erin

i have heard the mermaids singing 

My sister says it must be mermaids, but I don’t think the stream is deep enough for mermaids.

We get in an argument about how much water mermaids need and decide it depends on how they breathe and we agree they must at least be able to breathe air sometimes because if they couldn’t they wouldn’t be able to sing and we both agree that the mermaids sing.

We don’t agree about the rocks, though. I still say mermaids wouldn’t flop around our shallow stream just to build little towers of rocks but when she demands another explanation I don’t have one.

After a thorough investigation during which we accidentally knock one of the towers over we decide that mermaids must be nocturnal since the rocks were stacked overnight.

We ask if we can camp in the backyard and dad asks why and I don’t have a good non-mermaid answer but my sister says we want to commune with nature and he laughs but says it’s okay and we can come inside if we get tired of communing or if there are too many bugs.

The moon is bright enough to see fine from the yard but we put the tent in the shadows of a tree so the mermaids won’t be able to see us from the water and we take turns checking from the shore to make sure it’s properly camouflaged.

While we wait in the dark we whisper about what the rock towers might be for because we didn’t discuss that earlier and we decide they might be for directions, like a mermaid map signaling system.

We wait and wait and wait and nothing happens and my eyelids get heavy but I don’t realize I’m mostly asleep until my sister shakes me to get my attention.

She covers my mouth to shush me before I say anything and points to the water where a hand is reaching up from the dark surface and slowly re-stacking the rocks we knocked over and then I can hear the singing.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

of boxes and blame

It was the box’s fault. That is, if boxes can be faulted for such things.

And perhaps it was not the box itself to blame as much as the fact that the box was locked.

Which would make it the fault of the lock.

Or more precisely, the fault that it could not unlock itself at will.

Had it been able to perform such a feat, the entire ordeal might well have been avoided.

The bench was the one to suffer, though, left horribly bent and broken.

They can never resist a locked box, even when the locked box is placed on a bench that cannot possibly hold their weight without buckling under the pressure of curious claws.

The box remained intact but traumatized.

No one knows what became of the lock.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

muses

What are you doing? they ask in earnest, curious unison.

Writing, I reply, answering automatically even though they ask the same question every day and they often sit directly on the typewriter so it should be rather obvious.

Writing what? they chorus with their typical giddiness.

A story.

There should be a bear! one suggests.

No, bears are scary! the other insists.

That’s why they make a good story, the first argues, because scary stories are exciting stories and exciting stories are good stories!

You’re not helping, I tell them, but they don’t listen. They never listen to me.

They argue about bears and relative levels of scariness (digressing into a lengthy debate as to whether dragons could be scarier than bears and who would win in a dragon versus bear situation, including caveats as to age of dragon, type of bear, landscape the fight is taking place on and both competitors psychological motivations) and what makes a story properly good while I continue to type.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.