While Justin derived much satisfaction from his work––for he understood that work done for family is never wasted energy––there were times when he too felt strange stirrings in his heart. He sometimes sensed a tiny voice in his head, calling him to go and lie in the fields with his father and dream of places too mysterious to truly know. He could not allow himself to indulge the voice, for he had promised long ago that he would never burden his mother with a son as puerile and silly as her husband. Unlike his father, Justin found an empty belly unacceptable, a dying crop a tragedy.
It was odd then that a young man so practical should be chosen for a visit by a fairy (of all things). Fairies are, after all, mythical creatures to be appreciated only by one possessing such interests. It would have seemed far more sensible to have chosen Justin’s father, for he was as accepting of magic as he was of the existence of air.
Of course, the fairy was aware of these things, but not being bound by any particular call to sensibility, decided to call upon Justin. She landed squarely on his nose and kissed him on the forehead in greeting. “Hello there!” the fairy said, far more gaily than Justin liked.
“What are you?” Justin asked.
“A fairy.”
“Why would a fairy choose to visit me?”
The fairy hovered with her arms akimbo. “Reasons have their seasons and shorter lives than dayflies. I did what I did because quite frequently I find that I do what I do.”
This answer was hardly satisfying, but that bothered the fairy not in the slightest. “I am not in the business of pleasing others,” she said in response to his protests. “I am more concerned with magic and twinkling dust and the care and maintenance of gossamer wings and the like. I can’t be expected to take care of everyone else’s concerns.” And off she flew high into the sky without so much as a farewell, leaving Justin gaping in the middle of a field.
As one would most certainly anticipate, at that very moment, his father came upon him standing there in the field. He watched Justin squinting into the clouds, and was overcome with pride. “That’s my boy,” the farmer said, grasping Justin’s shoulder and tugging him towards himself. “What do you see in those clouds?”
“Nothing, but I was hoping to see a fairy.”
“Keep looking, lad, and you shall,” his father promised him.
“No, Father. I truly mean it. I was just talking to a fairy and she flew up into the sky.”
“Did you question her?” Farmer Thyme asked.
“Yes. I asked her what she was and why she visited me?”
Farmer Thyme gave a knowing nod. “They say you should never interrogate a fairy. It makes them angry.”
“I didn’t know,” Justin said sadly.
“You should have asked. I do know a few things you don’t. A man can’t spend as many years on this earth as I have and not learn a thing.”
Justin apologized for his failure to ask his father such a simple question, as if it were one he might have thought to ask.
“Just don’t let it happen again,” his father admonished.
Justin gave him dubious assurance that he would not. He looked back into the clouds hopefully. His father looked too, but was quickly lost in the many shapes he saw there and completely forgot about the fairy. Eventually, Farmer Thyme drifted away from Justin, following the shape of a three-masted schooner across the cornfield in the direction of the barn.
Justin strained to find the fairy, but after several minutes, he realized that she had indeed left and was not likely to come back. He could imagine no practical reason to keep looking up like that. In fact, after a time, he began to question whether he had seen a fairy at all. “It was just my mind playing tricks on me,” he said with conviction to one of the pigs.
To which the pig replied, “Indeed!”
Justin was of course taken slightly aback, since he was as accustomed to having pigs talk to him as he was to asking too many questions of imaginary fairies. Justin looked around several times. “What did you say?” he asked quietly.
“I beg your pardon,” the pig shouted, which caused Justin’s face to change into a shade not unlike the pig’s skin.
“I said,” Justin said softly, “what did you say?”
“Speak up! I can’t hear you.”
“Why, you’re as disagreeable as that fairy,” Justin said in a huff.
The pig’s left ear stood at attention. “Oh, I am, am I? And what’s this about disagreeable fairies? You’re hardly the type to believe in fairies!”
“And I’m certainly not accustomed to having pigs make judgments about what I believe in or don’t!”
The pig’s ears started to wiggle. Justin heard a faint snickering sound that sounded altogether unlike a giggling pig. He crept to the side of the pig. As he peeked behind the pig’s ear, he saw the fairy, hunched over in red-faced laughter.
“So it’s you, playing tricks on me. That’s hardly fair.”
“Fair it is not,” the fairy admitted. “But it is very fairy.”
