Bearwalker by Joseph Bruchac – A Book Review #1
Bearwalker by Joseph Bruchac, Harper Collins Children’s Books, 224 pgs, 2007, $15.99 Baron Braun is the shortest kid in the eighth grade and that’s the…
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Bearwalker by Joseph Bruchac, Harper Collins Children’s Books, 224 pgs, 2007, $15.99 Baron Braun is the shortest kid in the eighth grade and that’s the…
Hey, I found this girl. Can I keep her? Folks always ask me for my movie suggestions – so here’s one we watched earlier this…
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I root for possibilitiescloistered among the charnel and the chumsifting, sorting, weighinghacking meaning from the shadows that hidebetween darkness and light A fisher of deep…
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It was the night of the living deadand you are the last man on earthas the zombies are soundlessly howlingand beating onthe dead boarded windows…
All that Ramsey wanted was a little bit of luck and a whole lot of gold. Little does he know, but a simple walk through…
All that Ramsey wanted was a little bit of luck and a whole lot of gold. Little does he know, but a simple walk through the forest was going to bring him the luck that he needs. Or will it? Listen up and I will tell you the story of a young farmer, a wishing ring, and a magical fairy named Queen Maab.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago there lived a very young farmer named Ramsey who, although his heart was as good as one million pieces of gold, had not a single ounce of good luck to his name. Everything that he ever turned his hand to turned out completely bad. In fact, the only piece of good luck that he had ever had was his wife Glorinda, a woman as plain as any weed and yet as beautiful to Ramsey as a dew-kissed wildflower.
The young farmer and his wife lived together in a tiny shack that was held together with about three and a half coats of dirty red paint. The red paint was dirty because Ramsey had tried to paint the house during an unseasonable dust storm. He should probably have waited to paint, but the dust storm had blown so very hard that he and Glorinda were afraid that the force of the storm would have completely destroyed their little hand-me-down shanty.
In case you were wondering about the math behind the paint job the explanation is a fairly simple one. It seems that Ramsey had painted one coat of paint on the falling-down farm shack and the hot rising wind of the dust storm had dried the paint brittle, so he decided to go on and paint a second coat and the dust storm had dried that coat as well. A third coat proved no better than the first two coats. He was halfway through a fourth coat when the wind stopped blowing and he had run out of paint — so no matter how you count it up that is three and a half coats of red paint on one falling-down farm shack.
“Do you think that the shack will hold together?” Glorinda asked him.
“It will have to hold,” Ramsey said. “I am afraid that I have run completely out of paint.”
And then, once the painting was done, Ramsey decided to plant a crop. Unfortunately, the only cropland that he had to his name was a tiny patch of untillable dirt, no bigger than a grave dug sideways. The land had been given to him by his father-in-law, who was so very cheap by nature that it was said that he had taught himself to breathe through his nose in order to save the wear and tear on his teeth.
Unluckily, the land that Ramsey was given to farm lay two days of hard travel from the tiny falling down shack where he and his wife were supposed to live together. Ramsey worked on the land for five full days of a week and he would spend two days in travel out and back — which made for a nine day week.
“Between the four days of travel and the five days of work,” Jack told his wife, Glorinda. “I am away from you nine days out of every single week.”
“That is an honest fact,” Glorinda agreed. “I haven’t been unfaithful to you, but the mailman is beginning to look awfully promising.”
On the morning of Ramsey’s thirty third birthday he found himself far too far away from home. He had spent the entire morning plowing and planting and he had stopped for a bit of lunch. All that he had to eat was a slab of stale gray bread and a moldy slab of cheese that he was trying very hard to pretend was actually Gorgonzola cheese.
“I don’t actually know what Gorgonzola cheese tastes like,” Ramsey admitted to his wife when she packed his lunch. “But it is a small comfort to my mouth to imagine that I might actually be wealthy enough to purchase and dine upon such a fancily named cheese.”
