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Description
Danny was a normal boy

He was neither quiet nor boisterous. He hung out regularly with his friends. He ran after ice cream trucks with money in his hand or in one of the pockets of his grass stained shorts. He tried to teach his friend’s dog tricks, and all he got in return was a dog-bite and a whole lot of tetanus shots. He was the proper seven year old.

He was actually considered lucky by his friends. He wasn’t asked to mow the lawn, take out the garbage or any other little chore his friends had to grudgingly put up with. He had never been grounded and never had his Playstation 2 or computer time taken away from him. This, of course, didn’t mean that he was liked less by his friends. It was quite the opposite actually. They adored him. Danny was what you call a “popular kid” (as popular as you can be when you were of his age.) He was always picked first when they had a game to play during recess or after school. Most of the time Danny was the unofficial leader of the neighborhood gang, but nobody admitted this, because all of them professed to be the one in front. But, Danny knew that he was the actual leader.

His parents weren’t too happy with his behavior at times but otherwise, they loved him to bits. In fact, Danny was certain that they did love him all the time and they were just acting in accordance to some grand parent guidebook that all adults had to follow.

His parents and friends adored him to the limits, and the biggest worry he had at the moment was that he would one day be asked to do chores.

Life was good for Danny.

Of course, life didn’t bring eternal happiness either.

One Saturday morning he woke up and found that his blinds were still down, and the windows still shut. And, this was certainly strange to him, because Danny’s mom always came in early in the morning and pulled up the blinds and pushed the windows open, because as she said (and she said this every morning when she opened them):

“A little fresh air and sunlight in the morning didn’t hurt a seven year old boy, and it especially didn’t hurt my Danny.”

And then she’d tiptoe out of the room (so that she wouldn’t wake him), but not before whispering by his ear,

“I love you, Danny-boy.”

The truth of the matter was that Danny always woke up to her opening his window, but he still pretended to sleep when she whispered.
After all, he loved waking up to his mother’s voice in the morning.

And today he had woken up without hearing his mother’s voice or feeling the fresh summer breeze and sunlight upon his face. He sat up in bed and wondered, because he wasn’t sure what to do now, after all this was the first time in his life that his mother hadn’t woken him up He finally decided to open up the blinds and windows himself and go find his mother. This just couldn’t do you see, it disrupted Danny’s day.

After a few difficult minutes spent on opening them (he was only so tall, you see, and he couldn’t do it himself without help), he rushed out of his room and pitter-pattered his way down the stairs into the kitchen, expecting to find his mother there making breakfast or whatever other meal she was constantly making for Danny and his dad. The dishes from yesterday’s dinner were still sitting unwashed in the sink.

Danny promptly wrinkled his nose and exclaimed.

“Well, I never. I’ll just have to have a talk with mom. This won’t do.”

You see, Danny read the newspaper (the funny pages that is), and he'd heard when his father read in the newspaper, that when adults didn't like something they sometimes spoke like this

Not knowing what to do now, he skipped his way back up the stairs and knocked on the door to his parent’s room. He didn’t hear anything. So he knocked again, and still he heard nothing. Harrumphing, he opened the door expecting it to be empty, and for him to continue on this grand adventure that this had turned into – an amazing game of hide and go seek with his hiding mother and possibly father, and him traipsing on all around the house and maybe even outside to go seek them.

But it wasn’t empty. He could see his mother lying still on his father’s lap. Somewhat disappointed that his adventure had ended, but not to be let down, he shouted in the highest of spirits and in all his boyish exuberance,

“Aha! I found you!”

His father who until now had been staring intently upon his mother’s face cradled in his lap, just looked up at Danny at this point and cried. This too was strange; for Danny had never seen his father cry, and had figured adults can’t cry. The adventure was no longer as grand as it had originally seemed. He wanted to tell his mother that he wasn’t happy with her not opening the blinds and windows or not telling him that she loved him, but he couldn’t get the words out of his throat. And this is when Danny’s father spoke the words that changed Danny’s life forever.

“D-Da-Daniel, Mommy’s left us and gone to a better place, son.”

Danny, in all his wisdom and seven ancient years of experience took a moment to understand what his dad had just said, and then deciding that this adventure definitely wasn’t grand, he rushed back to his room, and hid beneath his blankets and tried to go back to sleep. But, he didn’t close the windows or the blinds, because a little fresh air and sunlight definitely couldn’t hurt Danny-boy.

