1. A Wish for Home

Illustration by Stephen Taylor

Into the Shadewell 1. A Wish for Home

It was a chilly autumn day. Not that the cold weather really has much of an impact on wells such as myself. I do enjoy beauty though and I found the grim ambiance of that day beautiful. The gray atmosphere was caused by cloud-burdened heavens, heavy with the weight of their own existence. Its pall gloom contrasted against the orange and yellow leaves scattered about the fields around my structure. My ill-maintained wood-shingled roof was covered with dead and decaying leaves, and the stones of my base supported piles of the same. My bucket lay haphazardly on its side beside one of the two hand-carved mahogany posts that held up my roof. A long, fraying rope curled from my bucket and wrapped around the creaking swoop that in turn was supported by the very post by which the bucket rested. Yes, it was a chilly day, but not chilly enough for my internal waters to freeze. 

I was pondering the state of my water’s liquidity, the nature of wetness itself when the heavy overhang of clouds ostentatiously burst. Rain came crashing around me in a torrent of percussive chaos. What a beautiful transition it was. Quite abruptly the leaves that covered my roof and surrounded my base were carried away by the quickly forming streams birthed from the extrusions of the overweight clouds. I was awash with rain, cleansed with waves. I danced in my ethereal form in the tantalizing torrent. 

The rain lasted well into the evening, and the clouds lightened their load. Torrents turned to drizzles, and the radiant blue gaze of the moon peered from behind the darkness of the clouds. That is when she arrived. 

From within the darkness she appeared—a young woman by human standards—bedraggled and wet, stumbling right into to my stone base. She was shivering. 

“Dear child,” I said to her, “Whatever could have caused you to be in such a state?” 

Of course she didn’t respond. She couldn’t hear me. People have a unique way of ignoring the voices of the inanimate. No one listens to wells.  

“Oh well,” She said in a sobbing rhythm not unlike the percussion of the rain. “Can you help me?” 

“I can certainly try,” I said. 

She did not immediately respond, given to her inability to register my voice. So I waited patiently for her sobs to ebb and for her to continue her plea. 

“Please grant me this wish, this desperate plea for help.”

There it is. Of course she thinks me a wishing well. I do find that subtly hurtful. How difficult is it for a human to distinguish between a wishing well, a cursing well, a healing, or wisdom well or a transporting well. Of course we all look the same, or at least our distinguishing features have nothing to do with our characteristics as a well, nevertheless it would be nice to be appropriately labeled from time to time. They always assume we are all wishing wells. I am not jealous or anything, I swear, but wishing wells do get all the attention.  

“I wish to be home, please well, please help me find home.” 

Oh, I might be able to help with that. 

“Girl,” I said, “What is your name?” 

I felt my spirits leap with joy as she looked up to the quasi-material haze of my ethereal form. I do believe she could see me. 

“I am Elyse,” She said. 

Haha! She heard me, she actually listened. I was overjoyed. A human actually listened to a spirit of the well. Now, I was motivated to help her.  

“Give me a gift and I will do what I can to aid you in your plight.” I said, as a fair exchange is necessary in all dealings for those of us who exist across the veil.  

“I have nothing!” Cried Elyse. 

I could say nothing to her. What could I do, console her for preferring to watch her die slowly rather than grant her her bequest? Not that that is what I wanted, I am simply a well, I don’t get to make such decisions. So I did nothing, and she cried. 

After a while of crying and shivering in a bundle at the base of my stones, the girl slowly rose from her place and began climbing up my side. Curious, I manifested as a wraith beside her, to watch her. That was really more for her sake than my own, but that’s what I did. 

“What are you doing, child?” I asked. 

“I have nothing to give,” Elyse’s lips were dark periwinkle roses, her eyes cracked with bolts of red lightning. 

I watched as Elyse threw herself into me. Her last words were, “I give myself.” 

Now if anyone knows anything about the spirit world, you would know we are not heartless and cruel. We are who we are and our motivations are our own. You can say that I aided Elyse because she sacrificed herself as payment, or you can say that I helped Elyse because I am a benevolent spirit of the well. However you prefer to judge me is your business. What matters is that when Elyse splashed into my waters she felt the universe flip upon itself. She emerged not from a well but instead a lovely pool within a warm meadow. 

