The Tale of the Wishing Well

Gypsy Lou spoke:

I remember squatting around camp fires on the scrub hills of Andalucia, trying to squeeze into a warm spot on the hemp rugs occupied by the old women who found the time to give a damn about an orphaned child. And it was they who told me that, somewhere in the Land of Zog, there was a large green field with a Wishing Well in the middle of it. Mountains overlooked from the North and the grass ran down into a lake that kept changing colour. To the side were forests with moody trees that only let through the people to whom they took a liking. The Wishing Well was not a bitch of a place to find.

It was said to be made from three grey bricks of mountain stone and three wooden posts held up the wooden hat above the Well. From this there hung a shiny plastic bucket on a length of good hemp rope. Although it was a mother to get to, a fair number found their way to the Wishing Well but not so many came back again, or at least not as they were before.

‘May all your wishes be granted.’ is a favourite curse of my people and, I can assure you from extensive personal experience, the fruit of your desires can leave you dog-sick with the consequences. My story concerns the last three men who came to this strange place.

The first was a businessman, some vapid jerk who lived only for the sound of falling money. After years of commercial failure he had been seduced by the thought of instant riches and had picked his way over the mountains. He got lost in the snowy passes and lost at least one of his balls to frostbite - |No big loss to the world of women. But as soon as he saw the Well he forgot his pain and sprinted down the hill in triumph.

Without a moment's hesitation, he lowered the bucket and pulled it up again with his wish of gold. At last. After so many years of trying to achieve wealth with cheating and trade, he'd finally achieved his dream in the few moments it took to raise and lower a bucket.

He poured his gold out onto the ground and sat down on top of the pile to count it. But as he did so he became aware of thousands of eyes watching him from the mountains and the forest - Of course. The place must be crawling with thieves, waiting to ambush honest travelers of their long-awaited rewards. He started to panic and to pack away the gold in his pockets. But the riches were too heavy to all be carried by him alone and he didn't dare leave it all here to go and find a donkey.

And so two months later, the next arrival at the Well found the businessman dead of starvation, his hands clutching coins with teethmarks in them. This traveler was well-suited to the task in hand for he'd been hanging out with dead people all his life. He was an undertaker. He even looked like a corpse himself and his grey face showed no emotion as he buried the merchant in his trove of gold. Then he approached the Wishing Well to draw a bucket of his heart's desire.

As a child he’d been such a misery-guts that his parents decided he might as well work with the dead. And if he was going to be any good at it and bring some money in to the house then he’d better learn to suit the part 100%. So every time he laughed or allowed a twinkle to light in his eye, they beat the shit out of him and starved him for a day. If he was going to make a living out of death and other people’s sorrow then he had to learn about being miserable first.

And so because he’d been a good boy and done what was expected of him, he didn’t know what it was to feel good. His heart had been locked away for forty years and he looked like some kind of reptile - I guess his blood was as cold and clammy as his expression, ashen-white and pale in the eyes.

He lowered the bucket and, with creaking joints, he pulled up a load of happiness. It frothed and bubbled within the bucket with all kinds of gurgles and giggling, popping noises. The undertaker raised his wish to his lips and drank the full draught of joy. The moment the happiness touched his lips it turned them to a bright pink. The rosiness spread through his face and head, down through the rest of his body to the tips of his fingers and toes. His eyes flashed into life. His shoulders and hips suddenly relaxed so that he seemed young again. The wrinkles vanished from his forehead and his mouth twitched at the sides. Slowly but surely, his lips started to rise, broaden and lift until they cracked through the mask of his stern face into a smile. His cheeks rose in union and soon, he was grinning like a babe.

He bounced off through the woods, merry as an elf on ecstasy and returned to his homeland where no one even recognized him. He couldn't explain who he was because his smile was too strong for him to move his lips to speak. But no one gave a shit because straight away he became very popular in the town where before he didn’t have a single friend. He just walked up and down the street with his big fucking grin, lighting up everyone's day with his own good mood. He was always welcome at anyone's dinner table and it was a gas to have him come by to sleep of a night.

It was a long time before the last arrival of all came to the Wishing Well and the guy who did didn’t mean to find it at all. He was my kind of man - A renegade from life, as others would have it lived. He dove into waters of experience without stopping to think if there were rocks beneath the lapping surface. He drowned himself in whatever wild opportunity came his way but the currents always seemed to beach him someplace, better off than he could believe he deserved.

On this day, he found himself surfacing on the grassy shore of a lake that changed from blue to green and then to orange in time it took him to haul his body out into the sunshine. He coughed up a little water and moaned under the weight of a sinner's hangover. He made one futile effort to remember where he had been the night before: Wisps of faces, wine bottles and expensive dresses floated past his eyelids but were all gone before he could weave a memory out of them. He gave up and looked up to see where he’d ended up this time.

The only obvious thing to do was to walk up to the big fucking well. But he didn't see why logic should make an appearance after all this time and so he walked around the field looking for mushrooms. Half an hour later, his thirst persuaded him that the well really might be worth checking out. He sauntered over and drew up a bucket of water, sighing all the while that it couldn't be gin with lemon and ice. By the time he realised that it actually was, he was thoroughly drunk again. He guessed at once what the story was and cursed reality for roping him into yet another ridiculous movie.

He considered all the treasures and miracles that he could summon, a bucket at a time and he sighed again. There was nothing he wanted that much as to have it just like that. Good times, parties and a little adventure just weren't the kind of things you could wish for - Especially if you had them already. It seemed a shame, though, that so many people in the world would have sold their families just to be where he was now standing. A wicked thought suddenly gleamed in his eyes. He saw the chance he now had to teach Chaos a thing or two.

He put his hands to the rope and pulled up a bucket of dynamite. He struck a match and stuck it in the explosive, let the bucket fall and legged it down the slope to dive into the lake. The explosion blew with the sounds of everything that could ever have been created. This source of infinite possibility blasted into the sky with the roar of scat-singing elephants, bouncing mountains and hurricane-strength hair-driers. The sky filled with somersaulting cities, double-decker buses in sexual intercourse and monkies with Shakespeare scripts in their hands.

All these impossibilities faded away as the impact of the dynamite sent the contents of the Wishing Well miles up into the atmosphere and out of sight. And up there a weird chemistry happened - The drops of Wishes mixed with the vapours and gases, becoming part of the clouds that the winds sent all over the planet.

And so the next time it rained, some people found that the hopes they secretly whispered to their pilows at night somehow, against all the odds, became true. Small wishes and dreams, perhaps, but important to them all the same.

Not everyone got lucky, of course. In fact, only a few were favoured as there were only so many drops of the Wishing Well to go around the globe. But still, for someone here and there, the impossible came true. Of course, you’ve only got a chance if you’re one of those who likes to wander in the rain, searching the sky for inspiration.

And even today, my adopted aunts told me in between spitting bits of tobacco, anyone stands a chance if they just take a walk in a storm and stick out their tongues to catch the right drop of falling opportunity."

Chapter 7