“I gave you a double-sized hunk of that moldy cheese, Gorgonzola or not,” his wife Glorinda said. “On account of that bread is so thin that it has only got enough room on one side of it for spreading butter on.”
“Now all that I have to do is to find myself a butter tree,” Ramsey said. “Because birthday or not, I am sure that we cannot afford to buy any real butter.”
“I am heartily sorry to be such a very poor wife that I cannot provide my husband with a proper birthday meal to dine upon,” Glorinda apologized. “I will try to do better next week, come nine days from now.”
Only Ramsey would not listen to her apology.
“An honest slice of famine tastes a whole lot finer than a week-long dream of a feast,” Ramsey said, winking at her to make her laugh. “I married you for richer or poorer — and I figure with this ocean of poor that we have been drowning beneath for our first few years of marriage that we ought to dog-paddle on up to an island full of money any day now, just you wait and see.”
Glorinda laughed at her husband’s unfailing good spirits.
“With your kind of luck it’ll be on one of those eighth and ninth days of the week that you are traveling home on,” Glorinda teased. “And then I will have to share all of my wealth with the postman.”
“I am pretty sure that I have a whole lot more going for me than the postman does,” Ramsey pointed out, with a wink and a grin.
“That is true,” Glorinda admitted. “His earlobes smell awfully funny.”
Ramsey didn’t care to ask her how she came by that particular bit of knowledge. He just told himself that there were some things that a fellow was better off not knowing about his woman.
In any case, that was several days ago and Ramsey had just sat down upon a comfortable looking stump that really wasn’t all that comfortable at all and had unwrapped his stale gray bread and his moldy cheese when out of the woods walked a tiny stick of a woman. She looked nearly three hundred years old and her face was as wrinkled as a field filled with dried up mud and she smelled even worse than the postman’s earlobes — or at least that was what Ramsey guessed.
“Good morning to you farmer,” the old woman called out.
Ramsey nodded politely and good morninged her right on back. He wasn’t inclined to look down on the likes of any other human being. As bad as she was he supposed that someday he was going to look three times as worse.
She grinned when he nodded her way and when she grinned, Ramsey could see that she hadn’t a single tooth in her head.
He could tell something else as well.
She was hungry and she was staring at Ramsey’s skinny stale scrap of gray bread and his double-sized brick of moldy cheese like a dog staring at a freshly flayed beef bone.
“Come, good grandmother,” Ramsey politely said. “I will share with you my bread and my cheese for I can see that you are traveling way past hungry and there is more than enough here for the both of us to dine upon.”
“You are a kind soul,” the old woman said. “And you will surely be rewarded in heaven for your generosity.”
So the two of them sat down upon that stump that looked comfortable but wasn’t and Ramsey was so very taken by the old woman’s obvious need that he insisted she eat the moldy cheese herself.
“I have a very bad stomach,” Ramsey lied. “And the cheese is far too rich for my delicate digestion. Besides, it is Gorgonzola cheese, did you know that? I never could stand for a cheese that I needed a dictionary to spell.”
The old woman laughed.
“You lie just as poorly as you are dressed,” she told him. “But your untruth is based in a good and honest kindness and God will surely bless you for all that you have done.
“God will just as likely bless you as well,” Ramsey replied, but she only shook her head with a rueful laugh.
“God will have nothing to do with the likes of my people,” she said, and Ramsey was far too polite to ask for further details.
And then the old woman ate up the cheese and most of the bread and when they had both finished their meal Ramsey stood up and stretched his arms and uncracked his stiffened backbone, preparing to return to his work.
“I have rested long enough,” Ramsey said. “I must get back to my work. That field will not tend itself and the crows are looking hungrier than sin.”
The old woman put her hand out against Ramsey’s chest and stopped him cold. It felt as if he had run into a stubborn brick wall.
“You have done me a kindness,” the old woman said. “And in reward I would do you another.”
“There is no need for that at all,” Ramsey said.
