The Glass Shorebirds [
10-09-09]
In a far away land lived a poor man and his wife in a small cottage by the sea. The man was an excellent marksman, and every morning before dawn, he would rise in secret and steal away to the shoreline with his rifle. The very first bird he saw, he shot dead, and in its stomach he would find a single coin of solid gold. He then would return to the cottage and place the coin beneath the floorboards, then softly wake his wife to start the day. After a quiet breakfast, the man would kiss his wife and depart to the city to bid his service to the king, While the man was away, his wife would recieve customers from miles away for divinations, love spells, and good omens, for his wife was a wise woman. In the evening she would send all of her customers away, and to pass the time before her husband came home, crafted glass birds out of the sand from the shore. Inside each bird she buried her daily earnings and a love spell she wrote from her heart. She hid the birds from her husband in her wooden chest beneath their bookcase, and greeted him with a kiss when he returned home. She would take the vegetables and fowl her husband brought from the city and cook him dinner while he tested her from a book of riddles or enticed her from a book of maps. At night when he had fallen asleep, she would rise in secret and steal away to the shoreline with one glass bird, leaving it at a distance where the tide would not wash it away. The instant she turned away from the shore, the glass bird would dissolve back into sand, earnings and all--for that is how she enchanted them. Kissing the face of her sleeping husband, she would return to bed.
One holiday, the man was not required by the king to go into the city. He and his wife took the opportunity to do some much needed cleaning. While sorting the bookcase, the man found a book of mysteries he knew his wife loved very dearly, and he schemed to hide it in her chest for her to find by accident. But when he opened the lid, three score of birds flooded from of the chest and fled out the windows. Startled and confused, he called his wife, who immediately shut the windows, trapping only one bird. The man caught it in his hands at her request. With the shivering bird trapped in his fingers, his wife could only smile sheepishly.
"It was our mystery," She admitted. "To save my money, I crafted birds out of glass from the shore and gave each one gold piece from my earnings each day. I enchanted them and put them on the shore where without me they would crumble back into sand. But, as long as you love me, when you see them they will spring to life."
Her husband gazed in amazement at the bird in his hands. "Then I have lost all of your money!" He mourned.
She only smiled back and said, "No, beloved husband; you have hid them better than I. I only spread them on the shore, but now they are scattered to the four corners of the globe, waiting to be found." She took his hand in hers. "Come search the world with me! You have proved yourself to the king a hundred times over, and this cottage will be here when we are too old for such adventures."
And so, the man and his wife traveled the world like they always wished. When their funds ran out, they would find a glass bird; when no birds were to be found, the man would offer his services to a nearby lord. In this fashion, they had so many adventures that if they were written down, they would fill the cottage twenty times over from cellar to attic, with uncountable grand tales still yet to be written! Who knows? Perhaps they are having an adventure at this very moment!
Pnelma's Pen
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