25052 or The Boy with Big Dreams

 

Happy Thursday!  Halfway there!!!!  I haven't yet written Faris, the Strange, or The WhisperSon, but I'm a little ways into the Watchmen and all the others are completed.  Today I wrote the entirety of the Lad with Big Dreams, which I'm about to share with you.

 

Week two of the Surface, and while I can't say I'm without complaints, it's certainly a useful tool.  Not only has it saved my life doing NaNo at school, it gets me out of my room to write and do internet.  I also used it to document the pie I made when my camera battery died.  I moved both Mumford & Sons albums from my desktop to my SkyDrive to here without ever leaving the couch.  Which is where I am right now, a sicky sick.

 

Now, on to the story:

 

The Lad with Big Dreams

 

When mankind was young, and the Ivywoods old, there lived a particularly young lad who lived in a mossy village at the edge of the Mountains.  Mumford, he was called, was a dreamer.  When he was very small, he dreamed of being the star of his classmates.  Later, he dreamed of being the star of his mossy village.  It wasn’t long at all before he set his heart on the mysteries beyond the village walls, and then he dreamed of becoming the star of the world.

 

Mumford, in order to achieve the renown after which he sought, tried his hand at this and took up that, every skill and task and art in turn, looking for the one that would make him famous.

 

He tried carpentry, and ended up building a cabinet with the drawers on the outside.  He tried being a fisherman, but all he caught was himself.  He tried spinning yarn and tangled himself to the spindle.  He tried working the fields and grew nettles.  He tried tending children and got bitten.  He tried selling maps and got lost.

 

Mumford tried sweeping floors, singing opera, painting doorjambs, writing plays, shoeing horses, caulking boats, building fences, slaying demons, and selling vegetables.  But no matter what he tried, or how hard he tried to do it, Mumford just couldn’t do it right. 

 

But Mumford was a wishful lad, and knew he would find his talent someday.  Even as he was wandering the Ivywoods, lost after trying to survey the nearest mountain, he kept his head up and dreamed of everyone in the world knowing his name.

 

“That Mumford,” they would say, “why that lad is just the best at…”

 

Just then he felt the forest shift in its atmosphere, the ground taking a different quality, the woodsy sounds becoming muted.  The change drew him out of his daydreams, and he paused to take stock of his surroundings.

 

He had wandered off the path, all right, and was now deep who-knows-where in the Ivywoods.  Yet he did not feel so much afraid as elated, for the spot where he had stopped just happened to be a faerie circle.

 

A ring of white and gold toadstools, arranged in a large circle wider across than the lad was tall.  The lad stood at the center, spellbound by its magical aura. 

 

Now the boy knew of all the Ivywoods tales, and knew that any so lucky to stumble upon a faerie circle would be granted one wish.  So the lad eagerly knelt on the mossy ground and wished for all his heart to be gifted something by which he could make a name for himself.

 

True to tale, right before him a tiny mushroom split the earth and sprouted with a little “pop!”  Mumford plucked the little thing carefully and ate it, as the tales had told him he should do.  He chewed it and swallowed, and waited for the feeling that there was something big for him to become.

 

But there was no feeling on its way, and Mumford sank down with a frown.  It had been such a tiny mushroom, he thought, eyeing the ring around him.  Maybe if he just sampled another…

 

So thinking, Mumford crept to the outer circle of toadstools and pulled up one of the white and golden sentinels.  Eagerly he devoured the whole thing, ignoring its stinging taste, and pulled up another to take home, just in case he needed another boost.

 

Mumford arrived home in record time, so quickly in fact that his mother and father did not even have to say, “It’s about time you showed up, lad, we thought some spook of the Ivywoods had got you at last.”

 

He said goodnight to them and went immediately to bed, dreaming of waking up the next morning a changed man.  Someone whose name was known across the land, from head to tail.

 

As he slept, though, Mumford found that he had a dream of a different sort.  In the dream he felt the white and gold toadstool swell up inside his belly.  Then his own skin became deathly white, with raised bumps of gold all up and down his white skin.  Then his form began to expand, and in no time at all, Mumford was completely transformed into a giant walking toadstool.

 

Frightened, the lad leapt out of bed, hurling his mushroom body out of the house.  People in the street pointed and stared, awed by the creature toddling by them, all white and gold with a puffy domed head.

 

“That Mumford,” the towns folks said, “why that lad is surely the best at being a giant toadstool!  Let us tell of his legend for years to come!”

 

At that, when his fear could grow no more, the lad thankfully awoke.  Hurriedly he patted himself down, searching for the gold bumps and mushroom head.  As soon as he had made sure that he was in fact the same lad he had always been, he rushed from his bed, hardly pausing to dress, and dashed up into the hills without so much as a by-your-leave.

 

Mumford ran and he ran, taking ever overgrown trail and each branchy turn, just wishing to find his way back to the faerie circle.  In his fist he gripped the stolen toadstool, which, as he ventured deeper and deeper into the Ivywoods, seemed to be guiding him along the unseen faerie pathways.

 

All of a sudden he burst through a patch of thistles that cut at him, and he found himself standing by the faerie circle once more.  Blessing his good luck, he quickly took the pilfered fungus and stuck it back in the ground where he had found it.  The calm of the magical place swept the area at once, and Mumford breathed a deep sigh of relief.

 

Then he pushed his way firmly back through the thistles and headed down the mountain.

 

When he arrived back in his mossy village that evening, wild eyed and cut to rags, the people came out of their houses to see what had happened to him this time. 

 

“Don’t take a mushroom from the faerie circle,” the lad cried to the town folks who had gathered at his front step.  “I found a faerie circle and tried to wish for something that would make my name spread across the land, head to tail, but all I got was a bad dream about changing shape into the form of a giant mushroom!  It was terrible beyond belief!  In the dream I went toddering down the lane, with all of you staring at me, an unholy fusion of fungus and man!  So this morning I ran back to the faerie circle and returned what I took.” 

 

And after this he hung his head.

 

“Look at me,” he said forlornly, “I can’t even make a wish right.”

 

And as his mother and father hastily drew him inside, the towns people turned to one another and said, “That Mumford.  Why, that lad is certainly the best at dreaming big dreams.”