In the Name of Love

Within the jaws of the pointed arc of cliffs that surrounded the land of Eldress, a town called Coor was once tucked snugly between two rolling hills, in a brief lull of the mountainous terrain. A small village of people lived here, their tidy cottages daintily perched to gaze down upon the lush valley below. They lived comfortably in a relatively lackluster but quaint lifestyle in which everyone knew everyone else’s business.

On the edge of the village, the smallest cottage within the town strayed dangerously close to a forest that was untouched by the people of the town of Coor due to the many legends founded by fearful farmers. It was within this cottage that our story began. On a day that would otherwise be unimportant, what was probably a quarter of the village’s population was packed inside this little house in the heated air of July. The long-awaited day was here.

It wasn’t easy to breathe within such a packed room, and to escape from all the hustle and bustle of the day’s excitement, one occasionally had to step outside for fresh air. As the sun began to slide behind the mountains, a squat young woman was doing just that.

She sighed loudly as she stepped out into the sunshine and fanned herself vigorously. Perima was a vital role in the day’s excitement, sister and friend of the town’s famous woman of the day, but the heat had been causing her dizziness, so she toddled up the path that weaved the streets of Coor together on a brief walk, occasionally pausing to wipe the dampness from her forehead. As she did so, a spot in the distance caught her eye, and she used her already raised arm to shield the afternoon sun as she squinted towards the man approaching on horseback.
She stood there for a moment more before recognizing the man and immediately rushing towards him, waving her handkerchief with frantic excitement as the last of her words stabbing through the dust of the hot summer day and the clopping of his horse’s footsteps.

“…Quickly! Oh, do come quickly, Athan, hurry!” She begged, ushering the man into his own house only seconds after he’d dismounted from his horse. Athan hastily followed, his face expressionless and his manner stiff as he stuttered over a million questions for his wife’s sister.

The room she led him to was already suspiciously quiet for the number of people crammed within it, but as he entered, the murmurs were hushed away and the cottage surrendered to a deafening silence. Words died on the man’s lips as he warily glanced over the many faces packed into the cottage he shared with his wife.

Perima, chin held high and her grip tight on Athan’s arm, cleared her throat and moved determinedly towards the center of the crowded room. Friends and family members, smiles wide, moved out of their way, eagerly backing into each other and against the room’s tiny walls as they murmured their happy congratulations to him as he neared his wife.

The young man paled visibly, already quite sure that his heart had never pounded so hard in his entire life – certainly not in any battle he’d ever fought, and he’d fought in many. His breathing all but stopped as he neared his wife, Merie, and watched as she glanced up towards him with a tired, tender smile. His eyes immediately found the precious bundle in Merie’s arms, and all time seemed to standstill (“Every person in that room’s heart stopped beating,” Perima would describe later) as he forced down a lump in his throat and stared at the sleeping infant that was his firstborn.

“Merie…” he whispered, and Perima bustled to her self-proclaimed place next to his wife and began fussing with the blankets.

“It’s a girl,” Merie whispered as he neared, “She’s sleeping now.”

Athan nodded, kneeling next to the bed and reaching out towards his daughter. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here earlier …” he started, but his shook her head.

“I know you have a responsibility to this town,” she said with a gentle smile, “and I don’t blame you for that. It’s those scoundrels from Kereth who are taking your time away from our dear Poppy. Aren’t they, darling?” But she was speaking to the child now, her damp forehead nearly touching Poppy’s own small face as she leaned towards their daughter.

Poppy.

The name was murmured as a trivial afterthought in Merie’s soft whispers to her daughter, but it sent a ripple of confusion throughout the room, and Athan was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the extremity of silence. He scratched embarrassedly at his ear, discreetly lowering his head as Perima’s own snapped up, the squat woman’s prematurely graying curls bouncing. Several people within the room began uncomfortably shifting back and forth, fanning at their clothes in the hot summer air. Someone whispered into her husband’s ear.

Perima was the first to speak. “Poppy? Merie, what kind of a name is Poppy? A nickname, surely?”

“Perima,” Merie sighed, her eyes not leaving the child, “Poppy likes her name, so don’t insult it. You like it, don’t you, Poppy?”

Athan sighed. Apparently he was supposed to be the one to answer the question properly, even though his wife had chosen the name. But both Perima and Merie had tendencies to be irrationally stubborn, and Athan often found himself burdened with the chore of soothing them in order to drain the bitter taste of drama out of their spats. The thought of what life was like for them before he’d come along gave him chills.

“Merie really wanted her to be Poppy,” he spoke up, nearly choking over his daughter’s name in his attempt to make it sound natural on his lips, “Merie said you both used to relate poppy flowers with your family trips taken down to the lake…That’s right, isn’t it?” He coughed hesitantly.

But Perima wasn’t going to give up so easily.

