Kren Feels the Unrest

Kren, from the short story Kren, available on this blog.

Many Happy Returns

The ancient if not eternal Elvish wizard John Kraft wishes the fledgling realm of the United States of America a Happy Birthday, with the greatest good will for its people, their prosperity, and their efforts and struggles.

Koppa and Moq Enjoy Thirty Year Stew

Drawn From Life: Part III

She dusted her hands off, straightened her smock, and tossed her hair back, clearing her throat, as she considered how to begin. He seemed to hang waiting on her words, doubtful they would help, but curious what she would say.

     "Well, at first, I thought it might simply be as your psychologist suggested: mourning after lost innocence. The feeling is more deep and widespread than people like to think about." She looked over at the woods. The dew on the flowers glittered like jewels in the rising sun.

     "'Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child,'" she chanted, a far-off look in her eye. "'All appeared new, and strange at the first, inexpressibly rare, and delightful, and beautiful. All things were spotless and pure and glorious: yea, and infinitely mine, and joyful and precious. I knew not that there were any sins, or complaints, or laws. I dreamed not of poverties, contentions, or vices. All tears and quarrels were hidden from mine eyes. Everything was at rest, free, and immortal.'"

     She watched him. He was hanging on her words like a homeless orphan looking in a grocery store window.

     "'I knew nothing of sickness or death. I saw all in the peace of Eden; Heaven and earth did sing my Creator's praises, and could not make more melody to Adam, than to me. All time was eternity, and a perpetual Sabbath. Is it not strange, that an infant should be heir of the world, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold? The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold. The gates were at first the end of the world, the green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me; their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things. The skies were mine, and so were the sun and moon and stars, and all the world, and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it.'"

     "That was from the seventeenth century," she finished. He came down with a bump. "Long before Freud, or even Wordsworth with his 'gathering shadows of the prison house.' The experience, as I say, is universal; the remembrance is not. But what happened to you has one big difference.

     "That passage concludes: 'So with much ado I was corrupted; and made to learn the dirty devices of this world.' Notice: with much ado, the gathering shadows. That condition creeps up on us, like ivy on a tree, till one day before we know it, we're engulfed. Then, if we want, we have to try to unlearn it. This trauma, whatever it may be, fell on you in the space of a morning. Taking a few clues from what you tell me, I think I might have a working theory about what happened. But I don't think you'll like it. In fact, your ... condition might make you incapable of even thinking it."

     He grimaced.

     "Lady, I been told a hobo boned me in a thicket. I doubt you can shock me."

     "It's not so much the shock as the disbelief I'm expecting. Now, how ..., well, have you ever heard of 'foisson'?"

     "Poison?"

     "No, foisson, with an f. Shakespeare mentions it once or twice."

     "Not unless it was in Julius Caeser."

     "It's not. Well, it used to be thought that everything had a sort of essential goodness in it, like a sort of invisible vitamin, that made things good and wholesome. If things lost it, they went bad, and however much you ate or drank or tried to enjoy them, you were never satisfied. It was like, well, a blessing I suppose, and without a blessing nothing in life really thrives.

     "And there was a type of creature, a parasite, that liked to latch onto things and drain the foisson out of them. Sometimes they attach themselves onto a person and take foisson out of whatever he consumes. He can eat as much and as well as ever he could, but his spirits pine and eventually he withers away. You can only know them by their effects, because they are as impalpable as the foisson they live on."

     "So you're telling me old imaginary creatures eat an old imaginary ... power, and that's what's making me depressed?" he asked. He blew out his breath in disappointment. "And I thought aliens was stretching it. What are these parasites called, anyway?"

     "I'm sure you've heard the name before. I'm not going to say it out loud, because I've heard they don't like it. I'm asking you not to say it either, if you guess. Call it a precaution. But I'll give you three clues, from what you've told me." She held her hand up, and started counting them off on her fingers. Her eyes were dead serious.

     "One, they like flowers, especially blue flowers. Two, they live in the woods and wild places. Three, they cannot be seen in normal circumstances. Now, does that sound like any creatures you've heard of in old stories?"

