Category: Uncategorized

The Moon’s Last Song

The Lady in the Moon

The Moon, she appeared
Unbidden
on the tips of winter branches
while the grey line of dawn
Gave shape to the earth
The Wind beneath her
Swept through the forest
Never still

Look up!

She knew where to find him

Why,
asked The Wind
Why do women come
and pin their hearts to my sleeve?
Women should come
and go
As casually as me

The Moon, she lifted
her silver veil
The Wind saw her face
her body
The promise of a new-born sun
Reflected on her skin

Well,
she said
I am not any woman
I am The Moon
My right arm the ebb
My left the flow
with the strength to shift oceans
I don’t change men
I change my mind

Oh, Wind
You injured man
You soul unchained
I’ve known hurt too
By hope
and love
and life
I have my dark side

Look up!

Don’t you see it?
Hope
and love
and life
Those are our prayers
Greater
More abundant
Alive
In every moment
Casual
Profound
Weighted in counterbalance
Our separate truths in opposition
Stretched like that horizon
and so we grow

Or we would still be yesterday’s creatures

The world needs The Wind
Your storms and summer breezes
All I want
Is to live the last breath of this night

Look up!

Roll me through the trees
Lift me to the stars
When you whisper
Forgetful
along my mountains
into my valleys
I can forgive any man
even The Wind

The Moon, she smiled
A woman can open herself wide
she knows the men who wait
standing ready at her gate
Interest or disinterest
She won’t need to rise
to the occasion like a man

A woman, she knows
Men are easily had
She keeps her gate closed
Until she has chosen

A woman, she knows
Men can be dangerous
She keeps her gate locked
Until she is safe

When she opens her gate
you are her guest
She has chosen you
That choice is a gift

Accept my gift
or leave it here in my lap
I know how to tend it myself

Hold my offer
as casual as you please
but never

Never tell me how to hand it over

Come,
or find your own way home

8

Beginnings, Endings and the Surprises in Between

Snowflakes by Wilson Bently

When I was a little girl, I had a recurring dream that a beautiful woman with dark hair smiled benevolently down at me.

“Would you like to see your life?” She asked. “How you live, and how you die?”

I can be a bit on the impatient side. I’ve always struggled with the urge to read the last page of the book first, so I let the woman take me by the hand. She led me into an ornate theater. Twin angels stood on either side of red curtains.

“Just say the word,” she waved toward the angels, “and they will open your life for you.”

As I sat in my velvet seat, I began to have my doubts. I was curious, but to lose the anticipation of Christmas mornings and new school years might be a terrible price to pay for having it handed over upfront. Eager as I’ve always been to know how everything turns out, there is nothing I love more than the surprise of a new beginning. To have loss and fear and hurt discovered at once didn’t sound so great either. And death? I didn’t want to think about my life ending at all.

“No,” I said.

And the dream disappeared. Every time.

A few weeks ago, I was standing in a little Chicago toyshop buying stocking stuffers for my children. My cell phone rang, and I dug through my purse for it. As usual, I couldn’t find it under all the mess, and I missed the call. It was the doctor’s office, and I’d been waiting for the results of a recent CT scan of my kidney. When I called back, the receptionist transferred me straight to the doctor.

As soon as I heard her voice, I knew something was going to be wrong.

“The good news is that the CT scan shows it is only a benign cyst on your kidney.”

I let out a huge breath. It wasn’t a tumor.

“The bad news is that the CT scan also picked up the lower half of your lungs, and they are covered in the same cysts.”

“What does that mean?” I dropped my basket of gifts and stepped outside, surrounded by the noise and the wind of the city. That will always feel like home to me.

“Well, it’s very abnormal. I had to consult with the pulmonologist. He thinks it is consistent with a very rare lung disease called lymphangioleiomyomatosis. We need to schedule you immediately for a CT scan of your lungs, and the pulmonologist is clearing his schedule to make room for you as soon as possible. This is urgent.”

Urgent.

Nothing about my body had ever been urgent. I’ve had colds and flus, a broken nose and plenty of torn muscles. I’ve given birth twice. Never urgent.  I was a dancer. I thought my body was under my control.

Urgent

I heard the word over and over in the rhythm of the train ride back to where I was staying. I heard it in the hum of my computer as I waited for it to turn on. I heard it in the click of the keys as I typed LAM into the Google search bar.

