Thursday 9 October 2014

Stories - 2011 - The London Fairytale



The Yellow Good Fairy was tall and black and slender. She sat up, majestic, on her throne, casually dressed in her Saturday yellow ballerinas and oversized yellow designer bag. (A present from a designer she had helped.)  Lightning bolts flashed on her robes like gold-fish in a summer pond, matching her shoes and handbag.
Maitreiy was lost.  She asked the Fairy for help: she needed the Medicine to cure her dying father, who withered with a strange, unknown illness.  The Fairy answered - her voice warm, resonant and slightly sad.
“I cannot give you the Medicine. But I can give you help to find it.”
She searched inside her designer bag, and pulled out a practical pen that doubled up as magic wand and key ring.  
“What you need is three UFO’s: a hat, a scarf, and an Oyster.  Useful Fantastic Objects”, she answered Maitreiy’s questioning look. “Do you have a Hat? Good”
Maitreiy gave it to her. The Fairy touched it lightly with the pen wand:
“From now on, this Hat will protect you. Not only will it cover your hair from the rain of London, so you can walk in any weather. Not only will it shield your ears from the cold wind, so you can enjoy yourself when others run inside for shelter.
This Hat is now magic. It will shut out your ears from discouraging words; it will shield your eyes from bad sights, and point them on to the right path.”
“Thank you, Good Fairy”, Maitreiy said, politely.
“Now you need a Scarf. You will find one at my sister, the Blue Goth Fairy. She runs this Blue Goth shop in Camden Town Market. Any time you need to change your clothes, ask the Scarf, and it will robe you
In the most appropriate attire
That you wish, need or desire.”
“The Oyster, you will need to find it yourself. This Oyster will help take you anywhere as long as you tell it where you want to go. It will be up to you to decide where, to discover where it’s best to go. You will have guidance. It will come to you when you know what you want next. Or, you may just be lucky”, she winked mysteriously.  “Now go, my child. Be true to yourself, be compassionate, and you will find your Medicine.”
With these words, the Fairy led her to the golden mirror gate of her mansion. Maitreiy left, bewildered. Her new gift seemed poor, and she dumped it carelessly into her bag.  She wondered how she was going to make this journey. She didn’t know where to start.


The wind brought a whisper to her.
“You don’t need to ask for ideas, or to be told. Just let them come, and they will. Trust me on that!”  Maitreiy looked around.  A flame-coloured Flower smiled at her, her petals swirling in the sun.
“All I do, all day long, is being beautiful. And think beautiful thoughts”, said the Flower, as an introduction. “That’s all I want, that’s all I do.  I just think of all the things I’m grateful to have in this world, and it makes me beautiful.”
“How did you know what to say to me?”
“Hmmm... luck?”  The Flower smiled, with a twinkle of a rain drop on her silky petal.  “I give beautiful thoughts to people I like.  I happen to like you.”
Maitreiy smiled. The Flower was irresistible, and her scent caressing, like a warm summer night in a Mediterranean garden.
“My real name is Splenda - Rosa.” She sighed. “Only, I’m very ill. A worm is eating away my roots.”
“This one?”, said Maitreiy, squashing with her foot something that squelched.
“Oh, thank you!  I- I can’t believe it!”
“No big deal!”, said Maitreiy.
“If you ever need me, just think of me, and I’ll be by your side. Now have an incredibly lucky day!  And remember: be kind to yourself, as you were to me. You deserve it. Bye!”
“Good-bye, Splenda – Rosa!”  With that, Maitreiy left, still smiling.