     He looked at her, puzzled, then an answer seemed to dawn on him. He stared at her in horror as if he suddenly realized he were out alone in a field with a person even more unbalanced than he was.

     "Good. I can see by your face you know what I'm talking about. Please don't say it. And I'll add a fourth fact that supports my theory, though most people have forgotten it these days: they leave red marks like pinches all over those who trespass on their territory. A fifth, they torment and despoil children especially, perhaps because of their freshness. A sixth, the crow and the raven are their messengers. A seventh ... but need I go on?" She folded her arms.

     "No. No, that's enough," he said shakily. He backed off a step or two, then saw her firm, sympathetic expression. He stopped and got a grip on himself. "Okay," he said reluctantly. "Suppose that's true. Suppose your whole crazy theory is true. Gaze into your crystal ball, read the cards for me. What would you advise me to do? Is there any hope for me?" She could hear the yearning creeping back into his voice.

     "There's always hope," she said. "There has to be. It's built into the rules for these creatures. They have to leave a way out, no matter how slim. No matter how desperate their need for prey. There has to be a door to escape. Perhaps you can be exchanged for a fresh victim; not an optimal solution. Maybe you can find a safe way out of the woods. Your mistake before was not going out the same side that you came in, an old taboo that puts you in their power. You just have to recognize your chance when it comes. And now that you know about it, it might come very soon."

     She looked around nonchalantly, at the canvas, at the woods, at the sky.

     "Did you know," she began casually, "That these creatures like to play tricks with time? I don't suppose you've noticed, but we've been here talking for what seems like hours, and the sun hasn't gotten any higher at all."

     The man's head jerked up and he looked to the east, through the trees, toward the live oak and the sunrise. At that moment a fire sprang up there, a bright, living flame, as if a curtain had rolled back to reveal it.

     He turned to Beth with wide, unbelieving eyes. She tossed her head toward the blaze.

     "Go," she said.

     He took off scrambling, and in a moment was under the shadowy eaves of the wood. She watched him bounding through the flowers, spiderwebs and dews drops scattering sparkling as he passed, and she gasped when suddenly halfway through he disappeared, as if he'd fallen amid the tall stalks. She ran over, and was almost to the border of the dell before she stopped herself.

     "Tricksy," she whispered.

     A sound came drifting from across the dell, the happy, carefree laugh of a boy. The fire winked out, as if the curtain had rolled back again.

     She looked into the grove. It still gleamed with allure, except for the path that the man had made, laying like a long bruise through the tall grass. She frowned. She sighed.

     "Have to make sure."

     She sat down and slipped out of her boots. She pulled off her socks, pushed them inside out, and switched them right and left. She spit in the boots, put them back on, and stood up. She removed her paint-spattered smock, shook it out to try to dry it, and turned it, too, before putting it back on. Finally she crossed her fingers, and stepped her right foot over the border.

     Quiet fell on her as soon she was inside. It was as eerie as he had described. She followed the spasmodic path cautiously, feeling as if at any moment something might strike her. His tracks stopped abruptly in the middle of the woods. There was no fallen body, no further trail. But there was a broken stump, three feet tall, surrounded by a scattering of fallen black feathers. She stood looking a moment, then walked sunwise around it, and went back the way she came in. She stepped out of the trees on her right foot.

     To her relief her easel still stood where she'd left it. She let her breath out cautiously. "One last thing," she thought, and started the long way around to the live oak.

     The dewy field around it was pristine and undisturbed. She trudged over to the tree, leaving a dark green trail as she passed. Once under its spreading boughs, she bent her head and started searching.

     She found it, overgrown with weeds and lonely as a grave. A blackened ring of stones that might have held a fire, a decade and a half ago. She reached down and touched it. It was cold and damp. Beth smiled.

     "I should have asked his name," she said to herself. "I could have found out how he did, this time around."

     She went back and packed up her gear. Before she put it away, she looked from her picture to the woods. Something had left the grove with the rising sun, something that was only hinted at, dimly, on the canvas. She looked up at the trees.

