Sevenday Eve

Sevenday was more eagerly anticipated by any child than Wintersday or Leafbury Day or even the Cinnamon Festival. The way people changed on their Sevenday was like magic to watch, and the elders said it was when you got to remember your past lives. You didn’t have to go to school anymore after your Sevenday, though plenty actually chose to. Some kids woke up on the morning of their Sevenday with talents they never could perform before.

Plenty yet seemed not to change at all. To them, all this about a past life was just a weird dream they had on the eve of their Sevenday. Nobody could really agree on what it even was, but clearly it had a profound impact on some people, and an unimpressive one on others. The best part of Sevenday was the pretty outfits you got to wear, and all the presents, the sweets, and the party that everyone in town would come to. Moxi’s Sevenday had been a right mighty swank as her great aunt Phoebe had named it. Georgio’s Sevenday, a less ambitious affair. Now, Moxi became quite pompous afterward and wouldn’t speak to people who were younger than herself evermore, but Georgio became quiet and almost never left his room again. Morton became more playful and obnoxious than he’d been when he was two, and he took on a great taste for ale and spiced rum. After Sevenday, you were called an adult and you could drink and take out loans and do all any other things you may want, but some species weren’t fully grown until they were fifty or more.

My mother’s wings shivered as she tried to hold herself up, the weight of a banner in two of her hands fighting against her as she tried lifting it. Her left wing was scratched by a cat’s claws when she was my age, and it never fully healed. There were long white scars along the light yellow and orange of her butterfly-like wing, and it was deformed at the end, always making her flight wobbly and slow. She yelled down the hall, “Ken! Ken, will you get in here already!”

My father always made a noise like snoring when he was caught off guard. He lazily walked into the front room. Fairies seldom ever walked. And, he groaned quite loudly, “The festivities begin not 'til bright morrow, Darling.” He fluttered up to try and kiss her, but the twitch in her weaker wing hopped her away from him just as he did.

I watched them both, smiling slightly. “It’ll be all right. We don’t need big banners and…” My father wandered back into the other room.

My mother screeched, “Hana! It is your Sevenday tomorrow!” She took a deep breath. “This is important to me, you know?” I nodded slowly. For all I could remember, I’d always been more excited for my Sevenday than anything. It was less than a day away now, and the excitement had somehow dimmed.

She exhaled, “I can’t wait for you to tell me about all the adventures you had before we met.”

“Can you tell me about your past life?” I flew up, grasping the banner myself and helping to keep it from falling. It would have been much too heavy for me on its own, and I doubted I was really doing all that much to help, but my mother smiled at my limited contribution anyway.

“I’ve told you that story already.”

“I know. I know, Mom.”

She chuckled, “Fine. I was a man in my last life, not a woman like I am now. And, I was a human, but in my world, we called them No-fins because in my world, there was a whole lot of water, huge oceans, and there were more mermaids than humans. So, I was a No-fin, and I was a fisherman living on a little island out in the Greensand Ocean. My grandfather lived with me because my parents passed away when I was very young, and even though he was never the kindest man, I always knew he loved me. So, we went out one day to go fishing, and a mermaid came up on my boat, and she was so sweet and fair that she and I did fall in love. We could never have children of our own because she was a mermaid and I was a No-fin, but it wasn’t really any different to us. She would swim up to the edge of the shore, and I would go down just where the water was in the high tide, and I’d set out a piece of driftwood with a whole picnic on it with warm bread, and lobster, oh you’ve never had lobster but it’s sweet and warm and a little salty and you’d love it, Hana. Sometimes, when I brought my fish to other islands, I’d buy raisins, prunes, and dates to bring back. Tomatoes one time, and she didn’t really like tomatoes, so the next time I brought juicy peaches instead, and she said it was the favorite thing she ever had. They can’t grow peaches underwater, you know? Do you remember what her name was, Hana?”

“You said it was Gwendolyn,” I answered, “and she had three siblings named Twist, Pollie, and Sam.”

“If you ever have a little brother, I hope I’ll name him Twist, you know.” She smiled, “But, I slowly grew old, and one day, Gwendolyn stopped coming to the edge of the water, so I got worried she was sick. I took my boat out one last time, despite a wild storm, and I fell over the side. And, I’d grown so old I couldn’t swim no more, and then I found myself here. Now, you’ll tell me your story tomorrow, Hana. You’ll tell me about all the fancy people you were in love with, and the amazing things you did, and the sculptures you made with your own bare hands.”

“What if Gwendolyn came to this world sometime?” I asked.

My mother thought for a second, “Oh, I bet we’d be great friends. But, she’d not be her, and I’d be me, your mother, not the man I was in my past life. I have friends here, and I love your father, and I love you, and even on my Sevenday when I first remembered her, I wasn’t so much missing her as I was thankful for the time we had. It’s a great mercy we can’t remember when we’re first born here, for we get to love new things and then be grateful for the past we learn about, rather than being somber about what we think we may have lost. Oh, there’s no hurt in melancholy, and I promise you’ll have your share in it. But melancholy is only appreciation in memoriam.”

I held the banner until it was done being pinned up. It was generic, with bright lettering saying Happy Sevenday across it. For how much of a struggle it was to put up, it was less than eight inches long. My father was the tallest fairy I knew, and he barely stood over six inches tall. I was just under half his height.

It was sunset already over the town of Tinborough. Sprouting out the caves of Mount Addor, Tinborough had been a little-known dwarven settlement deep within the mountain less than a century ago. It was only the expanding trade routes south toward the Sapphire Capital that brought more and more to live around the mountain. Dwarves were always welcoming to those who wanted to live within the halls of the mountain itself, or to build their homes throughout the green foothills and rocky steppes. As much as they loved the gold and iron and starglass they dug out of the ground, they needed people to sell it to if they were going to pay salaries to their workers, purchase more tools, and import food and other things that were much needed for anyone who lived inside a mountain. So, Tinborough itself crawled out of the mountain one neighborhood at a time until it was the make of a small city, the veins stretching from deep inside the mountain’s bladder out to the edges of its wingspan.

The setting sun dyed the clouds blues and greens but mostly pink-orange, flashing down and reflecting off the deposits of glittery starglass that still could be seen half-burried in the earth, and poking out the highest peaks of the mountains. I walked down the treebranch past our front door, keeping an eye out for sparrows and squirrels and other such dangerous things, and I sat at the thinnest, most wobbly twig that stemmed from the branch, letting my feet rest against its half-formed, Autumn-brown leaf. Will this be so pretty tomorrow? I wondered.