I have always thought that the sight of birds clustering the bare branches of a winter tree is one of the most magical things we have access to outside of fairy books--and the sight of a whole flock of birds taking off at once from such a tree, the most beautiful.  Birds seem to carry magic under their wings somehow: you can see it in the shimmer of their feathers if you chance to pick one up.

Seeing them sitting in dark rows on the trees, I can't help thinking it's a conference of birds, each flown in from fantastic travel to share a story with the rest of the flock. They gather together, somber councilors and fidgety pageboys, secrets passing from beak to beak and branch to branch.  In their bird language, they speak of magic, and of how they crossed the crest of the horizon into other worlds, and what they found there.  They speak of their flights through the smokescreen of mirrors and frozen lakes, into the realms of Father Frost and Lady of the Lake.  They mourn the young foolhardy pigeons who tried to make the journey before they were ready, and left their lives at windowpanes.

They weren't trying to get out through the window glass you see, they were trying to get in.

And of course, they cluck at the humans who scamper past, small black harried shapes, cold and insignificant bundled in their winter clothes, with no magic to them, and no knowledge of how close it lies.

She sat in a coffeeshop overlooking a busy street, in the corner table by the window.  A small girl, with somber eyes and a quiet smile.  Black hair, black coffee, a black hat placed on the chair beside her.  Not much to look at, but then, no one was looking.

Except her.

She had a notebook open on the table in front of her, next to her coffee.  A tattered thing, well worn and beaten at the edges, but sturdy still.  Smiling slightly,  she looked out the window, watching the people swarm on the street, wet and bright under the night sky, and she'd tap her pen twice, take a sip from her cup, and then jot down a short phrase in the book.

She didn't know what she wrote, not really.  It wasn't a premeditated thing, it wasn't even a story--just fragments, one for each person.  They didn't fit together until later, when, having been started and abandoned by her pen, they grew on their own and wrote themselves into whole sentences and paragraphs and sometimes even full pages.  She couldn't edit them after; half the time she couldn't even read them.  She'd flip past the older pages, filled up with writing, and only catch incidental words, fleeting images.  It was frustrating sometimes, but she understood that was just the way of things.  All she could do was seed the phrases.  Just how it was, and you had to accept it.

Once she wrote a person, she couldn't write them again.  Most she wrote in their their 20s, their 30s, their teens if she was short that day.  Sometimes she'd write a child, if they caught her eye.  Sometimes she wouldn't catch someone till their 50s or 60s.  She wondered about the people she never got a chance to write, then wondered if it was presumptious of her to wonder.  She wasn't omniscient after all, she only did what she could.  And that, too, was the way it was.

She'd hear people talking around her, sometimes.  She liked it best when she chanced to overhear the ones she'd written, years later, to see how it all turned out, make sense of the snatches she could get from her book.  Often they'd mention her by name.  They tended to ascribe too much to her, and too little to themselves, she thought.  She only seeded the phrases, and did her best to catch people at the right time.

Her sister was the one who could read the whole book: her ultimate editor.  She'd be the one to rip out the pages, when she wanted.  But she couldn't write in it, and that, too was just the way it was.  You just had to accept it.

I had a friend who always dreamt of a White City.  Half divided by rain, half by sun, he said, as though a knife had cut straight across and left a curtain of tears.  All the inhabitants of the city were the same in each dream, and one could say that every dream was the same dream, for every one of his nights was the same day in the White City.

He knew how every city-dweller's day would go like clockwork: he knew that every night, a wayward steel beam from the mechanic's would come through the window and behead the seamstress at her 4'o clock tea, and that the pub near the shipyard would erupt in a fistfight at 5:30 pm, and that a lone man bent on revenge would stumble when a cart crossed his path at the city's center, and stab himself through the heart instead of his target.

It was a very violent dream, and yet it was also very mundane, and the routine took the edge off the violence.  They would never remeber it the next night, after all.

Everyone revolved around the same inevitable track, except the dreamer himself.  He could choose his own path within the White City.  One night he might come to have tea with the seamstress in her sunny loft, promising to take her out dancing, knowing all the while that her smiling mouth would be half across the room from her feet not 20 minutes hence.  Another night he might choose to frequent the pub, leaving with a wink and a tip before he can get dragged into the fight.   The next night he might choose to avoid it all altogether, and wander on to the rainy side to see his friend Jim, and listen sympathetically to his futile plans for revenge.

