The Story of Fanny Piff (A Personal Myth)

Dream Nameless

     There was a nameless town of many cultures that sat at a crossroads between the three kingdoms of Haverworth, Valinoth, and Ixie, respectively.  The town sprang up around a small spring surrounded by three lemon trees, each tree facing one of the three kingdoms.  The town’s founding happened when three trading caravans, one from each kingdom, all happened to meet up one day in Autumn around the clear, glittering spring.  That the traders all happened upon the place at once was mere chance, wasn’t it?  Whatever the case, their six day journeys to and from each of the other kingdoms, having been cut in half by the chance encounter, became the foundation of the town that grew there.  The unique location made the place a center for trade and commerce between the three kingdoms that the town soon had a monopoly on, but there was always one problem.  The people from each of the three kingdoms all had different ideas of what the name of the town should be, but once it came time to decide a name, the campground-come-village had seen a generation or two and the children born of traders from entirely different towns no longer cared to be associated with one kingdom or another.  The area was simply known as The Crossroads, though no one that lived there particularly liked the name (or the notion that The Crossroads’ citizens would be referred to as Crossroadians, Crossroadanites, or Crossroaders).  Instead, they all chose to have their town be nameless until they could all agree or until one of the kingdoms decided to annex them and force them to take on a name.

     This seemed all good and well as the prospects of annexation seemed like a distant dream for another era, and it was; until Mayor Whistlethorp, whom was democratically selected some fifteen or so generations after the town’s founding, received invitations, all at once, one afternoon, from each of the three kingdoms, to be annexed.  Not knowing what to do, Mayor Whistlethorp called a town meeting that was to take place at the Lemon Spring Inn, one of the largest and oldest places in town, where everyone was sure to be comfortable.
     The Lemon Spring Inn was situated just off the main plaza of the town, an area built around the spring and trees the inn took its name from.  The family that owned the inn was called Piff and they had deep roots in the town and a deep memory to go along with them.  Ma and Pop Piff had five children, Finnegan, Ulah, Vaudie, Remmy, and the youngest daughter’s name was Fanellandra, or Fanny for short.  Her brothers and sisters had moved to different parts of town to follow their own interests, or the interests of their spouses, and create their own lives around blacksmithing, or money lending, or the crafting of fine clothes.  Fanny was eighteen, at the time, and in charge of the stables at the family-owned inn.  Fanny, up to this point, loved two things; horses and talking, which made her the perfect stable-girl.  She worked very hard every day with the three other hired stable hands to keep the stalls fresh and clean, padded with sweet-smelling hay, and full of tasty oats, and cool, clear water for the horses that was fetched straight from the spring.  Talking to the squires, drivers and travelers staying at the inn was always a wondrous experience for the girl.  See, Fanny had never left home on her own, except for the occasional ride around town on her horse, Archibald (Archie for short).  She’d never been to any of the kingdoms that surround her town, never gone riding alone on the road, and only been to other towns with her father and cousins to visit family in the countryside close to the kingdom of Haverworth.  She was an urban bumpkin, in a sense, but her access to the gossip from people that visited from all over made her one of the most intent listeners.
     Fanny was also particularly fascinated with maps.  She kept a secret stash of them hidden behind a loose board on the left-hand side of Archibald’s stable wall, a board that he had kicked loose once and that had never fit the right way afterwards, creating a slit of space between the wall of his stall and the one next to it.  She had bought the maps on the sly from travelers that had no use for them anymore.  The girl secretly wanted to travel the world, even beyond the three kingdoms that bordered the south, east, and west.  It was part of the reason she wanted to know so much about the travelers, the maps showed her that there was much more than her speck of a town in the vastness of the world. When Fanny heard about having to choose a name and a kingdom, her heart sank a little bit, knowing that the little question mark on several of the maps she would find in the future would have the calligraphic squiggle of a name and in parentheses the name of the kingdom it belonged to.  All of the mystery and the history of her nameless town would disappear.
     The news about the ambassadors spread – like wildfire, like a flash-flood, an earthquake, a lightning strike, a squall, a sudden gale, quick and powerful as the glimpse of a rainbow – through the town.  Everyone had an opinion, most of which revolved around family names (mostly why theirs should be the basis for the name of the town), or the spring and the direction or a spot where it’s trickle through town was particularly beautiful, or the lemon trees (the latter two options having always been discussed in the past with fruitless and unremarkable results).