At least that’s what his mother used to say.
---

After his mother died, it all changed. Daniel (he didn’t want to be called Danny anymore) and his father left the town where he had been born and had stayed all his life and moved very far away, in a big red moving van. This should have been another grand and new adventure, with all the new places to see and explore. But, it just wasn’t!

Actually, nothing was an adventure or even fun to Daniel anymore. He just sat in the seat between his father (who was driving the van) and his grandmother, who was going to live with them from now on, and just stared at his hands.

“Now Danny, what is so interesting about your hands that you stare at them instead of the beautiful country side out there?” asked his grandmother, in the way only old people who were your relatives could. But, all Daniel did was continue to stare into his hands, only briefly lifting his head to stare at his grandmother, and say,

“Don’t call me that!”

But his grandmother just wouldn’t give up, she kept on talking to him about the new town they were going to, the lovely house they would live in, and the great friends he was going to make. Yet he continued to stare at his hands. He didn’t know when, but finally his father spoke up.

“Ruth, leave Dann…Daniel alone.”

She wouldn’t though. She just looked him straight in the eye, and used that old people voice again.

“Leave him alone? Leave him alone, Jonathan? I can’t do that. A boy his age can’t act like this. For God’s sake, Jon, he’s still a child. He needs to laugh and smile and play his videogames, and…and…I just don’t know.”

And nobody spoke after that, with Daniel staring at his hands, and his father driving, and his grandmother just sitting there almost crying. The only other thing that was said on that trip was by his father about an hour or so later, when he thought that Daniel had fallen asleep.

“Give him time. It’ll pass.”

And the hours that passed from then on in until they reached their new home was filled only with static and the random messages that drifted through the CB radio fitted in the rented moving truck.

It was summer, so school hadn’t started yet, and it was a wonderful summer in Daniel’s new hillside town which bordered a small forest-like grove and a small lake where old men fished and smoked their tobacco, and high-schoolers snuck out after dark and made out under the trees or the more daring skinny dipped.

But Daniel, just sat in his new room peeking out from behind his closed blinds and shut window at the outside world. There were a lot of kids his age in town, and his grandmother tried to introduce them to him, but he stayed sullen and quiet, and he ignored the kids, and they in turn ignored him. Finally even his grandmother gave up on getting him to socialize, but she did finally get him out of the house by giving him chores outside the house.

The dread that once filled him about getting chores didn’t even bother him now; it was at least something to keep his mind occupied. And slowly he started leaving the house even without her asking him. He didn’t wander the hill or the streets or swim in the lake. He just went into the forest-grove where nobody else went, and he walked and walked until he reached its heart where a great grandfather oak stood. He would climb up into it and settle into a natural cubby-hole within the tree, and he did the one thing he had not done since his mother’s death. He cried. He cried, because he hadn’t cried in front of his father or anyone else.

The summer passed and school started, and it was definitely different. He still hadn’t made any friends, and he was neglecting his work, even more than he had done before. His father scolded him half-heartedly for this. But even, that was different from before. His father had found a new job, and left home hours before he woke up, and came back home hours after he had gone to bed.

Life in short, was horrible for Daniel.

The only comfort he got these days was when he slipped into the secret cubby-hole of his. He still cried but not as much. And the cries were what initially dragged her to him, and how they met.

At first he ignored her and told her to go away, but she wouldn’t completely go away. She just stood at the bottom of the tree and spoke to him. He tried to ignore her, but that didn’t work either. He couldn’t leave the tree because he would have to face her when he came down, so finally he grudgingly allowed her to enter his cubby hole.

And the first thing she said when she saw him was,

“Well, hello there Danny-boy!”

If he was surprised that she knew him (because there was an odd familiarity in those words), he didn’t show it. If he was angry that she had called him Danny-boy, he didn’t seem to care about that either. He didn’t even reply or say hello. He just stared into her striking and beautiful face.

This didn’t bother her, either. She just continued in that bouncing tone of hers, while twirling one of her long dark as midnight locks of hair between her fingers.

“Well aren’t you going to ask me what I am, or even my name?”

And Daniel in turn continued to stare at her, and not respond. With a snort of mock indignation and a glint of mischief in her eyes, she continued:

“I guess you just don’t remember the manners your mother taught you. But, I suppose she just didn’t have much time to completely teach you manners. Did she now, Danny-boy?”

She smiled, but she knew she had him now, after the mention of his mother. Broken out of his trance at the mention of his mother, he spoke slowly in that seven-year-lost-boy voice of his.

“You knew my mom?”

Bored with her hair, her hands flitted about a bough of leaf near her.

