Wish Egg

“That egg will be the death of you, son,” my father says. Old and dry as the dirt in our garden, he sits at the dining room table. He frequently sits there, even though there is rarely anything there to eat. Perhaps he expects the food to materialize if he sees how loyally he waits for it. I’d be glad if that were the case. “Thieves will be on ya like flies if you walk into town with that thing. Trust the good fortune of finding a golden egg to bring me misfortune in the death of me only son.”

“That’s why I don’t plan on taking it with me, Papa,” I say, rolling the smooth oval in my hands. It shows me my distorted reflection, my eyes thinner than they should be and my lips too round and pursed; my nose is bulbous on the egg’s face, and though exaggerated, the egg is right in that it is my largest facial feature. “It was on the branches of our tree, so it is ours and has as much right to be here as we do. I’m leaving it in your care until I can figure out how to get our wish from it. Most think that the value of a golden egg comes from the material that builds it, that the eggs are solid and worth their weight in money. But the real value of the eggs is in their core, their hollow center where a fairy resides. Guard it, but not with your life. Understand?”

“Why not use my life on it?” Papa asks. “I don’t have much longer on this green earth anyways. My boy’s wellbeing is seas greater than my own.”

“Right, Papa,” I say. There’s no arguing with him. I place the egg in his trembling palm and head for the door. “Remember, it’s our secret. Keep it hidden.” My old man nods and I return the gesture before greeting the sunlight.

#

“You must heat the thing down to soup, that’s what I’ve heard,” merchant Robby informs me, stroking the red stumbles on his chin. He has been my mate for years and I trust the good of his intentions, just not their accuracy.

“Just seems to me you’d melt the fairy down with the gold,” I say, masking my uncertainty with curiousity.

“You would think that, wouldn’t ya, Jack?” Robby asks me like I was the one with the preposterous suggestion. “I don’t rightly know how you’d go about it then.”

I didn’t think so.

“Well, thanks for trying, Robby. You’re a right helpful chap.”

“Aw, go on, Jack,” Robby says, giving me a friendly shove. I do leave as he wants but not before seeing the red blush of his ears. No kind comment could go without setting Robby’s ears aflame. He’s the only one I can confide in about the egg, the only one who wouldn’t attempt to rob me and my father blind in the night, so I travel the dirt road of town back on home.

#

I arrive at my cottage and see the egg glowing in my father’s hand, positioned just as I’d left it. Papa is staring at it listlessly as if hypnotized; possessed by the light or by something I can’t see.

“What’s this, then?” I ask, running up to him. I cup my hands before the egg, not eager enough to touch it, but somehow trying to keep the light contained. “What have you done to it?”

“Done?” Papa scoffs. “The shell was rather dull so I restored the sheen with a scrap of cloth and a little elbow grease.”

Rubbing? Was that all that was required to gain our wish?

The glow surges into a blast sun-worthy, sending out shards of brightness so powerful that I have to not only close but shield my eyes by turning away; I slowly open them again, ease back around and see . . . nothing.

The egg is still in Papa’s clutches, black as coal now, all brilliance gone. Anger stabs me. All our hopes and dreams blacked out by a simple polishing. I don’t truly blame Papa but the fury burns and I don’t have the strength to blot its flames.

“You had to be reckless, didn’t you?” I roar. “You just had to work on the thing before I figured out how to use it!”

Papa pays me no heed. I get not one word from him. He is still gazing at the egg, his expression unchanged since I walked in on its blaze. “Papa?” I question him, studying his eyes, waiting for a blink.

None comes and closer and closer still I notice that his eyes match the egg’s new shell, gone from sapphire to onyx.

I recall his words earlier, his tone when he described what he’d done to the egg. He’d sounded . . . muffled, more ancient than he was, tired . . . Had his lips even been moving?

Hesitantly, I touch Papa’s shoulder. I feel a shudder and then all crumbles. Like a tired stone structure Papa slumps over and vibrates, flakes of him falling away. Shaking and shaking he reduces into a sand figurine, a sad-shaped mound and then, finally, a pile of dust.

The egg nestles in his ashes, and in them its golden layer is restored. If not for its bed that still smelt of flesh, none would know what had happened. Well . . . none but me.

