Fable

by Charles Yu

  Fable

  By Charles Yu

  Published in the NewYorker Magazine May 30, 2016 Issue

  Once upon a time, there was a man whose therapist thought it would be a good idea for the man to work through some stuff by telling a story about that stuff.

  The man lived in a one-bedroom efficiency cottage all by himself, in a sort of dicey part of town. One day, the man woke up and realized that this was pretty much it for him. It wasn’t terrible. But it wasn’t great, either. And not likely to improve. The man was smart enough to realize this, yet not quite smart enough to do anything about it. He lived out the rest of his days and eventually died. The end. Happy now?

  The man could see that his therapist was not amused.

  A rather unsatisfactory ending, the therapist opined, and suggested that the man could do better. The man thought, Is she really serious about this? But he didn’t say anything out loud. The man was not convinced that he needed to be talking to the therapist at all, but he had tried so many other things (potions, spells, witches), and spent so much of his copper and silver, with absolutely nothing to show for it, that he figured why the hell not.

  So how do I do this? he asked.

  Why don’t you start again? the therapist replied. And, instead of rushing to the end, try to focus on the details.

  O.K., the man said.

  Once upon a time, there was a man who did not know how to use a sword and was also very afraid of dragons, so he took the L.S.A.T., did pretty well, and ended up getting into a decent law school. There he learned useful skills. Skills that would allow him to earn a living in the village and to court the women of that village.

  But what the man came to find soon after graduation was that, in this particular village, there were many people with the same skills. Many, many people. Really hard to overstate how many lawyers there were in that village. Accordingly, despite the man’s efforts the local maidens were not overly impressed. And, after all that schooling, the man was ashamed to admit the sad fact that he still did not know how to use a sword.

  But the man was fine with this. Totally cool with it. Did not feel inadequate whatsoever. He landed a job with a medium-sized firm. The pay was a bit below market, and the position wasn’t exactly his first choice. Top three, maybe. Top fiveish. Somewhere in there. Nevertheless, again, the man could have done worse. Competently plying his trade afforded him a very livable existence. Allowed him to enjoy the company of loved ones. His parents were both gone now, and his sister lived in another kingdom, on the other side of the sea. But it wasn’t like he didn’t have friends. He totally had friends. People he could call to get the occasional beer or catch a movie. It was just that, well, there were those nights. Nights when the moon was new and the sky was dark, and the hour before dawn stretched out before him, threatening never to end. On those endless nights, he would lie in his cottage alone, looking through the window, up at the starless sky, and wondering: Was there a life for him out there in the world? Someone who would love him? Or could learn to love him or, at least, let herself be loved by him?

  He thought about enchanting some young lady, but he had no talent for magic so that was not really an option. If he was going to find a fair maiden to marry him, he would have to do it the old-fashioned way: trick her into it. Kidding. No, he was going to have to find a woman with sufficiently low standards so as to give himself a fighting chance.

  He eventually found such a woman, the only daughter of the candlemaker, a girl whom everyone thought of as plain. Also sad. Quite sad. Not until they had been married for many years would the man come to understand how sad she truly was.

  But the man was getting ahead of himself. For now, the point was the man knew that he had to marry the candlemaker’s daughter. Because unlike everyone else in the village, including the candlemaker himself, the man could see one thing: the young lady was not plain at all. She simply possessed a very mild form of magic, which she used for the purpose of hiding her loveliness. The man told the girl that he knew her secret. She denied it, and he told her that he knew she would deny it. Of course she had to deny that she was, in actuality, the most fetching maiden in the village—maybe in the entire realm. The girl looked confused. Her face flushed with embarrassment. She searched his eyes, trying to understand. Was the man teasing her? But the man did not smile. He seemed earnest. Told her that he knew why she used her magic to hide her beauty: it was in order to protect herself. But, for some reason, he (and only he) could see through it. Now the girl started to cry, because surely the man was trying to humiliate her, wasn’t he? But she saw that he remained earnest. And, after a while, she stopped crying and, her face slick with tears, kissed the man softly on the lips.

