by John Devera

Created on: October 27, 2007

A Fool and His Wish

Fingal was a fool. He knew it because he had been told since he was old enough to ask absurd questions like, "Why do roots grow down while stems grow up? and, "Why is the sea sometimes gray and sometimes blue?" and, "How does the dirt get in-between your toes when you wear boots and stockings all day?" The people of Broken Shield were tolerant of Fingal, and even took pride in the idiot's nonsense since there is a certain amount of prestige in a village possessing a fool. Even Heather Own's village idiot was really just a drunk who had addled his brains on home brewed whiskey.

And Fingal did not think that his status was something of which to be ashamed. He made a shabby living growing potatoes. It should have provided better for him and his wife except that he took to foolish notions that would sometimes destroy entire crops. For instance, he once decided to roast the shoots before he planted them, so the potatoes would be dug up already roasted. He had unsuccessfully tried to pre-mash, pre-boil and pre-bake his pottoes before his wife took him in hand and carefully explained that potatoes were stubborn and malicious tubors that would do things there own way. And Fingal accepted that explanation.
One might wonder what woman would have a fool for a husband, but only men ever ask that question, for women know better. Every woman marries a fool! And there is no man who is so ugly, mean or brainless that there isn't one woman in the world who won't fall in love with him. Merrybell loved her Fingal, and Fingal accepted this love as he accepted no other truth: he believed it without question.
One evening, as winter was receding and spring looked like a distant possibility, Fingal sat on the porch of his ramshackle home on a barrel. Merrybell was knitting, and the two lovers looked out upon their life and, in a silence bred of familiarity and comfort, they were as happy as an idiot and his wife could be.
"Marrybell, my lover, is there anything you lack?"
Now that was a question Fingal had never asked before, and a normal person would have no need to ask such a question. But Merrybell was always thoughtful, and she considered carefully before she answered any of Fingal's questions, knowing what disaster could occur if he took the wrong thing into his soft cheese head.
Was there anything she lacked? How absurd. She had nothing! Well, next to nothing, and nothing worth the having. Fingal and Merrybell owned this land, an inheritance grudgingly bequeathed

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