The Storyteller

Stories have the power to heal. Stories have the power to hurt. If we tell them often enough, they become fact and they define who we are. Then they curse us.

People come to me to be healed. People come to me when they’re hurt. I tell them to pick a key. They pick one. I tell them a story.

My story is not a complex one of riddles like some of mine, mine is a simple story; one day I told a story because I needed to be healed and then I wrote it down. Then I told it to anyone who’d listen, most of them didn’t. most of them didn’t listen and then they complained that they didn’t know the story. But I did. I knew my story better than anyone and that is what cursed me. I knew too much about myself, so I was doomed. I live here now. I became the storyteller. I know everything but my own name.

A boy came to me and asked for his story. I told him to take a key. He took a large bulky one with a tiny hexagonal emerald in the top and a delicate swirled cut. I told him his story. He didn’t like it. He wished he’d never asked. I told him he was going to die. He cried and cried ad begged me to change it, but now it has been told it can never be untold. I begged him to stay for his remaining life, but he would not for he told me he must go to his girl and tell her just how much he loved her. So I told him to bring her here. And I told her her story. Her key was silvery with a moonstone at the cut and had a much rougher edge than his. She was going to die too. I could see that she could die so he would live. Then he would love me. She agreed and died before my eyes. He killed himself in grief. I cried and cried and begged but once a story has been told it cannot be untold. I sat upon my branch and played with the keys I had left, wondering who would next come my way. I waited and waited and told all their stories too. Some were happy, so9me cried, some begged me to change it. I didn’t change anything.

But then, as time ended, I found I had run out of keys. There wasn’t one for me. So, I told some stories and keys formed from the twinkling stars in the inky black night as I spoke and hung themselves from the branch by silken cord and more people came and soon, they were all gone. Yet I remain. Shall remain forever.

I am the one they call The Storyteller.

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