Stolen Heart

Her heart was stolen from her chest during surgery. A man guised as head cardio surgeon seized the pumping organ and ran. Turns out he was the desperate relative of a young girl he called his sister, a girl with red strands of hair and skin sickly pallid on the waiting list for a new part to pump life through her veins. The man was reprimanded and told that he’d lost access to the hospital. She shouldn’t have known this, the girl with the missing heart, but miraculously while under anesthesia she could still hear. She heard the man’s fire, his passion, mingling with his weakness and growing in intensity. When her heart was replaced, reconnected, she still heard his shouts, his screams, a year later he’s still inside her.

“I’ve got to go back to the hospital,” Ava said to her mother who was busying herself preparing a simple cup of tea as if it were a chemistry experiment (which Ava supposed it was, but not one to take so seriously). “You know, for tests and things.”

“That’s fine,” her mother said, still not turning from her cup after she’s added a dash of sugar to it, tasted it, added a drop of milk, tasted again. With spoon still in mouth, she added, “Just don’t expect anything.”

Ava didn’t ask her to elaborate. She knew what she meant. It’s what everyone said, their words lingering in her mind, on repeat. “Don’t expect anything.” “Don’t expect that that man will be there, the one who stole your heart.” She’d told the story to just about everyone, friend and relative. And, surely, some thought it all fabricated, too much like something in a medical drama; others didn’t believe the man, kicked out, would ever return to the hospital. Certainly the person he was trying to save would have expired by now. What reason would he have? And even still, all she had as a way of recognizing him was his voice. No face, nothing that had specific coloring or style like hair or eyes or even gait, just a voice.

But she couldn’t relinquish the thought, the hope. She walked swiftly, as though getting to the hospital faster increased her odds, as though it was still the day of her surgery and he was still running through the halls with her heart. She took no time for the birds flitting overhead, ‘happy sprites’ she liked to call them, singing everyday of their lives, blessing people with their gift. Any other day she’d stop to watch them flap and flitter, carefree, but not today.

She took no time for passersby, though she enjoyed watching them on ordinary occasion, guessing where they were headed, those who walked back towards where she’d come, those who sped ahead of her, assuming a spectacled girl with a stack of books tucked under her arms was bound for the library, a boy with a baseball glove to the park, a fidgety man in a trench coat too long and dark for the heat to a risqué engagement. She never discovered their true destinations but she liked to think she’d won when these same people passed by with evidence that she was close if not dead on – the girl with a new stack of books and a smile, the boy sweaty, grass smeared, the man still shifty but oddly pleased looking around the eyes, lips, where a lipstick stain dyed them pink. Truly, figuring what exactly someone had been up to would be a whole new game.

But today she hadn’t the time.

She was close to the hospital when something finally gave her pause. A man slumped against a light pole, clothes tattered and dirty, face shaded with overgrown shag. “Don’t go harassing strangers,” her mother always told her in this situation. “Meddling with one of them is like handling a stray dog, don’t know if it’ll bite, and it’s not worth tetanus.” Ava pushed this despicable warning off.

“Excuse me, sir, could you use some change, or food. I don’t have food on me, mind you, but surely I can get you something from the hospital there, soup, a sandwich, jell-o.”

The man didn’t answer, didn’t move. Perhaps he was asleep, Ava assumed. She turned to leave, then felt a brace on her ankle. She gasped, looking down to see the man’s hand gripping her. Rather than screaming and causing uproar, she asked quite calmly despite her heart’s newfound drumbeat, “What is it? What do you want?”

He didn’t answer, the man. But he eased his grip, slowly, and finally released her. His eyes cast down, Ava could still only see his hair, cheeks and chin hidden, but she sensed a blush, as though the man were embarrassed. A normal person would still run after such a startle, “a close encounter,” her mother would call it, but Ava wasn’t normal; she fancied herself extraordinary. So she stooped beside him.

He was mumbling, too low to hear. “What was that?” Ava asked, bending closer. The man’s stench was strong, but not unbearable. Her niece’s diapers, now those were nose-pinch worthy. The man still mumbled, so she asked again, “What are you saying?”

“A heart,” he said. “Get me a heart, if they’ve got one. My sister, she might still need one, in heaven.”

Ava’s breath hitched. His voice, she heard it now. Tears spangled in her eyes. And she smiled, “How about I get you some food first, water. Then we’ll talk hearts.”