Elyse looked around her surroundings. The sky was as a broken mirror, displaced and fragmented in irregular shapes. These shards acted as windows to a variety of unique skies. Some of the broken shards of the mirror were brilliantly warm blue, or pink, orange or purple sunsets, while others were dark blue or black, speckled with star-filled constellations. She felt as though she was peering at many worlds through the inside of a complex diamond.  

“Where am I?” She asked.

She turned around, and looked through broken mirrors at trees depicted through all seasons and life cycles, each represented in its own shard. A mirror origami crow flew over one of the trees, its caw came as a myriad of pitches and tones as though all its possible sounds were represented at the same time. 

“I believe this is home,” I replied.  

“Do you not know?” 

“I am but a well. How am I to know such things?” 

“I guess it’s because you are the granter of the wish.” 

“Do you know how you move? All the mechanisms that go into your breathing or thinking? I just do what I do, I don't necessarily know how, what, or why.” 

Elyse stuck out her lower lip, now a healthy shade of maroon, and furrowed her brows. She shrugged. 

“I guess that makes sense.” 

“I do know that what I grant you is a brittle thing, and if our compact is broken, you will return from whence you came, lost and alone as I found you.”    

“I don’t understand.” 

“You gave yourself to me in exchange for you to find home. I gave you what you wished, and so you have given to me what you have offered. If you break our compact then I will have no choice but to take back what I have given.”

“That sounds fair enough,” Elyse said.  

Elyse found her new home comforting. It was a constant temperature, warm enough not to be cold and chill enough not to be hot. She made herself a little hut out of stick-shards and crafted her a bed from shards of hay, though when she went to lay down on her new bed she cut herself on its surface. 

“Ouch,” She said. Then to me, “How am I to lay down if I cannot touch the bed?” 

“Each shard,” I replied, “may be breached if you’re careful. Find a large shard and pull your desired resource from within, but you must be careful lest you be cut.” 

“You couldn’t tell me before?” 

“It hadn’t occurred to me,” I said to a very perplexed girl, nursing her incised arm. 

And that is how Elyse learned to provide for herself. From there she learned to pull wood from within the shards and build a fire with that wood. She learned to fish. She also learned to be careful in choosing a shard from where she retrieved that which she desired. That lesson came on the third day of her stay. While preparing for a meal, Elyse reached into a crystal shard and pulled from it a rotten fish stinking of death. It didn’t appear very appetizing to her and she cast it back into the crystalline waters of the broken mirror pond. You see every shard shows a different stage of that entity’s development, and if Elyse wasn’t careful, there was a very good likelihood of retrieving a corpse, sometimes even a skeleton.

Manipulating shards was also possible. Elyse learned that by stirring the pond waters in such a way she could make them pour out their waters. This caused the mirrors to settle at the bottom of the pond allowing her to swim without cutting herself, so long as she did not touch the bottom, that is. Thus Elyse had found her favorite recreation.  

I am not an entity of time, so I cannot say for how long Elyse existed like this. She grew bored, and I felt sorry for her, so I asked her how she likes spending her time and she said reading. That is when I showed her a library where she had access to an assortment of literature. Retrieving a book was easy for her, but finding an exact copy in a precise language was time consuming and sometimes frustrating for her, but she managed. She was settling in quite nicely. She spent countless hours reading, sleeping, swimming, she picked up gardening and then cooking. She learned to craft herself complex meals that produced quite the variety of chemical odors. She seemed to like it. 

I was pleased with myself for having provided her with the home she so desired. Maybe, I thought, I was a wishing well after all. 

Then one day Elyse saw a figure wandering through the mirror woods. It was a crystalline humanoid. She only got a brief glance of him before she lost sight. She chased the figure but lost his tracks. There was a moment she looked as though she would chase him further, she looked back to her home and stepped tentatively away, but took another step and feared losing it, so turned back.

Now, the world in which Elyse belonged was not like the world from which she came; It was a shifting world, and there was a possibility that if she wandered too far from a known path that she would stumble upon a degree of randomness, which would result in her losing the place she has grown to love.  She couldn’t just go chasing random strangers across the world without a chance of losing her home again, so she only followed him within eyesight of her home before giving up and returning.  

That wasn’t the last of that figure. She saw him again a few days later. This time he was standing on the other side of the woods, on a beach, watching the sunset. The path from Elyse’s hut to the beach was clearly marked so she needn't fear getting lost. This was her opportunity to meet this tantalizing stranger, and she took it. She ran out to the crystalline figure.  

