Reminiscences of a Fairie Godfather
My name is Rellus Fuurrager. I am a fairie godfather. The fancy name for my occupation is wish fulfillment enabler. I didn’t ask to be a fairie godfather. The job was thrust upon me at birth nearly 1200 years ago. I don’t look bad for someone so old. If you ask me, I don’t look a day over 1000.
I was born in the city of Namlingran in another dimension that is close to this one. My family has been in the business since the time before Atlantis sank. We’re not immortal, but we’re pretty close to it. The patriarch, Stamere Fuurrager, died rather recently at the age of 35,780. It happened shortly after those two brothers from Ohio managed to fly their motorized contraption in North Carolina. His death wasn’t unexpected. His health had been deteriorating since North Carolina was a colony. At least my parents are in good health. They’re only a few thousand years old.
During my relatively brief life I have helped countless thousands of people. I remember helping one young fellow back in 1389, or it could have been 1398. I sometimes switch the numbers. It doesn’t really matter. He was trying to win the hand of a beautiful woman in France, but she was way out of his league. She wanted a knight to sweep her off her feet and not Charles, a lowly stable boy. I felt sorry for the kid. He was a bit handsome and had a lot of potential. He really didn’t belong in a stable for the rest of his life.
I appeared to him one Sunday afternoon after he walked home from church. We fairie godfathers and godmothers respect people devoted to God. But if you don’t have enough trust in God to help you out, we’re the next best thing. Actually, we have the advantage of becoming visible and answering requests immediately.
At first he thought I was an angel. People sometimes confuse us with them. But I told him I was his fairie godfather and wanted to help him win his lady love. The only way to do that was to turn him into a knight. But I wasn’t about to zap him and make him an instant knight with the suit and everything. He was going to have to train for a while because after I left him he would be on his own and needed to be able to handle himself when other knights challenged him. I provided everything he needed except for what he could add to the mix. Everyday after work for the next three weeks I trained him to be the best knight possible. I helped him finish early by doing the bulk of the work. The stable owner didn’t mind that the kid’s work was completed magically. As long as the stable was mucked, the horses groomed, fed, and watered, and the cats were in good shape to catch the rats, there were no complaints. I even shod some of the horses, which saved the owner some money.
After three weeks of intensive training, the kid was ready for his first joust. The woman he loved with all his heart was in the stands. He rode up to where she was seated, raised his visor, and announced he was going to win the tournament in her honor. She was a bit embarrassed because another knight had announced his intentions and marriage to him appealed to the young lady. She told the young suitor that only if he won the tournament would she consider returning his affections.
To make a long story short, he won the tournament, the girl, and enough money to purchase an estate in the Champagne region of France. I provided a vinyard with some of the finest champagne grapes in all of France, the chateau, the winery, and some synthetic people to work there. After champagne was invented a couple or so centuries later, Château Donet started bottling some of the finest champagne in France. Since I was responsible for the start of the success, on every bottle of champagne there is a picture of me. It’s not a bad likeness of me as I looked over 600 years ago.
Then there was the young artist in Germany who had the potential to be a great artist. But like most artists, he was desperately poor. He had no patron and had trouble finding food to keep himself alive, let alone earn enough money for art supplies. That’s when I appeared to him and helped him out in a big way. I became his patron and made it possible for him to paint to his heart’s desire. I also allowed him to cheat by giving him magic brushes and paints that made what he was painting almost come to life.
Eventually, as his skills improved, my magic was replaced by his magic. He was in much demand and after about 20 years was able to start an art school and major studio where over a dozen artists and assistants worked. The school is still going strong today. I’m just glad they rejected that Hitler fellow. With him as an alumnus, I think the school’s reputation would have been destroyed.
