(Glade, World, Master, Boy, Hero)

                                                 GLADE

There is a glacier.
Its blue tongue’s tip just tastes a frozen gorge.
There is a gorge, its walls shattered by cold; a once-green thing that, in dying, birthed a thousand aching fissures. It works its jagged way downhill, round ragged rifts and drifts until it comes upon a little frosted wood.
There is a wood, an island locked in ice.
Within this wood the gorge descends. It wanders and it wends; it brakes and all but ends outside a clearing wet with sun. And there, forking, its bent and broken arms embrace a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a glade.
And in this glade the black bears sleep, though salmon leap fat between falls. Here the field mouse draws no shadow, the eagle seeks no prey; they spend their while caressed by rays, and halcyon days are they. Here rabbit and fawn may linger, no longer need they flee. For in this timeless, taintless space, the Wild has ceased to be. (Outside the glade are shadow and prey, are ice and naked death. There blood may run freely. There the eagle, that thief, is a righteous savage, a noble fiend. But once in the glade he is dove, and has no taste for blood, running freely or otherwise).
And in this glade there nests a pool:  a dazzling, blue-and-silver jewel; profoundly deep, pristinely clear. All who sip find solace here, for this is the Eye of Being. They lap in peace, assuming blear, not knowing it is seeing. And ever thus this pool shall peer:  a silent seer, reflecting on—all that Is, and all Beyond.
(Outside the glade there lies a world where rivers ever run, where ghastly calves in random file revile a bitter sun. East, the day is born in mist. West she dies:  her rest, the deep. And North…North the Earth lies mute. Wind gnaws her hide, wind wracks her dreams. Wind screams like a flute in her white, white sleep).
But in the glade are tall, stately grasses, sunning raptly, spinning lore. Roots render the rhythms, blades bend without breeze, as signals ascend from the glade’s tender floor. (In this wise the glade weaves its word, airs its views. All the glade’s flora are bearers of news). They do not wither with fall, for in the glade there is no fall. They do not bind or wilt or brown—they gesture, spreading the mood, the mind; conveying, indeed, the very soul of the glade. As ever they have, as they shall evermore.
Bees do not hum here; they sing. They fatten the dream. Mellow and round are the timbres they sound, sweet is the music they bring. Birds do not sing here—they play. They carry the theme. Dulcet and warm are the strains they perform. Gifted musicians are they. (All in the glade are virtuosi. They were born to create. Melody, harmony, meter…are innate). Now the performance is lively and bright, now full, now almost still. For, though all in the glade may lean to the light, they must bend to the maestro’s feel.
And yet…there was a day, long ago in a dream, when this ongoing opus was torn. And on that day (so the lullaby goes) the wind brought a scream, and Dissonance was born.
There was a noise.
Moose tensed, their coffee eyes narrowed, their patient brows creased. Bees mauled the tempo, birds lost their place. The grass stood *****, all blades pointing east. There was a crash, and a shriek, and a naked, bleeding beast burst stinking through the fern, fell stumbling on its face.
Moose scattered:  unheard of. Sheep brawled, geese burst out of rhyme. The symphony, forever endeavored to soar sublime, fluttered, plunged, and, for all of a measure, ceased.
The pool was appalled…what manner brute—what kind of monster was this? Furless flank to forelimb, hide obscured by blood. As for its face…it had no face; only a look:  of shock frozen in time, of horror in amber. A deep welling rift ran temple to chin, halving the mask, caving it in. Such a grievous wound…the pool watched it stagger, on two legs and four, thrashing about till it came to a rise. There it labored for air, wiped the blood from its eyes, lashed at illusion, looked wildly round. Beholding the pool, the beast tumbled down.
And there this wretch plunged his thirst, drank his fill, fell back on his haunches.
The pool became still.
The two traded stares.
The glass read his features:  that durable eye pondered the wreckage and probed the debris. Revolted, the pool sought the succor of sky. But that thing remained—that face…in all creation…surely there could be…no other creature so ugly as he.
And he gazed in the glass.
Beneath the surface were…images…swimming in currents of shadow and light. He saw half-shapes and fragments…hideous men, exotic beasts…saw blue worlds of water, saw white worlds of ice…it was all so vague and unreal—yet somehow strangely familiar. Deeper he peered, but, as his mangled face neared, the sun smote the pool and the shapes disappeared. The brute pawed the ground and, dreaming he’d drowned, shook his head sharply and slowly looked round:
There were starlings at arm’s-length, transfixed with suspense, their tail feathers trembling, their dark eyes intense. Fantails and timber wolves, stepping in sync, paused for a sniff, stooped for a drink. Bees, pirouetting, threw light in his eyes. Seizing the moment, the pool pressed its hold.
And the glade revolved.
The freak watched it spin—saw the ferns’ greedy fingers reach round and close in, saw the tall grass rise high in an emerald sheen, swaying to rhythms from somewhere obscene. This place was madness; he struggled to stand, but, weak as he was, keeled over cold.
And the glade heaved a sigh, and the tall grass reclined, in curious patterns once rendered in whim. Far off in thunder the hard world replied, as iced pines exploded and screamed on the breeze. Down bore the sun, a chill just behind. The pool, grown blood-red, fended frost from its rim. Details dissolved in the oncoming tide. The pool dimmed to black. Night seeped through the trees.
Now flora found slumber while, pulsing below, the pool was infused with a soft ruby glow.
Soon birds bearing beech leaves, and needles of pine, laid down a spread and returned to the limb. But breath from the North blew their blanket aside. The wind grew in earnest, the air seemed to freeze.
And the wolf and the she-bear, of contrary mind, abhorring their task approached, looking grim. They sniffed him for measure, then, loathing his hide, growled their displeasure and dropped to their knees.
All night these glum attendants flanked his naked quaking form. The rising moon drew dreams in gray.
In time the man grew warm.

Morning swept through the glade in one broad stroke of the master’s brush, dappling the foliage with amber and rose. The pool was roused by the sweet pass of light. He opened his eye and the glade came alive:  into the whirlpool of life a thousand colors swam, chasing the scattering eddies of night. The magic of morning began.
Bluebird and goldfinch descended in rings, primaries clashing with robin and jay. Dollops of sun, repelled by their wings, spattered anew on the palette of day. Banking as one, the hues struck away.
There was a crowd.
And in this crowd that oddity sat, its chin on its chest, its rear pointing west. Its forepaws lay leaning, upturned and at rest. ***** and blood messed its muzzle and breast. Passed overnight. Or perhaps only dozed…tendril by tendril, claw by claw, the crowd decompressed:  the ring slowly closed.
And the stranger cried out and shifted his seat. His eyes sought his feet—rounding the arches, and topping the toes, the tall grass was questing. The little brute froze.
And the fauna took pause, and the flora went slack. Leaves followed talons, stems followed claws. Hooves tromped on paws as the crowd drifted back.
Not a breath taken. Not a move made. Stillness, like fog, enveloped the glade.
Now the grass tugged his feet, now the sea of jade splayed—left hand and right, the slender shafts reared. Gaining momentum, blade followed blade. The green field was torn till a deep swath appeared. The swath hurtled west, reflecting the sun. A hundred yards distant it died. Once more the grass stood, its tips spreading wide. The swath, born again, repeated its run.
Plain was the message, and clearly conveyed. The newcomer gawked. Confusion ensued.
The tall blades were swayed by the pulse of the glade.
But the swath was not renewed.
Something tiny bounced by. He ventured a peek, barely rolling an eye.
A chocolate sparrow, with pinfeathers black, popped past an ankle and paused to look back. The bird cocked its head, rocked in place, hopped ahead. It fluttered. It freaked. It glared and stopped dead. Vexed to its limit, it burst into flight.
The sitting thing watched till it passed out of sight.
Now a breeze bent his back, picked him half off his stern. The wind, done its best, grew flustered at last. It trailed to the west, thrilling lilies it passed. It wound round the willows and didn’t return.
So the fauna repaired to the live oak’s shade.
A strange kind of stupor fell over the glade.
From deep in the wood came a shape through the trees—a pronghorn, perhaps, or an elk swift and sure. But up limped a moose, a flyport with fur, low in the belly and wide at the knees. Wizened he was, scarcely able to see. Neither vision, nor vigor, nor velvet had he. He hobbled abreast, then groveled or died, his nose facing west, his tail flung aside.
The brute merely glazed.
But the glade was unfazed.
Those long shafts reshuffled. A tense moment passed.
The ominous shadows of badgers were cast. Three left their holes, as if to attack. They pedaled like moles and the stranger jumped back. He stumbled, fell flailing, and, kicking his guide, threw out his arms and tumbled astride. First he stepped on his tail, then he stepped on his pride. The moose bellowed twice and shook side to side while the little pest clung to his high, homely hide.
And the old moose unbent to his knees by degrees. He reeled like a drunk down the path of the breeze. Together they lurched through a break in the trees. And all morning long, and on through the day, both beggar and bearer would buckle and sway. The moose lost his temper, but never his way.
And the wind blew the sun to its deep ruby rest; the scrub, in obeisance, inclined to the west. Their slow taffy shadow in slinking would seem to slip round the rocks like a snake in a dream.
And the sun became a beacon, and the underbrush a stream. The wide Earth took their weight in stride, and the wind named him Hero.

