To her surprise, she woke the next morning. The little red dots on her arms from the day before hadn’t developed into boils, and her knees and armpits no longer felt tight. In fact, they seemed to have no feeling at all. But that might have just been the contrast from yesterday. She didn’t remember if they should have a particular feeling.  She sat up and yawned, then shook herself out. Perhaps the miracle had occurred, and the disease had passed.

She sniffed and looked about. The boy was nowhere in sight. He had been talking at her and wanting to show her something yesterday, but she could not remember what.  Doubtless it was something bizarre. Aida stood up stiffly and stretched. She wanted to go back and explore the castle now. They had just walked straight through yesterday, but it probably extended on the sides.

Her eyes had that crusty feel of leftover sleep, and she swabbed one out with her ring finger. She glanced briefly at it before dusting it off, and something seemed wrong. She cleaned out her other eye and looked. It looked like she had picked a scab. ‘That’s nasty?’ she thought to herself and squinted. Her eyes were itchy. She rubbed the first eye, and felt something on the heel of her hand. She looked, and there was a streak of fresh pus and blood. “Nasty,” she said aloud. “Nasty, nasty, nasty.” She quickly rubbed under the other eye and it was bleeding too. She looked at the blood on her hands and began hyperventilating. “What do I do?” She looked to herself as if she had just killed someone. “Where’s the boy?” she asked. Of course, no one answered. She wiped her cheek off. Oh. Blood. Why on the face?

It was making her vision fuzzy in the corners. She pressed her eyes into her head and slid her hands down her cheeks. They were covered in lumps. “What do I do what do I do what do I do?”

She ran back the direction they had come yesterday to the courtyard. She ran past the weird statue and through the arch and down the steps. She looked wildly around the courtyard for the boy but he was not there. She dashed across the courtyard and clambered out the hole in the wall. “Boy!” she yelled, but there came to her no reply. She looked about then ran to the right. She had thought there was more castle to the right, but there didn’t seem to be. “Boy, Boy!” she would run back around to where she was before. She ran around the walled courtyard to where the statue should have been, but everything was wrong. None of the landmarks were there, and the smell was different. And there were no white birds.

“What,” she said and rubbed her face on the back of her hand.

She walked back the way she had come, climbed through the hole, and looked across the courtyard out the arch. Everything was as she expected. “What,” she said again.

So she walked across the courtyard again and tripped on something. She looked down. There was absolutely nothing to trip on except her own feet. She started walking, and tripped again. What was there even to trip on? Aida did not usually trip on herself. But there was really nothing to trip on. She rubbed her eyes and kept going. Her feet just weren’t working properly today. And she had no idea where the boy was.

She had stumbled across the rest of the courtyard and halfway up the steps by the time she discovered what was wrong. Her legs were moving, but not bending. She tried to bend her knees, and found herself absolutely powerless to do so. It was the most helpless feeling in the world. “No! Boy!” she yelled and stumbled forward. She stumped madly up the steps and through the arch. She had no thought but to find the boy, as if he could somehow help her. “Where are you?” she called as she scrambled through the forest, dragging her feet and crying over her swollen face.

When she reached the spot where she had been before, the boy was standing a ways off with his back to her, as if he had not moved since the previous night. He was still destroying leaves bit by bit, and he was still talking. Aida wondered if she had only imagined that she was alone when she awoke.

The boy gave no indication of having noticed her. “And so one day, I went to the priest’s house,” he said, “And I found the priest dead. It seemed to me that the gods had answered my prayers for meaning. I put the priest in a closet and locked the doors and took off his mask. His face was a mask—I had known that since nearly the beginning. I stripped the priest of his garments and put them on myself. I put on the mask, and I was the priest. I felt no remorse. I was afraid at first someone would notice my deception, but no one did. They came and gave me their sacrifices, and I gave them their supplies, and they knew nothing otherwise. When it was late enough, I took the old priest into the forest for burial. It seemed I should bury him deep in the forest, so I carried him far, until I stumbled upon a sanctuary in the darkness. There were rooms made of trees and a bridge over a brook. I knew at once this was where the priest had spent his nights. In one of the rooms there was a trap door and an empty cellar. I buried the priest there, and went to sleep in his bed.

“At first I felt fulfilled. I thought I had found what I was looking for, and my garden of souls seemed to be flourishing. But too soon I realized that appearances deceive. Little by little, I realized that no one actually believed in the gods. It was as if I had discovered that none of my plants had roots. They all dutifully brought me sacrifice, but not a one of them believed. At first I tried to reason with some of them, but I realized what a powerless position I actually had. For what is power over men’s actions if their souls are a locked chest? Then I grew despondent, and I began retreating to my forest sanctuary more and more often. I began to beautify it and make it, at least, a place of belief. I gave up hope for my garden of souls, just as I had given up on my garden of plants. Life, it seemed, was nothing but bitter disappointment. I began to make myself a more fortunate garden: one that had never lived. I used lanterns and stones.

“Then hope came back one day in a form I had not considered. One morning, I found washed up on the bank of the brook a pile of threads. It had at first no meaning to me, but I saved it notwithstanding and used it in my lifeless garden. That night you came to me empty handed. I then recalled that you had been empty handed the night before too. And the next morning, more threads washed up. I used them too. I puzzled over you for many days, all the while collecting and using your threads. One day, I realized what you were. You were a single living soul among the dead. You alone of the town believed in the gods. At first you seemed to good to be true, but I repeated and dissected the syllogism over and over until I knew I was right. For if you did not believe in the gods, why would you rebel against them? And I knew that you rebelled, because you held back the threads, but you did not use them for yourself. And when you came empty handed and spoke of the grace of the gods, I saw hypocrisy all over your face. But I did not know what to do, for I had failed before in talking. So for a long time I watched you and collected your threads.

“Then one day, I remembered who I used to be. I had been Priest for so long, it seemed, that I had forgotten Boy.

“So one night, after you had come to me, I changed my appearance – for I knew you would be the last one that night – and met you. Why you hesitated outside my door, I do not know. Is it given to men to know such things? But even then, I knew not what to do. I warned you, but you did not heed my warnings. I only hoped I could get through to you before it was too late.

“I failed. The plague came, and I knew you were the cause. I spent my nights then administering to the sick, but I could do nothing. I watched you, and as long as you seemed unharmed I entertained the vain hope that I was wrong. Perhaps you were not the cause.

“But then the mayor came to me and said something must be done. And I knew what must be done. The offender must die. The Priest and the Boy in me warred, but neither gained an upper hand. I finally settled on drawing a lot, in case I was still mistaken. But I wasn’t.

“Then the Boy won the battle. I had to help you, my one living rose, to escape. And so I did. And now look. I have failed. The gods no know thwarting. I have failed.”

He stood silent for a long while, ripping a leaf into infinitesimal bits. Then he turned around to look at Aida. She was dead.

He walked over to her. “You belong in your own world,” he said. He picked her up and carried her back through the courtyard and around. Then he set her down and began to dig a grave.

Just before sunset, the grave was ready. He bent over her and wiped the crusty browning blood carefully off her face with the heels of his thumbs. Then he buried her. After he was done, he retraced his steps to the courtyard. Faceless, he walked through and up the steps. He passed the statue and walked through the strange forest and came to the sea.

Then he walked slowly down to the beach and walked out to the edge of a porous rock full of little tide pools. He sat down, put his chin on his fist, and waited for the tide to come as he watched the sunset.

…epilogue…

Things are different now. That village was destroyed in a fire, and that way of life has passed out of time and mind. The landscape has changed, and the inhabitants have changed. Now there is a hill with a house on it, and a driveway full of old cars. The swamp has been declared a wetland, but it is only a drop compared to the former swamp.

Two young people, a boy and a girl who think they are a man and a lady, are walking through the swamp holding hands. They are taking care not to get too wet.

They leave the swamp and walk a little into the forest. Presently, they come upon a tall chain-link fence among the trees. There is a way around, says the boy, so they go around and in. What is it, says the girl. It’s an old tennis court, says the boy. There is a large tree growing up through the pavement in the corner.

The boy prepares to move on, but the girl says wait. The boy misunderstands and hugs her. How do you know it’s a tennis court, she asks. There’s the net, he says. How old is it, she asks. He does not know.

