When in that fleeting
truthful week
three Thursdays came in a row
once upon a time there was, there was...
​
...an old farmer who lived in a poor hut. This peasant had a suffering son, hunchbacked and hamstrung from birth, who was unfortunately called Fortunato. At the age of eighteen, Fortunato decided to leave his father's hut and set out to seek his fortune.

He said farewell to his father, who blessed him with tears, carved himself a brand new pair of crutches and took the way towards the East, crossed mountains and plains, suffered hunger and thirst, always waiting for his luck to manifest. But luck wouldn’t come his way.

One day, at dusk, darkness was catching upon him while he lingered on an unknown path cutting through a fir forest.

He quickened his pace to reach some sort of shelter before nightfall, and he felt his heart leap with terror at the cries of the nocturnal birds and the howl of wolves.

Suddenly, between the twigs and the trunks, he thought he saw a flickering light: he sprang forward as much as his crutches allowed him, reached a wooden hut, and knocked in the cold.

The door opened: a tiny, bent, white-haired, wrinkled old lady appeared in the room, showered by the light of a fireplace.

- Good woman, I am lost; welcome me in, for charity’s sake.

- Come forward, my son.

Fortunato entered the warmth of the hut.

- I will share with you part of my dinner; you will be satisfied with the little I have. - Even a little will be too much kindness, mother.

They sat down at the table and the old woman placed between them a plate and a tiny bowl, with a crumb of bread and two grains of rice. Fortunato looked at her in amazement.

"She wasn't wrong," he thought to himself, "in telling me to be satisfied with little."

But the old lady gestured imperiously with her right hand: and behold, the crumb grew, grew, took the shape of a sparrow, a pigeon, a chicken, a roasted turkey with appetising

shades of gold. And there the bowl grew, turning into an elegant tureen where a sweetly scented soup steamed. Fortunato thought he was dreaming.

He ate with appetite, amazed to taste that magical food under his teeth. And he looked at his mysterious host with different eyes.

After dinner the old lady made Fortunato sit under the fireplace mantle, and she crouched against him in the warmth of the ashes.

- Son, tell me your story.

Fortunato told her of his illness, of his plight and of his vain pilgrimage in search of fortune.

- Help me, you must be a powerful fairy.

- I am no powerful fairy, my son, and my spells are few... I will help you by showing you a secret that everyone ignores: there’s a path in the forest, and it leads to the castle of desires...

At dawn the next day, the old lady accompanied Fortunato through the woods, stopped at a crossroads, and showed him which path to choose.

- Walk three days and three nights without looking back, no matter what you feel and hear. For centuries no one has dared to face the mystery of those walls. You will knock with this stone on the great door, and it will open by magic. You will cross courtyards and rooms, entrance halls and corridors. In the last room you will find a sleeping old man, standing with his arm outstretched, holding a green candle between his fingers; that is the talisman that you must steal and that will grant your every wish. The castle is full of magical frauds and diabolical horrors. But the necromancer, dragons and other spirits will fall asleep at noon and sleep till the strike of one. If you’re still there when the bell strikes, though, you will be lost forever...
​
Fortunato took the stone, thanked the old woman and continued along the road on his crutches. Towards evening he heard a call from behind:

- Lucky man! Hey, you, Lucky man!

He didn't remember the old woman's warning and turned around in curiosity. And he was suddenly brought back to the limits of the forest, from which he had started.

- Never mind: I’ll start again.

And he undertook the way of the forest again, and again he heard a voice calling for him. - They'll kill me! Help! Young man, help me, for goodness' sake!

He turned around in pity and there he was, brought back to the starting point again. He had a fit of anger, then patiently resumed his journey on his crutches.

He walked for two days: at sunset on the second day he heard the clash of weapons, the trampling of horses; he turned around in fear and there he was, led back to the starting crossroads.

- These are deceptions sent by that necromancer; but I will learn how to resist them.

And he blocked his ears with flax tows and continued along the road calmly, unaware of the calls that were trying to distract him. After three days he arrived at the uninhabited castle. He waited for the stroke of twelve and banged with the stone. The immense door, sculpted with fabulous carvings, opened by magic.

