(Blog)

One day, years ago, I wrote the following immediately upon waking:

She wore a robe of burgundy and gold, and her flaxen hair was all I saw. Her home was made of felt and porcelain, full of satins and ceramics. The house was too small, as if caving in on itself, and stuffy, though not suffocating. I felt as if I weren’t there.

The doddering old fool, I heard from my left. Out of a cupboard-like cubbyhole of a room to my right, a slinking hag emerged.

“Pot calling the kettle black, indeed,” she mumbled in retort. “She’s dropped her wishes,” the old woman continued, as if I knew her, what she spoke of, and its apparent importance. “Go on!” she continued, with more urgency, “pick them up, before she realizes she’s lost them. Do you expect to go to market empty-handed?”

Her words were confounding. Speaking of wishes as if they were physical objects? Going to market? None of it made sense, and this house was beginning to feel like an attic inside a dollhouse, and I had to get out.

I glanced down the hall and spotted a small staff leaning against a wall, delicately painted with golden symbols I could not read. Next to it, there was a pale blue robin’s egg. No, a stone with an egg-like appearance, with the same symbols as the staff. As the cupboard-dwelling hag vanished into the ether, the hall turned bright, and spring morning air wafted in.

From all around me, I heard, or felt, It was sunny, and glowing; it was Sunday morning.

Feeling these were the correct objects, I grabbed the staff and the stone. I wondered if these were the wishes the lady had lost, or whether they contained her wishes within. Perhaps they were the symbols. I wondered what story they told. She wore burgundy and gold, and held this staff and this stone, her wishes, and now she was gone.

Sunday morning tea and cake, everything methodically laid out, I heard whispered from all around me. As I ambled downstairs, that’s what I thought, as if the house or environment were thinking through me. On the first floor, I saw weathered oak chairs with pillows, an ornate teacup with a spindle used as a cover, delicately prepared pastries laid out on silver tray, and an enchanting view of a forest outside. Everything was indeed methodically laid out.

I sat down, ate a pastry, and drank the tea. I packed the staff and stone in a sack and decided to take the teacup, spindle, and the remaining pastries. I understood that I was to leave this house and seek the lady. Burgundy and gold, and flaxen hair, I heard and thought, picturing the lady of the house. I would make it to market, and find her.

I walked outside and turned to the west and entered the forest, for it beckoned me.