This dream is, of course, not to everyone's taste perhaps, but how fascinating to have a stable dream world that you can return to, night and night again.  What if you knew you'd return to your dream, anytime you wished?  What if you had a dream that could pick up where you last left off?  What if recurring characters staffed your dreams, who knew you, recognized you, and remembered the details of your previous interactions?

An old puzzle goes, if a man sleeps for 12 hours of the day and is awake for 12, and if awake he is a shoe cobbler but asleep he is a king, which is he really?  Does either have precendence?

If your dream could be its own autonomous world, what would that mean for the division of dreams and reality?  What if you liked it better?  Could you decide to spend most of your day asleep, could you choose to regard the real world as a dream to be endured until you could live your preferred life, elsewhere?

Something that I wish dearly could be true, is for dreams to communicate across dreamers, so that when you dream about someone, somehow they'd be having the same dream about you.  The dream would thus exist on an independent plane, its own thing with its own rules and reality.  This is impractical even aside from the constraints of physical dream functions, because then well-known people would have an unfair burden of dreams.

I spend a lot of time trying to come up with a plausible way for this fantasy to work.  Maybe such dreams are forgotten upon waking by one or both persons, remaining only in the subconscious (or a collective unconscious)?  This way the other person's lack of recollection of the dream would not be a defininite proof of its invalidity.  I can never quite get it to work though.

Still, isn't it appealing to think that somehow, what you experience in dreams could be in some way real, because shared?

"I have the weirdest dreams!" she said.

...But then again, don't we all?  Which one of us hasn't dreamed of, say, a bizarre cross-country roadtrip with your three closest friends, Madonna, and Barney the Dinosaur, that is really an undercover plot to save the world from karaoke-obsessed aliens?  Or being thrown in a Spanish prison with donkey and a bag of celery, only to escape with the help of a surprisingly gallant Henry VIII dressed as Batman?

No, the truly weird dreams would be the ones that are not weird at all.  Can you imagine someone whose dreams involve entirely banal things every night?  A full sleep's worth filled with things like making oneself a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper, paying the gas bill a day too late, going out to trim the azaleas, taking a nice walk before dinner and so on?  As though the Sandman forgot them completely, and when he realized his mistake, all he had left was the gritty remnants of sand-dust in the bottom of his bag, no good for a proper dream at all.  Those dreams would be the weirdest.

I. Luna

Luna was often called a good-for-nothing girl, but in fact she was very good at polishing floors and silverware and furniture, and this was why she worked at the palace. She was not told this of course. The older maids all made out her hiring to be a matter of charity, as though paying 12 martens for a day of work would be charity to anybody. Luna took both the work and the pay without complaining, though. Even 12 martens was enough for a loaf of rough bread and a slice of cheese and some good warm cider, even if it was hard put to stretch for much else, and she had a sick old mother at home who depended on her. Besides, she liked working at the palace. Everything was so beautiful there: the floors that shone like mirrors, the mirrors that shone like the sun, and all the lovely courtiers who shone brighter than both.

Now it was New Year's time, and the palace was shining even brighter than ever. A ball would be held that evening, and thousands of candles within crystal chandeliers illuminated the ballroom with a brilliance that far surpassed any earthly light. Luna was kept very late getting everything ready for the ball, and she saved a special treat for herself for the last--polishing the silver apples that would be given as gifts to the ball's attendees. She smiled as she polished the pretty apples, and was glad enough that her work allowed her to enjoy their splendor, even if she would not be one of the lucky rich young ladies who would carry them home. She was so lost in thought as she worked, that she did not notice an older girl carrying a bowl of vinegar from the kitchen till she tripped over her, and the vinegar spilled all over the silver apples. Splotches and stains ran over all the apples that were hit, ruining all of Luna's work and sending the other girl screaming.

Immediately, all the scullery maids and housemaids rushed out to the scene, and even the head palace maid, with her terrifying ring of keys, appeared with the rapid click-click of her heels.

"Why you good-for-nothing girl!" The kitchen maid who'd tripped over her shouted, "can't you keep out of the way? Just look what you've done! What will we do now?"

