Brayan Coraza Morveli
People tell many stories about duendes, a general word for us to describe goblins, elves, trolls and such. They are both real and imaginative. Other people insist they have seen duendes and that they had unforgettable experiences.
They say that when a child is born it has a fairy, a duende, who comes and plays with it. You may have asked many times: “Who is my child talking with?” Or, why does she laugh so much when she is alone?” It is said that these duendes are delightful personages who play and laugh along with your children but as they get bigger they forget about all of this that they have experienced.
Some people insist that the duendes are bad and bother the children making them uncomfortable when they sleep or take a siesta.
My mother would say that the duendes bring out their treasures to polish them in the light of the sun. Who has never had the experience of taking a stroll and then sitting in some park only to find some old coins that are dirty and tarnished?
One in an almost abandoned house in the city you could hear lots of loud laughter. No one knew why such troubling sounds came and they also had no desire to find out since the house was so old and could collapse at any minute.
No one knew that some neighborhood kids have gone into the back part of the house to play inside without any concern for the danger. Every day the kids would go in only to come out when it was almost dark. Their parents were worried and got made at them for coming home so late.
The concerned parents had the abandoned house torn down so that their kids could no longer play there and be in danger that it could fall on them. Some fifteen years went by and the parents of one of the children who used to play there bought the land to build his family’s home there.
The young man who had forgotten all about his days playing in the abandoned house decided to help an old fig tree that was forgotten and almost dried up. It took about a month for the tree to come back to life and begin to get green again. When it gave fruit you could hear laughter coming from one of the rooms of the house. He asked himself what was going on since the room was empty. How come noise was coming from it?
The young man’s dog had taken a toy into the empty room and had left it there. What happened was that the fairies, duendes, were playing with the dog’s toy and were laughing loudly. The boy put out another toy in another one of the rooms that was empty and then hid to see what he could see.
Like magic two little sprites appeared and began playing without even realizing that they Young man was in the room. But he wanted to know where they came from. Frustrated from not knowing, he went to the patio and stood by the fig tree. Tired from his search he fell asleep by the tree and at midnight, when he woke up, he saw that the duendes came out of the tree to play with the toys.
From that moment on they have said that fairies, duendes, live in fig trees and come out during the night to play and tease people in any place that is close to one of these trees.
