The Wishing Well

I live in a quite beautiful place, really. I sit on the edge of a forest glade. A gravel-stone path ambles up to me, slow and winding like a river of rock. There is plenty of shade nearby, and I am quite cool, even in the heat of the day. I can see the stars at night. Birds chirp and call to one another in the trees, and wildflowers grow all around me. It’s a quiet place, far removed from the rest of the world. And yet, people still come to me.

They bring heavy burdens of worry and concern, hopeful desires and dreams, and they come and whisper secrets of their innermost thoughts—things they wouldn’t dare tell another living soul. And I listen. I listen to all of them.

I’ve never wondered why they come to me, or why I must listen to them. I know why I exist. It’s something I remember vividly—a memory I will hold onto forever. My very first memory, in fact.

Darkness and nothingness were all around me. I slumbered like all things waiting to be awoken. And suddenly, I heard it. A voice, whispering words of power and meaning, which pulled me from the darkness of sleep and into the light of day.

An old woman with a long black cloak and a walking stick of hardened ash sat beside me, and I knew. Her words had awoken me. She was the one who had given me life. She spoke more words to me and told me what I must do, for what purpose she had awoken me.

“They will know,” she whispered to me. There was a sad sort of satisfaction in her voice. “They will know what it brings. And maybe it will lead them to change. But maybe not.”

Then, she got up and walked away, down that path of gravel-stone. I never saw her again. I don’t know what happened to her.

Many days and nights passed. I was all alone.

Then, one day, early in the morning as the mist still clung to the forest floor, I heard the sound of slow, shuffling footsteps coming down the gravel path toward me. At first, I thought it was the old woman, coming back again.

But no, it was a middle-aged man who looked as though he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. His face was downcast and he sighed heavily as he sat down next to me. After a moment, he began to speak, so softly that I almost did not hear him.

“Thirty years I worked for him, thirty years I spent laboring in a windowless building. Did I complain? No. I told myself I was providing for my wife and children, so they would have a roof over their heads. Hot food to eat on the table. Warm beds to sleep in at night.” The man paused, and I could hear the bitterness and despair in his voice, the longing for more. “And now, he’s laid me off; left me without a means of income. What am I supposed to do now?”

Then the man said the word, the one that made all the difference in the world. “I wish he hadn’t fired me.”

I couldn’t tell you how exactly it happened, or how I knew that it had happened. But I knew. As soon as the man said that word, that magic word, his employer, in some far distant town miles and miles away, had a change of heart. When this poor fellow made his way back home, he’d find several voicemails waiting for him. One apologizing profusely for ever firing the man. Another begging him to come back to work, for a substantial raise as well. I knew all of that in a moment and I knew it had to do with the magic word and with me.

The middle-aged man got up after sitting next to me a little while longer, and then shuffled back down the gravel-stone path. He was the first to visit me. He certainly wasn’t the last.

I don’t know how they found out about me. Perhaps the middle-aged man told his friends after what happened, and they came out of curiosity to see if the strange magic would work for them as it did for him. Perhaps the old woman told them where I was as she wandered the world, pointing people to a place where everything they ever desired could come true. I honestly don’t know.

Over the years, I’ve had hundreds, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, all coming to sit beside me and whisper their hopes and dreams, and wishes to me.

I listened to the young woman, full of heartbreak and sorrow, who wished she would find love and happiness. I listened to the little boy who wished he could spend more time with his dad. The middle-aged man who wished he knew how to support his wife as she struggled with depression. The old woman who wished she could see her grandchildren more. The little girl who wished more than anything in the whole wide world to have a bunny rabbit. The man who wished his business was more successful, that the world would know his name.

There were other wishes as well. Dark wishes. I did not want to grant those wishes. The people who whispered them to me were filled with menace and rage. They spoke of things like revenge and greed and cruel ambitions and things I do not want to repeat. If their wishes were fulfilled, they would spell out disaster, destruction, and death. But the words were spoken, and I listened to them all the same.

The wishes were endless. Some started out small and seemingly insignificant. But every single person came back wanting more and more and more. They couldn’t seem to stop. They couldn’t help themselves once they knew. And I listened to all of them. That was my reason for existence, after all. I was fulfilling my purpose.

Then, all of a sudden, the people stopped coming. The wishes stopped. I don’t know what happened.

The years have gone by. I still sit on the edge of a forest glade, but the trees are all palsied and dead. The gravel-stone path still ambles up to me, but there’s more dirt than stone these days. Pollution and the orange-amber glow of radiation light up the sky, even at night. I don’t see the stars anymore. The birds don’t chirp, and the wildflowers have turned to overgrown weeds which cover me. No one has come to visit me in a long time now. Maybe they’re all out of wishes.

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