The Blacksmith's Tale

(note from GB: this was originally written for a class as an addition to the canterbury tales, as told by an original pilgrim, but I think it still stands on its own as a short story)

There was a young man who lived in a village that I have forgotten the name of. He cared for all the people of the village, although they did not care for him overly much. Each morning, half an hour past dawn, he would walk to each house in turn, knocking on their doors. When they answered him, he would ask how they were feeling, and if there was anything that he could do to help them that day. More often than not, the people would shake their heads scornfully, and frustratedly mourn their lost sleep.

But although they did not hide their frustration, they never told the man to stop, until one morning when the owner of the local inn barked out in frustration, "Why will you not just be silent for once, and let us sleep in in peace!"

The young man was confused, unsure of how he had erred. But he didn't want to be the one hurting his village, so he decided to seek out the nearby elf-queen. The man's village was known for miles around, because only a day's walk away was a castle or a waterfall or an abandoned old shack, and within it lived an old woman, who everyone claimed could grant wishes, if she was granted great gifts in return.

And so, the man set out in search of the elf-queen, with the goal of finding gifts to give her along the way. Just as he exited the village, the young man came across a bridge over a river that he had never seen before on a map. The waters under the bridge were a deep muddy brown, marbled through with a clear, near transparent, blue. There was a young girl sitting on the edge of the bridge, legs dangling inches above the water, and she looked up as the man approached.

"Hello there," she greeted, voice light with youth, but thick with an unidentifiable accent. "What brings you this way?" she asked, smiling slightly, and beckoning the man over.

The man sat beside her, and responded: "I seek the elf-queen, to ask her to help me continue to help my village, without bothering them as the innkeeper told me I have been."

The girl nodded. "I cannot help you myself, but I can offer you this," she said, and pulled a bright red apple from her skirts. "A single bite of this apple will be enough to sustain you for months. However, if you believe it would be more valuable to do so, it would also serve as one of two gifts that you could give to the elf-queen in exchange for the answer to your question."

The man thanked her sincerely, carefully wrapped the apple in cloth, and set it in his near-empty bag.

An hour or so later, the man came across a traveler, heading in the opposite direction as him, a cloak that may have once been a deep red wrapped tightly around an obscured form. The traveler's hood was pulled low. Just like the man, he was on foot, but his arm was raised as though he was guiding a horse or donkey.

The two men greeted each other, and decided to stop for a rest and talk, as their paths would otherwise have forced them to diverge. The man from the village explained his quest once again, and asked if there was any way that he might aid the other man. The traveler was inspired by the young man's quest, and so offered him an accord. He was, he explained, a traveling merchant, who through a series of unfortunate turns had had his faithful donkey cursed to be invisible. He offered to sell the young man the donkey, as such a magical gift would make a grand offering to the elf-queen. The young man asked if the merchant might have anything else that could be offered to the elf-queen instead, as the hardy donkey could be a great boon to the man's village. But the merchant shook his head, and told the young man that the ass was the only thing he had to offer that the elf-queen would accept.

And so the young man nodded, and rested his hand on the donkey. He went to search his bag for payment for the merchant, but by the time he turned around again the merchant had vanished. He could not find any sign of where the merchant had gone, and so he took the payment for the donkey and left it in a neat pile on the side of the road, before continuing on.

The path steadily became steeper and steeper, the sun crept towards the horizon, and soon the man found himself on the top of a hill, looking out over his village. Standing, waiting, at the top of the hill, was an old woman. Branches blossomed from her back, wings reaching toward the sun, illuminated by the darkening sky. The woman spoke slowly, careful intent shaping each word.

"What brought you here?"

"I have come to give you gifts that I found on my journey, and to ask for a boon in return," the man said, and handed over the donkey and the apple.

The woman nodded. "What is it you would ask for in return for these magical gifts?"

The man said, "Another from my village told me to be silent, but I do not know what he really wanted. So, I would ask that the intent of his speech be imparted onto me, so that I can let it guide my future attempts to help the people of my village."

The elf-queen smiled at the man's clumsy request, and the man found himself back in his village. Exhausted from his journey, and prone to waking early, the man made his way home, and quickly fell asleep. The next morning, he woke at dawn, and half an hour later made his way to the home of the innkeeper, and knocked solidly on the door. However, nobody answered. He knocked again, and kept doing so. The innkeeper did not answer the young man's knocks, nor did any of his other neighbors.

Slowly, the village awoke, three hours after sunrise, half the morning already wasted away. The residents of the village were baffled by the lack of their customary morning interruption. They looked for the young man, but could not find him anywhere, and found an ordinary donkey, sniffing an apple in the young man's room. They sold the donkey to a traveling merchant who came through the village the next day, and the innkeeper shared the apple among his family.

The village tried not to let the disappearance of the young man bother them, for the relative wealth that the sturdy donkey brought was seen as a spectacular boon. Still, each morning, the residents of the village slept later and later, and maybe, by now, they might even sleep until noon.

The people of the village never learned that it was the elf-queen that had silenced the young man, and the innkeeper assumed that he had simply taken his desire for silence—intent exacerbated by exhaustion and frustration—to heart, and left, to never return.