Fairy Godmothers of The Four Directions

by Jennifer Morse

  Grumbling Cinderella asked, “What’s wrong with pleasure for pleasures sake?”

  The Fairy Godmother pursed her lips. Her finger tapping her lip in the gesture for quiet, she said, “Why not seek virtue for virtues sake?”

  Cinderella let the idea settle. She said, “I guess it would be more interesting.”

  The Fairy Godmother nodded, “Perhaps a balance? Could there be a world where virtues are pleasurable and pleasures are virtuous?”

  Laughing, Cinderella clapped her hands, “You’re confusing me.”

  Light pierced the darkness between the two women. Cinderella had a glimpse of luminous fibers extending and twining. She felt their gentle pulse.

  The Fairy Godmother said, “You have answered your own question. Pleasure for pleasures sake, as a life style, lacking purpose and meaning, is one dimensional. It cannot answer the deeper callings of the soul.

  “And all of us, like you Cinderella, find times when life throws us into the flames of transformation where grief is our teacher. Virtues guide and buffer you from the devastation of a catastrophic loss.”

  What was the incandescent glow at the Fairy Godmother’s fingertips? Wispy strings of light, elongated, inscribed with symbols. The Fairy Godmother was sitting with her. Yet simultaneously Cinderella saw her dancing along the light infused fibers. Light extended from her fingers and feet. On her face, reflected in her body, was a look of deeply focused relaxation.

  Cinderella shook her head. The vision faded. Her mouth went dry. The real purpose of their conversation sat with them in the room, overbearing and silent.

  She didn’t want to dwell in the long years living with her stepmother. Life changed when she was discovered by the Prince huddled within the interior of the kitchen fireplace. She wanted to forget years of terror and abandonment. “Must I relive the loneliness? Despair so deep my bones ached!”

  The dark incantations her stepmother used to hide her from the Prince. She had lived along the edges of light and shadow. Transformed from a young girl on the cusp of adolescence into a servant she even lost her given name. For seven years she was Cinderella. “I don’t even remember the girl named Charlotte!”

  Tapping her staff on the rocks ringing the fire, the Fairy Godmother said, “Tell me of Cinderella’s strength.”

  Cinderella was astonished. “What are Cinderella’s strengths?”

  Her face was a mask of confusion. As clarity bloomed, she said, “Cinderella hid and closely guarded her family history. My stepmother sought with trickery and witchcraft the details of our family’s wealth and friendships. Cinderella buried those details deep. She kept them from my stepmother who never knew our connection to the royal family.”

  The Fairy Godmother said, “Tell me more.”

  Cinderella jumped to her feet, defiant, “What more do you want from me?”

  Then just as quickly she collapsed. She tumbled boneless to the floor and sank her face into the palms of her hands. Rocking, her head touching the limestone floor she cried out. “Despite living with the witch for seven years, I’m just beginning to realize my stepmother’s destructive power.”

  Sob after sob clawed its way free while the Fairy Godmother dwelled in the silence of the Sacred Dream. When the last tear drained out of her Cinderella sat up and looked at the world remade.

  Luminous fibers glowing, a light shining and extending beyond the outline of her body, the Fairy Godmother confirmed, “You kept your secrets safe.”

  Cinderella lifted her face from her hands and said, “Focus. I focused on the needs of the house, the needs of the animals. I took walks in the forest. I loved Blackie. Living in love for Blackie and nature kept me safe.”

  Holding the threads of Cinderella’s memories the Fairy Godmother watched her working. They shared fleeting images: Cinderella scrubbing floors, beating dirt from rugs, washing-rinsing-hanging laundry, cooking than cleaning the kitchen. When she was too exhausted for energetic chores she oiled furniture and dusted treasures.

  Merging, sharing the dream with the Fairy Godmother Cinderella whispered, “I had a bedroom in the attic but sometimes I was so tired I curled up on the ledge of the stone hearth. I slept in the dying warmth of the kitchen fire. I learned to become invisible at the fireplace hearth as inconspicuous as my mother’s cat.”

  The Fairy Godmother said, “Tell me more.”