8-10 year life expectancy

Diminished quality of life

Lung transplant

Suffocation

Those were the words that stood out as I sat alone and tried to comprehend how what I read on the screen applied to me. I couldn’t. I went out and drank far too much wine instead. After that, I went for lashing out at people I care about for things that didn’t really matter. Everything seemed so immediately important. Every happy moment was ten times happier and every hurt feeling ten times more painful. My skin and heart and mind were supersonic and there was no way for me to control it. Why was everyone else so healthy and willing to thoughtlessly waste my time?

I know that wasn’t reality, but it was my reality.

At 5:00 pm on the night before Thanksgiving, I sat in the pulmonologist’s office for my official diagnosis of lymphangioleiomyomatosis. I actually beat some odds. I passed all the breathing tests, and I am still in the very early stages of the disease. Researchers have learned a great deal about LAM over the last few years, and I am in a great place to beat those 10 year odds. No one knows when or if I will ever suffer the debilitation of LAM. It’s too rare a disease, only 1500 cases diagnosed in the US.

And I’m still dancing in The Nutcracker this weekend so it doesn’t have me yet.

I haven’t gotten over that immediacy of life part yet. I’m still quicker to happiness or anger or sadness. I still feel the need to say what I might have held back before, or do what I might have left undone. I’m not the same person I was before that Tuesday afternoon phone call. I suppose it’s going to take some time to discover this new version of the best and the worst of me.

I’ve been going once a week to the Chinese acupuncturist. On my first visit, he flicked his needles all over my body and dimmed the light.

“Sometimes life brings us a challenge that is bigger than we think we are,” he said. “But we still fight.”

He patted me gently on the knee, closed the door, and left me alone to do just that.

As I lay there, I thought…this is my life! The one that waited for me behind the curtain when I was a little girl. The moments between beginnings and endings that I’ve been able to watch unfold with the precious gift of time.

This is my life.

Maybe it was just a little girl’s dream, but I’m glad life didn’t fall into my lap all at once. I’m glad I’ve been able to collect my memories and carry them with me one at a time. And I do carry them. All of them. The people I’ve met are precious to me. I used to think love was my greatest weakness and that when the world stopped amazing me I’d have an easier time of things. Now that I know how fleeting life is, I’m glad I still have a sense of wonder.

Last night, I had a new dream. I was in my backyard spread out on my back in the snow, but it wasn’t cold. There was a white cloud above me, and I watched it give birth to new snowflakes. They fell toward me, taking shape as they got closer, each one a beautiful, individual surprise. Every flake landed on my body. Some felt wonderful as they melted against my skin but some of them burned too. I knew if I got up and went inside, I wouldn’t have to feel anything at all…but I wasn’t ready. It was worth it to witness the beauty and wonder between the beginning and the end.

I’m sorry lymphangioleiomyomatosis. I know you want to take my breath away, but you’ll have to get in line. Life already got here first.

26

The Moon

The Moon Image
Moon Lady
Judy Pfeifer, 2013

The Wind, he swelled
to meet The Moon
She came through the quiet night
Alive and awake
Plucked from ashen skin
while sleep fell over the world below

like dew
from leaves
Trembling
under wind swept fingertips

The Moon, she lifted
Empty
like a vessel
Full

like a poet

Hidden behind her silver veil
Tired and free
and lonesome
Losing ground
Gaining space
She traveled with her mysteries

Home again
to spin silver linings into clouds
As best she could
(She only has two hands)

No matter how she waxed
No matter how she waned

The Moon, she remembered
How The Wind whispered
Over her curves
Along her edges

He will be your undoing,
sang the stars
A Greek chorus
Ladylike voices
Oh, I know,
she replied
I want to be undone

Hidden behind her silver veil
Shy and frightened
and eager
through the dark night
She fell to him

Tender heart woven safe
behind her words

Will you come again?
she called
Will you be my lover?