“Well, not personally, but we fae-folk know of all people, at least when they were children. But of course, you knew that, didn’t you, Danny-boy?”

The mischief of her eyes sounded of in those words, and almost as though in turn, Daniel regained some of that last curiosity he once possessed.

“No, I didn’t. But is fae-folk like the tooth-fairy or Tinkerbelle?”

Her rich laugh almost brought a smile to his face (almost.)

“Yes, Danny-boy. Yes. Fae-folk are like the tooth-fairy and
Tinkerbelle. Maybe more, maybe less.”

She left it open knowing that he would ask more questions, and in the end she could bring about a smile to his face full of sorrow.

And he did slowly. At first, it was only questions. A whole lot of questions at that. But he didn’t smile. He actually wouldn’t smile for a long time. It would take him years for him to smile.

All that mattered for now was that he had finally found a friend. A friend who knew almost everything that there was to know about him, but he barely knew anything about her. Not even her name. He didn’t ask for it though, he was just content having someone to talk to like he sometimes talked with his mother. He was just content to have her as a friend. But, he still didn’t smile.

He would only smile years later, when he had run out of things to talk about with her, but he still came and climbed into the cubby hole in the great grandfather oak, and just stared at her and thought of his mother. It didn’t matter though that she didn’t look a bit like his mother. He still stared. She didn’t mind either. She just talked about anything and everything to keep him occupied.

He would keep on coming to the grove for few more years to come until he grew big enough that he wouldn’t fit into the cubby-hole. But, that wasn’t the actual reason why he stopped coming to the grove. She had disappeared. He showed up for months, standing under the oak and searching the grove and the hill-side, but he couldn’t find her. He finally gave up. But it was alright though. He had slowly made friends and his grades were somewhat decent in school. He was old enough to notice girls, and he had even had the courage to ask a girl he liked out.

He wouldn’t see her again until many, many years later after his father had died. She had crept up behind him at the cemetery and asked him a simple question,

“Daniel, why’d you cry for your father and not for your mother?”

Wiping his tears away on her black gauze veil, he somberly said,

“My friends call me Danny-boy.”

Still true to her nature, she repeated her question, and he laughed a bitter laugh,

“You always know better when you’ve had the wisdom and experience of seven-years.”

Description
Danny was a normal boy

He was neither quiet nor boisterous. He hung out regularly with his friends. He ran after ice cream trucks with money in his hand or in one of the pockets of his grass stained shorts. He tried to teach his friend’s dog tricks, and all he got in return was a dog-bite and a whole lot of tetanus shots. He was the proper seven year old.

He was actually considered lucky by his friends. He wasn’t asked to mow the lawn, take out the garbage or any other little chore his friends had to grudgingly put up with. He had never been grounded and never had his Playstation 2 or computer time taken away from him. This, of course, didn’t mean that he was liked less by his friends. It was quite the opposite actually. They adored him. Danny was what you call a “popular kid” (as popular as you can be when you were of his age.) He was always picked first when they had a game to play during recess or after school. Most of the time Danny was the unofficial leader of the neighborhood gang, but nobody admitted this, because all of them professed to be the one in front. But, Danny knew that he was the actual leader.

His parents weren’t too happy with his behavior at times but otherwise, they loved him to bits. In fact, Danny was certain that they did love him all the time and they were just acting in accordance to some grand parent guidebook that all adults had to follow.

His parents and friends adored him to the limits, and the biggest worry he had at the moment was that he would one day be asked to do chores.

Life was good for Danny.

Of course, life didn’t bring eternal happiness either.

One Saturday morning he woke up and found that his blinds were still down, and the windows still shut. And, this was certainly strange to him, because Danny’s mom always came in early in the morning and pulled up the blinds and pushed the windows open, because as she said (and she said this every morning when she opened them):

“A little fresh air and sunlight in the morning didn’t hurt a seven year old boy, and it especially didn’t hurt my Danny.”

And then she’d tiptoe out of the room (so that she wouldn’t wake him), but not before whispering by his ear,

“I love you, Danny-boy.”

The truth of the matter was that Danny always woke up to her opening his window, but he still pretended to sleep when she whispered.
After all, he loved waking up to his mother’s voice in the morning.

And today he had woken up without hearing his mother’s voice or feeling the fresh summer breeze and sunlight upon his face. He sat up in bed and wondered, because he wasn’t sure what to do now, after all this was the first time in his life that his mother hadn’t woken him up He finally decided to open up the blinds and windows himself and go find his mother. This just couldn’t do you see, it disrupted Danny’s day.