  “When my stepmother conjured to invade my thoughts I lost myself in the shadows and light of the kitchen fire. While the smell of incantations layered the room with their stench I was safe at the fire’s edge, living along the boundary between shadow and light.”

  The Fairy Godmother nodded. “Yes. And what was your greatest secret?”

  Even now, within the safety of the Fairy Godmother’s Cave of Dreams, sitting next to the Fairy Godmother Cinderella hesitated. “I….I…I didn’t clean and tend the animals for my stepmother.” She shuddered. The pain of the past fell away. Standing on the threshold of dreams and memories, with the Fairy Godmother she marveled at her new-found safety. “I created and maintained the beauty of our family home for myself and the memory of my parents.”

  “Yes,” the Fairy Godmother agreed. “Another way you were protected from your stepmother.”

  “Wait!” Cinderella shouted. “I remember more! At night I dreamed of the past, of our family life shared. My dreams nourished and restored me. Living inside my dreams at night became as real to me as daylight hours. I wondered was there ever a time dreams were less important then waking?”

  The Fairy Godmother bowed her head, “Your dreams were another saving grace. So many ways Cinderella protected you Charlotte. Tonight, you have walked beyond your grief and found the resilience and resourcefulness you brought to a time of immense difficulty.”

  Chapter Seven

  Dreaming

  Sitting with the Fairy Godmother Cinderella fell into a reverie; a sweet compilation of her recent stay at the castle. Images of the Prince floated by only now the Fairy Godmother walked the fibers of her memories, too.

  Together they entered the dream remembering the time the Prince rescued her. After falling soundly asleep in the Prince’s arms, when Cinderella opened her eyes, she found she was in the palace. The blue velvet bedspread and crisp white sheets so carefully fitted she felt like she was resting in an envelope.

  Blackie slept on the floor next to her bed. Attuned to Cinderella’s movements he woke instantly. His brown eyes, warm and shining, made her smile. Stretching, Cinderella slipped her feet into slippers set next the bed. Feeling welcome she sighed with pleasure.

  The walls were a pale version of sky on a summer’s day. Bookshelves and a writing desk nestled in the alcove. French doors led to a terrace. Lemon trees, in ceramic pots the size a comfortable chair, stood sentinels at either side of the doorway. Star shaped, white flowers, blooming. Cinderella inhaled their sweet, potent, fragrance drifting in through open windows.

  Hazily she remembered being carried up the stairs. The Prince kissed her. Yes, he kissed her! Calling her by her given name, Charlotte, it was the first time in years she’d heard her name. Remembering made her smile again.

  Blackie jumped up, his paws on her lap, face filled with life and joy, he barked. Cinderella laughed and for a moment they wrestled on the carpet until Cinderella snaked her head under his shoulder and kissed the white star at the center of his chest. With a last hug she extracted herself and stood taking in the bright spring day.

  Around her wrist she found a piece of ribbon and used it to tie her hair up in a ponytail. She wanted to see everything clearly not frazzled with hair in her eyes.

  The door opened. A young woman, followed by a butler, pushed in a cart. A dish of blackberries, a large pot of steaming tea, buttermilk pancakes with syrup. “Yum!” Charlotte smiled her thanks. The pancakes were light and fluffy. Tea was hot. Charlotte ate the breakfast. The first food not prepared by herself in years. A pancake breakfast weeks past, was only a sweet memory.

  Now she was trap
ped in a dark cave, high in the hills, far from the palace, in the company of a ‘strange woman,’ for who knew how long? A Fairy Godmother who called forth the terrible losses she wanted to put behind her.

  Yes, something had happened in their conversation. She felt free. Free from the fear threading her muscles in anticipation of the next blow, the next dangerous moment. What more was there in the West?

  As if reading her mind the Fairy Godmother said, “When you become a woman of power then people will think you’re charmingly ‘strange.’ A hazard of wisdom I’m afraid. More importantly Cinderella, whatever you push into the shadows will grow and sabotage your happiness, and endanger the Kingdom.”

  Adding wood to the fire they both watched the sparks fly. The Fairy Godmother said, “The West is a place of transformation. It is the liminal space between one life and another. For example you are transforming from a young woman to a Princess. You know the skills of a woman who brings beauty to her home but what do you know about the skills of a Princess?”

