Chapter 3 - Questions

               Don’t get me wrong, I was a big reader as a kid and I devoured fairy tale books right alongside everything else, but it was never my niche in a way that I felt particularly knowledgeable about them. I knew they were way older than a lot of people assumed, and I knew that many had been made much more kid-friendly these days than the original versions, but that was about it. I was most familiar with the common modern versions, like Cinderella and Snow White – the blanched and palatable versions in kids’ books and movies.

              The term “crone” was familiar, but I wasn’t really sure what place it had in the fairy tale world, so once I roused myself and made it home (pretty sure it was pure mental auto-pilot, I don’t remember the trip at all), I grabbed my laptop and started a deep dive on fairy tales.

Wikipedia was of course the first thing to pop up when I searched for the Crone. It was kind of a generic term for an archetypal old lady figure from fairy tales, usually wise, sometimes wicked, but always some kind of powerful. It kind of felt right in that sense for the lady who had appeared and disappeared in my office, since I had definitely gotten a powerful vibe from her, but she didn’t look old at all, much less as old and wizened as the pictures I saw paired with the term “crone” in my search.

I wasn’t really sure where to start on anything else in my search, so I just kind of took a deep breath and typed in “are fairy tales real?”

I don’t know what I expected. A magical response to come through maybe? To confirm what I had experienced? Or to be redirected to a helpline maybe. Instead, it was exactly what you would think. Some things like “maybe, maybe not, who knows!” or “fairy tales can be assumed to be loosely based on real events” or “fairy tales are more palatable ways for children to learn about historical events” and “fairy tales are obviously fiction, you can tell from the magic and stuff”. Obviously I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist. So much for a deep dive. I had barely skimmed the surface and I wasn't sure where to go from there.

I went and laid down on my couch. Well, futon. Close enough. I don’t know why I started quibbling with myself over semantics at that moment but it was such a habit to be particular with my words that I suppose it was a way to calm my nerves.

Laying down only made me feel more ill at ease, since it seemed like I was treating myself as if I was sick, when I didn’t really think I was. I started to realize that more of me believed that it was real than didn’t. I sat up abruptly and reached across to the end table to grab a legal pad and a pen.

I was about to start a pro/con list to decide if I was going to take on the project for the Crone, but my pen stopped just short of the paper, and I realized that I had already decided. Maybe it was absurd, but there was something about her, and really the whole situation, that made me feel like I needed to say yes. So instead I started jotting down some thoughts and questions.

• Schedule/duration – how often and for how long?
• I need to be able to finish my current contracted work
• Will I be able to continue to take on my usual workload or will this occupy too much time?

• Pay – how much or what rate?
• Different rates for evening or late night? Weekend rates?
• Rate variability depend on task? (recording vs transcribing)

• Product – what format?
• probably not a digital file?
• paper print out?
• rough copy or bound?

• safety??
• what kind of creatures are we talking about
• do I need protections?
• can they all pop in and out like she did or will I need to smuggle them into the building?

I stopped and put my pen down. I stared at the last few lines, wondering how on earth I ended up writing something like that in earnest. “I need to go to bed,” I said out loud. So I did.