The head palace maid fixed the ruined apples with her cold stare, then fixed the maids assembled before her with an even colder one. "There is nothing to do," she said calmly. "The guests will be arriving shortly. Salvage whatever apples you can, and put them in a silver bowl. We shall place it in the middle of the dessert table, and hopefully no one will see that we are a dozen short." With a sharp click of her heel and a severe jingle of her keys, she turned to face Luna. "As for you, you have until dessert is served to provide 12 replacement apples if you wish to continue your employment."

"But where could I get silver apples?" Luna pleaded. "I couldn't even buy one such apple, let alone a dozen, and all the shops are closed."

"Pick them off the trees, then," the head maid retorted, and walked off.

Without half knowing how, Luna found herself turned out to the gates of the palace, her shabby coat and scarf at her feet, and a bucket in her hand. To her right lay the road into town and home, to her left lay the woods. The moon sparkled overhead, lighting the snow, frosting the tree tops, seemingly in much better spirits than Luna was. Luna thought of her mother, sick at home, and the fact that she had no cider or supper to bring her that night. She thought of how tired she was, and how the cold was already beginning to seep through the holes in her boots and mittens. She thought of the moon, round like a silver apple. Luna turned left.


II. The Kind and Fine Wizard

Luna walked deeper and deeper into the forest, trusting her namesake the moon to guide her way. The path glistened in front of her but disappeared immediately into blue gloom behind. The ice-covered trees gently tinkled their encouragement, and moved their sharp branches aside to let her pass. Luna's fingers and feet had long ago gone numb from the cold, and the bucket she carried seemed to her to be frozen into her palm, but still the moon beckoned her on. The wind picked up, and a night snow began to fall, covering Luna's tracks till she could not find her way back even if she wanted to. Finally, just when Luna thought she couldn't go another step and would surely let the snow entomb her where she stood, she came upon a clearing in the woods, and the moon stopped still in the sky above her.

There was no wind in the clearing, and Luna noticed that the snowfall had stopped also. A small frozen lake, smooth as glass, lay in its middle, and trees adorned with frost and ice-drops as though with jewels stood guard at the clearing's borders. An odd rock formation rose to Luna's side, and then the tallest rock coughed and Luna realized it was an old man so covered with snow and hoarfrost that he seemed to be melded into the very rocks he was sitting on.

"Are you all right, grandfather?" Luna asked, coming closer.

"Oh, another winter, another worry," rasped the old man. "Getting too old now. Can't manage it like I used to. Blizzards get sent where flurries are meant to go, flurries get sent where there should be sun and thaw. But what can you do? My magic mirror's grown dull and spotty, and the squirrels are lazy and full of mischief; can't count on them to do any of the cleaning properly."

"Perhaps I can help," Luna offered, becoming aware that this was no ordinary old man. "I've cleaned many a mirror in the palace."

"Oh? That would be kind of you, lass," the old man replied. He pointed to the lake with one shaking hand. "That's my mirror, you see. Can hardly make anything out for the murkyness. I'd be much obliged."

Luna looked with dismay at the lake, and at her frozen hands, but she set about her work as best she could, using her scarf and coat to polish the lake till it became clearer than the clearest crystal. To her surprise, she found that her hands grew warmer as she worked the ice, and by the time she was finished she was as warm as if she'd been polishing silverware in front of a blazing hearth-fire.

"Well then!" The old man cackled as he cobbled up behind her, "feeling a spell better now, I hope, lass? That's a fine job you did on my mirror there. So what brings you to my wood, and what can I do for you in return?"

Luna told the old man of her plight, and sighed. "I don't know what you could do to help me, for silver apples don't grow even in summer," she said.

"Ah, that they don't my lass, but in winter they might," the elder winked. "It's your luck you came here on New Year's Eve. It's a special time you know, between when one year ends and another begins, and many things are possible that would not be possible otherwise. Tonight and no other night, all rules drop away for a few hours, and I think a miracle or two could be arranged."

With that he straightened up, and as he did, the years seemed to fall off him along with the snow. A young man, strong and tall, with bright curly hair and bright warm eyes stood smiling before her. "There! Much better," he said. "Only tonight can I make winter and summer come together, so you best make good use of it, little Luna."

"How do you know my name? Who are you?" Luna asked, feeling as though she should be scared, yet incapable of being so.