  The man asked the candlemaker for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Her father asked that the man slay a dragon to prove his devotion. Even though the man was in decent shape, totally respectable shape, especially considering that he didn’t have time to go to the gym, he still wasn’t strong enough to swing a two-handed broadsword. So, being nothing if not practical, he sought out the smallest dragon he could find.

  After a long search, he found one not much bigger than a wild fowl. Possibly a baby. If we’re being honest, the dragon looked sickly. It had scared, wet eyes, and as the man raised his sword above his head to slay it his betrothed said to him, Don’t. Please. That’s dumb. You don’t need to kill a baby dragon just to prove something to me. All right, the man said, barely hiding his relief. He lowered his sword, petted the young dragon on the head, and sent it back to the cave or wherever. The candlemaker was angry, or maybe not angry—he was a fairly gentle soul—but definitely miffed. Still, he wanted his daughter married off, so, grudgingly, he gave his blessing. The man had found his wife.

  He said to her, I will provide you with a good life. Pretty good, at least. She said, Quit talking and let’s go before my father changes his mind.

  And so they did.

  And the man loved his wife. To the extent that he knew how to love, anyway. The man had a clumsiness about him, in his hands and in his heart. He fumbled words, missed chances, and, despite his best intentions, was prone to mishandling fragile things. Together they shared a quiet existence that was defined by well-managed expectations. Perhaps not the stuff of legends. Not quite deserving of “once upon a time.” But it was comfortable and honest.

  He wondered aloud, ahem, if this was really worth his and the therapist’s time.

  But the man was coming to understand that his therapist was not going to let him out of this exercise until he had navigated his way along (1) an emotionally honest path to

  (2) an unexpected

  (3) yet inevitable destination.

  Whatever that meant.

  The man sighed loudly and continued.

  Once upon a time, there was a guy who couldn’t swing a sword and nearly peed his pants whenever he saw even a toddler-size dragon, so he went to law school, where he learned a bunch of very useful skills, and when he graduated he became a lawyer, and he was pretty O.K. at that, and it allowed him to build a life, try to build a life.

  Great. The therapist liked where this was going.

  But he had dreams of more. He told his wife this, as they lay in their cold stone hut at night.

  Oh? she said, hopeful. A little surprised. What do you dream of? Being a hero?

  No, he said sheepishly. Deep down in his heart, what he dreamed of was not to be a lawyer, or a hero, but a blacksmith. A silly dream, he knew, so he had never told anyone. He waited for her to laugh, but she didn’t. She said that it was a lovely thing to dream of.

  But, having said this, the man was already talking himself out of it. Blacksmithing was old-fashioned and hardly anyone actually made a living at it anymore. He would, of course, keep his job as a lawyer. Would alw
ays provide for her. And the candlemaker’s daughter said, I know you will.

  It was cold, so they spooned. Made love under the nearly empty night sky. Through the window, the man saw a single star. It hung low, twinkling at them.

  This was kind of how they did things for a while. Talked at night, made love, and then the man would fall asleep and his wife would listen to him snore and worry about him. He seemed tired, overworked. She would worry well past the witching hour, and at some point drift off into her own restless half-sleep, just before dawn. She had anxiety and took potions for it, and herbs, and other things from the apothecary. All of it was prescription—it wasn’t like she was self-medicating or anything. But the potions didn’t help, or maybe helped a little—they caused her to have spells of forgetfulness, to lose an hour here or there, but nothing really could lessen her dread. It turned out that she was right to feel dread.

  One night, in the very short time during which both she and her husband were asleep, a sorceress from far away, whom they didn’t know, put a spell on their home, for some reason they would never understand. They would not ever be blessed with the gift of a child. That one star hung in the sky, and it would never fall to Earth for them.

  The couple handled this news in different ways. The candlemaker’s daughter did research, read books about it. Found a local support group that met on Tuesdays. The man, unsure of what to say, tried not to talk about it. Stopped blacksmithing for a while. Started grinding his teeth at night. A distance grew between them. The man wanted to touch his wife, to be with her, but it hurt too much.

