Fairytale - Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

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1 September 2023 ~ A Birthday Fairytale with Love

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A YORSHIK, who lived in the fifth dimension and worshipped Beautiful Nature. Although she could be prickly, she was not a nasty Yorshik. She loved the fields, gardens, flowers, lakes, suns, skies and trees ~ most of all she loved the trees.

One day, whilst walking by the side of the lake in the footsteps of the Teutonics, she espied a tree that she liked very much. It was an old tree, a tree that had stood for centuries. This tree had seen so much of life and of countless people’s lives.

How many people have admired this tree? thought the Yorshik. How many people have sketched or painted it? How many people have written poems about it. How many people have sat beneath it ~ daydreamers, lovers, people in need of shelter, people in need of support, people in need of a tree?

Whenever Yorshik found a tree, especially a great old tree like this one, she felt the need to hug it. She would throw her arms around the tree and say, “I long for the day when your inner strength will be my strength also.” And the trees that she hugged would hug her back, and each would sigh with happiness.

And so, she hugged the mighty tree before her. But the tree neither hugged her in return nor sighed a happy sigh. It clung to her. It trembled, and its sigh was a groan of fear and despair.

“Whatever is the matter, tree?” asked the Yorshik.

“They are coming to cut me down tomorrow,” sobbed the tree.

“But why?” Yorshik asked. “You are so big and strong and healthy!”

The tree it sobbed some more until regaining its composure, said: “Because I have a fairy in my boughs.”

Yorshik looked up and sure enough, sitting in the branches of the tree, there was a fairy.

Yorshik had seen many things, such as flowers, hedges, clouds and trees, but never a fairy before. She had, of course, seen drawings of fairies but never of one so round.

“What?” Yorshik asked the tree, “has a fairy in your branches got to do with cutting you down?”

The tree sniffled: “The fairy has cast a spell, and tomorrow at daybreak the men will come with saws and axes, and I will be cut down.”

“I didn’t want to cast the spell,” then spoke the fairy in a quavering voice, “truly I didn’t. But I am trapped between Heaven and Earth, and if I place my feet voluntarily on Terra-Ferma, I shall be forced to exist in a limbo state for the rest of all eternity.”

And now the fairy was crying, too.

“But if the tree is cut down,” the fairy sobbed (and the tree let out a wail) “I shall descend to earth, but not by my own volition, and I will be saved.”

The fairy was weeping, the tree was weeping and Yorshik was at a loss for what to do. She could not bear to see the tree cut down, but neither could she bear to imagine the fairy trapped between Heaven and Earth in a state of immortal torment.

A Birthday Fairytale with Love

She thought and thought until she could think no more, whereupon, in a paroxysm of despair, she threw herself on the ground and hugging the trunk of the tree, implored and prayed to the Gods for an answer.

As she prayed, her tears fell to the ground, and the tears of the tree and the fairy followed, mingling together until they had formed a stream that trickled into the lake. At that moment, the clouds, which had settled upon the sky, parted, and a ray of sunlight soft and luminous travelling from the Heavens landed gently at the point where the river of tears held hands with the lake. Still embracing the tree, the Yorshik watched the light as it danced upon the water. She followed its vibration along the beam, into the sky and back to the water again.

At the water’s edge, where a moment ago no one had been, she thought she saw a figure, the figure of a man. She could not be certain of this, because her eyes were so full of tears; they had become twin ponds from Königsberg.

She peered again at the water’s edge. Sure enough, there was a man. His detail was lost to her, but she could feel the warmth of his presence and the kindness in his heart.

“Who are you?” the Yorshik asked.

“I’m an artist,” he replied. “I have come to paint a picture of you. To paint it upon this tree.”

And setting down an easel, this is exactly what he did.

When he had finished the picture, which seemed to be of a moment’s work, he turned to the Yorshik and smiling said: “Don’t worry, Yorshik. Don’t fret. Everything in this universe has its finite place and everything will fall into place when the time is right for it to do so.”

He had hardly finished speaking, in a voice like balm to the Yorshik’s soul, when a second beam of light breaking through the clouds momentarily dazzled her, and when she could see again, the artist he had gone.

A Birthday Fairytale with Love

It was then that she saw his painting on the tree. She gasped in amazement. Her likeness was so lifelike, the colours so strong, so vibrant, altogether alive and everything so beautiful that she felt as if everything good had been given to her forever. And even the fairy and the tree, on beholding the artist’s magic, forgetting guilt, regret and fear, also forgot that they should be crying.

Spoke the fairy from the tree on high: “I cannot let this kind old tree that has given me hope and shelter, and which now has such a beautiful picture of Yorshik painted on it, be cut down. Tonight, I shall climb from the branches myself and take my chances as predetermined.”

It was a frightful night for Yorshik. There was a full moon that shone through the crack in the bedroom shutters and danced around in her half-sleep in an endless succession of mutated forms and apparitions most ghastly. She felt the bite of the woodman’s axe and turned away from that horror only to be confronted by the dreadful sight of the screaming fairy descending into a fiery hell.

No sooner had dawn broke, than, with bleary eyes and in a cold sweat, Yorshik scampered from her woodland house and hurried towards the lake and the tree. She was so afraid of what she might see, and even more afraid of what she wouldn’t, that she thought of running backwards, but very few Yorshiks have reverse gear, so she had to proceed as always and make the best of a very bad job. At least it wasn’t foggy.

As she rounded the corner where she knew the tree would be, if indeed it would be, she took her hands away from her eyes and, rubbing the bruises on her body, which, unfortunately, one tends to get when one attempts to run with their eyes closed, stared at where she thought she’d see nothing, or perhaps just a pile of logs. But Saints preserve and Hallelujah, the tree it was still standing!

Alas, of the tree-bound fairy, however, there was not the slightest sign.

Falling to her knees by the side of the tree and hugging its mighty trunk, the Yorshik cried: “You are safe, thank the Gods that you are safe, but what has become of the fairy? I cannot bear to imagine the pain and the suffering which, through her most noble act, she has brought upon herself!”

But why was the tree not crying! Heartless, ungrateful tree! The heartless, ungrateful tree was smiling!!

“Shh, shh,” said the tree, “Do not cry! Be still! Dry your eyes! Look at the painting, Yorshik! Look at the painting!”

Bewildered, understanding not, but drying her eyes as instructed, the Yorshik did as she had been bidden and looked towards the painting. At first, she could see nothing but herself, as a reflection might see itself on the opposite side of the mirror. But when she rubbed her eyes again and took a second look, there, in a moment of joy and rapture, she saw in the painting by her side the fairy smiling back at her. The fairy was alive! The fairy was alive!

And above and around the Yorshik in the painting on the tree, and above and around the Yorshik kneeling on the ground, not one but a host of fairies danced and laughed, embraced and sang and loved.

This time when the Yorshik hugged the tree, the Universe hugged back, and since that day to this, no one in the world and anywhere else beyond has ever had to suffer the pain of being alone again.