     "A failure this time, I'm afraid," she said out loud. "It was tempting, though. Oh well, there are other days and other Mays." She put the picture away, trundled back up the fields to her car, and threw easel, case, and smock in the trunk. She climbed in the driver's seat, started the engine, and in minutes was miles down the road.

     Behind her, in an empty field, two empty soda cans dried out in the rising sun.

 

                        First Draft: May 6, 2018, 9:47 PM

 

Drawn From Life: Part II

"My dad grew up in the country, and when I was a kid he was always trying to get us out there, on drives, on fishing trips. When a friend of a friend told him that old Mr. Auburn's fields were free for camping by invitation, he had our gear picked out and our cots loaded in his head before he'd even stopped talking." He paused.

     "You know, it's funny, but I've never even seen Mr. Auburn. Neither has dad, and when I asked him to ask his friend about him, he hadn't either. I could probably pass him in the grocery store and not even know it. I wonder if he knows how many people have been on his land. Or if he'll ever guess how much grief his generosity has caused me. Heck, maybe he's not even alive anymore, and the place belongs to somebody else.

     "I was a happy kid, you know? Life was all cartoons and playing and cereal. Sure, there was school, but with a little effort that could be ignored, and there were friends and recess and lunch to get you through. My dad was a hero, my mom a refuge, my little brother and sister my troops. Even church was a sort of solemn fun. Then we went on the camping trip."

     He pointed to the live oak, towering over the grove.

     "We set up under that tree there. Dad had come up a day or two earlier and mowed under it. The whole family arrived at noon, all our gear bundled up in our old tank of a car. We set up our cots and Dad dug a fire pit. Mom put up a card table for us to eat at, and then, in the evening, play cards on. Dad hung a Coleman lamp from one of the big tree limbs to light the whole camp.

     "That first day was great. After we set up, we went to the creek over there -- you can't see it from here, it's down under the bluff, where the land falls away -- and fished and swam until the sun began to set and lightning bugs started flashing. We went back up to camp and roasted weenies and listened to the transistor radio and played games until us kids finally ran down with exhaustion. Mom told us a story and the little kids fell asleep and she went to bed. I pretended to sleep, but was still too happy to settle. I lay still, thinking about the day and the days to come, listening to the sigh of the Coleman lamp as it ran down through the night. It was like company, you know? I think that's the last time I remember being truly happy."

     He stopped. Beth had heard the growing yearning loss in his voice. Now it seemed choked off. She reached into her case, took out a can of paint thinner, and set it with a clank on the easel. She didn't open it, but the action seemed to have distracted the boy from the emotion of his re-lived memories. She switched to another brush.

     "And then?" she asked quietly.

     "I woke up early the next day, earlier than anybody. It was May Day, like it is today, and a Sunday. Mom had wanted to wait until after church to come, but it was my dad's vacation, and he didn't want to waste a day of it. I decided ... I decided to walk over into the trees there, and pick her a bouquet of flowers, to kind of make up for it, and do some exploring. It looked just like it does now, green and quiet and, I don't know, secret, though you can see right through it. It kind of calls to you, doesn't it?" he said bitterly.

     Beth looked at the grove and thought of her own strange attraction that morning. She said nothing, but nodded, and slowly added some golden highlights to the oak in her painting.

     "So I got out of bed real quiet, slipped my tennis shoes on, and walked over through the weeds to the trees. The grass is pretty tall, you can see, but under the trees,  the flowers are even taller. I was nine, and they were over my head, like a wall in front of me. I hesitated for just a minute before I went in, wondering if I should wait for somebody to go with me. Then I thought, what could happen? Camp's right over there, it's a clump of trees, it's an adventure. The wind came and shook the flowers, and I smelled a sweet morning smell that filled the air, and I plunged inside.

     "I say inside, and I mean inside. Once under the eaves of the trees it was like being inside a castle, or a church. The wind seemed to break around it, and under the branches it was still. When I looked out beyond the thicket, it was looking out a window. I began to make my way in, trying to find the center.

