MY DARLING TALIA

1. An Unsatisfactory Visit

Nolls picked away at a bowl of strawberry ice cream while I desperately tried to keep his attention on the fundamentals of my new research project. The sound of gears whirring and humming in the projector made me feel claustrophobic, and I pulled at my tie to loosen it a bit. It didn't help that he wasn't listening to me. Occasionally, he nodded or looked thoughtful, but for the most part, he was very involved in his ice cream.

He swallowed another pink spoonful, just as I switched slides. "Dr. Nolls?" I asked. "Dr. Nolls, are you even paying attention to me? You know you're not supposed to eat in the lab," I admonished. All around us, different researchers were meeting with their own directors, showing off strange creatures and contraptions, and most of them seemed quite pleased.

Nolls had the decency to look embarrassed. "Well of course I'm paying attention, Henry. But this research project is so very dull... Can't you do something a bit livelier?" he asked, his brows arching. His fingers thumped against the counter.

"Livelier?" I asked as I set down my clicker. "What could be livelier than studying the genetic mutations of an aquatic opossum?" The question hung in the air for a moment. I felt very itchy under his gaze, and I adjusted my vest nervously.

It was then that he handed me a file, as if he had meant to do so all along. I suspected that he had never really wanted to give my aquatic opossums a chance, to be quite honest. On the front of the file, the name "TALIA" was written in large block letters. The name sounded terribly familiar, I realized.

"Surely you remember the tale?" Dr. Nolls asked, looking surprised. "Talia, she's the girl who's been asleep for nearly a century. You know, they thought that true love would wake her up, and all that rot?"

I cringed. I hated fairy tales... It had been years since I’d had a mother to tell them to me. "Dr. Nolls, I don't want to research this young woman. I've had quite enough of soft science," I explained. It seemed like my entire undergraduate studies was wasted on the like.

Nolls shook his head. "Henry, my boy, you've got to research what the public wants to know about. There's no money in aquatic opossums anymore!" he said, chuckling.

"I assure you, Dr. Nolls, that aquatic opossums are very lively," I insisted, but he simply patted me on the back and walked out of the lab, leaving me with the file. As the youngest researcher under the employ of the University, I supposed that I had very little choice in the matter, however. Unfortunately, all my thoughts about aquatic opossums had to be put away.

I ambled off to the library, intent on finding out more about the girl known as Talia. The building was a familiar one to me; I had been at the University since a very young age, leaving home shortly after the death of my father. I ran my fingers over the covers of many a dusty book before picking up an old favorite of mine.

“I should have known I’d find you here,” a voice behind me said. I nearly dropped my book out of surprise. It was still early for students to be back at school, and I hadn’t been expecting to see anyone.

“George!” I exclaimed, recognizing the tone of voice. I turned around to shake his hand before looking him over. “Well, you’ve hardly changed.” His dark hair curled around his ears and he looked rather overdressed for a library, his stuffy cravat tight around his neck. He was meticulous in his dress, but had an air of languor in all other things.

At the moment, his eyes were half shut, his lips partly curved into a smirk. “Summer hasn’t dulled my sense of fashion, if that’s what you mean.”

I flipped through the book I’d pulled out. “I admit, I’d hoped.”

He laughed and walked towards a table. “I know,” he said, before kicking out two chairs.

Looking him over once more, I realized that he had changed, if only superficially. He had grown taller, and the summer sun had given him a bit of color, but he remained otherwise the same. I sat down at the table and he cleared his throat. “You’re a bit early for classes,” he said, eyeing me cautiously. “Did you even go home for the summer?”

I suddenly felt self conscious, though I knew that I could well ask him the same question. “Well, you know I haven’t gone back there in a while… I’m hardly welcome at home.” My stepmother hated my existence and had all but written me out of my family, as George well knew. He was always of the school of thought that I should beg my way back, however, if only to win back some of my inheritance.

He nodded. “I suppose that’s true enough. Enough about that; I find family dramas too tragic for my taste, and you already know my opinion on the matter. What are you researching now? I thought you were working on aquatic opossums?” He eyed my book with some curiosity.

I cringed. George had warned me about Nolls not appreciating my opossums, though I hadn’t believed him then. I didn’t want him to realize that he’d been right all along, as it risked inflating his ego even further than it already was. “Just a bit of history research,” I said, fumbling for words. “Something on the side while I work on my aquatic opossums.”