The figure heard Elyse approaching, probably from her incessant yelling, “Hello.” 

He turned to face her, his entire body was crystalline shards, like diamonds covering the body of a man. Otherwise he appeared rather normal, though his features were hard to make out. He appeared curious as to Elyse’s existence. He made a sound like ice cracking from within.  

Elyse spoke again. 

“Hello, I am Elyse.” She said. 

The crystal man opened his mouth and moved his hands in a non threatening, conversational manner, but the shrill noise of slowly cracking ice was all that came from him. His sounds formed a pattern not unlike speaking, but his noise made pitches and emphases on what seemed to be all possible variables at the same time. 

“Can you understand me?” Elyse asked. The figure nodded his head. “Then I guess it is my place to learn to understand you.” 

Elyse was excited to have met someone with whom she could share this wonderful paradise, and having to figure out how to communicate with him was a fun puzzle to solve. The two arranged to meet regularly. The crystal man would show up to Elyse’s home, bathing her with the colors of the rainbows in the morning light, because his crystalline form acted as a prism and radiated a spectrum of colors everywhere he went. 

They spent many an hour learning to speak with one another. Elyse would retrieve something from this shard or that and recite what it was to her and he then would recite what it was to him. She learned that he could write also, and the two communicated by drawing in the soft earth beside her pond. It was through this method that Elyse learned his name. 

“Hector,” Elyse said. “What a fantastic name!” 

Elyse recalled the story of Troy, the tragic sacrifice Hector of Troy had to make for wronging the vengeful Achilles. The result was that he left his family without a father, and it was all because of the willful desires of the youthful lovers Paris and Helen.  

“The Greeks did love their tragedies.” Hector spelled out in the dirt with his stick.  

The two laughed.  

As time went on, Elyse learned to interpret the shrill creeps of cutting glass that was Hector’s voice. She learned to understand him as he understood her. They spoke at length about the world they inhabited and played imagination with the mirrored clouds that passed overhead without ever raining.  

“How did you come to be in this world?” Hector asked Elyse one day. 

“I made a wish at a well. You?” 

“I also made a wish at a well. Then I fell in, clumsy me.” 

“I fell in on purpose, because I was sort of desperate.” 

Despite his crystalline features, Elyse could see the surprise splay across Hector's face. 

“Well I hope you have found yourself well here,” He said. 

“I believe I have,” Elyse said as she peered into the slightly cracking blue crystals of Hector’s eyes. “I wished to find a home.” 

The two of them shared a love of reading. They would read books from Elyse’s library and then return to their meeting place and share their insights. It was all quite a bonding experience. 

As they grew closer Elyse found that if she could look at Hector just right she could sometimes see, through the crystalline facade, the impression of a human. She imagined that somehow there exists within the crystal figure, a man, just as her resources existed within the glass shards. The more they got to know each other the more Elyse noticed that upon his crystal form, cracks were forming. It was more than just her noticing the cracks, she was growing more convinced that the cracks appeared new, and growing longer and wider as time progressed. 

One day, as Hector was fishing with a pole he and Elyse fabricated, Elyse felt the impulse to touch him. She reached out and gently caressed his crystal arm with the tip of her fingers. He flinched, his blue crystal eyes wide with horror as blood shot from her fingertips far more violently than should have been possible. 

“Ah!” Elyse yelled in more surprise than pain. 

“Oh no!” Hector chimed in. 

They both made nonsensical intonations for a moment when Hector yelled in a panic. 

“What am I to do? I cannot bind your wound without touching you and making it worse!” 

Elyse calmed down after a moment and wrapped her fingers in her shirt. It stained dark red, but the bleeding stopped after a short while. 

“Did you not know that I am impossible to touch?” Hector asked after they settled down. 

“I sort of knew. I knew I couldn’t touch anything else, but only on the edge. I learned that I could reach into the shards of glass and retrieve what was inside. I guess I was just curious.” 

“You wanted to free me from my crystal cage?” Hector asked with a wry smile. 

“I guess,” Elyse said shyly.

“My hero,” Hector cupped his hands over his heart in an exaggerated gesture. 

He laughed. 

“I was trying to help,” Elyse said sullenly.  

“And I appreciate it,” Hector said, and after a brief pause, “You know we can never touch. You are flesh and I am glass. I just want you to know that nevertheless I am glad to be able to spend time with you, even though we are as close as is ever possible.” 