Fortunato recoiled, horrified. In front of him was a courtyard full of gigantic salamanders, toads, vipers, colossal scorpions. But everyone was asleep and Fortunato took courage and walked on his crutches among the slimy backs, the tails, the iron armour plates, the inert tentacles. He crossed courtyards, entrance halls, corridors, and eventually reached a room completely cladded with silver coins: struck by awe, thinking of everything he could do with such riches, he bent down and filled his pockets with them. He came to a second room full of gold coins: he bent down, tossed away the silver coins and picked up the gold coins. He came to a third room, cluttered with tall pyramids of gems: he emptied his pockets of gold and filled them with diamonds. He crossed other courtyards, other corridors, arriving in a final, immense and dark room.

The decrepit necromancer, with his long, white beard, slept standing up, holding the green candle in his outstretched hand.

Fortunato looked at him in amazement, and with equal amazement he inspected the thousand things in his diabolical laboratory. Then he remembered the time was passing, snatched the candle from the necromancer's hand, ran back, and got lost in the corridors. Dawn must have been imminent and if he couldn’t come out before that, he was going to be lost forever. He finally found the room again with diamonds, and the one with gold, and the one with silver, crossed the courtyard of the sleeping beasts, passed on his crutches between the slimy backs and tails again, and reached the immense door. The doors closed behind him with a dull crash.

The touch of one resounded instantly.

A frightening clamour arose behind the castle walls: croaks, hoarse and furious screams; they were the guardian monsters who noticed the theft. But Fortunato was safe outside the walls.
He immediately lit the candle and commanded:

- Let my legs straighten, let my illness be gone!

And the hump disappeared from his back, and his legs straightened strong, and the pain melted away from his body. Fortunato threw away his crutches, put out the candle because it was burning very quickly, and headed for the city. He arrived there late at night, chose a spacious hill and lit up the candle again, commanding it to build a residence more beautiful than the Royal Palace.

At dawn the citizens looked in amazement at the new marvellous building, its towers, loggias, staircases, terraces and hanging gardens that blossomed in a single night. Fortunato stood there on a balcony, dressed as a great gentleman, and bathed in their admiring looks.

The King, who was an evil tyrant, burned with indignation and envy for the unknown stranger and sent out a valet ordering him to appear in front of the Court and explain his sudden arrival.

- You will tell the King that I bow to no one. If he thinks it’s important, he can be the one to come to me.
The King ordered the valet to be beheaded, and swore eternal hatred to the mysterious stranger.

Fortunato lived the life of a great lord, eclipsing the king with a display of rich clothes, horses and riches: all he had to do was light the green candle for a few seconds and his every wish was immediately satisfied. But the candle was getting shorter and shorter, and Fortunato was starting to get restless and reduce his commands. And he wasn't happy. He felt that something was missing from his life, and he didn't know what.

One day, riding through the city, he saw the King's only daughter in a loggia of the palace. The princess seemed to smile benevolently at him, but she was surrounded by the ladies and watched closely by pages and knights.
The next day Fortunato passed under the loggia again and saw the princess among her women giving him a complacent smile. Fortunato fell madly in love with her.

One full moon evening he stood on the highest of his hanging gardens, leaning on the balustrades that dominated the city.

- Perhaps the candle could satisfy me in this too...

And he pondered for a long time how to express his desire for her.

- Candle, beautiful candle, I want the princess to be made invisible and to be transported instantly to my garden.

Fortunato waited, with his heart beating strongly...

And here the King's daughter appeared, dressed in a white tunic and with her hair undone.
- Help! Help! Where am I? Who are you?

The princess trembled, gripped by terror. She felt herself being lifted from her bed, and carried away through space. Fortunato knelt beside her, kissing the hem of her tunic.

- I am the knight who passes under your balconies every day, princess, and if I had you transported here it was not with an evil purpose, but only to be able to humbly speak to you.

And Fortunato declared his love for her and told her that he wanted to introduce himself to the King and ask for her hand.

- Don't do that! My father hates you because you are more powerful than him. If you show up he'll have you instantly killed.