“Well, we did, but they never did very much good for us. Made us sleepy and stupid. Do you really want a stupid child?” she hissed, unaware that every eye in the cabin was now very much on her. When Merie did not answer, she tried another tactic, begging, “Merie, you know how much names mean in this town…”

Silence. Someone cleared his throat.

“Merie, I demand that you change that child’s name right this instant or I’ll take her away from you!”

“You will not,” Merie argued, finally lifting her head away, a hint of anger shining in her brown eyes, “It’s none of your business what we name her, and besides, it’s too late to change it. Her name is Poppy.”

The child being discussed took this moment to open her eyes, and the whole cottage paused to watch her, but Poppy merely emitted a small yawn and returned to her slumber.

“Well, if the shoe fits…” Perima sighed. “But you’re going to wish you’d listened to me, Merie, I swear it.”

It was only time before the news would spread to every cottage in Coor, and those who weren’t present at the birth would soon know the story of what had happened July 16th almost better than those who were there.

In some towns, it was the first words the child spoke. In others, it was their birthdays. Perima even claimed to have once heard of a town where the dreams a person had in slumber were believed to describe the future of their whole lives. But in Coor, it was names.

No one could describe the almost magical quality that surrounded the way names were so influential on children in the tiny village. But parents spent months carefully planning the meaning and sound of their child’s name, contemplating every angle on which the word could be read or spoken so that their children would be the best they could be. Usually, the children grew up at least a little bit like their name, the connection more extreme in some cases than others. But it always had an impact.

Perima and Athan both knew this. Perima had always had knack for telling stories that, no matter how stupid they were, Athan could never forget, and as the days passed and the rumors about his daughter and Merie spread, one story in particular kept repeating itself across Athan’s mind.

“My grandmother told me,” Athan recalled Perima’s story beginning the way they always did on a day long before Athan had even considered having children of his own, “that once there was a lovely young woman she knew who had already had three strong, healthy young children with beautiful names that cannot be repeated. She was so good at naming her own children that other villagers often came to her for ideas for their future infants. But her fourth child came later, and since she had thought she was past her childbearing years, the pregnancy was a surprise.

However, she told herself, ‘I shouldn’t worry. I’m the best at naming children in the whole town! Surely I can give my fourth child, son or daughter, the best name yet!’ So she began devoting more and more of her time to picking out the perfect name.

Finally, she found a name better than any other, and she vowed not to tell a soul what name it was that she had found until the day her daughter was born. When that day finally came, she told everyone the name.” Perima had paused very dramatically at this point in her story, “Adess. It turned out that she had been planning to name the child ‘Adeo,’ meaning perfection, if it was a boy and combine that with ‘dess,’ the word from the child’s father’s native language (for he was from a land far up in the North that has long since been taken over by enemies) meaning beauty if the child was a girl.

Everyone praised the woman for her brilliance and, sure enough, the girl grew up beautiful and perfect in nearly every other way, as expected. The town adored her.

Of course, there was a problem with this name that had not occurred to her. Her husband’s language had long since changed and mingled with other tongues, and when a traveling salesman came to their town who happened to speak a similar language, Adess’ mother saw another side of Adess they had never expected before. You see, Adess began spending more and more time with the salesman, and as she did so, she grew more and more hostile to her parents, although to the rest of the town, she seemed just as perfect then ever. Then one evening, Adess didn’t come home from the marketplace. Her parents grew sick with worry, and when Adess finally came home the next morning, they demanded to know where she’d been. But Adess just laughed, a high and cold laugh, nothing like they’d heard their daughter do before. It turned out that the salesman had tried to convince Adess to steal all of her parents’ money and run off with him, and when she had refused, he left town without her.

Adess, unaware that her beloved had betrayed her, spent hours searching the forest for him. When she discovered that he wasn’t coming back, she came home to her parents, half-mad with anger and grief. She then brutally killed her parents by forcing them to eat all of the money she had stolen from them and threatening to stab them if they did not. Eventually, they choked and died. Adess hung their dead bodies by their fingernails in the forest, where their bodies still rot. Adess ran out of town, never to be seen again. It turned out that ‘dess,’ also meant “beautiful betrayal.’”

At the time he’d heard the story, Athan had not been impressed (this was one of Perima’s earlier stories; fortunately, they had improved a fair amount since then) and had pointed out that he’d never seen or heard of any skeletons hanging about the marketplace. He also reminded her, quite logically if he did say so himself, that no one could possibly become so crazy so quickly just because of their name.

“Ah, but they could!” Perima had said mysteriously when he’d mentioned this flaw in her tale, “That’s what makes name-choosing so dangerous!”

But it really isn’t dangerous, he said to himself as he bought rope from a salesman that reminded him all too much of the salesman he’d pictured as Perima told her story. It’s just a silly myth. Still, Coor was a town of gossipers, and he couldn’t ignore the whispers that chanted through his head as he left the marketplace.

