Old Friends and New Beginnings

The town is much smaller than it was when I left, but I think to myself that must not be possible. Maybe it is me that is larger and it seems my home has yet to grow with me. Growing up will do that. 

The years have passed in a flash of late nights, eyes heavy with sleep, editing essays and marking quizzes. I never had a reason to think of college or the part that happens next. The part that children try not to dwell on. Real-life, or so the one where you get to live without the boundaries of anyone else. 

When I was younger I was a storyteller, not a good one but no one had the heart to tell me. Whenever I imagined my life, I saw cloudless skies where I would sit at home and write till the sunset. I saw many things. 

In the end, I was accepted into three schools and rejected from four. I had applied to two programs at York, one psychology and another for physics. I hadn’t been able to decide what I wanted to do and my last hope was to have the schools pick me. Whichever programs I was accepted to, who offered me the greatest scholarships, would be the one I would attend. Most of my applications were for science, but I submitted one for a program I knew I would never be able to attend: creative writing. 

I was so close to accepting, but then my father intervened. I came home one day to the acceptance letter for my creative study in the trash and the York letters neatly stacked on the laptop keyboard, the portal to choose my program already queued on the screen. 

I’ve spent the last seven years away learning everything my brain could handle in terms of psychology and neuroscience. Today I had an interview with the new principal of my old high school, a formality since my application had already been approved. On Monday I will be one of the guidance counsellors I overlooked throughout my entire secondary school education. 

I shuffle my way through the basement door putting down my coat and my purse while I struggle with a bag of meagre groceries in my other arm. I’m renting the basement room from Mr. Morten, my old English teacher. Ever since I left for school I haven’t really spoken to my parents. We could never find the time to talk about why we never seemed to talk anymore and from there I guess it just became a wedge. 

The lights in the hall are off and I finally allow myself a moment to think. After the weekend, I will be locked into my life, numbed by the thrall of day to day musings. 

With a hum, I open my laptop to a blank page. There are surely thousands of things I could be doing, starting with unpacking the thousands of boxes littering the space, but there will be endless tomorrows for unpacking. I’ve waited seven years for a spare moment. After Monday morning, I’ll have an excuse to stay busy forever. This is my last chance. 

The page before me is blank, the cursor blinking, mocking me. I hear a rustle in my closet and sigh. 

“You can come out now. I just want to listen.” I say softly drumming my fingers on my desk.

There are whispers and hissing and then a thump of something heavy knocking into the wall. Figures. For years I have to beg for silence, but the one time I ask to hear them, they fall mum. 

I wait a few more moments but the shuffling continues, though there seems to be no moving towards the door. 

Before I can think better of it I stomp over to the closet and with a dramatic flourish, rip the handles towards me. 

There's a bang and several curses as a lump of creatures topple before me. 

A small feline looking boy looks up at me bashfully before he’s smacked by the weathered hand of an old witch. 

“Come, sit. I figured the closet couldn’t be too comfortable.” I say moving back towards my desk, sitting and swivelling lightly towards them. 

“Done us plenty fine till now.” The witch says in a slur. 

I look away ashamed. It’s hard for me to watch them truthfully. Even I can’t be oblivious enough to ignore the state of them. From what I remember, they seemed to spark to life under my gaze, I guess so long in the shadows has left them dull and weary.

When I was applying to schools I only got busier and busier. After I moved to the city I had to put away the foolish dreams of making lives for them. I didn’t have half enough time to do my own program let alone spend days upon weeks with them. On top of that, I never seemed to be able to do them justice. 

Fair or not, I told them to make themselves sparse so I could focus. The problem is I guess it took me seven years to find that focus. I haven’t tried speaking to them until today and now I know why. Like my relationship with my parents, it seemed everyday things got more strained and now I fear it is beyond mending. I’ve known this for a while but I could never face it. 

There are more of them than I can count, figures of all shapes and sizes filling the room from faeries to scarecrows, helping each other off the floor and muttering between them. In the gaps there are elves, sprites, and even human people, all milling about, finally enough room for them to breathe. The guilt only grows in my chest, larger than my heart ever was. 

