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THE MAIDEN WHO WAS WASHED OUT TO SEA, a fairy tale for enlightenment
Outside the cottage window rain falls and may never stop. Ships are said to be lost and do wreck upon the rocks. Gather round, listen as the crone tells us the tale of a life changed by a long-ago falling rain.
Find what meaning you will.
There once was a maiden doted on by an entire village. Not a day of anguish had she ever known. This remained true until the village miller insulted a wandering sorcerer by mistake on a bright summer’s day.
The touchy sorcerer pointed his crooked stick at the sky, thunder boomed, and the heavens split open. The maiden’s village washed into the sea. She was alone in her childhood home at the time and completely unaware.
When she thought to wonder at the leaking roof and sounds of splashing against the walls, she opened the front door. The maiden gaped in confusion to see wooden houses like hers bobbing on enormous swells of dark water.
“Papa!” she shrieked.
Though she heard gurgling screams, the maiden received no answer from her father. She stood in the doorway and watched as countless villagers she loved slipped beneath the capsizing sea.
Frantic, she searched the house but found no Papa. The library was locked as usual, but no one answered from inside. The house pitched in the waves and she cut open her feet on broken bowls of glass. Her head began to pound. That’s when she found a closet in which to sit and howl.
By the next morning she had gone a bit mad. She jumped into the waves, intent on swimming toward the wind-carried voice of the cobbler’s wife from another bobbing house.
Tiny mermaids like minnows punctured our maiden all over with sharp teeth as she swam. There was not a small loss of blood. She barely had strength to pull herself back onto her porch. Leaning against the door, she looked out to see thousands of minnow-sized mermaids lifting their tiny hairless heads out of the sea to grin at her.
Back in the closet our maiden went.
Until she needed to eat. The cobbler’s wife shouted instructions, and our maiden sobbed as she dutifully ripped her dresses into strips to make nets. With these she managed to catch fish for her suppers.
Winter came. Our maiden stepped out on the porch to see ice chunks floating in the sea. And yet still the tiny mermaids circled her house, having put on blubber for the colder waters. Carefully, she knelt with grumbling stomach to pull up her nets. Â
The fish had got loose. The knots of the nets had been untied. Baffled, the maiden blinked when ten thousand tiny mermaids rose to hold their heads above water. They wiggled clawed fingers for her to see.
“Oh, you unknotted my nets, you evil creatures!” the maiden screeched, pulling out her hair until she was half-bald. If you envision this correctly you will see she was no longer recognizable as the person she once was.
Later as our maiden shivered, muttered gibberish, and swept ash from the hearth, she found a key hidden between two stones. Â Â
This was how she gained entry to her Papa’s library. She toted books to make a big crackling fire and warm her blue fingers and toes. Book after book she tossed upon the hearth. With nothing better to do, she opened one of the books and began to read. The creaking house on the sea faded away. Our maiden lost all sense of time. Winter passed into spring with our maiden in wonder over worlds she’d never known could be. Her loneliness vanished, for she discovered that reading was the same as being in conversation with a great many voices.
When she’d read all the books, our maiden read them again. By this time a light had come into her eyes.
She needed more stories; she couldn’t get enough! Knowing exactly the kind she liked, she began to make them up.
Sitting on the porch as she imagined scenes on the swells of sea, she told a tale out loud. The tiny mermaids gathered to listen. They swooned from her poetic prose. Just when the heroine was set to die—our maiden fell silent.
The mermaids flipped. They thrashed the sea with their tiny tails while the maiden serenely waited. At last they gave up and spoke together in one melodic voice: “You understand us, you know our peculiar pain. For how else do you tell this tale of sorrow, this story of utter rage? We beg you for the ending. How will we—she—be saved?”
And our maiden leaned so close, she smelled the mermaids’ salted breath. She whispered the heroine’s transformation and how it came to be.
The mermaids wept in one another’s arms and died a little death.
How amazed our maiden’s neighbors were to see her walking on the sea. For the mermaids made a moving carpet for her to set her feet.
The sea villagers had once known a meek and silly maiden, and now before them was a woman wise. She held them captive with grand stories and gazed upon them with calm eyes.
To say the maiden’s ordeal had made her who she was is not exactly true. There was another ingredient, there must have been, or else her neighbors would have changed as had she.
The secret, of course, was in the locked library.
When a woman is shown the world and hears its many voices inside of books, she naturally feels compassion and moves to soothe its many hurts.
Not long thereafter the houses of the sea villagers washed up upon the beach of a beautiful queendom. To enter the pearl gate required words of wisdom, and the maiden was chosen to offer such on behalf of them all.
“I know who I am,” she said in great humility.Â
“And who is that?” the queen asked.
“The many in one woman,” our maiden answered.
The gate swung open. The queen recognized a crone, however young, when she met one.
If you enjoyed this fairy tale for enlightenment, you may subscribe to receive Crone Tales for free HERE.
And please leave a comment below, I LOVE COMMENTS! 🙂
And yes, that IS a vintage Cinderella image and I DID replace her glass slipper with a stack of books.