But I am The Wind
I run free
Your arms will never hold me

The Moon, she said
If I wanted a rock
I’d call for a rock
Stable and hard
and unmoving
The weight of him to hold me
Always
in the place I left him

I didn’t call for a rock tonight

I called for The Wind
His mind his only boundary
His north side bitter
with need so sharp
covered in quills
I can’t reach it

He shifts from the south
Warmth along my hidden valleys
and I forget his wanting
lost in my own

You sinner
You saint
I called for you
because I want The Wind

tonight. I can’t give you tomorrow

Who knows why?
He couldn’t refuse

The Wind, he swelled
to meet The Moon

6

My First Anniversary in Three Stories

cover 3

 

Once upon a time, I slipped away from my friends and ended up walking all night through the streets of Chicago. As dawn softened the sky, I sat down on a set of concrete steps and looked up. A solitary, tenacious star still hung between two buildings in spite of the city lights and the strength of the sun. That star in the sky and me on the concrete ground, both of us searching for the lonely courage to linger where we didn’t belong. I tried to share the feeling of that moment with somebody once. I wanted to turn it into a story of the deepest part of myself, but all I came to was a medieval map of the edge of my world. The great mystery of myself beyond what I can explain, an unexplored ocean written in ornate and ancient hand…here are dragons. Travel there and you will be lost.

Did you know that carbon and oxygen are attracted to one another? If you don’t, you aren’t alone. It turns out carbon and oxygen aren’t aware of it either. Oxygen might rub right up against carbon, and they still won’t remember they’ve bonded before. It takes something earth shattering, catastrophic or wild for them to change their solitary perception. A bolt of lightning from the sky crashes into a tree. The carbon in the tree starts to tremble. The oxygen in the air begins to shake. They move faster and faster until they collide and …snap…they remember how good it feels to connect. A flame born from the heat of attraction. Maybe that’s why stories are best told around a fire. Those burning embers of carbon and oxygen match that strange inner light of imagination. In life we knock around forgetful of one another. In stories a sudden spark of creativity reminds us how good it feels to be found again.

And speaking of found…a group of tourists once embarked off the California coast for a day of seal watching. They found the long, dark shadow of a great white shark lurking beneath the boat. A nervous chatter spread through the crowd. The captain reminded them that sharks eat seals, which means seal season is also shark season. Things calmed down until a mother orca and her baby where spotted alongside the boat. The orca are top predators, but would this mother be any match to the cold, calculated powers of a great white? Mother and child disappeared below the dark water. The shark’s fin circled ominously above. The mother orca burst through the surface and crashed against the side of the shark. In the blink of an eye, she had the great white turned on his back in her mouth. When a shark is turned upside down, he falls immediately into a catatonic state. Unable to fight, the great white was easy prey. The orca killed him in an instant before the amazed and horrified eyes of a group of tourists.

How was an orca able to defeat the primal king of the ocean? A shark travels and hunts from the instinctual information of his limbic system. Orcas live in ornate and complex communities. They learn and grow through language. Orcas tell each other stories. It was the creative use of her ancestral tales that made the orca the victor that day.

When an orca tells a story, does she ever come to the end of her song and fall into the inky dark of her own great mystery? I wonder if she resonates with a language that can reach beyond the dragons to the beauty and destruction of a life well lived, to the freedom of being lost and the wild, catastrophic pleasure in being found.

That would be one great story.

One year ago today, I wrote the first entry to this blog. It has taken me on quite a journey. Here’s to the uncharted mysteries of life.

 

 

8

Unbroken Line

Backyard

 

Morning dawns
Spring’s breath has left the buds
to follow her time-worn path
This unbroken line
Back to the cold of winter

New from old
Old to new
With stories on their tongues
And hearts across their sleeves
The ancient women sing

For winters past and coming springs
The whisper of a lover’s game
Under a sun chased moon
To press time westward across the sky

A woman’s breath beneath her hand
The guarded slip of her tongue
Stories played in a hidden heart
while winter sighs around her fire
This aging woman sings

For winters past and coming springs
The whisper of a lover’s game
Under a sun chased moon
To press time westward across the sky
Survivors in unbroken line
Drawn from me to you

2

My Favorite Ghost Story…

Betsy_Ross_1777

The museum of Raynham Hall is nestled inside a quiet neighborhood in Oyster Bay, NY. In 1779, a romance blossomed between those walls that may have decided the fate of the American Revolution.

Raynham Hall, historic home of the Townsend family. Visitors and employees of the museum still encounter spirits from the bygone days of the Revolutionary War.
Raynham Hall, historic home of the Townsend family.
Visitors and employees of the museum still encounter spirits from the bygone days of the Revolutionary War.

When British officer John Graves Simcoe billeted himself in the home of influential Patriot Samuel Townsend, he planned to send a message of his own power. What he didn’t plan for was Townsend’s pretty daughter, Sarah “Sally” Townsend. It might have been easier for the serious and controlled Simcoe to ignore his attraction to Sally, if it weren’t for the frequent visits of his friend and fellow British officer, John Andre.

