flax-golden

deceptively simple demands with deadly consequences

They told me it would ask questions but it doesn’t. Questions would involve question marks, these are demands.

They are fairly simple demands, which is good, since the only way to answer is with the blocks: carved wooden blocks like children’s toys, each with a single letter emblazoned on one side.

Your name, it demands.

I look through the blocks, already starting to feel familiar beneath my fingers, but there aren’t enough. There’s only one A, and no Zs.

I spell out “No” but that doesn’t satisfy it.

Your name.

I wonder what will happen if I lie.

They warned me not to lie.

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

cures for what ails

The sign on the door is so worn that if it bore a more elaborate description it might be rendered illegible, but because there is only a single word inscribed upon it, it remains discernible.

Cures, it says. No more than that.

A tinkling bell sounds the quietest of alerts when the door is opened or closed.

Inside, the shelf-lined walls are covered with jars and bottles, each clearly as old as the sign on the door, if not older. They are carefully organized and labeled, though some of the labels are fading or stained or torn.

Their contents can cure anything. Fevers of any type, colds of common and uncommon varieties, sleeplessness and restlessness, confusion and depression and allergies, broken limbs and broken hearts.

But the bottles hold only individual ingredients, they must be mixed to gain potency, carefully combined and measured to counter the ailment in question.

And though the mixologist has kind eyes and a secret-keeping heart, many customers find they cannot confess their needs aloud, leaving empty-handed while the tinkling bell echoes behind them.

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

an embrace made of stars

He asked me what I missed, most of all.

I was almost asleep so he had to repeat the question.

I told him truthfully that I didn’t know, the thought lost to dreams within a matter of minutes.

He asked me again the next night when I was more awake so I considered it for a while and I couldn’t think of anything and I told him so.

I thought that would be the end of it, but he asked again and again, every evening in that pre-sleep quiet, letting it become part of our nightly routine. But while I could have listed a litany of things I missed, none seemed worthy of that most-missed title.

And one night I knew, surprised that I hadn’t thought of it before.

“I miss the stars,” I told him, looking up at the empty darkness above.

He only nodded, in agreement or approval or some combination of the two, and held my hand while we fell asleep like he always does.

I woke to find myself enveloped in an early-morning night sky, stars hand-drawn on bare ground and walls, each one bright and warm and glowing.

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

the memory of birds

What is it? she asks, pressing her hand against the picture on the wall. I wonder how many other children have repeated the gesture before her, impressed that the paint has not yet worn away, though the wall is crumbling in other places.

What is it? she repeats, and in my distracted wonderings about the longevity of paint it takes me a moment to recall the name.

It’s a bird, I tell her, though the word sounds wrong as it escapes my lips—too harsh and short for the delicate lines of the painting—I am reasonably certain of it. I think there were different types of them but I decide the explanation is better left simplified.

Is it a real thing? she asks, her finger hovering over the black dot of an eye without touching.

It was, I say, still favoring simplicity.

So it was here Before and someone saw it and repeated it on the wall so other people would see it and remember when it was real? she asks.

Something like that, I say, but no one remembers the real ones anymore.

I’ll remember that it was real Before, she says, and she reaches up on tiptoe to trace the lines of its open wings before nodding to herself and taking my hand, leading me farther along the crumbling wall.

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

doom

The sun was shining the day it happened.

The survivors comment on it, still. They had expected storms with rolling thunder. Maybe some fog. A proper grey overcast sky to better suit the tone.

No, it was a perfect blue skies and fluffy white clouds day. Some of the clouds looked like bunnies, but people very rarely mention that.

They shake their heads about the inappropriateness of the weather and remark, almost always, that they never saw it coming.

But they were warned, well in advance. They were warned in bedtime whispers and colored chalk portents that languished unheeded on sidewalks, even without any rain to wash them away.

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

under-bridge heart

I keep my heart hidden, I always have. It never felt right to me to leave it exposed.

It took me quite a while to find the proper spot to leave it. I tried under-bed boxes and seasonal snow-burying, moving it from location to location for years.

Once I put it under the bridge, which was a difficult feat, I knew that I would leave it there.

I have been chided for this precaution, warned by everyone from street sweepers to nosy old ladies in supermarkets that hearts should be worn on sleeves or stylish hats so they may be easily spotted and courted.

I smile and nod and assure them I will take their advice into consideration.

But I have no plans to move my heart.

I am waiting for someone clever to figure out where it is, someone who will realize the under-bridge is accessible from the river.

Someone who wants my heart badly enough to brave the waters in order to claim it.

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