Just
after dawn, while the sun was still a red ball over the eastern hills, Joy went
down to the lake, as he did ever day.
As he walked, fairies scattered from before
his feet, chittering indignantly. Jay normally tried to avoid the fairy grazing
grounds, but they must have migrated again, as they did several times a moon. It
would be a couple of days before he could map it out, so that he knew to avoid
it. And then, without warning, they’d change it again.
“You could at least leave some kind of
marker,” he said aloud, though he knew it would do no good. He’d said this many
times before, but the fairies never listened. “One day I’ll probably step on
one of you,” he threatened, “and it won’t be my fault, at all.”
The fairies didn’t say anything. One waited
too long to fly away and its tail scraped Joy’s ankle, drawing a line of blood.
“Ouch,” he said. “Watch what you’re doing,
why don’t you?”
The fairy just sniggered derisively and
flitted away into the grass.
From where he was standing, Joy could still
see the castle. Today, the knights would come from across the hills, their red,
gold, green and maroon banners flying, for the tournament. Joy loved
tournaments, loved to guess which knight would win. That his guesses were
nearly always wrong meant nothing to him.
“I’ll bet today’s tournament is the best of
all,” he said to himself. “Maybe I’ll take part in one some day.”
That day would probably be a long time
coming, Joy knew, because he wasn’t big or strong, and it would take many long
years before he got big and strong, if he ever did. But then he would put on
armour, too, and sit on a huge horse, and then he would be a star of
tournaments, and everybody would know his name.
But for now, he’d sit by the lake and watch
the sun come up, and then maybe he might swim a while, if it was warm enough.
The Loch Ness Monster was still up and
about, its long neck and rear hump breaking the surface a little way from the
shore. Seeing Joy, it swam over, eager to chat, as usual.
“Hey, laddie,” it called cheerily. “Kind of
early, aren’t you?”
Joy tried to ignore it. He didn’t much like
the Monster, which had a habit of splashing freezing water over anyone who came
within range. The Monster thought it a huge joke, and laughed until both its
humps shook like jelly. But Joy knew the Monster was lonely, and he was a kind
hearted boy, so he turned towards it.
“Shouldn’t you have gone home by now?” he
asked. “The sun’s already up.”
“Ah, I thought I’d warm me blood a little,”
the Monster said. It had little horns on its small head, and it waggled them at
Joy, playfully. “You’ll be wanting a bath, lad?”
“Don’t you dare,” Joy warned it. “I’ll
never speak to you again.”
“Never is a long time,” the Monster said,
but moved just about far enough away that it couldn’t splash Joy. “So, I hear
that the knights be coming today. Tournament, hey?”
“Yes, there’s going to be a tournament,”
Joy said. “It happens every so often, so you know all about it.”
“Oh, aye,” the Monster agreed. “I know all
about it. Maybe I’ll drop in one day and scare the knights right off their
horses. Just think what it would be like.”
Despite himself, Joy giggled at the
thought. All the clanging metal as the knights fell over each other, trying to
get away, and lying helplessly on their backs, like upturned beetles trying to
set themselves the right way up again...the pretty ladies scrambling to escape,
and tripping over their own long skirts. It would be hilarious.
“But you shouldn’t really do it,” he
admonished. “Tournaments are important. One day I’d like to be in one.”
“Maybe I could be your horse,” the Monster
suggested. “You’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?” It had been slowly
sneaking closer to the shore, and now it suddenly threw a flipper-load of water
at Joy. But he’d been waiting for it, and jumped to one side. Only his feet got
wet.
“I told you not to do that,” he yelled. “I’ll
never talk to you again, I swear.”
“Never is a loooong time,” the Monster
laughed, swimming away. It submerged a little way from the shore, going down to
its lonely home in the mud of the lake bottom, where it would sleep the day
away.
“I really won’t talk to you,” Joy called
after it, still annoyed. But of course he knew he would, and the knowledge
annoyed him even more.
Still, it was a lovely morning, and when he
went down to his usual flat rock by the water, the sun was already warming the
air. He sat there and watched the dragons flying back and forth over the far
shore. They seldom came this way, which was a pity, really, because he enjoyed
talking to them, but they’d explained that they didn’t really like to be close
to people.
“Your energies cause us pain,” the purple
and yellow one had explained, her antennae twisting like snakes. “We can only
be near you a short time, and then we begin to hurt all over.”
“Try to understand,” the blue and green one
had added, gently. “It’s nothing you can help, or we either. We can visit you
sometimes, but only for a short while, and then we have to go away again.”
So he sat and watched them fly over the
mountains, and perch on the edge of cliffs before diving low over the water. He
was so engrossed in watching them that when something snorted at his shoulder
and a huge horned head leaned over him, he almost fell off the rock.
The unicorn snorted again, derisively. It
had been some time since Joy had met the beast, and he’d neglected to bring
something to feed it, a bun or apple, both of which it loved. So he merely
rubbed its nose.
“How could I have known you’d be coming?”
he asked it. “If I’d known, I’d have brought something. Where have you been all
these days?”
The unicorn didn’t answer, of course. It
merely nuzzled him so its straggly beard tickled his neck and made him laugh,
and then turned its head to scratch at its flank with its knobbly, twisted horn.
He rubbed at its neck.
“One day,” he told it, “just think, you and
I will walk together to the far side of this lake, and we’ll go and explore
those caves on the hillside there. I wonder what lives in them? Sometimes at
night there are lights inside them, white and red and blue. I think I’d like to
find out, don’t you?”
