Fableweaver

There was a land where faeries once danced in circles and goblins plotted in the dark, which I am sure we are all quite acquainted with. Then came alchemy and science, and the fair folk were thus banished to the utmost depths of unbelief. Nobody took them seriously anymore, especially the grown-ups who considered the little men products of childish imaginations and old wives’ tales. But there were others who remembered and could bring to life these stories, and they were scarce. They were known as Fableweavers.

Crowe tossed in his sleep as a mongrel in the streets howled a lament to Luna. He had not slept well in weeks. His rarely dreamed, but in the past weeks, his nights had been filled with strange dreams; Dreams which left him empty and sad. Those dreams were neither pleasant nor otherwise, and that left Crowe pensive for the rest of the day.

Shedding his bedclothes, Crowe recalled the school barbecue party last night. Being the shy and clumsy kind, he never really saw himself as a dancer. Yet the night had done strange things to his body. He had danced, and not only that. He had dance with a girl. He smiled quietly to himself, and let the thought get swamped by the plans for the day. His niece was coming over in the afternoon after school to visit. He hadn’t seen her in a while and thus looked forward to this visit.

The clock showed noon as Crowe strolled into the student’s lounge with his hands in his pockets and mind in other matters. Sitting down, he looked around him. Crowe found himself in the group of girls he had met at the party. Smiling, he greeted them when he noticed the girl he had danced with. Her name eluded him no matter how hard he tried. Digging around in his memory, he found nothing but emptiness and a strange silence; A silence out of place in a usually noisy mind.

“Hi, so we meet again!” Began Crowe, “You’re Sirocco isn’t it? Nice name.”

“Really? Thank you…My parents had a strange sense of humour.” Replied the girl as she returned his smile.

She turned her attention back to cutting some pictures and colouring them. Crowe was just about to continue the conversation when his cell phone rang. His aunt’s name flashed across the external display screen. Excusing himself, he answered the call.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Crowe! We’re over at your apartment now. I’m in a hurry, so I’ll be leaving Naomi in your room. She promised not to touch anything!” A light, airy voice tinged with excitement over the upcoming Megasales relayed the message.

The line went dead before he could even reply.

Opening the portal to his own world, he found it already conquered by a little girl lying on his bed, flipping the pages of a book. Hearing the door open, Naomi abandoned the book and sprang on to Crowe like a Raptor on the kill. Crowe tore her off, tickling her in the ribs, and put her back on the bed, careful to avoid placing her on the book.

“What have you been reading, Mi?”

“I’m not sure…I couldn’t unnerstand a fink!”

“That would be for sure! What makes you think you can understand Financial Accounting, much less book three, when even I’m not sure if I do?” laughed Crowe as he returned the text book to his bookshelf.

Crowe stood starring at the stainless steel structure which spanned the whole wall.

“Let me read you something you’ll appreciate at this age…”as he eased a book about a large cat, an anaemic witch, and a closet from between two thick tomes. Naomi watched her uncle with unfettered excitement as he motioned to her to sit closer.

“Once, there were four children whose names were…”

The story was told with great emotion as Crowe painted pictures with his narration. Naomi sat by him, lost in a land where animals talked and magic ruled supreme. It was then when Crowe realised there was something not right. By the time he came to the part where a character ‘got outside and found the snow falling all around him’, the room felt awfully chilly. Thinking it was the air-conditioning, Crowe reached for the remote control. A quick glance confirmed his worries: the remote control registered 28°c, but yet his window panes were already frosting over, something impossible in a tropical country. Just as quickly as it had started, the room warmed and the frost thawed as soon as Crowe stopped reading.

“I think that will be enough for today, Mi. I’m not feeling very well.”

“Is it ‘cos of the coldness?”

“Something along those lines. I would appreciate it if you kept this a secret.”

Naomi nodded silently as Crowe lapsed into his pensive mood again. This was certainly something he had never experienced before. Had he read the cold into his room? If so, why? How does this strange magic work? Questions danced around his mind as he floated of to sleep. This time his sleep was quiet. Not a single blade dream grass stirred, and no strange visions; just dark silence.

Waking up, he found Naomi missing, but a note he found stuck to his forehead explained that Crowe’s sister had come and had taken her back home. The dance of questions with no answers still continued in his head. Wanting to find some answers, Crowe decided to experiment. Grabbing a book from his shelf, he opened it and read a random sentence.

“The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw…”

The buzzing was too loud for him to ignore, and the stench of rotting matter made it worse, but vanished as soon as he had stopped. Wanting to see if this new power of his applied only to lines from books, he thought up a sentence.

“There on the table, a sumptuous feast of cold soup, roast boar, salads, pies and jellies appeared, served by floating hands in white gloves…”

As he spoke, his table was suddenly laid with white cloth and disembodied hands appeared carrying a tureen of soup, a whole roast boar, an enormous bowl of salad, a pie with a pastry pheasant on the top, and a tray of jellies as dainty as he could ever had imagined. Crowe’s stomach groaned in response to all the good food. Maybe it was the intense will for the food to stay, or maybe this talent worked better with un-plagiarised lines, the food stayed.
As the white gloved hands cleared away the last of the uneaten food, the whole ensemble faded into thin air. Feeling filled for the first time in such a long while, Crowe patted his abdomen and got ready for bed.

That night, the dreams returned. The confusion, the aimless longing, the silent pain. Crowe screamed in his dreams. Dreams are our mind’s way of sorting out information, telling us sense of what we usually ignore when we are awake. That Crowe knew very well, but what was he missing? What did he actually want? Why was he going crazy?

“Enough!! I’ve had enough! Somebody help me!”

A wave of power rippled forth from Crowe. As sudden as it all happened, the misery faded. The darkness was replaced with a wide green field and a bright sunny sky. Then there was a strange melody in the air. One which Crowe found to be strangely familiar and comforting. A voice called out to him across the field.

“Crowe!”

Looking in the direction the voice was beckoning from, Crowe found himself looking at Sirocco’s face. She wore an unprinted T-shirt and a pair of jeans. The sunlight reflected off her hair as she smiled and took his hands in hers. Instantly everything came to light. Crowe now understood why he had always hung around Sirocco and her friends, why he spent time talking to her, why he danced with her. He had always thought nothing of her, but yet unconsciously…

In his eureka moment, Crowe turned in his bed only to smash his face against the wall. The pain kept him from sleeping again but he didn’t regret that. He now knew why his heart was pained. He always thought he never needed anybody. Love was never meant for him. He was above love. His loneliness had eaten into his psyche, corroding him. His newfound power had called out for help, and Sirocco had answered in his dream. He was now offered the chance of a healed heart. Going to school could have never been more exciting.