It was a very long time ago and within the slums of Europe was a very poor woman. She had nothing but sorrow and pain and five children to add to her despair. She was not the religious sort. Nor did she have any dreams or pretensions of Worldliness or accumulating wealth. She had had her optimism beaten out of her before she was even four. She looked at the sky and saw that it was grey and knew that that was the way it was, the way it was meant to be and the way it always would be.

She was strong and she was sturdy, but she was also gullible. If she could have changed her life somehow she would.

One day while slogging through the local garbage pilings that was her only market she was approached by a small decrepit old man. He appeared so ancient an entity that he could have been the son of Methuselah himself. His smell was offensive even to her, a woman who remembered being bathed as a tot, but had no memory of one since that day. He offered her his wrinkled rotten hand and as she flinched away, persisted and managed to touch her cheek. She cringed, but not as much as would have been proper. But, no matter as propriety has no place in a tale about such a wretched creature as this woman was. The woman finding no speech able to leave her tongue, stands silent, facing the miniscule man. He says no words but offers his hand to her again and this time cupped within its prunish palm is a small amulet. The amulet is of a color the woman has never before lain eyes on. Resembling a multitude of colors at once. It turns pink, then grey, then green, then gold, then jade, then fades and resumes its ambivalent nature of being almost every color at once. It is not beautiful despite this, but the woman wants it. She wants it more than she wants another meal, more than she wants to lay down at night and enter the realm of sleep. The tiny man presses it into her palm, saying: "Galenug." Stunned and thinking perhaps she might be able to sell the amulet she quickly places it around her neck to protect it. The man begins to disappear nearly as soon as the amulet leaves his hands. His clothes begin to be to loose on his body and his skin and other external coverings to the body seem to retreat within themselves and then vanish. A skeleton stands before her and she is not shocked. It opens its mouth and speaks: " Your life will change." Then the bones lose whatever is holding them together and tumble into a scattered pile where Methuselah's brother once stood.

As the woman runs back to sell her treasure, she does not notice that some of her age has been lost. Leaving her a little bit newer, a little bit less battered around her edges.

She cannot find the will to sell the token she has come into possession of.

Over the next seven days she changes. Not only once but every day. On the day after she takes the amulet, she awakes to find that she is maiden of sixteen again. The next day she is a mere lass of nine or eight. The next she is a tot of four, then a giggling happy babe of less than two. After that it gets worse. She awakes the very next day to discover she has become an old woman of sixty. The day after she is forty, then twenty-five, then sixteen, then nine, then four, then a tot of two. Every day a different age. The woman never has time to adjust. One day she's a little child running with happiness the next she must rely on her daughters to change her soiled breech cloth, the next she must walk hunched over, an old woman. It is a cycle that does not stop. The woman spends much time hiding herself and her family suffers even more greatly than before. This goes on for many months. Then one day she decides to change her life. On a day she is able to walk on her own, she goes out to find someone to give the amulet to, muttering over and over to herself: "Galenug..galenug."



Click here to go back to previous page