                                               WORLD

When the sun was low the old moose began to stumble, at last limping to a halt beside a swift river lined with stunted pines. He’d half-expected a somewhat graceful dismount, but Hero, dug in like a tick, wasn’t about to let go. The moose knelt until his joints objected, shimmied, bucked, and with a sudden whirl sent the little bother flying.
Hero scraped himself out of the dirt and looked up forlornly. The ancient moose, his good eye gone bad, glared a long minute before hobbling away, his bony **** rocking with dignity, his scraggly tail fighting off imaginary flies.
Hero managed a few steps and dropped, staring in disbelief as the moose disappeared between half-frozen pines. He remained on his knees for the longest time, his jaw hanging, waiting for the moose—waiting for anything to show. At last a ruckus to his left snapped him out of it. His head ratcheted around.
Fifteen feet off the bank, three screaming gulls were dancing on an immense stone outcropping, fighting over a rapids-tossed sockeye. Hero was instantly famished. He wobbled to his feet and stumbled twice wading out, only regaining his balance by leaning against the current while rapidly wheeling his arms. The shrieking gulls reluctantly backed off as he stepped in slow-motion through the rushing water. Hero lunged at the slapping fish, cracked an ankle on the rock, and hopped around howling with both hands holding his shin. One foot was as good as none in the surging water. He went right under. Before he knew it he was being swept downriver.
This was glacial meltwater, so cold he quickly lost all sensation. Hero swallowed a mouthful and surfaced fighting for life; too disoriented to combat the current, too numb to realize his waving arm was striking something solid. That solid something turned out to be a swirling clump of rotted birches tangled up in scrub. He embraced one of these trunks as the mass slammed against isolated rocks, kicked his feet wildly, and somehow hauled himself aboard. The raft ricocheted rock to rock until repeated impacts sent it spinning. Giddy from the whirling and soaking, he clung freezing to the trees, retching continuously while the river roared in his ears. Through spray and tears he made out only cartwheeling fragments of the world.
But then the river was widening, its fury dissipating. The raft was approaching the sea. Hero gasped as the seemingly boundless Pacific swallowed the broad red belly of the sun. And as he spun he was treated to a panoramic, breathtaking spectacle:  the great indigo ocean with its slow traffic of driftwood and ice—voiced-over by the dismal calls of foraging gulls, and broken rhythmically by intermittent glimpses of the river’s rocky banks growing farther and farther apart. Whirling as it went, the dying man’s soul was taken by the sea.

At the 59th Parallel in winter, the Pacific coast plays host to numberless floes and minor bergs orphaned from Alaskan coastal glaciers. Hero cruised into a watery gridlock on a boat of ice-glazed birches, one bit of flotsam among the rest.
The cold wouldn’t let him move, wouldn’t let him breathe, wouldn’t let him think. He lay supine, feet crossed and hands clasped, terrified that to budge was to roll. An ice patina grew over the tangled trees like a white fungus—this growth soon webbed his fingers and toes, speckled his chest and thighs, glazed his hair and face, danced and disintegrated with his breath’s tapering plumes.
Floes and frozen-over debris tended to group with passing collisions; Hero’s married birches bit by bit accrued a mostly-submerged tangle of trunks and branches, all becoming fast in a creeping ice cement. Night came on just as resolutely, until land was only a flat black memory. The raft moved silently over the deep, still accepting the occasional gentle impact. And the floes became thicker and wider in a freezing doldrums; soon the proximate sea was all a broken field of packed ice, bobbing infinitesimally with the planet’s pulse.
Long ghostly strands of fog came striding over the torn ice field. They leaned this way and that, their mourners’ skirts tearing and patching and leaning anew. The ghosts were there to seal it:  their locked fingers and gray diaphanous wings were quickly becoming a wholly opaque descending shroud, its boundaries lost in the soughing wind.
Collisions came less and less. Darkness and silence, breaching some previously impenetrable barrier, began to take up residence in Hero’s chilling marrow. From his very center broke a weak little cry of refusal, of denial, as mind mustered frame in one desperate bid for freedom. His skin, frozen to the raft, peeled right off, and at that his inner brave succumbed. Hero’s smashed head arched back. His face contorted frightfully while the little lamp fluttered and paled within.
A raucous chorus slowly worked its way through the mist. It emerged a few hundred yards off—a tiny, terrified barking, growing in clarity as it grew in volume and urgency. It was a sound beacon. Hero strained eagerly, and when for one excruciating minute the beacon was cut off by a large passing body, was certain death had claimed him. Then it was back, and his heartbeat was quickening. He caught a heaving sound…something was moving his way down a wide tributary between floes. Hero could hear a gasping and snorting, accompanied by a hard slapping and splashing. The sounds vanished. In a moment the raft was rocked from below.
A sputtering muzzle blew salt in his eyes. A cold slimy flipper flapped across his chest and slapped about his face. The fur seal barked directly in his ear. Whiskers raked his dead cheek. The seal barked again.
Back below the surface it slipped. Hero listened anxiously as the splashing sound retreated whence it came.
The seal swam off perhaps a hundred feet and began barking hysterically.
From much farther off came a profusion of answering barks.
The seal swam back to Hero’s raft, circling and calling, circling and calling, while the responders approached en masse.
Now a sallow beam could be seen cutting through the fog. Several more showed vaguely along a plane yawing with some huge, barely discernible object.
A herd of northern fur seals burst into sight, barking madly, beating through the ice. They converged on Hero’s raft, really bellowing now.
Those odd yellow beams came in pursuit, and soon were close enough to eerily illuminate a gigantic wooden vessel parting the ice. The seals barked ferociously. Whenever the vessel leaned away, those nearest Hero’s raft would absolutely howl.
The fog deepened, condensed, crystallized, and then the collective light of a dozen lanterns was playing over a low, listing nightmare. Hero could hear the shouts of many aggressive men, but the waterborne seals, rather than scatter, boarded the ice and redoubled their din, fighting their way onto his quickly mobbed raft.
The sealers hurled serrated spears even as they clambered down rope ladders. When these men reached the ice the seals snapped and gnashed madly, refusing to be dislodged. The sealers lost all composure with the thrill of the hunt:  wielding clubs, spears, and hatchets—sometimes using iron bludgeons or any old utensil handed down—they crushed skulls, dragged carcasses, hooked animals still spurting and bleating. Clinging though he was, Hero was flabbergasted by the way the slipping and scampering men went about their butchery, hacking and smashing more with passion than with precision. But not a single seal attempted to flee—throughout the carnage they barked all the louder, egging on their slayers, carcass by carcass drawing the impassioned sealers to Hero’s ice-locked raft.
It was all so hazy and macabre. Hero’s eyes rolled back, and the next thing he knew he was sitting hunched on the vessel’s sopping deck. Two men were rubbing his limbs while another poured warm water down his back. He looked around in shock. The very notion of a boat containing more than one or two individuals—a sort of floating tribe—was way beyond his ken; so to see it, to have it come looming out of nothingness, was an experience almost supernatural.
He remembered some of those fur-covered men force-feeding him mouthfuls of halibut and seal fat, and he recalled a small group standing around him, shouting words that made no sense at all. After that he had a very vivid memory of their angry little chief repeatedly punching him while hollering one angry little word over and over and over. Hero couldn’t make out his inquisitor’s face, for the large feather-lined hood quite engulfed the man’s head, yet he could see those quick eyes flash as they caught the oil lamps’ light. Finally this man stopped boxing Hero’s ear. He stared hard. In these remaining decades of the tenth century it was fully within his power to administer as he saw fit—he could have ordered Hero’s immediate execution and not a man of his crew would have objected. He hesitated only because there wasn’t a hint of resistance in his prisoner’s pinched and frightened eyes. He leaned forward, studying the wound that all but split Hero’s face in two before grunting, raising his right arm, and yanking down its seal hide sleeve. Attached to the stump of his forearm was a primitive prosthesis consisting of a thick oak cap strapped to the arm with lengths of gut, and, hammered squarely into the center of that cap, a broad, cruelly hooked blade chiseled from a narwhal’s tusk. He held this obscenity in front of Hero’s eyes, traced the face’s deep diagonal rift, and once more demanded his captive’s identity. Hero then vaguely remembered being dragged along a tilting deck and thrown into the ship’s tiny hold. He retained a strong mental image of landing in a place of musty odors and dank projections.
There came a soft scuffling in the darkness, and presently a blind and exceedingly old woman felt her way to his side, mumbling as she approached. Her speech was comprised not of words; it was rather a running gibberish of cooing vowels and clucking consonants. The old woman was as mad as her circumstances; sick with sea and solitude, bedeviled by age and confinement. She sat cross-legged, patting her withered palms up his arm until she came to his face. Her strange mumbling soliloquy rose and fell as her bony fingers daintily explored the newly opened wound. Hero let his head fall back in her lap. A pair of hands like emaciated tarantulas scurried through the filth and tiny bodies until they came upon an old otter’s pelt bag that held her secrets. The woman loosened the bag’s cord and extracted an assortment of herbs, sniffing each in succession. She then scooped a handful of blubber from a bowl made of a previous occupant’s skull, kneaded the selected herbs into the blubber, and commenced gently massaging the wound, clucking and cooing while the black rats watched and waited.
For nine interminable days Hero remained in that cold, stinking compartment, rocking back and forth between life and death. The old woman never gave up on him. She clung to him during his seizures, rubbed his limbs vigorously when his blood pressure fell. She gathered various accumulated skins and, using woven strands of her own long hair, sewed him a multilayered, body-length wraparound with arm sleeves and very deep pockets, working by touch with a needle formed of a cod’s rib. By this same method she was able to fashion a pair of heavily lined snug-fitting moccasins. The old woman made him eat; she masticated the cod and halibut their keepers pitched into the hold, then shoved the results down his throat with a long gnarly forefinger. She called into his screaming nightmares, talking him out of sleep and back into their foul little reality. Together they lowed in the dark, while the keel groaned along and the waves beat time.
At the end of those dark nine days his strength was restored, but not his mind. Once again he was taken on deck.
The vessel had reached a chain of remote wind-swept islands, rocky and treeless, naked except for patchy carpets of hardy grass. These islands stretched far to the west, shrouded in mist. The ship was making for the smallest; just a chip on the sea. When they reached depth for anchorage Hero was hustled into a rowboat and lowered over the side. He looked up, saw two men climbing down by rope. These men positioned themselves at the oars and slowly rowed toward the islet. Seated between them, Hero felt like a man being led to his execution. He snuck a peek. The rowers’ heads were lowered, their features completely obscured by the heavy feathered hoods; they had all the somberness of pallbearers. Not a word passed between them as they rigidly worked their oars:  the only sound was the dip-and-purl of wood in water. Hero looked away. Against his will, he found his eyes drawn to that rocky islet waiting in the fog.
Not a bird, not a sea lion, not a shrub. It was lonesome beyond imagination.
Upon landfall one of the men used a spear’s point to **** Hero ashore. While his companion steadied the boat, he removed a skin sack full of half-frozen halibut, followed by a few armloads of precious tinder. These articles he tossed at Hero’s feet. He resumed his place at the oars and, without looking back, used the blunt end of his spear to shove off.
Hero watched the boat moving away, watched the men climbing their ropes, watched the boat being hauled aboard. As the mysterious vessel receded he saw a number of those silent men standing at the stern, stolidly returning his stare. Their hooded forms grew smaller and smaller, finally becoming indistinct. The vessel was swallowed up in fog.
Hero looked around, at a desolate world of rock and drifting ice. In the sunless pools at his feet a few purplish, flaccid sea anemones were waving in a sickly phosphorescence; along the rocks ran a tattered quilt of wild grass and lichen. It was the end of the world. He began to pace in his anxiety, only to crumple bit by bit inside his furs. At last he just sat with his face in his arms and wept. When he could weep no more he raised his head and opened his red, swollen eyes.
There were gulls all around him, staring like statuary in a madman’s garden. Standing in their midst were auks and puffins and murres, absolutely spellbound, unable to lean away. The silence was broken only by a wild, fitfully pursing wind—a wind that seemed, eerily, on the verge of producing syllables. And on that wind a flock of terns was rising slowly, their beady eyes fixed on the lone sitting man. The terns watched as he trembled, and banked as he swooned.
Then, beating as one, they threw back their wings and blew into the sun.

