Authors: Cameron Jace
“Is she a witch?” asked the girl with the missing tooth. She was the bravest girl in the pack, standing in the front line, spreading her protective arms on both sides.
“I’m afraid if I talk more about her, you’d have nightmares,” Charmwill said. “She has her way with dreams, feeding on the nightmares of the young sometimes.”
“Then will you tell us about The Boy Who is a Shadow before you go?” asked the lisping girl, “
Pleath
?”
“I can’t, because the boy’s story hasn’t been written yet,” Charmwill patted the child as she took a step back toward him. “The Boy Who is a Shadow is the only one who can write his story, depending on the choices he will make and the destiny he will choose.”
“Choices?” the missing-tooth girl wondered.
“Destiny?” another boy scratched his head.
The children questioned each other to see if anyone knew about what ‘choices’ or ‘destiny’ meant. They were new words to them. In the town of Hamlin where they lived, they weren’t allowed to ask their parents too many questions or oppose their way of thinking.
“Is this boy going to be famous? A hero, maybe?” a girl asked.
“Hmm…” Charmwill fiddled with his beard then coughed. Smoking Dragonbreath wasn’t easy. “It’s prophesized that the boy should be a hero, but it’s up to him to choose. Prophecies don’t come true unless we make them.”
Before Charmwill left, he gave the children enchanted candy that would turn their dreams into fairy tales until he visited again. He also gave each one a Book of Sand, which was a small book that carried a single fairy tale. Once a child read a page, it dissolved into sand. Once they finished it the covers of the book turned to dust.
With Pickwick on his shoulder, Charmwill walked to the river Weser, climbed inside his small canoe—which sometimes transformed into a swan—and rowed toward the North Sea.
Charmwill watched Pickwick flutter freely in the skies above. It reminded him why he had created the book enchantment for the parrot long ago. If anything bad ever happened to Charmwill, Pickwick was the world’s savior of true fairy tales; he’d be fluttering high in the sky, and as long as the tales were kept from being altered, they’d eventually find the children somehow so they could read them and retell them. Pickwick didn’t realize that he carried the most treasured scripture known to mankind.
While rowing in the North Sea, a thick fog floated upon the water in the distance. Charmwill stopped smoking and tapped his pipe twice, then watched it turn into a magic willow pipe, which produced a sound like chirping birds that only Pickwick could hear. The parrot responded to the call and landed back on Charmwill’s shoulder, sharing his stare at the fog that was spreading an eerie feeling over the sea like a dense layer of wavy ghosts. Pickwick looked worried.
“It’s alright. Don’t fear the fog, Pickwick,” Charmwill tapped Pickwick’s toenails gently then continued rowing into the fog. “I know this place. It’s safe. It’s only another dimension, not known to the people in the Ordinary World.”
A big tide struck but Charmwill managed to ride it easily with his magical canoe. When it passed, Pickwick saw a black fish with two golden bottle caps for eyes, floating on the water. It had a signpost on its back which read:
Welcome to the Missing Mile
East of the Sun, West of the Moon
Charmwill pulled out his compass, which didn’t point to directions known in the Ordinary World. It pointed to the unseen realm of fairy tales, which was hidden from humans. Charmwill liked to call it the Fairyworld.
Finally, the fog subsided and only then could they make out that the blue sea was filled with enormous dragons that people rode instead of ships. Others rowed in smaller swans and used them like Charmwill used his canoe—which had turned into a swan once they’d crossed.
There were also floating houses in the Missing Mile; they were small whales. When the residents entered the whale through its mouth, its jaws closed behind them. All whales sank deep into the water for privacy at night. Pickwick smiled when he heard the password for opening a whale’s mouth was knocking on it five times:
tic-to-tic-to-toc
.
Pickwick had never seen such a place before. He wondered why Charmwill hadn’t talked about it earlier, and why he decided to visit it today. Was it because he wanted to meet The Boy Who is a Shadow?
“The Missing Mile is a bit vacant now,” Charmwill educated Pickwick. “It’s because the fairy tale characters are still asleep. The few of them who are awake, are either lost or dealing with their own problems. You have no idea, Pickwick, how important this place is. It only comes alive for a small period of time every one hundred years.”
Pickwick saw a train emerging out of the fog behind them. It seemed like it was coming from the Ordinary World. It was a huge train that ran on rails that floated on the water, passing through the Missing Mile without stopping, until it reached an island in the distance.
