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The Blue Fairy by Ernest Dempsey

It was a house in that town called Flintberg. Festivity of a wedding was on its bloom. It was afternoon. Jolly faces of girls, damsels, and children were moving about. Everyone wanted to form groups, groups of two, three, four, groups of many. But there was a young boy not part of all that hilarity. He was standing at a distance from the lawn, a spot where he couldn't be readily noticed. He was somewhat amazed at the joy people lived in the lawn; a child wondering why he wasn't part of such an alluring scene. And then the drum was struck, followed by the melodious trumpet. An exquisitely beautiful damsel dressed in dazzling sky-blue and adorned with gold started to dance in the lawn. Time was bewitched. She looked unique in her presentation; an air of conceit lit her face. Her beauty was proud of itself. Blue, lake-deep eyes followed the twists of her hands. She was the enthusiastic spectator of her own charm. The boy watched her, absorbedly, sort of spellbound. Ladies and children standing before him partly hindered his view. Whatever he beheld was carved like a vignette in his memory-the beautiful Blue Fairy. It was that damsel's house, the girl who had bewitched everyone with her dance in that wedding ceremony. Today there was a similar festivity in her own house. It was evening now with dark failing to overwhelm the light of life and joy in the mansion. Noise of laughter, chattering, and expostulation echoed all around. The boy who was watching her dance that evening was also there. Young ladies, turned into beautiful fairies, were dancing in a circle, all with full flair. But the blue fairy wasn't among them. Today she was the bride herself, wearing her wedding dress and sitting amid her sisters and friends. She was going to be married today; she was to leave. Several rituals portraying joy and earnest well wishes were held. He was tired so he lay down beside his younger brother on the bed. He felt himself in a limbo, being pulled by sleep but hampered by some memories, feelings, and the noise outside coming to him along with the light from the gauze in the window. A roar of noise rose abruptly from the uniform sea of voices outside. He stood up in the bed. The decorated lawn was out there vis-&#agrave-vis the window. There she was, in her bridle dress. She was the Blue Fairy again, calm and collected, standing on the bed in the lawn to go through the ritual of showing her face to the participants there. Her shiny blue eyes were closed at this moment as was the custom and her lips were as motion less as a statue. Her white face with blood red tint looked like a rose in the moonlight. He was spellbound again. But this time the magic couldn't sweep the gloomy sensation of parting inside him. The feeling that she was going to another house forever, that she won't be seen or played with as often. The moment came when she was to be carried in the bridal carriage. Tears slipped out of his eyes and trickled down his cheeks; tears of gloom, of departure, of parting. The Blue Fairy was leaving her paradise. She had just become someone else's fairy, for ever. It was that boy's house, the boy who was enchanted with the Blue Fairy's beauty and who had shed tears on her departure to her husband's house. He was sitting in his room playing a game with a coin. Suddenly a lady outside started to utter shrieks broken by her weeping. This was surely a sign of death. A wave of apprehension shook his heart. His younger brother with a pale, lackadaisical face came running in. "Auntie is dead," he conveyed in a faint, wavering voice. His heart began pounding. He came out to the lawn and started to march irregularly in it, in an agonized obsession. "Auntie is dead". That was all he remembered in his head. He was soon sent with his brother to arrange for a vehicle. Then the people were gone. He could not hold himself steady. Soon he got out, crossed the fields running, and came along the road. He came striding to the house where people were going in and coming out. "Is Auntie really dead?" he asked someone as he stepped in. At that moment mourning and wailing from inside was clearly audible. He just wanted the answer and he got it-'Yes'. He never waited for another word of corroboration, turned right back, and came running to his grandparents' house, the house where he had seen the Blue Fairy in her wedding dress. And there he shed tears unchecked. For the first time in life, he made friends with tears. That night he was on his house's roof, alone. The path to the cemetery was in view. He saw the cortege in the light of the gas lamp leading the procession. Her familiar silhouette was enlivening the white shroud. He started to weep. It was drizzling. The sky was his mate shedding tears. The night was slipping quietly. He was being jolted abruptly as the coach traveled along the rough road. He was on his way home from the university. Money was consumed again. His mind was working deep inside on his constant reminiscence of his late aunt today; her love, smiling, affection, beauty, her marriage, and then her final departure. Scenes passed before his eyes. He couldn't stop his tears. Crying before people wasn't permissible, so he hid his head in his arm, simulating sleepiness, to rub his tears off and would then look out of the window at the passing fields. One question, a single thought, resounded in his mind; "she left forever, her body inhumed in the earth. But where did that love go that she had for us?" He thought repeatedly of answering it himself. All he got of it was: "It mingled in your nice thoughts, pleasant feelings, courage, and that eternal treasure, called love."

© 2004 Ernest Dempsey

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