The unicorn snorted again, and pushed past
him to the water to drink. Its tail slapped Joy on the shoulder and the side of
his face, rhythmically, and, he knew, quite deliberately. He tried to decide if
it was uncomfortable.
“That’s enough,” he tried to say, but part
of the tail went into his mouth, so he moved as far to one side as he could without
actually falling off the rock. The unicorn finished drinking, turned and
snorted affably to him, shook its head so that its beard showered him with
water, and walked away into the woods.
He was still laughing and wiping himself dry when the mermaid climbed out of
the water and sat next to him. She, of course, was wearing no clothes, so he
averted his eyes modestly from her, which made her laugh, as always.
“Oh, Joy,” she said. “Look at you, you’re
turning red. How will you ever get along in the world if you get so easily
embarrassed?”
Joy just blushed more furiously than ever. “It’s
just the same old world,” he muttered. “What’s there to get along about?”
“The same old world? Oh, but, Joy, it isn’t.” There was a new note in her
voice, very far from her usual teasing. “You don’t know anything about the
world, do you?”
“What are you talking about? I don’t
understand.”
“Look at me,” she said. “It’s important,
Joy.”
Reluctantly, he turned his head towards
her. Her eyes were wide, concerned, and brimming with tears. He was shocked, because
these were the first time he’d ever seen her crying.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Have I hurt you
somehow?”
She shook her head, the tears still
trembling on her eyelashes. “It’s not your fault,” she told him. “It’s just
that I was thinking how little time you have left here.”
“How little time?” He frowned. “I don’t
understand. I’ve been here all my life, and I don’t ever want to leave.”
“It doesn’t matter what you want,” she
said. “Soon enough, you’ll grow up and go away, and then you’ll never think of
us again. So you’d better get used to the real world, Joy.”
“The real world? Why do you keep saying
that? What is this real world?”
“The one that...” She shook her head. “How
do I explain? This lake...those dragons, the hills, even I...we aren’t real.
You’re imagining us.”
He frowned again, not understanding. “What
do you mean? All this is something I made up?”
“Not consciously, oh no. But, as surely as
the sun is up there in the sky, you’re imagining us. We’re all just a sweet dream
inside your head. One day, you’ll have enough of the dream, and we’ll vanish
into the mists until some other child dreams us up again.” She paused, looking
out across the water. “I’ll miss you, Joy.”
“You mean...” Joy whispered, “that there’s
some other world out there? Something I have to...live in?”
The mermaid nodded, slowly. “Something very
different, and you’d better prepare yourself for it. None of this is real – but
everything in that world is.”
“Can you...show me?”
“Do you really want to see it?” she asked.
Her voice was very sad. “Once you see it, you can never forget it again.”
He thought about it a minute. “This has
happened before, hasn’t it?” he asked. “With other boys.”
“Yes. Yes, it has.”
“And,” he added, “you’ve asked them the same questions, told them
this same things, and they had a look, and after that, they never thought of
you in the same way again. And you’re afraid that that’s going to happen with
me.”
“You’re right again. It is going to happen
that way.”
“Then why did you tell me about it at all?”
he asked. “Why didn’t you just let me go along until I...woke up?”
“Because you needed to know – and it’s my job to tell you, to prepare you.”
There was a long silence. “A little while
ago,” he said at last, “I was getting my ankle scratched by an angry fairy, and
thinking about riding in a tournament one day. And now you tell me it isn’t
real.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish it didn’t
have to be like this.”
“I still want to see it,” he told her.
“Of course you do. I understand completely.
They always do.”
“But,” he said, “before you show me, there’s
something you can do for me.”
“What?” She turned towards him, and raised
her eyebrows. “What do you want me to do?”
“Before you show me, I want you to put this
all...” he waved a hand at the lake and the mountains, and the wheeling
dragons. “I want you to put this all into my mind, somewhere safe, where I can
visit whenever I want. Can you do that?”
She bit her lip. “You’ll tire of us,” she
said at last. “Someday you’ll wish us all gone.”
“You said you’d miss me,” he said. “Don’t
you think I would miss you too?”
She smiled suddenly. “Soon, I’ll be just a
childish fantasy.”
“Not if you’re inside my mind,” he replied.
“I’ll get up in the dark of night, and come down to this shore, and it will be
dawn here, and the Monster will be waiting to splash me. And the dragons will
be turning and turning in the sky, the unicorn will come down to drink. And perhaps,
one day, we’ll go across the lake and explore the caves on the hill.”
“And you’ll have to put up with me too,”
she reminded him. “Have you forgotten that?”
“Especially you,” he told her. “You, mermaid. Especially you.”
********************
Years
passed, the seasons turning from summer to winter and back again. Joy grew to a
fine young man, and made a name for himself in the world of factories and
computers and business deals, where nothing was beautiful or simple or made to
last. But – alone among all his peers, he seemed to need nothing, to be happy
no matter what was happening around him, no matter how hard things got.
They did not know, nor would they
understand if they had known, that each night he would walk down inside his
mind to the lake, and talk to the Monster, and watch the dragons flying. And
then the mermaid would swim up from the water, and they would talk, in the
light of a summer day.
No, they would not understand him, and they
would call him crazy.
But then, in their world, happiness was
crazy, as was imagination, and everything that was beautiful and strange, so it
was as well that they didn’t know.
He told the mermaid that one day. She
smiled and touched him lightly on the shoulder. There was no need for words.
When he woke in the morning, he was still smiling.
Copyright B Purkayastha 2014