She asks no more, but they stand there in a silent embrace. The girl puts her head on his chest and watches the far end of the tennis court. He is too busy playing with the hairs at the back of her neck to notice.

The walls change slowly to stone and the ground to cobblestones. An arch appears in the far end. Through the arch the girl can see a statue of a mermaid, then a forest of some strange tree, then beyond that the sea. On the beach she sees a boy sitting on a rock. The tide is rising as the sun sets. Suddenly, the boy turns his head and looks at the girl. Their eyes meet.

Then the vision fades, and it is just the girl and her young man in an old tennis court at dusk.

You are ready to go, he says.

Yes, she replies.

Fin

When she woke up it was past noon. She didn’t feel as refreshed as she would like to; her lungs and her knees and her ankles still hurt from too much running. The backs of her knees were itchy. She blinked and sat up and looked around. She lay exactly where she had fallen that morning, in the entrance to a courtyard. The ground was cobbled stone, but grasses grew in the cracks and in the corner a young tree had displaced several stones. At the far end of the courtyard there were steps leading up to an arch, through which Aida could see an armless statue covered with vines and surrounded by forest.

The boy was sitting on the side of the arch. Aida got up and walked over to where he was and sat down next to him. She reached down to scratch the backs of her knees. The boy was whittling a stick.

“Where are we?” asked Aida.

He looked vaguely up at her. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You don’t?” For some reason Aida had thought he was omniscient, about the forest, at any rate. She stretched her legs out to help her knees and looked at the boy. He was still wearing the fine priest’s robe, but it was torn and covered with mud, and all the accoutrements were gone. The mask was gone too. “How did you get them?” she asked.

He looked at the stick he was whittling and the knife he was whittling with. “I found them,” he said.

“No,” said Aida pulling her right leg back up to massage her ankle.  It hurt too. “I mean the clothes and the mask.”

“They are mine,” he said.

“But how did they get to be yours?”
“They belong to me.” He was looking down at his whittling, and Aida could not tell from his voice whether he was in a dim or an intelligent phase.

“Just so you could pretend to be the priest?”

He looked up at her and met her eyes. “I do not pretend,” he said.

“But last night…” said Aida.

“I pretend nothing,” said the boy.

“You mean—“ said Aida and moved away from the boy a little.

“I am the priest. The priest is I,” he said simply and went back to his whittling.

Aida had never before gotten such a straight statement out of him, and now she did not know whether to believe it. “But the priest is old.”

“You know this to be true?”

Aida paused. No, she didn’t know it to be true. She had assumed it.

“You should do something with your knee,” he said at length.

Aida looked and saw that the back of her left knee was swollen. She tried to bend it but it would not bend. The boy watched, then dropped his whittling. He put his face in his hands and his head in his lap and began shaking.

“What?” said Aida.

The boy said nothing, but continued to shake, his back twitching and his shoulders convulsing.

“What? What? What?” said Aida in a high voice. She was beginning to worry. She tucked her hand under her armpit. It felt inflamed too. The boy turned his head and peeked out at her, then hid again. “What?” said Aida. Then, “Oh gods, no. I’m going to die.”

The boy nodded.

“No, no!” said Aida, shaking him, “You’re not supposed to agree with me!”
“But it’s true,” came the muffled reply.

“No!” Aida stood up, but it took a while. She stumped around the courtyard, and her knee flared in pain. “No, no, no, no. I can’t die now. I’m too young to die. Why did you rescue me? It would have at least been quick that way.”

The boy looked up at her. “Why anything?” he asked. His visage was so different than anything Aida had ever seen on him. It was so tragic and feeling that Aida stopped worrying about herself for a moment.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He closed his eyes and looked at her. “I’ve failed,” he said.

There was no answering this. Aida watched his eyeballs roll back and forth underneath his eyelids. His fingers searched for his whittling, and when he found it he began to carve, still staring straight ahead with his eyes closed. Aida shifted her weight to the less painful leg and watched him.

Finally, he spoke. “It hurts a lot.”

Aida nodded. “And my—under my arm.”

“I guess we should do something about it.”

“I suppose.”

He opened his eyes and set down his carving. “Come, come,” he said and stood up. But it no longer sounded cheerful and half-witted. It was resigned.

This change in the boy scared Aida more than anything else he had done, but it wasn’t the boy himself that scared her, it was the way he reacted to the situation. If he could no longer be cheerful, this must truly be the end.

He came toward her and took her hand gently. She realized she couldn’t put her arm straight down at her side. She felt her stomach plunge. He led her slowly up the steps and through the arch. They passed the statue, which seemed to have been of a woman with the bottom of a trout instead of legs, and walked through the forest. There were stone blocks scattered about, and the forest was rich with afternoon light.

A strange sound met Aida’s ears. At first she thought it was wind, but then it seemed to roaring to be wind. She sniffed in. Maybe it smelled funny too, but she couldn’t tell because her sense of smell was connected to her ability to reason, which was falling away into a pit of fear. She breathed in deeply through her mouth. It certainly tasted different. “Can we stop? She asked, and sneezed.

He looked at her, and she was struck by the tragedy of his bearing. It seemed that he was the one facing death, not she. “A little further?” he asked. He sounded like he was trying to use his cheerful dim voice. It was a strangled sound.

“No,” said Aida. She felt like she had been stung behind both her knees. It hurt to walk, and her arm hurt from holding the boy’s hand. She let go and sat down. She leaned against a tree and closed her eyes. She rubbed her knee with her hands, but it did not help. It only hurt her arm more. She moaned and wondered why making noise seemed to help pain.

“I wanted you to come a little bit further,” said the boy.

“I can’t.”

“I know. I’ll be back.”

Aida heard him walk away. Then all she could hear was the unfamiliar roar, and the cry of some bird she had never heard before. She wondered a little about the sounds and where the boy had gone, but she mostly thought about her knees and her armpits. She opened her eyes and looked at her knees. They were so obviously swollen. Little red dots were appearing on her arms, too, especially near the wrists. She pushed her swollen knee gently and felt fluid move. ‘That’s nasty’, she thought. Why did it have to be nasty?

She did not feel like she was dying. She felt vibrantly and painfully alive. She felt more alive than she ever had before. She stared into the forest, watching the trees and the ground.

The boy returned. His hands were cupped. “Close your eyes and hold out your hands,” he said. It was almost his normal voice.

Aida closed her eyes and held out her hands. Something cool and gritty plopped into her hands. She opened her eyes. It was light brown wet sand. “Sand?” she asked.

His eyes sparkled, and he clapped his sandy fingertips. “From the ocean.”

“What’s an ocean?”

His face fell. He looked at her blankly.

Aida felt like she was asking a stupid question.

Finally, he spoke again. “I wanted you to see it.”

Aida nodded. But she couldn’t get up again. She was too tired, and she didn’t want to move her knees. So she closed her eyes again and let the wet sand fall out of her hands. She imagined being in a burning building. It seemed like the flames were licking at her knees and her arms. Then she thought about a blacksmith, pounding and pounding his red hot hammer up and down on her knees and ankles and shoulders and elbows.

When she opened her eyes again, the boy was still standing there watching her, his head tipped to one side.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Watching you.”

“Who are you?”
His head was still tipped, and a wry smile began to spread. “I’m Boy,” he said in a distant voice, “that’s what they call me. Boy.”

Aida wiped her nose on her shoulder and looked at him. “Don’t play dumb,” she said.

He turned from her and walked a few paces away.

“Why do you pretend?”

“I do not pretend,” he said to a tree.

Aida watched him blandly. Was it really worth it to spend her last moments on this boy?

The boy reached up and picked a leaf off the tree. He began tearing it into little tiny pieces and letting the pieces float down to the ground. “That’s what they called me,” he said again, “Boy.” The leaf was all gone now, and he picked another.

“I didn’t belong. I came from nowhere and no one wanted me. I never spoke. They thought I was mute.” He stopped talking and looked over his shoulder at Aida.

She looked impassively back.

He looked away and continued shredding his leaf. One of the strange white birds flapped over. Aida gently massaged her swellings and moaned.

The boy did not notice. He was still dissecting leaves meditatively.

Aida whimpered.