“I wanted to talk to you all, catch up. We haven’t spoken in so long.” I say lightly, laying my shaking fingers on my skirt, smoothing out the lines I couldn’t seem to iron flat. 

The room falls into an immediate bone-chilling silence and I wince. 

“Catch up?” The witch asks glaring blades into my chest. 

“Have you forgotten the reason it's been so long?” Another creature remarks in a bell-like voice. 

“All these years, we waited with nowhere else to go, everyday thinking we would be saved but always ended up stuck in the dark!” The words are garbled as a woman with gills on either side of her throat tries to speak around the air. 

“I know, and I’m so dreadfully sorry, but I beg you, try to understand. I had to do what was best for me. There is no place for a misguided hero in this world, no matter how much you rely on me, remember I also have my life to save.” I remark my pulse speeding up as the sea of angry faces glowers down at me.

There are cries from some of the younger members of the group as they sense the brewing conflict. Some of the older children move to soothe them and the tears finally break. I’ve pushed back this regret for years, ignoring it and trying to pretend it didn’t affect me. Trying to pretend that none of this is real. It may not be real in the sense of my world, but to each and every one of them, their lives are very real. They are real enough that I can touch them. Real enough that I can hurt them, even without raising my fists. 

“You promised.” The voice of a small boy breaks the noise around us and I look around to see a bleary-eyed child with horns like a goat and buttons for eyes. 

Those are the words that break me. I curl into my skin, my heart stuttering, my breath coming in panting sobs as I stain my pressed work skirt with salty tears. 

“I’m sorry. Truly I am, I know I will never deserve your forgiveness any of you.” The words come between hiccuped sobs. 

“But why now. You’ve left us waiting so long. Don’t you remember I’m afraid of the dark.” A tiny wispy pixie says through a mouthful of fangs. 

“I should have let you out at least, but more than that, I should have freed you, but I could never find the time and when I did I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it,” I say watching the impassive faces wave as tears cloud my vision. 

“That excuse may work on someone else, but we know what you’re capable of, even more than you, and we told you just as much. We believed in you. Seems we’ve all done things we regret.” A scaly woman with violet skin says, her ballgown being tugged by the children as they get caught in the layers of tulle.

“I know, you all told me such nice things, but I was your only hope, you had no choice but to push me. Look at you all. You are the most interesting things about me and yet you are stuck with my dreary words. I could never capture all of this, not in a way that would do any good that is.” I say coughing to avoid another bout of tears. 

“Love, the words were never pretty. We speak only of truth." A man in a waistcoat says with a sympathetic half-smile.

“I’m ready to listen now. You have my whole attention and I promise you now, nothing is more important to me than hearing your stories.” I look at them earnestly and I see the resolve of some wearing thin.

“My dear you mistake us for fools, your promises mean nothing to us. We’ve heard it all before.” A Knight's muffled voice comes from the back of the room, the creaking of his armour echoing on the bare walls as he steps before me. 

One creature that looks like a cat-sized dragon, struts up to brush against my leg. I really have missed them. 

“Maybe I couldn’t write your stories because I couldn't let you go. Without you who am I? I don’t think I can handle being alone.”

A hand comes to rest on my shoulder and I look up into the eyes of the young wizard girl. 

“Without you, who are any of us? You make us who we are, truly and completely. If anything it should be us that are afraid. When our stories are told, who's to say what happens to us, but none of us fear the unknown, not really anyways. Do you know why?” She asks softly and I shake my head. 

“Because no matter where we go, you will be here and you will keep going. For us, the greatest gift is that we have a friend to tell our stories and make sure they don’t end in silence. You give us hope that people will come to know our names.” She says with a secretive grin. 

Looking around the room, I see hopeful, trusting faces. The faces of people that have been wronged time and time again and yet stand before me, comforting me and putting forth their trust once more. 

Shaking out my fingers and drying the lasting tears on my cheeks, I spin my gaze across the many faces. 

“Whose first?” 

