Cindy and the Anole

            In a time when wishing still worked (and by that I mean last Tuesday), Cindy greatly wished for gas money to get her beloved blue Yaris to Palm Bay by Friday. She knew beyond knowing that everything else would fall into place. The Facebook page had been explicit about that much: At the right time, the right love will come. Although the line of suitors might be long, her heart told her she was the right person and, according to the last status update posted at 9:15 pm Eastern, this Friday was the right time.

            There had been no postings on Rose’s page since Monday, no “likes” on cat videos, no Candy Crush scores. The fairy running the show had gone silent as the tomb and this made Cindy nervous—all connection to Rose was lost. With no new updates, Cindy reread the story in the “About” section, the story that had brought in 10,000 Facebook friends and gotten its own subreddit. Everyone knew the story. It began with the phrase stories like this always began with:

            Florida woman…infertile for years, was blessed with a child by the fairies. Trouble began when she and her husband could only invite eleven to the christening party instead of all twelve because the per plate costs were astronomical and the mother could not even hear of leaving her second cousin Shirley off the list. The Forgotten Fairy, being none too pleased, came anyway, arriving as the others were passing out their blessings on the beautiful baby Rose.

            “Enjoy her while you can, for in sixteen years’ time, your girl will prick her finger on a spindle and be your girl no more.”

            “Huh?” The mother barely looked up from her plate of steak and potatoes.

            “Die, my dear. Your child will die.”

            Everyone was shocked for they knew that this was not the way to win friends and influence people. Silly, silly Forgotten Fairy. But one fairy had yet to give her blessing for the girl, so on top of the beauty and joy and analytical thinking skills that had already been bestowed, she gave her a different future.

            “No, she will sleep. She will sleep for one hundred years until the right person comes and wakes her with a kiss.”

            The Forgotten Fairy wanted to argue that this was not a true blessing per se, but even she knew when not to press her luck. From that day forward there were no spindles allowed in the region, which wasn’t a difficult task to pull off since lumber and citrus were the main industries. The closest weavers were down in Miami where the prices were better.

            Cindy made a mental note to see if maybe one of these fairies might bankroll her trip.

            And Rose had become everything the fairies had promised. She was as beautiful as a sunset on the ocean, as graceful as a dolphin, and as smart as a robber baron, though significantly more kind-hearted. On Rose’s sixteenth birthday they feted her with Coca-Colas, cakes, and ice cream sundaes (including sprinkles). After the party, her mother and father reveled in their good fortune at having thwarted the Forgotten Fairy’s curse and so went to Daytona to take in the waves and celebrate, leaving Rose free to roam her father’s large citrus grove at will.

            Deep within the orange trees, on a disremembered piece of the property, she found an old shed. And in that shed was a spinning wheel, ignored by everything except time. Being a bright and curious girl, Rose reached out her hand to give the wheel a turn and see if she could discern how the mechanism worked, perhaps she could use it to pattern a machine to pull clothes in off the line or make bread faster. The possibilities seemed endless to her, as possibilities often do.

            When she reached out, a finger brushed the sharp edge of the spindle. One small bead of blood formed and Rose fell fast asleep in a lump on the floor. It seems no one remembered that she had been christened a week after her birth and so “sixteen years’ time” was not, sadly, the same as “on her sixteenth birthday.” It would seem that sometimes it does a mother and father a better service to pay attention to their own daughter’s story rather than to stories of the past. But that is a lesson that would come too late to Rose’s parents.

            Cindy always felt a sadness when she got to this part of the story. It was on her own sixteenth birthday, just last March, that she’d chosen to come out to her parents and they, like Rose’s parents, had thought only about how things usually are and not how they sometimes are. They wanted a grand wedding and grandchildren. They wanted her family photos on the mantel and picnics on the lawn. No matter what Cindy said, they couldn’t see these as part of her story now. But Cindy still could and in every daydream was Rose.