After that evening Fortunato often invited Princess Nazzarena to his terraces through the magic of the candle.
She appeared at Fortunato’s call, no longer pale and trembling, but sudden and smiling, like a celestial vision. They walked under the palm trees, among the roses and jasmine, and looked at the sleeping city. At dawn Fortunato commanded the green candle to transport the princess to her rooms and she found herself, a few moments later, laying in her alabaster bed. But a malevolent maid had noticed these nocturnal absences and reported the matter to the King.

- If it's not true I'll have you hanged - the King said threateningly.

- Your Majesty, you can verify this with your own eyes.

The next evening the King hid behind the curtains, spying on his sleeping daughter.

And behold, towards midnight, a very remote voice said: - Candle, beautiful candle, bring me my beloved Nazzarena!

And then his daughter became invisible and the window opened by magic. The King was furious.

And when at dawn Nazzarena reappeared sleeping in her bed, her father grabbed her by her golden braids:

- Where have you been, you wretched girl?

- In my bed, father: I slept all night.

The King calmed down.

- Then it is a curse you are unaware of, and that I will uncover its secret. He consulted a necromancer, who pondered around the matter in vain.

- There is only one expedient, Your Majesty. Hang a perforated bag full of flour on Princess Nazzarena's robes: at dawn we will discover the path she takes.

With the help of the treacherous maid, a perforated bag full of flour was hung above the princess's bed so that it would overturn as she moved. At dawn the King armed his entire guard, and with sword in hand he followed the thin white trail... And the trail led him to the palace of the mysterious stranger.

He burst into Fortunato's sleeping room, where he was conversing with the princess. Before he could resort to the saving candle, the King had him tied up, transported to the royal palace, imprisoned in the basement, and awaiting punishment.

He was condemned to death, and people crowded the large square on the day of his execution. On the balconies of the royal palace stood the whole Court, with the King, the Queen, and the pale and desperate Princess.

Fortunato calmly climbed the scaffolding.

The executioner said to him:

- As is customary in the kingdom, you can express one last wish to His Majesty.

- I only ask that a small green candle be brought to me, which I left back at my palace in an ivory casket. It is a dear memory and I would like to kiss it before I die.

- May it be granted to him - said the King.

A valet returned with the ivory casket and, amid the attention of all the people, Fortunato took the green candle, lit it, and murmured:

- Candle, beautiful candle, may all those present here, with the exception of the princess, sink into the ground up to their chin.

And the crowd, the Court, the King, the Queen, suddenly sank into the pavement.

The square and the streets of the city appeared covered with heads staring and crying for help. Fortunato distinguished among the innumerable heads the crowned head of the King who rolled his eyes to the right and left, and imperiously commanded for someone to free him. But in the whole kingdom there was not a single subject left standing.

Fortunato took Nazzarena by the arm and approached the royal head. - Your Majesty, I have the honour of asking you for the hand of Princess Nazzarena. The King looked at Fortunato with angry eyes and said nothing.
- If you remain silent, I will depart with her today and leave you and your subjects forever buried up to your chin.
The King looked at Fortunato, saw him young and handsome, recalled he was more powerful than him, and recognised he would be a good successor.

- Your Majesty, I ask you again for Nazzarena's hand.

- May it be granted to you - sighed the king.

- Upon your Royal word?

- Upon my Royal word.
​
Fortunato commanded the candle to dig up everyone, and everyone soared from the ground by magic.
And on the same day, in place of a ferocious beheading, a wedding was celebrated instead.

About Guido G. Gozzano:
Guido G. Gozzano, born in Turin on December 1883, was an Italian poet and writer and he belonged to the literary movement known as the "Crepuscolari" (Twilight Poets), which emerged in Italy during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Gozzano came from a well-established family and pursued classical studies at the Liceo Classico Cavour in Turin. In his early years, he was influenced by French symbolism and decadentism, and his poetry often reflected a sense of nostalgia and melancholy. Inspired by Leopardi and fierce political opposer of Gabriele d’Annunzio, Gozzano published both poetry and prose.

His notable works include "La via del rifugio" (The Way to Refuge) and "I colloqui" (Dialogues). His poetry, characterized by musicality and refined language, explored themes of fleeting beauty, disillusionment, and the passage of time.

During the latest years of his life he dedicated himself to delicate fragments of poetry called The Butterflies, segments of prose in epistolary form and, most importantly, the fairy tales published in this collection. They originally appeared serialized on the children's magazine Corriere dei Piccoli.