But Athan never had time to find out if his daughter would turn out as foolish as people expected her to. A few months after she was born, there was an attack on the village by a group of thieves from a town called Kereth, and Athan had taken up his duty as an Officer for their little village. There were few casualties, but Athan was one of them. After that, the attacks had eventually died away, but the lives of Merie and Poppy were never the same. A few years later, Merie was remarried to a man named Virit.

And Poppy grew up to be the dreaming, oblivious child everyone thought she would be.

She was a plain child with heavy-lidded eyes and hair that was always a mess of tangles that refused to curl prettily at the ends the way some of the girls’ in their village would. It didn’t matter, however, because Poppy didn’t spend much time with the other children anyway. Most of her days, when she wasn’t helping her parents by tending the garden they sold vegetables from for extra money, she would sit alone on the flowery hillside beside their neat little cottage and simply stare off towards the forest or the fields below her.

Poppy was dreadfully uninterested in other children, and whenever one of them tried to befriend her, she would usually make a game out of their attempts at friendship, running off to hide in a tree until the company left, no matter how many times Merie told her how rude that was.

Eventually, Merie, too, gave up on Poppy ever having any kind of a social life. Poppy would often hear Merie, speaking in quiet tones with Aunt Perima, discussing her daughter’s situation.

Merie would say things like, “She’s just so…oblivious. Oh, Peri, does it really have to do with the name?”

And Aunt Perima would say, “No, of course not dear. Just let her be,” even though Poppy knew that everyone in the town had been against her name when she had first been born.

Poppy believed her mother when she told her that the name had been chosen because Merie loved those poppy flowers so much, but Poppy was not stupid (although not exceptionally bright either), and she thought that Merie might have also picked the name for another reason: as a sort of challenge to the folktales that surrounded the village. Poppy knew that Merie had never liked them, because whenever Aunt Perima would start to tell one of her stories, Merie would interrupt with a “Perima, please” and tactfully change the subject.

Poppy made up her own stories, now and then, though she doubted they were ever as good as her aunt’s with the terribly violent endings. In Poppy’s made-up stories, she was the main character. In the stories, however, she would never be “Poppy”. She would have a more common name, one like “Ama” for love or “Laeta” for beauty. She was also much prettier and much more well-liked. She could always easily outwit the forest fairies that tried to trick humans out of their money, and although in Perima’s stories the humans always ended up getting violently killed, Poppy was a bit more optimistic.

Whenever she complained about her name, Perima and Merie would always say, “You should be proud of your name. It makes you special.”

Being special, in Poppy’s opinion, was highly over-rated.

Occasionally, Poppy found that she was not only pretending to have these names, but pretending to be someone else.

And soon, Poppy found out who that someone else that she wanted so dearly to be was. When Poppy was nearly six, another child was brought into their small family.

Remarkably enough, Merie had chosen (for the women nearly always chose the child’s names in Coor) Poppy’s favorite name, “Ama,” for her second daughter. Poppy was pleased, and very excited about the merry days she and Ama would surely have frolicking about on the hill, once Ama was old enough, of course.

But as years passed, Poppy started liking Ama less and less. It seemed like Merie paid much more attention to Ama than she ever had to Poppy. Not only that, but Ama seemed to be much kinder, much more beautiful, and definitely more loveable than Poppy.

When Ama was old enough to play with Poppy, they got along well enough, but Poppy suspected that Ama found her older sister dull, and she seemed to prefer the company of the other village children.

Poppy was the older sister, however, and wherever Ama went, Poppy had to follow to make sure her younger sister didn’t get herself into bigger trouble than she could handle. Ama knew that Poppy didn’t like seeing the other children. But the other children loved Ama, and Ama did care for her elder sister, despite their differences, and she convinced them that when they came to play, they should meet her beneath the hill Poppy loved so dearly.

That was how Poppy came to meet Talis.

One day, while she was sitting beneath the skeletal branches of the rotting tree that leaned awkwardly across the top of her hill, the tall boy had purposefully marched up to her tree. She remembered sun’s rays liquefied the boy’s golden eyes and brought shine to his hair. He had smiled at her, and she’d nervously turned her gaze away.

Poppy had at first been suspicious of him for spending so much time with the younger children, and when he had asked if she would mind if they used her tree as fort in a game they were playing, she hadn’t answered him, elusively turning her gaze back to the dandelion necklace she had been making.

“You’re Ama’s sister, right? She’s nice. She plays with my brother a lot.”

Poppy hadn’t answered.

“Do you want to play with us?”

She had shaken her head, and soon, he had grown bored of the one-sided conversation and wandered back to his friends.

At the time, she had thought him silly and childish, but as months passed, she started to find that she preferred the natural way he behaved to the stupid, self-important air the boys she usually saw at town gatherings to have.

He was very nice, for a boy, and very good-looking, with dark, lovely curls and eyes the color of honey. Although he could be playing with children his own age, Poppy soon found out that Talis indulged the children in their games because he had a younger brother Ama’s age who was supposed to be very sickly, and he was watched over very carefully, for if he was injured, he could die.