     At the town meeting all of the important merchants, traders, ambassadors, and town officials met in the Lemon Spring’s vast dining hall to argue and discuss possible names in an official manner, though most of the rest of the town was there to have their two cents put in to the discussion.  The arguments led to bouts of shouting between parties that could be heard for blocks and blocks in the evening (and then late-night and early morning) air of the small town.  People fell asleep in their chairs, partially from boredom, partially from exhaustion, and partially from the hopelessness of the situation.  There were so many opinions and options that all seemed valid.  How were they ever going to decided or agree?  Poor Fanny was up all night quieting horses spooked by sudden peaks in the decibel level of the discussion and running between the stables and the huge dining hall the meeting was in to listen to whichever new argument was raging.  When Mayor Whistlethorp fell asleep and suddenly awoke to find that he had missed the last several minutes of conversation, it was decided to adjourn the meeting until the next evening so the townspeople could get some sleep in their own beds.
     Fanny noticed something weird in her semi-lucid state after the meeting and just before she drifted off to sleep.  Her father had, long ago, installed a little bed and desk for her in the loft of the stables so she wouldn’t have to go far from her duty and her love, the horses.  It was while she was almost dozing up in the loft that looked out over two thirds of the stable, that she heard the telltale snick and click of one of the stable doors being opened.  Her stable-hand instincts were trying to kick in while she was grappling with her exhaustion.  She sat up groggily and was about to call out when she heard voices whispering to one another beneath her, through the loose floorboards of the loft.  Fanny wiped her eyes and yawned quietly.  Two of the ambassadors, whose horses and squires she had met the day before, were talking quickly to one another.  Something about “fire”, “squadrons”, and “the alliance plan” were all she could make out before she called out that she was coming down to meet them and get their horses ready.  Fanny didn’t want to be eavesdropping on their discussion, nor did she want it to seem like she had heard anything, she simply wanted to get them out of her hair so she could sleep more.  Her groggy and bedraggled appearance was convincing, but the two kept eyeing her like they were trying to distinguish if she had heard anything they had been speaking of.  She quickly fetched their horses and they saddled up and rode out, in separate directions.  Their constant questioning glances were what Fanny found most suspicious.  Why did they need to be so secretive, especially about a discussion on the naming of a town and its fruitless results?  Whatever the case was, she was too tired at that particular junction to give it much more thought, so she went back up to the loft and quickly fell into a coma like sleep.
     Three fires raged that afternoon, just as the townspeople were waking from their long night of discussion.  The first was at a young constable’s home that unfortunately killed him, his wife and their two children.  Another blazed up at the home of the Palaedin family, an old family like the Piff’s that had roots in the town’s beginning, no one was hurt, but all of their trade goods were engulfed by the flames, shattering their livelihood.  The third fire was set to the stables of the Lemon Spring Inn.
     Fanny Piff woke to the sounds of panicked horses.  The corner of the stable was spewing black smoke where the stairs to get up to the loft were.  If the keen senses of the animals had been any slower, Fanny would have gone up in smoke with the dry hay.  The black cloud seemed like something from the dream she had been having, but its reality struck when she began coughing.  Fanny sprang out of bed and ran over to the open part of the loft.  Archibald’s stall was just at the edge of the opening and, of course, she had practiced dropping into his saddle from above when she was younger, because that’s what any sensible twelve year old would have been doing at the time.  She never expected she would need to use the technique.  The horses were in a panic, whinnying and pacing about in their stalls, but when Fanny called Archibald’s name and he looked up at her, he seemed to calm and wait for her to act.  Fanny dropped down just as the hay bales in the loft caught.  She twisted her hands into his mane, kicked Archie’s sides with her heels, and yelled “Hyah!” to get him going.  Archie kicked open his stable door (something else they had practiced together, though he usually had a saddle on) and they were off through the stables.  Fanny reached out to pull at the ropes that loosed the latches of the other stall doors so the other horses could escape, all the while the fire blazing on down the walls and across the thatch roof above them.
     The fire brigade responded easily and quickly to the stable fire because it was right near the spring in the town’s center, but it had spread too quickly and reduced a large portion of the stable to ash.  Most of the horses had enough sense to break out by themselves, or push their way out of the unlatched stall doors, but some, like her father’s old grey mare, didn’t have the energy or the sheer panic needed to make it out safely.  The remaining horses were mostly gathered around the spring, though some of them had been so spooked by the fire and Mrs. Piff’s screaming about her daughter’s safety that they had bolted right out of town and into the woods beyond.
     These incidents were not the only distressing news for the townspeople, most of whom had also gathered around the Lemon Tree Inn near the spring when they heard the news.  Travelers were arriving back in town after setting out at midday, saying that the roads had been blocked in each of the directions towards the outlying kingdoms.  Apparently troops had been dispatched by the three kingdoms and it seemed that the town would face a hostile takeover.  Mayor Whistlethorp was flustered, to say the least.  Their town had no standing militia, they barely had an organized constabulary because, for the most part, the crime in the town was done by outsiders and visitors.  The kingdoms had organized against them and there was nothing that could be done about it.
