The wishing well

A short story around the theme "descent".

“Of course wells grant wishes,” Ura’s grandfather would suddenly say as the evening sun dipped behind the horizon. He always started his stories by the middle, as if the start was nothing but an inconvenience to be rushed over and forgotten, akin to wedding vows or promises to the dead. Ura didn’t care. It was the way things happened on the Land. They never really started nor ended, they merely stumbled forth. “What do you mean, Amatxi?” She would ask as her ma rolled her eyes while fussing over a soup that didn’t need any more stirring nor seasoning. 

“Why, has your poor old grandfather never told you of his wish, and of the well that granted it?” 

Of course he had. Numerous times, though the story was never exactly the same and the lesson never quite what Ura’s mother approved of. And he had that glimmer in his good eye that Ura knew so well. So, even when she had passed the age she could sit next to the fire with her hands idle: “Yes, Amatxi, but please, tell it again. Especially the part about the stars.” And Amatxi would move a little closer to the fire, light his pipe and continue his tale.

“A long time ago, your Amatxi was a young man, and like any young man, he was in love. A lot happened before that, but it’s not important. He was in love with the smartest woman in the land. Her skin was coarse as bark and her tongue hard as nail. She could bleed milk from stones when food was scarce and make dirt taste like a king’s feast.”

“But Amatxi, that’s the story about how you met Aitatxi. What about the wishing well?” Ura always asked. 

“It’s the same story, really, but for you, I will go directly to the well. Wells do not grant wishes that easily, you have to understand that.” Ura always said she did, which was a lie, and she would have learnt a great deal about wishes and how they were granted if she had listened to how his Amatxi wooed his Aitaxi, or how he came to this Land, or even how he, once, was a boy with his own Amatxi and Aitaxi who told him stories that never started and ended long after he had gone to bed. But so are children and so are old men. The former are too eager to become adults at once and the latter to become children again. Therefore, Ura’s grandfather continued his half-tale.

“Now, to have your wishes granted, you need to go get it. To fight your way down and then up. You go near a well, an open one, and you wait. You wait until a clear  night comes when all is dark. It means the moon and star have fallen deep inside. They can’t resist the darkness of wells, that’s why most people cover theirs nowadays. People don’t want the trouble anymore…”

“But Amatxi, the wish?”

“Yes. The wish. You wait till you are sure the moon and stars are at the bottom of the well. Then, only then, you jump in and you follow them. The moon and star are full of magic, or they would not stay up in the sky, and when they fall into a well, they get all cramped together because the well is so small and the moon and star are so big. The stones scrape some of that magic off them. All you need to do is to be strong enough and grab some of it. A tiny flake is enough. And after that….”

Then, Ura’s mum would always cut in, saying that it’s dinner time and not time for silly talk anymore. They would eat in silence, clean, mend clothes or card wool, or one of the thousands of things that always needed doing, say graces and go to bed, all silly talks about wells and wishes forgotten until the next evening by the fire.

Author's Note

English is not my first language and I write on my phone due to my current living situation, so I apologize for all the typoes and the "z" in place of "e"s