John Graves Simcoe, Lt. Colonel of the Queen's Rangers, who wore green rather than red coats.

John Graves Simcoe, Lt. Colonel of the Queen’s Rangers, who wore green rather than red coats.

A self portrait of John Andre, 1780
A self portrait of John Andre, 1780
Andre was dashing, cultured and well-loved by everyone (but women most especially). He was everything Simcoe was not. While Andre never had real designs on any girl, a flirtatious rivalry for Sally’s attention developed between the two officers. The terrible truths of war were distant stories to Sally, and it became hard to see these two young men as her enemy. After all, they shared the same language, knew the same songs and the same dances. They read the same books…and  they looked very handsome in their uniforms.

Though somewhat bombastic and rigid, Simcoe had his own hidden strengths. He was a brave and respected leader, a field officer who had been tested many times in battle. How and when Simcoe and Sally’s flirtations grew deeper is lost to the passage of time, but on Valentine’s Day 1779, Simcoe wrote Sally a Valentine.

Fairest Maid, where all is fair
Beauty’s pride and Nature’s care;
To you my heart I must resign
O choose me for your Valentine!

Love, Mighty God! Thou know’st full well
Where all thy Mother’s graces dwell,
Where they inhabit and combine
To fix thy power with spells divine;

Thou know’st what powerful magick lies
Within the round of Sarah’s eyes,
Or darted thence like lightning fires
And Heaven’s own joys around inspires;

Thou know’st my heart will always prove
The shrine of pure unchanging love!
Say; awful God! Since to thy throne
Two ways that lead are only known-

Here gay Variety presides,
And many a youthful circle guides
Through paths where lilies, roses sweet,
Bloom and decay beneath their feet;

Here constancy with sober mein
Regardless of the flowery Scene
With Myrtle crowned that never fades,
In silence seeks the Cypress Shades,

Or fixed near Contemplation’s cell,
Chief with the Muses loves to dwell,
Leads those who inward feel and burn
And often clasp the abandon’d urn,–

Say, awful God! Did’st thou not prove
My heart was formed for Constant love?
Thou saw’st me once on every plain
To Delia pour the artless strain –

Thou wept’sd her death and bad’st me change
My happier days no more to range
O’er hill, o’re dale, in sweet Employ,
Of singing Delia, Nature’s joy;

Thou bad’st me change the pastoral scene
Forget my Crook; with haughty mien
To raise the iron Spear of War,
Victim of Grief and deep Despair:

Say, must I all my joys forego
And still maintain this outward show?
Say, shall this breast that’s pained to fell
Be ever clad in horrid steel?

Now swell with other joys than those
Of conquest o’er unworthy foes?
Shall no fair maid with equal fire
Awake the flames of soft desire:

My bosom born, for transport, burn
And raise my thoughts from Delia’s urn?
“Fond Youth,” the God of Love replies,
“Your answer take from Sarah’s eyes.

Source

This poem is the earliest known Valentine ever received on American soil…written by a British officer for a Patriot girl.

Meanwhile, Andre had kept in contact with an old girlfriend who also crossed enemy lines for love. Peggy Shippen, the daughter of a prominent Loyalist family, caused quite a stir when she married Patriot General Benedict Arnold. Through Peggy’s letters to Andre, it became clear that Arnold had grown disillusioned with the Patriot cause. He was broke, and Congress owed him money. Peggy and Andre worked together to bring Arnold to the British side, and Arnold was persuaded to hand over West Point during a feigned Naval invasion. Arnold and Andre decided it was time to meet face to face. Before he left, Andre was warned not to do any of the following:

Don’t go anywhere without a guide

Don’t talk to anyone you don’t know

Don’t get drunk

Don’t take off your uniform

Impulsive John Andre did all of the above, and he was caught returning home from his meeting with Arnold. American mythology has painted the two men who captured Andre as devout Patriots, but it is likely they were simply opportunists. Although in plain clothes, Andre told them he was a British officer. Whether they handed him back to one side or the other, they knew there was money to be made. They searched Andre and discovered papers and a map of West Point in his boot, but because they were illiterate, they did not know what they had.

And yet, these two men are the official reason George Washington arrived at West Point moments before Benedict Arnold’s traitorous act. Arnold escaped to a British ship, and left Peggy behind. (She was in labor with their first child and had recently given birth when Washington arrived. She faked a nervous breakdown, and Washington was so uncomfortable with these “feminine issues” he let her go)

The loss of West Point would have collapsed Patriot defenses. The British Navy would have continued into Patriot territory and slaughtered their weaker and smaller cause like lambs.