His life was cut short when he succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 32. His poetry continued to gain recognition posthumously, and he is remembered as one of the significant figures of Italian symbolism.

Based on the poem “Erlkönig” by Johann Wolfgang von Goeth

The father and the child walked together, arm in arm, through the great vaulted halls of the Interspace Headquarters. They passed many a portal to the left and to the right which bore signs such as “Virtual Training” and “Online Constabulary” and the like, yet their steps took them resolutely, without tarry or distraction, toward one particular destination which loomed large ahead of them as they drew close. Finally, the two pods came into view over which a largish sign was affixed which read, “Child Interspace Imprinting”.

Upon reaching the twin pods, the father carefully eased the small boy into the smaller of the two machines. His large hands installed the headset upon the child and soon the small, blond head was crowned with a device out of which many wires ran this way and that. Having ascertained the secure placement of his son in the pod, soon the father too was seated in his own machine with a larger headset. The doors on the pods closed with a click and somewhere high above in the firmament of the chamber a technician pressed a few codes through on a keyboard. The lights in the pods darkened and both father and child closed their eyes and opened their inner views on a new world. A digital forest lay before them.

Programmed as it was for the education of the young, the digital forest comprised within it all variety of visual illusion and optical confection. Within the inner world the father and son saw themselves represented by a larger and smaller pixelated figure respectively.  The two figures walked forward toward the forest together. The father figure pointed from time to time at some distant configuration and the son’s small form responded to the prompts with cautious but not clumsy movements of his own.

After a moment or two the father pressed through an arranged sequence and soon, his son with dutiful precision, followed his father’s keystrokes on his own smaller HUD. Then, before the two minds, twinned in pods though they were bodily, in the reflexive space of both minds, moved the two figures, a larger and a smaller, representing them both, to grasp one another’s hands. These two figures strode forward through the inner space toward the deeper forest ahead, and as they did, the figures crossed beneath a banner held aloft as though in the nanobytes of the digital air and read, “Who goes so late through night and wind?”

The first moments of training passed with no ill report. The father continued to call forth his son’s attention to either side, to small brambles or tugging vines of distraction, and, prompted as he was, the son responded truly, avoiding the underbrush and stepping free of dark hollows and black regresses. Near soon the introductory sequences were logged and bound, and the father proceeded with the longer code. A darker section of the forest opened itself to them and soon they walked together into the blackened path, and when the child figure looked back he saw the path had closed soundly behind them and no glimpse of the entry portal from where their journey began could be seen.

The son began to turn back toward the path ahead, but, in the split second before he lost sight of the way behind him, his attention was caught by a sudden flash of movement in the trees. A figure appeared behind him in the forest. The body was dark, but the face had a silvery shine. The face of the figure held still a moment, and then, horribly, a largish smile widened across the white face, as though it were a crack in the surface of the world. Though it was a smile it was somehow ghastly and the upturned lips suggested malevolent interest. The father felt the son twitch. He looked down at the small figure and saw a flicker of interference in the small body. At that same moment the father heard the crack of thunder and felt a subtle shift in the grounding of the program that governed the inner world. He perceived something change in the root code. When he bent his gaze down toward the child again he observed how the small one was resisting some outside force. He bent toward his son and quickly pressed out a message for his son to observe. “My son, wherefore tremblest thou?”
The boy was still held in terrible and rapt attention to the dark figure behind him in the forest, but when he was able to seize control of his senses he sent back to his father an urgent message of his own. “Look, father, the Alder-King crouches behind! Dost see not it? Its crown and serrated smile?”

The father, proven as he was with his own memories of the first digital steps he once took with his own father, mused to himself what his son must be seeing, unaccustomed as the young one’s eyes must be to the inner digital terrain. Often, he recalled, these digital educational pathways contained within themselves purposeful stations where caution was advised so as to better prepare the young for their future travels. This must be the cause of the thunder and the shift in the terrain, he mused to himself. He sent back a message of mollification to the child, “My son, tis merely the wraithlike mist of distraction rising up from the forest’s floor. Give it no further glance and fix thine eyes forward.”