“There is need enough if I say so,” the old woman said. “My name is Queen Maab and some folks will tell you that I am the queen of the Faerie people, all though I do not look it. Listen to what I will tell you to do and when you have done it you will thank me for the asking of it.”
So Ramsey stood and listened.
“Three hours walk into yonder forest you will find an ancient fire charred jack pine standing alone in a field filled with wilted blue sunflowers. If you take up your axe and you knock that old jack pine tree down you will find yourself a gift that is worth the keeping.”
Ramsey shook his head.
“I cannot go to your tree, old fairy woman,” Ramsey said. “I have corn to plant and a field that badly needs weeding.”
“Leave the field be,” the old fairy woman said. “I will watch it grow and I will tend to its needs while you are gone.”
Which made no sense at all, but there was something hiding deep within her words that told Ramsey that he really ought to listen to her. So he lay down his hoe and he took up his axe and he walked into the woods until he came to a field that was filled with wilted blue sunflowers and sure enough, standing in the center of that field was an ancient fire charred jack pine.
“If that much is true,” Ramsey told himself. “Perhaps there is more to what she has told me.”
He walked towards the ancient jack pine but the field must have been wider than it looked. It took him three whole hours for him to cross that sunflower field.
“My legs must be shrinking with age,” he told himself. “To have taken so very long to carry me across this sunflower field.”
He looked up at the jack pine and he could not believe his eyes. The tree was large enough to have been planted when the skies were still growing their very own particular shade of blue, but with his very first swing of the axe the old jack pine tree fell down with a heavy crash.
In the tree’s branches Ramsey found a raven’s nest and in the raven’s nest Ramsey found a single black egg and inside the egg which broke in his hands Ramsey found a stone ring that was as black as midnight’s darkest shadow and seemed to glitter like the stars in the heavens above.
Ramsey carefully placed the black stone ring upon his finger and in a twinkling he felt strangely refreshed as if he had eaten and bathed and rested for a week full of Sundays.
He walked back home to his field and when he got there he was amazed to find that the field was plowed and planted and the corn had grown up just as tall as a grove of third generation maple trees and the weeds had laid down and died like a field filled with battle weary soldiers and the earth looked to be as rich and loamy and fertile as the dirt of Eden itself.
“Old woman,” Ramsey said excitedly. “What have you done to my cornfield?”
“I have done nothing that time and toil would not have accomplished all by itself. Now hurry on home to your wife, farmer,” the old fairy woman told him. “That ring that you found was a magic wish ring. Whatever you wish for will be granted, just so long as you wear that wish ring. But beware my warning, farmer, for that wish ring holds one single wish and one wish only. So wish carefully and do not waste it, for once you have wished that one single wish the wish ring will be nothing but a simple piece of stone.”
Ramsey could not believe what she was telling him.
“But the wish ring must surely belong to you,” Ramsey said. “I cannot accept such an amazingly valuable gift as this. You have to take this back.”
“Take it back? Not after I have given it to you,” the old fairy woman said. “Farmer Ramsey, know this. I was old when that tree first sprouted. I was old when the tree that begat that tree first sprouted. All that I wish for now is a bit of soft moss to rest my head upon, a sky for a roof and a bird’s song to bid me good morning and good night for as long as I walk upon this earth. What more do I need? Now hurry home and do not talk to any strangers. Remember, you must tell no one about that wishing ring.”
And then she was gone, like a leaf blown in the wind.
Ramsey stood there alone in the field.
“I just can’t wait to get home and tell my wife Glorinda everything that has happened to me.”
So Ramsey hurried on home just as fast as he was able but he forgot all about the old fairy woman’s warning about talking to strangers. On his way home the farmer encountered a rich jeweler who spoke to him outside of a tavern that Ramsey could not afford to enter, speaking out of what the jeweler swore was nothing more than a fellow traveler’s kind courtesy.