“So I joined a family of gardeners. They called me Boy, because I never gave them anything better to call me. I loved life, and I loved watching things grow. But whatever we grew always got uprooted. Whatever lived had to die. It seemed to me that I could do something worth more. There seemed to me to be no purpose in what I was doing; I wanted to do something lasting.

“So I started going to the priest and talking to him. Where I had been a gardener of plants, he was a gardener of souls. This seemed to have so much more profit. So I went to the priest and learned from him what he did. He taught me many skills and let me help him often, but he kept from me one secret. He would not tell me where he went at night, for he did not actually live in his house.”

The boy stopped his soliloquy suddenly, as if he had woken up from a dream. He turned around and looked at Aida, who was sniffling and groaning. “Just a minute,” he said to her. He wandered off, and Aida watched him go with little curiosity. He was finally talking like a sane person, and she found she was not really interested. She was only interested in relief from the awful tightness and itchiness behind her knees.

Presently, the boy came back with a handful of something. “Here,” he said.

He gave her a handful of berries, and she ate it. She didn’t know what the point of the berries was; there was hardly enough substance for a meal, and they didn’t taste very good. But presently, she began to grow sleepy. ‘Oh,’ she thought, ‘he’s killing me. Oh well.’ After a while she fell asleep.

“Your breakfast, miss.”

Aida opened her eyes and sat up. Suddenly, it all came back to her. Her family was dead. She was imprisoned.

The door opened, and a bowl came in. The door shut. Aida took the bowl and surveyed its contents. It was some sort of bland-looking grain mash, but Aida realized she was starving. She lifted the bowl up to her mouth and began to eat. As she ate, she peered over the edge of her bowl and observed her room.

If she had been living there, it would have been too small. But for one or two days she couldn’t complain. It was round, and the ceilings were fairly high. High enough that Aida could not reach the band of barred windows at the top of the wall. The way the roof seemed to be raised , and the sunlight came in squares, gave Aida the feeling of being in some cooking apparatus.

The room itself was empty, and the floor was made of stones. The walls were peeling, and there were cobwebs attaching the walls and floors. Apparently the room was not new.

Aida finished her breakfast and realized with a sigh that she had a very long day ahead of her. Yet, she by no means wanted to wish it away. She shoved the bowl against the door and considered what to do. The logical thing seemed to be to plan an escape. So. There were two exits to the room: the door and the windows. The door was guarded and she couldn’t reach the windows. ‘What are my assets?’ thought Aida. The room was bare; nothing there. So she was limited to what she had on her person. That was undergarments, a tunic, and a belt. She would rather make the escape clothed if at all possible, but it would be better to come out alive if it came to that. She also had the bowl.

Aida took off her belt. Obviously, she couldn’t escape now, but there was no harm in trying some things.

Her belt was essentially a rope, about an arm-span long. If she could somehow get it tied around the window bars, she could climb up. Then what? She would climb first and go from there. Rather, she would get the rope up there first, then climb, then decide.

What she needed to do was tie something to the rope that would fit through the bars sideways but not frontways. The only other thing in the room was the bowl. It was decidedly too small. But there was no way she could throw the rope up, and around a bar and have it come back down. There was just no way. So Aida sighed and turned her attention to the door. She lifted up her tunic and tied the belt on underneath. Sometimes they took ropes away from prisoners, and there was no reason to unnecessarily lose resources.

The door. She assumed it was locked, but it would be stupid to make that assumption and not try it. She jiggled the handle and shoved. It was bolted.

“Do you want something, miss?” came a voice.

It was guarded too. Aida thought quickly. She had to make a request, or he would know she was checking escape routes. But she didn’t want to give him back the bowl. “Yes, please,” she said, “I have to go.” It was true. She had to get out of there.

“Sorry miss, after lunch,” he called back.

After lunch. Aida gulped. They really didn’t trust her.

Suddenly, Aida was furious. She was furious with the people, and furious with the gods. She kicked the door. “It’s not fair!” she yelled.

“Sorry, miss, just doing my job.”

“Yeah right, sorry,” muttered Aida, “They don’t care. They just want me so I can fix their problems. They’re only sorry because I’m a nuisance. Why me?” she kicked the door again. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. Let me out!” she yelled.

The guard gave up on replying.

Aida took off her belt and tied a knot at the end. Then she started swinging it at the windows. Even though she knew it was futile.

After a while, she calmed down. The guard had said he would let her out after lunch. She could perhaps escape then. Surely she wouldn’t be that closely guarded. She sighed. Escaping was hard. She supposed she would head for the forest and try to follow the brook to the garden. But that would be so obvious. There was no way she was going to get out of this alive. She sat down against the wall and picked up the bowl. A bowl and a rope. Who in the world has to escape using only a bowl and a rope? She flung the bowl across the room and it shattered on the wall. Pieces of bowl and a rope. How useless.

Presently the door unlocked and opened. A cautious man poked his head in. “Your lunch,” he said. “Can I have the bowl from…” he looked at the shards on the floor and stopped talking. He handed in another bowl and silently shut the door.

Aida looked at the bowl. It seemed to be exactly the same stuff as she had for breakfast. She poked at the contents with her finger. Somehow the monotony of meals brought cold unforgiving reality with it. Aida was suddenly overwhelmed with despair. How had she let this happen? Was her mistake in letting the boy discover her? Was it in going to his garden? Was it in leaving his garden? Whatever it was, it seemed that if she hadn’t met the boy she would still be free right now. She closed her eyes and shoved the bowl away from her. It was chicken feed. Oh, chickens. So that is what happens when you tease the gods. You don’t get adventure, you get demoted a level.

Aida found herself in a profound state of apathy. There was nothing she could do. Absolutely nothing. She was doomed to die at sunrise or sometime tomorrow, and there was no use trying to escape when the whole town vindictively wanted her dead. Why bother even trying?

The door of her imprisonment opened slowly, and a sheepish nose poked in. “Miss?”

“What,” said Aida.

“You, uh, need to,” the head poked all the way in and paused.

It was another man; they had apparently switched the guard.

Aida waited for a moment, watching his eyes avoid her. Then she made up her mind. “Yes!” she yelled and jumped up and ran at him. She tried to bowl him over with her head and run past, but he caught her by the shoulders and held her from him.

“Don’t try anything,” he warned her dangerously.

Aida churned her feet against the ground uselessly, then gave up. She looked sullenly at the man.

The man was back in comfortable territory now, and he marched her like a naughty child to the nearest house.

The rest of the day dragged by slowly. Aida knew she had wasted her last opportunity of escape when she tried to bowl past the guard. She did not want to die, but she couldn’t help being incredibly bored. She tried sleeping and she tried playing games with herself, but to no avail. She was bored, and underneath her boredom there was a terrible gnawing feeling of dread.

As evening approached, and the squares of sun coming through the windows began to migrate up the wall, the gnawing feeling ate up the boredom. Aida paced restlessly back and forth in her little room, alternating rapidly between bitter gloom and wild schemes. The room only took about four paces to cross. Finally, the last square of sunlight slid across the ceiling and oozed out the window and was gone.

Aida sat wearily against the wall and thought to herself sadly, ‘The End.’ Then she closed her eyes and let all the bleak and morbid feelings run over her. For the first time, too, she was scared. Little tears came unbidden and dropped off the end of her nose. Why?

It was getting cold. Bitter shivers pulsed up and down her back, paralyzing her limbs and her will and her intellect. The time for moving and wanting and thinking was over for Aida. It was better that way. Like an animal, she waited for dawn.

When the door opened, Aida sat staring at the wall in front of her and ignored it. Whoever opened the door did not come in, but left the door wide open. Aida sat with glassy eyes, feeling the open door and doing nothing.

“You are resigned?”

Aida’s head snapped toward the door, hearing the boy’s voice. In the doorway stood the priest. He was still wearing his iridescent robe and his silver necklace. Aida jumped to her feet in confusion.

“Come, come,” said the priest, clapping his fingertips, “we must go.”

Aida held on to the wall and tried to figure out some way for the sight in front of her to make sense.

“You are bewildered,” the voice twinkled but the face remained impassive. The priest reached up and pulled his chin down.  His face stretched and sagged, and the eyeholes moved down to reveal pale cheeks. “We go,” he said, and let his mask snap back into place. He stretched out his hand, and Aida stretched out hers. Then Aida’s hand was caught in the familiar grasp, and they were running.

