Lies of Golden Straw

by E. L. Tenenbaum

  All of that changed with Merlin. With Merlin, pretending was safe because it was about possibility and not lies. With Merlin, a world appeared before me, as if it had always been there, waiting for me to step in and awaken the magic just beyond the threshold. There was no end to the amount of exploring we could do together using the river running along the mill as our guide to adventures only children can imagine.

  In a way, I also gave something back to him. Merlin would sink into dark moods at times, and with his potential for magic and lack of training, it was best to pull him out before he got lost. I would hold his gaze and help him relax. Young as I was, I knew our simple village was too small for Merlin, knew he saw a world so much bigger and greater than anything our little homes contained.

  I should know, too, for he was the one who taught me just how far away is the horizon over which the sun sets. I won’t say it was his fault, but it’s no wonder I made the choices that led me to where I am today. I couldn’t forget it once I’d gotten a taste of it, couldn’t forfeit it once I knew it was there.

  Well, after chores that is.

  “Why must I bother with the lot of them if I’ll never be a farmer anyway?” Merlin grumbled one day when I arrived just in time to help him finish so we could go exploring.

  “W-w-when you’re a w-wi-wizard you c-c-can d-d-do all your ch-chores with a w-w-wave of your h-hand,” I assured him. “B-but then y-y-you must remember t-t-to do mine as w-well.”

  “Well, there’s hardly any point in being done so quickly if I must wait around for you,” Merlin huffed, as if I would ever think he could forget about me.

  We fell silent as we focused on finding our footing on the big log we used to cross the river. As we grew, the log would become less of a bridge into other worlds and more of a bench upon which we would try to make sense of our own. The water below was neither deep nor shallow, but it rushed past with the unwavering speed of a busy person trying to keep a schedule.

  At the other side, Merlin jumped from the log with me close behind him.

  “I don’t see how milking cows has anything to do with magic,” he complained.

  I fell into step beside him. “M-m-maybe it’s ne-necessary should y-y-you need t-t-to turn someone into a c-c-cow,” I offered.

  Merlin giggled. “Now what could a person have possibly done to merit being turned into a cow?” he wondered out loud.

  “H-he c-c-cried over s-sp-spilled milk,” I quickly decided.

  “He neglected to milk the cows on time,” Merlin suggested.

  “He w-wa-was t-t-told to eat dirt,” I countered, and Merlin laughed again.

  “I don’t even know if wizards can turn people into cows,” he admitted good-naturedly.

  I smiled. “Whe-whenever you f-find out, I m-m-must be the f-first t-t-to know.”

  Merlin caught up my hand and gave it a quick squeeze before releasing it. “You’ll always be first,” he said sincerely.

  Those words may have been true once, when I was his Millie, but there would come a time when I would no longer be his. It makes me wonder what his response would be to that same comment today.

  Aside from being my best—and for a long while only—friend, the other great thing about Merlin was that he didn’t seem to mind my father and the kind of person he was. Not then, at least. Before Father disrupted the life we thought we’d have together.

  I believe my father suffered from a malady, one I haven’t seen so deeply rooted in others quite as stubbornly as in him. Surviving so many years under his roof, I thought myself immune to it, but as I look over the path of my life, I see clearly how contagious it was, how easily it could infect others.

  In small villages, many fathers struggled. Some with money, others with drink, some with anger, others with belief. But all these struggles seemed mundane next to my father’s inability, perhaps refusal, perhaps indifference, to tell the truth. Were he not the only miller to service the farm-dependent villages in the area, he probably wouldn’t have any business at all, which may have influenced his decision to settle where he did. The odd thing was that he wasn’t a liar in business. Sure, he may have slightly cheated his weights as much as any other businessman, but his problem wasn’t that people didn’t trust him with their grain. They didn’t trust him with the truth.

  Merlin had a bottomless well of patience for my father, and when he had time to spare, he would even indulge Father by listening to his stories about the time he had to capture a goat for a troll that wouldn’t let him cross the bridge under which it lived. Or the time he met and pried a bone out of a sobbing lion’s throat. Or the time he milled one hundred and forty-seven sacks of flour in one day so that when he was done, he could scarce grip anything in his hands for days. Or, or, or…my father never had a shortage of adventures to talk about.

  Merlin, for his part, listened intently, but once out of earshot called my father’s stories “sailor boots.”

  “W-why?” I wanted to know.

  It was a warm summer day, and even though he was going to be a wizard, Merlin was helping me peel potatoes on the side porch overlooking the river.

  “Because,” Merlin explained, “foolish sailors dive in after a mermaid’s song thinking they’ll return to the surface with great treasures. But all that’s left are their boots on the bottom of the sea, sole remnants of men who dove in after fancy and false promise and wound up dead.”

  I glanced up at Merlin. “You th-think Father’s f-f-following after something?”

  Merlin didn’t answer directly. “Even fish know that a mermaid’s song is only a song. They’re also wise enough to stay away from sailor boots.”

  A pause, then, “P-possibly because they’re m-made of leather from a c-c-cow that was once human.”

  Merlin grinned. “Now why turn someone into a boot?” he questioned.