Poppy began watching Talis, day after day, from her hill, while the children ran and played and talked, and sometimes, she thought it would be kind of nice to marry a boy like him.

Aunt Perima was a “hopeless romantic,” although she had no husband or children of her own, and Poppy’s favorite stories her aunt told were, oddly, the only ones that Merie would tolerate: love stories.

Poppy thought she herself must be a hopeless romantic as well, because as she turned eleven, she realized that more and more of her stories had side-plots about boys that often turned into the main plots by the end of the story.

Now it seemed that Talis was becoming that boy, although she doubted the happy endings in her or Aunt Perima’s stories were likely to happen between the two of them.

Harvest neared. The more Poppy watched Talis, the more she disliked herself for clinging to the desperate hope that he would notice her. At least she knew that this fall he would have to begin farming, and he and his brother couldn’t play outside with the others anymore, and she would stop thinking about him.

But she didn’t stop thinking about him. As harvest season began she realized, for the first time, that she could also see the fields, if she sat up in the tree (now covered with bright autumn leaves), she could occasionally catch a glimpse of him. That glimpse was rare, but even when she couldn’t see him, she began to pretend that she could; she pretended that he was waving at her every free moment he had, using his time to blow pretend kisses to her the way some men did for their wives as they walked off towards the field.

It didn’t help that now he would talk to her, and she would return his words. Although it was rarely more than a greeting, it never failed to give her a fluttery sort of feeling for the rest of the day.

It was unhealthy, she knew, to be teetering this close over the edge of obsession. But she, unlike Ama, had no friends of her own to occupy herself, so while Ama played and Poppy wasted time on her hill, she would daydream about what it would be like if they were the very best of friends.

And then one day, when harvest was ending and the temperature began to drop, everything changed.

After Poppy hopped down from her tree, she went to meet her sister, as usual, but Ama had an odd expression on her pretty, childish face, and she wouldn’t answer her older sister’s usual questions when she asked them to her. Poppy went into the cottage and began working on skinning the potatoes from the garden, but Ama didn’t leave her side but continued watching her sister with a very intent expression.

They stayed like that for a good ten minutes, and Poppy moved on to chopping carrots. She had just begun to believe that there was nothing to Ama’s peculiar behavior when her younger sister finally spoke.

“Laeta said something about you,” she said, interrupting Poppy’s steady chopping. Poppy looked up, knife still raised inches above the carrot.

“Laeta?”

“Talis’ best friend. The girl with dark brown hair.”

Oh. The pretty one. Of course.

“And what was that?” Poppy asked her little sister and hesitantly returned to chopping.

“You never stop looking at Talis, and they both think that’s creepy,” Ama said quickly, her words running together as she raced through them. The knife slipped off of the table, and both girls jumped back as it crashed to the floor.

Poppy’s cheeks were burning as dropped to her knees to pick up her knife and wondered why her six-year-old sister could make her feel so humiliated so easily. They rarely even talked to each other.

“Sorry,” said Ama carelessly as she ran outside, leaving her sister to deal with what she’d been told.

Poppy calmly finished her work, as the family came in and sat down at the dinner table, handing out rolls of bread and concentrating on keeping her eyes away from Ama.

“How was your day?”

“Good. We got a lot done, I think. Though the work load’s going to get a lot worst when harvest comes around…”

She stopped listening to the family’s conversation and simply sat there, staring at her plate and trying not to break down in front of them all. Deal with it, Poppy. Be strong.

But Poppy couldn’t deal with it. She couldn’t handle their cheery conversation. “Can I go out for a minute?” she blurted out, interrupting something her step-father had been saying about meat prices.

“Sweetheart, you haven’t even touched your foo-” Merie began.

“No, she can’t,” Virit growled, interrupting Poppy’s mother, “Hours of work went into this meal – the meat was bought from a nearby town, where men had to hunt for it. The wheat to make the bread was slaved at by my work in the fields. I guess I can see how a girl just can’t appreciate-”

Poppy stood up very suddenly, swaying slightly as she stood before the table. She felt nauseated.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Her step-father roared, leaping up from the table like some kind of monster.

“Poppy! Sit back down and finish your meal!” Snapped her mother, her temper short from a long day’s work of selling vegetables.

Before they could stop her, she was rushing towards the door. “It’s already dark out!” someone cried, but she ignored them. If she stayed a moment longer, she knew she would have thrown up or burst into tears.

And she couldn’t let her sister see that.

Breathing deeply, Poppy jogged away from her house as quickly as she could and praying that no one was following her. She wasn’t even completely sure where she was going. The single eye of a full moon stared down upon the eleven-year-old as her run slowed to a brisk walk, the cold silence of the night her only companion as she traced the familiar trail across the empty village. The autumn air helped the burning feeling in her lungs but it refused to disappear completely and continued to linger as she treaded the familiar path to her hill.

