By John Christenson
After several pints, my discussion with the Philosopher, as everyone in the village called him, turned to the question of why time passes faster as we age. “The reason is simple enough,” my good friend said. “It’s because of how time gets thin and watery. Summat is stealin’ bits of it from you, turning it from a rich stew into a sorry and sad gruel.”
I choked on my ale. “Stealing? No, the reason is that a year is significant when you’re four, a quarter of your life, but when you’re eighty like us, it’s just a rounding error. So, subjectively time passes much faster. Twenty times faster to be exact.”
The Philosopher chuckled. “There be nothin’ exact about time. That’s a fiction that come with the railroad and the smokestack. I’d have thought they would’ve taught ye that when you left the village all those years ago to study astrology and whatnot.”
“Astronomy, not astrology. My specialty was periodic phenomena such as Cepheid variables. And I can say with some authority that stealing time is impossible.”
My friend narrowed his eyes. “Is it now? What if time is a conserved quantity like energy? What if it’s not created or destroyed, but only transferred from one person to another, from oldsters to young’uns?”
I saw a twinkle in the Philosopher’s eye and realized he’d been having me on about his ignorance of science. “Conservation of time, you say? A fascinating concept, but one that’s never been proven.”
The Philosopher got to his feet. “I can provide the proof. Let’s pay a visit to the Seelie Court.”
I shook my head. “Seelie Court? What’s next, fairies and hobgoblins? Just how many ales have you had?”
“Not enough if you’re buyin’. Come on, I’ll introduce ye to the seelie wights. They’re to blame for the stolen time.”
“All right, I’ll play along. Exactly which type of seelie wights are we dealing with? Fire, water, earth, light, air, or mind?”
“A type you’ve never heard of. They’re the Seelie Court of Lost Time.” He led me out of the pub and down winding cobblestone lanes until I inexplicably lost my bearings. We finally reached a breathtaking garden I’d never seen before, even though I’d grown up in the village and returned after retirement. To my amazement, a cadre of seelie wights greeted us, no bigger than dragonflies, all clad in gauze. They were aloft on gossamer wings, tending rows of sparkling lilies that gave off their own light. I was astonished, gobsmacked even, but then dreams and half-memories came back to me from when I was little, and I realized I’d known of the seelie wights all along.
The Philosopher introduced me as his “scientific friend” and explained our debate. One of the wights landed on my outstretched hand and gestured toward the lilies. “As the Philosopher said, we use these Lilies of the Days to capture bits of time from the aged and give them to the young.”
“But why?” I asked.
“To see heaven in a wild flower and hold eternity in an hour, as the poet said. It’s so young people can have special days that are filled with so much time they seem to last forever. Days they’ll cherish for the rest of their lives.”
Now I was feeling lightheaded. “Is any of this real?”
The tiny wight smiled. “Is it real? Is it magic? Does it matter? Here’s the scientific side of the coin: time is made of discrete particles called chronons. The lilies capture them in a temporal matrix. In any event, take one with our compliments, and breathe deeply into it whenever you feel you’re sliding too quickly toward death.”
The years have passed in a blur since that Fae encounter, and I am indeed sliding too quickly toward death. I still have the Lily of the Days, which has not wilted. But all is regret and loneliness now that family and friends are gone, so why use it? I take it to the pub, where I sit alone until I spy a young couple in the first blush of love. “For you,” I say to the fresh-faced lass. She takes it and breathes deeply. And I know that on this day she will indeed see heaven in a wild flower and hold eternity in an hour.
John Christenson lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife and a cat who is fond of penguins. His publications include short stories in the New Mexico Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Whisky Blot, and several anthologies. A piece entitled “A Tree Grows in the Mancave” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
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