Modern Fairy Tales, Part 8

Modern Fairy Tales, Part 8

By Kris

This story takes place October, nearly a year after the first Modern Fairy Tale.

"NOOOO! It's not fair! Why couldn't it have been me instead?"

Fifteen-year-old Hallie Belden was tired of crying, tired of feeling sad. She felt a surge of anger blot out her sorrow, and she lashed out at her most beloved possessions--her books.

"Stupid fairy tales! Stupid fantasies! Why don't they tell you life doesn't have happy endings? Why do they have to lie?" she yelled.

She grabbed a thick book filled with beautiful illustrations and hurled it at her bedroom window. The glass shattered and the book soared out over the backyard, landing inches from the uncovered hot tub filled with dead leaves and murky water.

Ignoring the pain shooting through her left shoulder and arm, Hallie grabbed another book, and then another. One by one, the collections of folk lore, adventure stories and science fiction series that had fired her imagination and kept her company through a difficult adolescence became missiles. At first she paged through each volume, cursing it for the falsehoods it contained. After a few minutes she just threw books blindly and mutely, letting her fury consume her.

Then she missed the window, and the book she had just thrown crashed into a pottery figurine on her bedside table, shattering it. It was clay bird Cap had made for her.

"No, please no," Hallie sobbed, dropping to her knees and gathering the shards of pottery into a pile. She barely heard the footsteps pounding up the stairs or the shouts from the backyard. When her mother reached her, she was curled up on the floor, clutching a book to her chest.

****

The next evening, Hallie and Trixie sat on the floor in Hallie's room. The entire Belden clan had convened in Idaho for Cap's memorial service, deep in the woods on a mountain he had loved. Now, everyone but Trixie and her father had gone home.

Trixie had asked to be excused from school for a week so she could keep her younger cousin company. Her surprised parents had been pleased with her suggestion, and readily agreed.

Trixie glanced from the black tarpaper-covered window to the lean teenager with long black hair. Both were broken, she thought.

Earlier that week, a late season wildfire spread through the St. Joe National Forest. Hallie and her 18-year-old brother hiked up to their friend Tank's cabin to urge the stubborn old miner to evacuate. It turned out they had underestimated their friend; a note on the cabin's only table told them Anders Anderson could read the smoke as well as anyone. He had left for town hours earlier.

As Hallie and Cap hurried back down the mountain, the wind shifted and they found themselves trapped by flames that leaped across a gorge. Their only hope for survival was the creek that wound along the gorge floor. Hallie had been too terrified to move, so Cap pulled her onto his back and jumped. He saved her life, but lost his own.

Trixie wanted to reach out to her grieving cousin, but she didn't know what to say. She shifted her gaze to the pile of battered books stacked haphazardly in a wicker laundry basket, then up to the empty shelves. "Are you really getting rid of all your books?" she asked tentatively.

"They're just kids' books, and they're all lies anyway," Hallie muttered, kicking the basket impatiently.

Trixie picked up some of the volumes and read their titles. "The Black Cauldron? The Ordinary Princess? A Wrinkle in Time? You can really part with these?"

"Yeah, I really can. I'm sick of dreams and I'm sick of disappointments." Hallie spied a book on the floor behind Trixie. "That one's the worst! That one broke my little clay bird! Give it to me so I can tear it up!" she choked.

Biting her lower lip, Trixie reached for a book with delicate green pen-and-ink cover art. "The Brothers Lionheart? I've never heard of this one."

Hallie leaned over, frowning. "You know, I don't remember it either. I wonder if it belonged to..." She opened the inside cover and read aloud: "To Capelton on your 11th birthday, Love, Grandpa and Grandma Knutson."

Hallie heaved a deep sigh. "He probably loaned it to me to read, but I never got around to it."

Trixie kept a firm grip on the book. "He must have loved it. The spine is cracked and the pages are dog-eared."

Hallie scoffed, "That birdbrain didn't bother with reading. At least, not after he was old enough to hike and camp alone...." She trailed off and closed her eyes.

"Let's read it together, Hallie!" Trixie suggested. "If he loved it, you probably will, too."

"Forget it! I don't want to read fiction ever again!" Hallie moved to lie down on her bed, struggling with the cast on her left arm in an effort to get comfortable.

Trixie paged through the book for a few moments, watching Hallie out of the corner of her eye. "How about if I read it to you?" she finally ventured. "We'll read a little at a time and just, you know, see if you like it."

Hallie suddenly smiled. "Thanks, Trix. You're really trying to help, and I appreciate it, but I... I'm sorry, I just feel so bitter. Life is so unfair, and idea of reading stories where people live happily ever after isn't comforting. It just makes me mad."