  Still, they loved each other. After work one day, the man came home with two bottles of good wine and they opened both bottles and sat on the floor in the middle of the living room in their hut and drank all the wine and ate an entire loaf of hard bread and laughed at each other and at themselves, tried to see the silver lining in being cursed by a malevolent force, and, in the morning when they woke up, they felt a little better.

  They made a list. There was always adoption. Which took time and money and patience and luck. But they were in no rush, were they? Plus, while they waited they could enjoy each other. Take more vacations. If they could save up enough copper coins, maybe even go all the way to the seashore. Eventually. Why not? They were staying glass half full about it all.

  And then, out of nowhere, boom. Just like that. Just when the man had given up, you know? One day the star did fall from the sky into the belly of the man’s wife. And there it burned for six weeks until it had a heartbeat. At twelve weeks, they told family, friends. At eighteen weeks, they found out: it would be a boy. Their boy. And the lawyer-blacksmith and the candlemaker’s daughter were overjoyed. They didn’t want to question why it had happened now, or whether it had anything to do with them finally letting go. They just thanked the heavens and the earth and whatever little magic might be left in the world.

  It wasn’t the easiest pregnancy. There were nights when the invisible wolf, carried along by the fire wind, would come and snatch at the child with its jaws, try to take it away and carry it back into the hills. The wolf came at thirty weeks. At thirty-two weeks, it came again, and the sage elder mages were worried and had the man’s wife spend the night, just for observation. Just a precaution.

  Fortune was smiling, though, and they made it to thirty-five weeks. The mages still had concerns. They looked into their crystal balls or whatever. Behind closed doors, they talked in hushed tones. They nodded their sage heads sagely, stroked their beards, gave the lawyer-blacksmith grim and ponderous looks. Ugh, the mages were really kind of awful about the whole thing. So when the child was finally born the man and his wife wept with joy and relief. Two arms and two legs. Two eyes, a nose and a mouth, color in his cheeks. Head covered with wisps of soft, almost invisible hair.

  It was a few weeks later that the man’s wife first noticed it.

  Something about their baby.

  Difficult to see at first, because the boy looked fine. He acted fine. Nursed. Slept.

  For the first two months, the blacksmith and his wife would frequently stop what they were doing, pause, and look at each other. As if to say, We did it.

  Six months in, they didn’t look at each other anymore; instead, each of them silently studied their boy. Afraid to say anything to the other, lest they make it real by uttering out into the world what was, day by day, increasingly hard to ignore. Saying only generally positive things, vague expressions of hope. No reason to worry yet. Don’t jump to any conclusions.

  At twelve months, they said nothing. There was no need to say anything.

  The man and his wife took the boy back to the mage who had brought him into the world. At first, the old wizard refused to see them. He shook his head gently. The man’s wife begged. Fell to her knees and pleaded. The lawyer-blacksmith tried to pull her up by the arms. But she wouldn’t move. She cried there in front of the mage’s tower for three brutally hot days and three painfully cold nights, the man watching over her the whole time.

  On the morning of the fourth day, the mage emerged, on his way to somewhere else, and was alarmed and scared as he stumbled over the candlemaker’s daughter, still waiting there. He could not let this go on any longer.

  Your son, he said. He will never be of this world.

  Now the man’s wife broke down with fresh tears. The man stared at the mage and said, What do you mean? What does that mean? I know you’re a mage and that’s how you talk, but you can’t say something like that and then just stand there.

  The boy’s spirit, the mage explained, what some might call his soul—it is trapped. You can think of it as being inside a small box, and that box is inside another box, and that box in another, and so on.

  Is this because of the curse?

  Could be. Hard to say. It is possible that the child is afraid to come into the world, or that he is not fully allowed to, owing to the persistent dark energy that was attached to his creation.

