ANOTHER TRUE STORY
 

 My cyber friends, most of you have received true stories from me in the past. Well, this one is also true. Just this last week, I was searching through boxes of used paperback books that had been donated to the Jail Library. There were several larger boxes of books and each book had to be individually examined to assure it contained no contraband. As I neared the end of the last box, I picked up this book whose paper had turned yellow with age. When I fanned the pages to make sure nothing was hidden between them, a few pages of lined paper from a middle-sized spiral bound notebook fell to the floor. They had been folded like a letter to make them fit inside the paperback book. The edges of the notepaper had also turned yellow from age. I noticed the pages had been neatly filled with hand printing. What I found was most interesting and I present it here for your edification and pleasure.
 

TALE AS OLD AS TIME

 Well, hello there, traveler. Come in, set down and rest. In fact, you can just stay the night, it’s getting dark and there’s no other place within five miles of here.

 What? Oh no, it’s no bother. I live alone here, you see. I have for so many years it’s past counting – and it does get lonely. By the way, you can tell me if I’m talking too much. Bad habit of mine.

 I expect you’ve come to go up the mountain and see the view. I went myself, once, a long time ago. All a tourist attraction now, though, no offense to you. But you be careful out in those woods. I know there’s a path now, but still…

 Well, you see, the fairies live there. Oh don’t look at me like that. I may be old, but I’m not senile. Not yet, anyway.

 Hmmm! Are there really fairies? Of course there are – and no need to look so skeptical, either. Why, the fairies are responsible for whom I am today.

 Who am I? Well, let me tell you my story, and you can judge for your self.

 I am, 1,015 years old. I was born in a little village that stood on this very spot. I expect you saw the ruins as you came in.

 I grew up happy, carefree, and was supposed to marry the man I loved in the spring. However, that was not to last.

 I was walking home from my friend’s house late one evening, and took a shortcut through the wood – yes, this very wood. Had I been awake and alert, and kept my mind on where I was going, this misfortune never would have befallen me. But it was late and I was tired, and I soon discovered that I was lost.
 
 Some time later, I heard the crying of a child. I followed the sound, only to discover a fairy baby, seemingly lost. Again, had I been thinking clearly, I would have remembered that fairy children cannot become lost, as they are born with earth magic. However…

 I carried the child to the nearest fairy mound and waited. Shortly a fairy appeared. She seemed greatly relieved at the return of her baby and thanked me several times. She then offered me a wish in return. (Here I must interject something about fairies. They are from the sweetness and light I’m sure you’ve heard about. In fact they hate humans, hate the way we’ve come in, taken over, and ruined their world… and they will do anything for revenge. I knew all this, and yet I believed it had nothing to do with me. My only excuse is youthful foolishness)

 Being young, beautiful, with a happy life ahead and behind me, I said without thinking, “I wish to live forever!’ The fairy smiled, and was gone.

 I found my way out of the wood very easily after that, a fact which I did not think anything of at the time but which I now find rather suspicious. In time, I married, raised a family, and thought no more of my wish. But as time passed, I began to notice something odd. I saw all my friends and husband pass away. I saw my children and their children live – and die. And I – I lived.

 A plague came to our village. There were only three survivors. I was one. The others, both young, moved away and no doubt eventually died. I stayed. And I remembered my wish, so carelessly, foolishly made, and I knew that I was doomed to live forever. To grow externally older but never die. To watch my friends, family, everyone I’ve ever known or love slip away. Such is my existence, and so I became as you see me now, a shriveled old husk of an ancient woman, lonely and angry and out of place in the world.

Epilogue

 The traveler was shaken by her story, though he tried not to show it. On the surface it seemed silly, fairies and wishes and curses… yet something made it impossible to disbelieve. Every word, every tone of her voice, whispered to me, This is real. It’s all real. Believe me.

 He looked across at the old woman. “Do fairies ever just… grant wishes? I mean for no reason at all. Like if I went out and shouted, ‘I wish for… whatever? Would I get it?”

 “Occasionally,” she said. “If it would provide them amusement.”

 Later that evening, the traveler walked down the path toward the wood. As he walked he thought about what he could wish for.  Money, maybe, or a new house. It was silly anyway, a grownman believing in wish-granting fairies. No sane self-respecting man would be here doing what he was about to do.

 But he was going to do it anyway.

 He had almost decided on a new car when he heard the soft bang of an open shutter on the house, and paused. That old woman… she didn’t ask for what had been done to her. She didn’t deserve it. And she had carried that pain for over a thousand years.

 His mind made up, he faced the forest. He knew, now, what he was going to wish.

He took a deep breath, and shouted, “I wish for you to lift the curse on that old woman! She doesn’t deserve this! You seem as cruel as you accuse us of being, torturing anyone like that for so long! If you have an ounce of pity, mercy, compassion in you… end it!”

 His voice faded into the stillness. There was no answer.

 Disgusted with his foolishness, the traveler went back to the house. He decided to check on the old woman, to see if she was still sleeping.

 She wasn’t sleeping.

 She wasn’t breathing, either.

 She was smiling.

 The traveler stood by her bedside for a long, long time.

Author and date unknown.
 Now my cyber friends I will again assure you that my part in this tale happened as stated. However, do we believe what was recorded on the 9 pages of notepaper, which was hidden away inside of an old book? Do fairies really exist? For many centuries their existence was accepted as fact. Much the same as we believe in Angels today. Is the fairy tale a true one? Maybe so, maybe not. Never the less I would advise everyone to think carefully about the wishes they request.

By: Leroy Mitchell,
       April 4th, 1999