The children giggled.
“Your stories are so much fun,” a little girl said while sitting among the other kids around the fire. “They’re like poisoned apples. Once you taste them, you will never think of fairy tales the same way again.”
Sometimes, Charmwill picked one of the parrot’s feathers and used it as a quill for writing in the book. He used a peculiar ink, which looked like blood. When the children asked him why the stories he collected were written in blood, Charmwill said it was an ancient tradition to remind the storyteller that fairy tale characters weren’t fictional. In fact, they were real enough they could bleed.
“So why can’t we meet them?” a boy asked, resting his head on his bent knees.
“Because they aren’t awake yet,” Charmwill said.
“How long will they stay asleep?” one of the kids asked.
“That’s a long story. All you need to know is that the fairy tale characters were cursed into an eternal sleep centuries ago. They can only wake up for a little time every one hundred years, and that’s when you can meet them.”
“You mean the way Sleeping Beauty was cursed to sleep for a hundred years?” a girl asked.
“Yes, indeed,” Charmwill chuckled. He loved smart children for they usually figured out things much faster than the adults. “It’s called the Sleeping Death,” Charmwill whispered, drawing a serious face.
“The Sleeping Death?” the children chimed in unison, exchanging worried looks.
Charmwill nodded.
“So how soon until they wake up again?” another boy asked.
“It’s just about time they do,” Charmwill glanced at his pocket watch, which showed a sun and a moon inside “In about a year from now, they will all wake up again in our world. Not all of them will remember who they are, though.”
“Can’t we remind them?” a girl suggested.
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Charmwill said. “There is a big war going on in the fairytale world. Besides, many of them have become wicked and dangerous. We might not want to wake those characters up.”
“Like the Wicked Stepmother?” a girl said.
“Or the witch from Hansel and Gretel?” a boy asked.
“And many more,” Charmwill said. He looked as if he remembered something that happened long ago but couldn’t forget. “Actually, some of the fairy tales we think of as the loveliest have become the scariest, and the other way around.”
After Charmwill finished reading, he locked the book and threw it in the air, watching the pages flutter like a bird’s wings then transform into a parrot again. The children clapped their hands as if he were a magician showing them his latest trick.
Charmwill called his parrot Pickwick. It was mute.
The children were sad that Charmwill and Pickwick had to leave for another town to tell more tales.
“Do you really have to go, Mr. Charmwill?” a little girl asked him, pulling on his cloak.
“Yes, I have to,” he said. “Old Charmwill Glimmer has to take care of other kids, too. I also have to seek and collect more tales so I can read them for you next Christmas.”
“So you’re going to visit us the same time Santa Claus does?” a girl with a lisp, asked. Charmwill liked the sound of the words Thanta Clauth on her lips.
“Maybe,” Charmwill tilted his head. “I’d really like to talk to him about sneaking into people’s houses without permission.”
Some of the children snickered.
“We like you better,” said a girl with a missing front tooth. “We never get to meet Santa in person, but you, we can see and talk to, which is much better.”
“Can’t you at least tell us where you’re going? We could sneak out of this awful town and visit you wherever you are,” a boy suggested.
Sighing, Charmwill tucked his hand-held reading glasses in his pocket, rubbed his puffy eyes, stood up using his cane, and lit his Dragonbreath pipe again. “I’m afraid you can’t come with me because I am going to sail to a faraway place.”
“Does it have an address?” the kids asked.
“But of course, it does. It’s located East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” Charmwill explained.
“East of the Sun, West of the Moon?” the children wondered. “How can we get there? You have a map?”
“It’s really hard to find, and no map can get you there. Only a few special people, like fairy tale characters, know about it.”
“Wow!” the children’s eyes widened. “Are there other children like us there?”
“Yes, only a little older,” Charmwill nodded. “I am going to look for a very special boy there.”
“A boy?” they asked.
“Yes, the Boy Who is a Shadow,” he whispered to the children. “But don’t tell anyone, not even Santa. It’s our secret.”
The children cupped their hands over their mouths as if it was the only way they could keep such a secret. No one had ever shared secrets with them before, and they weren’t sure they could keep one.