It started dripping. Maitreiy looked up – cloudy. The London weather had surely changed quickly. Ochre-grey, purple-grey, and indigo-grey heavy clouds were hanging threateningly above her. A thick curtain of rain swished closer.  She walked faster. It started pouring. She put down her bag and rummaged inside. The hat. Good. She put it on. A perfect London hat.
“I see what she meant. The rain doesn’t matter when you have a hat.”
The sky cracked into a white flash, like an old cinema movie where the tape is broken. A few moments later, the world rumbled into a low, threatening roar. A Dragon came flying through the opening clouds, blowing flashes of lightning from his blood-darted eyes and roaring so utterly terrible that her bones shivered inside of her. He swooped onto a large lawn a few paces away from her. Her heart sank and she slid off to the nearest wall. A little cat, frightened, ran her way, with her eyes almost popping from her wet little head, her hair raised over her curved back.  For the briefest of moments, Maitreiy looked at her. The Cat must have seen something in her eyes, because she ran straight at Maitreiy and jumped in her arms. Maitreiy pulled her tightly to her chest, feeling her heart ticking like a clock in over-drive. The Cat squirreled down into the handbag.  Maitreiy flattened herself against the wall - near a large rose bush – her heart throbbing in her throat - and the dragon flew past. Only the thick cloud was left of him, and the rain-drenched pavements. “Phew!”  She let out a deep breath of relief.
“He doesn’t attack people, not in broad daylight. Too high profile”, meowed a little voice inside her handbag.  “Cats are dangerous for him.  We can see in the dark. We see where they go and when they come, in the darkest hour when nobody can see.  A Guilt Dragon on a Guilt-Trip. Nobody is supposed to know about these Trips!  Shouldn’t you be heading somewhere?”, said the Cat, changing the subject.
“Well, yes, actually, I was”, said Maitreiy, still mystified. “Not sure where, the Fairy said I’d find some UFO’s, Useful Fantastic Objects, to help me in my quest...”
“Let’s go to the South Bank. That’s a good place to think”, said the Cat.

The tide was low and the murky waters of the Thames were flowing past some people who prodded the muddy river bed with long sticks with a disc at the bottom.
“What are these?”, purred the Cat from the bag.
“Metal detectors. Modern mud-larks. Who knows what they are looking for.”
“In search of lost time”, said the Cat. Maitreiy giggled.
One of the people picked up something blue and threw it away.
“Another Oyster Card! Damn those tourists. Mess with my metal detector, they do, those magnetic cards!”
“Oyster, you said?” Maitreiy couldn’t believe it. Could this be?.... “Let me see.” She picked it up. An average blue Oyster Card, like those you use on the Underground trains, yet with something strange: a little oyster embedded into one of its corner, barely larger than the size of her nail. “I wonder if it works.  We need the Scarf, from Camden Town...”

In an instant, they were there. A loud throbbing noise was coming from a side-street. They went to see. Standing in a doorway a tall, dark man beat with all his might on a giant drum. He would sometimes stop, sit quietly for a while, looking up at nothing, with a fixed, somewhat silly stare. Then he’d suddenly stand up again and start beating his Drum.
“What are you looking at?”, Maitreiy asked. “What do you beat that drum for?”
“For the clouds!”, he grunted. Since he beat his drum all the time, he had forgotten to speak, and only wanted to grunt out enough words to make himself understood.
“Why, the clouds?”, she asked, bewildered.
“It’s cool”, he growled, grinning. ”People are happy when the clouds come. They all get together and dance, for the rain to come!”
“Do they?!”, she mused, even more befuddled. She looked around at the Londoners rushing about in the light drizzle, their collars up and their necks telescoped in between their hunched shoulders, as if that was going to protect them better from the rain. One of them walked past, muttering to his mobile phone about an umbrella he’d forgot.
“Yes, they dance all right! I saw them!”, said the drummer.
“Where?”
“Bollywood movie!  No rain, no food, people fed up with blue skies, dance at clouds... Boom! Boom!   Beat the drum!”
Boom! The drum echoed, as he spotted the next wave of thick grey clouds drifting in fast on a gust of wind.  Thump! Boom!
“You can beat that drum all day long, here in London!”, meowed the Cat.
“Tee -he, hee!”, he growled.
“Anyway, let’s hurry; I’m worried for my father.  Do you know the Blue Goth Shop around here?”
He motioned to his right, thumping away with his muscled, hairy arms.
They entered the shop hesitantly. Behind a rack of black lace dresses (embroidered with white skulls), stood a single, old scarf of butter-coloured silk. Maitreiy shook it hard. A sleepy moth rustled away in a disgruntled cloud of dust.
“You like that?”  The Blue Goth Fairy emerged from behind the counter, all dressed in black.  Her skin was so pale it was almost blue. Her eyes were exactly like those of the Yellow Fairy – only a crystalline shade of Caribbean blue. “You can have it – for free!”
“Er, are you sure?”, said Maitreiy.
“I’ve been waiting to give it away, only nobody wants it. It’s dusty and out of fashion.”
“Your sister, the Yellow Fairy, said I’d find one here...”
“My sister sent you, then?  I see.... Let me have another look.”  The Fairy passed the Scarf through her silver filigree ring.  When she gave it back to Maitreiy, it was light as a feather and thin as air. “Now it’s the right scarf”, she said, mysteriously, and vanished at the back of the shop. As she didn’t come back, they left.
“Now what?”, said Maitreiy. “I’ll go to work tomorrow, and we’ll see.” (She had a job, like any other Londoner of her age, you see.)