Pickwick saw that the island rested on the back of a huge whale that seemed forever asleep. The train disappeared into the island, and Pickwick saw turrets rising high out of a castle in the middle of it. The island itself was exactly in the middle of the Missing Mile, surrounded by water.
“Ah,” Charmwill announced. “I see you’re looking at the Island of Sorrow. Don’t worry, the whale it rests on rarely wakes up.”
Pickwick waited for Charmwill to tell him more about the island but it was clear that he wasn’t going to, because he was there only for the boy.
The parrot watched the magical world with his eyes almost bulging out. He was looking for the characters Charmwill always mentioned in his stories, but he’d found none; so he assumed they were still asleep like Charmwill had explained.
Then Pickwick saw the mermaids in the Missing Mile. They were so beautiful they almost took his breath away; swimming gracefully between the ships, giggling, whispering, and splashing water at Charmwill. They jumped out of the water like dolphins, welcoming the old man and his parrot to the Missing Mile. Wishing he could play with them, Pickwick squawked instead. The mermaids giggled again, covering their mouths with their wet hands as if they weren’t supposed to be in the presence of old man Charmwill.
“It would be better if you don’t stare at the mermaids too long,” Charmwill warned Pickwick. “I know they’re beautiful, but they can read your mind if you let them stare into your eyes. They’re curious about the secret stories you keep inside you, and eyes are windows to the soul.”
Pickwick fluttered his wings with obedience and closed his eyes, straightened his back, and pulled his chin high, away from the mermaids.
“Good parrot,” Charmwill said then wet his forefinger with his mouth and held it out to test the wind. “It’s a beautiful day in the Fairyworld.”
Charmwill continued rowing toward a Dragonship surrounded with floating glass coffins, which were half-filled with water. He stopped near a specific coffin and looked at a black, wavy shadow of a boy inside. The shadow had been chained as if it was capable of escaping, and the coffin was guarded by two mermaids. Pickwick shrugged. He had never seen such a thing before. The shadow seemed in pain, trying to free itself.
“The Boy Who is a Shadow,” Charmwill muttered as he climbed the zigzagged dragon’s tale up the ship’s deck—which was the dragon’s back. Sometimes, in the middle of sailing, dragons needed to take a nap, and that was when they came to a stop in the water. Pickwick wondered if they breathed fire when they snored.
Following Charmwill, Pickwick saw an old woman sitting on the deck. Her skin was tanned and her hair was a mesh of black-and-white. She had a weary look on her face, and it looked like she hadn’t been properly introduced to a comb before. Pickwick thought Charmwill should lend her his golden comb, but couldn’t tell him. It struck him that this might have been why Charmwill had turned him into a mute; maybe Pickwick talked too much.
The woman on the deck was blindfolded, sitting in front of a scale that carried apples on one pan and snakes on the other. Although the apples outnumbered the thin snakes, the snakes were still heavier, pulling the scale down to their side.
“Charmwill, my dear,” the woman welcomed them as a playful mermaid splashed more water, somersaulting from one side of the ship to the other. The woman shushed it away. “Those annoying, giggly Mermaids, all play, no work,” she muttered.
“Godmother Justina,” Charmwill bowed his head, paying his respects.
“Who’s your friend?” Justina asked, adding an apple to the scale, which still leaned toward the snakes. “Never saw you with a parrot before.”
“That’s because it’s been a hundred years since we last met. I found him and enchanted him years ago,” Charmwill chuckled. “I call him Pickwick.”
“I am Pickwick,” the parrot squawked. “And I am mute!”
The mermaids in the sea laughed again.
“Interesting,” Justina said. “A parrot that is mute, but actually isn’t. Is that one of the riddles you amuse the children with, Charmwill?”
“It’s the only phrase it can say,” Charmwill explained. “Other than that, it is mute.”
“And may I ask why you’ve bestowed such misery upon your parrot?”
“Because it’s also my Book of Beautiful Lies,” Charmwill said. “Parrots tend to talk too much, so I thought I’d enchant it with eternal silence.”
Pickwick folded his wings like humans fold their arms in front of their chest. He looked away, displeased.