     "How far can you go in the woods? Halfway, then you're headed out. It was easy; the land there dips down to the middle. It's all in a dell, though that's not immediately obvious. My steps followed the incline down thoughtlessly, instinctively, drawn along by gravity. I looked at the flowers along the way, thinking about the bouquet for my mother.

     "They all looked fine in a group or from a distance, but when I started to inspect them, they were all blotchy or bug-eaten or wrapped in spiderwebs. I passed up bloom after bloom as I walked along. The one I tried to pick as an experiment was so tough and fibrous in the stalk that all the petals fell off before it would even break, and I left it there.

     "I still don't know what kind of flowers they are. They're blue, and they're bell-shaped, so I just call them bluebells. I never think to ask anyone who might really know. Though I know they're way too tall for what people call bluebells. I always think of that place as the Bluebell Dell."

     "From the way you describe them, they sound like some kind of foxglove," she said. "But go on."

     "I was still looking for flowers when I reached the center. It took me unawares. I came into a little clearing, and in the clearing was a stump, about three feet tall, and on the stump was a black bird. It turned and looked at me, and I stood froze in its beady black eyes.

     "Some people scoff when I tell them I was afraid. Afraid of a bird! But it wasn't afraid at all. And it was huge, with a heavy beak and sharp claws that gripped the stump with strength you could hear tearing at the bark. It roused its wings slowly, and they must have spread at least four feet wide. On its perch, it looked like a black crucifix against the green wood.

     "I tried to edge slowly around the clearing to get to the other side, and it just turned following me. I was feeling spooked. It seemed personal. Then it opened its beak and started making a mad, hoarse rattling hiss in its throat, and bent its head and spread its wings even wider.

     "That broke me, and I cringed down in sudden panic. I remember stirring up the grass under me, crackling with old leaves and fallen sticks. That was like a signal, and it swooped down at me.

     "I dropped to the ground, hands over my head, and for a second I saw, like, every detail of the forest floor clear as a bell. It was made of a thousand different bits of pulverized decay: leaves, twigs, snail shells, insect wings, even tiny bones. I saw half of a shattered mouse skull. Then I saw the shadow of black wings over me and the beating of wings was around my ears and I scuttled blindly to my feet and ran out of the woods, arms still trying to protect my defenseless head.

     "I broke out of the other side of the trees -- this side, in fact -- and ran for a few yards before I realized I wasn't being chased. I stopped, out of breath, and turned around, slowly putting my arms down, looking back. The trees seemed as peaceful as they ever had before, if anything duller in the growing light. No murderous black shadow followed me or flitted under the shade. No harsh hunting calls echoed in the morning air. On the other side I could see a flame leap up, where my dad was awake and building the morning fire.

     "I took the long way around back to camp. I certainly didn't want to see that bird again. But I never did, and nobody else did either, though everybody was pointing out every hawk or songbird or buzzard they saw on the trip. I never went through the trees, and somehow nobody else did either. I kept dreading that someone would suggest we go exploring, but there was always something else to do, and I wasn't about to bring it up. We left that year without me ever setting foot in that place again. But the damage was done."

     He rubbed his throat.

     "Say, do you have anything to drink?"

     "Oh, yes!" She set her pallet down, reached into the case, and brought out a can of soda, still a little dewy from the hotel mini fridge. "Hope you don't mind diet," she said, passing it him. He accepted it gratefully, popped the top, and drew down a huge gulp that emptied half the can.

     "Sorry about rambling on," he said. "But I've gone over the details time and time again, with Dr. Chaney and in my own head, trying to understand, to figure what went wrong, what might have triggered something." His eyes looked bruised in the growing light. "He thinks the bird could be a cover memory for something too bad to think about, like maybe I saw a corpse or was assaulted or something. I been hypnotized and regressed a dozen times, and nothing happens; I don't remember anything but the flowers, and the bird, and running through the trees."

     "I see," Beth said. She pulled out another can of soda, crossed her ankles, and lowered herself to the grass, sitting to one side of him. "That does sound like a frightening experience. I know I'd be scared. But you were talking about damage? What had happened to you?"

     He frowned.