~Cricket
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The witch in the wishing well, a fairy tale for enlightenment
On the cottage porch is both sunshine and shade. Women gather here with silver spoons and marmalade. Cozy beneath quilts, the crone rocks in her chair and remembers a witch who found transformation deep in the earth. Would you like to hear the tale? Listen. Find what meaning you will.
A patch of dark forest encircled a witch’s cottage in the middle of a village. Also in this village were cruel children who tormented a small girl with a lisp and crossed eyes. Day after day they dropped her down a wishing well and left her to scream in terror.
In an effort to have one day’s peace, our little girl hid in the patch of dark forest. That’s when she got to watching the witch’s cottage and got an idea. For she knew that no one messed with a witch. Not even wolfish children.
“If I had the power of a witch they couldn’t hurt me again!” she declared and marched up to the cottage.
The witch opened the withered wooden door. “I always wanted a daughter,” she said.
Our little girl slipped inside. The door closed tight.
Twelve years passed with no villager seeing the little girl and thinking nothing of it (not even her parents). In the meantime she studied as apprentice to the witch. When she finally turned the last page of the witch’s ancient book of magic, she declared herself safe from the wolfish children ever hurting her again.
“It’s time for me to get out of this cottage for a while,” she said with relief, for twelve years is a long time to study. The witch stayed behind as she was now old and decrepit in her bed.
As it turned out, the wolfish children had grown up as well, but the new witch of the village recognized them at once. As she passed them by, with a tilt of her head to bring them into focus with her crossed eyes, she spoke with guttural verse the spells to get her revenge.
The grown children’s eyes widened and turned milky white to make them blind. Their tongues shriveled in their mouths to become ash. They spit and spat. The villagers shrieked in fright and huddled with bowed heads as the new witch walked through the village with her chin held high.
When she got good and ready, she returned to the cottage in the patch of dark forest. “You are the only one left who doesn’t fear me!” she declared with glee.
“Even I do, a little,” the old witch said from her bed. “You are a better, more heartless witch than ever I was.” And then she died with pride. Now the witch’s cottage belonged to the witch with a lisp and crossed eyes.
In an effort to appease the new witch in the village, a cake was baked and delivered to the cottage in the patch of dark forest. Brave villagers placed it upon the doorstep, knocked, and ran away quick as rabbits.
Our witch opened the door. Her jaw dropped in surprise. No one was there and so she lifted the cake and took it inside.
“They remembered my birthday,” she exclaimed and sliced into the cake with the excitement of a little girl. But her smile fell away when a frog’s leg stuck to the edge of the knife. When she placed a piece of the cake upon a plate, no less than six bulging frog eyes stared back at her.
Our witch grew very, very still. “This is what they think I eat,” she whispered to the empty cottage.
There are moments in life and this was hers. She received unsolicited (divinely delivered) proof that she was never going to get things arranged so she could be happy. For our witch, the proof was not in the pudding, but rather in the cake.
A froggy cake.Â
Our witch with a lisp and crossed eyes sat before the hearth’s fire, wrapped in blankets, and wept for her existence.
By midnight she was curled up in the corner on the floor.
By dawn she’d left her cottage forever to go stand at the wishing well. “I wish I were dead,” she said. And, with no help from a wolfish pack of children, our witch placed a bare foot in the well’s bucket and held tight to the rope to lower herself down the narrow well and into the water far below.
You may be unaware, but when a witch sits unmoved with her demons, they will at some point give up tormenting her and go away. They will leave her in peace. It was no different with our witch.
After 40 or 49 days (depending on which version of this story you hear), the sun shone into the depths of the well. It did this with Silence and not with a spell.
Thereafter, our witch felt quite content to stay put.
Villagers (who had no idea the witch could hear) stood by the well and begged for their wishes to come true, tossing in copper coins as bribes to they-knew-not-quite-who…
“If only my feet were tiny…”
“If only I could spin straw into gold…” Â
“If only I was kissed by a prince…” Â
Our witch in the wishing well heard every word. She felt pity for those who believed they needed their wishes to come true, for she knew what it was to be frightened—and thus confused.
And so, she answered each wish with a wordless spell.
Not one spell she cast indulged a belief of what would set things right. There was no spell cast for beauty or riches or a whole different life. The spell for each well-wisher was the same. It was
One. Spell. Only.
(There was only one she’d ever needed to learn, only one to have on demand. Let this be a lesson to you who believe thick ancient books will give what only a stint in stillness can!)
She’s still there in that well, our witch with a lisp and crossed eyes. If you find her, ask for what you will, but know this: Your wish won’t matter to her one little whit. Like everyone else, you’ll get the same gift:
An overflowing bucket of not needing to wish.
Ahh…you’re waiting for the revelation of the spell. I’m sorry to tell you that I cannot tell it, for a wordless spell cannot be put into words. Do not feel anxious, for this will not stop you from receiving it.
Neither can I tell you the end to this story, for how could the experience of immortality ever end? It is an everlasting
“And she lived happily right now.”
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