After a few difficult minutes spent on opening them (he was only so tall, you see, and he couldn’t do it himself without help), he rushed out of his room and pitter-pattered his way down the stairs into the kitchen, expecting to find his mother there making breakfast or whatever other meal she was constantly making for Danny and his dad. The dishes from yesterday’s dinner were still sitting unwashed in the sink.

Danny promptly wrinkled his nose and exclaimed.

“Well, I never. I’ll just have to have a talk with mom. This won’t do.”

You see, Danny read the newspaper (the funny pages that is), and he'd heard when his father read in the newspaper, that when adults didn't like something they sometimes spoke like this

Not knowing what to do now, he skipped his way back up the stairs and knocked on the door to his parent’s room. He didn’t hear anything. So he knocked again, and still he heard nothing. Harrumphing, he opened the door expecting it to be empty, and for him to continue on this grand adventure that this had turned into – an amazing game of hide and go seek with his hiding mother and possibly father, and him traipsing on all around the house and maybe even outside to go seek them.

But it wasn’t empty. He could see his mother lying still on his father’s lap. Somewhat disappointed that his adventure had ended, but not to be let down, he shouted in the highest of spirits and in all his boyish exuberance,

“Aha! I found you!”

His father who until now had been staring intently upon his mother’s face cradled in his lap, just looked up at Danny at this point and cried. This too was strange; for Danny had never seen his father cry, and had figured adults can’t cry. The adventure was no longer as grand as it had originally seemed. He wanted to tell his mother that he wasn’t happy with her not opening the blinds and windows or not telling him that she loved him, but he couldn’t get the words out of his throat. And this is when Danny’s father spoke the words that changed Danny’s life forever.

“D-Da-Daniel, Mommy’s left us and gone to a better place, son.”

Danny, in all his wisdom and seven ancient years of experience took a moment to understand what his dad had just said, and then deciding that this adventure definitely wasn’t grand, he rushed back to his room, and hid beneath his blankets and tried to go back to sleep. But, he didn’t close the windows or the blinds, because a little fresh air and sunlight definitely couldn’t hurt Danny-boy.

At least that’s what his mother used to say.
---

After his mother died, it all changed. Daniel (he didn’t want to be called Danny anymore) and his father left the town where he had been born and had stayed all his life and moved very far away, in a big red moving van. This should have been another grand and new adventure, with all the new places to see and explore. But, it just wasn’t!

Actually, nothing was an adventure or even fun to Daniel anymore. He just sat in the seat between his father (who was driving the van) and his grandmother, who was going to live with them from now on, and just stared at his hands.

“Now Danny, what is so interesting about your hands that you stare at them instead of the beautiful country side out there?” asked his grandmother, in the way only old people who were your relatives could. But, all Daniel did was continue to stare into his hands, only briefly lifting his head to stare at his grandmother, and say,

“Don’t call me that!”

But his grandmother just wouldn’t give up, she kept on talking to him about the new town they were going to, the lovely house they would live in, and the great friends he was going to make. Yet he continued to stare at his hands. He didn’t know when, but finally his father spoke up.

“Ruth, leave Dann…Daniel alone.”

She wouldn’t though. She just looked him straight in the eye, and used that old people voice again.

“Leave him alone? Leave him alone, Jonathan? I can’t do that. A boy his age can’t act like this. For God’s sake, Jon, he’s still a child. He needs to laugh and smile and play his videogames, and…and…I just don’t know.”

And nobody spoke after that, with Daniel staring at his hands, and his father driving, and his grandmother just sitting there almost crying. The only other thing that was said on that trip was by his father about an hour or so later, when he thought that Daniel had fallen asleep.

“Give him time. It’ll pass.”

And the hours that passed from then on in until they reached their new home was filled only with static and the random messages that drifted through the CB radio fitted in the rented moving truck.

It was summer, so school hadn’t started yet, and it was a wonderful summer in Daniel’s new hillside town which bordered a small forest-like grove and a small lake where old men fished and smoked their tobacco, and high-schoolers snuck out after dark and made out under the trees or the more daring skinny dipped.

But Daniel, just sat in his new room peeking out from behind his closed blinds and shut window at the outside world. There were a lot of kids his age in town, and his grandmother tried to introduce them to him, but he stayed sullen and quiet, and he ignored the kids, and they in turn ignored him. Finally even his grandmother gave up on getting him to socialize, but she did finally get him out of the house by giving him chores outside the house.