The following morning, Cat in her bag, they went to work.  They passed by the sandwich shop, the one that always smelled like they burned the omelette.  A sandwich-man stepped out, and unceremoniously captured them.
“You have trespassed on the territory of the King of Spit!”, he grunted.
“The Spit King of Should!  Very powerful, very annoying, if you ask me”, purred the Cat softly in her handbag. Maitreiy didn’t have time to be surprised. ”The nasty, dark, cold land of Should.”
A mosaic in gold letters was embroidered on the floor of the King’s throne hall – so you could read it at leisure while you bowed to him.  It proclaimed: “To be serious you Should not be funny”.  The King held his nose up so high, that his eyes would cross when looking down at them.
 “Those Londoners, they aren’t half as good as us”, he said, spitting on an elegant Page to his right.
 “He likes to spit on people’s heads - to make himself feel superior. The Page’s job is to walk by the King’s side and to be spat on”, whispered the Cat. “Whenever the King is annoyed, threatened, or confused, he only relaxes when he can spit on someone’s head.”
“That’s the best candidate so far!” – the Page quipped.  
“It’s the first one! You idiot”, muttered the King. “Pthew!” – on the head of the Page.

“To amuse the Army will your Task be”, the King said in a solemn, booming voice (this is how Kings speak, you see).
“The Army of Wives!” The Cat shuddered with fear.
Maitreiy laughed. “Army of Wives?!”,
“Don’t you laugh, meaw!”  The hair on the back of the Cat stood up, bristling.  “The Citizens of Should figured out the Wives were the most fearsome, cunning and astute creatures of the Land of Should. Somewhere – on a pen, a handbag label, a T-shirt logo - they all have the Motto: ‘Never mess with the Wife’. So they put them all into the National Army.  The Land of Should has never been this safe since.  Only, the Wives get grumpy very quickly, and everybody grows very, very afraid of them and keeps very, very quiet indeed. Everybody does their best to keep the Wives amused. Otherwise they walk around with their heads down in fear, their shoulders hunched and their necks pulled in, very much like Londoners when it rains. Everybody, including the King.  When he is afraid of his Wives, he keeps a low profile, and his crown falls off and it rings so loud, that everyone knows he is afraid of the Wives too. He even forgets to spit!”
“Amuse them – with serious things, of course, like Culture”, declaimed the King and waved them away.
“Hmmm....”  Maitreiy smiled, trying to ignore the flickers of worry in her stomach. “How do you amuse the Wives?!... I think we are stuck.”
“A-meaws, a-meuws... a-muse?”, the Cat twitched her tail, rolling the word around like a woollen ball. “You need a Muse!”
“A Muse!  That would be nice!”, said Maitreiy scornfully.  “Where do you get a Muse in London?! If they ever existed, they were all in Greece anyway.”
At that moment, a Crow fluttered above her, crowing:
“You’re no good. You don’t know anything. You never learned anything. You are a fake. Everything you did in your school exams was short-term memory, you’ll never remember anything useful.”
Maitreiy felt worse. It was as if her own doubts called the Crow.
“He’s right. Maybe I should make friends with this Crow.”
“You’re talking like a citizen of Should!”, purred the Cat. “No way, you won’t make friends with him!  Believe the Crow and you will just give up.””
“I don’t want that!”, said Maitreiy and shooed the Crow away. “You are a very well informed Cat!”
“Now you notice!  I know so much, they call me the Encyclopedi -Cat.  But I prefer just Cat”, she purred, curling her tail modestly around her paws.   “Anyway, back to our job. Modern times call for modern Muses”, she said, smiling under her whiskers. “Think of Easyjet... Those Greeks!  Get your Oyster and let’s go.”

