The Story Quilt

So here I stood, at last and at least within proximity to the item I had spent nearly a quarter of my life searching for . I found myself feeling both exultant and frustrated-I had found it, yes and a big Hooray to that one, but (the big BUT!)-I could not claim it! It undoubtedly belonged to me-I am the last and youngest of the clan and if i cannot claim it it will be lost and all it's mystery and history with it-I just can't let that happen, I have to find a way to get my hands on this treasure!

The treasure in question lay folded not very well in a box just behind the table I was facing in the Colton County Raffle Barn-said Raffle was held once a month on the last Saturday of the Month and might include anything from jewelry to farmlands being auctioned off on the other side of the Barn(the Barn was always referred to in caps as though it had a life of it's own ). To look at the object in the box no-one would have thought it would be a treasure to anyone-just an old,old, somewhat dirty crazy quilt passed down from generation to generation and hand to hand until no-one until now had been able to discover where it was- and I had spent entirely too much time on this search to be thwarted now-I was determined that when I left this day I would be accompanied by that quilt! So I had spent every cent I had over what it would cost me in hotels and transportation to make it back home on raffle tickets to be sure this goal could be accomplished-I thought I had bought every ticket that could be involved with that particular box of questionable "treasures".

Why, you ask, would an old quilt be so important?Why would I travel hundreds of miles, ask thousands of questions, sigh millions of sighs in this search? To me, and to me alone, this quilt held the answers I had been seeking all my life about my family's history and lineage-a lineage not quite like that of others around me. From the time I was very small I had been the different one-the one everyone in my family had expected for generations-looked forward to and in some ways almost dreaded; and then, when I did show up, they had no idea what to do with me, with my "specialness", so in their inimitably laid back way they turned a blind eye and deaf ear to those "special attributes" and just loved me anyway=all except for grandmother Moira-she was the only one who would talk to me about these things, who helped me to organize and channel them into usefulness and above all to keep them secret from everyone outside the family. And she told me as much as she knew about our history, back to when my great, great grandmother came over from the "Old" Country, bringing her "gifts" and the quilt with her and not much else except her unquestionable beauty; .but with those "gifts" and the power of the Story Quilt, she had been able to build a new and rich life for herself in this country, in the southern mountains I loved so well. And the Gifts? Well they are the gifts of the Fey-from whom I am said to be descended-the gifts of precognition, the ability to read minds, to see, somewhat, the future and to cross back and forth between the worlds (a dangerous and arduous gift to use and only used in extreme necessity). When I was little , I walked and talked at an earlier age than most and lived on a first name basis with the wee ones, fairies and elves and elementals. This made me somewhat of a singularity even in my own family who all believed , but none of whom had had the "Gift" to see until me. As for the world around me, it is well My Grandmother Moira took me in hand or I would probably have ended up in the nut-house.The Story Quilt had stitched into it the entire history of our line back to the very beginning and more than that, if you slept under it, it would add the story of your life to it's stitches also and so was the only way to keep our story alive.

So the raffle of that particular box was started and at every ticket I expected to hear my number but it never came-then finally, the number was called--and the ticket was held up by a stranger! A Stranger who had been standing beside me the whole while and who now reached up gently and pushed my thick auburn hair back from my face revealing the very slight upward pointed tilt to my ears and the tiny leaf-shaped birthmark just above the left one.He smiled, took the Story quilt in one arm, and laid my hand on the other and we walked out of the barn to go and start a new tale for the Story Quilt to tell.