If Andre had been caught in his uniform, he would have been held as a prisoner of war. Because he wore civilian clothes, he was convicted as a spy. And spies were hung. The death of the beloved John Andre was painful to both sides. In the place of his execution, George Washington built a monument which is still there to this day.

George Washington wrote of John Andre, "He was more unfortunate than criminal."
George Washington wrote of John Andre, “He was more unfortunate than criminal.”
How did Washington learn of Benedict Arnold’s plot so soon after Andre’s capture? Citizens of Oyster Bay will tell you that Washington already knew. He was well on his way to West Point before Andre stumbled into enemy hands.

In her comfortable love and friendship with Simcoe and Andre, Sally discovered the West Point plot. She was forced into a terrible choice that still haunts her and Raynham Hall to this day. She had to choose between loyalty to the man she loved, or loyalty to the cause she believed in. Sally chose her cause. She went to her father who sent word to his son Robert, a merchant in New York City.

Robert-Townsend (1)

Robert was able to warn Washington, and an alternative outcome to the American Revolution was thwarted by the heavy choice of a sixteen year old girl.

After Andre’s death, Simcoe left Oyster Bay and never came back. Simcoe and Sally never saw one another again. He married a wealthy woman and returned to North America as the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Ontario. Sally never married, and she never left Oyster Bay. When she died at the age of 80, a journal was one of the few things she owned. Inside was found Simcoe’s Valentine, creased and well-worn from the years she had held and read his words.

Sarah-Townsend

This story might be dismissed as local folklore, but at the turn of the 20th Century, historian Morton Pennypacker used handwriting analysis to uncover the members of the Culper Spy Ring, George Washington’s most successful espionage unit. One of its members? Sally’s brother, Robert Townsend.

Sally’s spirit still wanders Raynham Hall. She stands lovelorn and torn at her bedroom window. She isn’t alone. The ghost of John Andre often appears to charm and cause mischief.Sally stood firm on beliefs about American independence, but Simcoe believed just as strongly that the Colonies were legally tied to the king. To him, the betrayal of his love was also an act of treason.  Simcoe never forgave Sally, but maybe Andre’s visits mean he has. I pray someday Sally can forgive herself, and Raynham Hall will become nothing more than a testament to the painful beauty of life, love and honor.

7

The Northern Lights, Part Two: The Path

Wild Birds Burning © 2013 Brooke Shaden. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission of artist. http://brookeshaden.com/
Wild Birds Burning
© 2013 Brooke Shaden. All Rights Reserved.
Used with permission of artist.
http://brookeshaden.com/

Evelyn stood at the mouth of the cave. The lost warmth of the warrior’s hands, his body, his voice, his heart, that absence left an emptiness. She could feel it like a man might lose his arm in battle but still complain he felt pain in his fingertips. Nothing remained but a fire that dwindled to ash, and the thick forest she had come from. Beyond was the path that led to her village, to rows of houses but not homes. To dresses and shoes that waited in her abandoned closet, but they would not fit her anymore, or she would not fit inside of them.

She wandered through the arc of trees, which had become full of green and bird-song. Hope whispered on the wind. It was impossible to stay sad while the sun danced through the leaves and left a delicate pattern on the path ahead of her. Like life and love and time. They trace their shadowy impressions on the heart too, but they can’t do so without the light.

“Oh, how I wish I could share this with you right now.” She closed her eyes and tried to always remember that moment.

A breeze lifted her hair and smoothed it from her face the way her warrior once had.

Evelyn came to the other side of the woods, to the place she had entered frightened and burning with life on that first winter night. It seemed not only a season ago, but a lifetime of seasons since she had sought out the mysteries of the forest. Slowly, she put one foot outside the last row of trees, and let it rest in a world that had once been hers. She didn’t belong there anymore. She turned back to the path. Winter would return again, and maybe her warrior would too. She could go to the cave. She could wait.

A lone, gray wolf stood in the path. Each time she tried to take a step forward, he lowered his head, pushed back his ears and growled. Even with the wolf ahead of her, the road back to the village was a kind of death too. She stood straddled between her two pasts until night fell.