He cocked his head to the side and took a look at the page I was on. “They’ve got you researching Talia? I can’t believe you’d stand for such poppycock. If I were you, I’d just drop out of school.”

I sank my head down into the book and sighed. “I hardly have that luxury.”

“How droll; my academic-minded friend stuck researching fairy tales,” he said with a slight smile, before pointing to my book. “Wasn’t it required reading in year 11?”

I nodded. Percival Black’s History was required reading in just about every junior history class for boys, while most girls still stuck to Mrs. Black’s companion piece, A Women’s History. Though the originals were written half a century ago, they were still considered the definitive books on the history of the ages.

“I do so hate history class. Can’t believe you can still stomach the sight of that book.”

I frowned and gripped the book tightly. I was rather fond of it, to be honest.

“Anyway, I heard there was a new student… a girl. I’ve been trying to catch sight of her all day; I’m afraid I can’t dally here,” he said, adjusting his cravat before standing up. I nodded as he walked away, out to scout out other student haunts, no doubt.

I took a moment to collect myself before getting up to gather more material that would have information on Talia. The most useful text ended up being the first, Percival Black’s A History, but a few other texts had tidbits of information as well, and I pulled out A Women’s History by Mrs. Black, just to be safe, though that particular text was far inferior to her husband’s work.

From my readings, I was able to gain a clearer picture of who Talia was. She was born in an age different from the one I was familiar with—an age in which “Courtly Love” reigned above all else. Of course, in modern times, young gentlemen write their senior theses on the idea that Love or other such lofty ideals never existed at all, but in those days, the fashion was quite different, and people were obsessed with the many facets of what they thought to be Love. In any case, it would be suffice to say that her people were much more naïve than later became fashionable in polite society.

She was not, like the some papers alleged, a princess, or even, for that matter, of particularly noble lineage. Looking back on our history, one tends to over-exaggerate the romanticism of the times. If one thought logically, it would become plain that not every woman in history was a princess, regardless of how romantically inclined she might have been. From what I deduced from my thorough research, Talia was rather romantically minded, to an extent that would make the modern female quite embarrassed, but she was also quite unfortunately a daughter of peasants, who were able to afford their daughter neither fortune nor future. According to history, despite the unfortunate circumstances into which Talia was born, or perhaps because of them, she caught the eye of a band of fairies at the tender age of exactly thirteen months.

Before their near extinction, fairies were known to be notoriously foolish creatures, but they also were renowned for their sympathy. As it were, the fairies were passing through Little Pendleton, seeking shelter, when they sensed the cottage house that Talia's family occupied. Whether they could feel Talia's excessively romantic heart, or if they simply knew that the poor family would not turn them away, no scholars seemed to know. What the scholars did know is that of all the inns and taverns in Little Pendleton, twelve fairies chose to stay with a poor lumberjack's family, promising to bestow a number of gifts upon his fortuneless and futureless daughter in return for shelter and protection from an older sister. They did not seem to show much logic in choosing their lodgings, and I assumed that this could best be attributed to the fact that fairies were simply foolish.

The exact identification of all the gifts had largely been lost to time. Upon much reading, I discovered that the fairy named January offered Talia soft, white-gold hair, and it was common knowledge that April awarded Talia with the gift of song. Many postulated that June's gift was lips as red as a rose, though no one has reached any agreement on which particular breed of rose she was referring to. For the most part, the gifts were useless and asinine; they were well-intentioned, but of little practical use to a peasant girl such as herself.

The last fairy to bestow a gift upon Talia was the fairy named December, who later became quite infamous herself, due to her involvement in the Mirror Scandal. It is thought that she was going to bless the child with the ability to ice skate, but before she was able to cast her spell, someone knocked on the door of the cottage. The records were a bit unclear as to what happened afterwards, but I did my best to reconstruct the events of the evening, and it seemed that their older sister had followed them more closely than they had thought. The fairies flew from the house; some went out the chimney, others took the back door, and one of the fairies even slid through a crack in the window. December, the youngest of the group, became confused, as young fairies often do, and hid in the broom closet.

