The Heart Mender — A Fantasy Short Story

By Makayla Love

Madeline was careless with her heart.

Bianca, her cousin, could hardly consider herself surprised when she received Madeline’s invitation to visit the Heart Mender that afternoon. Madeline often gave her heart without consideration, declaring it in the name of true love. Yet she was still surprised, time after time after time, when it was returned to her with chips and hairline fractures. Lines of gold adhesive cut through the pink ceramic like rivers on a map.

Still, Bianca donned her blue hat and put her own heart in her bag. She would go with Madeline to the Heart Mender. She knew how her cousin hated doing anything alone. Before she left, Bianca made sure the handkerchief she wrapped around her glass heart was secure. One cannot be too careful about these things. All the people she passed who carried their hearts where everyone could see—all of varying sizes and shapes and materials—seemed utterly mad.

The sun shined bright and hot in the cloudless summer sky. Bianca walked with her bag held tight to her side. The street was much too crowded for someone with a glass heart. She had to be vigilant. She had to be sure and protect it. Glass shatters so easily, and she could get cut trying to pick up the pieces.

When she turned the corner onto Madeline’s street, she saw her cousin already halfway out of her front door. However bright the sun may have been, Madeline’s smile was brighter. Joy sparkled in her eyes like light off the surface of the river in front of her yellow house, which she bought to match her hair. Really, it was a wonder her heart had ever broken at all. Who could do anything but love a beauty like her?

Next to Madeline, Bianca was a mouse. Small and dull.

“You’re finally here!” There was a limitless charm in her voice. The tinkling rise and fall of it. The aroma of roses growing alongside the riverbed floated by on summer winds and Madeline had to reach up to hold her wide sunhat in place. “What took you so long?”

Bianca opened her mouth to answer but was interrupted by one of Madeline’s neighbors as he left his house.

On his back he carried an enormous stained-glass heart. Liquid sloshed about inside, filled to the top, as he shifted the weight by the straps that wrapped around his shoulders. She and her cousin both watched as he started down the street before his wife came out and stopped him. They talked for a time in hushed tones. Then they kissed and the liquid in his heart vented from the top into fine steam. When he again turned to leave, there was a new spring in his step. 

“I could never carry my heart around like that.” Madeline announced, as if she had some authority on the matter.

Though she agreed— It was so exposed, that man’s heart—Bianca stopped herself from reminding her cousin why they were going to the Heart Mender in the first place. Just because Madeline didn’t have to carry her heart on her back didn’t make it any less exposed. Not when she handed it out so freely.

“Instead, yours fits in your purse.” Seemed the more responsible reply.

Madeline patted her little pink bag, grinning.

The cousins set off down the street and walked until they reached l'Oiseau Moqueur, a popular café nestled between a bakery and a florist. A violinist danced amongst the tables and the wafting scent of freshly baked croissants. His long fingers moved deftly and elegantly across the strings while his other hand moved the bow with the grace of an artful waltz. The wooden heart dangling from the twine around his throat hummed along with his tune. Bianca smiled as she watched, enchanted. Even his heart had chips and gouges filled in by wood glue. Another patron of the Heart Mender.

Watching the violinist was the pastor’s wife, though Bianca could scarcely remember her name. Next to her hand on the white cloth-covered table sat her heart, porcelain encased in a gold locket. Like Madeline’s, her’s was covered with mended little lines. The only difference was in the material used—silvery and radiating a comforting glow.

As Madeline pulled her away from the café and towards the arched bridge connecting one side of the river to the other, Bianca thought about the pastor’s wife and about the Heart Mender.

When she and Madeline first went to the Heart Mender, Bianca hadn’t really known what to expect. Certainly not a shop devoid of any stock (“I mend hearts, I don’t sell them, so I don’t really have any merchandise to display” the Heart Mender explained once, sheepishly, when Madeline asked about it.) Only a few pieces of sitting furniture and a large, a three-tiered stand filled with little pastel-frosted cakes, and gilded mirror occupied the main room of the shop. A tiny brass bell sat on the polished counter with a sign tented in front of it with “Ring For Service” sprawled across in delicate handwriting.

Besides that, she certainly hadn’t expected a young girl, shorter than herself, with red hair to be the proprietor. Her red and white dress rustled around her knees when she came out from behind the counter to greet them. Her green eyes shined with pure delight.

It was hard to imagine the pastor’s wife in there. What could have broken her heart so thoroughly?

That first time Madeline’s heart was fixed with gold glue. As she worked, Bianca spoke to the Heart Mender.

It was fascinating to watch her work. She sat at a workbench cluttered with tools, looking through a large magnifying glass. Was it to make sure she got every nook and cranny mended? What happened if she didn’t fix a heart all the way? So many questions went through Bianca’s mind, but what came out was:

“Are there others like you? People who mend hearts, I mean.”

The Heart Mender didn’t stop working. Didn’t even look up when she answered. “I’m the only one I’ve ever met, so I don’t think there are.”

“Then who mends your heart when its broken? It does get broken, doesn’t it?”

At that the Heart Mender stopped. She didn’t look up but didn’t continue working either. “Yes, my heart breaks like everyone else’s.” Another pause. “I suppose I mend my own.”

From then on, whenever Madeline and Bianca visited the Heart Mender, the smile she greeted them with was never as bright as the first time. It seemed each time (though Bianca never really knew for sure) the light in her eyes grew dimmer and dimmer.

Bianca noted her cousin’s stride becoming longer and faster the closer they got to the green and pink, peony-covered building that was the Heart Mender’s establishment. She hurried to catch up. Even Bianca could admit to a certain childish excitement at seeing the heart-shaped, wrought-iron sign marking the shop. A kind of low, giddy hum.

Only the windows were boarded up, and the front door bore a “For Rent” announcement, and the heart-shaped sign was gone.

The cousins stood in silence.

Madeline’s pink purse slipped from her shoulder. It landed on the cobblestone street with a clatter. Out from within spilled her pink ceramic heart with its golden veins in two shattered halves.