The dread that once filled him about getting chores didn’t even bother him now; it was at least something to keep his mind occupied. And slowly he started leaving the house even without her asking him. He didn’t wander the hill or the streets or swim in the lake. He just went into the forest-grove where nobody else went, and he walked and walked until he reached its heart where a great grandfather oak stood. He would climb up into it and settle into a natural cubby-hole within the tree, and he did the one thing he had not done since his mother’s death. He cried. He cried, because he hadn’t cried in front of his father or anyone else.

The summer passed and school started, and it was definitely different. He still hadn’t made any friends, and he was neglecting his work, even more than he had done before. His father scolded him half-heartedly for this. But even, that was different from before. His father had found a new job, and left home hours before he woke up, and came back home hours after he had gone to bed.

Life in short, was horrible for Daniel.

The only comfort he got these days was when he slipped into the secret cubby-hole of his. He still cried but not as much. And the cries were what initially dragged her to him, and how they met.

At first he ignored her and told her to go away, but she wouldn’t completely go away. She just stood at the bottom of the tree and spoke to him. He tried to ignore her, but that didn’t work either. He couldn’t leave the tree because he would have to face her when he came down, so finally he grudgingly allowed her to enter his cubby hole.

And the first thing she said when she saw him was,

“Well, hello there Danny-boy!”

If he was surprised that she knew him (because there was an odd familiarity in those words), he didn’t show it. If he was angry that she had called him Danny-boy, he didn’t seem to care about that either. He didn’t even reply or say hello. He just stared into her striking and beautiful face.

This didn’t bother her, either. She just continued in that bouncing tone of hers, while twirling one of her long dark as midnight locks of hair between her fingers.

“Well aren’t you going to ask me what I am, or even my name?”

And Daniel in turn continued to stare at her, and not respond. With a snort of mock indignation and a glint of mischief in her eyes, she continued:

“I guess you just don’t remember the manners your mother taught you. But, I suppose she just didn’t have much time to completely teach you manners. Did she now, Danny-boy?”

She smiled, but she knew she had him now, after the mention of his mother. Broken out of his trance at the mention of his mother, he spoke slowly in that seven-year-lost-boy voice of his.

“You knew my mom?”

Bored with her hair, her hands flitted about a bough of leaf near her.

“Well, not personally, but we fae-folk know of all people, at least when they were children. But of course, you knew that, didn’t you, Danny-boy?”

The mischief of her eyes sounded of in those words, and almost as though in turn, Daniel regained some of that last curiosity he once possessed.

“No, I didn’t. But is fae-folk like the tooth-fairy or Tinkerbelle?”

Her rich laugh almost brought a smile to his face (almost.)

“Yes, Danny-boy. Yes. Fae-folk are like the tooth-fairy and
Tinkerbelle. Maybe more, maybe less.”

She left it open knowing that he would ask more questions, and in the end she could bring about a smile to his face full of sorrow.

And he did slowly. At first, it was only questions. A whole lot of questions at that. But he didn’t smile. He actually wouldn’t smile for a long time. It would take him years for him to smile.

All that mattered for now was that he had finally found a friend. A friend who knew almost everything that there was to know about him, but he barely knew anything about her. Not even her name. He didn’t ask for it though, he was just content having someone to talk to like he sometimes talked with his mother. He was just content to have her as a friend. But, he still didn’t smile.

He would only smile years later, when he had run out of things to talk about with her, but he still came and climbed into the cubby hole in the great grandfather oak, and just stared at her and thought of his mother. It didn’t matter though that she didn’t look a bit like his mother. He still stared. She didn’t mind either. She just talked about anything and everything to keep him occupied.

He would keep on coming to the grove for few more years to come until he grew big enough that he wouldn’t fit into the cubby-hole. But, that wasn’t the actual reason why he stopped coming to the grove. She had disappeared. He showed up for months, standing under the oak and searching the grove and the hill-side, but he couldn’t find her. He finally gave up. But it was alright though. He had slowly made friends and his grades were somewhat decent in school. He was old enough to notice girls, and he had even had the courage to ask a girl he liked out.

He wouldn’t see her again until many, many years later after his father had died. She had crept up behind him at the cemetery and asked him a simple question,

“Daniel, why’d you cry for your father and not for your mother?”

Wiping his tears away on her black gauze veil, he somberly said,

“My friends call me Danny-boy.”

Still true to her nature, she repeated her question, and he laughed a bitter laugh,

“You always know better when you’ve had the wisdom and experience of seven-years.”