RAVEL. Chapter 3. WHY DiD I LOSE MY WiSH?

Twitchy nights.

Agog.

Twisted lacunas of thoughts.

And sadness begotten by passion’s waves.

Many morrows were shed.  

Li could only nap. Abed, lass was dreaming for the shortest day of the year. The day of Gramps. The day of burning wishes.

It was nearing, day by day.

Gramps came once every twelve years.   

Every lone hamlet, every lost townlet, every old farm, were waiting for his visits.

Very few people had seen Gramps and even fewer met him face-to-face. However, old Gramps was the one to embody an everyone’s wish, the burning wish.

Rumelia, the land of mellow rum, lived under the Gramp’s coat, warm and sheer.

Many kindreds were piling wishes together within own kin for dozens of years to feast All-Wishes-Day.

By the bye, Li’s ma had come from the land without a custom like this. So, Venerva carriaged her wish to be done one day. Thereto, Flance kept his burning wish too.

Alas, previous Gramps’ Day had been happened when Greenkind’s kids were too little to understand the grandeur of the moment.

Henceforth, Greenkinds nurtured all their gladness inside own deep oceans of consciousness.

Years passed.

By that time, the cherishing moment was nearby.

So, Li couldn’t sleep.

Lying in the bedchamber, calm and moonlit by all moons, Livinia was contemplating, looking at herself mirrored by the surface of the thoroughly polished oaken closet. Her beautiful thin lips and aquiline nose were chiseled so lightsome as if she was a daughter of air.

Yet she wasn’t.

Li was a daughter of Venerva and Flance Greenkind.

And she could not withstand the cold.

The heavy slow wave of bleak blow encroached on her bedchamber on the third floor. Thence, Li was to snuggle deeper inside the chaos of coverlets and rugs. But Livinia followed an own gust and escaped from the warmth of coverings.

Old boots and flimsy flaxen tunic were weak against all cold. So, she coated herself in the blanket.

Then she touched rough stones of chimney. And, indeed, it was tepid.  

Livinia knew the hearth in the hall was waiting for her canny hands.

Anyway, the girl hurried, opened the door and gingerly stepped down the stairs. 

The wooden hull was wincing by weaves of remains of inner warmth entwined with winter’s bleakness. Li felt its tension, flinch, inmost budging and jittery pulse.

Greenkind’s house was to be alive. So, it could withstand any sinister unhuman thing, as Flance once said.

“Li! Li! Come here!” it was ma’s whisper.

Livinia hastened.  

“Stoke the fire, please… Ma…” the girl strode through the darkness to the hall. 

Her mother was stirring embers, sitting at the hearth. Meantime, other nestlings were still hiding in their chambers.  

Li came here along with the first gleams of the dawn.

“Morrowing… And snowing…” Venerva uttered.

“Luntis and Ounce…” Li frowned. “Why do they hide behind the doors? Every night… For many nights…”

“They don’t.”

“Ma-a-a… I feel them when they are nearby.”  

“Thou is anxious. Some things are tenacious.”

“What do thou mean?”

“I have to say. But I beseech thou, please, Li, don’t follow the path of thoughts like these,” Ma added. “Li, thou brought here a story of ghost. And all grim stories beget bad things.”

“Yet our house is alive.”

“No... Its hull is well… But his… her… her inner timber bones were broken by the storm… she died with woe, as if she was an old house… two years ago… Don’t thou remember?”

“Yes, but I… Aye-e… I don’t know what is wrong with me,” Li was tense as a bowstring. “Gramps’ Day…”   

“Three weeks… Thou can’t wait for a few weeks… But why?” ma giggled kindly.

“I am so wistful…” quoth the daughter.

“Li worries about me and thee, and fa’s, and Lu’s wishes,” Ma laughed loudly. “But why?”

Li turned back and saw her drowsy sister. Thereto, she heard tapping trickling from the Luntis’ room. In a nutshell, Greenkind’s nestlings were wakening to meet a new morning.  

“Yes, I worry about all our wishes and my own,” Li spoke with passion.

“Thy own? What is thou talking about? We will devote all juiciest chunks of our wishes to thee,” Venerva Greenkind smiled kindly.

Li’s mother looked so bonny and young, blooming, as if she was Li’s twin.   

“I will do the same for you,” Livinia said, embracing her sister and ma.   

“Thou would… I know…” ma agreed.

“I will,” Li’s utterance was plucky.

“But how?” Venerva goggled and said. “Thou must remember”.

“What to remember?”

“Thou lost thy wish,” ma’s answer was terse.

Venerva touched Li’s face.

By the moment, girls and their mother bathed in the tide of the winter’s sun.  

“Thou was four years old... A little doe… It was a Gramps’ Day… We were sitting in thy room. We were praying to Gramps… And he was budging, stepping here, heavily breathing… here… in the main hall. He was assessing our life… And we were waiting… Don’t thou remember?”

“I have never kept…” Livinia would have been happy to recall to her mind.      

“Thou said thou wish to fly… thy heartfelt thing… And so, the window was opened as if it was sightless hand… or hands… Gramp’s will… These Ankharian panes looked so flimsy in hands of His… And so…  Li, thou was taken by the air… And we were agape… Then you overstepped the windowsill… Thou was soaring above, at the house… Thou was so joyful… Thou was laughing… Our blissfulness… And… Then… Thou fled away… within twilight… Since…  Li… Thou wanted… Thou wished for that… Yes… ” Venerva hauled it word by word.

“In a word, I was blessed,” quoth the daughter. “Yet I don’t have such memories.”

“Thou returned by the dip of night. Perhaps, in a word, thy mind hadn’t written that as if it was a nightdream. After all, we are humans. And humans sometimes forget own dreams.”

“Thank thou for the truth,” with these words, Li kissed her mother.

By the moment, Livinia lived in felicity. She felt.

Meantime, it was so much unfair to lose an own wish.

MAXIM VAZANOV, 2024