They ran through the village to the forest and into the forest. “The mask….how…why?” Aida gasped, and the boy gasped back, “No time now!”

They were running faster than they had ever before, and the dark forest shapes went by in a blur. Aida could hardly feel the ground beneath her feet.

“The garden?”

“No.”

“Why are we running so fast?”

“To get as far away as possible before they find out.”

They ran and ran, and Aida could not help watching the ground run by under her feet. It made her dizzy. It was much easier to run with the boy dragging her, but her legs were still aching.

“Can we stop?”

“No. Must keep going!”

Aida made her legs keep going, and to her surprise they did.

“Where—“

“No!”

Presently, the floor of the forest began to slope down, and the character of the ground changed. Where before there had been dead leaves and branches and other innocent things, now there were living vines. Aida felt them crunching beneath her feet and knew she would trip on one sooner or later. It smelled different, too, and the ground was getting softer.

Aida began to hesitate, and the boy was forced to slow down. Aida tripped on something and went flying. She hardly had time to land before the boy dragged her back to her feet and kept going.

The ground was mud now, and they slowed to a walk. Every step they took their feet went in, half a foot, and Aida tried to step in the middle of the large clumps of grass to avoid sinking. The boy took no such care, but left great gaping tracks.

Something jumped up from the grasses. Aida screamed and jumped instinctively to the boy’s side.

“Just a fawn,” said the boy, and after Aida stopped trembling they continued.

The grasses were waist high now, and it was impossible to see the ground. Aida had given up watching her step, and her legs were caked with mud up to the knees.

Suddenly, the boy stumbled downward and dragged Aida after him into water. It was thigh deep swamp water, with things growing on top, and bugs bugging around. Several mosquitoes bit Aida. She tried to scramble back onto the bank, but the boy urged her forward. “It won’t get too deep to walk,” he said, which was small comfort to Aida.

So they waded through the swamp, shoving plants and floating things out of their way with their hands.

The swamp bottom was squelchy and unpredictable, but the boy was right. It never got too deep. Trees grew on little islands and blocked out most of the moonlight with their foliage. But as long as Aida’s hand was safe in the boy’s, she preferred not to know what she was walking through. She wanted to break the silence, though. “Why—“ she began, but she was cut off when she stepped suddenly onto a soft spot and her foot sunk in. She staggered forward and put her hand out to stop herself. It landed in the boy’s other hand, and he pulled her out of the sinkhole.  After that they veered off to the right.

They sloshed through the swamp for hours, not stopping, not talking, collecting grime, and getting waterlogged. Finally, they turned to the left, and there was a bank. Not a deceiving bank that crumbled into the swamp when they touched it, nor yet an island for a twisted swamp tree, but a real bank. They climbed out dripping and exhausted. Aida flopped down on her back, breathing heavily, but the boy would not allow her to rest.

“Come, come,” he said shortly but still cheerily, and pulled her back to her feet.

They were back in dry forest now. It was less dense than the first forest, and the trees were of a different sort. The air was beginning to turn grey, and Aida could see something in the trees ahead. They stumbled onto what appeared to be the ruins of an old castle just as the sun began to rise. There was a hole in the high grey wall, and they climbed through into a courtyard. Aida fell forward without wonder or curiosity. All she wanted was sleep, and she got it immediately.

She heard the meeting before long. It did not sound to her like a meeting of humans.  She heard a short high-pitched sound, followed by a low murmuring hubbub. It sounded like coyotes.

When she came out of the forest, she was behind a throng of people. They were all facing a great orange bonfire, and mediating between the people and the fire, the priest sat cross-legged on a platform. He was wearing an iridescent robe, which winked and shimmered in the firelight. It seemed to be of finer cloth than usual. Around his neck he wore a necklace of silver odds and ends, and in his lap he held the sticks. In front of him stood a woman, his interpreter.

A few people in the crowd turned around to look at Aida when she arrived, but most didn’t notice. They were all staring at the priest with bug eyes, murmuring and whispering.

The priest held up his hands for silence. The crowd hushed, but Aida could still feel them trembling. She suddenly noticed that the crowd was rather small for an entire village. The priest picked up the sticks. Aida gulped. She had missed the preliminaries; it was the final round. The priest dropped the sticks onto the platform, and bent over to read them.

Everyone held their breath. Aida had seen a lot drawn a few times before, but never for a really serious matter. She had always wondered how the priest read the sticks. Some people thought he just made them up. But Aida didn’t think so. Why would he puzzle over them if he made them up? If he made them up, he would come with an opinion.

Aida found she was holding her breath too. She let it out as quietly as she could. The priest looked up. She held her breath.

The priest looked at her. Then he leaned forward and whispered to the interpreter. “Aida Weaversdaughter,” she said in a clear high-pitched voice. Everyone else breathed a sigh of relief and turned to look at her.

Aida froze. Her head was screaming at her to run, but her feet would not move. It was like a terrible awful dream. Then the dream shattered. Energy surged to her legs, and she turned and ran. She dashed through the forest, as fast as she could. She had none of the agility of the boy, but she had his speed tonight.

She heard crashing and yelling and she knew that they were coming after her. If she could get far enough ahead, she would be alright. She would find the boy’s garden and hide there. The only problem was, she gasped for breath, she had no stamina. Somehow running was easier when the boy had her hand and was dragging her along. Now, her legs burned and trees moved into her path. She darted around one tree, only to find herself pulled up short by another, and she would have to skitter around that.  Actually, it wasn’t so much her legs that were out of practice, it was her lungs. They had that excruciating extra clean feeling, and she knew she would have to stop for a breath soon.  But she could still hear them crashing about behind her.

She stumbled over a tree root, but kept going. Her head was beginning to pound, and the forest was getting thicker. She found she had to concentrate hard just to keep moving. And there was fog starting to gather in the already dark forest. And she could still hear them coming. How could they still be coming?

The fog was getting thicker, and her ears started buzzing. And her saliva tasted bad. And she could hardly keep her legs moving. Her breath was coming in gasps. She ran into a tree. She staggered back, tottered, and righted herself. She kept running. She ran into another tree, but she went right through it. Oh. No. That was not a tree. It was a piece of forehead hanging down in front of her hair. Hair hanging in front of her forehead. There was a bush on the ground. She ran through it and came out dragging a piece of it. And they were still chasing her. How could they be, still? But she could hear them. There was another tree right in her way. Go left. No, go right. She couldn’t make up her mind. They were almost upon her. She hit the tree and toppled over. Someone grabbed her ankle and started dragging her off. “Stop!” She screamed. “Stay out of this! This is none of your business! None of your business!”

The fog got suddenly completely black.

When Aida opened her eyes, she was lying on the forest floor, looking up at a tree. There was no fog, no one was dragging her, and she was all alone. She took this all slowly in, then sat up. It was night, but there was enough light to see that the fog had been imagination.

Her head pounded slowly. ‘I wonder where I am,’ she thought. The only thing she felt was a horrible nausea. She leaned over and threw up. Then she stood up and steadied herself against the tree and looked the other way.

“At least,” she said, “I’m alive. And I’m free.” That was a relief.

She chose a direction at random and set off. Now that her stomach didn’t hurt, she felt the pain in her legs.

She continued like this, walking slowly and painfully for some time. Suddenly, she saw lights up ahead. She was filled with delicious hope. She had found the garden!

She began to run again, stumbling toward the lights. They were getting closer and closer. She wept for joy.

Then something went wrong. There were voices. And footsteps. And people. But it was too late. Aida ran shaking and weeping into the arms of her pursuers.

There was a lady combing her hair with her fingers. And she was lying on a bed with her face in a wet pillow.

“It’s all right. It won’t hurt. No one is accusing you. You’ll be all right. You couldn’t have known…” The lady was saying meaningless words in a soft smooth voice.

Aida pushed her hand away and rolled over. She sat up and looked about. She was in someone’s house, but she didn’t recognize the lady. The room was small but cozy, and there were cheerful patterns painted on the wall. The room was bare except for the bed, a desk with a lamp, and a chest. There was also a curtained window.

Aida looked at the lady.

“Would you like to wash your face?” she asked kindly.

