The Hawthorn Tree & Other Fables

A hawthorn once split in half and through its trunk, we saw another world. Golden and splendid, it was a city of spires and gilded turrets. Burning stars reflected in molten rivers. A city of the fae.

We kept watch over the tree, in the mud of the meadow, and saw them dance across glittering bridges and bathe in sun-drenched fountains. When our skies swirled with winter's snow, we pressed our cheeks to the cold earth and prayed to the Goddess.

She walked to the tree in a cloak of wind and spoke with the voice of the crackling stream.

The Goddess said, "Why do you weep when I have given you a gift just as precious as gold?"

As she spoke, she reached a hand through the hawthorn and brushed the branches of the tree in the other world. Then she knelt, one hand dipping into a pond of golden waters, the other into the soil beneath our feet.

"A handful of gold and a handful of soil," she said. "Let worth be weighed not in power, but in promise."