It was all the excuse that the farmer needed. The jeweler’s simple greeting was an excuse for a man who spent his days swearing at horseflies and cursing at a mule’s behind to indulge in a much-needed gossip. Ramsey was so full of pent-up excitement that the story spilled out from his lips like water spilling out of a broken wooden bucket. He told the jeweler of his find, and at the words “anything you wish for” the jeweler’s eyes lit up like fairy lanterns in the night.
“A wish ring, you say? Only one wish, you say.” the jeweler said. “Let me see that ring, would you?”
Ramsey eagerly fished the wish ring from out of his pocket and he waved it beneath the jeweler’s nose. It was a rash move and he almost regretted his rashness, but the truth was that he was anxious to show his good luck off to anyone who would care to listen.
“Just take a look at it,” Ramsey said. “Have you ever seen such a ring as this?”
The jeweler smiled like an old field cat who has found himself a broken-winged bird.
“That is the most beautiful wish ring that I have ever seen and I have never seen the like of it,” the jeweler said. “You had best put that ring away in your pocket and be very careful not to show it to anyone else but me. In fact, it would be safer if I gave you a fine silk bag to keep the ring in. I am a jeweler, and I have many such bags and I would be more than happy to give you one for your journey.”
“It is not that handsome a ring,” Ramsey said. “I have worn it on my finger and I will continue to do so, but I thank you for kind offer.”
“I would like to buy you a drink,” the jeweler said. “If you will join me in the tavern.”
Ramsey could not believe the man’s kindness.
“In fact, you have far too many miles to travel,” the jeweler went on. “You should stay and sleep beneath my roof tonight. You should be my guest and I will feed you and clothe you like a prince. I will give you my very bed and I will sleep upon the floor.”
“You are far too kind,” Ramsey said.
“Think nothing of it,” the jeweler said. “The floor is good for my bad back, and perhaps it will bring me luck to give a little bit of shelter, food and aid to the wearer of a magic fairy wishing ring.”
The jeweler was just as good as his word.
He took Ramsey to his house and he fed him a fine meal of rich heavy food served on the jeweler’s finest silver dinnerware. He poured the farmer large glasses full of the finest and strongest wine that he had in house. Ramsey was unused to such lavish fare. He grew sleepy and he began to nod and finally he knelt and lay down upon the jeweler’s carpet and he fell fast asleep.
The jeweler chuckled softly to himself. He had been waiting for just this opportunity. He knelt down beside Ramsey’s slumbering form and he gently worked the wish ring from off of the sleeping farmer’s right hand.
Then the jeweler stood up and he tiptoed carefully out of the dining room and he went down to his basement workshop and he toiled just as hard as he had ever labored over a deadline on a last-minute commission. He took his time and he hurried as much as he could, walking that fine balance-beam that any good craftsman knows of, taking the time to do it right just as quickly as careful would allow him to. He crafted a fake wish ring out of a smooth black stone, nearly identical to the real wish ring.
Meanwhile, Ramsey slumbered on through the evening, snoring softly and dribbling spit-sleep into his greasy wine-stained beard. He really should have known better, but Ramsey was a simple man and he believed that people were generally better than they usually turned out to be.
Sometimes, stupid just gets in a man’s eyes.
The jeweler tiptoed back into the dining room. For some reason he wanted to chuckle and to curl his moustache and to rub his hands together with glee, but he warned himself to think clearly and he kept just as quiet as he was able to as he knelt down beside Ramsey’s sleeping body.
For a moment he thought of killing the man. That would be simpler, he told himself. He could bury him in the forest behind the house and none would be the wiser. But then his body might be discovered by hunters. A dog might dig him up or even a bear and then like as not someone might recall seeing the two men together the day before, sharing a drink in the tavern.
No, it would be simpler this way.
He thought about how he was going to manage the trick of easing the wish ring back onto the farmer’s finger and then it came to him like someone lighting a candle in a darkened room. He simply placed the wishing ring next to the farmer’s hand, as if it had slipped from off of his finger or else he had unwittingly removed the ring himself during his drunken slumber. It would be easily enough explained and a man who is embarrassed at passing out during a fine banquet would doubtless seize such upon such a simple explanation, rather than to face his own personal sense of humiliation.