  “My name is Charlotte!” Cinderella snapped. Blackie lifted his head, watching over her, alerted by her frustrations. Pressing her lips together to avoid anymore unplanned outbursts she hung her head. What is wrong with me? Did I just yell at a Fairy Godmother?

  “Well Charlotte, why do you think you’re here?”

  Sifting through feelings Cinderella found no words. She sat in the silence of rebellion. Her posture concretized, transformed into stonewalling. She wondered will this night ever end?

  The Fairy Godmother loomed like a long shadow standing next to her. “You have begun to put your past behind you. Tonight you dealt with grief, the losses of your parents and the loss of your life as a girl, living at the center of her parents love. Our time together is short. You must enter the Sacred Dream and find your way home.”

  Cinderella shut her eyes, banishing the cave and the Fairy Godmother. The words continued reverberating through the luminous fibers of her dream body. Something indiscernible was happening. She saw her dream body woven with fibers of light, thick and tight. Softening her posture, light peaked out beyond the fibers. She was then surrounded in a nimbus of golden light.

  The Fairy Godmother said, “Do you know how to enter the Sacred Dream? Can you retrieve pieces of your spirit broken away by trauma? Will you walk between dreams or enter the dream of another? These are the skills of a Queen Charlotte. You have set aside pains of the past and now we dream.”

  The Fairy Godmother unfurled a necklace of moonstones from around her wrist. The soft luminosity of the pebbles reminded Cinderella of the Grand Ball. Back at her parent’s cottage, the Prince had seen beyond her stepmother’s deceptions. Did he learn to see past illusions while apprenticing to the Fairy Godmother of the West?

  When he pulled Cinderella into his arms she had felt a wild joy.

  Now the West Fairy Godmother’s version of introspection and dreaming awaited her attention. Glowing with a light she did not understand, Cinderella was unbearably tired. Her resistance fading, intuition, the miles of sensors lining her gut, intelligence free of worry and doubt, assured her of the Fairy Godmother’s wisdom. She was safe.

  But while her dreambody glowed, her physical body ached, bone deep striations of throbbing. Eyes hollow, trapped between who she was and who she might become, she retracted her light. Instinctively she closed her fibers preventing leakage of her luminosity. The Fairy Godmother’s radiance filled the cave, the limestone walls reflected her light until the entire cave was alive.

  Plaintively Cinderella asked, “Who am I now? Am I Cinderella or Charlotte?”

  The Fairy Godmother’s face shifted in the fire light but she did not speak. Cinderella couldn’t describe the features of this woman of the West. One moment her silhouette was delicate. Blinking, in the next moment strength radiated out of the Fairy Godmother like a force of nature.

  Charlotte felt even her wicked stepmother would not be able to keep up with the ever shifting nature of the West, the subtleties of twilight. Were the powers of the West stronger than her stepmother?

  She watched. The light in her dream body distilled to a pinprick, her fibers held so tightly closed she shook with the effort. In silence the Fairy Godmother pulled out of her pack, two shawls almost the size of blankets. Woven out of goat hair, dyed midnight blue, she wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and handed Cinderella the second.

  Bundled in the soft fabric Cinderella’s eyes became even heavier. The Fairy Godmother sang a song. She threw herbs into the fire. As the smoke cleared Cinderella shivered. The air was vibrantly alive.

  She took the cup the Fairy Godmother handed her. The drink was strong with clover honey and herbs. The fire even warmed the limestone wall and floors. Shadows wavered, expanding and contracting, over the pale surface. In the light of the flames Cinderella was lost. Shadow and light was an ever-changing effervescent dance on limestone’s blonde walls. Her head nodding, she tipped ever so slowly, until she lay down.

  The last she remembered the Fairy Godmother was smoothing the hair away from her face while humming. No one had touched her like that since her mother died. Cinderella felt her heart crack; fierce joy, sadness and terror flooded her. She was falling into an abyss of darkness, a menacing velvet presence.

  She screamed. No sound, only feelings, choking her alive. Her world went black.

