The Seventh Story: Driftwood
Title: Driftwood
Word Count: 885
Prompt:
Once upon a time there was an old fisherman who lived beside the sea. Every day he would take his hook and his net and go sit by the rocks just off his front porch. He would cast his line out to sea and sit for hours, just waiting for a bite. He rarely moved, and he rarely spoke. And when people asked what he was doing there he would simply say “Patience always wins.”
He had never been much of a fisherman. When he was a younger man he would take a boat out and try to catch the fish that live in deeper water, but even then his hauls were few and far between. His mother thought he was crazy, going out there every day and coming back with nothing. His wife left him after a few years, because you couldn’t eat dreams. His daughter married a man who brought home tons of fish a day, but when anyone asked him why he didn’t try anything else he would simply say “Patience always wins.”
Now the old fisherman had a granddaughter, a beautiful little girl named Cleo. And every day Cleo would walk down from the village and play on the beach. Sometimes she would sit beside her grandfather and talk to him. She liked it that he rarely said anything back. She never asked him what he was doing, or why he was there. Instead she told him stories about Princesses and Thieves and Magical Things.
And then one day, the old man’s line gets caught on something. It’s large and heavy and he can’t seem to pull it out. He heaves and tugs, then suddenly it explodes out of the sea in a crash of foam and spray, landing six feet away with a thump. The old fisherman gets to his feet and walks over to see what it is. Standing in the sand, polished and bright, it a driftwood horse. Its legs are poised to run, its head thrown back, its mane twisting roots down its neck.
Cleo runs down to him, her eyes wide, and reaches out a hand to touch the horses’ gleaming side.
“It’s a magical horse,” She says solemnly.
“It’s yours,” The old fisherman replies, then goes back to his line.
Cleo walks round and round the horse, looking at it from every angle, then climbs onto its back. She sits there for five seconds, eyes blank, before giving a delighted cry and leaping off.
“It is a magical horse!” She tells the old fisherman. “It can take you anywhere, anywhere you can imagine! It took me to a magic garden full of trees and fairies and little fountain, and there was a castle in the distance, I could see its walls!” She grinned at him. “And then the horse told me that I had a choice, that if I wanted to I could stay in the garden forever, but if I said no I could never get back there, not ever again. But I didn’t stay, because it isn’t real. It looks real, and it smells real, and it sounds real, but it isn’t.”
After that day more and more children began coming down to the beach to ride Cleo’s horse. They all left with tales of magical kingdoms and mountains made of candy and the biggest Ferris wheel they had ever seen. And then one day a little boy didn’t come back. His parents spent all night looking for him, calling his name over and over, but no one found him. The police said he must have fallen into the sea, but Cleo knew better.
“The horse finally found his perfect place.” She told the old fisherman.
The next day the little boy’s mother came down to the beach and rode the horse. She ran back to the village shouting about a place with no housework and chocolate cake for dinner every night and never getting fat. After that the grown-ups came every day. Soon the old fisherman’s daughter and her husband came down. When they saw how many people were waiting to ride the horse they came over to the old fisherman and started talking about charging money to ride it.
“How can you sit there with your empty net when there so much profit to be made!”
“It’s Cleo’s horse,” Was all the old fisherman would say.
Every day all the people in the town would come down to ride the horse, and one by one they stopped coming back. The first person to stay was the little lost boy’s mother, then his father. And after that one or two people disappeared every day.
“Everyone has somewhere they wish they were,” Cleo told the old fisherman. “Everyone has their perfect place.”
And one day, no one came back. The village was empty, the streets bare and deserted. And Cleo came down and sat next to her grandfather.
“Everyone’s gone. Even mother and father. They all found their perfect place.”
“You didn’t go.”
“It wasn’t real.”
And that day the old fisherman put away his line and his net and took Cleo back to his little house and made them dinner. He never went back to the sea, and one day when Cleo asked him why he told her,
“Patience always wins.”