A Fairy's Tale

The next day at school was incredibly strange. Ms. Timmons had let Mary sit at whatever seat she wished, no one had spoken to Mary and Julia during recess, and many of the townspeople had shot Mary some unusual looks while she and Julia were walking home. Mary and Julia had talked about it while they strolled down the dirt path. Knowing that Mary had done nothing wrong, Julia was dumbfounded. What could cause the townspeople to behave so differently towards one young girl?

Even Mrs. Cretchny had treated Mary differently when she had opened the door to Julia that evening. She looked at Mary’s face, and asked curiously, “Mary, what on Earth happened to your eye?”

Mary’s face went white. “I tripped over a tree root and hurt myself when we were playing yesterday,” she quickly replied.

Mrs. Cretchny was not convinced. A bruised and swollen eye like that couldn’t result from such a mere fall.

“Are you certain?” she questioned.

“Yes, Mrs. Cretchny,” Mary replied. “I’d best be going home now, my Uncle Alan wouldn’t approve of me being late for supper.”

With that, Mary hopped off of the steps of the Cretchny family cabin and strode down the path towards her uncle’s home.

“Whew!” Mary thought. “One more of Mrs. Cretchny’s cold looks and I would have been done for. Hopefully, she won’t ask me about my eye again.”

Back in the Cretchny cabin, Mrs. Cretchny was in deep thought.

“That crazy man has done it! The nerve he had, taking out his anger on such a precious child! I’ll see to it that she’s out of his reach. I’ll make sure that eccentric Alan Rowner never has a chance to lay a finger on that child ever again!”

Mrs. Cretchny grabbed her telephone. “Hello, operator? Yes, can you please connect me to the local authorities? I’m calling to report a child abuse incident.”