The sea rages. Rather than fear any coming storm, you could fling open your every last window and door. That would make it easier for spirits or faeries or what-have-you to find you and take glorious hold. The Crone will explain more. Come, listen to the tale of her beginning. 

It’s up to you to find what meaning you will.

 

 

A faraway king heard tell of a maiden’s lovely face and wanted her for his own.

The maiden read his letter of proposal and knew right away he fit her fancy. For he spoke of her being a queen wielding power to help everyday folk, and that sounded very good to her.

Besides. No one else would have the beautiful maiden. Her parents had despaired of ever marrying her off.

The maiden agreed to return with the king’s messenger upon a royal ship. The captain and crew couldn’t stop staring at her, so great was her beauty. Meanwhile she became very excited. Looking up at the main mast of the ship, she went to climb up.

The captain caught her round the waist and pulled her down. She explained she wished to sit in the crow’s nest to see if she could grow the wings or beak of a crow. She thought it possible.

“But why not?” she asked the flustered captain who held her fast. He tried not to look at the king’s betrothed as if she were a nutter.

“Why, your lovely hair would get tangled in the wind if you climbed so high, of course,” he sputtered.  

The maiden agreed she didn’t want her hair mussed. Do not judge her. With such overwhelming beauty, she couldn’t help being vain. She also knew good and well that without her lovely face the king would not marry her. And then she couldn’t do good things for a great many everyday folk.

When the crew sighted mermaids, the maiden bounced about the deck with glee. She insisted she knew of mermaids from books and dreams and would very much like to jump in the sea and meet one. She actually said so.

The maiden seemed unaware that her extravagant betrothal dress would drown her and that mermaids are known to be cruel.  

The crew began to mutter amongst themselves with faces aghast. She noticed and grew pensive, wishing for once in her life to be thought wise and not a fool.

It was no use. She couldn’t put the brakes on her fanciful nature.

The maiden talked quite a lot about wanting to befriend a unicorn once she reached the king’s castle. She was sincere in this. Captain and crew worried that when she opened her fanciful mouth before the king, he might find her queenly unsuitable.

And yet, her heart was as good as her face was beautiful.

After many days at sea, a great storm arose. “Batten down the hatches!” the captain ordered, and men scurried in each of the four directions. Our maiden seized this opportunity to climb the ship’s mast.

She really, really wanted to see if the crow’s nest held magic that could give her a beak. This notion which had taken hold so enchanted her that she didn’t stop to think that the king might not want his queen to be beaked. 

The maelstrom blackened and bore down upon the ship. Ropes twisted, creaked, and snapped. An enormous wave crested high, high, high above her head. So stunned was she at its frightening magnificence that she made no protest.

This, despite the sea shaping itself into her deathbed. 

Our maiden felt the shock of the sea’s cold and tasted its salt upon her tongue. She found herself bobbing on the heaving sea with a piece of broken mast in her hand. This wasn’t so bad as you might think.  

For our maiden floated. She did it prettily, and she did it with ease.  

She lifted her lovely, smiling face to see a fountain of watery wind blowing towards her. From sea to heaven it rose. She imagined it to be a magical beast.

Her breath drew in when the windy water wrapped itself around her in a twist. There was an unexpected spurt upward—fathoms high she went into heaven’s tempest. What happened next was this:

A maiden riding a mast from a ship.

She found herself soaring through a fountain of seawater that glittered with salt. Lightning cracked, and in a blinding flash of light she glimpsed what could only be the billowing veil of the sylph called Wind.

“Tell me your life’s one wish,” Wind invited with her lashing voice.

“Oh, but I’m stuffed full of wishes!” the maiden answered as she clutched her zooming mast stick.

“Tell me your ONE life’s wish,” Wind screeched in demand. Lightning drew jagged lines in the sky, and the thunder that followed very nearly shook our maiden free from her makeshift witch’s broom. Faced with a plummeting death—

The maiden’s truest wish screamed from her lips with an anguished longing she’d had no idea she possessed.

“I want to be wise! But I’m so filled with fancy, you see. It can never be.” And the maiden began to cry.  

Wind deemed this wish the best she’d heard in a very long while. “Your heart wants what is faraway to draw near. Therefore I shall make you the teller of fairy tales. But there is a price you must pay, and it’s one you hold dear.” 

Wind blew.

She blew and blew and blew—

Wrinkles.

The maelstrom vanished.

During her fantastic fall from a clear blue sky, our maiden had no idea the change she undertook. Wind caught her at the last perilous moment and lay her gently upon the battered ship’s deck. In this she fared much better than the crew, who lay moaning gobbledygook.  

The crew set sail for home mourning the loss of the beautiful maiden betrothed to the king. For when she could not be found, the captain declared with a cry that she must have washed overboard into the sea.

Meanwhile, an old woman tended the wounds of injured men with bandages as she regaled them with tales of wonder to ease their pain.

“Who is this kind and wise crone?” the sailors asked one another with incredulity. “Where did she come from?” Neither captain nor crew could account for the presence of the cheerful and heavily wrinkled woman leaning upon a stick fashioned from the mast of the ship.

They had no idea she was a changeling.

Yes, a changeling—the true kind, that you should grow up and want to be. Isn’t it grand that your deepest, most unknown longing is WITH SURPRISE meant to be achieved? For most of you it tends to happen après a journey lived at raging sea. Whatever.

No price is too dear to pay for the grace of blooming into wisdom. And the play of ever-happily.

To be wise is to be in wonder, to find what is impossible hiding in absolutely everything. Vivid appreciation—divine magic—is required. Simply open your eyes and see. Do it, truly.

As for our maiden who of a sudden found glory in thin white hair…You should know it was only the beginning for her. For Wind decreed she would keep her fated number of years to live.

Though most pray to find the fountain of youth, our heroine was thrilled to have found the opposite that fated day at sea. It was how a wrinkled crafter of fairy tales she came to blessed be. She found her stories helped everyday folk fall into wonder.

And come so very alive. As was she. 

She LOVED being forever wizened, forever old.

For she was Crone. 

 

 

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Featured storm image by Prettysleepy

Lovely maiden image by Arthur Rackham (repurposed here)

Ship at sea image by ArtTower

Sylph called Wind image by Arthur Rackham (repurposed here)

Crone image by Arthur Rackham (repurposed here)

Yes, I LOVE Arthur Rackham’s illustrations. Aren’t they classic and lovely???