However, in spite of the father’s message no such calm could the child find, for a moment after the father’s words arrived, they were cast aside by the strangely pitched voice of the silvery figure behind him in the forest. The child shook as he heard the words unfold, both on his screen and also, somehow, within his ears and, indeed, in his very mind. The being spoke with a terrible firmness, “Come, thou dear infant! Oh, come thou with me! Many a game I have for thy mind."

With a terrified sob the son tore himself free from the silvery words and rushed toward the figure of his father who had turned away and was continuing ahead into the woods. The child felt the Alder-Being behind him reaching for him as he ran. He stumbled in an ungainly fashion toward the father, and, reaching high up toward his father’s hand, he tried to grasp it while earnestly crying out a new message, “My father, my father, and dost thou not hear the words the silvery one breathes in mine ear?

Thinking perhaps folly and childish mischief was afoot, the father made not to stop, but briefly checked his step. He looked down at the face of his son and allowed only the briefest of messages, “Be calm, dearest child, 'tis but thy fancy. 'Tis the sad wind that sighs through withering leaves.”

By now the figure of the child was juttering, detaching from the main signal. His body was half in one place and half split into another. Nothing in the father’s words could bring respite to the child for in the very moment when the father’s message faded from his vision he saw with awful clarity behind him the marked shapes of, not one, but several silvery shadows trailing behind him. The boy’s steps betrayed him, for no matter how he tried to dash toward the distant figure of his father, his feet felt trapped as though in glue. He reached down to free his foot, but at that moment the awful smiling shapes behind grew monstrously and in each face was another and another of the gaping serrated mouths. The Alder-One was writhed and encircled with many more of its kind, each with their own smaller mouth, but each one snapping and smiling with intense interest. A high, frightful song came from the murmuring, silvery crowd of figures behind the boy, and, clearest of all above the terrible words came the voice of the Being, “Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there, my love? My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care. They have a bed prepared for thee. They'll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."

The child was now so terrified he could move his feet no further. He stood and felt his sight dwarfed by the rising figures as they approached. The figures were now close enough for him to see saliva and some kind of wet excretion dripping from their jaws. Unable to move but still with enough sense to cry out, the child pitched his message to the highest possible alert and sent it toward his father, “My father, my father, and dost thou not see how the Alder-One his daughters has brought here for me?”

The father stopped. He felt the hairs upon his neck rise. He turned and no sooner did his vision fall upon his son when he, too, heard now, with terrifying finality and utter conviction, the somehow simultaneously high and low harmonic voice of a being from the inner world. The father, now with his eyes opened from the adult-world of benevolence, heard with his own ears a thudding convicted voice of awful sentence. He saw the Alder-King touch his son and heard the black words, “I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy! I’m taking thee now."

A high-pitched cry now filled the writhing forest as the son felt his arms pulled from his body. He felt claws enter his mouth and eyes and feverishly dig therein. He vacantly marvelled that the cry he heard was his own. The father rushed back toward the horrible scene. He stretched out his arms and caught up the tortured body of his son and ripped it from the silvery shapes. He then turned and ran full force back in the direction of the entrance portal. As he ran he felt a violent shudder wrack through the body of the child and with each jerk of the entrails he heard, echoing in his mind, his child’s relentless message, pounding through his ears and out into the distant trees, “My father, my father, the teeth! They hurt me!”

In what seemed like an eternity of frantic struggle though in what may have only been a matter of seconds, the father saw, finally, the entry portal rising up before him. He clutched his child to his breast as he plunged himself forward and dove out of the aperture. Immediately he was back in his physical space within the pod. The sequence ended. He tore the headset from his head. He kicked repeatedly at the door of his pod. There was splintering and breaking and finally he was out. He lunged out and scrabbled frantically at the pod door of the smaller unit where his son still lay within. Finally, with a breaking of plastic and a shattering of screens and circuitry, the father wrenched the final hinge from its mooring. Smoke and the high smell of acid poured out. He reached in to the twisted interior of the pod. The smoke cleared and he saw pale skin and wide eyes.

The boy was dead.

About the author: 
Zary Fekete...

• Grew up in Hungary.
• Has a novelette (In the Beginning) out from ELJ Publications and a debut novella being published in early 2024 with DarkWinter Lit Press.
• Enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films.​

​Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete.