Friday Fiction: The Choice

 

THE CHOICE

 

The woods to either side of the stony path were full and dark green with late summer. The man was heavy, and walked with the aid of a stick, and his chin with its grizzled beard hung slack as he drew labored breath. The boy, who was about ten, ranged to either side of the road as he talked, asking questions, getting the occasional answer, examining curious rocks or sticks.

At last they came to a rise in the land and a blasted stump, man-high and covered with ivy, that stood right by the path.

"This is it," rumbled the man. "Over that rise is her house, down in the valley." The boy came to his side, gazing solemn-eyed and searching into the gloom ahead. The man rested his hand on the boy's head of thick black hair a moment, then gave his shoulder a squeeze. "Well, best get on. Good luck, lad."

The boy looked up, gave him a crooked smile, then turned and walked confidently past the stump and over the rise, vanishing into the shadows. "I wish I could go with him," thought the man, as he leaned on his stick and watched the boy go. "But once in a lifetime is enough for any man."

The trees did not last long once the path turned downward, and the boy had not been walking far when the valley opened before him. He paused in his journey for a moment to look over it and think, not least because it was not at all what he had expected. It was lit by warm, slow, golden sunlight, and filled with neat gardens and orchards and green lawns. Mist and fog were trailing over the valley despite the sun, revealing and concealing everything piecemeal.

The man had said it would be a maze of some kind, but even with the haze it seemed plain enough. The boy shrugged and started down, heading for the house that could be glimpsed in the heart of the mist.

The path wandered and forked, and hours later the boy found himself standing on a hill almost exactly across from where he had started, looking down at the house again. He grimly decided to ignore all roads and taking a sighting directly toward his goal plunged down the hillside. It was two hours past noon, and he was very hungry, but he ignored the fruit trees and berry-laden bushes he came upon as he went through the fog. They were always in a patch of sun, and temptingly ripe and juicy. He also came to distrust paths that seemed to be going straight his way, and it was well he did. As he went on his course, he found they would bend subtly away until vanishing out of sight. In three-quarters of an hour he set foot on a well-mown green lawn, and the mists parted, and there before him was the house.

It was unlike any the boy had ever seen.

For one thing, it was made mostly of glass, except for the tarnished bronze pillars that held it together and the weathered oak shingles of the roof. The panes were wavy and thick and warped, and though semi-transparent, showed little inside. The door however was wood, with a round window veined like a spider's web, and brass handle and hinges. The boy went up to it and knocked politely but firmly three times.

He hardly had time to look once on either side when he heard a voice coming nearer from inside, a high, pleasant voice, singing a wordless tune. The boy swallowed hard, the door latch clicked, and the lady he had come to see was standing in the doorway, her keen black eyes looking him up and down.

She, too, was different from the way the man had described her. At first glance she seemed a nice young lady, maybe twenty or so, dressed in a russet gown, green apron, and a snow-white cap. From her apron hung a bunch of keys and a pair of scissors, and in one hand she had a twiggy broom, as if she had just been about to start sweeping when he had knocked. "Well, young man," she said smiling, "And who might you be?"

The boy ducked his head, put his hand on his heart, and said gravely, as he had been told, "I'm Adam, madam."

The lady raised her eyebrows, whether in disbelief or amusement, it was hard to say. But she kept smiling. "Indeed? I get so many Adams coming by here, you know. Well, well. You can call me Mother Mayai. And what might you want here, young Adam, on this first day of autumn?"

"Please, Mother Mayai, I was journeying by and the day is hot. I was wondering if I might come in and rest awhile, and maybe get a drink of water?"

The lady looked the boy up and down, considering, and then stepped back and held the door wide open. "Very well. Come in if you like, young Adam, and I'll see what I can do with you." The boy didn't like how that sounded, but he had come here to get inside so he marched past the lady's watchful eyes and heard the door click shut behind him.

Mother Mayai's house was very odd indeed. From inside, the glass was clear as crystal, and one could see the valley from rim to rim. From some panes you could see distant prospects as if you were standing right next to them. The lady cast curious glances at the boy as she led him in, as if to see how he was taking it, but the boy decided it was wiser to act as if he noticed nothing unusual. She brought him to an inner room where the walls were opaque again. She told him to sit and wait while she got him a drink.

The boy got up as soon as she was gone and began to look over the room very closely. In one corner a tall dark grandfather clock was ticking slowly. Up close he could see that the face was marked into thousands of minute divisions, and several extra hands were creeping along at different paces. Next to the fireplace, where slow embers were burning, was a large cauldron full of water. The boy leaned down to look into it, but quickly drew back. Tiny waves and currents like a miniature sea were moving, minute but clear, across the surface of the water.

