[1989: pp. 12–17]
[2003: pp. 16–21]
INTRODUCTION
It happened here in the town of Mother's Day around the beginning of the 1900s, though now that's all but faded from people's memory.
In this town there lived a married couple who went together like a hand and glove. The husband, George, served as Editor-in-Chief for the town's daily newspaper, the Mother's Day Times, and gained so much of the people's trust that he was referred to as "The Conscience of this Town". His wife, Maria, was a sunny, hard-working housewife, befitting her family's generations of devout Protestants from this town.
To start off, the way these two met began with a single carnation.
George lost his parents at a young age, and from the day he graduated high school, he began work as a letter-boy for a big-name newspaper in a certain big city. Before long it got to where he was exercising his talents as a competent journalist.
Even though he never graduated college, he secured the position of reporter for the paper; his greatest motivation, you might say, was the strength of his outstanding curiosity. He secured quite a few scoops. In one, he did an exposé on the dark past of the President at the time, which catapulted his fame.
However, he had a head-to-head dispute with his chief editor over how to tackle the scandal, and it resulted in his leaving the paper on his own initiative.
The following year, on the strength of a help-wanted ad from the Mother's Day local paper, he visited the town. The first person to greet him, as she made a sketch of a carnation bed on the town outskirts, was the beautiful Maria. George was spellbound by her sketch, gazing long at it.
That same day, having been selected for Editor-in-Chief for the Mother's Day Times, George set to work authoring, as the paper's newest project, a serialized novel that made a story out of the town, from its beginnings to the present day.
The first installment's illustrations were graced by a single carnation, its artist the young Maria, who was obscure as far as illustrators went.
To go along with the sharp-edged wit George used toward incidents in his newspaper articles, the serial was brimming with the up-and-down thrill ride where each townsperson got his or her turn in the novel's spotlight, and contributed to all kinds of conversation at the breakfast table.
Of course, it goes without saying that it wasn't long before the couple received the people's blessing for marriage at the town church.
Maria, who had been intimately familiar with song and piano since she was little, after dinner and clear-up, would put on concerts with her husband George and the children as her audience. This became an unbroken tradition in their household.
In the afternoons the town's housewives, who idolized Maria, would gather in the warm, sunny yard and pour themselves into the sewing of huge patchworks. This, too, was already one of the town's longstanding traditions.
The finished bedspreads and tablecloths went to the needy at their husbands' newspaper-sponsored bazaar, and the proceeds were donated to the local church. It was a town that lived up to its name, a town just like the warm love of a mother.
And in a town so peaceful as this, ominous incidents began to break out. It began when a black, cloud-like shadow fell on the summit of the far distant Holy Loly Mountain.
Suddenly, room ornaments would begin flying around, or people would abruptly go missing, only to return to their houses the next morning with no recollection. A group of students from the town elementary school left for a trip to a nearby mountain then vanished into thin air, and though the town was in an uproar that night, the next day the whole bunch of them came back home, all smiles as though nothing had happened. Such was this series of baffling incidents.
George, who had brimmed with curiosity from the outset, began a thorough investigation of these happenings. But through his interviews of the people involved, he couldn't lay hold on a single clue. Every one of them had lost all memory of those very happenings.
There came a day when George published an article in the paper that acted as an intermediary report of the incidents. That night, as far as the town could tell, George and Maria dropped off the face of the Earth.
The depth of the townsfolk's shock and sorrow was immeasurable. They poured their hearts and souls out to God in prayer, and this act alone was proof of how much trust they had in their couple.
Perhaps their prayers got through, for about two years later, unexpectedly, George returned home alone. As if he were a completely different person, his hair had gone white, and clamping his mouth shut as a seashell he shut himself up in his house.
Even when his closest friends would come to check up on him, George wouldn't even try to tell anyone where he'd gone or what he'd been up to. And when they'd ask about Maria, he'd scowl, and like a grouchy old man sulkily chase the people away.
And, shut up conclusively in his house without so much as returning to the newspaper, he fell to immersing himself in the research of psychic powers.
All kinds of rumors flew, all over the place among the people who had seen George like that.
But time passed before they knew it, and even the rumor mill stopped churning. However, one thing the people did not forget was that Maria, his wife, never did return. ...
The years went by, and perhaps as if to wipe away the ominous incidents, Maria and George's house was built anew, and now, with a young boy who happens to be their great-grandson, his mother and a pair of twin sisters, it's leading an existence as peaceful as Mother's Day had once known.
The patchworks were inherited clear down to this day by the mother, and the carnation bed Maria had held so dear blooms proudly against a vivid green backdrop.
But now, in 1988, the ominous black cloud which had faded clear out of everyone's memory has once again settled over the summit of Holy Loly Mountain.
The peaceful town has done an about-face.
Pick any house in Mother's Day, and you'll see the flower vases and lamp stands have started clattering around the rooms.
Seeing his mother and his two tiny sisters panicking, the young boy vows in his heart: "I'll find out what's behind this weird mess, and protect my mom and sisters!"
And thus, the boy's journey is just beginning.
[The second page of this introductory story also contains the lyrics to "Pollyanna". Now, if you've been in this fandom for any barely-significant stretch of time, you can recite this song forwards, backwards, in your sleep and in Elvish (whoops, that's another fandom), but as I've found, if you spend enough time away from a good thing it gets even better when you come back. This song is refreshingly wholesome in a world desperately in need of more optimism, so it bears repeating!]
POLLYANNA (I BELIEVE IN YOU)
I believe the morning sun
Always gonna shine again and
I believe a pot of gold
Waits at every rainbow's end
I believe in roses kissed with dew
Why shouldn't I believe the same in you?
I believe in make believe
Fairy tales and lucky charms and
I believe in promises
Spoken as you cross your heart
I believe in skies forever blue
Why shouldn't I believe the same in you?
You may say I'm a fool
Feelin' the way that I do
You can call me Pollyanna
Say I'm crazy as a loon
I believe in silver linings
And that's why I believe in you
I believe there'll come a day
Maybe it will be tomorrow
When the bluebird flies away
All we have to do is follow
I believe a dream can still come true
Why shouldn't I believe the same in you?
You may say I'm a fool
Feelin' the way that I do
I believe in friends and laughter
And the wonders love can do
I believe in songs and magic
And that's why I believe in you
You may say I'm a fool
Feelin' this way about you
There's not much I can do
I'm gonna be this way my life through
'Cause I still believe in miracles
I swear I've seen a few
And the time will surely come
When you can see my point of view
I believe in second chances
And that's why I believe in you
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