Three Short Fairytales

Three Short Fairytales

  Copyright 2015 G. Wulfing

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  In memory of my princess. Thank you for sharing your company with me for a little while.

  Farewell.

  Table of contents:

  The Dwarf’s Heart

  The Leaving Of Princess Laellinon

  Butterfly

  About G. Wulfing

  The Dwarf’s Heart

  There was a dwarf who lived alone.

  He was a grumpy dwarf; he liked things just so, and no different. People did not like him because of this. In fact, they avoided the dwarf as much as possible. The dwarf did not care – at least he was almost certain that he didn’t care. “People,” he would sneer to himself. “Can’t stand them. Disgusting things. Who on earth would want them around?”

  But somehow, somewhere, in a part of the dwarf that he was almost certain did not exist … there was a sort of feeling about people; about the way it felt when they saw him and quickly looked away.

  About the way it felt when they walked past him without saying ‘hello’.

  About the way they glanced at him from under their eyelids, pretending not to notice him.

  About the way they talked with each other, and laughed with each other, and touched each other – a sort of lightning-fast spasm would go through the dwarf when he saw them doing such things.

  Must be a touch of hiccups, or something, the dwarf decided.

  And he carried on with his own life; busy with his own ideas and his own ways of doing things – just so, and no different.

  But the spasms grew bigger.

  “Hiccups must be getting worse, or something,” the dwarf muttered to himself one day.

  And the spasms grew bigger.

  “Very strange,” muttered the dwarf. “This is not normal, I’m sure.”

  But he didn’t know what to do about it.

  He tried eating less mushroom soup, but it made no difference. He tried breathing exercises, but they made no difference. He tried coarser bread, and brisk walking, and changing his bedsheets more regularly, and drinking a bucket of water in one go every day. But none of it made any difference. The spasms, which had once been tiny pinpricks in his chest, were now pangs like a sharp knife.

  Becoming more and more worried about what was happening to him, the dwarf finally resorted to asking someone’s advice.

  Morla was a giant tortoise, who lived alone, like the dwarf; but she had regular visitors. People travelled many dusty, muddy, stony miles to ask for her advice. Morla gave it freely. She had spent all her life in contemplation of the universe, and knew much about things that most people had never thought of. Irritably, because he didn’t like having to ask someone else to tell him what was wrong with him, the dwarf trudged to Morla where she sat, deep in her grey, dreary swamp, and deeper still in thought.

  Morla had her eyes shut. The top of her shell was almost as high as the crooked swamp trees. The dwarf waited for her to notice him.

  “Aherm,” he said, when he had waited for several minutes.

  “All of life is a storm within a storm,” Morla said slowly, without opening her eyes. Her voice was deeply ponderous.

  The dwarf opened his mouth, but forgot what he had been going to say, as he was trying to figure out what Morla had meant and whether it was anything significant. He gave up after a moment.

  “Great Morla,” he began gruffly, for humility was not easy for him. “I wish to have some advice.”

  “Why?” asked Morla, opening her eyes. They were huge, round, and grey, like a calm sea on a very cloudy day. Their pupils were as black and full of mystery as the night.

  The dwarf was taken aback. “Er, well, b-because I have a problem that I do not know how to solve,” he sputtered.

  “Hmm,” said Morla, as though he had said something very meaningful.

  The dwarf pulled himself together and decided to go straight to the point.

  “I have spasms in my chest. They’re getting worse. I’ve tried many things, and nothing seems to make them go away.”

  Morla breathed meditatively, as though inhaling steam from herbs steeped in water.

  “In your chest?”

  “Yes. That’s what I said.”

  “When do the spasms come?”

  “When I – when I see people. I can’t stand people, you see. I was wondering if it might be a sort of allergy to them.”

  Morla blinked slowly. Her enormous grey eyes, which had been unfocussed and dreamy, now focussed on the dwarf. He gulped. He felt as if Morla knew, just by looking at him, everything about him.

  Then Morla spoke, very softly. “You are lonely.”

  “I – I beg your pardon?” said the dwarf, leaning forward so as to hear better.

  “Lonely you are. The spasms in your chest are caused by pain in your heart, which is caused by loneliness.” The dwarf was speechless. Morla continued. “Now you have the reason. What to do about it only you can decide.”

  And then Morla shut her eyes, and the dwarf knew that the audience was over. Still speechless, without even thinking to say ‘thank you’, the dwarf turned and walked away.

  All that night, back in his little hovel, the dwarf sat and thought about what Morla had said. What to do?

  At the moment of dawn, the answer came to him. Since it was his heart that was causing him pain, he would amputate it. If his heart was no longer attached to him, it could no longer cause him pain. So, as the sun was dawning, he took a knife and cut out his own heart. It did not hurt so much as he thought it might have.

  Now, what to do with it? He didn’t really need it, but he was afraid to just throw it away, as he had heard that when the heart dies, so dies the body. So he buried it, in the earth just beside his back door. He marked the spot with a white stone about the size of his fist. Then he brushed the dirt off his hands, and sat down to have some breakfast.

  His chest felt oddly empty and barren without his heart, but it also felt somewhat lighter. And he noticed with great satisfaction and relief that the spasms were completely gone. In a short space of time, the dwarf became quite used to not having a heart.

