Memory Fairy

The fairy stared at the king’s tear-stained face as he sat across from her at the wooden table.

“Please, I beg you, help us.” The king held out a crumpled letter.

She lowered her head, her black twists cascading over her dark shoulders. “I can’t,” she whispered, adjusting her black gloves. “I’m sorry.”

“Snowbell?”

She looked up at princess Ciara, her closest friend.

“I know it hurts sometimes. I was there when you tried to read that book from that old lady and I know it’s scary.”

She glanced at one dusty book that was wrapped in cloth which lay atop her bookshelf, collecting dust.

The book Mrs. Maple had given her had opened the floodgates to joy, but also sorrow and grief. The smile Mrs. Maple had as a little girl upon receiving the book from her parents, and the bitter tears that fell to the pages when her mother left when she was only eight. But there was more. The book had been passed down from generation to generation, from sorrow to more and sorrow. Had all the memories trickled in one by one, she may have been able to handle it all. But they hadn’t. They’d rammed into her all at once without warning as she had tried to read the story aloud to Ciara, turning her into a laughing, crying mess in her parents’ arms, as they and her friend frantically asked what was wrong.

The experience was so intense, she had thought she would die.

“If you know, then…why?” Snowbell asked.

“Because Lord Rodin isn’t always honest about his motives. We need to know if my brother is really…” Ciara swallowed. “We need to know the truth.”

She looked at the letter again then glanced at her gloved hands. She had swore never to do it again. But…She sighed and reached for the letter, but hesitated.

“If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to,” the princess said.

Snowbell straightened. “No. It’s fine.” She lightly pressed her finger against the crumpled letter. For a second, nothing happened. Suddenly, light erupted around her and engulfed her. Pictures danced around her like she was in the center of a zoetrope, and they drew closer and closer until they were no longer pictures, but places and events she was witnessing firsthand.

First, there was a man with unkempt hair sitting at a small desk in a wooden room that rocked gently back and forth. Lord Rodin. The air tasted of salt. I’m on a boat, Shecaniah thought. The man was scribbling words on a page, a determined look on his face, fire flickering in his eyes.

Behind him, a man lay in a cot, moaning and turning as he slept, his forehead beaded with sweat.

As the ink bled on the page Lord Rodin wrote on, his anger and bitterness bled into her heart and soul, burning her gut. It was almost as if she were the one who had a vendetta.

Snowbell blinked once, twice, and then she was back at the table with the king and princess staring right at her.

As her heart pounded in her ears, Snowbell took deep breath and looked at the clock on her wall. 6 p.m. The vision hadn’t even lasted a minute this time. But, as usual, the experience had rattled her, and her mind raced to make all the things she saw and felt and heard make sense, and to bring her back to the reality that whatever negative emotions Lord Rodin felt was not what she herself had. 

My name is Snowbell Steward, I am seventeen years old, I’m not a hateful jealous person, Lord Rodin is…though perhaps if things were different, I could easily shared his negative emotions. That terrified her the most.

She went over these facts over and over. The clock ticked to 6:10 p.m. Once the pounding had subsided, and she felt she had regained some measure of her sanity, she turned back to the king and princess who with each passing minute of silence became more convinced their hope was lost.

Snowbell smiled as the vision and all the other visions that had plagued her in the past came to her mind’s front door. “He’s sick, I think, but he still has life in him. At least at the time the letter was written.”

As the king and princess burst into tears of joy and relief and thanked her for her help, and as the visions from the other books and scrolls she had touched creeper in, Snowbell took another breath. I’m sick, I think, but I still have life in me. At least right now.