The boy hurriedly looked around, knowing the lady would be back soon. He felt pressed for time. His eyes fell on a chair with a piece of cloth draped over it and a sewing kit left carelessly opened on the seat. His heart leaped. He rushed over quietly and looked into the kit. Next to the spools and needles was a pile of tiny charms, carved out of wood and bone and lead. "A selection," the man had told him. "A collection. A choice to make."

The boy poked his finger into the box and dug around. Miniature swords, scythes, trowels, hats, horses, and plows scratched and rattled. "Which one?" he wondered. He felt something flat near the bottom and pried it up with his fingernail. It was a small wooden book. "This," he thought, even as he heard the high wordless singing coming nearer again. He dashed back to his chair, looked around, put the book in his mouth, and swallowed it.

It went down hard and crooked, but it went down. By the time the lady came in, holding the water in a plain wooden cup, the boy was sitting still and staring vacantly in his seat, as if he had never even thought of moving. The lady gave him a hard look as she gave him the cup, and while she was next to him, he looked closely at her, too. The boy could see that her eyebrows were gray, as were the few fine wisps of hair that escaped from under her cap. Her skin, while seeming smooth at first, was infinitely wrinkled in tiny folds. He put the water to his lips and pretended to drink.

"Thank you," he said, and handed the cup back to her.

Her smile crooked. "Is that all you're going to drink?"

"Yes," the boy said, "I think I've taken all that I should from you, Mother Mayai."

The lady laughed, a big whoop of laughter. "I like you, young Adam," she said as she took the cup and dashed the water into the fireplace. There was a hiss of steam, and clouds furled up the flue.

"A couple of chores and I'll set you on your way." She took a bellows from the hearth and blew a few long, strong blasts at the fireplace. The boy noticed they missed the sizzling embers but went right up the chimney. The lady grabbed her twig broom and swept the hearth, sending dust and leaves flying.

"There!" she said. "That will do for now."

She led him back to the door and opened it but stopped a moment, her hand on his shoulder.

"I like you," she repeated, "You're a liar, and a polite liar, too. And a thief." She paused, as if giving him a moment of protest. He merely looked blankly up into her face. She smiled.

"Well, I'm a liar too, and the mother of all liars. And all things come from me and come back to me, eventually. Now be off with you!" She smacked him forward with a slap on his back and slammed the door with a bang that seemed to make the glass walls quiver.

The boy stumbled forward a little, then looked back. The house had gone dark, the glass smoky and dull. Overhead in the evening sky black clouds had sprung up and a cold northern was driving the mists and fog away. As the first drops of rain began to fall, he turned his back on the house of Mother Mayai and ran, very glad indeed to be done with it.

By the time he rejoined the man beside the stump, the rain was coming down hard. The boy began to gasp out his tale.

"Let's wait till we're out of this," the man rumbled. As they slogged home the boy settled down, and when they came to the man's stone hut and he had built up a fire and set supper to cook, the boy had the story fixed for telling. The man listened, stroking his grizzled beard. He sat thinking when the boy had finished.

"Swallowed it, eh?" he finally said. "I wouldn't have thought of that. That's good. A book, you say. That choice could mean many things for you."

The boy looked uncomfortable. "Did I do the right thing? Did I choose right?"

"We'll just have to see how it works out," the man said, almost to himself. He looked up at the boy. "Something bothering you?"

"She called me a thief." The boy scuffled his feet.

The man grimaced. "She said it herself. She's a liar. Everything she has is ours really, and we always must take it, with quite a lot of trouble, too. And she always gets it back again, in time." He spat in the fire. "She likes to call herself our Mother, and that's a lie, too. Dame Kind, Frau Hulda, Mother Mayai. She lies to us; we lie to her. But we don't lie to ourselves, boy."

The boy looked moodily into the fire. "But did I make the right choice?"

"Sometimes the right choice is just to choose," the man said. "And you make it right, by choosing it."

"I don't understand."

"Nobody does entirely, lad, but we stumble on," said the man. "Let's eat."

 

Notes

When I sat down last night to look over this story for posting today, I immediately saw that one of its flaws was that it was over-written. I was using three words where one would do and putting in unnecessary details. I was also able to rewrite sentences that had somehow been composed back to front. This version of “The Choice” at least has those faults somewhat corrected. Whether the story succeeds on its own as to theme and telling is another matter.

What I was trying to put across was how our situation, our ‘fall’, has put us in an adversarial (if sometimes genial) relationship with the world. The young must snatch a way forward, a destiny if you will, from the gifts of the world, which will not yield them willingly. “By the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.” But the earth is not our mother, though it seems sometimes to have a claim to be. We are fellow creations, and if we were in right relation to each other, all might be well. As it is, nature seems rather like partly goddess and partly ogre, a witch of mischancy humor, ready to bless or blast. Mother Mayai, quite literally, makes time and tide and the weather of the world in her kitchen.  We have a dim apprehension of the lost paradise that nature once was and feel that somehow our relationship could be mended. But being what we are, there is no natural way by our own means to return to the garden.