            A quiet fairy emerged from her hiding place among the cabbage palms and spread Rose out on the floor, covering her with a light cotton cloth for comfort. A hundred years would have been a very long while to wait in such an awkward position. As the fairy left the shed, an army of brambles pushed forth from the ground. They grew and grew until they barred the door. They grew and grew until the windows could admit no light. They grew and grew until any passerby, should there be a passerby, would never have guessed that beneath the white flowers and prickly thorns was a shed and that in that shed was a beautiful girl, sleeping peacefully while the world continued on without her, as it so often has been known to do.

            When her parents returned, they fell into a different kind of sleep. They knew no joy without their bright light of a daughter and their hearts caved in day by day until their souls slept soundly in their cages. But the waves on the ocean reminded them of her flowing locks and the happy twittering of the scrub jays sounded like her mischievous laughter. The grief grew until it was unbearable, at which point they moved to Ohio. The tale was that the sky was never blue there and the sun was never bright, so nothing might remind them of their precious daughter. And over the years the orange grove flourished around the shed and the town grew into strip malls and freeways taking the tourists to Miami, Daytona, and Cape Canaveral.

            When the Facebook page with this story began making the rounds last spring, Cindy had been cynical. The fairy running the page seemed to be friending everyone. How was anyone to feel special, lost among the thousands of friends? But each status update reminded her of the girl’s beauty and each YouTube clip post showed everlasting love. Cindy felt more and more sure that she must get to Palm Bay. As the day approached, everyone on the friends list was convinced they were the one, but Cindy knew that, regardless of what anyone else thought, she was the one. And when she wished for gas money, a small anole perched on her windowsill, spread his bright dewlap open wide, and dropped a hundred-dollar bill by her open hand.

            And Cindy was off to travel across the state to find her way to Rose.

            When she arrived in Palm Bay she prepared herself to ask a gas station attendant the way to Rose’s shed, but the line of cars leading out Highway 95 told her all she needed to know. As Cindy began to hang her head in defeat, a small anole hopped on the hood of her car. He spread his bright dewlap open wide and cocked his head to the left toward a small dirt walking path. One wink and the anole was off the hood and scrambling down the path, leaving Cindy no choice but to desert her beloved blue Yaris on the side of the road and run after the agile little lizard.

            She ran and ran, never letting her feet leave the small path which seemed to disappear behind her as she went. Mosquitoes buzzed her ears and fleas bit at her ankles, but still she ran. The anole disappeared and the citrus trees blotted out the sun, but still she ran. And before long it appeared, the pile of brambles that hid the shed, just as Rose’s cover photo had shown. But how to get in?

            She reached her hand to where she thought the door might be, but the vines were too tight, the thorns too sharp, for her hands to unweave. She brought her small knife from her pocket and tried to cut through them, but again the vines were too tight, the thorns too sharp to give her any entry to the shed. As she opened her mouth to try and bite through the vines, she caught site of another tiny anole sitting at her feet, shaking his head in disbelief. He opened his bright dewlap wide and with a wink darted through the brambles. Cindy heard a small click from inside the shed and the vines slowly retreated back into the ground as the door opened for the first time in one hundred years.

            The tight space was dark and musty, as would be expected, but there was a gentle glow surrounding the girl on the floor. She was everything her picture had promised even though her picture had looked suspiciously like a young Kristen Bell (sometimes fairies must make do with what they have). Cindy walked slowly forward and knelt beside her. Did she love cats as much as the fairy had said? Would her love of Jules Vern novels correlate to an obsession with Doctor Who, as the fairy had implied? Could she really think everything looked better decorated with an owl sticker? Cindy knew that thinking too much in situations like this only led to trouble, so in she leaned and touched her lips to those of the sleeping Rose. And, as you might suspect, they lived happily for the rest of their days, or rather until one of them decided to go to college in another state. Even fairy magic has its limitations.

---

---