The Wishing Well

By Charles de Lint

This gripping novella set in Newford is a cautionary tale about Brenda Perry, who bears deep scars from the loss of her father. Poor body image and low self-esteem lead to the resurgence of Brenda’s eating disorder and a collapse in the structure of her life. Ghosts, water spirits and wraiths all appear in this tale where there are no easy answers—only opportunities to live and fight another day.

“The Wishing Well” was first published by Axolotl Press, 1993. Copyright (c) 1993 by Charles de Lint.

Cover art by Kel Flowers (www.kelfae.com)

I can never recapture the feeling of first arriving in Newford and meeting the people and seeing the sights as a newcomer. However, part of the beauty of Newford is the sense that it has always been there, that de Lint is a reporter who occasionally files stories from a reality stranger and more beautiful than ours. De Lint also manages to keep each new Newford story fresh and captivating because he is so generous and loving in his depiction of the characters. Yes, there are a group of core characters whose stories recur most often, but a city like Newford has so many intriguing people in it, so many diverse stories to tell, so much pain and triumph to chronicle.
— Challenging Destiny

Charles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend—all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better.
— Alice Hoffman

Charles de Lint writes like a magician. He draws out the strange inside our own world, weaving stories that feel more real than we are when we read them. He is, simply put, the best.
— Holly Black

De Lint is probably the finest contemporary author of fantasy
– Booklist, American Library Association
Unlike most fantasy writers who deal with battles between ultimate good and evil, de Lint concentrates on smaller, very personal conflicts. Perhaps this is what makes him accessible to the non-fantasy audience as well as the hard-core fans. Perhaps it’s just damned fine writing.
– Quill & Quire
De Lint’s evocative images, both ordinary and fantastic, jolt the imagination.
– Publishers Weekly
It is hard to imagine urban fantasy done with greater skill
– Booklist, American Library Association

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles de Lint
• Release date: Mar 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9780920623589

Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint and his wife, the artist MaryAnn Harris, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His evocative novels, including Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, and The Onion Girl, have earned him a devoted following and critical acclaim as a master of contemporary magical fiction in the manner of storytellers like John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, Alice Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, and Isabel Allende.

Book preview

The Wishing Well

by

Charles de Lint

Copyright © 1993 by Charles de Lint

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for MaryAnn

Do you think it’s better to do the right

thing for the wrong reason or the wrong

thing for the right reason?

—Amy Luna, Sumner, WA, from Sassy, May 1991

Beyond the mountains, more mountains.

—Haitian proverb

- 1 -

There are always ghosts in the well. I can’t call them echoes, because the sounds I hear were all made too long ago.

The splash of coins in the water.

Voices whispering their wishes.

Secrets.

Nobody was supposed to hear them.

But I do.

- 2 -

It’s been almost two weeks, Brenda said, and he still hasn’t called.

She butted out a cigarette in the ashtray on the table between them and immediately lit another. Wendy sighed, but didn’t say anything about her friend’s chain-smoking. If you listened to Brenda, there was always something going wrong in her life, so Wendy had long ago decided that there was no point in getting on her case about yet one more negative aspect of it. Besides, she already knew the argument Brenda would counter with: Right, quit smoking and gain twenty pounds. As if I don’t already look like a pig.

Self-esteem wasn’t Brenda’s strong point. She was an attractive woman, overweight only in the sense that everyone was when compared to all those models who seemed to exist only in the pages of a fashion magazine. But that didn’t stop Brenda from constantly worrying over her weight. Wendy never had to read the supermarket tabloids to find out about the latest diet fad. Brenda was sure to tell her about it, often before it appeared in newsprint along with stories of recent Elvis sightings, Bigfoot’s genealogy and the like.

