By Ron Wetherington

“It’s all superstition,” my Aunt Emma proclaims, casting a broad net over anything remotely magical. She shares a common view, as the uncritical acceptance of fables in the deep past has migrated to an uncritical dismissal in the present. But in the process, the fables themselves have mutated. I politely listen just to encourage the conversation, but I worry that she has misplaced the ancient truths and replaced them with whimsical illusions.

“Hawthorns are everywhere,” she says. “I grew up with hawthorn trees, and I’ve never seen a fairy in any of them!” She folds her arms in an act of finality.

I love Aunt Emma, and that’s why I’m determined to temper her cynicism by correcting her misunderstanding.

“The fairies don’t live in the trees, Auntie Em.” I grin at her across the kitchen, happy to have drawn her into the subject. “The trees simply connect their world with ours, like a doorway.” She gives me a pouty face of disapproval.

She pours us both a cup of tea, settling her spare frame onto the kitchen chair across from mine. “You don’t really believe all of this nonsense?” She tilts her head in an accusatory gesture.

“It’s not what I believe,” I tell her. “The point is to be willing to believe.” She wants to protest, but I say, wagging my finger, “You only don’t believe it because you haven’t seen it.”

She wags her finger back at me. “No,” she says, “I think fables are not true because they make little sense.”

She’s right, of course. Fairies make little sense. But neither do superstitions, which most of us pay some mind to.

There’s a pretty hawthorn in a distant field behind our house. It’s filled with white blossoms now, announcing the coming of spring and—superstitiously—a portent of good fortune in the coming season. Despite broad skepticism, however, few souls here in the highlands will allow the blossoms in their houses, where they are said to conjure bad luck.

“A lot of things don’t make sense, Auntie Em,” I say, “but we still believe in them. Black holes don’t make sense.”

Exasperated, she twists her hands together on the table. “Well, you just go ahead and believe in fairies and their trees, Aaron,” she says, “and I’ll enjoy the hawthorn as a pretty tree without all the mystery.” She takes a sip from her cup and sends a smile across the table. “I love you all the same.”

I return her smile. I hover over my cup, the smoky Lapsang aroma summoning images of sparse realms and cool, dark places. We’re just different, I think to myself. We rub along well enough, tucked away in a thatched cottage perched up in the highlands, a land long-suffused with mystery and legend. Now just short of eighteen and preparing to enter university, I remain the sensitive romantic, she the tolerant pragmatist. Opposites attract: We’re a happy family.

My aunt arises and takes our cups to the sink. “Look,” she says, turning toward me. “I don’t mind what you believe. I just hope your beliefs are warranted by more than a fanciful desire, that’s all.”

I nod in agreement, but she nailed it with that remark. I catch myself wanting to believe, which is a dicey step beyond just being open to belief. It’s somehow comforting to see a reality beyond ours, yet I know that it’s risky to ride this horse too far.

I pick up the list of supplies she has left on the table. “Is there anything else you need in Glasgow?” I ask. She shakes her head. I make this drive once a week, an hour each way to the shopping center. I pause at the door. “Still,” I wink at her, “I’ll bet you’d go ballistic if I brought hawthorn blossoms inside!”

She thrusts out her chin. “I may just surprise you, young man!”

~

Emma removes her slippers and takes some time lacing up her hiking boots. She slips on a light cardigan and puts a pair of gloves in her pocket. At the door, she retrieves her walking stick, its gnarled blackthorn knob burnished from long wear.

He’s still so impressionable, she thinks to herself. Fairies? With wings? She scoffs.

Beyond the near field, a hill shields the view of the hawthorn. At its summit, she sees the distant multi-trunk tree, covered with small white blossoms, solitary on the pale moor. Emma’s boots squish across a boggy section, a faint acrid aroma rising from the peat. The clouded sky exposes small gaps which admit unfiltered sunlight, with stippled patches of illumination across the landscape.

He’s consumed with fantasy, she muses, his thoughts about the other realms are becoming troublesome.

Emma’s firm grip on the shillelagh guides her on the upward slope. At the crest of the hill stands the hawthorn, surrounded by boulders placed there in earlier times to protect livestock from the hazardous thorns.

An opening in the clouds spotlights the glistening white blossoms as Emma approaches. She and the tree are the only living creatures in sight. Shifting sideways between two boulders, she cautiously approaches a spot where two trunks stand apart, the blossoms hanging within reach.

She worries that he’s coming too near to the truth, yet she knows there is value in fairy myth. It keeps worlds separate; she reminds herself. Superstition protects the tree. We do not make walking sticks of hawthorn.

Her blackthorn staff lightly sweeps across the ground. It’s time to seek counsel from the others. The space between the trunks slides open, just wide enough for her thin body to slip through and disappear below.