The wishing tree

Morning sunrise always starts off with a rooster somewhere down the road telling us all it's time to get up. I shift in bed and look around, my eyes squinting as the bright morning sun shines through my window and onto my bed just beside it. There is a tree outside my window, the tree of magical wishes I called it as a small child. We all said if you whispered your deepest desires to it the tree would grant them to you. I stopped believing when I was 10 and I asked for it to bring my dad home from the war alright. His body was never even found.

There's a lot of dust dancing in the beams of sun. a morning ball for those who enjoy the croaking toads and wet grass. I sit up slowly, the bed makes a squeak and a creak and my back makes a crack. I slip on some old leather shoes with a hole starting to show itself in the sole of the left one. They are quite comfortable though, they've molded themselves to me quite well over the years. Mum says we will get new ones once these pair cease to exist and I am quite alright with that notion.  I slip on a loose white button up shirt over my bare chest and pull on some khaki pants that reach half way down my shins. I step onto the old wood floors of the living area where mum is sitting quietly and knitting. A sweater for dad she always says. I know she'll never finish it.

"You go and brush out that blonde mop on your head."  She says to me,

"Oh alright but have you eaten yet, mum?"

"It is quite alright. I will have a light snack later on." Mum always says she has a stomach ache but I know she just misses dad. "porridge, mum. c'mon." I give her a small smile and she nods. "I'll bring it over."

"I'm off mum. have to drop off the washing at ms. Fargo's then down to the river to get some work done." I tell her once she has started eating.

"Alright. You be safe Joseph."

Joseph. junior of course. My dad was Joseph as well. It's been nearly a decade since the war. I'm 19 now. I do what I can around here. Not many of the men came home. Ms. Fargo's husband and her son left with my dad. their bodies were found and brought home. She's quite old now with her 3 cats and barely enough memory left to remember her own name sometimes. Her granddaughter, Mia Fargo lives with her. They're just down this little dirt road that makes up most of our small village in the countryside of England. The house looks much like the rest, on a small hill with a small front yard filled with grass and a small tree. A thatched roof made of golden yellow straw and wooden pillars keeping it all up much like what you'd imagine from a story book.

"Hello, Joseph." Mia answered the oak door after I gently tapped on it holding a basket of clean linens.

"Hello, Mia. How are you?" I say with a noticeable grin on my face but a calm tone.

"Oh I am well. I'll take this to grandmother. Step in." A breeze caught her hair and I smelled lemongrass and strawberries. the freckles on her face seemed to dance like the dust in the morning wash of sunlight through my window. I don't think I have ever met anyone more ginger in my life. I wanted to paint her and keep it in my pocket.

"Joseph my boy, is that you?" Ms. Fargo always says hello. I'm not always sure if she knows it's me or thinks it's my dad but I smile and say hello and hold her frail aging hands as she sits in her old chair with an old blanket my mother once knit for her across her lap. It's almost hard to see how skinny she has gotten. Her hair was white but she had the same ginger freckles on her face.

"Mia, fetch this young man a glass of water."

"Yes, granny." Mia hurried off to the small kitchen and grabbed a glass. She must have already pumped water from the well for today. The sun was just as unrelenting here as it was in my bedroom not too long ago. All the rooms looked as if liquid gold had spilled in through the windows.

I drank my water quickly as Mia handed it to me.

"Well ms. Fargo, Mia and I have to head down to the river now but I will have her back in no time."

"Have fun you two." She called down at us and I could have sworn I heard her mumble what a nice young man under her breath.

Once Mia and I got down to the river that was located just down the hill off the small dirt road and through a small patch of trees into a beautiful and sunlit clearing, Mia grabbed the fishing equipment out of a hollowed out log we keep them in and I grabbed my painting equipment. We both set up. The river ran through the middle of the clearing. It contained crystal clear water that reflected bluer than the sky above us. The grass was long and greener than in the village. The birds sang their song as Mia sang one of her own as she sat on the river bank, fishing rod in hand and head tilted back so she could look at me beginning to paint her.

"stay still, would you?" I scolded her but I loved when she looked back at me like that.

"Or else what, Joe? What will you do if I absolutely refuse to sit still?" She laughed. I love that laugh. The birds try to mimic the sound but it'll never sound as lovely as it does coming from that red headed monster.

"Well, I won't be able to paint my future wife and it will be all your fault and then what will I tell her when we have nothing to hang in our new home?"

"You're getting married?? Congratulations Joseph! I cannot wait to meet the lass."

"Cheeky you are."

"It's the Scottish in me." Mia grew up in Scotland with her mother and father. When her mother passed at the age of 9 her and her father moved here to be with ms. Fargo. I saw her hair from my window and I knew I wanted, no, needed to know that girl.

"Will you marry me, Mia?" I asked while beginning to stroke orange onto my canvas and another brush in my mouth.

"That is the third time you've asked me that this week." She was facing the water but I know she was smiling.

"I love you, Mia."

"You know I'd sail the seven seas for ya and conquer a nation but it's not time yet." I knew she was right.

"Alright. You are inevitably correct."

We sat in silence for the rest of the afternoon both working on our own thing. She caught plenty of fish and I painted the event. Once we were both finished we packed up and went back through to the village. Mia took the fish for cooking and I took the painting up to my house. Mum loved it like always and I went back over to ms. Fargo's with mum on my arm to help setup for dinner. Arlo, a 50 something year old man from a couple doors down came down to join us. He was a survivor from the war and often kept us in his company. The sun began to set on our world and I noticed little evening bugs beginning to buzz around the darkening skyline. the sun taking back its golden glow and the moon casting out its light upon us. I don't have a chance to do much reading as the week is meant for tending to the farm and the weekends are meant for time with Mia and mum but I did once read Romeo and Juliet with my father as a boy and I'm always reminded of it when I watch the moon come up. I sometimes feel jealous of the moon myself. It has no worries and no strife. just a clock and a light.

Once everything is cleaned up, mum and I say goodnight to the Fargo's as well as Arlo who always stays an extra few minutes to combat his lonely nights. Just as we were turning away I heard Mia call my name. "Can we talk?" She asks me. "Of course. Mum I'll meet you home in just a minute. " Mum walked off whispering to herself with a smirk.

"What is it?" I ask.

"I will marry you. Ask me exactly one year from now." She smirked as well.

"To the second?"

"To the second."

She kissed me on the cheek and ran off home. I held my cheek with my fingertips holding onto the feeling of her lips on my skin. I walked home a very happy man.

I got to my room that night and slipped off my tattered white button up shirt and my too short for my legs pants and laid back down in my squeaky and creaky bed while the moon shone its rather melancholic light through my window, crickets chirping away. I looked out at the old magical wishing tree and whispered "let every day be like today. Let Mia be mine. Let my love be forever strong like the beams of the morning sun."

A year later I woke up and the day seemed very much the same to that one. The sun, the dancing dust, the noisy bed, the old leather shoes and I waited for the sun to go down, the moon to come out, I knocked on the door and when Mia swung it open I was on my knee with a golden band in my hand, the most expensive I could afford when I took a trip to London earlier in the year. A breeze caught her hair. I smelled lemon grass and strawberries and her freckles seemed to dance in the moonlight. She smiled and said yes and a tear sparkled in her eye.

I guess the tree had some magic after all.