Sidsellil and Gustave

Sidsellil arose from her slumber and emerged from the lily petals of her secret garden in Odense to a crisp autumn morning and breathed in the air as the lightest of breezes danced through the trees still clinging to their summer leaves. She set herself aglow and stretched her wings and began to flutter about from flower to flower happy to see the sunshine again. In all her life she could not remember feeling such joy for, having taken umbrage in the roots of the garden for over 300 hundred years, it had been a long time since she had been out enjoying the freedom of these colourful spaces.

She flew up into the trees and barrel-rolled through the branches. She played hopscotch on the tulips and bounded through the willows that grow by the river. Sighing with contentment at this perfect morning she skimmed along the water, looked at her reflection and began to giggle with amusement.

“What is so amusing?” a voice asked.

“Oh my!” Sidsellil cried. “Who are you? Where are you?”

“Hello! Little one!” cried the voice again.

There, by the riverbank was a mallard waving his wing at Sidellil and with a happy grin on his face.

“Go away!” Sidsellil shouted. “I can’t be seen!”

The mallard giggled. “Well, I see you, little girl. So I can see you.”

“No, I mean you can’t see me.”

“I disagree, my child.”

“No, no! What I mean is I will die.”

“But I was watching you this whole time. I saw a small light in that flower over there. And then you flew over there and then over there and over there. And you looked so happy.”

“But you are not supposed to be here. If anybody sees me I will die. Don’t you know anything about faeries”

“No, I am very sorry, I don’t know anything about faeries.”

Sidsellil began to fly away hoping to lose sight of the mallard.

“Oh no! Don’t fly away,” he said taking flight after her. “I have not seen another living thing in so long. Please, please, please, stay and let us speak a while. I promise, I mean you no harm. Let me introduce myself. I am Gustave.”

“It is very nice to meet you, Mr. Gustave, but you don’t seem to understand. Just by you being here, my very existence is threatened. Now please, if you don’t mind, go away or at least let me go away.”

“You are right, I think I don’t understand. Why will you die?”

“Because faeries are not supposed to be seen by any other living thing. If that happens, we die.”

“And so what happens, then? How do you die?”

“Well, if someone sees us then our faces begin to burn and our wings turn to dust. And we need our faces and our wings to live.”

“That sounds awful! But you look okay to me.”

This curious mallard had managed to stall Sidsellil’s getaway just enough for her to think about it a moment and determine that he was right. Her face did not feel like it was burning and her wings had not suddenly turned to ash. When she first noticed that a mallard had seen her, her instincts were to burrow herself back into the roots of the lilies, but she knew that she would not have awakened were it not safe to come outside. Faery protocol also demanded that she be polite and that she honestly answer any question asked of her.

“You are right,” Sidsellil finally conceded. “I feel like I am breathing fine, my face doesn’t feel hot, and my wings seem to be working too. That is odd.”

“What is odd, my child?” asked Gustave.

“Well, as I said, faeries are supposed to die if anybody sees them. That is the first and most important thing to know about faeries. Rule numero uno. Sight. Death. It’s like a thing. But I feel fine. Happy even.”

“Aha, you see!” Gustave said giggling. “I think whoever made the rules for you faeries is filled with, how you say, bullshit.”

“Nobody made any rules. It is called nature. Silly duck.”

“Ho, ho, ho! I am no duck, my child. I am a mallard – a proud mallard.

“Wait a second. Child?”

“Do you have any children?”

“Well, no.”

“Well then to me, my child, you are, as I say, a child yourself.”

“But I am 1200 years old. How old are you?”

“I knew an elephant once. He weighed more than two tons, but still, the rest of the pachyderms called him ‘Little One’. I am only six years old, but I have 12 children. Once you have children, you will understand.”

“But faeries don’t have children. That’s not how it works.”

“If faeries don’t have children, then where do faeries come from?”

“They come from where everything comes from. They come from Imagination just like everything else.”

“Uh oh! This sounds like more bullshit to me.”

“Well, where do you come from if not from Imagination?”

“I come from France. Aix-en-Provence to be exact. But I come from a mother mallard and a father mallard. I hatched from an egg just like every other mallard. You don’t need me to teach you about the birds and the bees do you?”

