A Thanksgiving Story

"O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endures forever." ~ Psalms 107:1

I haven’t written an Inspirational essay for a while, but Thanksgiving is the perfect day for one. Thank you to everyone for sharing this Break Free writing journey with me. Please subscribe if you haven’t yet.

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Below is my artwork from my children’s book The Rumpoles and The Barleys, which always reminds me of Thanksgiving.

Be thankful preparing your Thanksgiving dinner isn’t as precarious as it is for the Rumpole family.

I thought I would share a chapter from The Seduction of Islam, but not what you would expect. I start the book with a few of my childhood traveling adventures, laying the groundwork for my motivation for going to Luxor so many years later.

After my dear sister, Janna, passed away from cancer, I took my daughter and my niece to Switzerland to show them the castle where we lived as children. Janna had told me before she died that she didn’t want her daughter to remember her as she was during her illness. She asked me to please tell her stories from before so those would be her memories. Janna was always the best storyteller as you will find out …

On the left is my daughter Katya and my niece Tori. I'm on the right.

This is one of the stories I told them, about living in Chateau d’Echandens, in a village above Lausanne, Switzerland. It was so amazing to return after all those years. Yes, it was real, I hadn’t dreamed it all, and it still looked the same. Castles from the 17th century don’t change. I could almost hear the echoes of our laughter in the courtyard.

Below is the castle. My parent’s bedroom was the balcony on the right, on the third floor.

Saturday afternoons were the only times we had freedom to do what we wanted and often, when the weather wasn’t too brutal, Janna and I ran to our secret forest. I’d been to the Sierra Mountains where everything was huge, sky, rocks, trees; enormous trees like stomping, frowning giants with great manes of spiky green hair rising to the heavens. This forest wasn’t like that. It was a miniature, perfect little world of delicate sinewy birches sprouting lacy pale green leaves in the summer.

The first time Janna and I entered the forest, it was the beginning of winter, and the trees were almost bare, just a few bright spots of orange and red clinging here and there, the rest a carpet of rich color on the ground, rubbery mushrooms peeking out, damp dark earth and slippery mossy patches in between. A tiny stream danced and chattered through the middle of the forest, an array of rocks and stones strewn across its path.

“We’re going to name everything in the forest,” Janna declared.

It was a marvelous idea. There was no doubt that it was a magical place filled with fairies and dwarfs and all manner of fantastical creatures.

“At the full moon, the fairies dance,” said Janna. “Here, in the glen. So we’ll name it Fairies Glen.”

Dug into a steep bank above the stream was a dark opening. Knotted roots grew above it, making it look almost as if it was a carved entrance of a doorway. Closer investigation revealed that it was probably just an animal’s burrow, perhaps belonging to a fox. That didn’t matter of course, because where magic was involved, nothing was what it seemed to be on the surface. “That’s where the witch lives, the evil witch Dresella, so we call this Dresella’s Cave. She wants to kidnap the fairy princess, Lillia, and keep her captive. We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“How?” I asked.

“For starters, just by being here,” said Janna impatiently. “Dresella knows we’re going to be watching her.”

I glanced around nervously. “It seems more like she’s watching us.”

“Well, don’t worry. The fairies will protect us. Just stick with me.”

“And do what?”

“Karen! I’m going to talk to the fairies and then we’ll have a better idea of what we can actually do, okay? Honestly, anyone would think you were an idiot.”

“Where do the fairies live, where are they now?” I asked, looking around.

“They live in the trees, they’re Tree Fairies.”

I looked up.

Janna sighed. “You can’t see them. They’re invisible to ordinary people. But they’re there. I can see them, not right now, but sometimes I can.”

“How?”

Janna tried to look modest but failed. “They let me. It’s the first time they’ve ever trusted a human. I help them. I bring them supplies, warn them when people are coming from the outside world. That sort of thing. Once, they let me join them at the engagement party of Lillia to the fairy prince Rothgard. He’s a water fairy you know, and lives by Lake Geneva.”

I couldn’t contain my jealousy. “That’s not fair! Tell me about the party!”

“Lillia was dressed in a gown of purest white, her long blond hair woven with flowers. Rothgard was strong and handsome (of course), his long dark hair held back with green vines.”

“Long hair?” I asked.

“Elfen men have long hair, just like hippies, only cleaner. Anyway, just as they were dancing, Dresella and her nightmarish ogres and weirs appeared and almost stole the princess away. We barely managed to fight them off. But she’ll be back with a bigger army and we have to be prepared.”

“How about me?” I cried. “What can I do? Why didn’t you take me along?”

“Shh!” she said severely. “Don’t talk like that here. They’re listening. They don’t like dissension. Just be thankful I brought you and I’m telling you all of this secret stuff. They said I could. They’re trying to decide if you can be trusted. If they do, then next time, I can bring you along. So be quiet and be thankful!”