  And so he carried on, enjoying his own ways of doing things – just so, and no different. It was very satisfying.

  It happens, every now and then, that the universe throws a piece of magic in a person’s path. Often it is not when it is wanted, but when that person thinks that everything will continue in a certain way. This is what happened to the dwarf.

  He was walking, one day, through a part of the woods that had bluebells growing beneath the oak trees. He tripped on a root, and when he had got his balance again, he saw at his feet a small creature – much smaller than himself; about the size of a cat. The creature uncurled and looked up at him.

  “Hello,” she said. She had purple eyes, and velvety purple wings folded against her long back, and her hair and skin were the colour of fresh cream.

  “Hrm,” grunted the dwarf in his chest, partly because he was unused to greetings, and partly because he was so surprised at the creature’s being there.

  Suddenly the creature tilted her head to one side, narrowed her bright eyes, and gazed piercingly at the dwarf, as though she was staring straight through him.

  “Hrmph,” the dwarf muttered, not liking being stared at; and he stepped around the little creature and walke
d on. The creature twisted around to stare after him, her eyes still narrowed.

  Some days later, the dwarf came across a fox caught in a snare. The animal lay panting on its side, its foreleg stretched out to the slinky wire that had sunk squeezingly tight into its paw. The fox’s eyes were glassy, and its tongue lay half out of its mouth. It might have been struggling for hours.

  The dwarf looked aloofly at the animal, and, spitefully deciding that the fox would be put to better use hunting people’s chickens, he cut the wire with his short knife, and loosened it from the fox’s leg. After a few minutes, the animal hobbled to its feet, and slowly limped away. The dwarf smirked to himself, thinking of the chickens, and continued on his way.

  The next season was Winter, and the dwarf was tramping through the frost to the broad, frozen lake, where he wanted to cut a hole and see if any fish were hungry enough to bite the bait on his hook. He seemed to be feeling the cold particularly this year, and his joints had become somewhat stiff, so that he puffed slightly as he went. He heard whimpering cries on the cold air, and stopped to listen.

  Some creature with a small, high-pitched voice was calling for help. Curious, the dwarf turned toward the sound.

  “Help! Somebody please help me,” wailed the small creature with the purple eyes. Her hand was stuck in the crevice of an old tree that lay where it had fallen into the lake some months ago and been sealed there by the Winter’s ice. The creature’s purple wings were opened, as though she had been fluttering, trying to pull herself free.

  The dwarf stood at the edge of the lake and looked at her. Seeing him, the creature called to him: “Please help me.”

  “Why?” asked the dwarf.

  “Because someday you may need my help,” the creature answered, still tugging pathetically away from her trapped hand.

  The dwarf felt that such a scenario was very unlikely; – he made it a practice never to need help; but, still, it might happen. He regarded the ice, and tested it with his fishing pole. Carefully, he made his way to the creature’s side. With his knife he worked at the hard wood around the winged creature’s hand, until eventually he had widened the crevice enough for her to squeeze her hand free.

  “Thank you!” the creature rejoiced.

  “Hmph,” grunted the dwarf. The creature looked at him again as she had looked at him in the woods where the bluebells grew, head cocked and eyes narrowed. Suddenly her eyes widened in realisation.

  “You have no heart!” she exclaimed.

  “No,” said the dwarf, shortly. This conversation was wasting his fishing time. He turned away and started to pick his way over the ice, looking for a spot that might be good for fishing. The little creature watched him, thinking, until suddenly the dwarf fell with a shout. He had slipped on the ice, and his foot had twisted under him.

  “Are you all right?” asked the little creature, fluttering toward him.

  “No!” snapped the dwarf. “I’ve done something to my knee. What’s it to you?”

  “You may need my help,” the creature pointed out.

  The dwarf growled to himself. Using his fishing pole, he struggled to his feet, swatting the creature’s hands away as she tried to help lift him.

  “Do you want me to fetch help?” asked the creature.

  “Of course not,” grumped the dwarf. “I can do it without help.”

  “But what if your leg is injured?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  The dwarf hobbled off the lake and toward his hovel. It took him hours to get there. When he did, his knee hurt so much that he could not even get himself some food or water. He just laid himself on his bed, and slept.

  For the rest of the season, and all of Spring, the dwarf walked with a limp. On cold nights his knee ached as though a giant tortoise was sitting on it. After many months, it ached less, and the dwarf began to walk more normally; though the stiffness of the Winter seemed to have settled permanently into his bones.

  More seasons passed. One day, the little winged creature with purple eyes happened on a small hovel with a vegetable garden around it. She wondered who lived there, until she saw a fishing pole propped outside the front door.

  She went to the door and tapped lightly, planning to ask the dwarf how he was, if he was at home. There was no answer.

  The creature called, but there was no answer. Evidently the dwarf was not at home. Before she left, the little creature glanced in the window.

  There stood the dwarf, motionless, and grey all over. He had turned to stone.

  The little creature flutter-hopped up onto the windowsill, and into the hovel. She stood before the dwarf and looked up at him.

  “No heart,” she murmured.

  She touched one of the dwarf’s stone knees.

  “And no pain, either.”

  The End.