Sometimes it all drove Wendy a little crazy. In her unending quest for the perfect dress size, what Brenda seemed to forget was her gorgeous green eyes, the mane of naturally curly red-gold hair and the perfect complexion that people would kill for. She had a good job, she dressed well—perhaps too well since her credit cards were invariably approaching, if not over, their limit—and when she wasn’t beating up on herself, she was fun to be around. Except Brenda just didn’t see it that way and so she invariably tried too hard. To be liked. To look better. To get a man.

You mean the guy you met at the bus stop? Wendy asked.

Brenda nodded. "He was so nice. He called me a couple of days later and we went out for dinner and a movie. I thought we had a great time."

And I suppose you sent him flowers?

Sending small gifts to men she’d just met was Brenda’s thing. Usually it was flowers.

I just wanted to let Jim know that I had a good time when we went out, Brenda said, so I sent him a half-dozen roses. What’s so wrong about that?

Wendy set down her wine glass. Nothing. It’s just that you…I think maybe you come on too strong and scare guys off, that’s all.

I can’t help it. I get compulsive.

Obsessively so.

Brenda looked at the end of her cigarette, took a final drag, then ground it out. She dropped the butt on top of the half-dozen others already in the ashtray.

I just want to be in love, she said. I just want a guy to be in love with me.

I know, Wendy replied, her voice gentle. But it’s never going to happen if you’re always trying too hard.

I’m starting to get old, Brenda said. I’m almost thirty-five.

Definitely middle-aged, Wendy teased.

That’s not funny.

No. I guess it’s not. It’s just—

I know. I have to stop coming on so strong. Except with the nice guys, it seems like the woman always has to make the first move.

This is too true.

- 3 -

Sunday afternoons, I often drive out of town, up Highway 14. Just before I get into the mountains proper, I pull off into the parking lot of a derelict motel called The Wishing Well. The pavement’s all frost-buckled and there are weeds growing up through the cracks, refuse everywhere, but I still like the place. Maybe because it’s so forsaken. So abandoned. Just the way I feel half the time.

The motel’s all boarded up now, though I’m sure the local kids use it for parties. There are empty cans and broken beer bottles all over the place, fighting for space with discarded junk food packaging and used condoms. The rooms are set out in a horseshoe, the ends pointing back toward the woods, embracing what’s left of the motel’s pool. Half the boards have been torn off the windows and all of the units have been broken into, their doors hanging ajar, some torn right off their hinges.

The pool has a little miniature marsh at the bottom of it—mud and stagnant water, cattails and reeds, and a scum of algae covering about two feet of water. I’ve seen minnows in the spring—God knows how they got there—frogs, every kind of water bug you can imagine. And let’s not forget the trash. There’s even a box spring in the deep end with all the beer cans and broken glass.

The lawn between the pool and the forest has long since been reclaimed by the wilderness. The grass and weeds grow thigh-high and dandelions and clover have mostly overtaken the flowerbeds. The forest has sent a carpet of young trees out into the field, from six inches tall to twenty feet. Seen from the air, they would blur the once-distinct boundary between forest and lawn.

The reason I come here is for the motel’s namesake. There really is a wishing well, out on the lawn, closer to the forest than the motel itself. The well must have been pretty once, with its fieldstone lip, the shingled roof on wooden supports, the bucket hanging down from its cast iron crank, three wrought iron benches set facing the well and a flower garden all around.

The shingles have all pretty much blown off now; the bucket’s completely disappeared—either bagged by some souvenir hunter, or it’s at the bottom of the well. The garden’s rosebushes have taken over everything, twining around the wooden roof supports and covering the benches like Sleeping Beauty’s thorn thicket. The first time I wandered out in back of the motel, I didn’t even know the well was here, the roses had so completely overgrown it. But I found a way to worm through and by now I’ve worn a little path. A thorn hardly ever nicks me.

The fieldstone sides of the well are crumbling and I suppose they’re not very safe, but every time I come, I sit on that short stone wall anyway and look down into the dark shaft below. It’s so quiet here. The bulk of the motel