by The Cowl Editor on March 15, 2018
Portfolio
by Marisa Gonzalez ’18
There were three boys who lived in a magnificent house. A house that seemed to go on forever. Each room more wondrous than the next. Edgar, Allan, and Paul, who everyone called Poe, had it all: a swimming pool in their living room, a trampoline in their bedroom, and a bowling alley for a porch; however, they wanted more. They needed more, so they claimed. Bright eyed and blond haired, they would whine to their gullible parents and get more and more objects they really did not need.
“But Mama, I’ll die without it!” whined Edgar.
“Oh, Mama, everyone has this! Do you really want your child to be deprived of such an important thing?” cried Allan.
“Mama, Mama, this is old! I must be in the ‘now!’ Don’t you understand?” whimpered Poe. No matter what they asked for, their parents gave in. But they were never happy.
One day the boys’ friend, William, burst through their door and shouted, “Come, come, oh come look!” This awoke the boys who, infuriated, came clambering down the fine wooden stairs.
“What is so important that you must awaken us for?” asked Edgar, wiping his tired eyes.
“A wizard! A magic man! A man who can make dreams!” exclaimed William. The brothers were perplexed but then looked at each other, each with the same mischievous look in his eye.
“Where?”
The boys walked together down the brick sidewalk, William in the lead. The brothers were becoming restless as they turned another corner.
“How much longer?” whined Poe. William did not reply. He just kept walking in a hurried pace. Poe sighed. Can this man really create my dream? Poe pondered. Can he know what I want most in the whole world, when I, myself, do not? Poe began to doubt his friend’s story until a little shack with no windows appeared into his view. If not for the large line of people pouring out the door, Poe would have reprimanded his friend for lying and stormed off. Upon seeing the line, Edgar was quick to move.
“Get out of the way!” he shouted as he violently shoved a woman.
“Hey! That is not—” she started to say before Allan interrupted, “We have money! Move, peasant!”
They made their way through the crowd and there, right in front of them was the magic man, the dream maker. He smiled a little and chuckled. This disgusted Poe. How could an old man laugh at such a rich boy?
He was about to say that it is rude to laugh at such a prince when the man said, “My, my, such temper, such power. Power fit for a prince.”
Poe gasped. How could the man possibly know that he thought of himself as a prince, unless, of course, he was indeed magic? He looked to his brothers who were shining with pride, ecstatic that someone else thought they were princes.
“Now,” spoke the man, “your dreams.” He took one last look over at the boys and lifted up a brush. Slowly and carefully, the boys’ dream came alive in front of them. After ten minutes, the man nodded and got up.
He removed his arm from in front of the canvas to reveal a picture, one that was different to each boy. The boys gasped and smiled. This was it, the one thing that would make them happy! The man was truly magic.
The boys went to touch the painting but were stopped when the man’s frail hand stuck in front of them
“Is this truly what you want?” he asked.
“Don’t be a foolish old man. Of course! Now move your arm and let us have our dream,” Edgar snarled.
With a frown, the man complied and the boys touched their dream. It turned into a splatter of colors.
“Liar! You are no magic man, but a fraud. Give me my dream, now!” Allan screamed.
With a sigh and a shake of the head, the man said, “It is no lie. It is life. One must truly earn their dream, not simply want to have it or have the money to gain it. Now that you have learned this lesson, you may leave.”
Dismayed, the three boys left thinking about what the old man had said.
“What a fool,” Edgar grumbled. “What a horrid man and a horrid lie. How could I have fallen in into that trap?”
Poe walked beside him and shook his head. “I do not know. But I, too, am ashamed.”
Allan then ran in front of them. “Do not be sad. We are rich while that man is poor. We are far greater than him in every way. Now let’s go home and ask mama for a pony and forget all about this man.”
The brothers smiled, agreed, and began their journey home. In the shack the old man shook his head and smiled sadly. “Someday,” he whispered, picking up his paint brush.
“Someday.”