The Cry Fairy

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Title:     The Cry Fairy
Author: Alice Brown [More Titles by Brown]

There was once a fairy who wanted to know all the things that ever were. This was very unusual, because most fairies know a great deal more than they have time to do; but somehow this fairy, who was named Gillibloom, had an idea that mortals know a great deal and that fairies would be happier if they could find out what some of the things are.

So he went to the Fairy Queen and asked for leave of absence for thirty-three and a third years, that he might go and live among mortals and learn things.

At the end of thirty-three and a third years he came back again, and he found the fairies dancing just as if they had never left off. They were all perfectly delighted to see him, and they left off dancing and crowded round him and cried out all together, which is the way the fairies sometimes talk: "O Gillibloom, what have you learned?"

Gillibloom looked at them a few minutes very solemnly, as if he wanted them to pay great attention to what he was going to say. Then he answered: "I have not really learned anything, but I have almost learned to cry."

"To cry, Gillibloom?" called the fairies. "What is that?"

"I know," cried a fairy who was a great traveller, and had once gone on a moonbeam excursion to a large town. "It's what mortals do when they want something they haven't got, or have something they don't want."

"Yes," said Gillibloom, "that is it."

"But what good is it?" asked the other fairies.

"I don't really know," said Gillibloom: "but I think it is really very good indeed, because so many of them do it. Sometimes if you are very little and want something, and cry and cry, somebody brings it to you."

"But we don't want anything we can't get without crying," said the fairies.

"Yes, that is true," said Gillibloom. "But it can't be that so many people would cry if there wasn't some use in it. Try as I may, I can't find out what the use is, but I thought I might form a class and we could all cry together, and then we should see what happened."

Now some of the fairies were too busy painting flowers to join a class, and more were too busy riding on bees' wings, but there were a few dozen who said:

"We might as well join. Why not? It will please Gillibloom, and maybe there is some use in it, after all."

So Gillibloom appointed the next night by the banks of the Standing Pool, for, he said, it would be quite impossible at first to cry anywhere except by the side of still water.

The next night they were all there, twenty-seven of them, each with a moss-cup in his hand.

So the fairies all sat down in a circle, and looked pleasantly about at one another and said: "We are here to cry."

"Now, in the beginning," said Gillibloom, "I will show you how it is done. The first three of you there by the acorn must run at me and knock off my cap."

So the first three ran gaily at him and knocked off his cap, but they might as well not have done it, for another cap, just as green and with just as red a feather, blew right down from somewhere else and settled on his head, and the fairies laughed, and Gillibloom did, too.

"Well," said he, "the next three of you must trip me up, and I'll fall down on the ground, and then I'll show you how to cry."

So the next three tripped him up, and Gillibloom didn't mind it in the least, because, whatever you do in the fairy woods, it never hurts. But he remembered that he was the teacher, and if he didn't begin to teach he would pretty soon be no teacher at all. So he sat there on the ground and made up a dreadful face, and wrinkled his forehead and shut his eyes and pulled down the corners of his mouth. And then he dipped his own moss-cup carefully into the Standing Pool, and brought up a drop of water. And he put his fingers in it and splashed some on his face; and it ran down his cheeks, and he said proudly: "Now I am almost crying."

"Ho!" said the fairies, "is that all? We can do that without being taught."

So they wrinkled up their foreheads and shut their eyes and drew down their mouths and dipped their fingers in the moss-cups, and sprinkled their faces, and made a bellowing noise, and they said proudly: "Now we are almost crying, too."

Gillibloom had opened his eyes and wiped his cheeks on a bit of everlasting petal.

"That was very good," he said, "very good indeed! To-morrow we will go on with the second lesson."

But the twenty-seventh fairy was thinking just then that he might have been dancing all this time, and he said: "Gillibloom, I don't see what good it will do."

"It must be remembered that we have only learned Almost Crying to-day," said Gillibloom, with dignity. "When we have learned Quite Crying it will be a different matter."

"I can't help it," said the twenty-seventh fairy. "I'm not coming any more. Anybody want my cup?"