  “Someone w-wa-wanted to s-stomp all over him,” I reasoned.

  “Someone told him not to judge others until he had stood in their place,” Merlin shot back.

  “S-S-Someone w-wa-wanted to t-tie him up,” I rejoined.

  “Someone told him to take a hike.”

  “Sailors don’t be wearing boots. The deck be too slippery.”

  We turned abruptly at the new voice. Father was leaning in the doorframe of the kitchen, chewing on a raw stalk of wheat as if he had all the time in the world. I suppose if someone lives in another world, then there’s no telling what kind of time he’s bound to.

  Merlin nodded approvingly. “Well surmised, sir,” he said.

  Father looked thoughtful. “I ever be telling you about the time I be meeting a shoemaker who be employing elves for his work?”

  “Yes, Father,” I said automatically, even though I wasn’t really sure he had.

  Not that it mattered; Father gladly stepped into his sailor boots anyway. “Our story be of a shoemaker, who though poor, was a very kind man…” he began, quickly losing himself in the tale he spun.

  Merlin and I shared a look, then he raised his lovely purple eyes over the waves of my father’s lie.

  Considering how eager we always were to turn people into other things, I wonder how it came as any surprise to either of us when life would turn each of us into something other than what we had always been.

  Even before Merlin left for more schooling, magic was always around him, a dim purple glow that surrounded him whenever he was particularly excited, upset, or frustrated. As he grew older, the glow brightened into a faint then luminescent purple fire, until his very eyes and fingers sparked with a magical light he could scarce control, which I remember quite clearly from one particular incident.

  By the time we were about eleven years old, the teacher had long since moved on from my inability to give a name, though it seemed no one else had. That I was shy in school and usually began all answers I was forced to give with a stutter didn’t help matters either. It amounted to no end of teasing, though all would be put in their place a few short years after we finished school and mat
urity made me pretty enough for the boys to beg a dance from me.

  One morning, we stepped into the schoolyard, which was really only a clearing in front of the small schoolhouse, and were greeted with the cry of “M-M-M-M-Mornin’, M-M-M-M-Millie and M-M-M-M-Merlin!” from a freckled boy.

  Smothered giggles echoed around us.

  “Wh-Wh-Whoops,” chortled someone I hadn’t noticed until it was too late to keep from tripping over the foot extended in my path.

  Merlin’s hand shot out to keep me steady. Long before, we’d vowed that we’d never fall in front of the other kids. Let them do to us what they would with their words and their pranks, but we would never let them see us bend. Admittedly, that didn’t keep my tears from falling more than once when only Merlin was around to catch them.

  “Leave her alone,” Merlin muttered, using his other hand to shove the boy who’d tripped me.

  “N-N-Nice catch, f-f-f-faery f-f-f-f-freak,” the freckled boy sneered.

  “L-L-Leave him alone!” I cried, rushing to his defense.

  Laughter ricocheted about the yard.

  Merlin and I tried to escape into the safer confines of the schoolhouse. The teasing would continue there, but it would be in hushed tones and easier to ignore. We hadn’t taken more than two steps before it became obvious we would not be allowed to find relative sanctuary so quickly. A slowly tightening circle of boys and girls pressed us together, trapping us within their cruelty as they closed the gaps between themselves. I tried to look defiant, tried to ignore the feeling of being misplaced their taunting always caused. Beside me, Merlin was boiling.

  “Leave us alone,” he demanded, his voice steady, his stance unwavering, but his eyes beginning to smolder.

  Merlin’s statement was met with the usual snickers. By this point, the kids weren’t saying anything, as if the next beating they seemed ready to execute required they save up as much of their breath as possible. To them, Merlin had done the unthinkable when he’d shoved one of them back. He could have been one of them, but he’d chosen instead to throw his lot in with me. The lanky, stuttering, miller’s daughter. The liar’s daughter whom he befriended and defended. I will never find someone like him again.

  For my part, I finally cured that awful stutter not long after in pretending my tongue would break my teeth if it pushed against them too many times before getting a word out. It was a lie that cured me, another lie in a life full of them, but it was the first one to myself.

  “Leave. Us. Alone,” Merlin repeated, and this time everyone, and everything, even time itself, stopped.

  A hush descended on the huddled crowd as the purple glow in Merlin’s hands began to flicker. I’d only seen him like that twice before, both times within the past few months, and both times Merlin had screamed and begged me to put out the fire before it burned his hands beyond repair. That day, he didn’t fear the purple flames at all. Rather, he seemed to embrace them.

  No matter what words their jealousy still had left to deride the faery freak among them, there was nothing any of them could say or do in the face of his very real power, bottled lightning crackling with impatient energy. Merlin’s eyes glowed and his pupils disappeared in the same purple light that surrounded his clenched fists. In his hands that light was fire. An angry purple fire that hissed with a desire to be set free.

  The only reason why the circle took so long to break was because no one could quite believe what they were seeing. Whatever negative rumors abounded about wizards, faeries, and other magicals, it was difficult to look away.

  Needless to say, they never bothered either of us again.