     Fanny Piff, wrapped in her mother’s vice-like embrace and holding on to the leather straps of a bridle someone had found for Archibald, walked over to the west facing tree, the one that looked out toward Ixie.  She put her back to the smooth bark, detaching her mother’s arms in the process, and gave Archie a scratch underneath his chin.  He waggled his big lips at her and exhaled through his nose.  Men and women and children were all around the spring talking softly in big groups.  “What are we going to do Archie,” she asked him. “All of my maps must be cinders by now.  Without them, how will I know how to get out?  I feel like I know every brick of this place and every face in the crowd, the only mystery I have left is the name of my nameless town and it sounds like soon, that will be taken away from me too.”
     Just then, a soft, light, high note, like the soft whistling of a teakettle just about to boil over, began sounding its call among them.  Archibald’s ears twitched and a hush fell over the crowded people.  That first note was followed by two others in different pitch, resulting in a beautiful, ringing chord that settled into the gathered throng.  People were looking around, trying to find the source, and a rumble of conversation started.  Then the quality of the sound changed, it became muffled, as though it were coming from underwater.  Stifled echoes in different pitches layered themselves into the noise.  The ground beneath Fanny’s feet shivered and a long, thick root pulled itself out of the ground.  Fanny’s mother screamed and it was echoed across the short span of the spring by people standing around the other two trees, all the while the sound deepened and chorused and rose into a loud crescendo.  Roots snaked out of the ground around Fanny and separated into two clumps that the tree rose itself up on.  The chorus suddenly stopped.
     A voice that echoed the first note called out, “Do not be alarmed, citizens.  We have been listening to your troubles and have decided to do what we can to help.”  The lemon trees of the spring walked with their gangly roots through the sea of the crowd to the very edge of the spring and then dipped one chunk of their roots into the clear water.
     A second and third voice called out like a chorus with the first voice, “We, the dryads of the three trees, along with our silent and reflective sister of the spring, have decided to give you a gift.  We will free you from your human bounds to fight or scare off your threat.  We have been hearing gossip on the winds of the forces rallying against you and will lend our aid, for a small price.  We have been missing a fourth sister these many long years for the north side of the spring, one that believes in life, knowledge, and the language of all things.  We believe she is here among you in this young one, Fanny Piff.  After her part in the struggle, we ask that she join us.  We only await her decision.”
     After a moment of silence, Fanny answered before anyone else could stop her, “I’ll do it.  But I have a question first.”
     The trees were silent for a moment, “Ask and we shall answer.”
     “Will I always have to be a tree?  I want to see the world I hear about from all of the people that visit the Lemon Spring and our town.  The choice to save my town is an easy one, while giving up on a dream is much more difficult.”
     A rumble went through the crowd.  The words selfish and sacrifice and youth floated about.  A large bubble broke the surface of the spring.  The trees answered her, “Come Fanny, look into the water and hear the words our sister would speak to you.”
     Fanny Piff walked over to the edge of the water beside the dryad of the west tree, knelt down and looked into the cool depths.  Only her reflection was there, strong faced, looking worried and hopeful.  Her reflection blinked up at her and smiled, though Fanny did neither.  The girl’s eyes widened and her reflection laughed, though the sound felt as though it was coming from deep beneath the water, faint but precise.  The reflection looked up at her, and responded with a smile in her voice, “You will soon see the power of dreams.  My magic is merely reflective and so, I cannot hold anything except what is seen in my waters.  What is truly seen is what will be.”
     Fanny stood up and addressed the crowd and the dryads, “I will be your sister tree, but how will we stop the three kingdoms from destroying us?”
     The west tree answered her with a shiver of it’s boughs that loosed several lemons into the spring and onto the heads of the crowded people, “Sister, you, the Mayor and the Chief Constable will lead separate charges of the townspeople at the gathered forces of the kingdoms, one squadron for each direction.  This is how.”