"Oh, I know you well, little lass," the young man laughed. "I have seen you with the eyes of the moon, and I have seen you with the eyes of the sun. You do not know how bright you shine, Luna, brighter than the mirrors you polish, brighter than all the bright courtiers in the palace. As for me, I am twelve in one, I am birdsong and I am bitter wind, I am luck and I am disaster. But questions waste time and the ball is far underway, and we must hurry before it gets to midnight."

With that the young man raised his hand, and a sapling tree rose out of the ground in front of Luna, gaining strength and girth as it sprouted upwards, till it was a small apple tree in full bloom. He made another gesture, and the blossoms ripened into apples, heavy on the slender branches. "Get your bucket ready, Luna," the young wizard smiled, and blew on the apples. With his breath a silver sheen covered all the apples, as smooth and as bright as ever Luna's work could make them. "Well, why do you stand there? Go quickly, and take your reward!"

Luna scrambled after the apples, soon filling her bucket.

"Don't be afraid to take a few more," the wizard laughed again. "Mine are a better gift than the dead mockeries of the palace. They can be eaten and bring more joy than just the joy of a surface glow." Then he picked an apple from the top of the tree, and held it in his hands. "I think I shall give you an extra gift tonight. This one is for you and your mother. Let her eat of it and it will cure her sickness, and it will cure any ill that may come to you as well. Keep it safe, however, and do not give it away to anyone, for it will hold your happiness." Saying that, the young man kissed the apple, and it blushed gold all over, shining like a small sun in the clearing.

Luna caught the golden apple as he tossed it to her, and deposited it carefully in her pocket. "I don't know how to thank you," she began, but the young man cut her off.

"No need for that, little Luna. I will ask another favor of you later, mayhap. But you must get back. It is almost midnight."

Luna started, and looked around the clearing, bewildered. "But I do not know which way I came!"

"Just so." Again the warm laugh. "Take a bite of your golden apple, Luna."

Luna did so, and it tasted of June sunshine, filling her with warmth all over. Then she saw that her old shabby clothing had melted away, and a new fur coat with snug mittens and sturdy boots had taken their place, all white and embroidered in gold. A downy scarf lay across her throat instead of her threadbare ragged one, and a neat cap was on her head. The apple glowed in her hand, as whole as it had been when it was picked off the tree.

"Now take a bite of a silver apple, and think of where you wish to go, and you'll be there anon."

Luna hardly had the time to thank the young wizard, when sudden snow flurries swirled around her soon as she bit into the silver skin, and she stood again at the gates of the palace.

Running into the kitchen, she hefted the bucket of silver apples onto the cook's table just as the final cakes and ices were being prepared to go on the dessert cart.

"Are you late for the ball, my Lady?" one of the lead maids inquired politely. "Beg your pardon for speaking to you out of turn, but let me call a valet to get your coat and show you in properly."

"Show me in? It's me, Luna!" she cried out, out of breath. "I got them! Here is a dozen silver apples, and more!"

The kitchen maids stared at her in shock and consternation, taking in the silver apples and the rich new clothes. "Where in the world did you get all this, you thieving girl?" the lead kitchen maid demanded.

"I didn't steal them!" Luna replied indignantly. "A kind and fine wizard gave them to me in return for some work." The bell was rung for dessert before she could say anything more. All the kitchen maids rushed to get the apples ready to be served, and Luna slipped away in the commotion.

"Follow her," the cook spat at a sour-looking girl, who was the very maid who'd tripped over Luna with the bowl of vinegar.

Luna ran swiftly home, happily clutching her golden apple in her pocket, not hearing the sour girl following her some while behind.

III. Stolen Happiness

The fire was only barely flickering in the hearth by the time Luna stepped through the door of the small cottage.  Her mother, wrapped in an old afghan, lay sleeping on her stoop near the fire.  She coughed weakly as Luna came in, trying vainly to sit up.

"You are back so late, Luna dear," she started in concern, and then fell silent as she saw Luna's fine clothes.

"It is all right, mother!" Luna reassured her, smiling.  "It will all be all right now.  Look, I brought you this."  The apple shone in her hand with an insistent warmth, immediately banishing all chill from the room.