  A woman’s face, round and filled with life, laughed down at her. “You tell yourself a really good scary story!” She said. Raising a moon faced drum she struck the hide with a padded mallet. Right next to Cinderella’s ear!

  The reverberation travelled down her ear canal into her jaw unlocking the spasm holding muscles rigid. Her luminous fibers forming her dream body relaxed. Her throat opened a hoarse cough. Rolling onto her side Cinderella coughed and coughed. Until finally expelling a thick river of mucus that flowed from her mouth and nose. She was horrified. The rhythm of the drum never faltered.

  Muscles unwound. Her heart synchronized with the drum’s pulse and cadence. Even her skin throbbed. Each thump was thunder: Babaaaa Booom. Air quivered. Shimmering, the drum’s face stretched over a hoop the size of a full moon. “Where am I?”

  Cinderella sighed, surrendering into the heartbeat. Her preoccupations fell away. Concerns for her future drifted, dissolving like smoke. The authority of the drum, throbbing, the tides on the current of moon, was all encompassing. She drifted atop a deep sleep, relaxed and alert.

  A whisper across eternity, she heard, “We all have a place within us; a place of impenetrable peace. From this location you’ll retrieve your spirit.”

  Cinderella opened her eyes. Overwhelmed she snapped them shut. Squeezing her eyelids tight, the pouring in of nature, she opened one eye. Trees vividly green against a saturated blue sky. Bushes bent heavy with gardenia blossoms and fragrance. A primordial current whipped through the garden. Lighter than air the woman’s disembodied voice continued, “Impress on your Spirit Shield this place of impenetrable peace.”

  Cinderella risked opening both eyes. Intensity: the melding of colors rippled over her skin. Gusts of wind bent the bushes setting the flowers swaying. Fragrance set free, hit her with supernatural force.

  She was in a place of untamable power but felt only peace. She could see fragments. A flash of memory emerged and receded. Moments in time punched through the otherworldly landscape. Feelings externalized from her past floated on the whisper of air. The numb years, after her parents passing, unfolded in exquisite detail, compressed in the blink of an eye.

  She observed from a great distance these traumas. She took solace in Nature. The mountains gave their strength. Glacier fed streams sparkled with purity. Trees swaying in communion, the fragrance of her mother’s roses, these were the stepping stones she used to find her way back to love. Blackie as her ever-present guardian, her mother’s gardens, night-walking through memories and dreams of family life were more stepping stones. The moment was eternal until eventually love, Cinderella’s Deepest Desire to give
and receive love, was restored.

  She felt a stirring in her naval. Images, grief and loss, viewed from this landscape of impenetrable peace, mixed with love migrated fusing in her belly. The frayed edges of the landscape smoothed like the individual fibers of a feather gently brushed into place. In this way Cinderella reconciled the disparate parts of herself into a cohesive whole. She retrieved the broken pieces of her soul. Her belly contained her memories, within the reflected the landscape of impenetrable peace, shimmering and vibrating with love.

  When Cinderella woke the following morning she stretched. Her eyes popped open. She felt willowy and tall. Free of the aching muscles and complaining joints that plagued her. The fire was a pile of ashes. Water and bread waited on a wood platter. Next to her was a drum. Three symbols imprinted in the face of her drum resonated in her belly. Startled, she sat up, knocking over the water. Jumping to her feet she put her hand to her belly and felt a quickening.

  She cried out in surprise and alarm. In a panic she ran out of the cave, slamming into the Fairy Godmother beyond the gigantic stone covering the entrance. “Good morning Cinderella. Has your moon shield frightened you? Will you choose to become a woman of power? A woman who knows who she is? Or will you continue to cower?”

  “Yikes! Harsh words so early in the morning!” Cinderella felt at once hurt and infuriated. She wanted to lash out. Before she could spit out her words of anger the Fairy Godmother turned her around, returned her to the cave, taking her to face her drum standing up along the limestone wall.

  Pointing, the Fairy Godmother said, “These symbols carry messages of love, protection and wholeness for you. They are potentially the beginnings of a Sacred Spiral.”

  Turning Cinderella around one more time, she said, “Go. Spend the day in sunshine. We have only one more night together and much dreaming ahead of us.