     "Nothing physical, really, though I was covered in red bites that Mom said was chiggers from the long grass and running around without a booster spray of Off! in the morning. For a while I just carried on, like a cartoon character running till he realizes he's out of cliff. I was shook, I knew, but I expected I'd get over it, but the feeling never went away.

     "I call it a feeling, but it's more the lack of a feeling. It was like I was walking around with a pane of glass between me and the world, between me and my family. It started that day. I could only taste the burn on each hotdog, just feel the slime of each fish I caught, only worry about the unseen depths when I went swimming. Anything good about all the things I had enjoyed just the day before seemed short-circuited before it could reach me. It's still like that. When my grampa had a stroke, years later, he said the thing that bothered him most was the loss of taste, except for the strongest and foulest things. I knew what he meant. Except it's not simply taste, it's everything.

     "Since that morning -- since those woods -- ," he pointed accusingly with his can, "My dad has looked to me like a rube and a bully, my mother a religious worrywart, my siblings a couple of deadweights. Church was a farce that I stopped attending as soon as I could, school an agony of wasted time that I gladly fled, only to be bored when I got home. I lost what friends I had. When it came time to date, I let myself drift into a few attempts, hoping for some change, but dropped it afterwards as pointless. Expectations pushed me into college, and after a few useless semesters I was pushed out again. I have a dull job that keeps me afloat.

     "The worst part of it is ..." He shifted on his hunkers and faced Beth earnestly. "The worst part of it is, that I remember how it used to be, and I want it back. That's why I was crying, because you reminded me ... the smell of a firework, the color of a paint ... They used to mean something to me, and I want that back."

     "What does your doctor say? Is that why you're here?"

     He laughed mirthlessly.

     "Old Doc Chaney is agin' it. I've come out here by myself more times than I can count, and always on the first of May. He says it's become an unhealthy compulsion. He says it's simply unhappiness with growing up, and I should just accept it and move on. But I don't think I trust his diagnoses anymore. For a while, when it was popular, he was suggesting I was abducted by aliens."

     "Interesting theory." Beth smiled. "But I don't think so."

     "Neither do I." He leaned in and looked serious. "But something strange is going on. I've never seen another black bird again, no matter what season I come. You know, I haven't been able to find the stump, either? Not even a spot where it might have been grubbed up. That's where I was headed, to go search one more time, when I came across you. I wanted to head in, but I didn't want to cross your line of sight."

     "Well, it's not like taking a photo, you know," she reassured him. "I wasn't going to accidentally paint you in."

     The thought made him shrink back. He looked stricken.

     "Maybe you might as well," he said quietly. "In some ways, I don't think I've ever left the woods."

     He finished his soda and got to his feet, brushing his pants off as he stood. Beth set her soda can down in the grass and held out a hand. He took it and pulled her up, her paint-splattered robe flapping with the movement.

     "Well, that's my story," he concluded ruefully. "What have you got to say, with your strange talents and hidden knowledge?"

[End Part II. Part III and conclusion to Follow] 

Friday Fiction: Drawn From Life (aka Taken From Life; aka Through a Bluebell Dell)

 

(Note: They say,of short stories as well as paintings, that they are never really finished so much as abandoned. That may be the reason I did not - so far as I can discover - publish this Tale of the Bureau of Shadows here on NOT: vaguely discontented with the outcome, though pleased with individual details. Anyway, here is the first part of it. Perhaps it is the multiplicity of titles that makes it hard to pin down; perhaps the Folk are playing tricks with it.)

Every year Beth Castlemaine took two weeks in the spring to get away from the stress of her job. This year she had packed her painting gear and was wandering through the back roads of the Southwest, setting up wherever a vista or arrangement caught her eye. When she found something, she might check into a local motel and spend two or three days trying to get a likeness. If she couldn't, she snapped a Polaroid and put the bungle in her trunk to examine later. If she was satisfied that she had at least made a beginning, she would pack up and move on.

     On the first day of May she had started a half-hour before dawn, driving out from the town she had stayed in for the night and turning down a lonely country road. As the first rays of the morning sun rose, she was arrested by a passing landscape revealed in its sudden glory.

