The farmer woke up on Sunday morning, Halloween, and he got up, got dressed, took a walk with his wife. It was quiet, cold, gloomy. Snow was falling, and ice covered the browning grass, the dying leaves, the hills. “November,” he said. “Yuk.”

“I had a dream last night,” he said. “Maybe because it’s Halloween. Because I was up reading “Dracula.”

“What was it?” the former girlfriend asked.

“I’m almost embarrassed to tell you,” he said. “I dreampt there was a fairy in the barn. Pink and beautiful, and with a radiant smile, loving

the donkeys and lighting the old barn up and filling it with memory and light.”

The farmer heard the donkeys braying softly, although they could not be seen, and the barn cats, always curious, were nowhere to be seen. Frieda and the other dogs, quick to bark when they heard anything strange, were quiet, on the porch, in their crates, out of sight.

Only Lenore was wagging her tail, whining, eager to come out and go into the barn. The farmer sensed that things were not as they usually were.  So they went. It was quiet. The donkeys were inside the barn, standing still, snorting softly, chewing on some hay. The barn cats were skittering up in the hay bales. The donkeys seemed content. They were calm, at ease.  Although it was dark outside, the barn was bright. And warm.

“There’s a fairy in here,” said the farmer’s wife. And he could see that there was, although the sight of left him speechless.

The fairy sparkled and glowed, and had wings. And she was a vision, she was. She danced, and whirled, silently. And smiled and laughed. And you could not look at her and not smile. Or feel the warmth come up to your heart and spread through your body.

And Lenore rushed up to the fairy and licked her leg as she twirled and twirled. And the donkeys brayed so softly he could hardly hear them.

It was magic, he thought. He had never heard anything like this from the other farmers, who all had great tales to tell about their barns. Wait until they heard this one.  So it wasn’t a dream after all. And the barn was filled with light, and new memory being made, a new story to be told,  one that would be repeated and disbelieved and remembered for a long time that touched everyone who heard in one way or another. And challenged them to see the light in the world, no matter how much darkness.