Broken Wings

It seemed that within a heartbeat those green leaves on the trees had started to turn shades of brown, orange, and yellow. But barely a few had started to fall off their branches. No doubt that with the next rainstorm that would change, if a windstorm didn’t do the job first. Emma would enjoy the beauty while it lasted, admiring the leaves as each one continued to change and break away from their parent tree. From time to time, she would pass a solitary leaf on the stone path outside her house and study the veins as they spread out from the base of the leaf to the tips. 

Once each season, she would pick the one she admired the most and press it into her book where she kept all her favorite ones. She had yet to choose the newest addition to her collection, and time was running out: soon, the remaining leaves would fall to the ground and her fellow villagers would gather them up to add to the growing mulch piles outside the village walls. If she didn’t act soon, she would have to wait until next fall. A tear streamed down her face at the thought. She would not miss out on adding to her collection, remembering her childhood when her mother took her outside to teach her to inspect things closely.

Emma felt her lip tremble. All she had left of her mother were the memories. And sitting in front of the fire with her knitting in her lap would steal this chance for her to feel her mother’s spirit nearby. She gently placed her knitting in the basket next to her chair and came to her feet. Before turning towards her cloak hanging next to the door, she tossed two more logs on the fire, to keep the interior of her cottage warm while she searched for her next favorite leaf.

With the wood crackling in the fireplace, she wrapped her cloak around her shoulders and stepped outside. It had rained that morning, and although the skies were starting to clear, both the air and the ground were still damp. She whispered a prayer in thanks that she would not have to get soaked to the bone just to find the perfect leaf.

The previous morning, a group of boys had cleaned the stone path that led from her door to the street. Their efforts had been in vain, it seemed, for the rain had caused more leaves to cover the cobblestones. Emma glanced up at the trees on either side of her path to find the branches nearly empty. A frown formed on her lips. Only a day or two more before all the leaves would be gone, and she would be deprived of her memories for another year.

Emma took a deep breath, stepping away from her cottage as her eyes left the trees towering above her to the cobblestones beneath her feet. None of these leaves would be as perfect as she would have found earlier in the season, she had no doubt. But one of them would have to do. Today, she decided, she would walk all the way to the street, glancing at the leaves around her before she turned around to inspect a few more closely. So few leaves had fallen on the stone that she was able to step around them, thank God. She would hate to ruin the perfect leaf by stepping on it.

She kept her pace slow, her eyes on the ground as her ears ignored the voices of her neighbors around her. She was just a lonely aging woman who preferred to keep to herself; Emma knew they thought it for she had heard them whisper it when they thought she could not hear them speaking. With a shake of her head, she pushed that memory aside. Only happy memories needed to cross her mind.

As she neared where the path to her cottage met the street, Emma stopped midstride. Her eyes focused on a leaf to her left as it moved ever so slightly without the help of a breeze. The air was still, there was no way that leaf could have moved on its own. With careful steps, she approached the leaf, inspecting it as closely as she would any leaf she wanted to add to her collection. It was a large maple leaf, one of the largest she had seen that season. When she was a child, her mother often recounted stories about how small woodland creatures would use such leaves to thatch their roofs. 

Her lips smiled again, the endless number of stories her mother had recounted about the creatures that inhabited the forest beyond the farmland that surrounded their village. She let out a giggle. This was not the most beautiful leaf she had ever seen, but it had provided her something beyond beauty: the stories her mother had told her. Emma reached out for the leaf, grabbing the stem with her thumb and forefinger. As she lifted the leaf off the cobblestone, movement from beneath caught her eye.

She yelped as a tiny human girl with wings scrambled towards the next leaf. Emma nearly fell backwards as she watched the little creature. A fairy like the ones from the stories her mother had told her in her childhood. Fairies were real! How could fairies be real? Had her mother known fairies were real? Who else knew that fairies were real? She and her mother couldn’t be the only ones! 

The sound of her heart beating pounded in her ears as she studied the tiny little thing try to find another place to hide. Her visitor should be flying away, not running away. In the stories her mother told, fairies only used their legs when their wings were broken. So Emma looked to the fairy’s wings to see a tear in it. She had spent part of her childhood helping her mother tend to the broken wings of both bats and birds. How different could fixing the wing of a fairy be?

