Mary's Awakening

It was her first fairytale. Mary's eyes were wide as her mum told her about the boy and girl with the funny names in the forest, dropping breadcrumbs and hoping that they would find their way home. It was a story that inspired uncertainty and insecurity.

When her mother told her about the sweet cottage with its sinister secret, she experienced a tingling, a sensation of knowledge already acquired and a flash of recognition that sprang into her head as a vivid pictorial image.

She knew that German cottage but she was five years old and never been out of the country.

The storytelling represented a turning point for her. You see, the Grimm Brothers' fairytale, designed to scare and entertain was a key, a key designed just for her that unlocked the fact that she was actually not a little girl, even though that was exactly what she was.

It is confusing for you. It was confusing for her.

She was Mary, she was the daughter of Janet and Martin of 24 Aintree Crescent, Barnesthorpe and she was starting in Mrs Smith's class in a couple of weeks.

But the night that the cottage appeared in her mind's eye, she discovered that she was actually someone else entirely.

That night was disruptive. The key had unlocked the gate and the bombardment began.

Steadily, she was subjected to image after image striking her consciousness. Each revelation was a piece of a composite, like a necessary information download.

And when a voice said "I've found you!", she realised that her life would never be the same again. She was Mary, protector, saviour, usurper, whatever you wanted to call it, and the owner of the voice was coming to get her.

But not in the way that you think. There was nothing sinister about the voice at all. In fact, it belonged to the Keeper of the Keykeeper, a storyteller called Hayley. Hayley had always thought it was a clumsy title but nothing else described it as well.

And so, it was no surprise to Mary, when after a fitful sleep, her mother announced over toast that she was going to have a little sister.

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366 words

I have to admit that when I got to the end of this story, there were more ends than a fraying scarf, left dangling there for the tying. So I will return to this, if only to see where I thought this would go in the first place.

I quite liked the idea of it though, the idea of a story being a key, links to the Brothers Grimm where I first encountered fairy tales, two beings across ages being reunited and reincarnated as sisters and maybe having adventures together...there was so much scope that even though I thought I'd abandon it because it was clumsy, I couldn't. I had to release it if only to allow it to germinate a little.

Thanks for stopping by! If you do read this, please leave a comment as I do love to interact with my readers!

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