But nobody did, because all the other pupils had kept their cups very carefully, and he tossed it into the Standing Pool and danced away through the forest, singing:

"School's dismissed! School's dismissed!
Out of so many I shan't be missed.
By and by they'll learn to cry.
But if any one's there, it won't be I.
I'd rather sing or dance or fly,
Or swim in a puddle where star-shines lie.
I'll not cry--not I!"

And the next day it was just the same. The twenty-six fairies, sat by the side of the Standing Pool, and Gillibloom wrinkled up his forehead and shut his eyes and drew down his mouth and bellowed and wet his cheeks with water out of his moss-cup, and they all did the same, and then they said: "Now we are Almost Crying."

But when the lesson was over, the twenty-sixth fairy said he had some wheat ripening to attend to in a field ever so far away, and the next day the twenty-fifth fairy said there was a Crow Caucus on, and he wanted to see what they meant to do about the scare-crow in the field they owned, and he couldn't come any more, and the next day the twenty-fourth fairy said there were ever so many dancing steps he hadn't practised for a long time, and he couldn't come any more, and the next day the twenty-third fairy said there was a queer-shaped leaf on the watercress down by the spring, and he thought he ought to look round a bit and see if there were any more like it, and he couldn't come any more.

And so it went on until Gillibloom was the only one left, and he sat by the Standing Pool and dished up water to splash his face and wrinkled up his forehead and shut his eyes and drew down his mouth and bellowed; and whenever the rest of the fairies heard him or saw him, they clapped their hands over their eyes, and put their fingers in their ears, and ran away as hard as they could. And so it happened that the forest about the Standing Pool was perfectly quiet, for no bird or squirrel or bee or any other thing that lives and breathes in the forest will stay after the fairies are gone.

And the Sun looked in and said: "There is nobody there but that silly Gillibloom, and he is Almost Crying all the time. I'll go away somewhere else."

And the Moon looked down at night and said: "Why, there's nothing in that forest but a Dreadful Sound. There's no use in my troubling myself to squeeze down through the branches, for sounds can get along just as well by themselves."

So she drove off very fast to the fairy green, and rolled such a river of light into the fairy ring that the fairies gave up dancing, and got flower-cups and sailed on the river, and some who couldn't stop to get flower-cups swam in it, and it was the gayest night ever to be remembered.

Now, when Gillibloom found that the fairies had all gone and left him to himself, and the four-footed things and the two-footed things, and the things that have feathers and fur and gauze-wings and shell-wings had gone too, he had felt differently from what he ever had before. He had been bellowing for a long time that night, because he was determined to learn to cry and get it over, and then go back to his people, but now he said to himself: "I will not cry any more. And anyway it is not Quite Crying, and if Almost Crying makes everything run away from me, I don't know what Quite Crying would do."

So he tried to shut his mouth, and stop its bellowing, but it would not stop. And he tried to smooth his forehead, and it stayed wrinkled, and he tried to draw up the corners of his mouth, and they would not stay, and he tried to open his eyes, and they would not open. And there was a strange feeling in his throat, and his heart beat very fast, and though he had not dipped up the water of the Standing Pool for as much as two hours, his cheeks were all wet.

"Oh," said Gillibloom to himself, "what has happened to me! what has happened to me!"

And he started running as fast as he could through the silent forest to the Earth-Woman's house, and as he ran he said to himself: "What has happened to me? What has happened to me? Am I afraid?"

Now for a fairy to be afraid is just as impossible as for it not to be a fairy, but Gillibloom knew he was somehow changed, and he could only run and call aloud at the top of his voice, "Am I afraid? Am I afraid?"

Now the Earth-Woman lives in the very middle of the wood, in a green house that nobody can see by day, and a dark brown house that nobody can see by night. And when she heard Gillibloom come screaming through the forest, she stepped to her door and stood waiting for him, and in a minute he was there, and laid hold of her skirts and clung to them.