Then the jeweler quietly walked to his bed and he let the farmer sleep on. It would be better if he woke on his own. There was always the possibility that the farmer might prove to be as unscrupulous as the jeweler was, of course. The farmer might very well awaken alone and find the jeweler asleep and steal his silver dinnerware and cutlery, but the jeweler was not concerned at the risk. The farmer could only carry so much plunder, and he seemed such a stupidly honest man. Besides, he would fear the repercussions of the local sheriff and even if he did make off with a little bit of insignificant wealth the jeweler intended to make up for any loss with the wish that he was prepared to make.
He slept peacefully, dreaming of shiploads of treasure and caves of undiscovered gems and riches. He dreamed of dancing girls and silver platters, intricately carved by a great hall of jewelers whom he would employ to carve all of his future commissions.
Meanwhile, Ramsey awoke alone.
His mouth tasted like a sand dune that had been trod upon by a caravan full of incontinent camels. His head was humming like an angry hornet’s nest and his eyes were red and sore. The very first thing that he saw was the fallen wish ring lying there beside his hand, and he picked the ring up hastily and he replaced it upon his finger. He felt so silly at almost losing it that he did not even stop for an instant to consider the possibility of foul play.
Ramsey picked up his belongings and he tried to be just as quiet as was possible. He was embarrassed at his behavior. He felt that he had been unspeakably rude, falling asleep in the middle of the jeweler’s charitably served supper. He felt very bad and he did not wish to disturb the kind man’s slumber, and more than that he felt stupid at nearly losing the magic wish ring.
Mind you, by now he had begun to wonder if what the old fairy woman had told him about the ring was even true at all. Still, she had managed to work her magic upon his corn field and he really ought to be grateful enough for that. If the ring wasn’t magic after all, at least he could be happy for his unexpected bounty. He needed to get home and replenish himself and return to the field and make ready for a harvest.
He tiptoed out of the house.
Perhaps someday he would think of a way to repay this man’s kindness, but for now he would simply hide his own embarrassment and allow the man to slumber peacefully.
“Good people like the jeweler will find their own reward, soon enough.” Ramsey told himself, speaking more truth than he could ever dream.
No sooner did the greedy jeweler awaken alone to an empty house that he leaped into action. He bolted all of the doors and he barred his windows shut and he even stopped up his chimney for fear of his neighbor’s nosiness. Then he stood in the center of the dining room and he took the very last untroubled breath of his soon to be untimely shortened lifespan and he made his carefully thought-out, greedily-planned, ill-considered wish.
“I wish for a house full of gold,” he said aloud.
Sometimes, stupid just gets in a man’s eyes.
The ring burned on his finger and he tried to pull it off but it felt as if the stone of the ring had somehow seized upon the bones of his finger and was grinding them together.
And then the rafters began to rain gold pieces.
Now gold is as heavy as a guilty man’s heart and a million pieces of gold weighs more than you might ever imagine it could. And this was far more than a million pieces of gold, raining down from out of the guilty man’s rafters. Quicker than a stolen breath, the jeweler found himself standing knee-deep in a floor filled with falling golden pieces.
He tried to pull himself free but the growing weight of the gold pouring down from the rafters of his house proved more difficult to free himself from than a pit full of unexpected quicksand.
“I take it back,” the jeweler shouted. “I take it back! Help! Help! Help!”
The jeweler continued to shout for help, but by the second shout of “back”, the pieces of gold were piled up hip-deep across the entire floor of the jeweler’s house. The jeweler could feel the cold of the gold pieces working their way into the bones of his skeleton, as the cumulative weight of all of those countless gold pieces began to weigh and grind against his ankles, knees and pelvic bones.
