SANDCASTLES
Written by Helen Dawson

Wet sand splintered into biscuity crumblyness as she let it dribble through each tiny finger onto
her carefully placed mound of wave polished pebbles. She told me that this was a palace for sand fairies. She cried later when the sea came to take it away. I told her that she could always come back to make another, maybe tomorrow. She asked if the sea would take that one too. I said thatthe sea eventually takes everything that we leave for it on the beach. She thought that the sea was very naughty stealing things like that. But it's not stealing, the sea doesn't ask us to leave things on its beach. Afterall it is the sea who has kindly let us borrow its beach and after a while it has to come back home, anything we've left there should be gifts to say 'thank you for being ever so kind and letting us play on your sand while you were away'. She wasn't too happy with this explanation and started kicking at the sand. She wanted to know where the sand fairies would live now if the sea came and swallowed up all the sand? I had to admit that I didn't know. I knew that on some beaches there were dunes that are huge piles of sand that the sea never laps up, so the sand fairies would be quite safe there. But on our beach the sea hadn't left us with sand mounds that it never came to take away. Our sea came and greedily gobbled up the whole of the beach each evening. Maybe our sand fairies could be underwater sand fairies? She didn't like this idea either and started pelting pebbles that she had been collecting in her skirt angrily at the sea. She stopped when she started to worry about hitting poor fishes on the head and making them all dizzy. It wasn't their fault that the sea could be so mean.

She was holding my hand. Her grip was so tight that grains of sticky wet salty sand pressed into my skin, hard enough to sting. Her hand must have hurt too. It was already sore from shovelling the gritty hot sand all day. She was still determined to cling almost as if she were a part of me. Totally dependent. Entrusting herself to me in that grip. I was supposed to be her protector. I was the responsible one. Nothing has ever felt so suffocatingly unbearable. I wanted so much to let go. But she held on, her dependence bitterly burning into me. I watched the waves and envied their freedom.

She told me that when we come back tomorrow she was going to build an even bigger and better castle. I thought that she meant that she was going to build one so big and strong that even the sea couldn't take it away. She thought I was very foolish to think this as everyone knows that the sea is strong enough to take away boats and beach huts and houses and even cliffs. She would never be able to build a castle that the sea couldn't take away. I had to admit that she was most probably quite right. She said that she just wasn't going to build her castle for sand fairies. Instead she was not going to build it for something real, like sand fairies, but for something imaginary like a princess. Then when the waves washed it all away the princess couldn't be all disappointed like the sand fairies because she wasn't real and so wouldn't be sad. I felt quite sorry for the sand fairies being abandoned in this way but could see her point. Although I thought that princesses could be real too. She said this didn't matter because although real people could be princesses her princess would be quite unreal. Real princesses already have castles and palaces and wouldn't need her to build one for them on our beach. I agreed and told her that I didn't know where she had got all her common sense from. She smiled in that way, the way she only can smile.

I lay in bed that night. The sand creeping through my hair as if it were alive. It had disturbed my dream of the waves interminably coming to take me away, but teasing and running away as they almost touched my feet. Eluding me. I watched her. Her eyes shut tight, her face deep in concentration in some other world. A world far away . One in which she didn't need me.

It rained all day the next day. And the next. She watched the water droplets running down the pane, washing away all her hopes of going out to build her castle. The sea roared over the beach, kissing the sea wall with such ferocity that it showered the sky with dazzling white spray. She said that it was the sea fairies who were being bumped and bashed so hard that they were trying to escape the waves. She was scared that the sea was being so rough that after it had finished being angry there would be no sand left on the beach because it had eaten it all away. I thought that there would maybe be more sand left on our beach because the sea was in such a rage that it seemed to want to throw everything out of it. She pondered this but wasn't optomistic. She brought out her paper and pencils to take her mind off the rain. She stayed sitting in the window though, waiting for her beach to return as she designed pretty little castles fit for her princess. When she had finished she started to draw what she thought her princess might look like. She told me all about her as she drew graceful flowing dresses, sparkling tiaras, precious toys and beautiful gardens full of flowers. I thought that she was quite a spoilt princess. She said she deserved it all because she was ever so good and shared everything with all the other little girls who weren't princesses and so didn't have nice things like her. She said that to the princess her friends were far more important than all the pretty things she had. I had to agree. She thought that as long as the princess had her friends she would never need to be lonely and would always have someone that she could be with.

Sometimes it's nice to be lonely, to have no one relying on you being there. I didn't say that to her though.

It didn't rain the next day. So I took her down to the beach. I had been right. The sea had left us with huge great piles of sand and all the little useless bits and pieces that it had swallowed up from other beaches but hadn't really wanted. It had left us huge great big pieces too. Jagged hunks of wood and brightly coloured netting and rope littered the newly amassed banks of sands. She could build quite a splendid castle now. We set about collecting the debris. Chunks of wood that would make sturdy timbers to hold up the castle walls. Beautifully coloured shells, rounded pebbles and sea polished glass to adorn it. I caught her a fierce crab that could guard the princess's moat. She never seemed to tire of hunting for things on the beach, staring intently at any object of interest the sea had washed up.

I wandered away from her to rest from the sun against the sea wall. I watched her tiny figure as her sturdy little legs crouched over the site of her castle. I knew I could just walk away. Leave her absorbed, thinking of her princess as if she were her closest friend. I could go and she would never be able to follow me. She'd be left on the beach where she always wanted to be. The only place where she didn't need me constantly at her side. She could build her castle and have her princess for company, to depend on to always be there. I could go anywhere and be free being just me. Not me and her. Another town. Alone. No one to hold my hand as if it were theirs. She was happy and safe on her beach. She didn't need anything else as long as it was there. But it's not always there. The sea would eventually come and steal it away. It would surround her castle. It would brush up against her ankles, it would lick at her waist. It would come and sweep her up into it. It would swallow her whole. It would eat her all up like it ate away at her castle until it dissolved into nothing in the waves. It would come to take her like it came to take everything else people left for it on its beach. I could leave her there, like the castle, a gift for the hungry sea.

[fairytales]