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.