  Dark energy. At this phrase, the man’s skin turned cold. He feared. He knew. Something in him had caused all of this. He had no way of proving it, but the man knew it was his fault, could not even look at his wife, afraid that just one look and she would instantly understand.

  But if his wife did have any such thoughts she did not betray them. She took the man’s hand in hers and pressed the mage for options. What could they do? Tell us what to do.

  The answer, the mage said, may be hidden deep within him. Too deep to retrieve safely. You will never know him. But you will care for him, love him, see that he has everything a child needs.

  As soon as the lawyer-blacksmith heard these words, he knew that they were true. He wondered what insurance would cover; he worried about the large deductible, the high cap on out-of-pocket expenses. Ahead of him, the lawyer-blacksmith saw many years of therapists, of special schools, of helpers. No birthday parties. No playdates or friends. No playing baseball with his son.

  At sixteen months, the boy stood up once, clapped his hands.

  At twenty months, a word: Bye. Bye-bye. Bye.

  Then, at two years, more words, all in rapid succession: Mama, baby, Da, sorry.

  Why sorry?

  Maybe he heard it often.

  At three, he said, What’s that? And, Who’s that? And, Where are we going?

  When he was five, the lawyer-blacksmith’s son said, Dad is my best friend. He said this from very far away, from a place deep inside himself. The man could barely hear his son. The boy was sitting on the ground and looked confused, and from his mouth came a terrible sound. An old sound, a pain trapped in there. The boy looked out the window at other boys running. He wanted to run. But his legs wouldn’t work right.

  His father said, They do work, son. Your legs are just fine.

  And the son said, Then why do I feel stuck?

  His father said, We will get you unstuck. Those are nice legs, good legs. Don’t be mad at your legs. Look at me. Look at Mommy. We will figure this out. We gave you those legs. We are sorry.
I am sorry. But it is not your fault. And you will get to run.

  The boy eventually did run. Sort of. It looked funny, and other boys laughed at him. So after a few tries the boy stopped running.

  Was the man O.K.? Did he need a moment?

  The man was fine.

  A glass of water, perhaps?

  No, the man said. I’m fine.

  Deep breath, O.K.?

  In other ways, things were going pretty well. As it turned out, the man did have a talent for blacksmithing. Not a great talent. He would not make swords for knights and princes. But he had something. And people noticed. They started to bring him stuff to smith, and he could smith the heck out of that stuff. He hammered stuff and flattened other stuff and made stuff, stuck stuff in the fire, and stuff. What had started out as a thing on the side turned into a little bit of a cottage industry.

  He had time to do this because he had quit his job at the firm and now worked as a lawyer in local government. No bonus, but good benefits. And the hours were so much better. Now the man was home most nights for dinner. He and his wife and son moved to a slightly bigger cottage, just outside the village. The lawyer-blacksmith was still no knight or lord, of course, but he could provide for his family. They were never hungry. Things were fine, mostly, although sometimes when they went down to the village for a harvest festival, other families would look at them, and they hated the way they were looked at. Sympathy, mixed with something else. Something like, I admire you, but don’t touch me or I might catch your plague of misfortune. Sympathy, as in, I sympathize, my heart goes outward to you— outward to you, as in, You over there, stay over there, don’t come any closer. I will admire you from a distance. The man knew that look well. The man’s wife said, Don’t be so hard on people. They mean well. But the man said, Meaning well is for shit. Oh, he knew that look and how he hated that look. The presumptuousness of it. Those other families didn’t say anything. That was the worst part. Except when they did say something. And that was even worse: So inspiring. You must be so strong, selfless. Now, that was a fairy tale. The idea of selfless people. As if their lives were somehow different, as if they didn’t have flaws and urges, didn’t ever want to have a couple of drinks, or three, or ten. As if having a kid like theirs made them into some kind of charmed species, some imaginary fairy-tale type of nonhuman humans, people who never got bored or tired or horny. But the blacksmith-lawyer, as much as he resented these strangers with their heartfelt looks, couldn’t blame them. So he ignored them.