The moon rose round and full, and its light spread until it fell over the wolf. He leapt away and disappeared into the dark forest.  Evelyn ran as fast as she could down in the direction she thought would take her back to the cave. Nothing was familiar. Everything seemed changed. She came to a place she didn’t remember, where the path forked in two directions. Neither seemed right. In the center, a gnarled tree twisted up from the ground. Evelyn was too tired to decide which choice to make. She threw herself down in front of the tree and rested her head against the trunk.

“I am lost.” But what am I really looking for, she wondered.

“Alms for the poor?” Croaked a voice from above her.

Evelyn wasn’t leaning against a tree. She was leaning against a bent, old woman draped in a black cloak with a pointed hood.

“Alms for the poor?” The old woman reached out an arthritic hand.

Evelyn had lived too long with the magic that hummed through the forest to let fear run cold through her body. She reached into her cloak and pulled out her last pouch of dried seeds and fruit. “Here you are, Vala.”

“You call me Vala?” said the old woman. “How do you know I am a seer?”

“I have lived in these woods for many months with a young warrior who runs with the wolves and disappears with the ravens. I have survived with nothing more than these seeds and the clothes on my back. There is no such thing as poor here. You asked only to test my generosity.”

“Ah, well, you do have a wise mind and a generous heart. Tell me, do your mind and your heart hold the same desire?”

“You know they do, Wise One. I wish to find the warrior’s cave, to find the joy I had for a short time. I want it back. I want him to return. I want him to want to return.”

The old woman worked her ancient tongue over her toothless gums. “No. Your heart wishes to love him, and your mind wishes to possess him. It is one kind of generosity to offer your food to a stranger. It is a far greater generosity to offer freedom to the one you love.” She placed her chill, twig-like fingers on the top of Evelyn’s head. “You won’t find your home or your story on this path anymore. Do not linger here.”

“But I can’t go back to the village. I’m not the girl I was any longer.”

“Then go forward into what you are becoming. Not every fire was meant for warmth and the discovery of another soul. Some fires are lit ahead of us, to guide us where we need to be to discover ourselves. There is a child in your belly now, and she is a part of your true destiny. Raise her to know how to tend the hearth and wield a sword with equal strength.”

“I don’t know which way to go.”

“In exchange for your seeds, I will show you where to start.” The old woman pointed down the path to the right. “Go forward this way, and do not get lost in the past again, My Child.”

The gray wolf leapt down the path and disappeared into the shadows.

Evelyn looked back at the old woman. There was nothing but a bent tree with a knotted branch that pointed to the darkness of the right hand path. She pushed through branches and tripped over logs until she came to a clearing. Above her in the Heavens blazed the greatest fire she had ever seen. The young warrior danced through the sky around it, leaving trails of deep red and indigo and violet wherever he went.

“Evelyn,” the warrior sang.

The night grew bright with his dance.

She made her home in that clearing, and there she had a daughter. The mother of us all. She taught her daughter to fight and weave with equal craft. Since that time, our ancestors have lived only where the Northern Lights can guide them to the place of their own stories and then, in the end, the lights call us forward to our greatest adventure of all…to the Beyond North.

Read part one here: The Northern Lights, Part One: The Wolf

9

The Northern Lights, Part One: The Wolf

 Wolf and Lights

Long ago, in the land of our ancestors across the sea…

 A woman in an emerald cloak drifted through the snow, down a white path that snaked through a thick forest.  She was alone. No one had come with her because no one knew where she was. All her life, she’d heard the forest wasn’t safe, but it would be better to die than to go on living as she had been. She didn’t know what she was searching for in the forest. She didn’t know what she was running from in the village either. She only felt it. A knowing that there had to be something more. It called to her on the wind. The wild wolves answered, and suddenly she needed to answer it too. She needed it so badly that it didn’t matter what might come of her.

The song of the wolves danced along the frozen North Wind. They sang of the night, and the pure white snow, and the lonely moon grown full with waiting from above. As if conjured by their plaintive call, she came to a place where the trees formed a long arch above the path, like a snowy cathedral that glittered in the moonlight. A pack of silver wolves stood sentry at the far end, weaving a web of deadly confidence.

My goodness, they will hurt me, she thought. I will die here all alone.

But she had been hurt in the village too, and lonesome, although she was always surrounded by her people. On that path with the wolves, fear made her blood race, and she felt alive.

“So beautiful,” she whispered. “So fatal. I will grow, or I will die.”

“You won’t die today,” A young man stood over her. His hair was cut haphazardly, as if he’d done the job with his knife and no mirror, but it shone as silver as the wolves and the moonlight. He carried a large wooden shield on his back and the horned helmet of a warrior under his arm.

