Well Wished

The Avy’s Wish

It was on a winter afternoon, just before Christmas, that Nuria finally gave up the idea of making a wish. She stood on the embankment that bounded the village Common and looked at the Wishing Well. It didn’t even tempt her. Then she gazed about her with pleasure. More than a year had passed since she’d come to live with her grandfather in Bishop Mayne, but it was still hard to believe she lived in such a beautiful place.

The trees stood black and sleek as skeletons, their crisp edges blurred to velvet by the failing light. But there was nothing blurred about the Wishing Well, which rose from the pale winter grass in a massive sweep of granite. Agnes, the Well’s Guardian, was a mere shadow beside it, knitting as she rocked in the great stone chair, rocking and knitting just as each Guardian had done for as long as anyone could remember.

Nuria snapped her fingers high into the air. She liked the bright, brave sound it made. Danger is as nothing to Nuria, the undaunted, she said, for when she came to Bishop Mayne last year, her grandfather, the Avy, had told her first thing that the Well was dangerous and she must set out of her mind the idea of wishing.

A great black dog with pointed ears and yellow eyes nudged the back of her leg. Osa was officially the Avy’s dog, but she’d attached herself to Nuria when Nuria arrived last year, trailing her now so closely and constantly that the Avy sometimes laughed and said Osa knew who really was in charge.

Patience, noble wolf! said Nuria. Before we approach, let the Guardian of the Well speak.

A coin for passage to your heart’s desire, said Agnes. That is the first rule.

Nuria sprang suddenly down the embankment, her empty hands thrown behind her for balance. I’ll beat you to the Well, Osa! she said. She wore one gray mitten and one green, but it was a wonder she had any mittens on at all, and since no hat could be persuaded to stay on her head for more than two minutes, wild drifts of coppery hair flew behind her as she ran. Osa trailed her like a shadow.

One wish each lifetime, said Agnes. One cycle of the moon to repent and call it back. That is the second rule.

Nuria slapped the cold granite wall. Ha! I won! she declared, petting Osa, who dissolved into a puddle of bliss, leaning heavily against her. Melting, Nuria called it. Nuria let Osa melt into her leg and watched the light snow sparkle into the pools of lamplight in the village Square. These were both calming things, but Nuria was not calm inside.

Just that morning, the Avy had wished for the only thing Nuria wanted anymore. Nothing had happened, not yet, but Agnes might know if the wish would come true. Nuria put on her impatient face, the one most grown-ups hated. Just get on with it, she muttered, because Agnes couldn’t say anything until she’d recited the last rule of the Well. Nuria’s words came to life in a chilly cloud that hung in front of her mouth, then vanished.

And for that cycle of the moon your lips are locked in this: To no one may you speak of your wish. To no one but to me, for your wish is my wish too. That is the third rule.

Now that the time had come for her to ask, Nuria was suddenly afraid. What if the Avy’s wish hadn’t come true? A friend was the only thing she wanted in the whole world, except for someone who loved her just the way she was, and that wish had come true the moment she met the Avy.

She’d always wanted a friend, even when she lived with Aunt Hortense and hadn’t known there was an Avy. She never played with her cousins, who wanted her to be a proper orphan, quiet and timid and grateful they’d taken her in. But Nuria was not grateful, and anything quiet was impossible for her, so she’d always been alone.

I know the Avy’s wish isn’t just for me, she said, repeating what the Avy had told her so often. He wanted her to understand he had to make a wish for the whole village. Everyone wanted to undo that other wish—that terrible wish—that had made all the children disappear. But if the children do get wished back, I hope there will be one special friend for me.

The great stone chair creaked, rocking along the deep ruts that decades, centuries, of Guardians had worn into the ground. Do you have a coin? said Agnes. The Well gets hungry so quickly these days.

Nuria looked at Agnes with dislike. You won’t get me to make a wish. Agnes was wrapped as always in a harlequin collection of shawls and skirts, and she was so old that even the Avy couldn’t guess her age, for time had dropped over her a veil of fine lines like ancient lace.

I wouldn’t use up my only wish! said Nuria. And if I did, I’d be careful how I said it. I wouldn’t need to take it back, not like him.

She pointed to a granite pillar that stood about twenty feet from the Well. It resembled a man in height and breadth, narrowing decidedly near the top, then swelling into a rounded lump that peered over its shoulder at Agnes. On this lump were curves and hollows that might once have been cheeks and jaws and temples. There were two dark pits that might once have been eyes.

