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Now, it was said of Gold Crown Town that the fairy who dwelt amidst its charming bridges and sturdy old towers could be seen out and about from time to time.
At times she was a spark of light, a will-o-the-wisp who appeared to lost children and brought them to the clock tower at the old Academy before fading into the flame of the streetlamps as the children, bearings caught, ran along home in the dark of night.
In other times, an insistent swan sometimes swept in to chide the tardy, who lingered over morning cups and breakfasts, calling and calling until they hurried off to avoid her scolding. This did not make her very popular with that crowd, but once, when the ironmonger arrived at work as he grumbled of that nosy Princess Tutu, he found an impatient crowd of out-of-towners tapping at their watches and shouting that if he did not sell them a nail in time, the tongue of the new bell at the belltower would never ring on time and was he prepared to answer for that?
In the time of gloaming, as the night began to settle in and the sun was nearly gone, the fairy was often to be found, nearly indistinguishable from the lamps that winked on line by line along the cobbled streets of Gold Crown Town. She shone like the heart of a star on the darkest of nights.
Anyone who might care to seek her out on such nights should hie their way to the Gold Crown Library. I have heard it said that the librarians, before shutting the grand doors and turning the key in the old fashioned lock, will always look outside their window before shutting up shop for the day.
If they should see the fairy of Gold Crown Town seated comfortably in wait atop the balustrades of the front steps, in her guise of a beautiful swan, then the youngest member of the team will be sent into the depths. Past the children's reading nooks, past the thick volumes of philosophy, beyond the tomes of language and linguistics, the accounts of scientific enquiry, and then again past the lavish illustrations of the arts and the chaptered serials of literature and the books filled with history and geography, shelf on shelf in a forest of reading, the returns piled on the clever little trolleys to be dealt with tomorrow…
In the quietest corner of the library, in the very last of the carrels, this was the territory often claimed by perhaps the most famous of all writers produced by Gold Crown Town, Herr Fakir. If the fairy sat outside, then his dark head would be bent here, over his ever-so-important papers, whether thick sheaves of manuscript in his own flowing hand or dusty storybooks turned to their epilogues.
At this time of day, the most junior of librarians would issue a discreet cough, sending him bolt upright.
"Is it so late already?" Herr Fakir would exclaim, or similar words to that effect, although his hands would already be at work to keep away his belongings until his return on the morrow, when he often rose so early that the librarians would find him waiting there for him on their arrival.
As the lights in the library dimmed and the bustle in the library wound down, the librarians might look outside the window again, to where you yourself would also be watching if you have heeded my advice. For the fairy of Gold Crown Town does not leave the library until its very last patron has emerged, blinking like an owl, into the evening light.
"Here you are again," Herr Fakir has been heard to say before, on such occasions.
And the great fairy swan of Gold Crown Town — or is she a woman now? — will respond, "You ought to stop keeping the librarians so late!"
"I've only ever been locked in once… and I had to pay for the window you broke."
"Wouldn't you have starved in there, if I hadn't broken in?"
But if you dare look closely, despite the tenor of their conversation, you might notice as they walk, aglow, into the night, that their hands are clasped together, as tightly as the ivy clings to the old stone of Gold Crown Town's ancient walls.