Before Mother decided I had outgrown such nonsense, Grandfather liked to tell me a story about the fairies that lived in the forest outside our town. 

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Hidden away in the trees, he would whisper, there once lived a court of fairies. They were majestic beings—tall and winged, each wearing a crown of stars that could only be seen reflected in their pale, crystalline eyes. In the fairies’ grove stood a massive tree whose branches stretched far into the heavens. Time slipped around the fairy folk freely, but once every hundred moons, the court gathered round the tree to slip an offering into the well nestled amidst the roots.

Some would sing to the tree with upturned faces, and treasure would fall from their lips with each otherworldly note.  

Others would sit high in the tree’s branches and draw with ink made the juice of the colorful berries that grew in bushes lining the grove. The treasure merely needed to be pulled from the bark canvas. 

Still others danced around the grove in a flurry of leaps and bows, leaving the ground littered with treasure-embedded footprints. 



As the hundredth moon approached, a fairy prince found himself without treasure. He tried and tried for many a moon, but not singing nor drawing nor dancing yielded any treasure for his offering. With the court preparing to gather the next day, the Prince turned to the stars for help.

[i]We can show you the way to treasure beyond imagining,[/i] they said eagerly. [i]All it will cost you is the time in your veins. A pittance, really. [/i]

So the fairy Prince traded his eternity for mortality, and the stars pointed to a twig on the ground. And the Prince was inspired.



When his turn came to present an offering, the Prince rose and faced the assembled fairies. With a voice as clear as the forest-fresh air around them, he spoke of a magical stick that led its owner to his heart’s desire. With only his words he wove a story, and when he had finished he gathered the treasure from his audience’s captivated gazes and dropped it down the well at the tree’s roots.



Time passed. The Prince did not feel its hold, nourished as he was by the grove’s colorful fruit. The sun and moon still obeyed the rhythms of the universe, however, and time came again for the fairy court to lay their treasure at the roots of the tree. So once again, the Prince went to beg the stars for inspiration.

[i]Surely we can help,[/i] they replied. [i]Merely hand us the jewels on your back.[/i]

So the Prince traded his wings for a vision of a troublesome fly and went on his way.

At the offering, he told the court about a tiny group of pixies that wreaked havoc in the gardens of mortals. Their resounding laughter rang with both amusement and the tinkling of treasure, and if anyone found the Prince's apparrel odd, none commented on the long cloak draped over his empty back. 



When the next hundredth moon rolled around, the stars were waiting for the Prince. 

[i]The glimmer in your eyes belong to us,[/i] said the heavens. [i]We would have it returned.[/i]

The Prince froze. They wanted his crown of stars? Would he even be a fairy without it?

[i]No less a fairy than one who brings nothing to the offering-well, Highness,[/i] the stars purred.

Convinced, the Prince squared his shoulders and turned his face skyward. When the glare faded from his eyes, he stood in an empty grove. 

Gone was the fairy court. Gone were the bushes, the tree, and the bottomless treasure-well. He waited for daybreak, but the grove remained empty. Blind to his home, the Prince was forced to depart, stumbling through thicket and underbrush as he traded the forest for mortal landscapes. 

And so it was that he slunk into the village-by-the-forest, shoulders hunched against the curious eyes of the locals, trying for all his worth to escape notice. His efforts were forgotten, though, at the discovery of a small throng of people, all sitting rapt as a bard gestured wildly as he relayed the tale of a magical stick that could lead its owner to his heart's desire.

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I liked to imagine the townspeople listened to the bard with the same wonder that danced in my grandfather’s pale, crystalline eyes each time he told me the story.