"I’d never wish to be a pillar of society," said Nuria with contempt. What an idiotic wish. The Well must have thought so too, turning that man into a pillar.

If you have no wish for me, said Agnes, what is your business here today?

Did the Avy’s wish come true? Nuria held out her hands, palms up, to show how empty they were. I’ve wanted a friend for so long, and Bishop Mayne must be the only place in the world with no other children.

It hadn’t always been that way, though. The village had been full of children when Nuria arrived last year. But she hadn’t even had a chance to meet anyone before . . . Well, no one knew exactly what had happened on that dreadful day. It started at midnight with the screaming, followed by the sudden silence, which was even worse. The children’s beds were empty by the time the parents could reach them, although the sheets were still warm. All the children disappeared except Nuria in her mountaintop cottage, and also one other girl, whose father took her away the very next morning. For her health, he said.

The Avy had explained it as best he could to Nuria. The Well was to blame, naturally. Some plaguey fool had made a wish, and as usual the wish had gone wrong. And even though the children had been found, no one dared bring them back again, and so the parents had left too.

The Avy’s the bravest one of all, said Nuria. That’s why they asked him to make a wish for the families to come back.

Brave or foolish, take your pick, said Agnes, and drew a spiraling tendril of white smoke from a basket at her feet. She began to cast it onto one of her knitting needles.

Nuria stepped back. Usually the Guardian’s smoke creations vanished into the air. But sometimes they didn’t, and Nuria had a vague understanding that this meant trouble, although she didn’t know what kind of trouble it might be.

What are you knitting? said Nuria, watching the white smoke spin from Agnes’s needles, growing and taking shape, settling now into the size and form of a faceless head.

Here’s your answer, said Agnes. Her needles trembled, and the globe of smoke shifted. It drew into itself in places, curved out in others, and settled finally into the head of a young girl. Agnes curled a tendril of green smoke round her needle, and a moment later the face was staring at Nuria with glowing green eyes.

Here is the result of the Avy’s wish, said Agnes, and cast the last loop of smoke off the needle. The face hung bodiless, swaying slightly in the restless air. Meet the first child to return. Catty Winter is eleven years old, just like you. She and her father have already returned to the old Winter place—have already been deposited there, I should say.

Catty! Nuria tried to speak, but she was breathless and trembling and could make no sound. Her heart skittered ahead of her body, and she had to run around the Well to catch up with it. Osa followed, barking and nipping at Nuria’s heels.

The families are coming back! cried Nuria. And there’s a special friend for me!

Agnes put her hands to her ears. Don’t imagine that because I cannot feel I also cannot hear.

The Avy says I’m too loud, agreed Nuria cheerfully, ignoring this reminder of the Well’s heavy-handed ways. It had fixed things so that its Guardians, bound as they were to the chair, day and night, in rain and sun and snow, could feel nothing at all. It was probably to protect the Guardians, but Nuria thought she’d rather die than be protected like that. She hoisted herself onto the Well and leaned into it from her stomach.

Clever Avy! she shouted. He made the wish come true. Oh clever, clever Avy!

Avy, said the Well in its hollow echo. Avy . . . Avy . . . Avy . . .

Nuria’s eyes hadn’t adjusted to the twilight inside the Well, and she took a deep breath to smell the roses that bloomed on the granite walls. She heard the hummingbirds in flight, strumming the fragrant air with their wings. The Avy said that the Well’s everlasting spring must somehow leak into the surrounding landscape, for certainly Bishop Mayne was the most fertile and beautiful place anywhere in the region. Winter was short, and spring and summer long. Sweet corn grew from April to November, and the strawberries were as big as Nuria’s hand.

Then, as Nuria’s eyes began to work, a nightingale emerged, a small patch of gray against the darker granite. The hummingbirds’ eggs were specks of light in the woven cup of their nest, none of them bigger than the tip of Nuria’s little finger. Nuria peered down to the water below, but it was too dark to send back even a glimmer of pale skin and coppery hair.

Do you think my new friend will like the way I look? Maybe I should wish for long, sooty lashes.

You’ll need a coin to make a wish, said Agnes.

I’m not an idiot. In all the fairy stories, if you wish for beauty, you end up with toads in your mouth. But it’s just that I’m so plain. Look at how big my mouth is! And these lashes!

She hated her long, light lashes, which disappeared on a cloudy day, giving her the look of an old-fashioned portrait, pale and serene with high, flat cheekbones and