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guard pig

Every house on the street requires a protector, a fact that is bolded and italicized in all of the paperwork. Though if the reason is specified in there it’s been buried in small-font, legal-speak sentences and footnotes.

Each protector is different, I don’t think that’s a bolded rule, but I’m not certain and none of them are the same, standing or sitting or draped over front doors in their own particular fashion.

We moved in most recently, but our house is the oldest and it shows, the steps are worn and the brick has seen better days. The list of things to fix once there’s enough time and money just keeps getting longer.

Our protector came with the house. He’s seen better days, too, and for a while after we moved in I was kind of ashamed, since other houses have regal-looking lions or glimmering dragons curled around their entryways.

Until one of the neighbors (the lady with the golden-eyed owl perched by her own door) came over, bearing a welcoming platter of fruit tartlets individually wrapped in wax paper.

“You’re so lucky to have the pig,” she said as I let her in, and she looked so scared I didn’t dare ask why.

But after she left, I gave the pig a tartlet.

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

last words

It’s a simple game, really. Once you understand the rules, that is, but the rules cannot be told to the player beforehand, they can only be learned through playing.

It is remarkable how many choose to play despite that fact, and despite the fact that a game must be completed—won or lost—once begun.

The game keeps records, imprints of movements made and choices taken by previous players, engraved into the gamespace itself, though much of it is recorded in an almost-indecipherable system of the game’s own devising.

It is particularly fond of marking down last words.

Though all of the last words are similar. Echoed cries repeated over and over again, before being etched in text for posterity.

So perhaps the next player who reaches this particular spot in the game will have a bit of warning.

If they take the time to look down.

But hardly anyone ever thinks to look down.

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

pushy ponies

It’s not the worst house-sitting job I’ve ever had, but it’s certainly not in my top five or anything, either.

This lady didn’t even have time to meet me, I just got the keys from the agency, but she left long, detailed, color-coded lists stuck to the refrigerator with instructions about Proper Care and Management of the Estate, which is really more of a cottage but if she wants to call it an Estate that’s fine with me, she’s paying me twice what I normally get.

The plants that have two pages of instructions all to themselves are cactuses, or is it cacti? They don’t need watering but it says to turn their pots thirty degrees counter-clockwise three times a day and to leave an orange for each one at night, and the oranges are always nothing but curling peels on the floor the next morning.

The ponies are the worst, though. This flock of miniature ponies done up like carousel-less carousel horses the way other people put little sweaters on small dogs. They refuse to stay in their corral and they can undo the latches anyway. They’re constantly begging for treats and they try to steal the oranges from the cacti-cactuses and I have to shoo them away.

I try to ignore them, but they kick me in the shins with their hooves when they don’t get what they want. And they bite.

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