A Story

    “The cradle, what a wonderful place to be!” exclaimed Marlin, marvelling at the trinkets and mobile encircling the infant’s cot. Wishes--her duly caretaker-- ushered her away, and past me, and through the doorway. The woman is of a very stiff, professional resolve.
    They walked on home, through The Garden around the path. It is not a long way to the house on that trail, but they took their time going past the flowers. I am thankful that Wishes allows little Marlin the chance to slow down on her own accord, instead of only when she is told to. Too many of the parents here hurry up their babies when they are really, truly fascinated by something-- only to reprimand them for not looking hard enough at the boring things, at the ‘grown-up’ things.
    It is not surprising that Marlin picks and ties together any flower that she fancies; behind Wishes’ back, because the picking of blossoms is strictly forbidden here. That sort of conduct, the caretaker would hardly permit.

    And like this the two wander. With a direction, you must keep in mind, but it is the sort of directness that is wandering nonetheless. Marlin’s mind, as she passes through The Garden, is of a similar composition. It is free, with an airy lightness; and yet it is still intent, on whatever, for I am not she. At her age, there is hardly soul besides herself that could imagine her ambitions.
    “I am stern, though,” she once insisted to me with half a pout, “I know precisely what I want of you.” She went on to assure me, that she’d already got it. Extracted some part of myself, for her own purposes. I’d be fine with that, she would find a better use for it, anyway.
    “But no, you must fight me for it!” argued Marlin.
    She’s probably all but forgotten that little struggle for the bit of me I was willing to give up. She continued out of The Garden with Wishes and onto the street laid down by packed mud. It was a long road, that went both up and down the way, all around the neighbourhood. Maybe even the whole country, the whole world could be circled on that one road
    “Now, do you remember the way back?”
    “Wishes, I remember every time the way back to Pop. It’s you, the old one, who forgets!”
    The girl was right, but I don’t think either of them truly understood why. Without Marlin, Wishes never would have walked that road.

    They kept on, down the street. Homeward. All the homes were far apart. When you stood at one’s mailbox, the next house down the way was but a tiny pinprick on the horizon. They all looked exactly the same, too; so unless you counted them each as you passed, you would quickly loose track of how far you’d gone.
    When they started walking, the shadows were long; and when they arrived home, they were long again. But it was a different kind of long. They recognised the house instantly, despite it being identical to all the others.
    Where is Mother, where is Pop? They are never home when Marlin gets back, or even when she wakes up. The two are gone from her life most of the time, substituted by by Wishes, and their ventures around the county. Wishes is always running small errands, so that she has enough money to support herself and her candies. She confidied in me, once
    “An older woman, such as I am closed to being (though not quite, she adds), must always carry candies. For the children, yes, but not just. It is, really, candy for the lonely.”
    Lemon sundrops and lemonade stands: lemons, always lemons for the lonely, and cocoa for the heartbroken.
    “Nothing for the widowed.”

    Marlin gives Wishes the sweetest kiss good-bye, even though the focus of her attention reaches far off into space. She climbs up the stairs, up into bed.

    “I don’t even know why I’m here, Monsieur Milldo. It’s too early to sleep,” she tells me, “there is so much daylight left.”
    She dreams. In a different world, she is just as small. But the people there pay attention to her, accepting that her heart is as great and honest as it really is. There is a tree there, that she frequents. It a willow tree, because that is the only tree that Marlin knows the name of. I’ve been to that tree.
    At its base, there is a stream that runs with water that is as clear as the sky. And when the clouds are out, the stream is even purer. That is the only water this willows’ roots drink from. And because of that, it is enlightened. The willow’s branches are turned upward, like canopies. And when the wind is low and the sun high, Marlin will sit in them.
    She has woken up again, not in her room, but on a raft that is drifting down the stream. And so, she drifts. What else can a girl do?
    There are fields, there are woods. The stream drifts past them all. And she grows tired of being still, because she is full of her young energy, like Wishes’ lemon sundrops. The water is not wet, because nothing is really wet in a dream. Even though your clothes may become so soaking dark that you may believe that you are wet, you will always find that you are dry as sand.
    No, it is not the cold damp that prevents her from going to shore. Marlin can not swim, and she is too tired to try. That is the problem with dreams: eyes though your body is at rest, your thoughts still carry the burden of daily fatigue.

    She bargains with the stream, sternly at first, but then with an ounce of tact.
    “Come now, water, you know I’ve got places to be. If Wishes were here, she’d tell you just what they are. But she is not, so we must trust her absent judgement.”
    The stream just looked at her, in that knowing way all water looks. The streams and rivers have their own places to be, always on their busy ways. Not today, Marlin.

    “What a beautiful blossom!” exclaimed the Old Toad Lady, lifting Marlin from the water. “What sort of bloom do you think it is, Henry?”
    Henry just sat, his bottom in the water. He glanced over, and croaked. Henry is also a toad. Then, he turned to me. He croaked again, inquisitively. I croaked back, as courteously as I could, and then Henry was on his way.
    “Stupid, fat toad!” slowly remarked the Old Toad Lady, each word rolling  slurpily off her old toad tongue. She looked again at Marlin, who was asleep.
     “Strange,” she thought, “this blossom. I’ve seen many before, but not quite like this. Perhaps it is a ginger root.” She gently laid Marlin in her basket, and then hopped off on her way.
    Marlin was dreaming of the cradle. Deeply dreaming, so deep that she could not even think, only be heavily embraced by the gentle bed. She didn’t even notice the great toad-basket she had been placed in, nor the incessant hopping by which she travelled further and further from the stream.
    “The willow,” she remembered. She rocked in it slowly, in her cradle dream, repeating to herself a rhyme, the rhythm in time with its rocking. Wide rocks, that tempted to throw her from the branches, and which eventually did. She fell toward the stream, now deeper than the ocean, and she awoke. Not in her bed, but in the basket in which the Old Toad Lady has laid her.

    Honestly, the Old Toad Lady’s voice sounds a bit like Wishes’, but only when you are not looking right at her. So it is no surprise that, with eyes glued shut with sleep, Marlin mistook the Old Toad Lady talking to herself for her caretaker.
    “Have you any lemon sundrops, Wishes?” asked Marlin mistakenly.
    The Toad Lady turned, flabbergasted at what she thought to be a talking ginger-root. Then she came about her senses, and said,
    “Lemon sundrops are for the lonely. Ginger can not be lonely, for it is the root of love.”
    This was something Wishes would say, in one of her reminiscent moods, so nothing changed. Marlin went on to think that the Old Toad Lady was Wishes, and the Old Toad Lady thinking Marlin was a ginger-root, now talking. I myself thought that the exchange was going along particularly well, and that it could continue thus quite finely. But then, Henry came home. And Henry, you know, he changes everything.

    Henry stared intently at the two characters in his home, his Lady and the girl. His countenance was that of one deeply betrayed, a hurt deeper than that of tears. I glared intently at him, trying to explain, but he could not feel me. I was too far away.
    “You’ve found.. a girl,” he said slowly, through the wounds in his heart, “you know what this means, my Toad Lady.”
    She did not. She looked glanced over at Marlin, for an explanation, but she was again fast asleep.