“Don’t run, little fairy,” Emma whispered. “Please. I think I can help you.”

But her visitor refused to listen. Within seconds, she had crawled under another leaf. Emma sighed as her shoulders sagged. Did fairies mistrust humans as many other forest animals did? It made Emma wonder what stories fairies told each other about the giant beings who gathered outside the forests. Did their stories encourage them to never leave the protection of the trees?

She opened her mouth to tell her little guest that she had experience mending the wings of other creatures, but stopped. Could the fairy understand her words? Surely if she returned to her kind, they could repair her wings, couldn’t they? But how would she be able to get there in her condition? Emma frowned. She had to help the fairy before harm came to the little creature. Only the forest knew what preyed on fairies out there. She let out another sigh. No matter the outcome, she had to mend the fairy’s wing.

“I’m going to help you, my little friend,” she promised. “I’ve mended the wings of other creatures. I’m sure I can help you.”

Emma set the leaf in her hand aside before she reached out for the leaf her visitor hid under. She lifted it up enough to reach under and gently take the fairy into her hand. A squeak escaped the little fairy’s lips –it sounded more like the screeching of rusty hinges than a scream. Cradling her patient in her hands, Emma retreated to her cottage. By the time she had reached the table, the little fairy had passed out from the shock of being captured.

“Poor thing,” she whispered, setting her guest on a napkin so she could gather up her supplies to mend the wing.

She still cared for her woodland patients the same way her mother had. On a shelf near the fireplace, she kept a box filled with all the items mending wings required, and she always had a small pot of water boiling on the fire. With everything in hand, Emma returned to the table and took care to clean the wing off before stitching it back together. The little fairy, no bigger than her thumb, never budged, thank God. With her guest so small, she had the wing mended in less than a minute. With a smile on her face, Emma found a clean rag and wrapped her patient in one, bringing her to a small table near her chair by the fireplace.

Only slight movements from her guest let Emma know the fairy still breathed. For the rest of the evening, she worked on her knitting and checked to see how her patient faired. Near dusk, her little visitor came awake, letting out another squeak before she pulled the rag over her head to hide herself. Had the fairy ever set foot inside a cottage before? None of the stories her mother had recounted had spoken of fairies living in buildings of any kind. She let out a sigh and came to her feet. Perhaps a little food might settle her guest.

“I’m going to fix us something to eat,” she told the fairy as she crossed her cottage and stepped into her kitchen.

As she gathered some vegetables to chop, Emma began recounting the story her mother had told her that she had cherished the most about an emperor who had taken ill and how a kitchen maid had found an herb to heal him with the help of a pair of forest fairies. When she finished that tale, she recounted the next tale that came to mind about fairies helping humans. Her tales continued as she fixed dinner. She heated up some vegetable broth as she went looking for the tiny tea set she had played with as a child, so her guest might have cups and plates her size to use while she healed.

When she returned to her chair by the fire with both food and broth for her guest, the fairy was peeking out from under the rag. Emma smiled as she set the meal in front of her tiny patient. She watched the fairy glance from the food up towards Emma. Perhaps if her guest knew her name, she would not be so frightened.

“My name is Emma,” she greeted. “Do you have a name?”

Her guest looked up at her and shook her head. Perhaps she did have a name, Emma couldn’t help but think, but perhaps fairies were told never to reveal their names to the giants who lived outside the forest. Many of the stories her mother had told her in her youth were meant to teach her –some had made her afraid of the forest itself. This could be the reason her little patient refused to speak her name.

“Well, I need to call you something, little fairy. And with you hardly bigger than my thumb, I think Thumbelina is what I shall call you. I mended your wing. I don’t know how long it will be before it fully heals, but you can rest here until it does. I’m sure some food will help you get better faster.”

Tiny little Thumbelina emerged from her bed and reached for the first bite of food off the miniature plate. Emma watched her patient eat and drink as much as she could before retreating back under the protection of the rag. With a smile, Emma returned to the kitchen and prepared her own meal. As soon as she finished eating, she checked out Thumbelina once more before taking herself to bed.