Aida felt her face. It was wet and dirty. So was the pillow. Aida felt disgusted. She had been playing the fool. She nodded.

The lady stood up and left the room. Aida had a sudden impulse to run to the window and try to go through it, but she restrained herself. That would be foolish.

The lady came back with a wet cloth, which she gave Aida. Aida took it and scrubbed her face. Then she handed it silently back.

“Will you be all right?” asked the lady.

Aida looked at her and raised the corner of her lip scornfully.

“You can’t stay here tonight,” said the lady, “I’m sorry—I’m sure you understand—we can’t trust you.” She said it kindly.

Aida looked at her. Her soothing had been nonsense. They were accusing her, everything would not be all right, and it would hurt.

The lady approached Aida and firmly took her hand. Aida tried in vain to resist. The lady pulled her up and led her out of the room.

They passed through the rest of the house and went out the front door, down the steps, out of the yard, and into the town.

They went to the priest’s house. Behind his house there was another hut which Aida had never noticed before. Maybe it had never been there before.

A man was guarding the door. With his beard and his sympathetic look, he looked fatherly, but Aida knew that inside he was as cold toward her as the rest.

They shoved her in and shut the door. “You have two days,” said the lady, just before the latch clicked.

“Two days,” said Aida. “Huh.” Then she was overwhelmed with tiredness, and she crumpled to the floor and fell immediately asleep.

long fingers of trees

poking our eyes, and beetles—

near love, said Yvain

–

castle disappeared—

haunted again with feeling

of willows thrown off

–

scarlet dress, pale hands

tending my wounds. here she comes.

mm. this tea smells good.

–

Nick accused me of being an obscurist. Yeah. Maybe. With the exception of Yvain, which is obvious, is it plain to anyone who the other two are about? And I’ll give you a hint – they aren’t about Merlin or Arthur.

Part I Part II Part III Part IV

She woke up suddenly and sat bolt upright. The first thing she noticed was a bad, dry, morning taste in her mouth. Then she felt a faint but rhythmic pulse in the earth. Then she heard someone singing. It was the same crooning off key voice of the night before. She strained her ears to catch what he was singing. He seemed to be walking back and forth, or else to be alternating between soft and loud.

“…guilt…self pity…”

Aida got up. She wondered who he was, and what he had done that he was singing about guilt and self pity. She smoothed out her tunic and crept to the opening of the room.

As soon as she peered out, the boy stopped singing and looked in her direction. At first Aida thought he saw her, but then it seemed just to be coincidence. It appeared he had just stopped to ponder something, and just happened to ponder it staring in Aida’s direction. Presently, he continued his business. He did not continue singing.

His business consisted of raking the threads about, probably into a fresh pattern. Aida wondered if the threads got dirty. He looked so odd and idyllic, raking around in the weird green morning light. Aida wondered for a moment if he were even human. It seemed that if he pulled up his long brown pant legs he would reveal hooves.

After a while, Aida grew uncomfortable watching him. He hadn’t noticed her at first, but he would be bound to eventually. She went back to her bed and sat down on it. There wasn’t really anything for her to do today. She could go back to her house, but it would do no good. She didn’t really want to know anyway. As long as she stayed here she could pretend she was on holiday. She could save the nightmare until she got desensitized.

She lay down. The ceiling was so nice and green, with little timid rays of sun coming in the cracks. In the corner there was one red leaf. Odd. It shouldn’t be fall yet. Was it really fall already? As she watched, the ceiling swayed, probably from a gust above. The single red leaf came fluttering down. Really? What had happened to summer?

“So tired, so tired,” she heard outside her door. She closed her eyes in case he came in. He didn’t. “But what is she tired of?” He said, and walked away. That is, Aida thought he walked away. But she didn’t open her eyes, just in case he was out there still, watching her.

Finally, she couldn’t stand it. She rolled over, and faked a grandiose yawn. Then she got out of bed, nonchalantly humming a bit. She left her room, but the boy was nowhere in sight. She crossed the bridge, and looked around for him. He materialized out of the wood on the far side of the garden.

“Goodmorning, goodmorning!” He called cheerfully.

“Good morning,” said Aida.

There was a long pause, and Aida realized she was hungry.

“Do you like what I have done today?” He asked.

Nothing about food. “It’s lovely.”

“No, look,” he said.

Aida was beginning to dread those words. When he said look she usually didn’t want to see. Reluctantly, she looked.

This morning, the garden was in a circular geometric pattern. When Aida looked closely, she realized the pattern was orbiting around something. “May I?” she asked.

He nodded.

She walked gingerly through the pattern to the center. It was a piece of paper, torn at the top and crinkly. It looked like it had gotten wet. She picked it up and read:

“A meeting of the township is called at sundown this evening.”

She felt a cold chill go down her spine. The priest seldom lost an argument. The paper fell from her fingers and landed in a patch of red. She did not fix it.

The boy was clapping his hands. Aida turned to glare at him fiercely. What was he so happy about? She walked out of the garden the opposite direction. She stood at the edge and watched as the boy went in and carefully restored the paper to its place. When he was done, he joined her. “Well,?” he asked.

“Well what?” replied Aida crossly. He was beginning to wear on her.

He smiled. “Boy has business to attend to today. You do not leave the garden. It is dangerous for pretty girls to go alone. Do not go tonight.”

Aida was taken aback. She had assumed that he wanted her to go. But he was really warning her away. She didn’t understand him at all. And it creeped her out how he talked about himself in the third person. That was partly what made him seem half-witted. And now he had warned her against a town meeting tonight. No, he had forbidden her. What business of his was it if she went?

She had to admit, even to herself, that before he had said don’t go she had had every intention of not going. But the last thing she wanted was to be ordered around by the boy. What was he trying to do, anyway? Keep her away from her own life? It was her town. She too had lost a family in the plague.

The boy was looking at her quizzically. “What?” she snapped.

“You are hungry?” He repeated.

Oh. Hungry. Starving, actually. “Yes, a little,” said Aida.

“Boy will bring you food later,” he said and smiled graciously as if he had offered her half the kingdom. He waved to her and left.

“Later,” muttered Aida. “Some way to treat a guest.”

She now had the whole day stretched out before her, with nothing to do until sunset. At first she idled, sitting on the bridge and dipping her toes into the brook. Then she amused herself by mixing up the garden. Then she wandered around the perimeter. Presently, she grew sleepy. She laid down on the mossy bank of the brook and fell asleep.

She awoke to water dropping on her neck. She rubbed it sleepily away and opened up her eyes. The boy was sitting next to her, dipping his fingers in the brook, presumably preparing to drip more water on her.

Aida sat quickly up and shook out her hair.

“You are hungry?” the boy said.

Aida nodded.

This time, he procured lunch in two bowls. It seemed to be a brown salad. It looked like he had raked up the forest floor and put it in a bowl. Aida was reluctant to taste it, but she did, and it was good. If it were just forest floor, there were some wonderful trees in the forest. It was fresh and crisp and somehow spicy. Aida ate with abandon.

Presently, the boy got up, took Aida’s bowl, and left. Aida saw he left a different way than he had before, and took note.

After he left, the afternoon took on a new character. No longer was it fresh and idyllic. It got hot, and the garden grew stuffy. Aida found that putting her feet in the brook helped little. And she was restless as well. She decided to look for the way out.

First she tried the exit he had most recently taken. It proved to be the entrance to a pantry. There were low shelves with wooden dishes and utensils, and a locked chest. At first Aida was alarmed, because she had seen the boy enter but not exit the pantry. Was he still inside, hiding somewhere? A moment later she was relieved to discover an exit on the other side. This probably led into the forest. Aida, however, was not ready to go into the forest yet. She wanted to explore the boy’s whole domain first.

She left the pantry and returned to the garden. She explored the perimeter again, this time more carefully. She discovered two more rooms. One of them was another bedroom. The other was empty, but had a wooden board on the floor. Aida assumed it was a trap door and tried to lift it, but it was too heavy for her. She also found the regular exit, which she termed the ‘front door’.

After she had satisfied herself there were no more rooms, she went to the pantry again. She tried to open the locked chest, but it was impossible. Then she left out the pantry door.