Don’t think that fairie godfathers only help guys and fairie godmothers only help females. I’ve been married to my wife Drealla for over 400 years and every now and then we switch clients for the fun of it. I remember a couple hundred years ago meeting a young lady near Boston who loved writing poetry and composing songs; often her poetry set to music. Back then, it was fine for ladies to compose poetry. But composing music was a different matter. They didn’t receive any respect in America for nearly a century more. But I thought her poetry and songs were quite lovely. They sort of remind me of Schubert. I appeared to her as a publisher who was looking for poetry and music from unknown yet talented newcomers. I took much of her material to Europe to have it published by human publishers. I took her manuscripts and transformed them into professional looking sheet music. She even gave me some of her piano pieces and I was able to orchestrate them into chamber and symphonic works that were appreciated all over Europe and came to the attention of such composers as Beethoven and Schubert.
She had a little bit of success in America. But I couldn’t force the public to accept her fully. A fairie godparent can only do so much. So I had a publisher from England come to her and take her to England to work and live. As the story so often goes, they lived happily ever after.
Speaking of happily ever after, I was able to transform a rather plain looking woman into a beautiful one so she could win the heart of a young merchant my wife was working with. She made him a success while I made the woman gorgeous and talented. After I got done with the woman she not only looked great, she could play the keyboard quite well and sang like an angel. She could also cook and bake almost anything. Her sewing ability and fashion sense was so keen that she opened a dress shop that is still in business today only it is now the first store in a small chain of dress shops. Her husband’s business didn’t do bad either. I believe it’s on Nasdaq.
I must confess that not all my clients succeeded. There was one who was a gambler out in the Dakotas. You may be familiar with a guy named Wild Bill Hickock. My client was familiar with him too. They were friends. He told the famous gunslinger not to sit facing away from the wall. But he wouldn’t listen. It could be Hickock’s health was getting so bad that he wanted to die doing something he enjoyed instead of coughing up blood and looking like death warmed over. My client needed some luck during one hand of poker and I slipped him an ace he needed to win a big pot. The only problem was that another player at the table had discarded the same card and accused my client of cheating. Before I could place a wall of protection around him, the disgruntled card player pulled out a 45 and gunned my client down. Since then, I’ve usually stayed away from gamblers. As for my family, there’s my wife Drealla, my oldest son Strangford, my oldest daughter Shalla, my second son Mangin, my second daughter Thurellen, and the twins Kavis and Navis who are both boys. Actually they’re 150 so I wouldn’t exactly call them boys. They’re both tooth fairies. They have to start somewhere and that’s generally the first job fairies are assigned to.
Strangford, who is 780, is one of Santa’s field operatives who gathers wishes from children in Europe and enables the parents to have the money which they can use to buy their children what they want.
That’s right. Santa doesn’t deliver presents in a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer. He is an interdimensional being like me. He is similar to the Holy Spirit in that he convinces parents to buy certain things for their children and for one another. If you’ve ever considered buying your grandma a microwave oven and you had no idea if she wanted one or not, yet when she opened her present and cried because it’s exactly what she wanted, don’t think of it as a lucky guess. Thank Santa for convincing you to buy Grandma the oven.
Shalla and Mangin are 730 and 692 respectively. They’re in the family business and quite good at it. Shalla likes to work in Europe while Mangin has chosen America. Both are busy and we rarely get together to talk shop or have a family meal. The last time we had a family reunion was shortly after FDR died.
Thurellen is a muse. For the last 450 of her 509 years of life she has inspired composers ranging from Palestrina to some kids who you may have heard on the radio to compose some very nice pieces of music. She has also entered the imaginations of countless writers, poets, and artists and inspired them to create works in her honor. She sort of takes after me in that she helps her clients help themselves. She takes their abilities and enhances them. She offers opportunities that they might not have been able to avail themselves of. She gets the best out of her clients and they’re rewarded for the partnership.
I could write a book about my clients. But I don’t want to bore you right now. If you want to be one of my clients, I’d be happy to help you out. If I’m not busy, I’m a wish away.
Copyright © 2005 by Bewildering Stories on behalf of the author