How had he interrupted her solitary path? She never wanted him to look at her like that again, and she wanted him to always look at her like that. Like the unknown forest, how his eyes promised her life and danger.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“I am a traveler.” He shrugged, but the corners of his mouth grew tight, and she wondered if he had traveled much farther and longer than that shrug let on. She only dreamed of travel and yet to him it seemed like a burden.  “I am many things to many people. Who are you?”

“I am Evelyn. I mean nothing to anyone.” It was impossible for her to shrug away the secret that she had just left being a daughter, and that she was intended to be someone’s wife. Those both meant something to someone. The truth was that she was the one who didn’t know the meaning of any of it. That felt like an unworthy sentiment, and she looked down so he would not see her go red.

Cuts and bruises ran over his hands and into his fur-lined coat.

“Are you hurt?” She reached out and touched a clotted wound. What made her do that? What made her ache to think he felt pain?

“Only a little. Nothing that won’t heal. Are you hungry? Are you cold?” The way he said it, not like she was a child, the way she felt at home, but as if he had a giant heart and he really saw her standing in front of him. Like a woman should be noticed, full and real.

“Only a little.” She smiled.

He returned it with a small, lopsided grin that made her grow warm right through her heart.

“I am very far from home,” he said. “I don’t have much to offer you, but there is a cave just around the bend. I’ve got dry wood, and I could build you a fire.”

“Yes.” She hadn’t really, honestly said yes to anything for a very long time.

“I see the richness of your cloak, and I’m worried it won’t be enough for you.”

Richness. Comfort. Plenty. She’d had every one of them in abundance, but none had given her the warmth she gained from his crooked grin. She reached up and kissed him on the corner of his mouth.

“Come on,” he said.

They walked together to his cave. He moved toward her, so close she could feel his heat and smell the foreign spice of his skin.

“I am brave in battle.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “But you frighten me.”

“Why would I frighten anyone?” She wasn’t afraid, not now that she had said yes and meant it. She liked the moment just as it was with the promise of discovery spread out in front of her. It would never be like that again, with everything right on the edge of beginning.

“I am afraid to part with you.”  His face grew sad again, as it had when he spoke of being a traveler.

Evelyn nodded. She knew what it felt like to always be waiting for the hurt to come. “I was afraid of the wolves in the same way. They captivated me, but I knew they could hurt me.” It was worth the risk. She stepped in closer to him. “I’ve never done this before. Have you?”

“I don’t think so. Not like this.”

She smiled. He kissed her.

Neither of them left the cave, not for a very long time.

One night, Evelyn woke and watched the warrior sleep next to her. His profile glowed gently in the firelight. He looked so much more a boy than a man. Sleep had taken the edges of worry from his face, but a single tear slipped from his eyelid and slid down onto his temple. She put her lips against it and tasted the salt of that tear. Her heart grew so big she could hardly breathe.

My goodness, I have fallen in love, she thought. He will hurt me. I will die here all alone.

When morning came, and the sun pressed out the shadows and the mysteries, she was afraid to tell him how she felt.

Time passed. The wind and the wolves stopped howling. The cave echoed with the rush of melting snow. Evelyn watched the warrior’s face grow distant, as if he were listening to something far off beyond the newly budding trees. She felt the coming hurt, waiting to tear out her heart with the same deadly beauty as the pack of silver wolves that had stopped her on the path.

“I’m cold,” she said. “Will you put more logs on the fire?” As long as he kept the fire going, he couldn’t be leaving.

He did not look at her as he put them slowly, one by one into the flames. “It is time for me to leave. These are the last logs I will ever put on this fire I built for you.”

“Why can’t you stay with me? I want you to stay.”

“Because the snow has turned to water. The dead of winter has turned to the life of spring. That is change. I have heard the thrumming call to battle, and I always answer that call. It is as much a part of me as what I was here with you.”

“I thought you said you were afraid to lose me.”

“I am afraid to lose the warmth of your touch, and the way you look at me, and the way you notice life’s simple beauty. Even worse, I am afraid you won’t understand that I have to go. I have no choice. I am afraid you will be so angry that I will lose your love.”

“You don’t know that I love you.” If he did, he would know how vulnerable she was.