I don’t sleep the entire weekend, and slowly the room begins to clear. My fingers are all but calloused from typing but I can’t stop. Every time I think of quitting or taking a break I think of the years they all spent waiting on me and push through it. 

After nine hours of writing, do the figures remember I have to eat and tell me to get breakfast. 

On Monday I walk into work, dishevelled and exhausted, hiding away in my office, clicking away at the keys of my computer, not even bothering to pretend to work as one of the princes whispers his story to me.

At the end of the week, I have a computer overflowing with tall tales and an empty bedroom. The quiet is so unnerving and I miss them as I knew I would, more fiercely than I have anything. 

I could look through my notes and see them again but it wouldn’t be the same. Instead, I put the radio on and go about cleaning out my boxes between rescheduling one of my assigned kids' classes. 

Far past midnight, I finally find my way into bed, my muscles aching. 

The hairs on my arms stand on edge as I hear crashing in the living room. Thumping footsteps ring through my ears and my fingers begin to tremble. I thought I had locked the door but I can’t remember, I had so many bags in my hands I don’t know if I went back for it. 

My breath stutters in my lungs and I hide under the pillow. For a second I think the mattress heaves under my weight but I push the thought aside. 

The door to my room crashes open and my bones rattle in fright, slowly turning to meet the eyes of whoever broke in as I mutter a prayer in my thoughts. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you, I was looking for my companion, I thought she might have slipped away.” A sheepish looking shepherd boy stares at me, shaggy hair dipping into his eyes. 

I heave a sigh, sinking back into my mattress with relief, that is short-lived when a monstrous lioness sinks out from under my bed. 

In a yelp, I jump out from the covers, into the corner as the beast jumps over my mattress in a leap and moves to nuzzle the thigh of the boy. 

“Madaline, you’re frightening the prophet.” He whispers looking jokingly towards me. 

If cats could roll their eyes I could have sworn she did. 

My eyes fly closed as I hear the crunching of bones as the creature stretches and in seconds, a willowy olive-skinned woman grins towards me, twisting one of her curls between her fingers. 

She bumps the boy and he nudges her back and they begin a sort of mock fight. 

“Guys can we do this tomorrow. I have work in the morning and I’m exhausted.” I say with a yawn, moving back under the covers. 

Their gazes cut to me as they study each other. 

“Fine but just as long as you will help us first.” The girl drawls lowly. 

“Yes, yes whatever just let me sleep.” I swipe at the air and they start towards the door.

“Wait, come back a second.” Their heads pop back through the door. 

“First?” I ask. 

“I beg your pardon?” The man asks looking at his companion for help but she merely shrugs. 

“You said I would help you both first tomorrow, what did you mean?” I pinch the bridge of my nose.

“...I said first, as in before the others…” He sounds more confused than anyone ought to. 

“Yes I gathered that, but everyone else is gone, I wrote their stories.” I say.

They smile at each other knowingly and step through the door once more. 

“When you wrote the stories of the others, you made room for more. You are the author after all.” He says.

With a nod towards the other room he beckons the others in and soon there is a mess of pixies, a baker holding a loaf of bread shaped like a house, and a ghoul coasting through the air to swim near my lamp, disrupting the light into harsh flickers. 

“I don’t understand,” I say tiredly, the stress from years before creeping back in. 

`“This is what you were meant to do. The words don’t stop just because you’ve decided you don’t feel like speaking.” The ghoul says in a snit. 

“Will they ever stop?” I ask, not knowing if I’ll like her response. 

“We can’t answer that.” A blue pixie giggle. 

I look around and study my room. For years I pretended I couldn’t see them, the ideas milling about my space disrupting everything. Now I get the choice again. To become someone new, someone who I might not like, or revert back to the person I regretted becoming in the first place. 

I pick up my laptop from under my bed and my fingers float to the keys like they are returning home. If it didn’t sound crazy I would say that I could feel the shift in my world that day. Every nerve in me all but buzzed, singing along with the song of the keyboard clicks and computer fan, and the voices of a thousand people, with a thousand stories I get to be the one to tell.