“I want more,” Elyse said. 

“So do I,” Hector replied. “That’s why they say not to make deals with the fae.” 

“Excuse me?” Elyse said.

“The fae, the others, the spirits, pixies, genies, the little people, the creatures from the other side. Have you never heard stories about them before?” 

“I mean I have, but not the Spirit of the Well. He saved me.” 

“Did he, now?” Hector asked. 

I listened on as yet again, the mortals misunderstand the nature of my kind. They always think that just because things don't go their way there was malice involved. Such assumptions have made my kind distance themselves from mortals. It's best to isolate ourselves so as to prevent such misunderstandings. 

They parted that night with sadness weighing them down. 

“Spirit?” Elyse said once Hector was gone. 

I manifested my aura in front of her.  

“Yes?” I replied. 

“Was this all a trick?” 

“I do not do tricks,” I said.  

“Then why can I not touch him?” 

“Your wish does not align with his wish. For you to have what you have asked for goes against what he has and has asked for,” I said.

 Now to be clear, I don’t know the rules any more than the mortals know the rules. I do know that when the universe presents you with incompatible situations, then it is best to trust what the universe has to say. But hey, what do I know, I’m just a well, and not even the wishing kind, so quit asking.

My cryptic response seemed to do the trick because Elyse nodded and wished me goodnight before turning down herself.  

The following day the two met again, Hector appeared with the gift of a few books. Their covers were only slightly torn from his touch. Elyse noticed immediately that one of his pinky fingers was missing. 

“What happened?” She asked. 

“I don’t know,” Hector replied. “It just fell off.” 

“You didn’t try and put it back?” She asked. 

“If your finger fell off, would you just try and put it back on?” 

“I’m not made of crystal.” 

She looked him over more thoroughly now. The cracks she was noticing before were much more pronounced. There were three large cracks pointing directly at where his heart should be. 

“Let’s just forget about it. We can spend our time discussing Robinson Crusoe.”

“How can I forget about it Hector? You’re dying!” 

 The crushing weight of sorrow rang out from Elyse like the rhythmic bells of a church in mourning. I felt it like a wave through my waters. Hector did too. He tapped his book thoughtfully, then slowly replied. 

“And what am I to do about it Elyse? I can either die alone on the other side of those trees, or I can fall to pieces in your company. I prefer spending my time with you.”

He paused for a moment then said, “If it is too much pain for you, then I can leave.” 

“No,” Elyse said, her breaths came shallow and fast. 

She turned up to the heavens and shouted, “Spirit!” As though I lived in the heavens.  

My nimbused essence appeared before the two lovers.  

“Explain yourself!” Elyse shouted, “What are you doing?” 

“I haven’t the power to determine life and death,” I replied. 

“Then what is happening?” 

“I do not know.” 

When she said nothing, and Hector remained silent, I simply faded away. It does take quite an effort to manifest a spiritual aura. Humans take it for granted that they exist in tangible reality, they forget (or maybe simply don't know) how much effort is required by us intangibles to manifest.  

Elyse turned to Hector. 

“What did you wish for?” 

Hector smiled. 

“I wished to find my true love.” 

Crystalline tears dropped from Elyse’s eyes.

“How is that incompatible with me finding my home?” She asked. “I found my home, I belong here.” 

“I feel as though my wish was granted too,” Hector said. 

“How do we fix this?” 

“I do not know.” 

“I want to hold you, to comfort you,” Elyse said.

Hector smiled his dazzling smile. 

“So too do I wish to hold and comfort you.”

The two sat in silence for a time. The subtle but shrill sound of Hector’s body slowly cracking was all that broke the quiet. 

“In all our stories, they are about overcoming odds, besting adversity,” Hector said. 

“Or dealing with loss,” Elyse added. 

Hector smiled, and a crack creaked opened across his face. 

“Dealing with loss is overcoming adversity,” He said.

Elyse looked up at him thoughtfully, but then her eyes teared up again.

“I don’t want to deal with loss.” 

Again they fell to silence, only to listen to the slow cracking of Hector’s body. 

“I don’t understand the mechanics of the broken wish,” Hector said. “I wished for love, and got it. It took many years of wandering in this strange land, but I got it.” 

“And I wished for home. I have never felt more at home than I am here with you,” Elyse said. 