At the word “how”, the townspeople felt a collective change and Fanny watched as her own perception of the world changed.  She grew taller, her legs thinning and her neck elongating.  A downy, pure white plumage swept across her reflection in the spring, replacing her skin and clothes.  Her arms elongated and her fingers stretched into long white feathers as her head morphed itself into that of a swan’s, albeit the largest swan anyone had ever seen.  She looked up to find a menagerie of creatures and beings, some of them one could only dream about.  There were lions and elephants, oxen and great golden eagles, giant snakes and even bigger spiders, there was a family of grizzly bears standing together, and another of buffalo, cheetahs and gorillas, man-sized bats and cow sized hedgehogs, even a massive and dazzling butterfly with huge eyespots on the underside of its wings mixed with black and dun colors, while on the inside of it’s wings was a dazzling array of greens, blues, and pinks.  The more exotic beasts were male and female centaurs, an enormous glistening green dragon with aqua colored wings, an ostrich with six heads and two sets of legs, a creature that was simply a mass of glistening eyeballs set on one large grey stalk, a man that was half snake and another person that was half scorpion, there was an eerily blue-white glowing cloud that let out showers of sickly yellow sparks, a thirty foot tree with white polka dots on black bark and several chattering heads at the ends of some of its branches, pastel flecks of light flew across the spring at Fanny and danced on her bill, revealing themselves to be naked little fairies, in all different colors, with wicked red fangs, Fanny turned to where her mother had been standing beside her and found her mother’s face in the shaggy mane of a lion with brilliant, gold-colored wings and a serpent’s rattling tail.
     The creatures from the dreams of the town had come to life in the very streets.  Fanny, brimming with joy and wonder set out across the spring, flapping her wings and bursting into the air with a loud honk, no meager task for a swan the size of a horse.  “Mayor, Constable, let’s take back our countryside!”  A cherry colored phoenix with a crest of orange feathers answered her in the Mayor’s voice, while a large, regal looking stag with a full rack of antlers answered her in the Constable’s voice, “To the defense of the town!”  With that, the population of the town set out to reclaim their space in the world that was not to be infringed upon by the ambitions of the three kingdoms.  They slithered, galloped, floated, flew, sprinted, slunk, dove, and stampeded their way south, east and west.
     The forces outside the town, bolstered by the knowledge that the people would be distracted by the threat, the fires, and the town’s lack of agreement with one another, never expected a preemptive strike by a menagerie of dreams and nightmares.  “Swans the size of ships,” they would say later, “Birds that caught fire and crashed into the ranks, only to rise again,”, “Giant creatures of the forest,”, “A wailing woman’s head on a flying beast that made the sound of dry bones rattling in an empty skull,”, “People that were half animal or insect or reptile that screamed a wordless cry as they descended on the ranks,”, “A cloud that rained sparks that ate through armor, but tickled when they hit the skin and left men in fits of uncontrollable laughter.”
The metamorphosed people of the unnamed village returned that night under a full moon to the spring and the Lemon Tree Dryads on the bank.  The Swan that was Fanny Piff landed gracefully on the quiet surface as the people gathered their dreamed-selves close to hear the ringing voices of the trees.  “Well done citizens, you have rescued yourselves from those that would define you, but not without losses of course.  Those that did not return have decided to continue to live out their dreamed lives out in the wild world, but do not despair for them.  If they ever find that they want to return, all they must do is drink from the waters of the spring and they will be changed back, just as you all will do to regain your human forms.”
     The cherry red phoenix at the north end of the spring and the graceful stag at the south both bowed their heads to the cool waters and drank.  Antlers and feathers melted into changing bodies and, in no time at all, the Mayor and the Constable were standing at the edge of the spring.  The other townspeople bent their noble heads, tentacles, roots, et cetera, to the water and shrank or grew accordingly, back into themselves.  The human forms moved back amongst the dream creatures so that everyone could get at the spring.  Fanny Piff, all the while, sat on the water watching everyone change back.  When a little girl emerged from the last creature, a giant turtle with glowing limbs and a garden of mushrooms growing from its back, Fanny bent her head down and drank deeply.
     Swan changed to crouching girl atop the waters of the spring.  She drank again.  Fanny’s hair and limbs grew dark and barky.  She stood on the waters and turned to the north end of the spring.  As she walked closer her arms elongated and her fingers grew long and wiry as her legs extended and her feet branched into roots.  Fanny’s hair twined in and out of itself and grew into a huge twisted crown of dark branches.  When the new dryad reached the edge of the spring her trunk and torso widened as her neck and head grew thin, branched, and twisted itself into her hair.  A young wiry oak stood at the north edge of the spring and it shivered as new foliage burst from its branches.
     “Thank you Fanny Piff for your sacrifice,” the Mayor said quietly.
     “Mayor, everyone, do not feel pity for me.  It is no sacrifice that I make today.  You will see.  The magic of water is reflective and if I dream hard enough, I can go anywhere and be anything,” she said.
     From then on, the memory of Fanny Piff was kept alive by the town and its lore.  Some say that on nights when there is no moon in the sky and the dreams of the earth must make up for the lost light, the north tree of the spring vanishes and returns with the rising of the new moon.  You can only see it go and come, always in a different form, if you are dreaming deeply enough to hear the trees singing and the water echoing a melody in reply.