Marianna Rosset - Fanyasha - Why Do Angels Need People?

With these words, Bosya rushed to leave his sister’s room in order not to say anything more.

“Oh, my,” whispered Fanyasha raising her eyebrows, “How about that!”

She understood that she didn’t understand anything, and that was awfully interesting!

“I definitely need to find out more about these ‘people’! Why do we need to help them?.. And most importantly, why do angels need people?..”

Little angels don’t have a concept of time. They do not care about counting minutes, hours, days, and years. They live by taking pleasure in every moment, and this gives them a feeling of being completely dissolved in time and complete happiness.

It is only natural that until you become aware that everything passes, it is hard to imagine counting time, and there is no sense in it. When you know only what you are meant to know, when you don’t need to rush anywhere, when it is not important what was yesterday and what will be tomorrow, and there is not a single doubt that everything will always be ok— that is true childhood!

However, Fanyasha’s sweet, carefree life came to an end the moment she found out about people. It is not that it bothered her. Quite the opposite; forbidden knowledge filled her being with a certain magical trepidation. She felt special, and waited for the opportunity to learn some more.

Now the time dragged unbearably slowly and days spent in her previously beloved room now felt like a long imprisonment.

Bosya hadn’t stopped by for a while – probably because he was scared of having said too much. Her parents, who always hurried away to work, visited briefly, praised their daughter’s new accomplishments, admired her new crafts, and were sure that Fanyasha wholeheartedly enjoyed her happy childhood. Yet, children always know and understand more than their parents think they do.

Fanyasha saw that everyone except her knew something important about people, and that a person must be born for her too. But when? And why? These thoughts haunted her. Having to live as a child for many years, having to wait for this childhood to be finally over and for the period of new discoveries to begin was weighing heavily on her.

Her room seemed smaller and more cramped every day, and her childish matters became duller.

Sometimes Fanyasha carefully asked about what was waiting for her in the future, what she would learn at school, and where her parents flew off to, but such questions always remained unanswered. Her father frowned sternly and asked grandmother to be more careful with her fairy tales.

But fairy tales were the only thing that distracted her from her sad thoughts.

What can you say, it is evident that a special talent is awakened in all grandmothers – they become such masters of voice and intonation when they tell their fairy tales that you forget about everything else, and fly off to a magical world.

So this is how nights were spent: grandmother’s velvet voice lulled Fanyasha, and in her sleep Fanyasha saw extraordinary stories, wondrous events and unusual objects. She learnt about natural phenomena, flying metal ships, various curious creatures, some of which were called “birds,” – they could fly but could not speak – while others, with the funny name “cats,” could neither speak nor fly but could run on their hands and feet, climb trees and, unlike most other ones, could communicate with angels.

When Fanyasha stayed alone in her room, she diligently trained, ran, jumped, pushed off the walls, and flew higher and higher. One time she could almost touch the door, but realized that she didn’t have enough strength to maintain that height. Then she grabbed the soft wall, drooped and jumped on the windowsill of the only tiny round window in her room.

“Wow! How pretty!” she whispered with delight pressing her face against the glass.

Outside the window, everything sparkled and radiated blue light, and semi-transparent and airy pink clouds rapidly flew by —grandmother weaved curtains and tablecloths out of them. In this azure light, here and there one could see thick accumulations of clouds. “These are probably the houses of other angels,” figured Fanyasha. She once heard that the parents flew to visit neighbors and friends.

The houses resembled huge snow-white magical tree trunks, which reached so high, that it was impossible to discern what was up there, and what kind of tops these trees have. Instead of branches, along the trunks hung rooms with windows like large droplets. On the right, the windows were square, on the left, round. In the lower part of the houses were large round or oval living rooms with large windows.

“Oooh! Oh, how interesting!” thought Fanyasha. “So this is how we all live here.” A little to the right she saw a large house with twelve rooms of different sizes, and below, a large living room sphere with panoramic windows.

“My goodness!” she said in awe. “How many people live there? They probably fly, play and have fun together. It’s not like what we have – mommy and daddy are always at work, Bosya is either at school or in his room studying something all the time, and it’s not even that fun with him, only grandmother knows how to live well.”

But then she noticed another house a little further to the left. Only two rooms hung on its thin trunk – one larger, and the other small, possibly a nursery with one round window at the top.

“Would you believe it, a room like mine,” thought Fanyasha, “with a tiny round window. A little girl like me probably lives there.”

“Only there are only two rooms in her house. That means she lives only with her mother or only with her father, or with her annoying brother. And she doesn’t have a grandmother, and no one kisses the poor baby, no one hugs her, no one praises her and no one tells her stories,” she thought with sadness, sighed deeply and slid down.

In comparison to the life of that unlucky girl, her own life didn’t seem so terrible all of a sudden. She smiled, flapped her wings and whirled in a dance around the room, jumping from the armchair to the bed, from the bed to the dresser.

“How pretty and blessed you are! How this yellow lacy dress suits you! What beautiful eyes! And eyelashes! And braids! And lips! And wings! Lovely!” Fanyasha cooed to her reflection in the mirror, trying to mimic her grandmother’s gentle voice.

From then on, when Fanyasha became sad or bored, she climbed on the windowsill, absorbedly studied the houses of other angels and imagined what their residents were doing.

“Efania, are you up?” asked father one morning, peeking into his daughter’s room.

For some time he was scanning the room wonderingly in search of Fanyasha. To his surprise, the little one was sitting on the windowsill, almost below the door.

“How much you’ve grown! You climbed so high! Aren’t you scared?”

“Not one bit!” Fanyasha replied proudly, sticking her nose up in the air and gracefully tossed her braids behind.

“Since you are so brave, it’s time to show you the house,” with these words her father flew up to his daughter and stretched out his beautiful strong arm.

It’s hard to describe the happiness and glee that filled Fanyasha. Anticipating the long awaited exit out of the room, she was ready to scream as hard as she could, squeal, laugh and cry simultaneously, but decided not to waste time on emotions, and hurriedly jumped off the windowsill and dashed for the door, leaning on her father’s arm.

“What amazing self-restraint and motivation. Bravo, my dear, you take after me,” thought the father and smiled.

“Look, Efania, over there, higher, there is mother’s room right above yours, and across is mine,” told father, and helped his daughter fly up through the wide sun-filled corridor with beautiful oval windows. The higher they rose, the harder it was to fly. Fanyasha felt how tired her wings were. The father caringly took her in his arms.