Trixie climbed to her feet and sat awkwardly on the end of Hallie's bed. "Well... maybe people can live happily ever after even though bad things happen?"

"You mean, what doesn't kill you will make you stronger? So kill me already," Hallie snapped.

"Just shut up and listen, Belden. It's time for a bedtime story," Trixie responded with forced cheerfulness.

When Trixie read the first line, she thought Hallie was going to spring out of bed and wring her neck with one hand. Her cousin tensed, but Hallie stayed in bed, staring stone-faced at a crack in the ceiling.

Now I'm going to tell you about my brother, the book began.

That first night, they read only a couple chapters before Hallie dissolved into tears at the story of two brothers caught in a terrible fire. Trixie blinked back her own tears. She missed Cap, and she couldn't begin to imagine losing one of her own older brothers. What would I do without Mart or Brian? she asked herself again and again. She hoped she would never have to learn the answer.

The next day, though, Hallie suggested that they bring the book with them on a walk in the woods. Trixie read several more chapters of the saga as they sat on one of Cap's favorite rocks, overlooking the ridge where his family had scattered his ashes.

As the week passed, they used the book as an escape from the difficult task of helping Eleanor and Gloria Duncan, Knut's fiancee, sort Cap's things into give-away, throw-away, and keep forever piles. The "keep" pile looked far too small to Hallie. Could a person's life really be reduced to this? A photo album, a lock of baby hair, a knife with a carved handle, and a gold nugget on a leather cord?

The two girls also used the book as a means of communicating. Hallie didn't want to talk about her own feelings yet, but she could talk about how the fictional younger brother felt. Trixie used the story as a crutch; she didn't have Honey's tact or Diana's natural empathy, but she had beautiful words to read. She hoped they would be enough.

Trixie would never forget how her heart seemed to stop when she came to a line Cap had circled with a red marker: "There are things you have to do even if they are dangerous... Otherwise you aren't a human being but just a bit of filth." The girls shared a looked that said, Cap thought so, too.

****

As the cousins stretched out on the dry grass in the backyard, mulling over the end of the story and the terrible events of the week before, Hallie decided she desperately needed a distraction. Prying into Trix's love life should do it, she thought.

"Love life?" Trixie snorted in response to her cousin's inquiry. "I'm dating Soon Yong. I'm not in love with him!"

"Yeah, I figured out that much, but he's been a lot of fun, hasn't he?"

"Yes, he has," Trixie agreed. "He's actually been wonderful. More than anyone else, he's helped me start to, um, like myself, I guess. I just feel more confident and comfortable being me."

"You always seemed pretty confident to me," Hallie eyed her older but shorter cousin doubtfully.

"No, I was just outgoing and impulsive! There's a difference!" The girls shared a laugh.

"How did you get over Jim, though?" Hallie wondered.

Trixie shrugged, then smiled mischievously. "Mart says didn't get over him, I went around him!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Trixie gathered her thoughts before answering. "I guess I just accepted the fact that I'll probably always be in love with Jim, and that it's okay if he doesn't love me back. I'm getting on with my life, and I'm not going to let this wreck my self-esteem, but I'm also not going to lie to myself and pretend that he doesn't matter to me."

Hallie shook her head. "Amazing. And here I was torn between knocking his block off and knocking her block off!"

Trixie grinned. "Well, you know how upset I was at first, and then for a long time I was just mad. I decided that if he thought I wasn't good enough for him, then he wasn't good enough for me! Aunt Alicia pretty much got me through the first stage and into the second one," she revealed.

"Alicia? As in the tatting queen of New Jersey?" Hallie's jaw dropped.

"Yeah, well, she was really cool about it, and she bought me a cute kids' book that made me get off my butt and stop feeling sorry for myself."

"Which book?"

"The Paperbag Princess."

"Oooo, I love that book!" Hallie squealed. "That's perfect! Prince Ronald the bum!"

Trixie giggled with her, then sighed. "It felt good to be mad for a while, but when I looked at the situation logically, I realized that Jim just isn't a creep. He probably wanted to fall in love with me because he was so grateful that I helped him out, and then he felt all guilty that he wasn't really attracted to me."

Hallie rolled her eyes. "You're letting him off way too easy." She paused. "Books can give a lot of comfort, can't they?"

Trixie nodded, and Hallie continued, "So can friends. Thanks, Trix. You've been really great."

"Like a bridge over troubled water," Trixie warbled comically.

"Aroooooo!" Hallie howled. "Yikes, I take it back!"

The cousins cracked up, then Hallie held out her good hand so Trixie could help her up. "Let's go in, Cuz. There's something I need to do."

Trixie followed her cousin into the house and up the stairs. Working together silently, they reshelved Hallie's books.

The End