Slowly, she sat down in the grass and wrapped her arms around her chest for sorely needed warmth. It was colder than she’d expected. I can’t go back now, she thought miserably, stiffly picking up a flower and gently shredding the petals as she sat there in the cold, overwhelming dark, I can’t face Ama right now.

It was then that Poppy realized she was a coward, and no matter what happened, she would never be the brave, outgoing girl that always lead the stories she made-up.

A cold gush of howling wind swept the hill, and Poppy, filled with self-loathing, buried her face in her arms, tears leaking from her eyes and warming her frozen cheeks.

She raised her head as the wind grew stronger, its fierce blows shaking the large pines at the forest’s edge. There was a storm coming. Poppy stared towards the forest and watched as the shadows of branches swayed back and forth, scratching against the starry sky.

Unable to sit still, Poppy shakily stood up and moved towards the forest. She tried not to think about what she was doing, concentrating on the sound of her boots padding gently across the damp grass. The forest’s trees were menacing, looming, but also large enough to swallow her whole.

She stood at the edge of the forest for a good moment, trying to pinpoint the place where the trees stood together too dark for her to distinguish.

A flicker of light caught her gaze and she blinked, staring. The light blinked again. A candle? Her heart began beating wildly.

The flicker came back. It was too small to be a torch. Too tiny to be fire.

Could it be…a firefly?

But how? Fireflies were extremely uncommon in Eldress. Not only that, but it was the wrong season and the wrong weather. Still, it was said that fireflies had magical properties. Anyone who could catch one would be able to make a wish on it.

…Their wish would supposedly be granted the day after.

Before she knew what she was doing, Poppy was running, running after the firefly and into the forest’s embrace, chasing after the dim glow of light.

There was a story Perima had told that had to do with fireflies, and Poppy was sure that there was more to it than the bit about granting wishes, but that was the most important part. The wish, she had to have that wish.

Wish.

Poppy raced past brambles that snagged and tore at her hair, ferns and thorns tickling and prickling at her ankles as she ran, the firefly always just out of her reach. She didn’t keep track of which way she was turning or for how long she’d been running; the trees were set on blocking her way and causing her to lose track of where she was running to.

The firefly was getting farther away, and desperately, Poppy groped at the air in front of her and leaped.

Her boot caught on a rotting log embedded in the cold earth, and she plunged forward, a cry escaping from her lips as she fell to the forest floor.

Instinctively, her head snapped up to search for the firefly, her face smudged with dirt but her eyes bright with her hunt.

The firefly was gone.

What am I doing?

Fear welled up inside her as she scrambled into a sitting position and looked around the pitch black forest. This place was dangerous; evil things lurked behind every tree. What was she doing? Children weren’t allowed to be wandering out here.

Poppy remembered a time when Ama had wandered out of her gaze and off towards the forest in a game of hide and seek. Poppy had never seen her mother so furious in her whole life.

Poppy swallowed, taking a few nervous steps back towards where she thought her house was. But now she was all turned around now. She couldn’t tell whether she was nearing her house or getting farther away from it.

“Help!” she cried, running into a sprint towards what she hoped was the way back home. She stopped abruptly, turning around to look the way. No…this couldn’t be right.

It was useless.

She couldn’t recall how long she kept this up: this running back and forth, searching for the way out. It seemed like hours. Something told her that she should be exhausted, but she was now too energized by fear to give up. Tears streamed down her face.

“Mother!” she sobbed, “Someone!”

And then, she saw it. Halfway blinded by tears, she glanced up and the firefly was there, directly in front of her face. Instinctively, she he snatched towards it, her hands cupping around the tiny light as gently as possible.

Moments after she did so, the light grew brighter, and a force unlike the tiny insect she’d seen before began to push against her hands. With a small shriek that shattered the forest’s silence, her hands flew apart, and before her very eyes, a tiny winged creature that was not the insect she’d seen before emerged.

The pixie was beautiful in a crafty, nonhuman sort of way, radiated by magic and an eerie yellow light. She wore a short, leafy dress, and even though it was November, she seemed untroubled by the cold. She had no hair, and the wings that hung on her back were thin like sheets of glass, like a fly’s. A grin stretched across the pixie-woman’s pointed face, revealing sharp teeth.

“Looking for me?” she asked, the calm in her voice almost absurd after the hysteria Poppy had just been going through. A vague amusement hung in the words, and Poppy paled slightly, taking a step away from the floating figure.

“Don’t hurt me,” Poppy gasped, wiping frantically at her face, streaked with blood, dirt, and tears. She stumbled backwards.

“You attacked me, little girl,” the pixie pointed out idly and gracefully flitted back a few feet to rest on the branch of a scrawny bush.

Poppy, paralyzed by fear, didn’t respond at all, and the pixie sighed loudly. “Wow, you’re boring. Usually I have a sort of talent for managing to lure the interesting ones in here. Aren’t you going to demand I grant you a wish or something?”

