A Penny For Your Grief

Do I believe in magic? Of course I do, though I didn't always. I was just a boy when my grandfather told me about the little people. He said that the little people called the woods their home, that they were capricious little creatures, but honorable in a way only the peoples of the wildwood could be. He built a birdhouse of sorts, open more fully to the elements to let the little people more easily access it. He put it atop a wooden post a bit smaller than I was at the time so I could properly see. He called it a waypost. He said if you left a offering for the little people, a piece of bread or some candy, that they'd come overnight and take it; leaving a little gift in exchange. Often an old pressed penny the fae folk had found in their ventures into the world of man and enchanted with luck or spells of invigoration.

As any child would, I took my grandfather at his word and excitedly awaited the next morning after we left a piece of cornbread for the little people. And this became our shared little ritual over the ensuing years, grandpa and I leaving our offerings to the small folk and waking at the crack of dawn to march out and see what trinket or penny was waiting for us. As I got older, I, as most children do, stopped believing in faeries and enchanted trinkets and I stopped leaving offerings for the little people of the woods in the old waypost. I figured it had always just been him, sneaking off when I'd fallen asleep to go leave pre-prepared little gifts for me to find when I woke up. Just one of those things parents and grandparents do to make the world seem a little more magical. But I was an adult now, and I knew better. Like all grown men eventually do, I stopped believing in magic.

And then his time came, as everyone's eventually does, and I presumed the magic had gone with him. There was no one to leave gifts from the fae folk in the old waypost anymore, and yet, for old times sake, as I was staying at his home to move and settle his things and estate, I couldn't help but go out and leave a little something for the little people. A part of me hoped I'd wake up in the morning and he'd be there, excitedly rushing me awake so we could go and find our gift, as he always did when I was a boy, but he didn't. He wouldn't ever again. I wasn't in the mood after that disappointment to go out and see the waypost, I knew what I would find there. But off I went regardless, I figured I had to remove the thing anyways.

Imagine my shock when, instead of finding the half eaten Snickers I'd left there the night before swarming with ants or some other creepy crawlies, waiting for me there was a 1939 New York World's Fair World of Tomorrow pressed penny. As shiny and clean as it must've been almost a century ago.

I like to think that that penny was a gift not just from the little people, but my grandfather as well. An assurance from him via his friends on the other side that the magic didn't leave with him, that so long as you have the courage to look and see, you'll find the magic all around.

Sometimes I still travel out there, and with the permission of the new owners, leave a gift or two for the people of the wildwood. I don't have the time to stick around for any gifts they may leave me, but luckily I'm not the only one trading with the faeries anymore. The lovely couple who live in my grandfather's old house tell me their children are always happy when "the wizard" comes to visit to summon faeries to leave magical gifts in the "faerie birdhouse" out back, and that they've begun to leave offerings for them themselves so they can be wizards and witches too. I'm sure the parents think it's all just sentimental tradition and childish fantasy, and I'm sure those children will think so too one day.

But when I'm gone, and when their parents are gone, if they have the courage to go back out there and see; I know they'll find that the magic lives, beyond even us.