The next morning, her patient had finished the rest of the food that Emma had put out for her. God be thanked, she thought, as she fixed them both something to eat for breakfast, but Thumbelina still hid herself under her blanket even after Emma had placed pieces of bread and cheese next to her blanket and whispered kind words to encourage her guest to emerge from hiding. What else could she say to the little fairy so she would not be so frightened?

“Would you like a bath, Thumbelina?” she asked once she had finished her own food. “I can heat up some water for you.”

Emma heated up some water and put it in a bowl, placing it on the table next to where her guest had slept. With her wing still healing, there was no way Thumbelina could fly up to the water, so Emma constructed a little staircase for her guest to climb. She disappeared into the kitchen to give her guest some privacy. While she was tidying up her kitchen, she heard splashing and giggling coming from her common room. Emma smiled and she stole a glimpse of her guest playing in the water.

Only after she heard no more splashing did Emma join her guest by the fire, her knitting in her hands and more of the stories her mother had told her falling off her lips. For most of the morning, little Thumbelina kept herself hidden under her blanket, but by the evening, the fairy was sitting on top of her rag, listening to every word that fell off Emma’s lips. 

“Tell me of the emperor and the kitchen maid again,” Thumbelina begged near dusk. “Please.”

Emma gasped hearing the little fairy’s voice for the first time. Her gasp made Thumbelina giggle. Her guest’s voice reminded Emma of little bells chiming in the wind, and how could she refuse her? With a smile on her face, she recited the tale for a second time and then a third before her guest agreed to go to bed.

The following morning, as she recited the same story for a fourth time, Thumbelina allowed Emma to check on her wing. The injury looked to be healing well, but Emma could not be certain having never before tended an injured fairy. On the third day, Thumbelina started stretching her wings, flapping them, and by the following day, she was able to fly short distances. Emma lost track of the days until the injury had healed enough for her to remove the thread she had used to sew the wing back together. By then Thumbelina could fly from one end to the cottage to the other. And each day that passed the little fairy became more talkative, asking a thousand questions between requests for certain stories to be repeated to her. She even started doing her own set of chores.

“Thumbelina,” Emma said one day, “how did you injure your wing?”

The little fairy’s skin paled when she heard the question, and as she shivered, she flew back to her rag, hiding beneath it. She refused to come out, even to eat, until the next morning despite every kind word Emma could think to say. What horror had befallen her? Had a human done that to her? Perhaps another fairy had attacked her. Would Thumbelina ever tell her why? Would there ever be enough trust between them for Emma to learn the truth? Only God knew.

When Emma came into the common room of her cottage the next morning, she found Thumbelina sitting atop the rag, her arms wrapped around her body and her eyes staring off into the distance. Emma took a deep breath and joined her little guest by the fireplace. She sat there, in silence, and waited to see if Thumbelina would trust her enough to tell her what had happened.

“My clan has always lived near a stream near the edge of the forest,” Thumbelina told her. “A vole has always lived nearby. We thought he was our friend, our protector. He fought alongside us whenever we were attacked. We never thought twice about being alone with him. None of us did. Then one day, he abducted me, cutting my wing so I couldn’t escape. He brought me to an abandoned den in your yard. One morning while he slept I slipped away. I know he’s looking for me.”

“Do you want to go home?” Thumbelina nodded. “Will you let me help you?”

“Will you?” the fairy asked in a trembling voice.

“I will, and I promise to never tell a soul where you and your clan lives.”

Emma found a clean rag to wrap Thumbelina in before putting her cloak on. She hid her guest in a pocket inside her cloak before heading outside. Every leaf had been cleared off her cobblestone path and the streets beyond. Her fellow villagers greeted her as she traversed the village. A friendly face would stop her from time to time to ask her where she was headed.

“I fancy making a mushroom soup,” she told them, “so I’m off to the forest to see if I can find enough.”

They wished her luck and continued on their way. Once she and Thumbelina reached the forest’s edge, she pulled the fairy out of her pocket. Thumbelina flew out of her hand and turned back towards her.

“Will you come meet my clan?” she asked.

Emma gave Thumbelina a smile. “I would love to meet your clan, little fairy, but for your safety and theirs, I think it’s best I don’t know where you live. Can you find the way from here?”

“I can,” Thumbelina promised. “Thank you, Emma. You will always be my friend.”