There was a blaze.
Behind that blaze a pair of black, bug-like eyes met his and immediately withdrew. A man wrapped in caribou hides stood abruptly, drawing angry swarms of sparks.
The Aleut peered queerly into the icy Pacific, his craggy profile merging seamlessly with a jumble of rocks showing just beyond his shoulder. The man was very tall, closer to seven feet than to six, and thin almost to emaciation.
He was also a mute. Soon enough he would display a talent for communication through gutturals, but now his body language spoke louder than words. It told the shivering stranger that he was not only disliked—he was feared.
The islander removed the hides he’d piled on the sleeping man. He produced a bone awl and strategically pierced a caribou hide, draped the hide over the old woman’s handiwork, and ran a cord of tightly woven tendons crosswise through his made holes, knotting it at the bottom to create a kind of cloak. He then killed the fire, heaped wood, fish, and remaining hides into Hero’s arms, and led him to a tiny cove where his long skin canoe lay in the grass. This was not the one-man kayak used by his people for centuries, but an actual canoe modeled on the graceful vessels he’d observed under the control of northern coastal tribesmen. After dragging it into the water he perched Hero in the fore, placed the cargo in the middle, and stepped into the rear like a gaunt furry spider. The Aleut dug out a paddle and began pulling with smooth strokes of surprising muscularity, his black eyes trained on his quiet companion’s back.
So began their long island-hopping journey. They stepped the chain one stone at a time, living off the sea. But much as the islander disliked Hero’s vapid company, it was not in his nature to proceed expeditiously; his people, remote as they were, had learned to count not in days but in generations. Given this, the Aleut took his time. He showed Hero how to build shelters of skin and gut; during bad weather the two would sit on an island in utter silence while rain hammered on their stretched seal-intestine window. And one very clear night he pointed out constellations while attempting to demonstrate, using broad gestures, just how the brighter heavenly bodies were in perfect alignment with the Aleutians. Hero followed his guide’s gestures as a pet follows its master’s movements and, like a pet, soon became bored. The Aleut did not grow flustered. He grew ever more wary:  behind that granite, weather-beaten exterior squirmed a very primitive imagination. Superstitious as he was, the Aleut was almost certain Hero could read his mind. So one time, and one time only, he threw a searing look at the back of Hero’s bowed and listing head. After a long minute of vigorous thought-projection he shifted his gaze aside. The brute appeared to feel this shift, and gently turned his head. And both saw the ocean break rhythm, and watched as otters and sea lions surfaced, noted their progress, and slipped without tremor beneath the waves.
In spring the fogs lifted. The grimness gave way to serenity, a generous sun buttered the dappled sea. On the islands grass grew lushly. Wildflowers leapt on the color-starved eye.
And one day the islander’s nape itched. He turned to see a flock of arctic terns casually tracking them under a gorgeous, white-plumed sky. As the day progressed the terns came drifting high overhead, slowly but surely taking the lead.
The Aleut squinted against the sun. He’d never known these birds to pursue a westerly migratory pattern—the terns were distributing themselves into a rough wedge shape, much like geese on the wing.
For a while he let the flock be his guide. Then, to test his stars, he cunningly steered his canoe north. At once the wedge disintegrated. Not until he’d lowered his eyes and pulled purposefully to the west did the disrupted pattern reassert itself. He peered up timidly. The wedge was now in the shape of a perfect arrowhead.
Just so were the fates of mariners and aviators inextricably entwined. At night, once the Aleut had landed his canoe on the nearest pearl, the terns would light in a quiet circle and remain until sunrise. As the Aleut and Hero took to sea, the flock would quickly form that same authoritative pattern.
In time the Aleut paddled his companion clear to the westernmost islands of the Aleutian chain. His people had dwelt, even here, a thousand years and more, but no contemporary islander knew for certain what lay beyond. Legend told of an enormous land mass forever gripped by cold, where a cruel people waylaid innocent seafarers for barbaric sacrificial rites.
So here the islander paused. But even as he vacillated he noticed the terns were veering south.
If the Aleut had been able to curse aloud he would have been vociferous. He was being compelled to follow an even less desirable course—that of the unknown open ocean. Now he looked upon his passenger’s hunched back not with fear but with loathing. He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and defiantly continued west. The wedge broke up immediately. The terns dive-bombed the canoe, whirled around the windmilling Aleut, tore skyward and hovered determinedly. Something huge broke surface behind them, but the Aleut was way too frayed to turn. He dropped his head, a beaten man, and began paddling south. Little by little the birds returned to formation.
The tiny canoe had no business going up against the mighty Pacific. It would soon have been swallowed and smashed, had not the terns veered in close formation whenever the distant sea appeared too rough. Once he’d lost his bearings the Aleut religiously followed their serpentine course.
The days began to warm.
Now the sea’s bounty all but leapt in the canoe.
It seemed the Aleut was forever catching the finest currents, practically sliding down a corridor entirely free of peril. In this manner he was able to safely navigate waters no such craft had mastered before.
They were proceeding south by southwest, awed children of a plenteous, generous sea. The going became easier by the day, the ocean heavier with cod.
Nights the Aleut drifted comfortably, but a lifetime of wariness made him wake off and on. He’d slowly rise to find Hero sitting quietly under the stars, and soon he’d see, pallid in moonlight, a large body neatly pleating the ocean’s surface. The shape would precede them a while, only to vanish without a ripple.
All this strangeness kept the Aleut’s heart in a whirl, though he took pains to maintain his poise.
To allay his fear he kept a flat black stone planted squarely between them. It was his oldest treasure; an oddity he’d taken off the body of a mauled Tlingit woman when he was a child. Who she was, and how she’d come by the stone, were mysteries far beyond him, for no such piece had ever been known to Aleut or Inuk.
The stone was smooth and had been worked perfectly round. Bright yellow specks were scattered about its dull black face.
Long ago someone had etched a quaint and clumsy rune on that flat black surface—it was the crude, universal symbol for sun:  a broad circle surrounded by several rays. When the stone was rubbed against a pelt it possessed the curious property of growing quite warm and bright in the rune’s grooves, while the surface remained cool and dull.
This stone, both friend and overlord, had always “spoken to him”. It caused him to become restless when it was time to move on, and allowed him to relax when a destination had been reached. In this way he’d come to the familiar islet and discovered the unconscious little man. Just so:  the stone, he was sure, was responsible for making him “feel bad” as he watched the stranger shiver, and “feel better” once he’d built him a life-saving fire from the small pile of tinder he’d found nearby.
By now, however, the Aleut was wholly disenchanted with his stone, and deeply regretted having done its mysterious bidding. Never before had he been so long from sight of land, and never before had he felt so very, very small. The unimagined immensity of the Pacific was really starting to get to him when, after all their while at sea, a gray, seductive haze broke the horizon. They had reached another chain of islands, an Asian chain, the dark and smoky Kurils. Here a cold current kept the climate cool and foggy, and the chill, along with the prevalence of otter and seal, made him feel almost at home.
But this place gave him the creeps; he was a stranger, a trespasser somewhere sacred. There was a looming quality to the island mountains that made him extraordinarily aware of his transience, his pettiness, his puniness. He grew more and more cautious, sure their progress was being monitored—he could have sworn he saw wraiths in the trees, and wolves padding warily in the brush. The big islands looked on breathlessly. All along the rocky cliffs, thousands of auks and puffins followed the canoe in dead silence, their heads turning simultaneously, their countless tiny eyes peering redly through the fog. As the weeks passed, the Aleut’s anxiety was manifested in tics and sighs, and he’d cringe each time the crimson sun sank behind those black volcanic summits. In his imagination the mountains would rise right out of the sea, as though to pluck him. But the islands, in all their dignity, would always refuse to acknowledge so meek a stranger, and return their eyes to sea. The Aleut would hang his head, and timidly paddle by.
Then for days and days he pulled his weary canoe west—through a strait parting two mighty islands not part of the chain, and thence across a sea that was a warm, enticing bath. Spring had come to the East Asian coastal waters, and the Ainu, alone and in groups, were venturing deeper in search of increasing bounty. The Aleut, absorbed in his thoughts of sweet climate and bitter fate, was unaware they’d been spotted.
This first meeting between strangers of different worlds was a brief and awkward one. A lone Ainu fisherman, seeing the Aleut come paddling out of the unknown, dropped his net and turned to stone. The Aleut, for his part, instinctively froze with his body turned half-away to make the leanest target possible. Their stares locked. Never had the Aleut seen a face so heavily bearded, and never hair so fair. The Ainu began banging on his bronze catch pail. Other fishers soon appeared from the north and south, effectively cutting off the canoe. The Aleut caressed his stone and looked to the sky. The wedge had vanished. He put down his head and paddled for all he was worth.
With the word out, uncountable fishing craft appeared out of the blue and broke into hot pursuit, their pilots determined to force the canoe ashore.
Suddenly they were in sight of land, and the sea was absolutely riddled with watercraft. A train of small boats cast off from the mainland, even as a posse of two-man coracle-like tubs began to surround the battered skin canoe, their inhabitants calling back and forth in astonishment at the sight of these dark, savage newcomers. But the pursuing little coastal men, banging excitedly on the sides of their boats, were not Ainu. They had very straight black hair, prominent cheekbones, and strangely slanted eyes. And their speech, oddly marvelous as it was, was a rapid series of coos, chirps, and barks. Their boats formed a tight semi-circle around the canoe, forcing the Aleut to approach the mainland. The little men banged their boats maniacally, with more joining in as the canoe neared shore.
A bit farther south was a natural harbor swarming with fishing vessels of every description. As the canoe was forced into this harbor, people along the rocky coast began banging whatever they could get their hands on, until the air was filled with their lunatic percussion.
Tiny brown men came running along a soft yellow cliff overlooking the harbor, gesturing wildly. The canoe was squeezed between a chain of tubs and the shore, and, as it slowed, the tempo and ferocity of the banging decreased accordingly. When the canoe came to a halt the banging and shouting stopped. Hero creaked to his feet. The first North American to set foot on Asian soil stepped out shakily.
There followed the profoundest silence imaginable.
A second later it was as if a dam had burst.
Hundreds of hysterical, yammering voices erupted from hundreds of hysterical, clinging men and women. Hero was spun around, jostled about, handed along. He stared into their astounded, pinched little faces, and the sun, pulsing between their heads as he was turned, repeatedly stabbed his eyes. There came an excited outburst and frantic splashing which could only have been the Aleut’s violent demise, and then Hero was somehow limping alongside a primitive fishing village, blindly following a narrow dirt path that hugged the yellow cliff’s base. The warm spring sun caught the dust as he shambled. He rounded a bend and stopped.
Half a dozen children stood in his way, too fascinated to run. A chatter and scuffle rose behind him. He looked back to see that he was now in the midst of a small crowd of these children, and that more were running up with cries of amazement.
A stone struck his shoulder. As Hero turned another glanced off his chest.
A moment later he was being pelted from all sides, and the giggles and gasps had become something wildly unreal. He dropped to his knees in a hail of hurled rocks, covered his head with his arms, and slithered up the path on his belly.
A new voice broke in; an older, authoritative voice.
The children scampered off squealing.
Hero, shaken to his feet, found himself face to face with a diminutive, shouting, incomprehensible old man. The old man threw his arm around Hero’s waist and, jabbering all the while, led him to a secondary path cut into the cliff’s face. This path sloped gently upward over the waves. Together they picked their way to a place maybe halfway up, where the cliff’s face was honeycombed with natural alcoves and dug-out caves. Most of these spaces were used as one-man shelters; a few, cut deeper in the earth, as family hives. Strange gabbing people slid out of these holes like worms, reaching, but the little old man, who was evidently a little old man of some stature, embraced his find possessively and shouted them back inside.
The path narrowed as they climbed.
At its summit spread the upscale end of the neighborhood. Hero was led to a hovel nestled amid dozens of similar hovels, all scattered around a dainty stream wending between patches of stunted vegetation.
The old man’s place was basically a one-room hut fashioned of earth and salvaged boat hulls, with a slender side-yard surrounded by dry, dusty hedges. But inside it was clean and tidy, with rice paper partitioning and, built into the far earthen wall, a miniature stone fireplace. The old man sat his guest in the exact center of the room. There he fed him scraps from his bowl, using long sticks to pluck out bits of fish and clumps of tiny, starchy white pellets.
He studied the brute closely, watched him chew, walked round and round him. He poked here. He pinched there.
And that night he lit a fire on his crushed-shell hearth.
Hero curled up on a mat where the gossip of flames could reach him. Nearby, at his delicate wicker table, the old man sat in semi-darkness, illuminated only from the waist down.
But his eyes were alive. They spat and darted as they reflected the fire’s light, and, when at last they’d begun to sputter, his scratchy little voice came pattering out of the dark, muttering something vile and oddly modulated, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a gathering snarl.
Hero feigned slumber, unable to ignore those paired ominous flashes. Still, the room was cozy, and the fire warm, and the play of light and shadow kicked sleep in his eyes.