"Well! Well!" said the Earth-Woman, "and who is this?" Then she stooped down and took up Gillibloom between her thumb and forefinger, and looked at him. "By acorns and nuts!" said she. "It's the Cry Fairy."

"No! no!" said Gillibloom. "No! no! I'm the Almost Cry Fairy. I'm never going to Quite Cry, for I don't know what it would do to me."

The Earth-Woman laid her finger to Gillibloom's cheek and touched it and put it, all wet, to her lips. She nodded and then shook her head.

"Well," said she, "you were a silly, weren't you? Now what do you want me to do?"

Gillibloom kept on bellowing.

"I want to be with the others."

"What others?" asked the Earth-Woman severely. "The other cry-babies?"

"The fairies and the furs and the feathers and the wings and the fins and the tails and the sun and the moon," bellowed Gillibloom, though now you could hardly have understood a word he said.

But the Earth-Woman could understand. She understood everything.

"Then," she said, "you must open your eyes, smooth out your forehead and pull up your mouth, and stop that noise."

Gillibloom tried, because, whatever the Earth-Woman says in the forest, it has to be done. But he could not do it. And worse than that, he found he didn't really want to.

"Do you like to have your throat feel all pinched up, as if you couldn't swallow a drop of honey?" the Earth-Woman asked him.

"No!" screamed Gillibloom. And then he roared louder than ever. You could have heard him across twenty violets.

"Do you like to have your mouth all salt with tears, and your pretty tunic wet with them?"

"No! No!" said Gillibloom.

But he kept on roaring.

"There, you see!" said the Earth-Woman. "Now I'll tell you something, Gillibloom, and you keep it in your mind until you forget it. The more you cry, the harder it is to stop, and the only way to stop crying is to smile."

"Cry?" said Gillibloom. "Is this Quite Crying? Isn't it Almost Crying?"

"That's as may be," said the Earth-Woman wisely. "Now you come in here with me."

So she carried him into her hut, where it is very dark but light enough to see to do all sorts of wonderful things, and she ironed out his forehead and put a nice polish on it, and she opened his eyes and told them to stay open, and she shut his mouth and told it to stay shut, and when it had really done it, she stretched it very carefully indeed, until it was perhaps two cat's hairs wider than it had been for a long time.

"There!" said she, "I can't do any more until it softens a little. Lie down there, Gillibloom, and think about leaves in spring."

So Gillibloom lay down on a very soft couch that was perhaps rose-leaves and perhaps thistledown and perhaps cornsilk, and when he had lain there a day and a night, the Earth-Woman stretched his mouth a little more, and a little more. And one night she said to him: "Now, Gillibloom, your cure will take quite a long time yet, but you must do the rest of it yourself. And this is what you must do. Whenever you think of crying, you must stretch your mouth just as wide as you can."

"Why, that's what the mortals call smiling," said Gillibloom.

"And you must keep on doing it until you've forgotten to cry. Now. I wish you were in the fairy ring."

And she had no sooner said it than he was there. All the fairies were dancing the new dance that is called, "Remember the Robins and Roses To-day and Think of the Lilies and Larks." Now when they saw Gillibloom standing there among them, balancing on one foot and trying to look very bold and gay, they stopped dancing and half turned away, and looked at him over their shoulders. If Gillibloom was going to teach, they didn't propose to stay more than a second and a half in his company.

Gillibloom looked very nice. The Earth-Woman had got the salt stains out of his tunic, and pressed it neatly for him, and brought him a new pair of grasshopper tights. They were very much worn at that time. And he was stretching his mouth as hard as he could, and he put up one hand and touched his cheek, and it was quite dry. That gave him courage.

"Come on, fellows," he said. "On with the dance!"

Just then the moon looked down, and she was so pleased to see Gillibloom back again that she tossed a moon-wreath down over his shoulders, and it brightened up the old tunic wonderfully and sent a splendid light up into his face. And the fairies could see he was smiling, and they began singing together.

"Gillibloom!" they sang, "Gillibloom! Gillibloom's come back!"

[The end]
Alice Brown's short story: The Cry Fairy

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