“Yes, I do know you love me.”  He put his arms around her and pulled her close to him. She felt the muscles of his chest move beneath her hands. It seemed impossible that she was about to lose the familiarity of his form. “Before we met,” he said, “you knew how to find the beauty in life. You don’t need me for that.”

“I don’t want to live without your touch.”

“You will live all the same. You found me with a pack of wolves, Evelyn, but I am the lone wolf. Please let me go.”

“I wanted you to stay forever.”

“Forever isn’t possible here on earth, and believe me you wouldn’t want an unchanging forever even if I could give that to you.” He smoothed the copper hair from her face. “Do you remember the first day we met, how I built you this fire?”

“Yes.” She forced the word through the pain in her heart.

“I will build you a great fire in the Heavens. The largest and brightest you have ever seen. It will be my gift to you. For your love and for showing me how beautiful this world can be. I had forgotten that beauty a long time ago. My fire will always show you where I am, and how to find me when you are done with the life you were intended to live.”

“But I want to come with you now.” Impossible. It would be impossible to move through the world without his touch and his voice.

“Your story isn’t over yet. Someday you will come tell it to me, and I will hang on every word.”

He kissed her. She tried to smile.

A cloud of ravens flew through the cave. And he was gone.

  To be continued…

The story continues: The Northern Lights, Part Two: The Path

7

A Tale of Guinevere and Lancelot

Queen Guinevere William Morris This work of art is in the public domain
Queen Guinevere
William Morris
This work of art is in the public domain

Guinevere
Soft and lost
Naïve and wise
Stood on the street corner
Watching poetry fly
up toward the street lamps
like moths to that last hope
That dangerous burning promise
When Lancelot happened by

Oh, hey there, Guinevere
Hey, friend of mine
Imagine running into you like this
your letter fresh in my pocket
Unanswered and waiting
Naïve and wise
I was going to write
I’d have written so well
but I’ve been so busy
Didn’t you hear?
I’ve gone on a quest
I’m finding the Holy Grail

She tried to pass him
but he pulled her close
So lately familiar

Lancelot, don’t
Don’t stand so near me
We can’t collide anymore
I never knew you at all
I knew you like I shouldn’t
How you shed your clothes
The first time I asked
And I saw what you thought of me
Alive and real and unmasked
But now my words
My heart
Hidden there in your pocket
Exposing the colors
The me I think I am
I showed you mine
But you won’t give me a peek
Not of your heart
You won’t undress that far

Hey, friend,
said Lancelot
Don’t think it doesn’t matter
But my silence is the kinder story
Than a lie about the contents of my heart
A heart I hardly know

Don’t mind me,
said Guinevere
Don’t stand there watching, Lancelot
I’m just falling
One foot in front of the other
Like learning
Like walking
And Baby, a woman
She can walk all night
Until she comes to that morning light
Where the sky grows soft
and the pillars sleek
That man-made building between her streets
How it can touch her sky
and make her breathe
I know you know that feeling
You have shown me

But I was falling from the start, Lancelot
When my sins came spilling
All at once into your lap
And you said…
I’d have asked you anyway

My god, I thought
Here he is
A man who can make me breathe
A man who will take me as I am
I fell
One foot in front of the other
Until you found me here

Oh, Guinevere
My friend
Where is that woman I held?
Wild and impetuous and free
You will run me off with girlish fear
Don’t look for my white horse now
I’ll still make you breathe
We’ll find some other convenient time

Lancelot
Soft and lost
Older and wiser
Stood on the street corner
His face unmasked in the summer sun
No lover’s shadows to hide behind
Just a man
of lost intentions
of empty promises
of wayward dreams
Just a man
in civil war with disappointment
and the brilliance of his mind
and the goodness of his heart

Guinevere
There in front of him
Her heart and Camelot destroyed
Nowhere left to run
Knowing everything
Coming to her own wasted truth
I’d have asked him anyway

I’m late, said Lancelot
I’ve got a grail to chase

Sometimes, a man
He comes up empty handed
Nothing to hold but his own manhood
When a Guinevere happens by
A woman to fill with his empty time
That sacred gift
That faith for free
Consecrated at her private alter
Isn’t that what holy means?
And isn’t she a vessel?
Isn’t she that grail?
Hidden there in plain sight
Right in front of him

But, Lancelot
He turned away
Sometimes, a man
He’s out for the quest
He looks around another corner

Sometimes, a woman
She swallows regret for her pride
She learns to offer the final empty lie
I’ll see you later
Guinevere called after Lancelot
When she really meant goodbye

4

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