John and Gretel

[Note: There is an allusion to some disgusting murder of an old woman and violence toward children. Heads up.]

Once upon a time, there was so much magic in the world and so much time! A person could sit and take in every atom, molecule, cell, and being; we could see the sky, the heavens, the earth all around us. We felt and heard every tree, every shrub, every leaf, blade of grass, even the tiniest creatures occupying the most minuscule places in the foliage. And in every moment of experience, we could always find magic.

The magic was so loose during those days, even thinking about it would work some kind of energy out of a person's fingertips. The nearest and merest thought, the briefest consideration, the slightest inclination would loose magic. And at that time, magic was so commonplace, free, and free-flowing, there had to be a way to rein it in.

Reining in the magic did something to the people. It took away from them, removed some of the spring from their steps, some of the light in their eyes, and some of the imagination that brimmed from the very ends of their hair. But something had to be done. With so much magic everywhere, it was almost impossible to transact regular life, regular business, regular living amongst people in society.

And I hid my magic. I hit it in my coat pockets. I hit it under my hat. I hid it everywhere I could find a place to hide it. I was terrified that someone would find it and take it from me, and then I would lose something more precious than gold, more precious than freedom. I was afraid I would lose my sanity, my intellect, and my own identity and personhood. Those were losses I would not be able to survive sustaining.

I grew older, and unlike Don Mclean's song, I didn't watch the music die, but I did see the wonder of beauty fritter away in direct proportion to the disappearance of magic. I lived long and simply, only taking what I needed and giving everything I didn't need, and sometimes giving only for the sake of giving. From this simple living, the magic I'd been hiding preserved me, not in a preternatural state, but I aged very slowly, and out of necessity, I didn't live a large life. And my higher power said to me each night, "We will call your life good." My mission and magic were safe, small, useful, and saved many a person I had met in my time here. And it was good.

One afternoon, though, on a lonely throughfare, I found the old man. His eyes were rheumy, watery, the aqua found in a deep, pristine body of water reflecting the perfection of a cloudless sky. When I saw him, I knew him immediately, though we had never met. He had magic. I touched his hand in greeting, going through the motions of offering him assistance crossing the street or asking about his people and how they could have left him there, and could I help him home. When my skin touched his, I felt a pleasant burn. It was a burn I hadn't felt in many years, since I had put my first bit of my magic in a cookie jar. The old man felt the burn from my touch as well. His eyes opened quite wide.

"Oh, hey, young lady. I'd like to know what you're doing here. Today. In this place. Do you know what today is?" His eyes lit. He had been window shopping along the thoroughfare.

"May I join you on your shopping trip?" I asked.

He simply stared at me, and I felt his question inside my head.

"No, sir. I don't know what today is."

"That's quite sad not to know what today is. Some people call it the first day of the rest of their lives. Some people claim it as a birthday, or an anniversary, or a celebration, or a day of mourning. If you could choose what day today is, what would you choose?" he asked.

"I would choose a day to free magic. To help magic souls flex and train to prepare for the next age on this earth of ours," I answered.

"That would be a glorious day indeed. Is all your magic still inside you?" he asked.

"Oh, no, sir. I hid it during the curtailing time. Is all your magic still inside you?" I countered.

"It is," he said. "I believe it may be why you touched my skin. Sometimes, the magic leaks from me. It's gone through my hair, skin, eyes, nose, mouth, throat. Sometimes it's in my nail clippings."

I laughed. "One day I cleaned out my hairbrush, and do you know the magic from the hair shed from my head generated something I could never have imagined. Even in the old, old days."

The old man's eyes grew like saucers. His delighted smile revealed perfectly white, straight teeth. We who had the magic didn't smile too much because we enchanted others with a carelessly bandied smile, a wistful wink and half smile. We had to be careful of showing genuine delight and mirth because the consequences to each of us personally had been dire throughout time.

"Let me just say this. I had to stash a pegasus in my basement until I could leave home under cover of darkness to let her go. To this day, she was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

The old man's eyebrows climbed up his forehead just a tick in inquiry.

"She was silver with a gold mane and eyelashes and blue eyes," I recalled from my memory. "She was perfection. Her hide may have been from fine silken velvet, but, of course, that doesn't make sense in practicality."

"I've seen her babies," the old man said. "There was one down in this part of town for a time, but we could live in the mists of our magic for a while before anyone was the wiser as to what we were doing here in this pocket of town and time. Since when did magic have to make practical sense? Do you remember the whimsy?"

It had been so long, I had forgotten the whimsy, and I frowned. A glockenspiel in the town square began its song, and in my mind's eye, I saw the animated figures go through their precisely orchestrated movements, telling a story that wasn't entirely correct, but which had outlived many of the town's residents. It was a story the people just accepted. I sighed.

"Don't be sad, girl," he said. "Do you know where I take my whimsy? I do it every year, but do you know where?" The old man practically bounced. "I go to the hot air balloon festival in New Mexico. 'Sky's the limit,' as they say." He looked to the sky, a dreamer's expression covering his face with the rapture of someone who was still connected to earth and nature.

"Can you tell me something?" I asked. "We haven't even introduced ourselves to each other. I don't know your name."

"I know who you are, young lady," he said. "Even without your brother I'd know you anywhere. I smelled the sugar around you before you even touched me, Gretel."

"Impressive," I said, "but I'm still at a loss."

"My given name is John. I didn't come to magic in the normal way, though. My poor, poor, departed mother sent me to town to sell our cow. Mother never knew the milk from our cow was enchanted, and as I grew up drinking our cow's milk, the magic became one with my bones, my very constitution. The magic inside me holds me up and holds me together. I couldn't sell the cow. I did sell her milk, though." He paused. "The cow's name was Titania, after the queen of the fairies." He slapped his knee and gave a boom of a laugh. "I traded a bucket of milk for beans—a whole bag of beans, enough to plant an acre of beans. At the very least, we could grow something for a long time. Mother wasn't pleased, though. Not one little bit. I had a piece of trouble sneaking out of the house to milk the cow. I had to stash Titania in a barn down the road."