Poppy had a million wishes, and she felt sure she’d thought of before, if she ever met a firefly. But the fact that the firefly had changed into a talking creature right before her very eyes had zapped all creativity out of her, and now all she could remember was her desperate wish for a new name. Please, give me a new name.

The pixie raised her eyebrows as if she’d read Poppy’s thoughts. “But right now you sort of need to use that wish to get out of the forest, correct?” she said, and her smile proved that she knew that that wasn’t what she’d had in mind, “Or would you like to stay here with me forever?”

A whisper of high-pitched laughter danced through the trees and crept over Poppy’s shoulder, and a shiver to run down her spine.

“I don’t care about going home anymore. I don’t want to go back there.” Her voice was barely a whisper, but the pixie heard it.

“Oh?” the winged woman asked, intrigued, “Well, I was going to help you out of the forest whether or not you gave me something, to tell you the truth. But since that’s not what you want…” She raised her eyebrows. “Darling, this might be the only chance you have to make a wish. Do you really want to waste it?” She grinned in what was obviously supposed to be comforting but carried a hint of malice.

Poppy stared hungrily at the pixie-woman, desperate to keep from breaking down completely. “I want…I want…I don’t want to be Poppy anymore!” her voice shook as she shouted at the woman, and the forest seemed to still suddenly; even the wind’s icy chill pausing mid-gust.

Hesitantly, she continued. “I hate myself, and it’s all because of my stupid name. If I had a different name…maybe…” She trailed off, staring ashamedly at the dirt below her feet.

The pixie cocked her head to the side, “You’re name, is it? Interesting. What name did you have in mind to change it to, then?”

She whispered something, but the pixie didn’t catch it. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Amalae,” she spat. She’d made it up, combining her favorite names “Ama” and “Laeta”. To be loved and to be beautiful. What could be more perfect? It was all she’d ever really wanted, after all.

The pixie smirked, “That’s a bit complicated, and I simply can’t do that for free. Why don’t you just ask your mummy to change your name for you then, eh?”

Poppy was being mocked. “You don’t understand,” she argued viciously, “It’s not just the name, it’s who I am. Isn’t that what your name is? Who you are?”

Silence. The wind picked back up, and Poppy encircled her body with her arms, her teeth beginning to chatter.

“Be careful what you wish for,” the pixie said finally.

'How should I be careful?' asked her head, but her lips insisted, “This is all I want.”

*

A beautiful day greeted the villagers of Coor the next morning, sun streaming down from the heavens. Poppy woke up feeling oddly well-rested.

She rolled over and snuggled deeper into her comforter with a sigh.

“Amalae!” came the distant call from the other room. She did not stir. “Amalae, darling, time to get up!”

Poppy rolled over, grunting, and sat up, her hair slightly mussed.

Merie walked into her oldest daughter’s room and smiled. “Come on, sleepyhead. Your sister’s waiting on you.”

Obediently, Poppy rose and dressed herself unenthusiastically, running her hands lazily through her hair without consulting a mirror before stepping out into the main room.

Merie’s smile faded. “Are you feeling okay, sweetie?”

“Yeah,” Poppy answered automatically, “Why?”

Suddenly, it occurred to her that Merie hadn’t even mention Poppy’s odd behavior last night. How was it that she didn’t remember?

The memories of last night came back in a short flash. Running out on her parents, losing herself in the woods, meeting a pixie…Had it all been a dream?

“It’s just; you don’t usually come out until you’re looking your best. Not that you don’t look fine as it is, dear.”

“I’m fine, mother,” she assured hesitantly, moving towards the door. “Ama, are you ready?” she called, and her younger sister emerged from the room.

The expression on Ama’s face was what gave Poppy assurance that it couldn’t have been a dream. Ama had never looked at her older sister this way before. As the dark-haired child took her hand, Poppy began to see the change, and as it all clicked in her sleepy mind, Poppy’s hand flew to cover her mouth. She really had changed from Poppy to Amalae!

So she was Amalae now. It seemed obvious now, why would her family be treating her so well if she was the same daughter she’d always been?

“’Malae,” urged Ama, tugging impatiently on her older sister’s sleeve, “Let’s go!”

Still deeply shaken, Amalae gazed down at her younger sister, who was already inquiring what was wrong. “Just a minute, okay, Ama?” Amalae said softly, trying to keep the surprise out of her voice. For the first time she noticed how awkward it was to be one of two sisters with such similar names as “Ama” and “Amalae”. Still, many families had similar names in Coor.

Gently, Amalae released her sister’s hand before rushing back into the bedroom she shared with her sister. The sight of her reflection in the mirror gave her the strangest sensation she could have ever imagined.

Amalae generally looked the same as Poppy, but there was an air of something surrounding her that she was sure hadn’t been there before, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. Her skin and hair seemed to have a healthy shine that they hadn’t had before, as if much better taken care of.