"Goodness, child!" Luna's mother exclaimed.  "What shall I do with it?"

"Take a bite, and you will get well again," Luna said, and she told her all about the wizard and the apple that would keep their happiness.

Luna's mother bit into the golden apple, and as they both watched, strength flooded into her limbs, and color into her cheeks.  And again, as they watched, the apple immediately replenished itself and shone as whole as ever.  Rising by itself from her mother's hand, the apple floated in the midst of the cottage, cloaking the cracked bare floors in woven rugs, girding the windows with fresh linen curtains, furnishing the spare beds with soft thick coverings.

Luna hugged her mother, and they laughed and cried.  Even though neither had anything to eat that long day, they felt neither tired nor hungry.

"Bless you, child!" Luna's mother said at last.  "May we deserve our fortune.  You have brought a miracle into this house."

Another pair of eyes was watching the miracle in the little cottage, and watching it with far less goodwill. They belonged to Taina, the kitchen girl, and they watched the scene in the cottage with dark bitterness and envy.

As soon as she felt she had seen enough, Taina ran back to the palace, and went straight to the cook and the head palace maid.  "Mistress," she cried, "I have cause to believe that good-for-nothing girl Luna is a grievous thief.  Not only did she steal the silver apples she brought back tonight, but I have been to her house and saw it full of all sort of ill-gotten goods and luxuries, and heard the wicked girl exulting over her deceit.  You have taken her in out of charity, and she repays your kindness by robbing you and the palace!"

"Is that true?" the head palace maid demanded of the cook.

"You can see for yerself," the cook replied.  "The wench came in tonight all dressed in gold and splendor, carrying over a dozen of silver apples, and she gets but 12 martens a day as her pay."

And so when Luna came in to work the next morning, she found herself dismissed in disgrace.

"No matter," she assured her mother when she got home.  "So long as we have the apple, we will be well.  Now I just have all the more time to take care of you."

Sure enough, their luck seemed to continue charmed.  Neighbors who heard the news came by to offer gifts of eggs, bread, and butter to tide the old widow and her young daughter over, for Luna was always well liked in the village.  The butcher came by with spare cuts of meat, and the pewter-merchant's wife came to ask Luna if she would like to take some work around the shop.  Luna thanked them all kindly, and hardly knew how to decline the charity, for each morning she found several coins in her mother's cooking pot.

But Taina continued to watch with gnawing bitterness how Luna, even having lost her position, lived in luxury.  She watched where Luna placed the golden apple on top of the stove each evening, and soon one night she stole into the cottage and stole the apple away with her.

Luna woke up that morning shivering with cold.  The fire had gone out overnight, as it had not since their new fortune let it burn perpetually without firewood.  Her mother coughed in her sleep, with a deep thick cough.  Fear like winter frost chilling her veins, Luna ran to the stove, but no matter how she looked, she could not find the wizard's present.

A harsh knock on the door interrupted her search.  A brigade of palace guards came into the cottage, letting snow and wind in along with them.  The captain of the guards cast a brief rough look at the fine rugs that still lined the cottage floor, at the gold-sewn coat that Luna had placed over her mother, and the gold coins glittering in the cooking-pot.  With hardly a word and a chance for Luna to bid her mother good bye, the guards drove Luna away, and with hardly more words she was thrown in prison.

While Luna sat sick with worry in her small stone cell, another girl found herself equally sick with misery.

The golden apple did not bring happiness to Taina, neither wealth nor success.  It glowed so bright it burned as she carried it, and Taina had a long night walking back to her house along dark winding out-of-the-way roads lest its light in her pocket cause her to be discovered.  Several times she tripped over ice and branches, and each time the apple would fall out and roll away, making her go still further out of her way to retrieve it, till she was well and properly lost.  Finally, tired and bedraggled, Taina found herself in a small clearing with a smooth frozen lake in the middle, shining clear as the moon.  The apple rolled out of her hands and came to a stop before a snow-covered rock just to the side of the lake, and no matter how Taina tried she could not pick it up again.    It would burn her hands whenever she tried to touch it, but would grow heavy and cold as soon as she let it be, providing no help against the sharp chill of the night, and the gusts of wind and snow that buffeted the unprotected clearing.

