While eating his supper, and building a snowman out of his mashed potatoes, the boy engaged in stealing peas as opportunity offered off Sith’s plate. These became the potato man's eyes, nose, and unhappy frown at the prospect of being eaten. Expertly, he added a pat of butter for blond hair.
As he diligently performed the task, the boy was asked by Athiel questions woven with threads of suspicion. Each word was a hidden snare, ready to trap his secrets, for she knew he liked to play hooky from school, go fishing, swim in Gold Creek, or pick somebody’s strawberries. So she was hell-bent on lecturing him about why he shouldn’t do it and why he should attend school instead. Of course, to do that, she needed to prove he’d skipped school. Yet the boy’s attempts at concealing his actions were meticulous. He had wiped away all the strawberry stains and scrubbed his hands clean, hoping to evade any interrogation. Yet Athiel’s keen eyes weren’t fooled.
“Did you attend school today?” she inquired, launching the first strike in their verbal sparring match.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You have strawberry stains,” she noted. “Have you been picking strawberries?”
“No, ma’am,” he said, showing her his hands. “You can see there are no stains.”
The boy’s hands appeared pristine, but Athiel’s observation shifted to his lips. “That ain’t the stains she’s talking about,” Sith chimed in, exposing a truth the boy had overlooked. As he hastily wiped his lips with his napkin, the evidence of his deception was laid bare. Sure enough—it came away red.
“You lied about skipping school, didn’t you?” Athiel concluded.
End of discussion. He lit out for the door. There’d be consequences for this, but not just for him. Later, he’d give Sith a pounding for his remark. The boy stopped at the door and looked back at Athiel just long enough to say, “You know, one of these days I’ll be telling the truth and you won’t believe me, and then you’ll be sorry!”
He left. He was not the model boy of the village, and everybody knew it. Sith was. Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a constant good example. It somewhat rankled him to be thought of by all as third best while living in the same house as the first best and without even a second best—but it didn’t rankle him enough to actually do anything about it.
The boy sulked now about having been caught lying. The first rule of lying is to get your facts straight. Then you can bend and twist them as you need. To the boy, lying was an art form. It was his canvas, and his imagination his brush. Shucks! Anybody can give up lying. He’d seen others do it hundreds of times. It’s sticking with it that requires practice and perseverance. It’s only the people who can’t get away with it that have to resort to the truth. They just don’t take the time to develop the skill, that’s all. Why, after a few hundred spankings, the others all give it up. They obviously weren’t learning from their mistakes. They weren’t getting their lies right.
But this time he’d been careless and gotten caught, exalting that woe. Regret gnawed at him like a persistent hunger, a bitter taste that lingered long after the lie was spoken. He knew that in her heart Athiel was on her knees to him and would do anything for him. And he was just as certain that someday he would indeed be telling the truth and she wouldn’t believe him, and then it would be her turn to sulk afterward and beg his forgiveness. When she did, though, he planned to ignore her. He would not forgive her. Not even if he lay dying and with Athiel bending over him begging for one little forgiving word, would he forgive her. No. He would turn his face to the wall and die with that word unsaid. Ah, how would she feel then? He pictured himself dead and how she would throw herself upon him, and how her tears would fall like rain, her lips praying to El to give her back her boy, and she would never, ever disbelieve him anymore! But he would lie there cold and white and make no sign—a poor little sufferer, whose griefs were now at an end. And it would serve her right.
He noticed he was so worked up by his grievous feelings about being disbelieved that tears swam in his eyes, running down to trickle off his cheek. Such a luxury to him was this drowning of his sorrows that he could not bear to have any worldly cheeriness or delight intrude upon it. It was too sacred for such contact, and so he wandered far from the accustomed haunts of boys and sought desolate places that were in harmony with his spirit. He wished he could tell his aunt just one truth, be disbelieved, and then die and be taken out of this world—just not by any unpleasant means.
And Sith should suffer too, for he never believed the boy either. He should be made to take pity on his poor dead half-brother, too. Would he cry out in regret and wish he hadn’t called the boy a liar, or would he turn coldly away like all the rest of this hollow world? Surely he would have to feel regret? This picture brought such an agony of pleasurable suffering that he worked it over and over again in his mind, setting it up in new and varied ways until he had it all worked out and had a plan ready to put into action. There were only two obstacles to the perfect plan of revenge. First, he had to tell the truth to his aunt, and that might take a while. Second, he had to die, something he’d rather put off.