In the morning he woke in the old man’s side-yard, his head pounding, a rusty iron clamp securely fastened around his neck. This clamp was attached to the outermost link of a crude three-foot chain, and the link at the other end to a long stake driven into eight inches of solid rock. The chain and stake, like the clamp, were hammered of local iron. The clamp was too tight for comfortable swallowing, the chain too short to make standing possible. Hero could, however, spread out on his chest and stretch an arm to a low row of hedges. By parting the tangled undergrowth he had a limited view of the fishing village below, and of the harbor beyond. As the days passed he was able to tweak himself a view-space discernible only from his peculiar vantage. He accomplished this by gently breaking small branches strategically, then guiding their interrupted growth with the utmost tenderness. It was his secret garden.
He had no memory—none whatsoever—of being staked here. Obviously the old man hadn’t set this up overnight. Hero’s mind prodded timidly…how many others had been chained to this spot, and why?
But over the subsequent weeks and months he went beyond caring. Each day was the same:  just after dawn the old man would storm into the tiny side-yard swinging his reed whip wildly. The lashings were savage and unremitting. The old man, except for his eyes, would be mute. Only his whip need speak. And the snap of his reed had but one message:  when you see this whip you go down, and you go down immediately.
The naked savage, scarred head to foot, learned to go prostrate on the moment. Even so, the old man couldn’t resist the temptation to indulge in the occasional good old, all-out thrashing. And after each session he would toss the prisoner a vile mess of dead fish and rotting leftovers.
Hero lived like this for many months, lost in a confused world of pain and anticipation. Perversely, he came to look forward to the bite of that whip, for, whether he flogged him in passion or just for sport, the old man was always sure to make it personal. It seemed their relationship might go on forever.
But one day there was a great commotion in the sleepy little fishing village. Hero parted the leaves and beheld a small train of oblong coaches at rest near the harbor. Large oxen yoked in pairs lolled between the carriages, immune to the clamor around them. There were dark shaggy horses and colorfully dressed Bactrian camels. The horses and camels were tethered in the rear, but were occasionally paraded around the carriages by little men wielding long painted bamboo poles. The whole affair was exotic and mesmerizing, eccentric and profane. Hero watched all day in amazement, infected by the hubbub, though he was totally mystified by the crowd’s fascination on the carriages’ far side.
And late that afternoon he saw the old man come walking out of that crowd, talking heatedly with another man. The stranger was shorter and broader than the old man, with long stringy hair and long stringy mustaches. He saw them climbing the path, saw them crawl inside a hole lashing furiously. They were lost from view for a minute, then popped up big as life. Hero glowed and curled up eagerly as they approached.
The old man and stranger came into the narrow side-yard still arguing. The old man grabbed Hero by the hair and twisted until he was facing the newcomer.
The stranger had oily, porous skin, and a round but grave countenance. His highly slanted eyes were bright and restless. He studied Hero’s mutilated face with keen interest before borrowing the old man’s reed. When Hero scraped at his feet he grunted and returned the reed.
The stranger pulled out something shiny and hefted it in his hand. He then raised his other hand while considering Hero, as though weighing him too. The old man’s eyes glinted, and for an instant his expression became grotesquely servile. The stranger and old man, facing, nodded curtly in unison. The stranger dropped the shiny thing onto the old man’s itching palm. The old man whipped Hero frantically before taking a small ax to the chain. A few hard blows split a link, the broken link was bent back by the tool’s shaft, and the prisoner was at last released.
The old man handed the stranger a short hempen rope. The stranger bowed deeply. He then tied an end of the rope through one of the remaining links and began dragging Hero along. Hero’s hands sought the old man, who kicked and cursed him all the way to the path. The three stumbled single-file to the bottom. The old man waved his arms and shouted hysterically, trotting behind until he ran out of breath. But he got in a final kick and, before he came to a gasping halt, managed to lash Hero once for old time’s sake, and to spit on him twice for luck.