The surest way to get out of the forest was to find the brook and follow it upstream. So Aida set out in the direction in which she thought the brook lay. After walking straight for some time, though, it seemed she had judged wrong. So she veered to her left and kept walking. Part of her was afraid of getting lost, but the other part said pah, she was in no hurry. So she kept wandering. Presently, the ground began to slope down. Aida knew this could not be right. She wanted to be going uphill if anything. So she reversed directions and trudged back the way she came. She wondered why she had not taken the brook out all the way. She had noticed the brook in the garden, but she had failed to notice how it got there.

As the afternoon wore on, Aida became more and more frustrated with herself for not following the brook to begin with. She was hot, tired, hungry, and the half of her that worried about being lost was steadily eating up the optimistic half. She also wondered if the boy had returned to his garden and found her missing. If he had, would he look for her? Or would he not even care?

The light in the forest was changing, and the air became cool. Aida knew it was nearly sundown. Suddenly, she heard the sound of water. She ran toward it, realizing she was thirsty as well as lost. She reached the brook, knelt down, and drank deeply. Then she began to follow it upstream. She had no idea how far downstream she was, but at least now she had a road and a constant water supply.

It was getting late. The little animals that Aida feared so much were pursuing their phaeocrous activities, and Aida and the creatures kept mutually startling each other.

Presently, Aida realized she was in familiar territory. This gave her great relief and fresh strength, but she also now had time to think of what was ahead. She figured she knew part of what would happen at the meeting. It would probably already be underway when she arrived. They would be casting lots. But the outcome of that, and what would happen afterward, Aida did not know. She was not sure she wanted to know.

In reading some of the fairy tales of both the Grimms, Anderson, and various others, one salient feature of a great many of them is this concept of the Forbidden Fruit. A Forbidden Fruit is something irresistibly desirable for little better reason than that it is forbidden. It isn’t an impulse based in the usual human desires, psychological, physical, or otherwise, but simply an impulse to do something because it’s off limits.

It’s been often noted that every sin distorts something formerly good. C. S. Lewis talks about it in terms of “bent” things. This may be an apt observation for the present, but there is something fundamentally wrong about the notion. The root of all sin started with one sin that was totally inexplicable. Nobody could possibly explain the psychology behind it – why does Adam want the apple so much? We can rationalize this by calling it Adam’s desire to test God or Adam’s pride, but we have to keep in mind that those are actually the excuses the devil gave Adam. It was the devil, not Scripture, that projected the motives of pride and arrogance onto Adam. To the best of my knowledge, nowhere does Scripture tell us these were the real motives. Scripture simply tells us that Adam saw that it was good to eat. And he ate it.

But why? Why do we always want whatever is off limits? Every person does. The temptation to steal cookies from the jar was not that great until Billy’s Mom actually said, “Now, Billy, don’t steal any cookies from the jar.” Now it’s all he can think about. And he does it. It’s the most fundamental of sinful, human desires. It trumps all others in origin and chronology. Perhaps this is where we mimic the devil the most. At the root of it all is a totally arbitrary, formless, meaningless, exuberant, uncommunicable need to disobey. (Maybe this is what makes Heath Ledger’s performance so compelling. We feel the basest, deepest sinful desire in common with him.)

This seems to be the defining trait of a fairy tale. Not all fairy tales feature it, but it shows up in an uncanny amount of them. In Anderson’s “The Garden of Paradise”, the one thing the Prince is asked not to do is kiss the Fairy under (of all things) the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the Grimms’ “The Golden Bird”, our hero has a simple task – go kiss the princess and don’t let her say goodbye to her father. Our hero has no trouble doing the first task (of course) but he just has to let her go say goodbye to the king. And, bang, things fall apart. He’s given another chance – he has to go into the building, past the guards, and capture the golden bird. Only, he must not put the bird in the golden cage but keep it in the shabby one. And we all know exactly which cage he choses. One can even see this in some of the Arabian Nights stories. Don’t look behind you. Don’t go in there at night. The off-limit sign can be ridiculously specific, and yet the characters never fail to do it.

It’s a trait of fairy tales proper and of certain of the best of parts of fantasy fiction as well. Several times Mr. Vane is told not to go into the fountain or do the bidding of Lilith in Lilith. Curdie knows the one thing he oughtn’t to do is kill the pigeon. Anodos touches the stand that says “DO NOT TOUCH” in Phantastes. And MacDonald is not the only one. What is so attractive about ringing the bell for Diggory in The Magician’s Nephew? This is the true symbol of the fall in the Chronicles – not the final scene in the garden in The Magician’s Nephew. There, Jadis offers him the apple because it will heal his mother. He has a good motive there and he refuses. But he has no good motive in Charn where the only thing that tempts him to ring the bell is simply because he was warned not to. And perhaps it’s that same horrifying, inexplicable desire for the forbidden that motivates the never-explained impulses of Frodo and Sam and Gandalf and Galadriel to wear the ring. It’s infinitely attractive, but why? There’s no better reason given than that you mustn’t wear it.

There are undoubtedly more examples to be found. The point here is broader. C. S. Lewis talks in one of my least favorite parts of An Experiment in Literary Criticism about how, in myth, “even at a first hearing [the conclusion of the plot] is felt to be inevitable.” Consequently, “Human sympathy is at a minimum. We do not project ourselves at all strongly into the characters.” Insofar as this extends to fairy tales, I think Lewis is dead wrong. It’s that inevitability we feel when we see a character approach the forbidden fruit that creates the strongest of all possible connections between us and the character. It unites us with them in one of our most basic instincts. It is simply that we cannot communicate or assign motive to this instinct that makes these characters in their folly so distant from us.

Perhaps more important than the point that fairy tales mimic a fundamental strand of reality is that reality mimics this fundamental strand of fairy tales. There are (contrary to what Lewis says about myths) comic fairy tales and tragic fairy tales. The tragic ones end with the failure of an Adam who eats the fruit. The comic ones end with the triumph of the Adam who refuses the fruit. We are living in a tragic fairy tale being rewritten in medias res into a comic one. Our reality is the reality of a fairy tale. It is a fairy tale not in that it meets the requirements of having dragons and princesses but in that we have eaten and fallen and another refused to eat  and is redeeming the story.

“So what, Helena’s sick? She’s been sick before. Haven’t we all?”

Later Aida wished her callous words unsaid. Even in her confused state, she had no excuse for saying that. Those words came back to haunt her when Helena died two days later. Never again would Aida grudgingly fix a snarl for Helena. They buried her in a piece of blotchy cloth she had woven herself.

Helena was the first, but hardly the last. It spread to her playmates, to her playmates’ playmates, and all throughout the town.

The disease had symptoms hitherto unknown. It started with little red swellings, like ant bites, especially behind the joints and on the face. But unlike ant bites, they didn’t stop swelling. They grew into huge boils, followed by a fever, and in some cases madness. Some people ran stark naked through the village—because they could not stand the feel of clothing—while others became paralyzed in their beds. It did not matter which form the disease took; they all died eventually. At first someone thought that puncturing the boils and letting the fluid drain out would save the victim, but it didn’t. It only made the victim smell rank.

During all this time, visits to the priest were somehow forgotten. Everyone was busy taking care of their own sick. So Aida suddenly had no need to conceal her crime. Her crime was everyone’s crime. This brought a certain relief of conscience, but it also made Aida restless.

One evening, she decided to go to the priest’s house. She went into the weaving shed, which hadn’t been opened in several weeks, and found a pile of threads on the floor. She scooped them up and set off.

She paused outside the priest’s door before she knocked. Someone was talking inside. First there was something indistinguishable.  Aida did not recognize the voice.

“But,” said another louder voice, “that’s barbarous. We haven’t had that for years. Nobody practices human sacrifice anymore.”

The reply was a whisper, but it carried. “Do you think the gods care what people ‘practice’?”

Aida bit her tongue. She did not want to hear what was coming next. That was the priest. The priest would win the argument.  He always did. She dropped the bundle and ran.

That’s gross. That’s wrong. I wonder who it will be.

Her knees were starting to hurt from running, and she had a feeling she should tie up the arches of her feet when she got home. She had been running a lot recently, and her feet were starting to sag.

She ran into someone. “Sorry!” She ran past. Then there was someone running alongside her.

“Always running,” he said.

Aida didn’t look at him, but she knew who he was.

“Now what are you running from?”

