“Why do I always have to tidy away my toys?” asked William as he got into bed.
“Let me tell you a story,” his mother had answered. “This story happened in Scotland, in a remote and forgotten part of the country, long, long ago, so long ago that the very oldest folk heard it from their ancestors, who heard it from their ancestors, who first heard it when they themselves were only little children. Once upon a time, there were five children who lived in a cottage with their father. Their mother had died giving birth to the eldest girl, and they were all very sad to lose her, for they loved her dearly. When the father left to go and find work in Edinburgh, the children stayed in the cottage for six long days while they waited for their father to come back for his Sunday rest. Each time he came home, the father was very upset. Not because he had to leave his five children all alone, but because their cottage was becoming uninhabitable. The children were very untidy – they left their toys all over the house, the dishes piled up like the tower of Babel in the sink, and the floor was so sticky that even an elephant running from a mouse would have been stopped in his tracks. The father was much too tired to put the house back in order after his long week’s work, and he felt like Sisyphus rolling his boulder up to the top of the hill only to have to start all over again, over and over for all eternity. But one day he had an idea that brought a ray of hope to his mind: he would ask a brownie for help. The brownie was a magical creature that would come into the house while everyone was asleep and clean everything up, until the house was shining like a new penny. It was not easy to win a brownie’s favour, and they had to be coddled with honey and warm porridge. They are stubborn and covered in hair, with no noses and great blue eyes; they are fairy creatures that only the gifted can see. Still, there was no creature more useful when it came to tidying up a cottage. So when a brownie deigns to take a house under its care, he also looks after the children and might even be persuaded to entertain the master of the house by playing at chess or whist. But the five children did not want to have dealings with a brownie, finding the little creature with its soot-covered face frightening and intrusive. So they decided to tidy up after themselves so that the brownie wouldn’t come. Better to be neat than to come under the care of a brownie. Better to play freely than to have to follow instructions.”
“Mummy, you won’t call upon a brownie, will you?”
“You never know...if you give your father a hard time, you might have to get a brownie like Mummy.”
“I promise I’ll always tidy up for Daddy.”
“Goodnight, darling. Sleep tight! Tomorrow is a new day.”
This morning, William went out shirtless and shoeless to go and sit on his rock. It was his habit to go and sit on this rock when it was low tide on the Isle of Arran, off the coast of Scotland. William was melancholy, and wished to daydream by the waterside. He watched the tide ebbing and flowing, listening to the lapping of the waves. He was not in the mood to take a long walk up into the mountains to spot black guillemots or peregrine falcons. All these birds, the rock-billed chough and the rock ptarmigan, would always be there, flying over the island to distract him from his sadness. “They won’t go away. They always come back,” his mother had promised him. William dipped his feet in the water as it lapped up to the rock before slowly creeping back, leaving the sandy shore inert and intact. The clouds had passed, and the sun shone its dappled rays over the coast. William remained immobile, with only his thoughts wandering and mingling with the light morning breeze. “Soon I’ll go to join the other world,” his mother had told him as she cuddled him. And he’d promised to be good before she left. His mother was sick, but he did not know what ailed her. He did not understand the sickness that she had tried to explain to him, but he understood that she was going to leave him. She’d be somewhere else, as she explained it, somewhere between sky and sea.
Alan Alfredo Geday