The Carousel Of Dreams

Under a dark oak apple tree, in a green land far from here, stood a young girl with eyes as green as the grass, hair like the sunshine, and a quixotic mind. This young girl was named Annie, and despite her dreamer’s imagination and talent for storytelling which drew everyone in the land into her, she was desperately sad. Annie had lost her parents a few years earlued. They were dead, and she was now alone, with nothing but her stories and the apple tree. On a cloudy day, when the sky was iron grey and the air was heavy with malaise all across the country, Annie heard a woman’s voice as she was sat under the tree. Follow me, whispered the voice softly. Annie mused that it could have been the wind, or in her head, but she decided to follow nonetheless, through the red-bricked lanes into the empty villages, across the fields of black earth and wheat, stretching into the pale horizon where land meets sky. Eventually, it lead her to a bright silver roundabout, illuminated like a star, in the shape of an old-fashioned carousel. It was completely silent, other than a soft chime. The voice whispered to Annie that she had one wish she could make. One wish. That was all. Annie thought long and hard about what she wanted most. Finally, she spoke, in a voice broken with emotion, to ask for her parents back. The carousel split open, and out from it stepped Annie’s parents, as though they had been in there the whole time. Annie was overjoyed, and so began to walk with them back to the village. But her parents soon began to wilt and fade - they were no longer of this world, and slowly became a heap of silvery-grey glitter on the shadowy pathway. Annie sunk next to her parents and cried, devastated that they’d left her again. As she did so, one of her tears fell onto the dust. It rapidly began to spin around and take a shape, the shape of a tall, beautiful woman, with long flowing hair and immense gold-tinted wings. She bent down, and told Annie in a voice shimmering with compassion, that there had been a curse on her family - a curse dooming all of the women of the family to die young. But because Annie found the carousel of dreams, she said, and made a selfless wish, the curse was broken now.

“But my wish wasn’t selfless,” said Annie.

The bright figure drew herself up and looked at Annie thoughtfully.

“Why did you want your parents back?” she asked gently.

Annie pondered, then answered with a whisper: “They were good and kind parents. They did not deserve to die. I wanted them back so that they could have had the lives that they should have had.”

The figure nodded, as she had expected this. “Take my hand, child,” she said. Annie felt herself slowly rising into the air, then zooming through it down a whirling tunnel that seemed to be made of colourful glass and finally, landing soundlessly outside the house she had lived in with her parents before they died. The door creaked open, and there stood Annie’s mother and father, real and solid, as though they had never perished. As they cried out with joy and held each other tightly, the figure ascended from the ground and said, in a whisper only Annie could hear, “You wanted your parents to have their lives back, so now I am giving you back yours.”

“It was magic,” Annie told friends years later. “The magic of being selfless.”