The family was bewildered, but they could not forget their good manners, opening the door after the fairies had vanished from sight. A formidable dark fairy stood at their humble door, and asked them what they knew of her sisters' whereabouts. The thirteenth fairy had searched for them all throughout Little Pendleton, she explained, and it really was getting late, and their mother was cooking August's favorite dinner, after all. The lumberjack and his wife thought that the fairy spoke well, and told her all they knew about where the fairies had gone, which frankly wasn't much. They were certain that October had headed due south, though November and February, always rather contrary, had headed southeast, and they were not certain at all of where August had gone.

According to available sources, the dark fairy, the thirteenth, did not deem their answers to be worth her time, and would have simply left well enough alone, but then suddenly heard the baby Talia laughing. When she went to view the baby, she noticed the spells that her sisters had cast on her, still shimmering on the surface; a pretty fabric of magic. The fairy was enraged that the lumberjack should profit from her misfortunes, and so she bestowed her own gift upon the baby. It glowed red, blanketing the other spells in a tight knit. The details of the gift were not been agreed upon, but it was common knowledge that by the time Talia reached the age of sixteen, she was already entranced in a deep, frozen slumber.

Her parents spread the rumor that Talia could only be awakened by the touch of her True Love, and of course, all the romantic princes and poets of the age were soon at her doorstep to kiss the girl silly. It is a well documented fact that 793 young men, and even a few young women, sought to awaken young Talia, renowned for her fairy-blessed beauty. Not a single one of them was able to awaken her, as it became generally agreed upon that there was no such thing as True Love, outside of a fairy's foolish little mind.

In the years that followed, Talia's body neither aged nor decayed, and she was placed in a glass coffin at the request of the town's mayor, Jonathan Piggle, who wished to make her a tourist attraction. Some of Talia's surviving family members were offended by the idea, but they were outvoted in the town hall meeting, and effectively silenced. Custody of Talia went to the Piggle family, an offense which history has all but forgotten. Mr. Piggle was also the man who started the rumors that Talia was actually a princess, and invented his own historically inaccurate version of the events, which clouded scholarly debate on the issue ever since, and made my own job much harder. His actions were reprehensible, but he brought his little town much fame and fortune while he was acting mayor. Of course, like the rest of the country, Little Pendleton soon fell into poverty as six different wars ravaged the economic capabilities. Talia's body was no longer a subject of interest, and she was forgotten, left to remain as a Piggle family heirloom.

When there was stability across the lands once more, the Age of Enlightenment began, and the Age of Fairy Tales saw its long-deserved end. Since those dark times, many advancements were made in the modern sciences, and perhaps people grew too comfortable, for there began a renewed and regrettable interest in fairy tales and Courtly Love once more. Few would be foolish enough to say that they actually believe in True Love, but many younger people started reading the stories, paying little attention to the history behind the matter. In fact, misguided scholars started to write papers on fairy tales in a manner that was sympathetic to the Romantics, which was a step back more than anything else, in my opinion. Unfortunately, the University was backed by private individuals, many of whom were susceptible to the allure of such romantic little tales, being out of academia for many years. Though none of these individuals would profess to it in public, there was a great amount of pressure to research tales such as those of Talia's.

While the research might have been somewhat interesting, if anything, the genetic data gathered from my research would be redundant, as many studies had previously researched the effects that such magic had on the DNA, and the methods used to test her would be elementary at best: gel electrophoresis here, DNase assay there. I had half a mind to quit my position in protest, but as a man who is nothing if not sensible, I knew that I needed the work, unfortunately.

After exhaustingly consulting the preliminary research that I had acquired from the numerous texts I had poured over, I knew that my next step in this frivolous project would not be nearly as pleasant. Thanks to the limited written documentation that I had available, in addition to the persistent urges of a certain Dr. Nolls, I was grudgingly forced to abandon my histories and step out of the lab to do some field research. Seeing as how the University was situated in Hampton, it was not particularly difficult to take a day trip to Little Pendleton, which was almost entirely rundown at the present time, although there were still some families of name who resided there. One such family would be that of the former Mayor Piggle. The Piggles were still in high positions in Little Pendleton, and they did not want to leave their seats of power.

It took only a few questions here and there around town before I was able to discover that Talia was in the possession of Sean Piggle, the town judge, who lived in a stately, but old, mansion. A maid let me in at his rusty door and led me into the parlor to wait for Judge Piggle, leaving me with a tea service. The walls of the parlor were covered in exotic artifacts and strange heirlooms, and it seemed that Judge Piggle was something of a collector. A pair of fairy wings was mounted on the wall behind me, and I moved to touch the shimmering material.