     A stand of straight slim trees rose like an invading army, creeping into the new-mown fields all around it. In its shade, crowding thickly, the stalks of some tall blue flower nodded in the uneasy wind. Behind it all, off-center, the gigantic top of an ancient live oak tree reared its head, newly filled out with spring green, gilded with the early light. It seemed to call to her.

     Beth stopped when she found a gate and pulled the car over, crunching slowly through the gravel. She took her easel and case out of the trunk, draping the flowery old housecoat she used as a smock over one elbow. She paused at the sign on the five-railed galvanized metal: No Trespassing. She looked at the tempting copse of trees. A ray breaking out from a passing cloud for a few seconds made it gleam all the brighter.

     "Oh, well," she murmured. "Always easier to get forgiveness than permission." She put her hand on the latch, went in, and carefully clicked it back in place behind her.

     It was quite a hike back to the trees, first down the stony ruts of a truck trail, and then through a couple of recently mowed fields. But she was wearing her comfortable old walking boots and felt the eagerness of the morning air. If anything she was invigorated as she drew near the shadowy woods, blood pumping in her veins and the cool wind in her hair.

     She slowed down as she came closer. The shade under the trees was enticing and secretive, almost like a closed room, though she could see open air and sunlight on the other side. For a moment she considered running into the shadows, but here, she knew, was the right distance for her picture, and felt there was no time to waste. The morning was passing, and the enchantment could break at any time. "Promises to keep," she said out loud, almost defiantly. She stopped, and set up her easel.

     She penciled in a rough outline to guide her, then slipped into the smock to mix her paints. She laid in the background color and brushed on the broad details of grass and leaves. She was concentrating on dabbing in the light trunks of the trees with a palette knife when a voice said behind her, "That's pretty good."

     To her credit, she didn't jump or startle. Her training let her know that appearing vulnerable often led to an attack. At forty-two, she realized that she was no longer the most provoking of targets, but she also knew that simply being female was sometimes the only necessity, and not even always that. She turned nonchalantly, the sharp palette knife held firmly in her hand. It would do until and unless she could get to the something stronger stashed in the bottom of her case.

     He seemed to be in his early twenties, if she was any judge of horseflesh, and in her estimation looked sadder than anybody ought to be at that age. His brown plastic leather jacket, bell-bottoms, and soft shoes declared him to be no farm-boy.  Slightly long black hair feathered over his collar and ears, and looking at it made her itch to trim it. He flinched under her direct gaze, and her heart unbent a little in motherly response. She glanced aside at the fledgling composition.

     "It's just a daub, really," she said, unable to keep the hint of pride out of her voice. "With a little luck I might be able to work it up into something worth looking at." She examined his expression a little closer. "I'm sorry," she said. "Am I on your land? I can always move on."

     "No, no; it belongs to a friend of the family, I guess: old Mr. Auburn. Don't worry." He gestured off into the distance past the trees, beyond the point of sight. "He lives on the other side of the creek over there and doesn't get around much anymore, I heard. He won't mind if you're out here with me." The boy came no closer, but stared at the canvas. He seemed reluctant to disturb her.

     "Well, thank you," Beth said. "That's very kind." His shy deference reassured her. She edged in a few more trees between canopy and floor, then scraped the knife clean and picked up a delicate brush. She stirred the blue paint she had mixed to keep it fresh, and with the lightest and tiniest of touches began to tip and waver in the suggestion of blue flowers.

     "So what brings you here so early in the morning," she asked, attention on the brush strokes, "alone and palely loitering? Bringing in the May?"

     "The what?"

     "Never mind. An old custom." She finished the flowers and stepped back to judge the effect. The boy leaned in squinting but stood rooted where he stood, as if wary of invading her personal space. Beth stepped aside and nodded her head, inviting him closer. "Go on," she said. "Get a good look. Give me your opinion. It helps to have another pair of eyes."

     He took two stiff steps forward and tilted his head in, peering closely. She saw his expression clearly. It was sick, helpless fascination.

     "Yes," he said weakly. "That's how it looks. You're a good painter." He stood back, his focus never moving, but split now on the picture and its original beyond.