Thus, he abruptly shelved the plan. Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter than before, but because he had gotten out his flute to play. Satyrs are, by nature, flute players. To a flute in his hand was an invitation to a one-person symphony. The boy began with a peculiar tune, produced by touching his fingers to the holes of the instrument while blowing. His first tune sounded like a cat with a harmonica stuck in its throat. Yet he played on with the perseverance of a determined mosquito. Diligence and attention soon gave him a fine new tune, and he strode through the trees with his mouth full of harmony. He felt much as his elfish classmates feel when they discover a new plant—no doubt, as far as strong, deep, and full pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with him, not his classmates.
The elves of the village wood turned their heads to listen to the boy play in the distance and, although expert musicians themselves, none could have matched him on a flute. Yet, it impressed none of the elves, despite his skill. They all thought a song was something to be translated into words, like a bird call, and their enjoyment was in deciphering the meaning, not in the melody. Of course, the boy wasn’t playing any words at all. But if he could, it would have been about no work and all play.
Still, he impressed others with his flute playing. The wood fairies would come forth to hear him play. In the gathering dark, they darted and flew. If you’ve never seen a fairy, they are wonders to behold. They are all tiny, short-haired girls with big eyes who make their cute little outfits from the softest rose petals. They have wings of silk that are as bright, delicate, and beautiful as butterflies. And by night, when they fly, their wings give off little clouds of sparkles—gold, silver, and even white diamonds. It is an amazing sight and is called “pixie dust” for its magic. They say if you can get a bag of it, you can fly yourself.
Unlike the elves, the fairies loved the boy. Not only did they love his music, but they also loved him for freeing them from spiderwebs that caught them in the dark. By comparison, if an elf saw a wood fairy trapped in a web, he’d have to sit down and ponder, perhaps for the next year or two, whether he should interfere with nature and save the fairy or not. Elves and webs—it’s a timeless debate. Save a fairy, starve a spider. No wonder their solutions involves more excuses than a child at bedtime.
The boy often wondered why Athiel took him from Old Joe when he found him. He was willing to bet a dozen others didn’t do so first.
It’s not that elves felt opposed to helping. Mostly, they felt opposed to interfering. Most elves figured you were in a bind because nature intended it that way, and so giving help was to be in opposition to nature—a mighty important point to elves.
But why they wouldn’t free the fairies, the boy didn’t know. They all knew which spider made those webs, and she certainly wasn’t a friend of the elves.
Yet, being as how he was the fairies’ only savior, the boy was their hero. There wasn’t a girl fairy among them that didn’t want to marry him. For the boy was quite handsome with cheery eyes and the most pleasant, disarming smile you ever saw. He could have charmed a snake with his looks alone. (Though the elf girls noticed him, they refused to admit it.) Moreover, he was genuinely fond of the fairies. They were powerfully pretty themselves, and of course, they were all sparkly and full of magic.
And not only were they great fun, but they also liked to steal. So that put them on the same side. Yet they only liked to steal gold. That meant Old Joe’s gold, and they usually managed to make off with a good part of it. The boy was always happy to help the fairies hoard their stolen gold treasure, even though he liked Old Joe. He just liked stealing more.
But this evening there was no gold to steal. The dwarves had yet to crush and smelt it. So he played his flute for them, and one girl fairy flew up and brazenly kissed him for it. That distracted him from playing so much he blushed and left, embarrassed, for home.
Of course, his Aunt Athiel was waiting at the door when he arrived. She had not forgotten her list of chores she wanted him to do, and after he’d run out, she’d undoubtedly added to it as punishment for skipping school. She now recited a list of jobs that amounted to nothing less than life in captivity at hard labor. The consequences for lying to her fell full force.
But, he was unconcerned. Just as he had planned, it was too late to do any of them now and the next morning was school, so there was plenty of time yet to avoid her work. He would use the time he should be in school tomorrow while playing hooky to get out of it once the time came. And for that he already had a foolproof plan. It couldn’t fail.
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