Even marble can dream of flight.
A Question for Wren
The marble fairy had been to the sea twice, a mountain once, and a garden too many times to count.
She had never left her table.
Her name was Wren, at least according to Mira. The sculptor, Elise, had not chosen a name when she placed the little figure in the studio window. Mira had supplied one, along with a paper ticket.
“It’s for her first journey,” she explained.
“Where is she going?” Elise asked.
Mira looked at the ticket. She had written a number on it, but no destination.
“I haven’t decided.”
Wren sat with her hands resting on her knees. Behind her, two clear wings rose above the folds of her white dress. The glass caught the studio light along its fine golden lines.
Mira set the ticket beside her.
“She can keep it until she knows.”
The Place Beyond the Window
That afternoon, Elise’s friend Daniel arrived with a parcel wrapped in blue paper. He stopped at the window to admire the new sculpture.
“Those wings remind me of the sea,” he said.
Mira fetched a pencil. “Which sea?”
“The one I visited last summer. The water was green near the shore, but farther out it looked almost black.”
“Did it have waves?”
“Plenty. One of them carried away my hat.”
Mira wrote the sea on the back of Wren’s ticket. Beneath it she drew a hat floating on a very large wave.
After Daniel left, she placed the ticket beside the fairy again.
“She’s been somewhere now,” Mira told Elise.
“Did she find the hat?”
“Not yet.”
A Ticket with Two Sides
Over the next few days, Mira asked visitors what place they would show Wren if they could take her anywhere.
Mrs Vale described a mountain path with yellow flowers growing between the stones. A young musician chose a garden where a bird had once landed on her music stand in the middle of a song. Daniel came back and remembered another detail about the sea: a little boat with a red sail.
Mira filled the ticket with words and drawings. When there was no space left, she turned it over and found the number she had written on the first day.
“I can’t fit the boat,” she said.
Elise found a strip of paper in her drawer. Mira folded it into small sections and joined one end to the ticket. The new pages stretched across the table, past the candle dish and almost to the edge.
“Now she has room for more journeys,” Elise said.
Mira drew the red sail on the first fold. On the next, she drew a mountain flower. The musician’s bird took up two sections because its tail was unexpectedly long.
Wren remained in the window, her glass wings held wide behind her.
Room for One More
On the morning of the exhibition, Elise placed a small card beside the sculpture. It gave the title and the materials: marble, glass, and gold-coloured wire.
Mira set the folded strip beside it.
“What should we call this?” Elise asked.
Mira thought for a moment, then wrote on the first page: Places Wren Has Heard About.
The first visitor read the card and unfolded the strip. She looked at the hat in the sea, the mountain flower, and the bird with the long tail.
“May I add a place?” she asked.
Mira handed her the pencil. The visitor drew a small bridge and a river beneath it.
“Does Wren need another ticket?” Elise asked.
Mira looked at the empty space on the next fold.
“Not yet. This one has a return journey.”
She turned the strip over. There was plenty of room on the other side.
Livora Gracely ♥
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