Words Paper-thin

I stand before a bookshelf, listening to the whispers. When a person says that they hear voices in their head, most would think them mad. And most of the time, I guess, the majority would be right. But I hear them, voices from objects inanimate but very much alive in that they can tell a story to just about anyone. But they speak, plain and clearly to me. I hear the voices of books.

“Why must you frequent the library during socials, Miu?” my mother asks. It is Father who caters to the large social events held in our manor.  If you ask me, Mother and I are mere figureheads, antiques or collectibles to be gawked at behind glass. “Look, don’t touch,” our elaborate clothes scream at our patrons. I just can’t tolerate the empty comments of people who don’t really care what I think or feel.

“Would you prefer that I give the dirty old goats and gossipy hens false smiles and absent nods, Mother? You know it doesn’t matter whether I’m amongst a crowd or not. I’m invisible to them, all the same.” I twiddle the thin diamond bracelet manacling my wrist, a perfect complement to my white dress, the sort a marriage-bound American girl would desperately covet, in my opinion. I can’t find comfort in Western clothes myself and would much rather be in kimono, but right now, during the Meiji era, Japan is consumed with staying modern by incorporating Western influences into our culture.

Mother sighs in exasperation, places a gloved hand on her brow. She’s getting one of her migraines. Like me, she’ll wind up suffering through her pain without a single complaint to Father. “These parties aren’t to make best friends in, dear,” she says, face still buried in hand. “Your father is the proprietor of a very prestigious company and he must flaunt his capabilities if he is to keep his position.”

I don’t know why she feels a need to remind me of such things. It’s not as if I could forget my own family’s obligations. Mother masks her pain and turns on a quick heel, leaving me with no more words. I’m expected to follow her out shortly, but before that . . .

My hands meet the warm spine of a book, so tender I’d expect to feel a pulse beneath it. I close my eyes, and listen.

No knowledge is gained without searching . . . Words die on deaf ears lest they are felt through emotion. Use wisdom wisely.

A book’s voice can seem random, completely irrelevant to its contents. Fairytales can spout very true history, and bibliographies frequently blurb fabrications. That’s the mystery of it all; along with the question of why I’m the one granted with such a beautiful ability, a girl so plain on the outside. I’ve looked for signs that others in my household and out might share this gift, but whether my parents, a housekeeper, or a guest, all pick up a book like a thrift trinket, flip furiously through the fragile pages, and replace it to browse another. Like me, the most marvelous of books is looked over and forgotten.

This one that has gained my attention, this book of guidance, appears to be older than any of its brethren. I gently un-tuck it from its resting spot and give it a sniff. If its yellowing pages weren’t a sign of its advanced age, the stale aroma it offers is a dead giveaway. Somehow dust has managed to cover the pages that I’ve opened up to. I stare at the clouded symbols for a moment then give the dust layer a blow.

The powdered covering takes off but, to my astonishment, so do the symbols. Kanji characters find their way to the floor, dissembling and reassembling into black scratches of nothing. Nothing like this has ever happened before, not in my wildest dreams. Distraught, I grab at the symbols, try to replace them where they belong. To my relief, the figures act as stickers and don’t fight adhesion. My fingers jitter as if I were in the middle of a heinous act or engaging in indecent behavior and I can’t help casting nervous glances over my shoulder to be sure that no one is entering the room. I don’t know why anyone would care for an old book in this house but it’s the bizarreness of it all that I can’t imagine another soul witnessing, just another odd act to paste on my dysfunctional being.

I work and work, not at all focusing on the sentences I’m creating, just attempting to fix what is broken. I didn’t get a good look at what the book read before I distorted it so there is no way that I could properly reconstruct it anyway. When I’m done, I’m surprised that the result is coherent, entirely readable and meaningful despite my rushed artistry. I study the new words that I’ve written and soon drop the book in response, seized by disbelief.

I’m not sure if it’s the tight clothes across my bosom or my own lungs constricting my air, but the only sound in my ears is my haggard breathing and my vision appears to be going, black decorating the fringes. As if in a dream, I pick up the book and search for the title. The front cover is but a bare burgundy leather skin, devoid of writing just as the spine, I remember. Tentatively, I flip to the first page. Five seconds of denial pass and then I’m flinging the book as if it has my hands on fire.

The title page reads: The Past, Present, and Future of Tachibana Miu.