My Cloak of Many Colors

It is late. The stars blink in the sky. There’s no moon tonight. I sit in the Tailor’s shop. This dress needs to be finished by tomorrow or Madam will ring me out like wet cloth to be hung on the line. The thought brings a shiver, though it is a warm summer night, and I adjust the patchwork cloak on my shoulders .

  The town of Cerroito, also known as Little Hill, is quiet, for once. Fairies and elves and dwarves and humans all asleep. Is Cerroito a town or a city? I wonder as I sew. It’s too small to be one of the grand cities of the world. Take Jaralucia for instance. Huge! With crystal towers that twist to stunning heights, and bridges of glass between them. They say Jaralucia like a grand gemstone glittering in the sunlight. I’ve never been. Still, Cerroito is much larger than the villages that surround us, with barely ten thatched cottages apiece, and more cows than human or elf or goblin folk.

I fold a piece of fabric aside and stretch with a yawn. Only a few more stitches, and I should be done. 
            That’s when you enter. The door should have been locked, but I guess I have been negligent.  You are an ogre. Big and thick muscled, with a mane of hair like a lion, you’re intimidating at first sight. The blood smeared across your cheek doesn’t help make you any less so.
            I freeze. My mind scrambles. My throat knots, and I mentally kick myself. A scream would be fire-whisky useful at the moment.

            But then torch-light flashes past outside, and you press against the wall to hide. Feet trample upon cobblestone, the torch casts shadows of fairy wings, and pitchforks shake. All motion accompanied with the sound of a slithering snake – and I understand.

            I ask if you are okay. My voice quivers. But I ask.

You jump at the sound, startled. You didn’t realize I was here. You nod, stammer an apology, and make to leave.

But I stand, and walk to you with a piece of discarded cloth. I ask you to sit, and I clean the wound on your right cheek and the cut on your left arm.  

            You carry a leather bag. When your wounds are cleaned and attended, you reach inside, and hand me a summer fruit. The bag also contains a rag doll. It’s your daughters favorite. She had lost her doll earlier in the street, and she can’t ever sleep without it. So you left the cottage to find it. But with the tension between the everyone at the moment….

            I think of the slithering snake-like noise. I am saddened – there is so much conflict in Cerroito. So much conflict everywhere. But a soft glow radiates from the patchwork cloak on my shoulders, and a warm feeling like honey saturates me, easing the sadness.

             And I say aloud - I have a secret? Would you like to hear?

            You seem confused, maybe a little weary, but answer yes. I lean a little closer, and whisper the following as if it were a monologue and I were a character in Hamlet’s play: 

             I have a cloak of many colors. A patchwork quilt of daisy yellows and grasshopper greens, sunset indigos and cherry blossom pinks, deep-sea blues and cloud grays, it wraps me in a protective embrace. When I wear my cloak of many colors, I am safe. 

            Did you know little flying snakes and tiny dragons surround us? They are invisible to the humans and other creatures eyes and hearts, and prefer it that way. Being invisible makes it much easier for them to land upon our shoulders and whisper with slithering tongues in our ears. Not nice words, either, do they murmur. The words they whisper puff like clouds, black and stormy, into the interior caverns of our skulls. Soon enough a storm bellows in us. Again and again do the little dragons and snakes do this. Some delight in whispering fear – Don’t go outside, you’ll be shot by a fairy archer at the market. Don’t leave your house, you’ll catch the Redpox Illness, for which the Druids have no cure, and give it to a loved one. Others, in hatred – it’s their fault- the fault of those different than you. They are to blame. Those bull-headed, fairy-hating gnomes or family destroying, human hating fairies. Scream at them. Yell at them. Brandish real or imagined weapons at them. At your enemies. And some really crafty ones, hatred towards yourself: You stupid, silly, little girl. Everything wrong with the world is your fault. You should be punished.

            These little snakes and dragons haunted me. I would go into the tailor’s shop, pick up a needle, thread and cotton cloth, and ten minutes later race to the little side yard to hide among the shrubs and cry. My work, ironically, along with the cat that often visits for food and who I’ve named Gray, was what kept me sane. Focusing on the cut, the lace added, threading needles in and out. Choose the fabric. Wool or Cotton? Less often, but occasionally, a client requests silk. Take the yardstick, measure, and cut the cloth. Sew with needle and thread. Add ribbon and sash. Breathe.

            But patrons and tailors talk – about the angry fairy archer who shot with his bow and arrow Healers on the Battlefront, or about the gnome who doesn’t like fairies and refused to help guard the fairies huts at night, allowing los Sabuesos Infiernos, the Nether Hounds, to attack and maim three -  and the snakes creep into my ears.

            One day, I was at my rope’s end. Bone-weary and drained of all emotions, a storm raged in the caverns of my skull and I wept on my bedroom floor. But then, my fairy godmother appeared in my room. She held a patchwork cloak of many colors. This cloak of many colors was a special cloak. Each patch was stitched into the cloak by friends and family who loved me very much, and for that reason the cloak had protective powers. No little dragon nor tiny snake could land on my shoulder nor whisper in my ear when I wore the cloak. The cloak makes me invisible to them. The little dragons and tiny flying snakes cannot see me when I wear the cloak. And the cloak could sooth my wounds like healing ointment.

            Others cannot see my cloak of many colors, just like they cannot see the little dragons and tiny flying snakes. But I feel it, wrapped along my shoulders, swishing at my ankles. My cloak of many colors keeps me safe. My cloak of many colors protects me while the world’s storms rage.

            My monologue finishes and I lean back.

            Not exactly what you were picturing for a secret, is it? Still, I don’t go around telling people about my cloak, nor about the flying snakes and dragons. I always told myself no-one would believe me. But I’m trying to be braver. 

            You wear a frown. Not an angry frown, but a frown that shows sadness and a melancholy I know too well. But after a moment those thick eyebrows of yours straighten out, and you nod.

            I retrieve a square cloth of red wool and give it to you. You ask me what it is for.
           For your cloak, I reply. I’m not a fairy godmother, and can’t magic you a cloak of many colors to keep you safe. Find more pieces of fabric, given by your mother or your daughter, by the old gnome neighbor you visit every day, by the wheat-field worker you shared a mid-day snack with, by anyone who has shown you kindness and you have given in return. If you trust me for a short time with those pieces of cloth, I will sew them together. Then, you, too, will have a cloak of many colors.