My father hobbled up the path, still using that old bamboo stick as a cane. His favorite torn-up hoodie was a large cocoon of grey cloth around him. I remembered when it had fit him just right, but now it swallowed his frail figure. He was hardly the tall army sergeant I used to know him as. As he approached, his entire weight on the stick, his back still arched at 90 degrees, I couldn’t help but compare him to the hermit tarot. “Card IX,” in the Rider–Waite deck, features an old beggar in profile, one hand extended, holding a lantern, the other grasping a walking stick. A grey hooded cloth draped over his frame. My father looked just like him. When upright, the card may signal a time of introspection, of mental restoration. A hopeful card. I wondered what lessons my father had to offer.
I had been trailing through the forest. It must have been early spring, and post-tempest, as everything was lush and emerald. Tall trees lined our curving road, verdant, their canopies spread wide. It appeared as the trail my father and I would walk every morning during the summer of quarantine, or as the trail behind Kiplin Hall in Richmond England, where I briefly lived in 2014. Every day, following afternoon tea, I would explore the estate, the teal-leafed forest, and the topiary gardens, the same as Lewis Carroll had done in 1865. I remember that path fondly—how muddy it was, how there were always sheep baaing away in the distance. Stinging nettles and wild roses were always just off-path, and I recalled the pond where I’d sit and enjoy a daily lemon tart. It was the closest I had ever felt to living in a fairy tale, and our quarantine path was the last place I had felt like life was a movie. It’s a shame they tore it down.
My father drew close. I ran to him. My hand flew to his back. I marveled at how he walked there all by himself. He wasn’t allowed to do that normally—to risk going that far from the house without supervision. What if he had fallen? Even with his stick, his balance was never right. I remembered the summer when, after a walk, we rested atop a small incline. He toppled over even while standing still. I couldn’t react in time, so I just stood there and watched him fall.
“No, no, Boy,” he said and waved me away. With a long grey beard, he looked to be a wise old beggar at the crossroads, a blind soothsayer who would trade me words of wisdom for coin. Perhaps he was some forgotten Celtic god. The ghost of some soldier. He would’ve fit in perfectly with the sad old fey of Irish folktales.
He kept walking. The bamboo stick, tap-tap-tapping along the path.
As our path rounded the corner, the sun rose. Beams of light cut through the treetops and glistened on emerald mist. It felt cool on my face, and I found a sort of comfort within the trees. There was safety on this winding road. If we stuck to it, we’d be fine.
My father stopped. He turned and pointed. Past the trees, there was a pasture with a large hill. The path split in two, one that continued through the weald, the other to a wooden fence at the edge of the pasture, and then up and over a hill. There were sheep grazing. It felt so familiar, so comfortable.
I ran to the fence then looked back. My father stood, both hands at the top of the walking stick. Why was he waiting? The sheep baaed. I wanted to bask with them. My hands fluttered down to the gate. I opened it. As if some spell had been cast, my father dashed forward. There was a mirth in his bones I had not seen in years. He rushed past me and started to dance in the field, an Irish jig, hopping through the clover like a rabbit. I joined him, already savoring the sun on my face.
There were about five sheep total, maybe more. Initially, they paid my father and me no mind, but we could approach them without hesitation. I remember them kneeling on the hill, or frolicking, jumping, and skipping after butterflies or little bugs in the lime grass. I tiptoed over to one and realized it wasn’t a sheep at all. A mask hid its face, white porcelain, straight out of a Venetian parade. Rosy circles dappled the corners of its black lipstick, like a French Pierrot. When it smiled, it showed only two buck teeth. Bows were tied from ribbon throughout its pastel pink wool, and an old magician’s top hat balanced on its head. Two little horns pierced through the front brim. It wore a bowtie and had three black buttons that led down to its front legs. It wore fluffy white bloomers, and instead of a lamb’s legs, it had a human’s, wearing fallen white legwarmers and pumps. Atop its two front legs, were the top halves of someone’s arms, which it would emote with when speaking. When I first approached it, it flashed both hands out to its sides, and wiggled them, like an actor performing Fosse. Instead of baaing, it spoke.
“When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see, / For all the day they view things unrespected; / But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee, / And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed.”
Ah, I thought, Sonnet 43. They conjure the Bard.
Another spoke, “O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. / She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes / In shape no bigger than an agate stone / On the forefinger of an alderman, / Drawn with a team of little atomies / Over men's noses as they lie asleep.”
Another, “Perle, plesaunte to prynces paye / To clanly clos in golde so clere, / Oute of Oryent, I hardyly saye, / Ne proved I never her precios pere.”
Not the Bard, but the Gawain poet. Interesting. These lambs are well-versed.
When they kept going, reciting poem after poem, I was quick to realize that there was no meaning behind the stanzas they chose, this was just the fantastic way they baaed.
My father was petting one with blue wool, light, like fairy floss.
“They can heal you, but only when they want to,” he said. I nodded. I must’ve brought him here for that very purpose, to call on these petite poppets with their healing hands. Or perhaps he had been to one to lead me. To show me that a cure was just out of reach.
My father tickled the underside of one’s porcelain chin. I sprawled out in the grass, laid on my back, and just basked in the sun. Tiny flies flickered like glitter through rays of sunlight. The air tasted clean. I was in no rush to leave this idyllic picture, this rococo landscape that I had been painted into.
The sun started to set. I could’ve laid there forever if I had been allowed, but it was time for the lambs to go home. They danced away, up over the hill. I could tell from the way they had sprung about that they wanted us to follow. My father grew frail as the blue one hopped away. I moved to him before he could fall. He had an arm reached out, longing for the lamb’s soft wool.
“We should follow,” he whispered. Somehow it sounded like a question, as if he was asking me if I thought it was safe. I looked up and saw the path disappear over the top of the hill. I knew of the fey and their tricks, the way they lured with candied treats. I had read all the same verses they had. Even Shakespeare warned that the prettiest things in the woods were the most chaotic of them all. Still, there was a sweet desire in my heart. I wanted to follow, to join those darling little lambs.
But we didn’t go after them. My legs wouldn’t let me. They were firmly rooted, as if some subconscious part of me knew that, no matter how desperate we may be, we weren’t allowed to go there. As if I was wading through water that had risen to my chin. So, I just sat, collapsed to the grass with my father, and we waited until dusk.
When it was time to leave, we walked side-by-side, his arm draped over my shoulders, all of his weight bearing down on me, but I was happy to help him. We ate well and in the morning after, I awoke feeling well rested.