In a flower bed out front of an old Victorian style house, a weasel was admiring some daisies. His coat was as white as milk and his face was soft and innocent. His eyes lit up at the sight of the daisies and his voice let out a squeak of delight. He was a creature who loved the beautiful things in life, especially nature. As he began to lean his head in for a closer look, the front door burst open with a bang.

“Out! Out!” shouted a middle aged woman with broomstick in hand. She was ready to defend her hard work. The daisies represented hours of toil and love. “Be gone, pest! This garden isn’t for you. I won’t let you ruin it!” She batted him away in anger.

The weasel was perturbed. He hadn’t meant any harm. He had only meant to admire her handiwork, but perhaps he had gotten too close. Misunderstood, he left the yard and climbed a tree. He was content to admire beauty from afar, but he could no longer find the aroma of the daisies at this distance. The scent had been lost in the air.

Days later, a child named Madelyn of age seven or eight was playing in the yard of this very same house. She was clothed in a new sundress with yellow flowers. Her mother had warned her not to ruin her new dress while she played. Children do the best they can, but a child is still a child. She wandered from the yard into the neighboring field and played and played for hours. She had devised a game of picking flowers and stomping them with her feet.

“Why would you do that?” a small voice chirped out from under the tall grass of the field. “Those flowers were beautiful and causing no harm. Why make sport out of ruining them?”

“I’m sorry” the little girl replied. “I didn’t realize my game would bother anybody. I was only having fun.” The weasel smiled at the child’s innocence and elected to show her how to enjoy the flowers in a less destructive way instead.

“Here, let me show you a trick that I learned from my dear friends the birds some time ago. If you take the flower stems and twist them just right we can make a beautiful crown fit for a princess.” The weasel showed her how to weave the flowers in the manner he described and the child’s eyes lit up at the natural elegance of the new adornment that he offered her. With delight in her eyes she bid the weasel farewell and rushed home to show her mother. She saw her mother waiting on the porch and called out to her. “Mother look, look what I learned how to do! My new friend in the field taught me so.” The mother smiled at her child so filled with delight and asked “Sweetie what friend are you talking about?”

“He’s small and he’s white and runs through the tall grass. He looks sort of like a cat but he’s smaller and long.”

“The Weasel!” her mother exclaimed with frustration. “I told him not to come around here. I caught him snooping in my garden just the other day. Madelyn, weasels are sneaky and they plot to cause trouble. I don’t want you becoming friends with someone like that.”

“But he’s friendly and loves beauty and nature. He doesn’t seem like he’d be a bad friend. He was charming and polite and taught me not to harm the flowers.”

“Madelyn, he is a weasel and weasels are not to be trusted.” Still within listening distance the weasel heard everything. His face fell as he headed back to his home in the forest. During the walk home the weasel tried to figure it out. He couldn’t understand why the woman hated him so. She had never even taken the time to get to know him. He decided that he would return to Madelyn and bring her a gift of apology for the trouble he had caused and bid farewell to his new friend. The following day the weasel returned with an apologetic look on his face.

“I’m sorry if I caused you any trouble. I heard your mother scold you. I brought you a pail of berries to share. It’s the least I could do if I’ve caused any harm.”

“It’s OK Mister Weasel. She just doesn’t understand. She thinks you were snooping around to ruin her daisies.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have been in the garden. The truth is they’re just my favorite and your mother does such a good job. Her daisies are beautiful and I wanted to get a smell of them.”

“That’s Ok Mister Weasel. I’ll try to set things straight. Maybe once she understands it will all be fixed.” The weasel smiled at the kindness and acceptance his new friend showed him. “You don’t have to call me Mister Weasel, Madelyn. My name is Wesley.”

“Alright.” She smiled and together they sat and shared the berries from the pail he had brought her.

“Madelyn Elizabeth!” They both heard her mother shout. “Come back inside this instant!”

Startled, they both jumped to their feet. The weasel said goodbye as he walked off with a new sullen heir to his scurry. Madelyn marched home with a new determination to convince her mother of her misconception of the weasel.

“Madelyn, we need to have a discussion” her mother began. “The weasel is not your friend. I know you think he’s charming and nice, but he is deceiving you. Let me explain. In stories there is always a good guy and a bad guy. The Bad guy tries to convince everyone he is harmless and a gentleman, but inevitably he is revealed to be up to no good. Weasels are bad guys. They try to lure you in and make you feel sympathetic for them, but they are sneaky. He is scheming to ruin my garden.”

” Mother, you’ve got him all wrong. It’s not like that at all. You just don’t understand.”

“Madelyn you need to obey your mother. I don’t want that weasel around our yard anymore. He is a Bad guy.”

Crushed and defeated, Madelyn began to think. Her mother had been specific. She didn’t want Wesley coming in the yard. What if Madelyn could bring the yard to him? She hatched a plan, but she had to be quick. Once her mother returned to her seclusion in the house, Madelyn went to the shed and grabbed the small trowel that was her own. She snuck into the garden and uprooted three daisies. She was very careful to only take as many as she needed. She took them from the outer edge of the garden and did her best to leave no evidence. The garden remained seamless. She filled a sack with dirt and placed them inside, and off she headed towards the woods.

Madelyn didn’t know where Wesley lived so she followed the path into the woods. Far enough away from the house so her mother couldn’t hear, she began to call out his name until she heard a reply.

“Madelyn, what are you doing so far out into the woods? Your mother told you not to see me. You could get lost or catch a cold.”

“I brought you a surprise, Wesley. Will you please show me your home?”

“No, I insist that we get you home at once. The forest is not safe. You cannot stay.”

“Wesley, I have come this far, will you please just take me to your yard? I’ll just be a few minutes and then you can show me the way back home.”

“Madelyn your mother is not going to be happy. She already dislikes me as it is. I don’t want her opinion of me to worsen all the more.”

“It will just take a moment. Please!”

“Alright just a moment, and then we are leaving.”

Once they had arrived at Wesley’s home he showed her his yard and the opening to his den. With a clever but tender smile she made Wesley close his eyes as she transplanted the daisies she had brought with her.

Wesley opened his eyes and tears began to form at both the kindness of her gesture and the realization of what she had done. “Madelyn this is too much. Why would you do this? Your mother will come apart.”

“Because Wesley, you have become my friend and I think you deserve to have a beautiful garden of daisies in front of your home as well. I was very careful to take them without disturbing all of her others. She probably won’t even notice they’re gone.”

The two sat in silence and admired Wesley’s new garden until he finally spoke up and said “I wish I knew why she thinks I’m such a bad guy.” Madelyn replied “I think some people just need to think there are bad guys in the world, but if you’re a bad guy then I would be honored to be one too.” After a moment of silent reflection at the new garden she had bestowed upon him, Wesley led Madelyn back to her yard. With a thanks and a gentle hug the two parted ways.

#fiction