“I’m sorry!” I cried. “I can be trusted! Oh please, I really want to meet them. I’d rather die than betray them. You know that!”

“Look, this isn’t a game, Karen, it’s real. Once you align yourself with the fairies, you become the enemy of Dresella. It’s dangerous. You sure you want that responsibility?”

“Yes!” My whole being said the words.

Janna nodded, satisfied. “Okay, we’ll see what we can do. Now, we can’t forget about the dwarfs. Because of course, there are dwarfs. See this rock here?” Janna pointed to a big gray boulder on the other side of the glen where the trees grew more closely together than any other part of the forest. “That’s the secret door to the dwarfs’ underground home. In there they forge their weapons made of the finest metal. They have an uneasy alliance with the fairies against the witch and her army. But it’s in danger of collapsing because really, fairies and dwarfs don’t ordinarily get along.”

“Where’s the door?” I asked, staring hard at the rock. I wanted to see the door. I wanted to open it and go inside.

Janna spoke slowly as if to a three year old. “Karen, how many times do I have to tell you, just like everything else right now, you…can’t…see…it. But at night, when the moon and stars come out, that’s when the forest comes alive.”

We stood still for a moment, imagining the night. It seemed that the stream quieted its chatter, the birds stopped their chirping and the squirrels paused in their search for nuts, almost as if the forest, too, was listening for the sound of the fairies’ singing and then the clash of weapons; for some lingering memory of the engagement party that had almost gone so terribly wrong.

A mist crept up from the ground and swirled about our feet. The air grew fiercely cold. The entrance to Dresella’s cave looked like a yawning mouth and I imagined I saw something glittering inside. Two eyes?

“Let’s go home,” I said, shivering.

As we walked back to the castle Janna said, “Okay, I think it’s time I told you everything.” And my heart leaped, wondering what new excitement was in store for me.

“The fairy king, Clairven, has told me that long ago a dragon stole a fabulous fairy treasure, a giant diamond of great power, and hid it beneath the castle—our castle—in its lair. The dragon has long since been killed but no one has ever found the lair or the diamond. A spell was cast around the castle keeping the forest creatures out—even Dresella can’t come near the castle.”

“Thank goodness,” I said fervently.

Janna nodded. “Yeah, except that she has an ally—Madame Franco’s son, Guido.”

I gasped. “No!”

“Yes! He’s looking for the lair and if he finds it, he’ll give the diamond to Dresella and in return she’s promised to give him powers and make him the most famous movie director in the world. If that happens, all will be lost.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant would be worse—Guido’s horrific movies influencing the world or Dresella controlling the diamond’s power. “What can we do?”

Janna turned to me and grabbed my arm. Her face was earnest. “We must find the lair and take the diamond back to the fairies before it’s too late.”

An icy rain had begun to fall and we hurried on. We were out of the forest now and above us on the hill could be seen the castle, the ghostly mist creeping towards it like Dresella’s claws, grasping, searching, clinging to the walls, snaking up and over into the castle grounds. It began to snow, the first snow of the winter and we hurried faster, the castle towers and slatted rooftops looking forbidding against the leaden sky.

We climbed over the castle wall and into the backyard.

“Wait!” cried Janna, steering me behind a scraggly bush. We peeked out and I saw Guido, walking along the little path to the mysterious bungalow where he usually went in the late afternoon and stayed until the wee hours of the morning. He wore his signature black beret, and even on this dark, snowy afternoon, the dark glasses that never left his face. In his arms he held a big brown box.

“What’s he doing?” I whispered.

“I don’t know.”

We waited until he was inside and the door had shut before venturing out from the safety of the bush. Then, we ran and didn’t stop until we were around the other side of the castle into the courtyard and had opened the big wooden door to the central tower. Once inside, we stopped, breathing heavily.

Janna was such a brilliant story-teller and I was such a perfect audience. Everything she told me I believed because I wanted to. I wanted to believe that there were fairies and maidens in distress and magical, mystical places that only we could see and nobody else. It didn’t matter that nothing ever really happened, and I didn’t actually see a fairy or a dwarf, I imagined that they were there and that was enough. Whether or not we ever solved the mystery and Guido was or wasn’t looking for the diamond and did or didn’t find it wasn’t the point. We had created this rich, magical world and we inhabited it and life incredibly exciting and fun because we made it that way.

Every night when I went to bed, I dreamed of the stories we made up and, in the morning, I wondered what we would discover that day.

Dedicated with all my love to my sister, Janna. Below, Janna and my daughter, Katya.

Thank you for reading. God bless you all on this beautiful day.