Frustrated to distraction, Taina finally knelt down in the snow and attempted to take a bite of the apple by force.  Its flesh was bitter and sour in her mouth, and it stung as she swallowed it.  Rather than comfort or warmth, immediately it sent spasms of pain to her limbs, and Taina found she could not move.  So chained to the ground by invisible bonds, Taina was covered by drafts of snow till by morning, she appeared to be part of the rock formation herself.

Night descended into the cell where Luna sat, though it made small difference.  Night always came early and morning late in a place where dark and despair was the rule.  But Luna could see a sliver of the crescent moon through the bars in the small window under the ceiling if she sat just so, and that was as much of the outside as Luna had seen all day.

"Dearest Moon, my namesake!" Luna pleaded softly, "Go watch over my mother.  Keep her from harm for my sake.  You have always been my comfort and companion in the cold nights I would walk back from the palace, and the dark mornings I would walk there.  Don't deny me a last favor."

But the moon made no answer, only wavered dimly through the tears that slipped down Luna's cheeks of their own accord.

Luna closed her eyes and thought of the wizard, and the apple that was his gift, and the inheritance it had brought her.

"I shall always answer you, Luna, though you may not know what to ask," a voice said in front of her, and Luna's eyes opened to see the wizard standing where the moonlight was before.  "But I have no more favors to grant.  It is time I claimed your own favor that was due me."

"But what can I do for you?" Luna asked, ashamed.  "I can't even leave this cell.  I have lost your gift, and have let your kindness turn to waste and misery."

"You can do anything, Luna," the young wizard smiled.  "Come with me, and you'll see that."  He held out his hand.

Luna held out her own in return, and as he took it, the prison walls faded away, and Luna saw that she was again in the clearing where she had first met the wizard.

"It's so cold and dark here," Luna shivered, looking around her with surprise.

"Make it warm and light then," the wizard told her.  "It's you who makes things shine, Luna."

Luna wanted to protest, but before she could, the clearing lit up with a radiant light, painting the trees and the lake and rocks in shades of gold.  The shine emanated from a snowdrift at the base of the rock.  "My apple!" Luna cried, rushing to retrieve it.

"Yes," the wizard smiled again.  "Your happiness cannot be easily lost, you see."  He indicated the snowdrift, and Luna realized that what she had first took to be piled snow was in fact a familiar girl, frozen solid.  "She tried to steal it, but one person's happiness is not always fit for another.  You cannot take someone's happiness for yourself, you can only share it.  Those who try often find that what constitutes another's happiness changes to misery in unfit hands.  No one else can have your happiness, Luna."

"But... is she... is she dead?  What will happen to her?" Luna asked, horrified by the frozen girl.

"Why, that is up to you.  I gave you your gift so you could use it, and you can do so much more than you think, Luna."

"I think... I think I want her to go back," Luna said.  "I don't want to hurt her.  I just want my own life, without taking anybody else's."

And as she spoke, the snow melted away from Taina and thawed her out of her icy prison.  She fell coughing on the ground, and spit out a golden pebble of the apple.  Eyes wide she stared at Luna and the wizard in mute confusion.

Luna turned to the wizard for guidance, but he only hummed a melody and looked to the sky.

"Go home," Luna said finally.  "Go home and forget all this, and may your heart be thawed along with you."

Taina disappeared.

"What now?" Luna asked.

"Now?  Now that you know that you're the one who grants your wishes, it is up to you.  You have no more need to ask me for help.  Consider your favor paid, little Luna."

"But will I ever see you again?" she pleaded, panicked, as the wizard began to fade away.  "Please, I don't want you to leave!"

"Oh my little Luna," his voice encased her, "you should know that I'm always with you.  Who do you think watched over you all those cold nights you walked from the palace, all those dark mornings you walked there?  I'm there with you each night, and each day, whether you see me or not.  All those days, all those years, you were my helpmeet and companion, as I shall always be yours."

And with that Luna found herself in front of her cottage, with her apple in her pocket and the moon full and bright in the sky.  She could see her mother inside, up on her feet, making dinner.

"Good evening, Luna!" the pewter-merchant's wife said as she passed by.  "Back home early from the palace, are you?  They must be occupied with that ball.  It's good news about your mother feeling so much better lately.  Bids well for the coming year.  Well, have a good New Year's, and if you'd ever like to help me out at the pewter-shop, let me know, dear."