  That was the worst I ever saw him. Before he went away to study. Before everything began to change.

  For all his little faults, and his large, glaring one as well, I still loved my father, which is why it was so much harder when it came to talk about my mother. I never knew what to believe, could never ascertain if Mother had mercifully been spared Father’s malady, or even knew a thing about it. At times, in the darkest part of night, I often wondered if perhaps Mother hadn’t been quite tired of all Father’s lies and so, seeing no other recourse, returned her soul to the world of only truth.

  With no memories of her, I had but two items to conjure her with, two items my father gave me and said were once hers. For these two facts, and only these two facts, I tried so hard to believe they were true.

  If Father was to be believed, he’d retrieved the thin strand of pink pearls from the mouth of an oyster by the light of a full, glistening moon.

  “There be a shallow bay,” Father told me each time he let me wear them for a while, “poking out from the ocean, just like so, carving a little spot for itself from the shoreline. It be an enchanting little bay, waters so clear they be glass windows set over the sandy floor below. It be ever well known that magical creatures be living there, though most never be seen.”

  “W-W-Were there m-m-mermaids?” I would ask innocently, still young enough to believe, young enough to think his stories could possibly be true.

  “There be mermaids,” Father would confirm, gesturing dramatically to infuse more life into his tale, “singing so it seem the voice of Heaven itself be singing along. Legend be that anyone with a pure heart who be standing in them waters under a full moon be finding there whatsoever they most be seeking.”

  “D-D-Did you?” I’d whisper, awestruck.

  “Well, I had just be meeting your mother, and there be nothing more I be wanting than to give her something special. So, true as the sun rises, I be setting out, pure of heart, on a cloudless night, rolled up me pants, and stood in the cold waters of them bay. Aye, them waters be frigid, but I be thinking only of your mother and how much I be wanting something special for her.

  “I’m sure to be standing there least an hour before something be bumping against me feet. Like so, I be looking down through them glassy waters and there it be, a single oyster, smooth and white, with none of them other colors on the shell. It be the only thing there in them sands, and I be quite certain that it hadn’t been there before. I picked it up, took it with to me rooms where I be carefully prying it open, like so.

  “Inside, there be a necklace of soft pink pearls for the woman I be loving much as life itself. I be giving them to her right away and them were enough to make sure she would marry me and none other. And the rest of the oyster, I be cleaning it, like so, and sticking inside a bit of mirror, on either side. Some lady be opening it, like so, for a little peek when she be away from her rooms.”

  “C-C-Can I s-se-see it?” I’d ask, wanting so much to hold another piece of this tale, wanting so much for every part of it to be true.

  Father would chuckle. “That oyster I be selling to a nobleman on the way to a wedding, who be in desperate need of a neat little bride’s gift. I be using that money for this here mill, where we be living happily ever since.”

  I loved that story and begged for it many times before I was old enough to doubt it. Still, when I was old enough, I wore that necklace every day, and only took it off the moment I finally gave it up altogether. I can’t say now that its loss bothers me as much as it used to. For all I know, my mother never saw that necklace in her life. With Father, there was just never any way to really know.

  The other item he gave me was her wedding ring, a thin gold band with a tiny green jewel set just off center. If Father spoke true, it had been given to him for his future bride by his mother, who was given it by her husband from his mother, which is how it stayed in the family for seventeen generations. That’s all he would ever say about it. And Mother was never there to correct him.

  According to Father, he met my mother, she of the voluminous golden hair and bright hazel eyes, when he was still a low-level knight serving under a particular Lord Blackwell. There has yet been any evidence uncovered to prove that Father was a knight, or that his noble lord ever existed. Surely, I would know by now if either were true.

  Father did walk with a slight limp, which he claimed
to have earned in a victorious battle against an ogre terrorizing a border village. Curiously, for a man who never forgot a story, he could never remember the name of the village or which of his comrades in metal battled beside him. But I digress.

  Mother was the daughter of a merchant, the sixth daughter to be more precise, and she convinced Father to retire his lance and take up a trade that would serve him better in his later years. Father insisted that he could never refuse Mother, and so he left the service and bought the small mill he vowed to keep running until the day he died.

  Her hair caught Father’s attention first, the same hair I was blessed with, though I have Father’s calculating brown eyes. Father had creaked into her father’s shop, looking for some trinket to bring home to his sister, a woman I have never met or confirmed was ever born, when the sunshine dancing through the windows glinted off a headful of gold.

  “Me heart stopped beating there,” Father always said then, thumping his chest, “right here, it be going dead still. I scarce be getting a breath in me until I were back outside.”

  At which point Father could no longer remember where he was going or from where he had come, because the only direction he knew from then on was the one to Mother.

  That was the version he told most frequently. There were some variations over the years, but I was never one to point them out. From what I was able to gather growing up, those little facts I picked out for their consistency in Father’s lies, and what I was able to glean from village folk, it seemed my mother was a nice enough woman, with hair that really did sparkle like spun gold. Otherwise, she was unmemorable. Whether this was because Father usually sucked the attention from the room or because she was the youngest of six daughters is still undetermined by me.