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The Bedtime Tale
by Mia
November 21 , 2005

"Tell us the story again Momma."

"Yes, tell it! Tell it!" She's smoothes a hand over each golden head, and peers at them fondly.

"Oh all right you two rapscallions. But then to bed," holding up the hand that said she meant it. Two halos nodded vigorously nodded, leaping into one bed and ignoring the other next to the window. It was more fun to all be in the same bed when Mother was telling stories, just like it was more fun to sit on the same beam in the roof of the smithy when Father was making his swords. "Once upon a time, there was a princess who fell in love with-"

"A soldier!"

"No not a soldier, stop ruining the story! Mummy, make him stop." A small girl glares fiercely with the blackest of eyes, her lips turning up in a scowl.

"Now, now both of you, I shan't be able to finish the story with you going on like that." The mother, looking scarcely more child than the other two, clambers over pirate hats, swords, Indian bows and arrows, scarves weaved into rigging, makeshift anvils and hammers to take her place in the middle of things. "The princess fell in love
with a farmer. A very handsome, very brave farmer, why he could have been a soldier! If someone needed saving, he'd save them. If someone's house needed fixing, he'd help fix it. But more than anything, the farmer just wanted a family to take care of. So he planted plenty of crops, and kept a good farm for everyone to see."

Sometimes it's a princess and a farmer. Sometimes it's a soldier and a mermaid. Sometimes it's a governor's daughter and a blacksmith.

"And after saving the town from evil ghosts, the farmer and the princess were married and the princess went to live in the farm, which she liked much better anyway. But, there was a curse on the farmer and his princess that they would never have the one thing that they wanted in the whole wide world." The mother waits for her
daughter to ask the expected question.

"What was it? What was the one thing that they wanted more than anything?" The mother gathers her two closer to her.

"Well the one thing that they wanted most in the whole wide world….was a child."

"What a silly thing to want," splutters the boy pulling the hair his sister and braided from his face. He never ceases to be amazed at the stupidity of the farmer and princess or soldier and mermaid or governor's daughter and black smith. "They could have wanted a nice house to live in, or a dragon of their own, or a ship to sail around the world in-"

"Yes, yes well they wanted children. Dragon scales are the best one can do these days, and houses can always be burnt down. As for ships, well they can't talk to you or play with you, at least most of them don't," answers the mother getting a faraway look in her eye. She's silent until one of the children elbows her to keep going and the curtains outside of the window flutter even though there is no wind.

"One day, the farmer, who still helped everyone who needed it, hid a very strange man who was being chased."

"Was the man a criminal?" asks the boy shrewdly, an eye patch still round his head.

"Was he a hero?" echoes the girl who is quite a bit more romantic than the boy.

"It didn't matter," the mother continues. "He needed help and when people need help, we give it to them, all of them. When the strange man-"

"You forgot to say what was so strange about him," squeaks the little girl.

"Oh yes of course," and this is the girl's favorite part of the story because when her mother tells it, she gets all glassy eyed and excited. Her voice would change becoming deeper, and her words seem to become a sort of song. "He had long black hair, with beads that would twinkle. Magic beads and all, holding tricks and treats. His eyes shone with moonlight. His arms and legs were snakes, always moving. When he walked he was dancing, when he sat he was dancing, and when he talked, (when he talked!) he would make his own music. He had funny ways of saying things that would trick you to listen, that would spell you to follow, no matter the reason. Round his head a red scarf, never dirty but never clean. When shook, that red scarf would give presents and toys, pretty things, glittery things that fell from its deepness. And when he was near, you could always smell the sea." Her voice catches on the word blocking other words that would leap out after it, but they aren't part of the story. At least not this story, not yet.

"And then?" prompts the boy.

"Well, he promised the farmer that he'd give him anything he wished for in return for hiding him. He offered him ships, and he offered him castles, and he offered him rings to wear round his hand. But the farm replied that the only thing he wanted was a child of his own and if he couldn't give him that, then he could be on his way." She has forgotten to tell the children that this man was really a fairy, but the children have heard this tale so often that they already know and forget that they need to be told.

`Well, says the fairy, not all treasure is silver and gold. So I'll give you you're children, but it'll come at a price. You see, nothing lives forever, not fairies not farmers, and magic only goes so far without a little helping hand. If I give you you're children, you must give something to me.'

`What's that?' asks the farmer.

`Immortality,' says the fairy."

"Mummy, what's immortality again?" interrupts the girl because she is in peril of sleeping and doesn't wish to miss the end of the story.

"Oh. It means to live forever. It means you never die because people will always see you, will always remember you, and always talk about you. So even if you aren't in front of them, well then again there you are."

"Oh. Ok. Can anybody be immortal mummy?" The boy elbows the girl grumpily.

"Hush, Maggie, I want to hear the story!"

"Hmpf. You needn't be so cross about it." There is a reshuffling of the blankets, accompanied by a trio of yawns and valiant clearings of throats. The curtain flutters a bit more now as if it would fall back altogether, but not in this story, not yet.

"How can we give you immortality? We're just people,' asked the farmer.

`Very simple,' says the fairy. `In your child, I'll put a bit of myself, and when it is born it'll be hidden in its body until one day when someone calls it out, I'll come alive again and live some more. But you have to give the child the same name as mine or it won't work.' Well the farmer wasn't sure he wanted a bit of fairy in his child, and what's more the princess wasn't sure she wanted a bit of fairy in her-"

"Mummy, why do your cheeks always get red and hot at this part?" asks the girl still wearing her mother's old dress. It's from London, so she says, worn a long time ago.

"Shh. We're finishing the story now. Finally, the farmer and the princess agreed just because they wanted to have a child so very, very bad. The fairy gave the princess an apple and told her to eat it all that very night and then…he went away. And he never came back." There is a ghostly sigh in the wind and though there's nothing to be frightened of, the children shiver, and their mother shivers for an entirely different reason.

"The princess ate the apple and just as he'd promised, some time after that, she had a baby. But not just one baby, she had two! A boy and a girl. Well the couple wasn't sure what to do as they now had two children; which one was the fairy hiding in? They had to know, to give it the proper name! They looked at both babes very
hard and thought very hard. And finally, they named the boy after the fairy and the girl after the sea since that's where the fairy had come from. And to this day they still live together, the boy very happy, the girl very happy, the farmer very happy, but the princess always waits to see that bit of fairy. Truth be told, she missed the fairy but having her children was like having a part of him too. And that's the end."

"That's the end? No happily ever after?" recites the boy.

"No `and the children were safe'? How can it end if not everyone's happy?"

The mother pulls her children, very, very close to her and kisses each of their cheeks in turn, looks very hard at their dark sparkly eyes, holds their dark, dark hands in her very pale ones. "My dears, not all stories can be only happy just like not all stories can be only sad. The truth is, most stories are a little happy and a little sad because sadness makes the happiness that much more precious. And now I have to go and save your Da from his swords!" Having heard the same answer they have heard all their lives, the children giggle, acquiesce, and consent to shut their eyes. Their mother tucks them in and caresses them fondly, and if her eyes are a little wet, it is only because she loves this story as much as a she loves the people within it. "Goodnight, Margaret. Goodnight Jack."

"Goodnight Mum," they both call. And if she sees the shadow standing behind the curtain, she never tells, never calls to it, its not part of the story. Not this story, not yet.

-fin-

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