This Island, draped with the moss of the past
And drowned in the foggy mist of the future
Lies awake, breathing under a darkened sky.
My trembling hand touches the black silence,
Caressing its blank face and wooing it.
A lonely voice rips the quiet into dusty shreds
And leaves them to rot on the ground.
“It is him,” it says. “I remember him from long ago,
In a land far from here. I remember him
And his shining laugh, and his darting eyes.
He shot the hearts of young women with unseen arrows,
But from the ranks of men he remained
As a the dying earth to an newborn skylark
When it first tastes the sweet fragrance of freedom
And never looks back. Who would look back?”
A distant blue memory finds its feet in my mind
And travels down the forsaken labyrinth, invisible,
Until it gorges its divine spear into my heart
And shakes me awake. My eyes relent.
She hovers over my unfeeling face, and Lady Dream
Smiles on me. I find blessed comfort in that gaze
And my mind wanders into lush green meadows,
Blind once more to the Nightmare Forest.
The voice speaks again. It is Master Fletcher.
The Lady’s sharp retort slays his words.
“Shut your mouth,” says Dream. “He has known more
Than you can ever imagine. He has seen things.
Let him have his long-deserved repose.”
A thought from the Other World coils and wraps
Its snakelike loops around the victim of my mind.
Fletcher appears, young and bright as ever,
Regarding me with dancing eyes, under windswept hair.
Suspicions, secrets, wonderings, all rush inside
At the cheery sight of his roguish face.
I have heard tales of an unknown curse
On an unknown friend. Is it this friend?
Fire in my bones, a river of pain, I stand.
A whirlwind of feelings, colors, questions,
Drown me in the black sea of Unknown.
“Careful,” Dream warns. I gaze at her moonlit face.
My heavy question drops, and she watches it fall,
Wasted words wishing in a wasted world.
“I do not know,” she says. “It is a desolate place,
Forsaken in a jungle of twisted vines and branches.
Mother Earth breathed her sweet life here, softly,
Crafting a forest of flowers and outlandish beasts.
But it has left her wild mind for a thousand years
And in that aged time, it has become green and lost
Under an overgrown fortress of ruin and rock.
The trees have twisted faces, and all that grows
Can speak in tongues I understand, and Fletcher
Hears them likewise. The sky rages both in day
And in silver night, and the air is as a warm sea
Heavy and swirling in an unseen storm.
The beasts, fowl creatures, have manlike voices
And villainous minds, feeding like vultures
On the young, and wolves on the grown.
One day and one night have we lived here.
This is a desolate, abandoned place.”
Her flashing words release me from my spell;
The enchantment drops like silk to the grass.
“Endless water surrounds this place,” adds the boy.
“And serpent-demons dwell in that eternal ocean.”
The shaft of his beloved words pierces my heart,
Despite the poison on its sharpened tip.
“At least I am not alone,” say I, flogged by fear
And shackled by the chains of my affection.