Aida ignored him. She could tell by his voice he was in a dim phase. No one in their right mind would sound so happy right now. She kept running.

When she got home, all the lights were out. They shouldn’t have been; it wasn’t that late. Aida ran up to the door. There was something on it.

“Don’t come in,” it read. “We’re all sick.”

Aida gulped. “No!” She tried the door, but it was locked. She threw herself against it, but it would not yield. She kicked it. She rattled the handle. Then she sat down and began to cry.

Then she remembered the boy. She looked up, and he was looking at her with a peculiar half-smirk. When she met his eyes, his face changed. The corners of his mouth dropped, and his eyes grew grave and gentle—like a cow’s. He came toward her and took her hands. He pulled her up and hugged her, and she did not resist.

The gesture of kindness in such an unexpected place sent her into fresh tears.

“There, there,” he said, rubbing her back, “I told you if you played it like a game you would lose.”

“What?” Aida pulled away, offended. “What do you mean?” She had been expecting comfort, not rebuke.

He lowered his chin and looked at her out the top of his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“No,” said Aida, “I don’t.” It was a lie. She began crying in earnest, the kind of crying that hurt. The boy hugged her again, and she cried onto his shoulder for a long time.

When she came back to her senses, the boy was singing a weird little song, based on a tonality she had never heard before.

“Pretty girl, do not cry

Come with me, by and by

In my garden spend the night

Everything will be all right.”

His voice was soft and crooning, and Aida was alarmed. She pulled away suddenly and wiped her face on her arm.

“Thanks,” she said, “I’ll be all right.”

“She’ll be all right,” he muttered to himself. Then he shook his head. “No. No you won’t. You come with me. Pretty girl will be safe in my garden. I have other business tonight.”

“I’m fine,” said Aida, stepping away.

“No, no. Pretty girls should not lie. It’s not becoming.” He tipped his head and put on a teasing smile. “Trust me, trust me,” he said. “Trust Boy. He will take care of you.”

“Why should I trust you?”

He laughed, and clapped his fingertips as if she had asked a ludicrous question. “Come, come,” he said in answer. He took her hand and began to run. She had no choice but to run after.

He led her into the forest, and through, and at a certain point he again instructed her to close her eyes. She did, and he lead her gently through to his garden.

When she opened her eyes, she saw that this time the lanterns were dim, and the garden was rearranged.

“Come, come,” he said. “I show you where to sleep.” He led her across the bridge.

On the other side, there was a small room hidden in the trees. In it was a low bed, and a pitcher of water.

“Goodnight!” he said. Then he disappeared.

Aida ducked into the room and sat down on the bed. It was lower than she expected.

She sat there for a while in great turmoil of spirit. She cleaned her nails and fiddled with her hair and tried to organize the thought particles banging around in her brain.

Her family was all dead. At least, they weren’t yet, but there was no hope of recovery. She said it to herself, but she didn’t really believe it. She would come home the next day, and it would be a joke. Or an imagination.

Only, it wouldn’t. That never happened. ‘What about me?’ thought Aida. ‘What am I going to do? Now I’m all alone in the world. When the plague runs its course, and life goes back to normal, where will I go?’ She felt pathetically wistful, thinking about life returning to normal and leaving her behind. ‘I’ll have to start all over.’

She noticed that it was quiet outside. At first, she had keenly heard the sounds of the trees and the brook, but now she heard over them, and it was empty.

She turned her attention to the room she was in. She was sitting on the bed, and the pitcher was in the corner. In the other corner was a lamp which she hadn’t noticed. Light had seemed so natural in the room that she hadn’t considered looking for a source. But now the lamp was beginning to flicker and grow dim.

The bed had fresh green sheets on it, made out of fabric finer than Aida had seen. There was a pillow, too, of softer stuff. Aida suddenly felt awfully sleepy. She got off the bed and went to put out the lamp. Then she groped in the darkness toward the bed, crawled in, and went to sleep.

Part I Part II

Little yellow millet seeds slipped through clutched fingers, and the hens cackled and clucked around Aida’s bare feet, leaving little red lines where their talons scratched her. A long sigh wheezed down, and she let all the grain fall at once. A flurry of wings erupted, and she reached into the bag for more millet. It trickled down to the chickens.

“My goodness,” said Aida suddenly, “I don’t even know who he is. He must be a west sider.” She dumped the whole bag on the crowd at her feet and stomped out of the coop, leaving the indignant chickens to shake the millet out of their feathers. She muttered to herself as she stalked to the weaving shed. “What do I do. What do I do? This disastrous oaf is going to ruin everything. How in the world do I get rid of him?” She put her hand on the handle of the door and bit the insides of her cheeks. “Creep,” she said, and went in.

She made an inordinate amount of mistakes that afternoon. Usually she was the one sorting out Helena’s endless snarls, but today Lysias had to come and help her undo an awful knot. Her father snapped at her and Helena looked smug. Aida looked at her. “If you were a dragon,” said Lysias, “fire would come out your eyes.”

“They don’t have fire out their eyes,” said Aida.

“What’s a dragon?” said Helena.

“Never mind,” said mother, “you’re about to get a snarl.” Mother didn’t even ask Aida to fix the snarl when it inevitably came.

At the end of the day, Aida had a pile of extras much larger than anyone else. She played games with the others, a game involving pebbles and a game involving sticks, but she kept losing, so she took her stick and left. She went to her enemies, the chickens, and poked them into a riot with her stick. “What would you do,” she said to them, “If you had been discovered?” No oracle came forth. “Even if I change my habits, he’s sure to find me. I don’t know whether he’s intelligent or not. But he’s assuredly curious. And curiosity killed the cat. Funny how they never say whose curiosity. And you assume it’s the cat’s. But they never said so. His curiosity is going to kill me.” She poked at the chickens again and took a deep breath of the foul air.

“Aida!” came the dreadful high pitched voice. “We’re going to the priest’s now!”

Aida ignored Helena. It was a mere formality. Helena yelled again. Then, “It’s because she’s embarrassed about her big pile.” Feet pattered off.

“No I’m not.” Aida kicked at the chickens, erupting a satisfying white flurry.

Presently, she went inside. She went to the corner of the kitchen, where there was a table full of kitchen implements. She watched her slim fingers fumble with the clasp of a dark mahogany box. It opened, and she saw her eyes reflected suddenly in the polished blade of a long square meat cleaver. She took it by the black handle and pulled it out. She looked up and down the blade and felt the edge with her thumb. She caught her eyes again and shuddered. She put the knife back, shut the box, and did the clasp rapidly. She rubbed her nose violently with her shoulder and ran out to the weaving shed.

She put her hand on the handle and paused. Her lips moved apart and together as she debated within herself. She felt grotesquely aware of her tongue hitting her teeth and running up her gums as she thought. She pushed the handle down and felt the door yield softly. She found her pile of threads and scooped it up. Little bits drifted to the floor, colorless in the dim light.

“Well,” she said, “so now what.” She closed her eyes and dropped the pile onto the floor again. Fumbling, she found the knot in her belt and tightened it. Then she bent down and grabbed manically at the threads, picking them up, stuffing them down her shirt, feeling around for any she might have dropped, all the while seeing nothing but the backs of her eyelids.

“Blast,” she said suddenly, standing up and opening her eyes. “Either hide them or take them to the priest already. You don’t have time to moon about.”

She banged out the door and began striding toward the priest’s house. She walked past several houses, making sure to stay in the shade of the trees, then turned to the left, away from the priest’s house. Past three more houses, then right, toward the woods. She nipped behind a tree, breathing hard. People were returning to their houses.  Once they were all safely tucked indoors, she continued. After a bit, the shudder she had been putting off overtook her, and she turned right again. She was almost there, wherever there was. She was only a few houses away from the clearing, and then either the priest’s house or the forest. She felt her artificial paunch and waited. Then she opened her mouth and ran her tongue over her teeth and undid the belt. She watched the threads being born, then tied her belt back on. She bent to pick up the threads, filled with the crawling feeling that she was being watched. She stood there, fingering the threads and imagining them in nice rows in the Boy’s garden. “What a creep,” she muttered, and looked around wildly. There was a large thorn-bush behind the next tree, the kind that was thick and formidable. She marched forward and put her hand gently on it. If she could get to the middle of it, no one else would think to look there. She began gingerly spreading its branches apart, precariously avoiding thorns. A moment passed with her hand in the bush and the threads under her other arm.  Her heavy lids went up and down. Then she took a step back and the branches sprang back, scratching her dry hand. Better to just go to the priest.