“Oh, bees!” Sidsellil giggled. “Listen to you! There are no such things as bees. Bees are just a story made up to scare other faeries, but they’re not real.”

“You are funny, little one. I believe that I am richer for knowing you. Can I tell you a secret?”

“Haha!” Sidsellil giggled again. “There are no such things as secrets.”

“But I haven’t told you the secret, so it is a secret.”

“But if you tell me, then it won’t be a secret.”

“Well, then I won’t tell you, so it will just be my secret.”

“But if you don’t tell me, then how do I know that you really do have something you could tell me?”

“Well, if I tell you, then you will know, then the secret will be something that we share.”

“But that’s not a secret. That would be just a thought that you have shared with me.”

“Right, but it becomes a secret if we promise not to share it with anybody.”

“But I can’t share it with anybody. I can’t be seen or I will die, remember?”

“But I am seeing you now and you’re not dying.”

“Just tell me whatever it was you were going to tell me.”

“I know many bees.”

Sidsellil was shocked. “Don’t tell lies! What are you doing? That could destroy the universe!”

Gustave ruffled his feathers. “Come again?”

“It is the first law of physics. The universe runs on truth and honesty. To tell lies could force time to run non-linearly and cause the entire universe to collapse in upon itself. Don’t they teach you this stuff?”

“Little girl, little girl, this sounds like more bullshit. Where do you get these crazy ideas?”

“That’s just how it is. It’s always been like that and it’s always been known to be like that. Just take my word for it, alright. I mean, who do you think knows more about this stuff, a 1200-year-old faery or a 6-year-old duck?”

“Mallard.”

“Whatever! You clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. They make ‘em a bit daffy in Aix-en-Provence I think, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“I don’t mind,” Gustave replied. “But think about this, my child. The universe seems not to have collapsed, correct?”

“Despite your recklessness, it does appear to be holding together.”

“I think maybe you are not so right about your ideas because now we have another problem.”

“And what is that?”

“I told you that I know many bees which you say is a lie because you say that bees don’t exist.”

“And how is that another problem?”

“Well, you say my knowing bees is a lie, but I’ve also inferred that just by knowing bees that bees exist. In your view, that would be two lies, no? Bigger problem, yes? But here we are and the universe has not collapsed. Perhaps I must be telling the truth wouldn’t you say? Or maybe you are just mistaken about the nature of the universe.”

Sidsellil did not quite know how to respond so she took a moment to think about it while Gustave sat waiting for a response.

“I think I see what has happened,” Sidsellil began. “You’re not lying, you must just be ignorant. I mean, after all, you are just a duck and you have a pea-sized brain. You couldn’t possibly know very much especially anything having to do with the nature of the universe.”

“I am very sorry my child, but you are very much smaller than I am and this is why you are the one with the much smaller uh-uh-uh-uh-brain.”

“I was referring to brain size relative to the rest of you. Honestly, it’s not important. You see, we faeries are naturally imbued from the moment we are born with all of the world’s knowledge. This is how I know I’m right.”

Gustave quacked a loud chuckle. “Oh, my child, you are too funny.”

“My existence and the health and security of the universe is no joke! This is serious stuff that concerns every living thing!”

“You know, my child, in some ways you are right. I am just a silly mallard and I do not know complicated things about the universe. I only know what I know from having lived my little life – and what a life it has been! I was born in a treetop and eventually, I learned to fly. I came once to this garden and I loved it so much that I kept coming back to it and returning to my home in Provence every so often. I grew up. I had children. And, up until today, I had never seen a faery and now I think I can say that I have seen everything there is to see. But you know what I know for sure? The best moments in life are the ones spent laughing. Smile, my child, the universe is a joke.”

Sidsellil did not appreciate this sentiment. For her, serious matters were very serious that needed to be taken seriously.

Gustave looked around the garden and noticed that it had grown particularly lush this year which made him happy. The grass seemed greener and all of the colours of the flowers were on display. But, besides this conversation with Sidsellil the faery, the garden was quieter than he could ever remember. “You say that you can not be seen by anybody, yes?” he asked.

“That is how things are, correct,” Sidsellil responded.

“That makes me wonder because it seems to be just you and me in the garden. Where did everybody go?”