literature

A Penny for the Well

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Literature Text

A girl named Susanna once lived in a village in front of an old well. The village had long ago paid the water company to pipe water to their houses, and ever since the well had remained out of use. The villagers made up rumours to attract tourists that the well was a wishing well; flocks of them visited the village to lean over its side and drop a coin in there, hoping their cancer would be cured or their numbers would show up in the lottery. That was many years back, though; Susanna was ready to believe what her grandparents heard from their grandparents, and so on and so forth until the legend seemed to be regarded as true only because so many before believed it.

Susanna had funny crooked teeth and frizzy hair but she was pretty otherwise. The boys in the village did not like her very much, and that pained her. She fussed over her looks constantly while all the other girls had to do was brush their hair in the morning. She was so desperate one night, after reading girl's magazines and fretting about her husbandless future, that she tiptoed out of house and visited the well in vain hope.

She dropped a silver penny into its unmeasured dephs and watched its gleam grow smaller, smaller until it was nothing. She prayed for a wonderful man to take her from this smelly, common village to the bustling, energized cities. She prayed the prettier girls would get raped by wandering minstrels or sold off to brothels in the cities. She prayed very fervently, even rubbing the stones of the well as if they were sacred. She repeated her habit of tossing a penny into the well for six years until the town carnival, when she met her beloved.

Her beloved was what she enshrined in her head: dashing, boisterous, funny. He was everything to her and vice versa for him. He whispered his name--Frederick--tenderly into her to make her giggle. They took long walks in the mountains and sat under the nightly blanket of stars, pointing at peculiar ones and laughing pointlessly. Susanna stopped tossing pennies into the well, feeling her wish had been granted.

While she was sleeping one night she dreamt she walked into a beautiful grove with trees all around and a sky so blue it seemed dyed. In the centre was a clearing where the well stood, same with its ruddy bricks and wooden winch. A booming voice sounded from inside it.

"I am Old Man Time, Susanna. Please come closer." the voice said. She approached it gingerly, stepping around the grass as if traps were hidden in them. She approached closed enough to lean over the side of the well and peer into its nameless depths where she threw hundreds of coins into.

"Susanna, you have stopped giving your pennies to me," the voice said.

"There's no need to," Susanna said, "I have my beloved now."

"That is not my doing, and yet in the past you asked for my aid."

"I don't need you anymore," Susanna said, "you're just a smelly old well in a stinky village."

"I would have given you a boy but you forgot to thank me, or even find out if I had brought him here. Nevertheless, you still have to give me money."

Susanna had the sensation of sticking her tongue out at the emaciated man and making silly noises. "Yah, go screw yourself," she said, "I don't need to know some strange well. She pinched herself awake and continued the day without worrying about the dream.

In a space of two months Susanna and Frederick got engaged. Susanna had another dream this time, and she heard his voice making a disapproving noise and the snap of fingers.

"I'll take him away, just like that."

The next morning Susanna got up and yawned and stretched her arms and over on the side where Frederick slept was a layer of fine dust. She puzzled over this for a moment, then searched everywhere in the house for him, and the village, and even the nearby towns. The gossip ran that Susanna had prayed to Old Man Time who lived down the well, and if you did not finish your donation for your wish he would make your lover age and die and turn to dust within the night.

She had thrown the dust down the bathroom sink before she started her search that morning. His coffin was light as they lowered him into the earth--why bother with an urn? There was nothing to keep, and might as well make a fanfare of it.

The same night of the funeral she dreamt she saw Old Man Time for real. He was not really a man, just a wisp of a sort that wreathed its features into something vaguely human. He was old but still a trickster. She cried in her dream as he mimicked Frederick's voice while talking to her. He molded his ghostly complexion into Frederick's cheerful face. Susanna tangled herself in her bedsheets, swatting the air she mistook for the man of the well. Then Old Man Time lowered himself to her ear and whispered, "Would you like to stay for eternity with him?" Feeling no other choice, she said yes.

The villagers found the dust on her bed the next day.



That concludes the legend of Old Man Time in the well. Today lovers recall the cursed love of Susanna and Frederick and pour wine down the well (wine is better than money, because he can drink it) to appease Old Man Time and hope that time will not separate them.
Requires revision later. I'm fairly pleased with it now, as it's the most I've cranked out in one sitting recently and still sounding decent.
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Comments3
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demonlight's avatar
Interesting; it has the lyricism and the moral of a new faerietale. There are a couple of points I would like to bring up; one being the setting. It is suitably neutral, the reader is not innundated with unecessary details (in the same way that no one wants to know about the ceiling panels in 'sleeping beauty'), however there seems to be a bit of hybridisation. For instance, we are given the word 'Minstrels' - insinuating that this is based in a middle age type-era. But then we are told about bath rooms. I don't think even well off low class people had bathrooms until the 1900's. Privy, I think, would be a better word. Other than that, and a couple of modernisms 'vice versa for him' - could perhaps be replaced with something more innocuous and romantic 'as she was for him'.

I like that Susanna isn't two-dimensional. She is, in her wishing, truely unpleasant. This too fails to fit in with the usual one-dimensional faerietale, but this time I think it fits nicely. Although her maliciousness against the other girls makes the ending a little less bittersweet, at least we see that she is a rounded character.

Good stuff here; I will look forward to seeing more of it.