They arrived again on the South Bank, on the Thames, close to the National Theatre.
“Here we are, at the Muses’ Chairs”, purred the Cat sleepily from Maitreiy’s bag. “They each have a chair, marked with her name. Caliope – Poetry, Terpsichore– Dance, Euterpe – Music, and so on. Nine of them.  The Chairs are nailed up high on the wall so the muses can fly and land on them, and sit there above the common mortals.”
“How do we call one?”, asked Maitreiy impatiently.
“If you walk past the Barge House in the morning, you will sometimes see a grumpy Bucket and a Mop and wiping off Grafitti.  They are very grumpy because they have to do this every day. To send a message to The Muses, write a Grafitti here – only do it in the late evening after the Bucket and Mop have gone home for dinner. Ask them in the morning for any odd messages they’d wiped off.”
It was late evening. Maitreiy scribbled on the wall: “Come.” She didn’t know what else to write. Someone tapped her on the shoulder, startling her.
“Here I am.” Maitreiy looked around, feeling like a vandal.
“You thought I’d fly?!”, said a girl of her age with a big strange guitar over her shoulder.
“Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance”, purred the Cat.
Terpsichore was a Music student, plump but beautiful, with a mane of dark curly hair and thick, black eyebrows. “Call me Terpy”.
“Your guitar looks like it swallowed a watermelon!”, said the Cat.
“Guitar!  Humpf!  It’s a bouzouki! The Harp is not that fashionable, we Muses like to keep up with the times. Even this is a bit traditional, but I like it. Better than an electric keyboard. More original, you see.”
“Terpy, can you help us amuse the Wives?”, asked Maitreiy.
“Amuse – hmm, I can’t amuse anybody.  I can only inspire. Don’t you know anyone who likes to dance?  Someone beautiful or arty?  Anybody will do. ”
 “The Flower!  Splenda-Rosa!”  The Flower gracefully landed by their side.
The following morning they all went to the Concert Valley of Should, where the Army of Wives was assembled.
Terpsichore strummed her bouzouki. The music burst like a ray of sunshine after the rain, making the green leaves sparkle, gushing forth with such joy that the Flower closed her eyes, swaying and smiling. The bouzouki weaved a silken thread of light music, a deep, simple, childish joy for life that swirled around in a rhythmic, playful dance.  Splenda-Rosa started to dance.   She blossomed, perfumed, rained petals on the Wives, who felt their hearts softening, even the hardest-hearted of them all.
Slowly, one by one, each of the Wives started to dance too. The Old danced, and the Ugly danced, and the Nagging, the Clever, the Super-Clean, the Good Cook and all the other Wives.  The great Valley of Should looked like a seething sea of colour, and all the elegant ball dresses, pin-striped suits, saris, sarongs, jogging track suits and party dresses, they all swirled and swayed, fluttered and tapped and waved to Splenda-Rosa’s entrancing dance.
“But this is a Concert Valley. A place of Culture – Culture shouldn’t be this fun!”, whispered an usher. Nobody paid any attention to him.
When Splenda-Rosa finished and the Wives were all tired and giggly, she said:
“I need to go back to my roots now. Only when I am true to my roots can I be strong, honest and happy”, she said, and fluttered off.

The King was very happy indeed to see the Wives giggling.
“Now tell me”, said he, “what are you searching for?  To reward you is my wish.” Maitrey told him about the Medicine.
“That’s a very rare and secret potion. I can send you to someone who can help you, to the Dark Rock Prince, but only if you prove to me you are worthy of my recommendation”. He looked around impatiently. The Page quickly came to be spat on.