There were five carriages; a long one in the center hitched to four oxen, and two smaller coaches in the front and rear with a pair of oxen on each. The carriages were old and battered, built of splitting wood slats and rusted iron braces. Various hides, spare wheels, and a hundred odds and ends were tied to the sides and roofs. Hero’s new master, using him as a ram, shoved him through the crowd to the long carriage. He hauled him up the single wood step and watched the crowd’s reaction. Children hid behind mothers, mothers hissed and jeered, men spat in that smashed, disgusting face.
Satisfied, Hero’s master twisted the rope tighter and dragged him through the hide flap that served as the carriage’s rear wall.
A strange ruckus began at their entrance.
Inside the carriage were bulky shapes and quirky movements, yet the immediate and overwhelming impression was one of unbelievable stench. Hero, instantly covered with flies, was kicked and shoved down a foot-wide aisle. The carriage’s walls were riddled with black flecks of old dried blood, the floor coated with standing *****, a variety of small carcasses, and some clinging, indefinable slime. But the living contents of this hell were so horrifying, and so unexpected, that Hero at once dropped to his knees. Observing this, master grabbed a whip off the wall and lashed him along the floor.
A number of bamboo cages lined either side of the carriage, each four feet high, four feet wide, and three feet deep. In the first cage to their left, a quadruple amputee dangled in a leather harness in a cloud of flies, jealously gnawing a chicken carcass balanced on his belly. The second cage held a man who had been burned over ninety per cent of his body, and the third a middle-aged woman with no eyes or tongue, her head shaved. The next cage housed a fully grown black leopard, its bright eyes fixed on the horrified newcomer. Then an empty cage, and finally a cage containing a demented man whose long yellow nails were busily raking a face deeply scarred and bleeding.
The first cage against the opposite wall held two girls rolling in their own excrement. Siamese twins unable to part, they had developed a unique method of locomotion, and now executed a three-quarters cartwheel in Hero’s direction, their mangled, severely bitten hands attempting to reach him through the bars. In the cage next to theirs a naked dwarf glowered menacingly, his eyes following coldly as Hero’s master shoved him down the narrow aisle, occasionally pausing to lash a cage. The hissing and howling increased as each prisoner beheld the new neighbor.
The third cage held an intensely sick adult Bornean sun bear, so confined it was entirely unable to move. Its hide was a patchwork of scraggly fur and grayish skin, glistening with odd eruptions. It rolled its sunken eyes in Hero’s direction, its muzzle twitching feebly.
The next cage contained a man who was frightfully diseased. Broad fungal patches covered his face and limbs, terminating in waxy folds that dangled like a rooster’s wattles. Welling sores spotted his chest and back. His eyes were bugged and sallow; his lower lip drooped below his chin. He barked wetly at Hero’s passing legs.
The second-to-last cage housed a rare, completely hairless Chinese albino, and the last cage a very tall, skeletal woman. The albino snapped at Hero while repeatedly banging his head against the cage. The woman hissed and coiled like a snake, her spine arching amazingly.
Master hauled Hero to the empty cage on his left, swung its door open with his foot, and forced him to his knees by pushing down with all his weight. He kicked and punched until Hero had been squeezed inside, then shut and secured the wide bamboo door.
Master inched his way back down the carriage, hammering the **** of his whip on each cage as he passed. There was a glimpse of daylight as he lifted the flap.
Once he’d departed, the carriage grew eerily silent.
Hero cautiously turned his head. Less than a foot away, the black leopard was frozen in place, one paw waving hypnotically in his face. The beast’s fangs were bared, its ears straight back, its eyes glistening. Hero turned ever so slowly, until he was looking into the eyes of the demented man in the final cage. The man cocked his head quizzically. A second later he was screaming his lungs out in a bizarre downward spiral.
At once the carriage erupted. The freaks shrieked and scrabbled, the leopard spun in place. Directly across the aisle, the albino hurled himself against the bars of his cage. He batted his face with his fists, threw back his head, and just howled and howled and howled. The snake woman curled even tighter, her long scrawny legs entwined behind her head.
Hero sat with breath held, absolutely silent, absolutely motionless. He very, very slowly closed his eyes.

Later that night the flap was flung high. The menagerie came alive as master, weirdly illuminated by moonlight, slowly made his way down the aisle carrying a skin sack oozing blood. He stopped at each cage to toss in a dying chicken and a handful of smelt.
When he reached Hero’s cage he looked down thoughtfully.
He extracted a quivering chicken and held it above the cage so that blood dripped on the brute’s deeply pleated forehead. Hero lowered his eyes. Master’s face darkened. He smashed the bird against the cage, over and over, a vein throbbing in his temple. Finally he hissed and displayed the limp chicken high over the albino’s head. The albino yelped and kicked, thrusting his hand up between the bars and jerking it back to lick away the blood rolling down his forearm.
Master eyed Hero coldly before pointedly dropping the chicken into the albino’s searching hands.
Master hissed again. He slowly made his way out.
Soon there was a commotion outside. The carriage rocked a bit before settling. Hero, turning in his cage to peek through a rift in the wood, saw horses being urged forward. He could hear men shouting. The carriage rocked again. He looked up and saw the gibbous moon suspended in mist. For just a second something wedge-shaped cut across its soft white face.
But then the oxen were grunting, the wheels had been freed, and the horses drawn abreast. Master’s lash spat left and right, and the show proceeded…west.

                                              MA­STER

She was very round and very small, with very short, very shaggy black hair. Her arms bore the scars of numerous bites from beast and man, and around her neck ran long wheals from a particularly savage owner. Hero, having spent the better part of the morning watching master storm in and out of a strange screaming house, now watched him drag the little round woman through the dirt. For a while he listened to the song of his master’s lash, waiting for the woman to break. But there was never a whimper.
It had been a difficult transaction for master, and an altogether difficult morning. For hours he’d paced up and down the main carriage, alternately murmuring affectionately into, and lashing at, each cage he visited. The sun bear, long dead and stuffed, had been taken outside for barter. It had soon been returned.
Master had lingered over Hero’s cage for a good while, staring critically. He’d begun shouting, and three of his men had burst in through the flap, unlatched the demented man’s cage, and dragged him out by the feet for trade, master personally stomping on his torn and groping hands.
And now master was kicking and shoving the little woman down the aisle as his men restrained her by the hair and throat. Upon master’s command these men stripped her naked and commenced pinching and slapping while making threatening faces and mocking noises. The freaks sat right up in their cages.
The woman looked as though she’d fainted:  her arms were lax, her eyes rolled up. Her whole face seemed to purse, and her body, head to toe, began to run blue. Her fingers quivered, arched, and clawed—the woman was self-asphyxiating. Master fairly leaped with delight while the cages rocked around him. He had the men slap her awake. Once she was fully conscious they stuffed her into the demented man’s old cage next to Hero’s.
Master then looked in eagerly, one to the other, his hands balled into fists. The woman buried her odd round face in her forearms as she squeezed herself into her cage’s deepest corner. Hero gazed indifferently and went back to his peephole.
Master exploded. He smacked and kicked the cages over and over, swore up and down, ran the shaft of his whip back and forth against the heavy bamboo bars. Eventually he calmed somewhat. He stared coldly at Hero, made a ***** smile, and spat right in his eyes. A tense minute passed. Master slowly made his way outside.
Hero automatically relaxed. Across the aisle the albino ****** his face between his cage’s bars to sniff the newcomer. The leopard, bobbing rhythmically, emitted a high-pitched squeal that gradually descended to a steadily throbbing growl.
Hero looked the stranger over. Once she’d lowered her hands he saw that her eyes were crossed, her jaw slack, her face as round as the full moon. He looked closer. There were scars all over her throat and arms:  plainly, the small round woman had been treated very badly. Hero instinctively slid a foot between the bars; the woman cried out and scrunched even deeper. Across the aisle the albino quickly extended an arm. Without knowing why, Hero turned on him. The albino flinched, his eyes tearing into Hero’s. A second later he was stamping his feet and grinning wildly. Hero went back to his peephole.
Next morning master and two of his men dismantled the bamboo walls separating Hero’s and the woman’s cages. They bound the frames with broad leather bands, making a single cage of the two.
A common door was fashioned and secured. Master used his broad blade to shear away Hero’s rags. The men hunched around the long cage expectantly.
The naked couple backed away. Master was instantly exasperated—he shouted, lashed furiously, stamped and screamed, jabbed a broken shaft between the bars with malevolent intent, whirled and hurled the shaft at nothing. The carriage’s inmates went out of their minds. At master’s bellowed command a man scurried outside, returning with a long rope of woven leather strands. Master opened the cage and, applying all his weight, pinned Hero and his new mate in an awkward embrace while his men tied them together.
Again master and his men bent over the long cage to watch.
When Hero realized his predicament he made a desperate attempt to reach his peephole.
The men, misreading his struggles, babbled and cheered, but master threw up his hands. He then, through gesture, ordered his men to drape a number of hides over the long cage. Once these hides were in place he very quietly bent to one knee and placed an ear against the cage. After a while he cursed and rose to his feet. He shook the cage and stormed out, whipping and kicking the howling inmates.
In the semi-darkness the man and woman quit fighting their bonds.
A muffled patter began on the hide-covered roof.
Rain, as always, had a calming effect on the carriage’s occupants, causing the freaks and beasts to slip, one by one, into lethargy or slumber. Under such a spell, the attainment of master’s goal was inevitable.
It was a coupling both innocent and vile, without passion or celebration. Occasionally the freaks would surface, register their excitement by shrieking, shaking their cages, or otherwise clamoring…but very quickly the air would stifle them, weighing their heads and confusing their impulses. The atmosphere grew heavier by the minute. And, when night rolled over the carriages, the rain came down in sheets.