She looked like the same person, but she was completely unrecognizable.

Amalae’s self-examination was interrupted by Merie’s voice. “Amalae,” she said, sounding vaguely annoyed. Amalae jumped away from the mirror.

“It’s market day, remember? I need you to hurry up so you can buy some things for me before all the good things are sold,” Merie was saying, “You’re not going to have time to ask Talis to come with you if you don’t go now.”

Only one word that her mother said had any meaning whatsoever to Amalae. “Talis…?” she breathed as she turned away from the mirror and stared at her mother.

“If you’re not feeling well, I can do it.”

“No…I’m fine. You have other things to do,” Amalae argued, nodding resolutely. She had to get a grip on herself before they noticed something!

“Sorry, Ama,” she said as she hurried back to the door and took her sister’s hand again, “I’m ready now.”

*

Hands clasped tightly, the two sisters waved their mother goodbye and stepped out of the house and into the bright sunshine. Ama pulled her sister along in a direction that seemed oddly familiar, across a little bridge that hovered above a muddy creek on a path parallel to the one that led back to the center of the town. Amalae paled as they neared an unfamiliar cottage, but her legs seemed determined to get her to it with confidence, and before she knew it, she was at the door.

Before she could even knock, the door swung open, and there stood Talis with a large grin. He was as beautiful as ever.

On any other day, she would have shrunken away from him in embarrassment, but she was a new girl now, and the shy eleven-year-old who had once been Poppy was gone forever.

“Hello, Talis,” she greeted him with a brilliant smile and noticed that he looked slightly taken aback. A thrill ran through her at this newly discovered power, and Poppy found herself eager to test it further.

“Hey, he breathed, “Just a moment. We’re almost ready.”

A boy not much younger than Ama tumbled out of the cottage after him, interrupting Talis’ protests. The child was frail, sickly looking, and he lacked resemblance to his brother other than the golden-brown eyes they shared.

“Hello, Renun,” she greeted, the name slipping off of her tongue before she could stop herself. She didn’t know where it had come from, but no one else seemed to notice anything strange about her greeting. Talis’ brother shivered and Ama swatted at a fly next to her ear.

“It’s cold,” he complained, and Talis smiled in the patient way Amalae had grown to love so much.

“We know. You’ll warm up when we start walking,” he assured patiently, flashing Amalae a heart stopping grin. “You ready?”

She was ready.

It was the first day of many wonderful ones. As the days grew shorter, they grew more fun-filled for the four friends, and Amalae knew that she had never been so happy as when she was playing, side by side with Talis.

She was a different person than she had been before. Wherever Poppy had been quiet and stupid, Amalae was flirtatious and talented.

Winter came, and with it brought frolicking in the snow. Amalae and her sister met with Talis and his brother nearly everyday to throw snowballs or catch snowflakes. Anything snow related was welcome, as long as they could relax by someone’s fireplace at the end of the day with promises to meet again.

Talis made their days especially fun, always the best at coming up with new winter-related games or finding new places to explore. She didn’t know how she’d ever lived such a boring life without him, and sometimes she wished that she’d asked the pixie to relive her whole life over again as Amalae, because there were so many more fun games she could’ve had with him if they’d only spoken earlier. Amalae was much smarter than Poppy had ever been about these kinds of things.

Well, that’s what she’d thought. But one day, Talis brought up this very topic. “Why do you spend so much time with me now?” he asked one day, and she stopped halfway through scooping up a snow ball.

“What?” she asked, surprised, “Haven’t I always…?”

He paused nervously and chewed at his lip a moment before continuing. “No. You never used to hang out with me this much. Just when you had time.”

She stared. She supposed she’d just assumed that Amalae had always wanted to spend time with Talis. After all, Poppy had been so infatuated with him. But perhaps Amalae had…had better things to do? The thought was laughable. Better things than Talis?

Her mouth hung open for a moment as she tried to think of some sort of response, but he shook his head at her and smiled. “Just forget it. I don’t know why you changed, but I’m glad you’re spending time with me now, anyway.”

She grinned back at him and momentarily forgot about her confusion, just glad that Talis wanted to spend so much time with her and only her.

As the days grew shorter, they grew more fun-filled for the four friends, and Amalae knew that she had never been so happy.

The Winter Solstice Celebration was one of the most anticipated and exciting events in Coor, a day of feasting and dancing that was the highlight of everyone’s holidays. Amalae couldn’t wait to experience it; it would definitely be better than any other time she’d ever attended now that she had Talis by her side.

Amalae danced with Talis that night, her brown hair encircled with holly and ribbons; her eyes were bright with joy as she twirled and laughed in long chains of children her age.

“I think I’m going to go get a drink,” she told him when she began to grow thirsty.

“What?” he asked loudly, his voice barely hearable over the loud voices and the beating of instruments.