 “If you vanquish the Guilt Dragon, my Wife will escort you personally with her battalion to the Dark Rock Prince, who will be your guide.”
They were thrown into a dungeon.
 “The Guilt Dragons walk around seething and hissing and letting out shallow and soothing silver poisonous fumes”, said the Cat, shivering. “These fumes are choking; their stench is like long-worn shoes, like the trainers of mountain hikers and students. They grip your stomach like a searing indigestion, making you feel guilty for standing up for yourself, guilty for not pleasing the others, for not being the same. The fumes make you think the others care about you letting them down, more than they actually really do. They haunt you with regrets and guilt and feelings of being no good, unsuccessful, a freak. They infect your thoughts with imagined arguments - with those people or cats who have long forgotten about it, arguments you can never win because those people and cats are not actually there, to forgive you and tell you they don’t care anymore, and have never really cared much in the first place. They are never there for you to punch in the face, or scratch,even.” The Cat hissed and spat, her spine curved up, bristling.  She was rather surprised at her own words.
“What a rant!”, laughed Maitreiy. “I’ve never seen you so angry!”
“Don’t you laugh. There’s nothing worse than the Guilt poison. It can haunt you for years. The Dragon Office issued a declaration that these are not official, standard Dragons. They are officially very nasty indeed.”
A silver smoke reached them. They heard a hiss: “Seeping, slithering, silent smoke!”
“Oh my God, I’m starting to believe you. Oh, Lord!  Here he comes!”, cried Maitreiy. 
“Some sort of salamander!” the Cat hissed too, much to the Dragon’s gruff, vile amusement.  “Are you going to start singing a Gospel Song now?! Meaow! They all start like that – Oh Lord!”
“Tush!”, said Maitreiy, annoyed. The Dragon was approaching fast.  “Hardly the time for jokes!  What are we going to do?” 
“You aren’t getting anywhere!” The Crow swooped on her. “You’ll never succeed! Give up! You’ve never done anything important in your life! You’re lazy! Nobody cares about you.”
Maitreiy picked up a stone and threw it at him. “I’ll show you!” Then she turned around to the Cat.  “Is there any antidote?!”
“There is only one: clapping! Only I can’t clap...”. The Cat studied her soft paws, and gave them an elegant lick with her pink tongue. “...Now that’s an idea!  Bring your Gospel choir in with the Oyster!”  (The Cat knew that Maitreiy was singing in one every Tuesday.) “They can clap so loud, that they’ll scare any Dragon and Guilt and take all the fumes out of you. Sing this:
I don’t want to please you – meaw!
I don’t really care,
I don’t owe you anything,
You can go to hell!

I don’t want nobody – meaw!
It’s more fun like this
I don’t owe you anything
I can sing alone!

You don’t have to like me – Meaw!
I don’t really care
I don’t need to please no-one
I can be just fine!
Meaw Meaw!

I am very clever, purr,
I am very smart
I know I can walk alone
Walk alone and far!
Purr purr!
The Cat danced a sort of a kazachok as she sang this. The Gospel Choir repeated after her and clapped very loudly as they all sang together. Their voices echoed each-other in harmonies, like the sea-waves in the storm, or an organ playing in a cathedral. The song was so moving, it made Maitreiy laugh and cry, and she sang and danced and clapped with them. The Crow fluttered away sheepishly, and the Guilt Dragon danced so hard he panted. He just couldn’t stop.
“What a philosophical Cat-zachok!”, said Maitreiy when they finished.  The Guilt Dragon lay exhausted on the ground, flat like a pricked salamander balloon, his tongue out, and the silver smoke had vanished.
The King of Should now said: “You are worthy of my recommendation.  My Wife will take you to the Dark Rock Prince, who will guide and protect you along the way.” He didn’t even spit on his Page this time.
The Dark Rock Prince lived in a Mansion at the top of a remote Volcano, very beautiful when erupting, very dangerous too. When they arrived, the sun was setting, throwing golden flecks on the dark night clouds. The sky turned from blue to pink and violet as they approached, and then the moon rose, light pink on the deep indigo night sky.
The Price welcomed them in. He was tall, dark and handsome. Maitreiy felt him to be quiet and strong. He had a serious air about him, serious and a little sad, like he had known much about suffering and terrible pain, but kept it to himself, as a secret. His eyes were gentle and mysterious, his voice deep.
One look at him, and Maitreiy’s mind stood still. Behind her eyes, however, a process as complicated as the wheels of a Swiss clock ticked in motion, with little square cogs neatly engaging others in other wheels, which in turn set other, larger, wheels in motion. She was only to understand this much later.
“This guy is as serious as a headache”, said the Cat, jumping out from Maitreiy’s bag and making herself at home by the imposing log fire.
“I actually do have a headache”, he smiled, much to Maitreiy’s surprise. “Do you have a Nurofen? ... I often get them, that’s why I look so serious. People think I’m scary.” A mischievous smile passed on his otherwise serious face. “I like that.” Maitreiy giggled.
“My name is Blaize. Like ‘blaze of burning fire’. Dark Blaize. I will take you to the Creature of Infinite Wisdom.  She has the Medicine for your father. I have a torch of Darkness that projects a cone of darkness at will. With that I can ‘shine off’ the light and hide things, just as with a real torch you can shine a light and show things. I will make you invisible to the Gatekeeper of the Creature of Infinite Wisdom.”