“Help me! Help me!” the jeweler called out in vain, but by the fifth “help me” he realized that his neighbors weren’t all that interested in listening in to anything that he possibly had to say let alone his yells for help, and as the gold pieces continued to rain down from out of the rafters he found that he was neck deep and his shouts for help had been reduced to mere husking grunts of something that almost sounded like hell or high water.
As quickly as a stolen breath the jeweler was completely buried beneath a mountain of gold pieces and his bones were crushed beneath a weight that could not be weighed or counted upon any moneylender’s balance. The wish ring was completely crushed and the jeweler’s greed was crushed as well and his heart was likewise crushed and he died.
At this point in the tale Ramsey was walking down the road to his home and he could feel the golden sunshine burnishing upon his cheeks and he smiled as the wind crackled merrily through the yellowing green leaves and he thought to himself just how happy a man’s life could truly be and he was actually singing to himself, albeit tone-deaf and about as tuneful as the farting of a bowel-bound bull moose.
While Ramsey was walking and whistling and trying to learn how to sing the old Fairy Queen arrived at the jeweler’s gold-filled house. She could feel the weight of the gold pressing against the timbers of the houses structure and she could feel the tiny moth-fluttered hopelessness as the jeweler’s dying heart beat out a final goodbye in a few last half-remembered tremors.
I must touch that heart, she thought to herself.
“Let me see,” she spoke aloud. “What shall it be? Big, or little?”
Then she decided upon little and she shrunk herself down to a size that would have proven to be less than a mouthful for a dust mite, had any dust mite been bold enough to try her temper. She flew in through the razor-thin slit beneath the base of the door and flitted around the compressed gold pieces, only pausing once to shrink just a little bit more to slide herself between two pieces of gold, one coin bearing the good King Oberon’s stern features, the other coin wearing the more kindly, coy and cunning visage of good Queen Titania.
“Your pardon, your majesties,” the Lady Maab said. “For not thinking to bring with me my chariot of hazel nut, but needs must win out when my hunger desires to be assuaged.”
Then she flitted downwards to where the remains of the jeweler lay crushed and buried beneath the countless hundredweights of fallen golden pieces. She could feel the greedy man’s essence leaving his very being as he lay there in the arms of eternal oblivion.
“I thought that you would have been the farmer Ramsey,” she spoke to the deaf as death ears of the jeweler’s memory — for nothing was really left of his ears or any features at all save a skim of powdered mealy mush. “Did you somehow outwit him? I suppose that it probably wasn’t all of that hard of a task. Are you feeling sorry that you did now? You should be sorry. Your cunning and your greed are only out-weighed by the burden of your own stupidity.”
Then microscopic Maab opened up her tiny infinitesimal mouth and she inhaled powerfully, sounding a little like the wind creeping through a crack in an old farmhouse’s windowsill. The multitude of wrinkles boldly plowed upon her features gently unfurrowed themselves. The crowfeet took wing and her laugh-lines giggled into nothingness and her youth was reborn in her features.
Then Lady Maab reached down and she closed her tiny hand about the crushed-to-a-shadow circumference of the wish ring, feeling the enchanted stone bauble fold like a shadow within her diminutive palm. Then she held the wish ring to the jeweled pucker of her lips and she inhaled that as well.
She sighed to herself.
How good the return of her youth felt to her.
“Shall I return to court?” she wondered. “Shall I take a lover, or perhaps two or three? Shall I seek vengeance upon those who have maligned my gentle reputation? Shall I seek out imaginary indignation or possibly invent new sins for man to frolic in?”
She smiled at the thought of all of the possibilities.
“Perhaps I shall simply go and see,” she said, and then she was gone, like the dream of an idea lost upon the wayward dance of the wind.
When Ramsey returned to his wife Glorinda he told her the tale of the old woman and the ring.
“She called herself Queen Maab,” Ramsey said. “And she told me that I might have whatever I wished for.”
Remember, dear reader, poor simple-hearted Ramsey still thought that he was wearing the original wish ring.
“Whatever shall we wish for?” Glorinda asked.
Ramsey carefully considered the question.