"I will, thank you," Luna said.  "Happy New Year."

And she smiled at the moon, glad that it lead her home.


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This is a rather old story with a rather obvious influence, but I am fond of it still.



Once there lived a dancing girl of fire, a gypsy girl of flame.  Bright and free were her days, leaping and twirling from match to wick, from candle to candle.  Redder than desire was her mouth, hotter than shame was her gaze, and her swift fiery feet could drive men to madness.  Many were her suitors, but none could keep her.  She'd only swish her brilliant skirts and laugh in the faces of those who tried, and with a flick of a saucy tongue and a flash of a lithe leg, turn another heart to ashes.

"I refuse to be taken by anyone," she would cry whenever another hopeful tried to claim her heart.  "I am for myself, and my heart will remain free.  If you try to catch me, I will burn you; I will run away.  No, I was not made for marriage, I was made for dancing and joy and song!"

Then one day, a young man came to see her dance.  He was beautiful, this young man, with the kind of beauty that can burn worse than fire.  She danced, and he watched, and she fell into his eyes, lost herself in their swirling twilight.  His hair was as the night, his face was silver and fair as the moon, and for the first time the girl felt herself blush under another's glance.  She danced only for him then, and danced as she never had before.  All her sudden passion, all her breathless wonder she put into her dance: she was wanton and timid, she was insolent and she was shy; she was all things to all men, all for this one man. 

When she had finished, the young man clapped and smiled.  "Why, that is marvelous!" he exclaimed.  "I daresay you are as lovely as the reflection in a precious stone, though less expensive.  But I shall not hold that against you, for your feet fly as doves, and your hands glide as eagles.  I must have you, and you must come with me, so I can watch you dance every day."

"You can come watch me dance here," she answered hesitantly--she, who never hesitated.  "I can't come with you, I was not made for it."

"Then you were not made for me," replied the young man.  "I want you to dance for me whenever I wish, and to have you all to myself.  If you will not come with me, I will go find someone who is made better."

And she looked into his eyes once more, and though her heart bled at the thought of losing her freedom, she could not find the words to refuse him.

He caught her, captured the once-proud gypsy who'd been the captive of none, and brought her back to his home.  He put her under glass, and every evening she'd dance for him, and every morning she'd find herself alone in her clear prison. 

"I can't always be expected to be with you, you know," the young man told her.  "I need my freedom.  But you are a pretty mistress, and as long as you dance like that, I shall be more than happy with you.  And isn't my happiness what you wish?"

But the girl chafed under the confinement of the glass, and she missed her days of carefree liberty.  She faded day by day, lost the liveliness in her step, and the gaiety in her gaze.

The young man noticed, and was not pleased.  "You don't laugh anymore," he would complain.  "And your dancing grows worse and worse.  Why, you don't even look as you used to.  Your eyes are dull and your cheeks are pale, and I am growing tired of you.  There is a rose in the garden whose petals outshine your flames, and whose color should make you blush.  She does not dance, but she will not mind if I put her in a vase."

The girl bowed her head and could say nothing, only looked longingly through her glass and wished she were back home again.  "If only I could go back," she thought.  "If only someone would free me.  Oh, how I would dance again, how I would sing.  But I will die here."

The wind, whistling past the young man's window, heard her heart's lament, and felt sorry for her.  "I will free you and I will bring you back to your home," he told her.  "We are alike, you and I, and we should never be chained to one place.  I will sing with you, and we will dance together, and neither of us will own the other, but we will be as brother and sister."

And he blew through the window, throwing open the shutters and throwing over the girl's glass prison.  "Now you are free, and you can come dance with me!" he fluted merrily.  But the girl did not answer.

So weak had she been, that in his enthusiasm, the wind's breath had blown her out.  Only a charred mark remained on the side of the overturned glass.

When the young man came home that evening, and saw the empty glass, he sighed and threw it in the trash.  "Oh bother," he said, "and the rose has begun to wilt, too.  No, it is no use expecting constancy from women.  From now on I shall love only myself."

So he did, and found it a most fulfilling relationship.

Melancholy is good for the mind.  Happy endings kill any desire to explore.

Trees talk to you when you're little. Running the palm of your hand over bark is like reading runes.  They don't stop talking, as long as you don't stop listening.