Leaning ******* the woman’s cage, master slipped his gnarly hand between the bars and slowly rubbed her belly in a counter-clockwise motion, his sinister features soft in the candle’s light. And he told, in nonsensical cooing whispers, of a lovingly secure and impossibly prosperous future.
How large and promising that belly had become! And how wise was he, the cunning and aggressive master, in his far-reaching business decisions. He turned his affection to the motionless gaping brute; stroked the battlefield of its face, tossed in another lizard. Master rubbed his palms together. From now on it was extra lizards daily, for both the woman and her mate. He remarked, with only passing interest, his star player’s continuing indifference. They didn’t know each other, didn’t need each other.
There’d been months of shows on the road now, broken only recently by this sensible rejoining of the mates at conception.
Hero’s horrible disfigurement was unquestionably top draw; he was a guaranteed crowd pleaser at every stop. So now master looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. He held the reeking candle high. The carriage was absolutely silent. Master smiled again, rose to his feet, tiptoed away.
Hero watched him retreat until the flap had fallen. He returned to his peephole, saw master round the rear of the carriage and slowly crunch by. For a time he could see nothing but the half-shapes of junipers bathed in starlight. There was a tentative movement to his right and a large shape came to obstruct his view.
The horse stood for a minute in profile. It slowly brought its head to rest against the carriage, applying its eye to the peephole. Hero froze. The two remained fixed, eyeball to eyeball, while a breeze played odd tunes on the outer wall’s hanging paraphernalia. The horse’s big dark eye rolled nervously. A long moment passed. Slowly the horse backed off. It stood uncertainly for a while, staring at the peephole. Then it quietly moved away.

Master kicked the cages one by one, left hand and right, as he slowly made his way down the aisle. Into each cage he delivered a personalized warning in passing—a growl, a hiss, a bark—but he was quickly losing control. Animal electricity hopscotched the carriage, cage to cage, ceiling to floor, front to rear and back again. Master froze. Much more of this excitement, he feared, could seriously agitate the woman—with grave consequences for master.
She was splayed on her back, in labor’s throes, her ankles and wrists bound to the long cage. Hero had been removed to give her room, and now sat hunched atop the snake woman’s cage, two men holding him by the throat and legs.
Master gnashed and snarled, listening to the woman scream, watching her stupid round head bounce up and down and back and forth. He knew it! He’d been suckered, hoodwinked, scammed—ripped off like a common rube. The woman was too ******* to handle even something as natural as childbirth. Still…it was too late to second-guess himself—all these months he’d been patient—he’d been supportive and vigilant and now he would not be denied. He flogged one of the men to alleviate his tension.
The blue lady was very slowly, very dramatically arching her spine. Master wiped the sweat from his eyes. When the bars were pleating her big round belly, her shoulders began drumming on the straw-strewn floor.
Master screamed one very colorful expletive.
A razor silence came over the carriage. Not a body moved or breathed.
At last two men tiptoed around their purpling master and leaned into the cage. One obediently ****** a foot between the bars. He pushed ******* her right knee while using a hand to grip the left knee, spreading her legs wide. The other man drew a broad leather strap between her teeth. After lifting the woman’s head he pulled the strap behind her neck, knotted it to make a gag, and yanked a skin sack over her face. He looked up anxiously. Master licked his lips and nodded. The man made a fist and frantically punched the woman’s face until her muffled screams ceased. She moaned gently throughout her contractions.
Master genuflected, brought a spitting candle in tight, and took a deep breath. As he raised his hand the candle’s light bounced off his knife’s chipped and scored eleven-inch blade. Master swore and reached down carefully. He flicked his wrist twice and the menagerie went mad.