“Then you shouldn’t have chosen a parrot in the first place,” Justina mused. “But you’re charming Charmwill. You always do things your way, and I won’t argue with you. Nice to meet you, Pickwick,” she nodded toward the parrot as if she could see. “I am the Justice Godmother of the Fairyworld, but as you see I’ve been blinded by the dark forces, trying to spread evil into our world,” Justina sighed at the irony. “I’m blindfolded, and you’re mute. We might be the perfect match.”
The mermaids let out a sympathizing whistle.
“Any luck with balancing the good and evil in the Fairyworld?” Charmwill wondered. He knew the apples resembled the good, and the snakes represented evil.
Godmother Justina kept silent for a moment. She had been trying her best to balance good and evil, but the evil in the Fairyworld, however little, caused a lot of mischief.
“So tell me, Charmwill. What brings you to the Missing Mile?” Justina asked, rummaging in a basket next to her for a healthy apple to balance the scale.
Charmwill put his hand-held glasses back on, walked to the edge of the ship, and looked down at the coffin with the shadow of a boy in it. “I came to free the boy,” he said.
“What boy?”
“The Boy Who is a Shadow,” Charmwill looked back at her.
“Loki?”
“Yes, Godmother,” Charmwill nodded. “I came to free him from being shadowed, and give him a second chance in life.”
“And why would you want to do that?” she wondered. “You know this boy has great darkness in him. That’s why he was banned from Fairy Heaven. He’s been sentenced to be shadowed for eternity.”
“Eternity?” Charmwill narrowed his eyebrows.
“When an immortal, particularly a half-angel, sins, his soul is turned into a shadow as punishment. Forever. His shadow is very strong though; that’s why it’s chained.”
“I can’t believe you did that to a fifteen year old boy,” Charmwill said.
“It was the right thing to do, or the darkness inside him would have taken over his soul, and the consequences would be irreversible.”
“He is mentioned in the prophecy,” Charmwill said. “This boy is going to help save the Fairyworld. How could the Council of Fairy Heaven do that to him?”
Pickwick had never seen his master so upset.
“It looks like the prophecy was false,” Justina said, adding half an apple to the scale. Still, the snakes won. “The boy has proven that by defying the Council’s orders. You know what he did, Charmwill.”
“I don’t care what he did,” Charmwill said. Pickwick was curious as to what the boy did to be punished. “He was one of the best Dreamhunters ever. He killed many demons, defending the Fairyworld.”
“That was before he fell in love with a demon girl,” Justina said. “Disobeying the Council of Heaven is the worst thing a half-angel can do,” Justina sighed. “In Loki’s case, the phrase ‘like father like son’ proves to be true.”
“Are you saying that because his father also fell for a demon girl?” Charmwill asked.
“Although his father was a pure angel, we both know that he defied the Council of Heaven, too, when he married Loki’s mother, a demon girl as well,” Justina said. “Can’t you see it runs in the family?”
“I still have faith in the prophecy, Godmother. I still want to free the boy,” Charmwill said.
“You don’t understand,” Justina said as she rummaged in the basket, desperately wanting to balance apples and snakes. She had picked the ripest, red apple from a basket to create a balance, but without success. The problem was that the snakes grew bigger and heavier whenever she added an apple to the scale. It made her mission impossible. She found a rotten apple in the basket with a worm climbing out of a hole in it. Pickwick thought she knew about the apple from the way it smelled. Or was it that the Godmother Justina was cheating, and that she wasn’t actually blind? “This boy you’re trying to save is like this rotten apple,” she sighed, about to throw it away.
“Wait!” Charmwill said. “I see you’ve failed to balance the scale with the ripe apples. Would you accept a suggestion on my behalf, Godmother Justina?”
“And that would be?”
“Why don’t you try using the apple in your hand?” Charmwill said.
“You mean this rotten apple?” Justina shook her head, “no way.”
“Just trust me,” Charmwill said. “You compared it to the boy, remember? What if it balances your scale? Would that change your mind about him?”
“Charmwill, Charmwill, Charmwill,” Justina exhaled. “You’re always trying to see the ripe in the world, even when it’s rotten. I will do it, only to prove you wrong.”
The Godmother added the rotten apple to the scale. It didn’t work. But before she could comment, Charmwill shushed her and pointed at the worm climbing out of the apple, gliding over to the snakes. Surprisingly the little, helpless worm freaked out a couple of snakes, scaring them out of the pan, and balancing the scale in turn.