Fairy in a Bottle

(c) Linda Eisele

 

     "All I need is a  'What if…'  Then I'll be able to write a story.  But where can I find one?  A what if..."

     An empty perfume bottle stood on the marble shelf in Esmeralda’s bathroom.  It reminded her of her honeymoon and the room with lime-green upholstered walls, tiny pink flowers, tall, curtained windows overlooking a turquoise lake, emerald hills, blue sky dotted with soft puffs of cloud, alps in the distance.  "What if there were a fairy in that bottle?” she pondered.  “That's my  'What if'!  Now all I have to do is find the story it belongs to." 

     She removed the wing-shaped bottle stopper and imagined letting the fairy out and listening to her offer to grant three wishes.  "No, that's the old genie in a bottle.  Of course, a fairy's not a genie so this could be different.  Or… the fairy could read daydreams and make them come true.  No.  That's Walter Mitty.  I feel like I'm standing in front of a locked door.  The fairy in the bottle is the key.  If only I could turn that key; the door would open, and the whole World of Story would be mine!"  Esmeralda could feel something big waiting to spring upon her like a tiger leaping out of the shadows in a deep glen.  "Don't slip away.  Don't let me lose you.  What is it?  It's... it's... I know!  I have the story!  This is the story!"

     She hurried to her writing desk.  In her most beautiful hand, she wrote,  'All I need is a ‘What if?’ ’   "I have a beginning.  I know the ending.  All that’s left is to fill in the parts in between -- to show the fairy in a bottle who grants a wish to write a story." 

     As she wrote, a frog hopped across the floor near the desk.  She stooped and lifted him.  "What are you doing here?  I'll take you back where you belong."  On her way to the meadow, she greeted Herr Winkelmann, perched precariously on a ladder using a rake to attempt to reach the soccer balls, volleyballs, and tennis balls his small son had kicked onto the roof of the shed.

     "It's no small feat getting those down, is it?"  Esmeralda asked.

     "I should say not!"  Herr Winkelmann replied.

     She pondered, silently,  'What if a troll lived on that roof and threw the balls down each evening?' 

     When she reached the pond in the meadow, she set the frog gingerly onto a lily pad in shallow water out of reach of the neighborhood cats.  The frog stretched and spread its tiny toes like miniature stars.  Esmeralda touched its forehead and stroked her fingertip delicately down its spine.  Walking away, she looked back over her shoulder.  The frog looked her straight in the eye as though wishing her ‘good day.’

     At her desk, she continued to write.  Before she knew it, her story was finished.  In the bathroom, she lifted the empty perfume bottle, gazed at it, then set it down and returned to her writing desk.  Inside the bottle, a tiny woman wearing pink gauze and whispers lifted a magic wand made from sparkles of gold.  Gossamer wings fluttered, thin and delicate like the wings of her cousins, those lime green insects arriving on a summer’s breeze to rest on the window panes of the house.  The fairy settled onto the curve of glass, closed her eyes, and inhaled the fragrance of dandelions and daisies that carpeted the emerald hills above the turquoise lake beneath a tranquil sky, alps in the distance.  In the next room, oblivious to the existence of a true fairy in an empty perfume bottle in her bathroom, the writer decided,  "Tomorrow I shall write the story,  'What if there were a troll living on the shed next door'."