Wish Upon

I went back to the well today. Nestled within a brimming forest, hidden among the trees, the familiar, stony structure stood, waiting. Filled to the brim with water, it glistened, reflecting the stars and Moon above.

People visit all the time. The ‘Well of Wisdom and Woe’, as it is often called, is a staple in my little village. People come to sit by the well, letting their salty tears slide down their cheeks into its depths, merging with the existing body of water, a host of a multitude of emotions. They gaze at the perturbed water swirl for a moment before it stills once more, simultaneously calming their souls as it does so before they leave. But water never stays still for long – such is the same with ones’ soul. Most people return to the well often. At least, I know I do.

I lost my job today. The aftermath of the virus left a lot of people in the same predicament as me. Rent is due, and I barely have enough money to buy food to feed both me and my one-year-old son. Not to mention the toilet has stopped flushing and the dishes are piling up in the sink. My job was not much to begin with, just barely enough to make ends meet, waiting tables in the busiest restaurant on my high street. It’s actually where I met my late boyfriend. The virus took him first. My parents, a month later. It’s a miracle that little Sean and I are okay, but sometimes it feels as though it is just as much a miracle as it is a curse.

It suddenly occurred to me what a rash decision I had just made, leaving home to walk the two minutes to the woods, just to sit by the Well for a while. I didn’t regret it, but I did feel guilty, leaving my son. I had asked Debbie, bless her, to keep watch over Sean, who was already asleep, for fifteen minutes. She’s a university student studying Law, who lives in the flat above mine.

Staring at my reflection in the water, a knot began to form in my stomach, and I gulped back the bulge rising in my throat. Flashing before me were all the times I had frequented the Well, each time a different reason, a different wish, getting darker as I grew older. I’ve lived in this village my whole life, moving out of the family home only to move into a flat two minutes away. I suppose there are some things, and some people, you just can’t let go of. Shame I had to anyway.

The Well has always been important to my family. It provided the best view of the sea of stars above. Our stars. You see, my family has been buying stars since the opportunity was made available. After a few generations, we had built a little collection of them. My father used to joke that we were the ‘Keepers of space’s jewels’. He had bought quite a few for himself. He bought some for my mother and I as well.

I used to come to the Well with my mother. She used to sit by it, holding my hand. She would tell me about how people would cry into it. When I asked her why she didn’t, she explained: “People cry to get rid of their pain, to hide from it. But pain always comes back, doesn’t it?”

“So what do you do?”, I asked.

“I make wishes.” And her eyes would glisten as she told me to gaze into the water, holding me with one arm to keep me stable.

“You see that?”

I gazed in. I saw mine and her reflection, and then a beautiful crystal backdrop behind us - the stars.

“They’re always there, behind us, watching.”, said my mother. “I like to give them each a wish.”

I made my first ever wish then and there. I pointed haphazardly at a star and cried: “Chocolate!” I pointed at another: “I want that one to rain ice cream!”

“That’s not how it works!”, my mother laughed, but she played along, nonetheless. “That one’s going to get us a dog!” she cried, egged on by my laughter. “And that one’s going to get your dad a nicer pair of glasses!”

I started going to the Well alone as I grew up. Instead of looking up at the stars, I would look into the well, to see their reflection behind me. They felt so much closer to me that way, making my wishes appear to be more in reach.

Tonight, reminiscing on this, I couldn’t help but wish I could go back to the simpler times when my most desperate wish was that Jonathan Perkins liked me back, and that Miss Feldham would forget to set us homework that week. Alas, they changed. The ‘please don’t let him break my heart’s turned into ‘please let me do well in my exams’, to ‘please let my parents support my dreams’, to ‘please let it be a boy’. ‘Please let quarantine end soon’. ‘Don’t take my boyfriend’. ‘Not my parents. Please’.

I hadn’t come to the Well since that last wish. I guess once you’ve been disappointed so many times, you stop believing in things like wishing wells. Gazing into the water, the stars I once used to call my friends, my guardian angels, had never felt so far away. So distant, cold and unsympathetic.

I dipped my fingers into the water, swirling them, and I felt my mind drift out of focus in mutiny with the rippling water. The swirling hypnotised me, transfixed my mind. Maybe the water in the Well would form a whirlpool. Maybe it would suck me into its depths if I got lucky. Taking me away from the bills, from the pain, from the guilt that hung over me every day.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a twig cracking. From the corner of my eye, I saw a woman. I tilted my head towards her, squinting my eyes. She looked to be about my age, maybe a little older. She did not sit by the Well, as most would. Instead, she seated herself on a patch of grass a few metres away. The patch was glowing ominously, lit up by the Moon, gazing intently at the scene, his beam of light leaking through tall trees with gnarled branches.

Either the woman was oblivious to my presence or was simply not bothered - I could not tell. She was sat cross-legged, cradling a little black book in one arm, and writing in it with the other. She stopped every once in a while, contemplating her surroundings. And I wondered what she was writing about.

Perhaps, poetry, if she was admiring the nature encumbering her. Curating metaphors about the gnarled tree branches, or the grass speckled with flowers.

A novel, maybe, if it was a story she was after. The story of the animals she could hear rustling the leaves behind her. The crickets chirping. The owl perched on the tree.

Or maybe she was writing about the Well. About its beauty and effervescence, and the turbulent emotions that lay beneath its surface.

Had her heart been broken? Had she lost someone? I longed to know what she is writing in the little black notebook, so dark it merged with the shadow it cast.

Suddenly, she looked up. Her eyes searched the sky, and a grin spread across her face. I looked up to see why. And then I saw it too, and I smiled. A dozen stars had begun to fall rapidly. Stars which, just moments ago lay sprinkled, so sugar-sweet upon a perfect, navy-blue birthday cake. I watched them fall, bursting into a shower of glitter.

The stars rained down silently, like a quiet miracle. But to me, their presence was as loud as fireworks. Entranced, I watched the sky until the last star fell. Once the spectacle was over, I glanced over to where the woman with the black book had been sitting, to see her reaction, only to find that she had disappeared just as suddenly as she had turned up.

I replayed the scene the whole time I was walking back home. Somehow, it felt as though they were raining down for me. All the wishes upon a star that I had made and that had not come true, now raining down over me.

Debbie answered the door once I finally reached the door to my flat, still a bit dazed.

“Sean’s fast asleep, and I took care of those dishes.”, she smiled.

“You feeling better?”, she added.

“Much, thanks. And thank you so much again, Debbie. I really appreciate it.” I said, slipping her a ten-pound note. After bidding her goodnight, I shut the door, and walked across the hallway to check on Sean. I heard the faintest notes of soft snoring as I stepped into his room, and smiled at the boy, sleeping peacefully in his crib. I leaned in to give him a kiss on the head, then left the room quietly.

Slipping my shoes off, I walked into the sitting room and sank into the sofa, replaying the night’s events. My first time seeing shooting stars. The woman with the notebook. My thoughts were interrupted however, by the sound of my phone ringing. I glanced at the clock above the TV in front of me. It was 8pm. Who would be calling at this time?

I picked up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Catherine Vega?”

“Yes, speaking?”

“I’m Mark Palmer, from the Star Registry. I am calling to inform you that today, at 7:46 pm this evening, a meteor shower was experienced. All the stars listed in your family’s name were among those that fell. When your star falls, you earn back the money you paid to buy them. Due to the amount of stars you owned, you have come into a considerable sum of money.”

“Considerable?”

“20 000$.”