"Remnants of a more elegant time," a deep voice boomed, and, startled, I dropped my teacup onto the hardwood floor. Dismayed, I watched the cup as it shattered upon impact, sending glass and tea across the floor.

"Judge Piggle!" I exclaimed, and rose from my seat. "I'm sorry about the mess.”

The man was rather rotund, and had an obtrusively large, white moustache that flicked out at the ends, but he had no hair to boast of upon his shining bald head.

He swatted his hand at the cup as though it were of no importance, and motioned for me to sit down as he pulled a chair towards me. "So, my dear, dear boy,.what brings you to Little Pendleton today?" He poured milk and sugar into his tea, before he again noticed the broken cup at my feet. "Mildred! Mildred, get over here at once," he called out.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "My name is Henry Watson, and I'm here on behalf of Hampton University. I have an academic interest in the girl named Talia. I've heard that you were in possession of her and, well… I…" I trailed off, watching in fascination as Judge Piggle unsuccessfully tried to wipe tea off of his dripping moustache.

"I do apologize," he said, as he wiped frantically. "I've become quite clumsy in my old age. Now, what were you saying? –Oh, Mildred, my dear," he called out to the maid when she walked into the room, "Mildred, please pick up the broken tea cup and bring us another? And perhaps some pastries?"

Mildred bobbed around me, picking up the shards of the tea cup, and placing another on the table in front of me. Judge Piggle continued to absent-mindedly converse with her on the subject of what needed to be done around the household, and I felt my patience wearing thin.

I cleared my throat, hoping to get done with this formal nonsense as soon as possible. Judge Piggle immediately stopped petting his moustache, and looked at me expectantly as I went on with my business. "Yes, as I was saying before, I'm here to speak with you about the girl named Talia. I've heard that she has been a possession of the Piggle family for nearly a century now?"

I cringed at the thought of the townhall meeting that had passed on ownership of Talia from her family to the Piggles, but then remembered that she was just a body, not a person, and that morals did not apply to her situation.

Judge Piggle's eyes brightened. "Talia? You're here for Talia?" he asked.

I was surprised to find him so open to the idea. "Yes, Sir. You see—"

"Oh, that is wonderful!" he interrupted. "No one has wanted to kiss Talia in nearly fifty years, did you know that? It's quite sad, to tell you the truth. The poor girl probably never expected to sleep for quite this long."

I nearly choked on my tea. "No, Judge Piggle, you've certainly misunderstood me. I don't intend to kiss Talia at all!" I exclaimed. Even the thought of it made me start to itch. The judge stayed very still in his seat.

"What exactly do you mean to do then, boy?" he asked, his voice now dangerously quiet. Mildred walked in with cakes, but he put a hand up to stop her where she was.

I pulled at my class ring anxiously, knowing his tone of voice didn’t bode well for me. "I'm here for my University, Sir. You see, there's been an interest in Talia's body, as she is a very special case, and we would like to study her to discover more about her." The judge made no movements, but his face slowly turned a deep scarlet. The maid, sensing the tension, walked out of the parlor, cakes still in hand.

He shifted in his chair and frowned deeply. "I am afraid that I do not know where Talia's body is. I wish I could help you," he said, halfheartedly, before he rose from his seat and stepped out of the room.

I was shocked, to say the least, at his blatant lie, but then I realized that the man did not want to give up a family heirloom, even if it was for the sake of science. It always shocked me how selfish some people managed to be, refusing to act for the greater good, which was, in this particular case, the act of saving my career.

Oh, the humanity. According to the clock on the wall, I had wasted an entire 33 minutes on this ridiculous fairy tale True Love nonsense. In any case, I hoped Nolls would be understanding and allow me to work on aquatic opossums instead. I eyed the mounted fairy wings once more, before standing up from my seat. The maid entered and offered to show me the door, a pinched smile upon her face. Knowing when I was no longer welcome, I took up her offer.

Author note: This story is based on the fairy tale Sole, Luna, e Talia. Major thanks go to GrannyP and to The Mumbling Sage, my betas. Without their help, this story would not be here today.