True miracle

"But I can’t!” Asher lifted his hands in dismay. He genuinely wanted to do something, but he really did not know how. “I can’t create miracles! I am not a magician,” he repeated helplessly. “Aren’t you?” mysterious smile touched the fairy’s lips, and the next moment she turned away and disappeared. Now he was all alone on the empty playground. Well, almost empty: at the far end of the play area on rusty swings a five-year-old girl was sobbing softly, wiping her big starry eyes with dirty little fists. The young man walked up to the little figure, hunkered down and caringly asked: “Hi! What happened?” The crying stopped, and the girl tried to hide her face behind the swing chain. “I…” she murmured. “My mummy did not come to pick me. All kids are gone long ago, their parents came and took them, but I am still waiting for mummy.” The child dropped her head sorrowfully, but all of a sudden a splash of hope brightened her tear-stained pretty face. “Uncle, can you take me home, please!” she asked. At first he was taken aback with innocent credulity of the kid, but after all she was so frightened, tired and lonely. Of course, she would trust anyone who sympathised with her. “Look here, let us better…” he frantically explored his pockets and, with a relief, pulled out a chocolate bar. He used to always stock something sweet with him, just in case, but he recalled that that afternoon he gave the last one to his distressed classmate. But now he desperately needed to pull out that chocolate from his pocket — and here it was! He handed the girl a sweet bar, and didn’t even wonder where it came from. “We’ll sit here and wait for your mum. She is surely on her way here, but if we leave now, we will miss her. Right?” The child, busy with the treat, nodded and started to swing. Asher got back his breath: the girl seemed to calm down. “Sarah! My baby!” a pale excited woman ran up to the swings and embraced the girl with trembling hands. “My dear child, I am so sorry! I rushed to reach here, but there was such a huge traffic block and I got stuck! You felt scared? Oh, my dear!” the woman took the girl in her arms, kissing her. “At the beginning — yes! But then this uncle came and said that you are coming,” the contented child quietly finished the chocolate and gratefully smiled at her patron, who was turning scarlet. “Thank you very much, young man!” showering the boy with blessings, the woman tightly hugged her daughter and headed for the exit. Watching them leaving, Asher — alone again — thought how quickly the children forgot bad things and how great it was. “Well done!” said a fairy emerging out of nowhere. She took a seat on a swing. “And you were insisting that you could not do it!” “But I really can’t! Creating magic is not for me!” “Do you think it wasn’t a magic? Thanks to you, a frightened child smiled! In my opinion, this is a real miracle! And this...” she took out a bottle with soap bubbles, “... is merely a trick, which is easy to learn if one pleases. True magic is in your eyes as people trust them, and in your heart — as it can love and empathise. The rest is up to you: you are a magician, and you can do anything.” “But in that case, everyone is a magician,” he whispered thoughtfully. “Not all of us are magicians,” the ephemeral figure slowly began to melt, dissolving in the March twilight. “But each one of us can become one.” For the third time that evening, he was left alone in the empty ground. He is about to leave, when something on the seat of the swing caught his attention — it was a bottle with soap bubbles. The boy felt heat spreading on his hand, his fingertips started tingle. He took a deep breath, shook his long hair and beckoned the bottle with his finger. That fine March evening, a boy walked down the street, blowing soap bubbles. Somewhere behind him, from the shady playground, a barely audible squeak of the swings was heard, and he could clearly feel a very warm and kind smile of someone invisible, who was watching him. But even if he turned around, he would hardly spot anyone on the ground, and he knew it. From now on — he will do it himself. Each one of us can become a magician. Especially if we know how.