong hands pushed him gently backwards, and a kind voice with a steel core said "Lay back down boy, the only devils in this house are the ones in your head."

If he had not already been consumed with fear, he would have jumped out of his skin all over again at the sudden appearence of the voice. But as he regained his wits, shaken and shaking, he obeyed and lay back down.

A moment later, a candle sprang into life and revealed the face of the woman, looking strangely elf-like in the tiny glow of the candle, her golden hair thrown about her shoulders, a guarded expression in her strange, wise eyes.

"Nightmares eh?" She asked, a wry quirk at the corners of her mouth. "Seems strange for a grown man like you. But then," she added more kindly "Lord knows there's much that would give the strongest soul nightmares." She looked at him more closely. "Say," she said softly, "we all have things in our pasts that aren't pretty. All of us." And she nodded, her eyes suddenly wet looking and grim.

He sat up, avoiding her eyes. He nodded. There was a long moment of silence, except for the cold sound of wind rushing through the pines outside. They both seemed to be waiting for something. He chanced a look at her eyes and winced. She was looking right at him, not just at his eyes, but through them, as though she could go down their tunnels and see the darkest regions of his soul. She did not flinch. He looked back at her and she nodded, ever so slightly.

"I don't know where you've been or what you've seen," She said quietly. "but you can't run away from it all your life. Some day you're going to have to go back and slay your deamons." She smiled wryly. "Believe me. I know from personal experience."

Slowly, carefully, he let himself look deep into her eyes, and there was something there, a fortress of steel, a warrior maiden with a flashing sword, a child forced to grow up too early, an ancient woman, wise beyond time... that made him suddenly know. She understood him. She saw without seeing. She comprehended without knowing. She accepted without judgement. She saw. It terrified him to his very core, and calmed him like a drink of water given to a man dying of thrist, and made him feel as though a great, great iron door had opened somewhere in him, letting a dim ray of light into the dark, fetid, unopened dungeons of his pain.

The gray morning light pried open his eyelids with scratchy red tipped fingers and he rolled over, wondering in a dim, half conscious way why he felt so peaceful, and wanting to savor it sweetly before he fully awoke and it was gone. But just as he was drifting softly back into sleep's warm embrace, an icy draught of wind whistled against his neck, accompanied by the loud clomp of hobnailed boots that proceeded to stomp loudly across the floor to within a few inches of his nose. There they stopped, and a deep, soft voice said from somewhere above him "Well lad, if you want to make your keep, you'd best get up and come with me."

He blinked at the boots. They were huge and dark brown and their tips were covered in frost. He shivered just looking at them. They seemed to have a life of their own. He squinted. It almost seemed as if the boots themselves spoke to him. Then one of them leapt suddenly forward and prodded him in the arm. He jumped up, all his sleepiness gone, and came face to face with the Master, for of course it was he who had spoken and not his boots, however alive they seemed. And so it was that he got up, grabbed his cloak and shoved on his boots and followed the Master out into the icy, glass blown morning, looking ready to shatter if he breathed on it.

It was late afternoon, the deep blue shadows of winter hanging from the tree trunks in the low light, and the soft gray-blue sighing of the wind high up in the branches sending shivers down his spine as he stood on the doorstep. She stood in the doorway above him, the dim dusky light of the fire illuminating all the seperate golden hairs on her head, so that she looked like some sort of pagan goddess of the sun. It was time for him to go, the Master had said it, gruffly, over lunch. But something odd and deep was compelling him to stay, fixing his eyes hungrily to the cottage, to the woman in the doorway. This wanting confused him. He had never wanted a place before, he had only wanted the... The wind's icy nails shivered down his back, and he shook his head violently, and turned away from the house, from the light and warmth, and the golden woman he wanted, but could not understand. He didn't look back, but he thought he felt her eyes on him like rays of sun, and when he was almost out of sight of the little cabin in the woods, he thought he heard her call something, but he didn't know what.

That night he couldn't find a place to stay, and so he huddled miserably in a ditch, wracked with cold the whole night through, never alseep, but never really awake either. Twice he thought he saw visions. First he saw the glass palace, high on the blue hill, clear as water, just the way he remembered it. He felt his heart yearning for what he knew it held, felt his very blood boiling for the stuff that kept him alive. He tried to walk towards it, but as he took a step, the sky suddenly turned black, the hill a hideous red, and the beautiful glass palace shattered into a million jagged pieces, and blew away on the foul wind.

The second vision was so real that in the morning, he wasn't entirely sure that it hadn't really happened. Out of the night and frigid cold, there came a soft, pale golden light, like that of the first rays of sun coming over a hill in the morning. In that light, he heard a soft, high singing, so ethereal that it sent tingles throughout his entire body. The light and singing grew stronger, and then there she was, the woman from the cabin, red dress like flames, and long golden hair. He tried to speak to her, but she just shook her head, still singing, and pointed into the dark woods. As she did so, a brightly lit pathway opened in the frigid black of the trees, golden and inviting. His eyes widened in disbelife, but when he turned back to the woman, she had vanished, though he could still hear the soft, trembling notes of her song.

In the morning, cold and stiff, too tired to think, but thankful that he had somehow lasted the night without freezing, he went to the woods on the far side of the road, looking for the path that the woman had pointed to. There was nothing to be seen. He shivered and shook his head, it had to be here somewhere, the vision had been so real. He scrambled through thick, spiney underbrush, briars and thorns pulling at his clothes, leaving red scratches on his hands. The trees were dark and silent, as though they were keeping secrets from him. At last he sat down on a stump, breathing heavily, berating himself for finally losing the last grip he had on sanity.

It was then he saw the path. It was tiny and brown, only a deer trail really, but it was well worn, and he gasped when he saw it, squinting his eyes, blinking, sitting absolutely still to make sure he wasn't halucinating it. Then he got up and started walking.