“What is love but to be at home with another?” Hector said. “Although I think of a quote I heard once, ‘You know very well that love is, above all, the gift of oneself. It’s from an old french play, by Jean Anuoilh.”  

“Oh no,” Elyse said, a knot caught in her throat. 

“What?” Hector asked. 

“I gave of myself to the well when I made my wish.”

“So what then? If you fall in love with me you break your compact with the well?” 

“I don’t know. I guess.” 

“But I wished for love, I got my wish!” Hector said. 

At that Hector’s hand fell off his arm. 

“Oh no,” Elyse said tearfully. Hector’s hand crumbled into a pile of glittering sand. “Spirit, please, you cannot do this to me!” 

“My wish was granted, Elyse,” Hector said. “But I think the balance was thrown off when you fell in love with me. For you to maintain your wish, to maintain your home, I cannot exist.” 

Half of Hector’s face fell from his head.

“No, no, no!” Elyse screamed, “I cannot accept this!”

Elyse stood and once again turned her head to the fragmented mirror maze of the heavens and shouted.

“Spirit!” 

I manifested. Hector’s other arm was just falling off as I appeared. He sat in a pile of diamond sand, his one eye looking at me fearfully.  

“Undo this,” Elyse said. 

“I cannot, I do not have that power,” I replied. 

“How can I fix this, please, spirit?” Elyse begged. 

“I think Hector was right. If you give yourself to him, you cannot also have given yourself to me. It is a paradox. The universe cannot allow paradoxes.”  

“But if he is gone then I am no longer home, that means you have broken your promise.”

“I believe the Cosmos may see that differently. If you have given yourself to him after promising yourself to me, then it is you who have broken the promise and I am no longer obligated to provide you with a home. This is not my wish but what may be the reason for our collective predicament.” 

“It’s not fair.” Elyse cried. 

“But it is,” I said with a sympathetic shrug. 

I cannot help but notice that mortals have a strange definition of fairness. Whenever something is denied them, that is their definition of unfair, whether equity is taken into consideration or not.  

“Elyse,” Hector said, now but a torso, head, and single stump of an arm. “I want you to know that I cherish all our time together. I die content.”

“But I am not content. I am to be left alone, without you.”

“Your story is one of overcoming loss,” Hector said. “Live with the memory of our time together.”

“I refuse to let you die.” Elyse shouted. “I choose you!” 

And with that Elyse wrapped herself around the disintegrating crystalline figure of half a man.

 He shattered. 

I watched as the heavenly mirrors crashed and broke, trees exploded and the ground quaked.

The entire world broke asunder. Both young lovers were lost in the prismatic explosion.

The sun baked my wooden shingles. A squirrel sat atop my stone base, working at an acorn. Splashing sounds erupted from within me. Startled, the squirrel fled, knocking my bucket into my well. 

“Ouch!” Came a shout after the bucket landed. 

The figure crawled up the bucket’s rope and awkwardly clambered out of my opening. 

Elyse, as soaked as she was when she entered me, but in much better health, panted as she stood. She turned to look at me, at the well, not my spirit. 

“Is he dead?” She panted. 

“No,” I said. “He returned from whence he came just as you did.”

“Thank you,” She said. 

“I did nothing,” I said. “I really am quite powerless.” 

“All the same though. You saved me, Well, and for that I am grateful. Goodbye, Well.”

She left me then. I returned to basking in the heat of the day, watching the birds and squirrels frolic and play. I returned to my usual contented self. I watched the seasons change, warm rains turned to sweltering heat to cold rains and falling leaves, icy snow, and then repeat. Many years passed before I saw another person. 

A woman came to visit me. She was of middle years, subtle wrinkles appeared on the corner of her eyes when she smiled, and a few gray strands of hair grew from her temples. She was confident and proud. She had with her a man and a child. They ate a picnic at my base. They laughed and played, and enjoyed themselves. They packed up their picnic after a time and were getting ready to leave when the woman said to her son.

“Leave a gift for the well.” 

The little boy placed a flower he had picked upon my stone structure. 

“Here you go Mr Well.” The little boy said. 

The man hefted the boy onto his shoulders and the two laughed as he pranced into the woods as a faux pony. The woman kissed a coin and tossed it in me. 

“Nothing can ever repay you for what you did for me,” She said. “You taught me independence, friendship, fairness, love, and loss. You have made me strong. In the end, because of you, I found home.”

End