The child was a tremendous disappointment.
Master had eagerly anticipated an infant ******* and deformed; something embracing the best qualities of its parents. He had even designed a special cage that could be expanded by degrees as the spawn developed. There also remained the tantalizing option of a family display, though such an undertaking would require the eventual construction of a structure even larger than the cage its parents now shared. Master anguished over the logistics, knowing it would break his heart to have to cut one of his jewels’ throats just to make room for a growing child. Nights he would slowly pace the carriage with all the possessiveness of a jealous suitor, one hand maneuvering a sputtering candle, the other tenderly rapping his whip’s **** against each visited cage.
But the boy was a flawless specimen; a beautiful, undemanding baby. From the moment master angrily tossed the placenta he felt cheated, even betrayed. He grimaced as it peaceably took to its mother’s breast, despite the surrounding horrors. Master hated it, immediately and entirely. The ****** thing was so docile it was almost charming. He drew his knife and was just reaching down, when an overwhelming sense of dread shook him like a rat in the jaws of a mastiff. Sweat poured down his squat, pig-tailed nape. He knew he would live to regret it, but decided to not cut the child’s throat right away. It was the oddest feeling. His knife hand had trembled for the first time in his life, and he had found himself momentarily contemplating right and wrong at the outset of a perfectly simple and commonplace procedure. That was it, then. His business instincts were letting him know there was a good, albeit unknowable, reason to let the sweet baby live. Master left the carriage anxiously, muttering in his ambivalence.
The boy grew to embody his worst expectations. Not only was it a poorly oriented child, clinging to its father rather than its master almost from the moment of weaning, but it soon proved a lousy draw with the patrons. Those who paid to view the child dangling in its special cage inevitably departed unsatisfied, some vocalizing, strangely, an acute sense of shame. So once again master entered the carriage with his knife hand steady, and once again he exited trembling, his heart in his throat and his soul in a whirl. He whipped the dwarf savagely before leaving. What place conscience in the mind of a businessman?
Soon as the boy could walk, master put him to work fetching and feeding. But the brat was slothful in his chores, preferring to hang around his family’s cage while staring wistfully at his father. For their part, the parents were wholly disinterested. Master would fume while Hero gazed for hours out his peephole—even as the mother lolled, perpetually ill. Sometimes that accursed woman’s condition riled poor master to no end. She could teeter at death’s door for months at a time, her body changing hues to the fascination of customers, only to bounce back with a hardiness that was of interest to no one. But at the peak of her performances the blue lady could really hold a crowd. Master produced an entire outdoors extravaganza around her:  within concentric rings of raging torches his men would slowly strip her naked before wild audiences, then allow the dwarf and albino to take her while the leopard strained against a gaily festooned chain. Master circulated his crew through the crowds to encourage his patrons’ cult-like behavior of breath-holding and fainting. No getting around it:  the customers were crazy about her—village to village, master’s Bactrian vanguard’s colorful robes shouted her approaching fame. And Hero’s popularity continued to soar. Many were the nights when master, pacing the perimeter, wondered just what devilry could have produced the lovely boy.
Overall, Hero remained his master’s favorite conceit and hottest property. Part of the little brute’s appeal was, of course, his exoticness. And certainly the ugliness arising from his deformity was compelling…but there was a detachedness about him that fascinated every soul with a fistful of copper cash coins. Whether they ****** him, cudgeled him, or spat in his face, he remained unflappable, staring only at the aching sky. Though many would leave uneasy, master noted with deep satisfaction that they almost invariably returned.
The boy soon evinced an amazing affinity for animals. No matter how agitated an ox or horse became, the child could pacify it with one hand on a lowered brow. This was a source of endless fascination for the crew. Wagers were made. The boy was pitted against oxen whipped to a frenzy. But they would not harm him; they would rather go prostrate and take the lash. Master tried to work this knack into a viable act, but his patrons just weren’t buying. They wanted freaks.
When the lad was a mere five years old, master had him trained in the peripheral art of the pickpocket. The boy worked well alone, and had all the makings of a fine little flimflam artist. Master sighed, his chronic nightmares a thing of the past. As ever, his business instincts were guiding him well.
Then late one afternoon he found the boy squatting outside his parents’ cage. The boy had done the unthinkable:  he had deposited his day’s pickings at the feet of his father instead of bringing the ***** to master. Master flew into a rage and raised his whip to give the little traitor the lashing he deserved. But before he could deliver a single stroke his other hand shot to his chest and he staggered back against the albino’s cage. He blinked down at the boy, who regarded him steadily while scooping the plunder into a little pile.
From that day on the boy placed whatever he could get his hands on at his father’s feet. As time passed he became ever more adroit at thievery, growing into a youngster both admired and despised by master and his crew; admired because theft was a cinch for him, despised because they were all that much lighter in their possessions.
Now, for eleven long years the strange little train had bounced along, sometimes camping outside villages for months, occasionally pausing on connecting roads. The show traversed the heart of Manchuria, skirted the Gobi in the north, and so eventually crossed almost the entire width of Mongolia before proceeding north to the confluence of the rivers Yenisey and Ob’. Much silver and copper had come to master’s coffer, much fame to his name, but he now sat looking over a vast, unmapped Siberian wilderness. The mostly nomadic characters they’d been encountering spoke in tongues unfamiliar even to his personal valet-translator-accountant, and the tone of these nomads had been unmistakably hostile.
Master huddled surlily under a canopy of sopping hides. Night was falling hard during a merciless rain, the wind was picking up, and his supplies coach was bogged in a growing sea of mud. At that moment he accepted the whole end-of-the-line concept, and knew he wasn’t going anywhere but back. And when he got back he was going to shine! He jumped from the coach.
The earth took his weight for a heartbeat—and he was up to his chin in muck, splashing about on his hands and knees, sliding forward on his palms and toes. He did a belly flop into a rain-filled depression and churned to his feet with the devil in his eyes. Wallowing in mud and bile, master stomped to the supplies coach and kicked wildly at the stuck rear wheels.
Somewhere between kicks he lost it completely.
Master broke for his whip. One minute he was blindly lashing his men, the next he’d succumbed to a mindless ferocity. He thrashed about like a berserker; whipping the beasts, the coach, the very night. His men were scarcely able to move in all that mud, but their dread of his savagery kept them hopping. They gathered as one and shoved the coach recklessly; slipping, splashing, shouting. A minute later, three lay splayed underfoot, but the mired wheel had been freed.
Throughout all this the oxen had swayed nervously, while the horses softly tramped their hooves in place. Master had his men turn the oxen about until the rickety train was pointing dead east. He checked the hitches and personally applied the lash. The oxen didn’t budge. Master swore and wiped the rain from his eyes. He had the horses hitched ahead of the oxen, but they were even less obliging. Master flew into a spectacular rage. His men, fearing for their lives, ran liberally with the lash.
The swaying of oxen picked up until the entire train of carriages was rocking. Yet the oxen could not, would not be compelled, under any amount of prodding, to take an eastward step. Master looked around in exasperation.
The night had gone insane.
Horses were fighting hitches, oxen walking on fire.
Master cursed the rain and mud and lashed all the harder. His men, seeking to please, whipped maniacally until the horses and both lead oxen broke their hitches and bolted west. The men immediately embraced the rear oxen, but the hitches shattered and the beasts stormed off. The remaining horses blew it, kicking at everything and nothing.
Inside the long carriage all was chaos. The albino was neighing and screaming, the aged leopard spinning in its cage. Hero stared out his peephole, amazed at the blur of figures stumbling by in the rain.
A pair of clopping blows rattled the opposite wall. Three slats cracked. A tremendous impact, and a huge section collapsed. A thrashing, hysterical mare burst through the breach in a veil of rain.
The horse went mad, killing the albino and snake woman in a flurry of hooves. She fell ******* the near wall, crushing the cages. The leopard shot into the air like a rocket, slashed at the mare’s throat and vanished in the rain. The horse reared above the family cage. She was just coming down in a wheeling storm of hooves when something made her freeze. Her stare locked with Hero’s, and a second later her eyes were rolling in their sockets. The mare kicked crazily and came down ******* her left flank, smashing the long cage’s side. She whirled upright and leaped outside.
For a tense minute the family sat in the rubble, rain bombarding their eyes. Nothing in their years of captivity had prepared them for such a situation. But by the end of that minute the son had taken full command. He rolled onto his back, braced himself, and kicked his parents across the aisle, through the remnants of the opposing cage, and out of the carriage. They all fell about in the mud and rain. To the west, the mare stared back strangely as she splashed into the night. The boy wedged himself between his parents, threw his arms around them, and pushed with all his might. Their bodies found a common center of gravity. Fumbling drunkenly, the family staggered through the rain in the wake of the mare.

The boy was the natural leader.
Master’s innocent-looking little ex-student could quickly assess and exploit almost any situation. He did the foraging and the figuring, slept with one eye open and one fist ready. He got what he wanted by charm or by stealth, slipping off at nightfall, returning at daybreak with small slaughtered animals and chunks of dark peasant bread. He also pilfered any bauble or oddity he could get his paws on, to be placed reverently at his father’s mangled feet. Breadwinner and watchdog, he faithfully held the family together; a nuclear son. He sewed hardy feather-lined cloaks of reindeer hide, and turned a cache of marmot pelts into a kind of side-slung backpack. He was doting nurse during his mother’s episodes, and unbending apportioner of calories in lean times. Dauntless when it meant crossing mighty rivers, relentless when it came to finding mountain passes. But the endless marching, the unreliable diet, and the countless predators made the three wanderers lean, haggard moving targets. There were times when the little lamp of family was all but extinguished, and long stands in places that seemed absolutely impassable. Still, the boy would work things out. He would stoop to any level to feed Hero, and for a stranger to threaten his father was to summon a psychotic, unyielding monster. He was both spear and shield.
The toughest job of all was maintaining a tight unit, meaning he was forced to become a hard-nosed ******* whenever his father was ready to wander off, which always seemed to be whenever the mother was hurting most. She’d become a tremendous impediment to Hero’s compulsion, and therefore her son’s chief nemesis. It wasn’t a big-picture concern anyway; the writing was on the wall. The blue lady’s attacks were increasing spectacularly on the steppe; her world had always been an enclosure of some kind, and the great horizon was proving just too much. Perhaps these intense affairs served as links to Hero’s suppressed memories, for at the onset of each attack he’d turn and hike, and then only exhaustion could curb him. The boy would press his mother on, dragging, shoving, and smacking—he could be mean when necessary, and though circumstances had made him the nucleus, their worlds unquestionably revolved around Hero. Where he sat, they sat. When he rose, they did the same. In this manner they marched for years across the vast steppes, single-file—father, mother, and son, respectively—unmolested, lacking possessions, always following the sun. Long before they could be measured they had drifted into obscurity.
The woman’s end came quickly and dramatically, in a rocky little depression on a half-frozen field. One moment she was responsive to her son’s prompts, the next she was flat on her back, her eyelids fluttering. That night she leapt from fever to chill, from alertness to stupor. The boy, squatting beside their campfire, watched her face and hands run cadaver-blue to fish belly-pale and back again. While he was staring her eyes popped open and her hands came scrabbling. He sweated through the clawing embrace until he could bear it no longer. He oozed out and ran down to fetch his father.
When they got back Hero watched incuriously for a while. His mate’s face was scrunched up and her skin the color of sapphires. She wasn’t breathing.
His gaze became glassy, his eyes returned to the night. As he rose the boy immediately grabbed an arm. Neither moved for minutes. When the boy at last relinquished, his father casually stumbled off.
Strange things were going on in Hero’s world. Some days he would notice how animals regarded him oddly, in a manner that seemed almost personal. He found, for instance, that particular creatures were recognizable even over great distances. A number of times he would sit with one in a stare-down, waiting patiently, until the animal’s natural disposition caused it to bolt. Though the meaning of these encounters was way over his head, he would watch, and he would listen.
In time he noticed an increasing skittishness in some of these familiar creatures. Something had them spooked. He then observed a number of lean gray wolves moving in and out of the picture with an air of complete indifference:  these wolves weren’t hunting; they were loitering—lounging in the grass, lackadaisically padding to the rear, filing by slowly in the distance. Once in a while a lounger would raise its head, yawn cavernously, and drop back out of sight. So unobtrusive was their behavior that even Hero’s ever-vigilant son began to take them for granted. They paused where the family paused, and halted whenever the woman broke down. Perfectly camouflaged by the gray boulders and dire sky, they were completely forgotten in the drama of her passing.
There were other, far subtler events existing for Hero’s senses alone. He could perceive patterns in everything around him; in the manner vegetation gave way wherever his heart was leading, in the way so many animals appeared to be not merely mirroring, but making his course. And wind, rain, running water:  these phenomena had voices. Yet not for everybody. No one—not his mate, not his son, not another soul on the planet could hear this call, for they were all of a sort. They were static, they were temporal. Hero couldn’t have cared less about the lives of his family, or about the mundane goings-on in the encampments and small tribes they skirted. Such beings lived in a world that was defined by the moment. They shouted, they banged, they clamored.
But west—west was music.
For his boy, once again watching Hero shamble off, the moment of truth had arrived. He looked back down, at his mother’s death mask being remade by the dying light of their campfire. As the flames dwindled he could have sworn he saw shadows creep into the wells of her eyes, while others, crawling up around her jawline, drew her bluing lips like purse strings. He hopped to his feet and ran for another handful of tinder. When their little fire provided enough light he dropped to his knees and looked again.
She was sinking right before his eyes, every aspect of her expression in collapse. The boy watched clinically, fascinated. As the flames began to sputter he thought he could see large purple bruises spreading across her cheeks like the seeping limbs of overflowing pools. He bent closer.
From deep in the night came the longest, the leanest, the saddest wail he’d ever heard. He turned to see the starlit ghost of his father, facing away, staring at a low barren hill. Uncountable stars embroidered the spot. The boy made out a low shape moving along the hilltop, cutting off patches of stars as it passed.
The wolf howled again; a mournful, spiraling cry to nowhere and nothing. Hero’s head notched upward. He began to hike.
Halfway to his feet the boy stopped dead.
It took a minute to sense why he’d frozen in place, and a good while longer for his heart to quit pounding. He was aware of a nervous padding, and, once his vision had adjusted, of a lazy stream of eyes gleaming in the dying campfire’s light. The eyes bobbed around him, glared momentarily, returned to the ground.
A massive gasp, and his mother was tearing at his wrist. He watched her hyperventilating, saw her bulbous yellow eyes sinking in a wide violet pool. With a sizzle and pop the last tongue of flame was taken by the night.
Then her clammy hands were all over him, pulling and demanding, caressing and beseeching. He had to pry them off like leeches, had to place them clasped on her shuddering arched belly.
A silky snarl rose almost in his ear.
With a little squeal he sprang to his feet, even as something nearby jumped back in response.
The boy stood absolutely still while the panting thing padded nearer. They stood very close, smelling each other. He instinctively extended a hand, palm forward. But it was no good; his arm was shaking out of control. The snarl rose again, not so tentatively this time. His mother’s nails tore at his ankle.
The boy gently stepped away, only to find himself surrounded by the shifting silhouettes of half a dozen gray wolves. They approached in a calculated manner:  two from the left, one from the right, another from behind. He was being goaded away from his mother; he could hear her fists beating the ground, and a few seconds later the sounds of a nauseating assault and ravaging.
He shakily raised his other hand. Now both arms were extended, and their message was clearly one of defense rather than control. Two snapping wolves stepped aside, leaving him a gateway into the night. A cold wet nose bumped his wrist.
Screaming like a woman, he took off after his father just as fast as his feet would carry him.

