She walks in the teeth of the wind. Her hair, as always, obscures her raccoon eyes. Her fierceness still clutched about her shoulders like a wool blanket the color of rose clay.

But.

The blood on her arms is not fresh. Her God has given her iron tiger feet against the hooks and snares, against the serpents and young lions, against the matchstick voices.

Let us walk to the wetlands, the sticky places where the stars fall. Let us go there, my sister; you have tiger feet on which to walk, but I need to stop and sample the sap, sniff at the soil, seek the stillness of the soul. I need to think on what we have seen:

the whispering of the bearbugs, against whom only true history suffices.

the bees of the north, who did not mean to destroy us and whom we must learn to love rightly.

the witch and her kingdom of contradictions, from which you escaped on your tiger feet.

the stalking robots, taller than a tall man, whose blank faces feed on fear and who cannot be ridden without great wisdom.

And of all of these things, more, more, more must be said, thrice more… anon. For now…

We have seen these things, and in seeing some small seeds of wisdom and love have come to us. We have the tiny books of our own history here in our pockets. I hear again the distant murmur of a Word–not clearly, as I once did, but I know now where it lies. Not in the cities, the tall one and the short one. Not in the houses, where the garden-gnome has entombed himself in foolish grass and the elephants maunder their way to the attainment of peach-pits wrapped in gold foil. Not in the wilderness, not on the trains, not in any of the places we have seen.

We are not full-formed, you and I, sister of my heart. There is much still to learn, many wounds still to be tended. In time, we must love the bees and the elephants–we must love even the witch in due time. But first we must go among the trees of God and the waterways and the little white flowers with pinkshot hearts. There we will find the Word.

And so they took a slow train, watching the elephants from afar, making easy distance through a land without water. The mountains opened their skirts and bounced them down to the right rails. The train whose name is sometimes called Eliphelet, she knows the way to go. They listened from the shade of their candy-striped seats to the cicadas singing the song of Elijah, clutching tickets in sweaty hands.

previous