“A drink!” she repeated, and he nodded, his arms dropping to his sides as he prepared to leave the circle of dancers. She giggled, shaking her head at him and motioning for him to stay where he was.

“I think I can manage by myself, thank you,” she informed him teasingly, even though she doubted he could hear her words. Turning, Amalae began forcing her way through the crowds and towards the table lined with water and rum.

She took a glass of water and quickly drained the glass, eager to return to her dancing. But someone grabbed her arm, stopping her before she could get away. She turned.

“Hi,” said an older boy she recognized to be an Officer’s son. He looked about fifteen.

She smiled, confused, “Hi?”

“Want to dance?” he asked immediately, a charming smile on his face as he led her back out into the circle before she could protest.

“I sort of…” she began, but her voice was lost in the music and his smile.

Soon everyone was watching the dance as they turned and swirled. This boy (his name was Athan, she soon found out, which brought a familiar ache to her heart that she quickly ignored) was a wonderful dancer, and soon she could feel the envious eyes of every girl in the room.

Amalae scanned the room for Talis but couldn’t spot him. She did, however, see the girl named Laeta, who she managed to grin smugly at several times between dances. For after the dance with the Officer was over, another boy approached her, requesting another dance. After that, so did another.

That night, she spent a long time looking at herself in the mirror and brushing her hair.

The next day, Athan came to visit, and he brought her a whole bouquet of yellow and orange flowers (“Like your hair,” he’d said, and when she’d laughed and told him her hair was brown, he’d said, “No, not completely…and when the sun catches it, there are strands of gold”) that she put in a vase and set by her window.

Other boys came to visit her, but of all of them, she grew most attached to Athan. She soon didn’t have time to play with Talis and his brother as much. Amalae came to less and less often to the snow bank they played at, and eventually, she never came as all. Talis stopped expecting to see anyone but the six-year-old Ama at his door and never asked if Amalae was coming anymore.

So Amalae was shocked when Ama mentioned over dinner one night that the next day, Talis would be leaving for the king’s palace to train to be a knight.

“What?” she’d gasped, throwing down her napkin.

All three of her family members had looked surprised at her outburst, and when Amalae jumped up from her seat and scrambled to leave the room, the night was suddenly very similar to one that had taken place last November.

“Amalae, where are you going?” Merie asked her daughter, her forehead lined with worry (competing with lines of coming of old age, but they didn’t talk about that yet).

“I’ll be back!” Amalae promised as she ran towards the door, taking the closest coat, her step-father’s, for warmth as she headed towards the door and out into the blizzard.

She started shivering the moment the winter’s harsh wind swept across her body and pushed the door closed behind her without needing her help. But Amalae was resolved to ignore it as she ran through the snow up to the path to Talis’ house, her boots stomping against the icy bridge as she ran, her face tucked down to hide from the hailing snow and sleet. She trusted her feet to know the way.

It’s all my fault, she kept telling herself, even though she knew it couldn’t be true. She’d waited so long to have a chance with Talis, and then she’d thrown it away. And he was leaving now. She could never have him.

By the time she reached the cottage, she was nearly in tears. “I’m sorry,” she gasped when she got there. Luckily, Talis was the one to answer the door. “I just wanted to say…”

“Amalae!” he cried, ushering her inside. His family was all seated at their own table, and she felt terrible for interrupting their dinner, but she didn’t have time to apologize, as he ushered her into a side room nearly as soon as she came into the room.

He glanced over and gave her a sad sort of smile. “Are you okay?”

“Talis, I just came to say goodbye,” she whispered, and it sounded pathetic now that she’d spoken them. She stared at the wooden floor, where drops of the water that slid off of her damp coat were creating a steadily-growing puddle.

“I know. But I’ll see you again someday, okay?” he said with a tone that obviously proved he never would.

“Talis,” she said, tears filling her eyes, “I’m sorry. I’ve been ignoring you…” She reached to embrace him, but he was stiff in her arms, and when she released him uncomfortably he stepped away from her.

“Please don’t worry,” he said with a genuine concern that almost hurt more than their embarrassing hug, “I know you have other ways you want to spend your time. We have other ways to spend our time, right?”

“No!” she started, but he shook his head in determined silence as he waited for her to dry her tears. When she’d stop sniffling, he gave her an awkward pat on the back and began gently leading her towards the door.

“You have to go back to your family now,” he said as he stood in the doorway and stared at her through the crack in the door, his face illuminated by the warm glow of his cottage. “I’ll write.”

He closed the door.

After that, Amalae was never seen again. Perhaps part of the contract with the pixie included making her the rest of her wish come true on her own. Or perhaps she just lost the will to be Amalae. Perhaps she is now Poppy, alone on a hill and looking off towards fields of workers.

Perima sometimes told the story of the girl who’d wanted nothing more to become someone else. “Some say she went into the forest,” she would end the story, “I’m not sure when Poppy became Amalae and Amalae became Poppy. But that’s what so mysterious about name-choosing.”


THE END