“You can’t stop now,” said a voice in her head. Disturbed, for she wasn’t prone to hearing voices in her head, she parted the branches again quickly and shoved the threads in. She withdrew her hand and began pulling thorns out of it. Of course she couldn’t. Not now. She marched to the priest’s house and delivered her customary lie, holding her slightly bloody hand slightly behind her back. The priest’s face looked more saggy than ever, which somehow paradoxically contributed to the birdlike look of his eyes staring out. Aida wondered suddenly if he were really there.

Once outside his house she shook herself out, shaking away thoughts of the priest and what he must think of her, and put her hands on her hips. “All right, Boy, now what?” She was met only with eerie silence, and then a cricket started up. “Well?” she said again, softly. She felt the nasty feeling of eyes once more and wheeled around. Nothing was there, and the priest’s door was firmly shut. She licked her lips and looked about. She hated the dark.

Slowly, forcing her steps to be calm and measured, she walked home. When she reached home her resolve crumbled, and she ran up the steps of her house, burst into the front room, and scampered off to her bedroom, ignoring the looks of her family.

Helena was in the bedroom, drawing something on the floor with a piece of chalk, and she looked up with an annoying triumphant little sister look when Aida burst in. Aida gave her an unprecedentedly successful withering glare and flopped onto her wavy bed, feeling her nerves being played like a hardanger. So she had put off the disaster, whatever it was, for one night. Joy.

The same thing happened every night. Horrible inward debates, the awful feeling of being watched, forced calm with panic inside, all accompanied by growing irritability. Every night she went with stomach aching trepidation, and every night nothing happened. It was far worse than something happening.

Her mounting insanity made her careless. One night she made her way to the priest unhindered, as usual. Instead of destroying the threads before her visit, she waited. Once safely done lying, and back outside, she waited to see if the boy would materialize. He did not. This made her nervous, as usual, far more nervous than his coming would have. She waited and waited. When the nerves got too much for her, she cautiously left. She kept looking behind her, but he was never there. Finally, she hastily undid her belt and let the threads out. She knelt down and scrabbled a shallow hole with her fingers in the ground, and buried them. It was a crude, obvious job, but she was in a hurry. Her nerves were getting too much for her.

She straightened up, dusted her hands off, and tried to pat down the earth to normal position with her foot. She had dirt under her fingernails.

She cast a hurried glance, and ran off.

Hardly had she run ten paces, though, when the boy popped out from behind a house into her path.

She screamed.

“You buried them,” he said in a gently accusing tone. “You buried the pretties in the ground.”

Her terror overcome by a flood of relief from madness, Aida rushed at him and grabbed his wrists. “Not a word about ‘the pretties’, you hear? And leave me alone.”

He smiled and extricated himself. “So distraught,” he said. “Calm down.

His eyes grew serious and Aida froze. He took her hand. “I’m sure you think you know what you’re doing,” he said softly.

Aida tried to pull away, but he held fast.

“It’s not a game,” he said.

Aida felt a chill go up and down her spine. This seriousness was the most unnerving thing about him. At these moments, she felt sure he was fully in possession of his senses. But what motives could a person in his right mind have to act as he did? Someone sane would not act like that without serious motives. Suddenly, Aida realized she should take her chance while he was sane. “You’ll help me?” she said.

He tipped his head on one side. “If you play it like a game,” he answered, “you’ll lose.”

Aida felt hot and cold all at once. “Who are you?” she asked.

His head was still tipped, and a smile began to spread.

“No, no!” yelled Aida, and grabbed his arm. “Snap out of it! Come back!”

But it was too late. “I’m Boy,” he said proudly. “That’s what they call me. Boy.”

Aida looked into his eyes, but they were vacuous. She sighed. He was a maniac with moments of sanity. That was it. The most dangerous combination of all.

Suddenly, he turned and fled. Aida gaped after him until he disappeared from sight. Then she walked slowly home.

When she arrived home, the lights were on. Lysias met her on the porch. “Oh there you are,” he said, “Helena is sick.”

Some storm-tossed sailors have just landed on some coast outside Africa. They’ve just been saved from a gale sent by Juno, who has a thing with these Trojans. Venus, who has a different thing with these Trojans (Aeneas happens to be her son), comes whining to Zeus, calling him out for not keeping his promises to the poor, destitute Trojans. Not particularly worried about pandering to the special interests of lobbyists—he is a somewhat partisan figure himself—Jove consoles Venus, telling her that, in fact, the Trojans’ luck will turn. They’ll settle in Latium and someday have an empire. Bigger than anybody else’s. An imperium sine fine.

Vergil’s famous words are usually, and somewhat metaphorically, translated as “an empire without end”. We think immediately of duration—it’s going to last forever. But finis has a more fundamental meaning of “boundary” or “limit”. This is a limitless empire. Dictionaries even have “goal” as a denotation of finis. But surely Vergil isn’t saying the Roman empire is an empire without a goal. Surely not.

Take a look at modernity for a moment. Whenever anyone talks about modernity (if they want to remain reputable), they always have to qualify it with “whatever it is…”. We don’t exactly know. Even worse with post-modernity. You try to define it or quantify it or even qualify it, and somebody is sure to say, “You just don’t get it.” Well, sorry, maybe I don’t, but you’ve just proved my point. My point is that modernity (and its relatives) is limitless. It has no boundaries. It only has one rule—Do Not Limit.

You can see this everywhere. Do not limit my abilities. Do not limit my sexuality. Do not limit my ownership (oddly, this can apply to the most radical free marketeers and the most radical communists equally). Do not limit my profession. Do not limit my nationality. Do not limit my knowledge. We hate diseases and “gender roles” and ignorance and poverty. Picasso can’t seem to stand three dimensions. Schoenberg itches to be rid of the overtone scale (never actually managing it). Perhaps Philip could enlighten my ignorance, but isn’t that the point with Derrida as well? Or you could look at the two political philosophies of the last century—classical liberalism, which despises the limitations imposed by government, and modern liberalism, which despises the limitations imposed by poverty. Both speak endlessly in terms of liberal, which comes from another Latin word meaning “free”. Or look at Darwinism, the science in which taxonomy is only a matter of time and distinctions between me and an ape are transient at best.

Along with the European Union and other amusing attempts at globalization, you have, in the last two centuries, the largest-scale attempt to subvert Scriptural authority. Pardon me if I do the offensive and delve edgily into the ethos behind this, but why is it that Thomas Jefferson scissors out the parts of the Bible he doesn’t like? Why is it a woman priest in the Methodist church is not likely to believe in a logocentric Christianity? Because she doesn’t want to. It is only ever superficially a matter of academic persuasion. If it were fundamentally a matter of an well-founded academic disbelief in the infallibility of Scripture, then there would have been many more Karl Barths in the Middle Ages. People weren’t stupid back then. Higher criticism is not a function of higher intelligence, it’s a function of modernity. It’s lower tolerance to limits. We would rather have a god whose limits we define than be ourselves defined by the limits of a god. The imperium sine fine signals the end of the reign of Jove and the beginning of the reign of Augustus. But first you have to get rid of all the religious documents that put any boundaries on belief.

But take one more look at the phrase—an empire without end. This time think of telos. Think of “end” not as “finish” but as “purpose”. Finis as “goal”. Is that another reason why nobody ever lets you define (post-)modernity? Because, in the end, there’s nothing there really to define? Why is it that modern science makes the assumption that, if there is knowledge to be gained, it ought to be gained? Why is it that there is no knowledge of good and evil that is forbidden to us? Why must we know it? Only in a few noble instances is it so that we can find a cure for cancer or an end to suffering. But motives like that have always existed. Motives like that don’t explain tax money going to fund explorations of string theory. We seek to know simply because we can. No matter what the cost—having found a way to destroy everyone at once, can we really say our scientific exploration saves more lives than it endangers?—we continue to explore. To what end? Why? Pretend you’re Number 6. Type that question into the computer that seeks to answer every question and it’ll explode.