     "That's sweet of you to say, but I can see all the flaws in it already," Beth said. She picked up the fan brush, loaded it with bright green, and started whisking in the live oak's spread. "Still, I go on." As she built up the ancient tree like a tumbling cloud, she started to declaim.

       "'There was a time when you and I were all very close to God, so that even now the color of a pebble or a paint, the smell of flower or firework, comes to our hearts with a kind of authority and certainty; as if they were fragments of a muddled message, or features of a forgotten face. To pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life is the only real aim of education. It is the towering levity, the uproarious amateurishness of the universe, such as we felt when we were little, and would as soon sing as garden, or as soon paint as run. To smatter in the tongues of men and angels, to dabble in the dreadful sciences, to juggle with pillars, and pyramids, and toss up the planets like balls, this is that inner audacity and indifference which the human soul, like a conjurer catching oranges, must keep up forever. I here maintain the prime truth of woman, the universal mother: that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.'"

     She stood back to gauge the results on the canvas critically.

     "Sorry to quote at you," she said absently. "My old mentor made me memorize quite a lot. It seemed like torture at the time, but now I find it an unfailing resource." She turned cheerfully, and was shocked to see the young man was crying, tears runneling down his face, wan and glinting in the morning light.

     "I'm sorry," he said, glancing at her, voice thick. "It's just that I remembered ... I've been coming out here most every spring since I was nine ... when our family went camping ... that's how it used to be ... and since ... " His face squeezed shut, his pallid cheeks reddened.

     "Here." Beth pulled a handkerchief out of her back pocket and handed it to him. It was a big, blue-squared, no-nonsense cloth, not a frilly scented show. He accepted it, looking ashamed, wiped his face, and blew his nose. He stood, eyes cleared, scrunching the handkerchief in one hand, glaring at the picture.

     "Yes, it really looks like the woods," he said. "Like the woods." He looked up at the clump of trees, the tall flowers dancing on the breeze, the shaded copse pierced here and there with slanting rays. He frowned. His voice hardened, trembling. "How I hate them!"

     She raised an eyebrow. She took her brush and started casually dabbling some highlights onto the tree-trunks. Keeping her voice carefully neutral, she asked, "Did something bad happen there?" She seemed absorbed in the effects of her strokes.

     "I wish I knew. Something happened. I wish to God I knew what it was."

     "Do you want to tell me about it?"

     He laughed, a short, bitter snort.

     "You sound like my shrink," he said. "You a psychologist or something?"

     She smiled to herself, and continued working.

     "Something like that," she admitted wryly, cleaning the fan brush, then touching it to the white. "Though I'm no doctor. More like a counselor. I've had a few classes, for my job." She began patting in some clouds to frame and echo the live oak.

     "So," she said. "Do you want to talk about it?"

     He tossed his head. "I been going to Dr. Chaney for two years, and it hasn't done me any good so far."

     "Ah, but as you can see, I have strange talents and hidden knowledge," she said, eyes twinkling. Then she was serious, sympathetic. "There's probably nothing I can do about it, but you might feel better after you've told me. 'This poor frame of thine is wrenched with a woeful agony; now begin to tell thy tale, that it may leave thee free.' Sorry. Another quote, if slightly adapted."

     "Strange knowledge," he sniffed, He wiped his nose again. He looked uncertainly from her to the woods then back. He made up his mind.

     "Yeah, sure, why not?" he said, drawing in a juddering breath. "You're just a nice crazy lady I met in a field, who I'll probably never see again. What do I care if I seem just as crazy to you?" He looked around, then let himself down to sit in the dewy grass, plastic coat creaking. "Where do you want me to start?"

     "Begin at the beginning," Beth said. "Go on till you come to the end. Then stop.” She settled herself back to her work, giving him space to unfold, but enough attention to feel he wasn't speaking into a vacuum.

     "I wish it had an end and that it would just stop," he muttered in despair. He put his head in his hands, but looked up, eyes fixed on the grove and beyond. "But it did have a beginning,like I said, when I was nine years old, and we went camping."

[End Part I]

Master Bodge of Ravenglast