John winked at me. "I think you know what happened. Back when my mother was living, I was her little Jack," he mused. "In not such a long time after sowing the beans on our land, I happened to come into possession of a golden goose, a singing harp and, you know, some other odds and ends. At the time Mother wasn't happy, but with the goose and everything, she became brighter with each passing day." He leaned in toward a shop window to take in some of the goods before going on. "She never drank Titania's milk. She cooked with it, but she wasn't like I was when I was just a young man, not much more than a boy, drinking great glasses full of fresh, magical cow's milk. She had a bit of magic in her, my mother, and it came through in her cooking and baking. She never put a foot wrong in her kitchen." John smiled with a look of longing and missing someone dear, someone integral to his very foundation as a human being.

"After all this time, I can't believe I'm meeting you. It's truly an honor, John."

He blushed a deep, rosy color I found to be disarming and charming at once.

"I will tell you, darling Gretel, my lovely wife of more years than we can count would be honored to have you over for dinner. Goldie is a fine cook, baker, wife, and mother. Let her dote on you for an evening," he said. I felt the pieces clicking into place in my brain and smiled.

"I would love that very much. I'm assuming everything she does is 'just right.'"

John pressed a calling card into my palm. It contained a photo of him and his wife, Goldie, their address, email, and phone number. I felt I knew his story and her story, but it had to be only their closest friends and family, people from our magical community, hidden now for so many years and ages right in front of the eyes of the world, running in tandem with a different beat and rhythm from even the smallest of small living things—it had to be such a microcosm, such a tightly limited number who knew John and Goldie's story. Funnily enough, they wanted to hear my story, too. My eyelids grew heavy with moisture.

There had been so few people (or otherwise) who wanted to hear, and, frankly, comprehend the events that transpired when my brother and I escaped the old lady's cottage, deep in the woods, under the lush green canopy so thick it looked like midnight in the middle of the day. John cocked his head to the side, the angle looking uncomfortable. "You kids were like me. You weren't born with the magic…"

"I'm not proud. My brother and I did what had to be done, and our father feared us after the rescue and escape." I frowned when I recalled the horror on our father's face when it registered what we were doing in the old woman's kitchen.

"The old woman had tricked us into the oven but had not turned it on, at least not until we had climbed in. She left the door open to hear our screams and moans, I'm sure. During one of her checks on us, my brother said there was something very large and dark in the oven with us. He said it was beginning to take shape. We had seen a photograph of her own children, and my brother described her son in perfect detail. By the time she came back to open the door to see what was happening, we had wedged my brother's shoes into the oven door hinges. I wore mine on my hands and boxed the old woman's ears with every bit of force a child possessed. What we truly possessed was the strength a person musters in the face of utter fear and terror. She fell into the oven with us and lay across the door. The oven had not reached its top temperature yet."

I hadn't told the story in over a hundred years, but, still, it felt like it was yesterday. "We pulled her the rest of the way into the oven, and we crawled out, slamming the door shut and engaging the lock. I can't tell you the rest because it's not who I am anymore, but our father's horror is a reminder to me even now of what we do, to what lengths we will go to protect our physical selves, what resides in us pushing us to survive."

John touched my hand. "I know, dear. I drank the milk. I planted the beans. I let someone die. I stole, and I lived, flourished, but here we are, strangers to one another, in hiding for hundreds of years. There are so many prices to pay."

"I've been a vegetarian since that day, but had the old woman not come into our lives, had she not tried to bake us, I would not have had the opportunity to come into my own magic. My brother and I consumed her magic. When our father found us, we offered some of the magic to him, and he couldn't look at us or the scene of carnage in the cottage," I admitted, looking deep into John's eyes. I didn't see a trace of fear or revulsion.

"And have you done good things with your magic?" he asked. "I know we don't have the freedom to allow our magic to roam loose and free, to paint the world as it was meant to be, but I have tried to put things to right as I feel it in my mind."

"I do," I said simply. "I hide my magic outside myself most of the time, carrying only a bit from moment to moment in protection. I fear our fellow humans and what they do when they don't understand."

I gave a small, low laugh. John looked at me in surprise. "What?"

"Do you and Goldie ever go to the cinema?"

John looked a little confused, answering my question with an inflected, "Yes?"

"I've seen all the X-Men movies, and that's what I fear if my magic were free and visible."

John put his hand out to me, and I place mine in his, and he covered my hand with his other hand on top. "Needs must, my dear. Needs must." He glanced at the sky, then at the placement of the shadows on the sidewalk. "I must go now. Please call. Goldie and I would be horribly disappointed if this were our one and only meeting. Okay?"

I nodded. John released my hand from the gesture which had meant the world. I gripped him tightly and hugged him. He laughed into my hair. "You are good, Gretel. Please don't forget that ever. You will join us around our table soon. We have so many stories for you, too. You must know, our purposes are so much more than our origins for those of us not born with magic. Okay?"

"Okay," I said, letting go of John. "I will come to see you and Goldie. I will tell you about my beautiful pegasus, how she is still spotted in Bavarian forests, just fleetingly, by hunters and hikers. You know, in that way of, 'Did I just see what I think I saw?'" John's pale eyes took me in with love, like he were considering one of his own children.

"So be it," John said, and as the last word left his lips, he was gone. At my feet, I found a small, plain, brown paper bag. Inside, I found a golden egg, my cue to go home.