“Perhaps I should wish for a piece of good farmland, closer to our home,” he said. “With land situated closer to our home I could spend more time with my wife. These nine day weeks are really beginning to wear on me.”
“True,” agreed Glorinda. “But with a little bit more time and a little more work we could save up enough money from this year’s harvest to buy the land just the same and save the wish for later.”
“Why save it?” Ramsey asked.
“We only have one,” she reminded him. “We ought not to waste it.”
“That is true,” Ramsey agreed. “Perhaps I will work for another year and we can see what we can save. Now that the corn is grown, there will be enough time for me to plant another crop. We can make back twice as much as we would have made last year.”
“That is true,” the wife said. “What did we make last year?”
“Nothing at all, come to think of it,” Ramsey said. “But we ought to make twice as much by the end of this season. Say, what is two times nothing?”
“It is nothing that you should be thinking about,” Glorinda replied. “Let me help you this year. My family can keep an eye on our farmhouse. Together the two of us can certainly make a difference.”
And so that is what they did.
Ramsey went back to work and Glorinda accompanied him and by the end of the year they had saved up enough to buy themselves a piece of land next to their little shack of a farmhouse and the wish had been saved.
“What should we wish for now?” Glorinda asked.
“Some cattle would be nice,” Ramsey suggested. “A horse as well and perhaps some pigs.”
“That is true,” Glorinda agreed. “But if a little time and a little toil has bought us our new land, perhaps another year of good hard work could buy the animals.”
“That is true as well,” Ramsey concurred. “It would be even easier if I sold that piece of old land now. We have had a good harvest and a man who lives closer to my old land has been talking to me about buying it for some time now. I could sell it to him and save that money and we could save that wish ring for another whole year until we think of something that we really need.”
And that is exactly what they did.
Ramsey sold his old land to the neighbor and he worked even harder on his new land and in a year’s time they had more cattle than a tree had leaves and two horses to pull a new plow and a fine wooden wagon, as well as pork chops and roast pig for their Christmas supper.
“What else do we need?” Glorinda asked her husband.
Ramsey thought about it.
In truth, he had been thinking about it for some time now.
“Children,” he answered. “All that we really need now is some children to share our good fortune with and to help us work upon the land. I have made up my mind that I am going to use the wish ring to wish for children.”
The wife smiled shyly.
“There are better ways to make children than wishing for them,” she said. “And they are way more fun.”
Within three years of time Glorinda had given Ramsey three strong children and his farm had grown to become one of the richest farms in the whole entire countryside. His children grew tall and healthy and his wife remained his strong and his heart was happy and he awoke nearly every morning with a song upon his lips, although he still was quite tone-deaf.
“Perhaps you might wish for singing lessons,” Glorinda teasingly suggested. “We still have our wish left.”
“We should keep our wish,” Ramsey said firmly. “We should hang on to it, just in case our children have need of it.”
Which is exactly what they did.
Years later, when the Angel of Death came to call upon the household he found Ramsey and Glorinda wrapped together in a nightly embrace that was so tight that he decided it would be easier to take them both at the very same.
So Ramsey and Glorinda died happily, taken quietly in their sleep, wrapped together in the arms of a long and mutually shared love. Their children buried the two of them together upon the farm that the old farmer and his wife had loved so very much and they left the old stone ring upon their father’s ring finger, because he had worn that ring for as long as the children remembered.
Were the two of them happy, people asked their children?
It was a reasonable enough question. After all, in spite of his success both Ramsey and Glorinda had to work just as hard as any two people had ever toiled.
Where they happy? Why not, said the children.
After all, the two of them had everything that they could ever wish for.
The End
Hi.
I’m Steve Vernon. I’ve been writing for an awfully long time. Long enough to know better, but I just can’t shake the habit. I’m brand new here on Simily and I’m looking to share my stories with you.
I hope you enjoyed the read.
Leave a comment and tell your friends.
And PLEASE give my story a Simily Snap!
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