Previous post
A quote: “If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.” ~~ Ray Bradbury
I’ll start with a story …
***************************
Cousin Maeve was a sickly foundling abandoned at the town firehouse. Uncle Will and Aunt Anne took her in, wrapping her in love and care.
But school was a struggle. Maeve believed everything. Fairy tales terrified her. Once, her second-grade teacher found her shivering on the playground after the bell. Billy had placed a rock on her shadow telling her it pinned her to the spot. She wouldn’t … she couldn’t move until the teacher kicked the rock away.
Maeve was home schooled after that.
And she never left. She worked a quiet job, helped at home and seemed content.
Will and Anne passed within months of each other. I was worried enough to take Maeve aside at Anne’s funeral to offer to make her home with us.
“No, Rob. I love you, but I have traveling to do.”
What? The girl who lived at home and never went further than the mall?
She laughed, “Billy told me long ago I wasn’t fully human. Fae left me under Flynn’s Folly. I mean to pass back under.”
She was serious.
Now I find myself shivering on the river’s bank as Maeve pushes her tiny canoe out and moves towards the bridge. No one uses the Folly – a precarious arch built on a bet. The water is calm, a perfect mirror and the bridge looks more like a window. Maeve should have no trouble turning around and coming back. I’ll take her home and get help for her.
She looks back at me as she gets to the bridge, raising her hand. I raise mine in response …
But she’s gone.
***************************
Now, it’s your turn.
.
.
.
.
.
. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
“It’s called a moon gate.” I thought back to what I’d read about them in a book I’d found at my aunt’s house. “Apparently they’re common in China — but this one would be special, because only part of it is in the mundane world. The rest of it only appears when the physical part is perfectly reflected on the water, which suggests it’s a gate to a dragon’s mansion.”
My younger brother shuddered — but of course he was thinking of Western dragons, which are violent and often actively evil.
I rested a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be scared. Chinese dragons are different. They’re wise and powerful guardians of water — and just like the Fair Folk and Wee Folk came along with our ancestors to the New World, the dragons would’ve come with the Chinese immigrants who settled here. Now every pond, lake and stream will have its own guardian dragon, just like they do in China.”
He looked again at that circle of stone, half solid, half rippling as a breeze stirred the surface of the lake. There was a certain longing in his eyes — but also a certain wariness. Perhaps just as well, because like the Fair Folk and Wee folk, the dragons and their kindred are just sufficiently orthogonal to mortal humanity that dealing too closely with them can put us at grave peril.
1 Comment