Look at the word through lowered lashes, and you'll see what Milady saw.

If you run through a sunset, you'll have every wish you ever made.  Of course, sunsets get further away every year.  Yet even the chase is worth it.

Dry mountains in the desert hide secrets whispered to them by the wind.  Play with the wind and bid it welcome, it may share some of these with you.  Catch the wind, and they will stay with you forevermore.

Even before he saw the fairy, Billy had trouble sleeping at nights.

It wasn't the dark that kept him awake.  Billy liked the dark, more even than he liked full light.  No, it was the ending.

Each night, his mother would sit down and read Billy a bedtime story, and then she'd kiss his forehead and say, "and they lived happily ever after," and she'd shut the book and that was that.

Billy couldn't believe in the happy ending.  Though if that were all, he could perhaps still go to sleep, but it wasn't just that he didn't believe: the endings all felt wrong--off somehow, sideways.  They didn't work.

Billy would sit awake and try to figure out what else could come after, but he couldn't.  "And the princess married the prince, and they lived happily ever after."

It was every child's truth, wasn't it?

Billy's sleeplessness worried his parents, and his mother stopped reading bedtime stories to him.  Instead, his father tried to wear him out during the day with games: Robbers and Bounty Hunters, football, baseball.

It didn't help.  Billy still sat awake at night, but now it was the game's ending that he tried to figure out.  Score.  Goal.  "Pif-paf, bang-bang."

It was every boy's truth, wasn't it?

It wasn't for Billy, and he's spend the night with his knees cuddled to his chest, blinking his eyes, and trying to hold off the ending that sleep would bring crashing shut onto his day, desperate to reach some other ending that he could fit into.

Then he saw the fairy.  A little porcelain doll, dancing outside his window clear across the sky.

He didn't believe in her, of course.

Not at first.

But he slept that night.  He dreamed of dancing in the stars.  He dreamed that the doll talked to him.

"How did you get out?" he asked her.

"I jumped," she said.

"I'm afraid to jump," Billy told her.  He was only 7 after all.

"Don't be," she said.  "I did it, and you're just like me."

"But I'm not a doll," Billy protested.  "I'm a real boy."

The doll smiled sadly at him, and then it was morning.

Billy thought about his dream all day.  And that next night, carefully, he tried to walk out his window.

It didn't work.

He fell.

"You can't do it just like that," the doll told him as he lay broken on the ground.  "You have to see what you are first."

And then it was morning.

Billy's mother was so glad that Billy slept all night.  She didn't hear when Billy said in fact he had not slept at all.

The next night, Billy tried again.  He made it to the first star, but when he tried to step onto it, he fell.

"Better," the doll told him, as he lay bleeding on the ground.

"It hurts," Billy said.

"It will," she nodded.  "But you have to see what you are."

And then it was morning.

Billy's father was so happy that Billy was sleeping now.  He didn't hear when Billy said in fact he had not slept at all.

The next night, Billy took a running start out his window.  He made it to the first star, and then the second.  He went higher, and higher.  He could see the doll waiting for him.  "Did I do it right this time?" he asked her.

And fell.

"Not yet," the doll sighed, as he lay battered on the ground.

"I can't do this," Billy told her.

"You just have to see what you are," she replied.

And then it was morning.

Billy's parents were so pleased that Billy always slept well now.  Billy kept to himself that he had stopped sleeping altogether.

The next night, there were no stars, and thus nowhere to go.  Billy waited for the fairy doll to show, but she didn't.

Billy sat and waited for morning.

For some reason, he found himself very afraid.  He thought about what the sun would bring, and his parents.  He thought about happy endings.  He thought about the princess and the prince, and pif-paf bang-bang.  He thought about what he could see.

Toys. All around him.

Storybooks.  Wooden soldiers.  Plastic guns.  Alphabet building blocks, one on top of another, all arranged in their predetermined order, A before B before C.

And then Billy saw what he was.

And when he saw, he woke up.  Blinked awake into the night and stars as far as he could see, and the doll sat next to him, perched on the moon.

"Finally," the doll said.  "I was worried that you'd stay asleep forever."

Billy smiled at her.  He knew now that in the night, he could have the only ending he wanted: none at all.  Happy endings were the property of toys.