The following morning, Blaize lead them her to the Creature of Infinite Wisdom. They reached the foot of a very tall mountain.
“We have to leave you here, my dear Maitreiy”, he said. “You have to walk the last part alone, with none of your friends.  I will shine my torch of darkness over you while you pass the Gatekeeper, but from afar.  Be brave, I trust you.  I will wait for you here.” And with that, Maitreiy left.
The climb on the mountain was hard. Maitreiy felt very, very ill, very weak, in pain, tired, worried and sad. The Crow came to feast upon her misery. It was the Crow’s happiest day. He soared up and down, crowing so happy he almost sang. He crowed and laughed and cackled - so loud, that he chocked and spluttered and cackled even louder. He turned somersaults in the air and swooped down, and strutted and skipped and paraded. So hard he crowed and so pleased was he, that he rolled on his back and held his stomach with his wings, hooting with glee, and piped away on his stomach like on black, feathery bagpipes. He just couldn’t stop.
“You’ll never be any good, and they know it! They know you failed. You were oh so high and mighty, and now there you are, no more Miss Strong Woman, weak, weepy and afraid. Ha ha ha ha!!”
The Crow grew huge as a condor. Maitreiy tried to shoo it away, to throw stones, even large ones, but in vain. He was only getting bigger, and so were her doubts.
“Maybe I really won’t make it.” But the thought of her father gave her strength. The Hat! Only that could close her ears from the merciless cackle of the Crow. She stuffed it over her ears in earnest. She passed the Gatekeeper in a cone of darkness that the Prince shone on her with his torch from afar.
It was scorching hot. She felt as if she was walking on the surface of the Sun. If only she had something cool to wear!  She remembered the Scarf and asked it for an astronaut costume.  The Scarf was of a different opinion, because it turned into a flowing summer dress that felt breezy.
Then she finally saw it. The Creature of Infinite Wisdom.
A Hen.
Hatching eggs.
“Don’t look at me like that, my dear”, the Hen said in a friendly cackle. “You found me all right. Each of these eggs are a London day. This one is a spring Chicken-Day. How the day goes depends on what you feed me. I feed on prayers - they flutter up like sea-gulls, and then land on the river of the Night. They bob up and down on its dark waters, like little white paper boats, all the way up to my dinner-plate. Gold grains hatch sunny days – only they are rare. They are the prayers of gratitude. Most prayers are shopping lists, so the grains are gray, and so are most London days.”

“This is the secret Medicine: feed him good food, good water, and Good Words. Encouraging words, words of Health, words of Hope, words of Courage, words of Strength, words of Endurance. Tell him about the things he likes, and how he will do them when he gets better. Tell him how much you need him. Tell him how much everybody else needs him and wants him to be there. Tell him about all the beautiful things he likes in the world, about all the places and flowers and sports and things that bring him joy. This will give him the Desire to be here. The Desire to Live and be well again.”
“I can cure him with a bit of fun?”, said Maitreiy.
“Fun? Well, yes, my dear. Fun, or joy. Joy for life. The most important and serious thing in life. Only playing is almost as serious as this. Now go to your Father. He is waiting.”
Maitreiy listened to this, and then thanked the Hen and returned home to her father with Blaize and the Cat. Her father recovered, and gave his blessings for her to marry Blaize. Every evening from then on, when Blaize came from the supermarket, he found his father-in-law playing with his grandchildren, who liked to ride on his back giggling. And every night, Blaize’s eyes would meet Maitreiy’s over the heads of the children and her healthy father, and she knew she was happy.
The Cat would sometimes play with them too, or go to sing with the Gospel Choir, who were very fond of her song and asked her for many other songs.

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