                                                  BOY

Alon­g the great Kazakh Steppe a man could wander a lifetime and never meet another of his kind—especially if his kind happened to be Alaskan Inuk, and if he happened to be the teenaged patriarch of a two-man family going nowhere.
Here history is mostly mute.
Upon this continent-spanning steppe, unnamed communities were scattered and rebuilt, lives blown about by the wind. The only centers of humanity a traveler might encounter, far removed from the Silk Road at the very crack of the new millennium, were temporary encampments of civilization at its rudest—shifting holes of cutthroat commerce existing solely for the barter of silk and spices and hapless souls. Life here was revered far less than merchandise, and the longest-lived men were those who kept their distance.
Hero and his boy hiked over permafrost and tundra for years; their meandering course a drunken mapmaker’s scrawl. Chronological entries along this imaginary line would reveal that they’d stopped, sometimes for months at a time, when the father had grown too weak and disoriented to continue. Hero’s internal compass was long-sprung, and his weight had fallen considerably. He’d sit on his lonesome, scarecrow-scrawny, wistfully scrolling a 360-horizon while his boy scouted and scavenged. Then, for no apparent reason, he’d just up-and hike—sometimes northwest, sometimes along a tangential plane that always threatened to spiral. It was brutal:  winters were frigid, summers, by odd contrast, running steamy to baking. Season by season these marches lost their tenaciousness, and eventually their heart. Hero’s obsession was becoming his demise.
Now, to a hypothetical observer, the ratty pair of woolly camels materializing out of the rising August heat might have been mirages.
These beasts were novelties here, and pioneers, for they were way beyond their normal stomping grounds. They’d tramped for months with a mind-numbing monotonousness, a thousand miles and more; round the Urals to the south, and through the hard territory braced by the Volga and Voronezh, avoiding anything that even smelled of men. They’d been wild camels; ugly, ill-tempered, and unpredictable, until the boy tamed them by touch…but this new pattern was a literal change of pace…for weeks the frail little man and his dark teenaged son rose and fell with the animals’ rhythm, lulled by it, sick of it, dreaming of lands far removed from hoarfrost and peat moss. In this manner they were borne clear to present-day Belarus, whereupon the camels’ stupefying march began to quicken. Mile by mile they put on steam, until one day they reached a broad area distinguishable from its bracing terrain only by its many deep surface cracks. Here the camels’ behavior became erratic; they crouched at an angle while tramping, their long necks oscillating, their noses bobbing along the ground. Eventually they came upon a dingy pool nestled in a pebbly depression. The local brush surrounding this pool was situated like iron filings about a lodestone. The boy hauled back his camel’s neck and laid a hand on its brow. The brute slowed to a halt. The other camel imitated its partner, move for move. Simultaneously the animals dropped to their knees.
The boy jumped off, catching Hero as he fell. The camels stood watching stupidly as son maneuvered father, but after a while grew nervous and began tramping their hooves in time. They slowly stepped to the pool’s rim and knelt woozily, their noses poised just above the surface. Their whiskers danced on the pool’s face, their lids became heavy, their hindquarters quivered as they drank. Their nostrils, having fluttered in unison, remained agape. They appeared to be asleep.
The boy began filling skins.
The water was quite warm; he slurped a palmful and almost immediately felt intoxicated.
He flicked it off his fingers; the water was bad.
Three heads were now mirrored in the pool; the camels’ at ten o’clock and two o’clock, the boy’s at six. He watched their reflections continue to ripple, long after the pool had become still. His face, melting and firming, rapidly fluctuated between extremes of age, and between his own recognizable features and those of some…monstrosity. The effect was hypnotic. He felt his joints stiffen; his eyes became weak, his thoughts muddled…his face was irresistibly drawn to the pool’s surface, and for a moment he was in real peril of drowning. He ****** his head aside and creaked to his feet.
Where the camels had knelt were only the prints of their bellies and knees. In the distance they could be seen galloping all-out for the horizon, right back the way they’d come. The boy watched until they were swallowed by their dust, and when he turned around his father was long gone.
Now he knew it was all just a matter of time.
And sure enough, after eleven more days of feebly staggering along, Hero completely ran out of gas. The boy bundled him up in a shawl, like an old woman.
Sitting there, cradling an unresponsive man weighing less than eighty pounds, he couldn’t help but let his morbid fantasies run wild. He was now old enough to realize his father had at some time suffered severe head trauma, and honest enough to accept that the man was rapidly approaching a vegetative state. This understanding accompanied him like a shadow, and that night he questioned, for the very first time, his own convoluted rationale.
He was just beginning to sense that his will was not his own.
He built a semi-permanent camp west of the Desna and foraged in a tight spiral, always returning in a straight line. Some days he came back feeling uneasy, sensing another presence. Then it was every other day. It bugged him to no end. At last, when it became every day, he hauled his father to his feet and began a resolute march to the west.
Again he became anxious, and after only a dozen yards.
He turned slowly while hunching, certain something bulky had just dropped out of sight. Nothing looked suspicious, everything looked suspicious. He walked Hero some more, occasionally peering back over his shoulder. There was…something.
He whirled:  only masses of rock and high brush. Yet, when he really strained his eyes, he was sure, pretty sure, that he could make out a large crouching body continuous with the rocks. Heart in his throat, he began a slow steady creep, only to pause, positive the bulge, whatever it was, had shifted in response. The boy very gradually raised his arm until it was level with his eyes, faced the palm outward, and extended the arm parallel with the ground. He could almost feel some kind of current passing between his itching palm and…nothing. He walked over to Hero, stopped again. There’d been the subtlest sense of traction. The boy propped up his father in a cloud of flies and waited.
In a minute the bulge drew *****.
Out of the brush strolled a furry gray wild ***, her back inclined from countless weary miles; stretching her neck, pausing to nibble, taking her sweet time. Grungy as she was, she fit right in.
At the boy’s first casual step she immediately hit the dirt and remained flat on her belly, one big dark eye staring between her hooves. Another step, and her **** bunched up. The closer he got, the higher her rear end rose. When he was almost at arm’s length she sprang back and danced away, seeming to bound with delight. But not to the east, as she’d come.
To the northwest.
She backpedaled while the boy came on whistling and cooing, matching him step for step. But the moment he threw up his arms in resignation she spun round as though cued, dropped on her belly, and peered over her shoulder.
The boy was first to blink. This time he approached fractionally, keeping movements to a minimum. She rose just as carefully, sauntering northwest in reverse, and at the first sign of hesitation turned, dropped, and cautiously gazed back. The boy glared at that huge mocking **** and broke into a sprint. She easily danced out of reach, plopped down, and continued to stare.
He began hurling stones, with venom and with accuracy, until she’d scurried into the brush.
But on the way back to his father he could feel her tagging along.
Twenty feet behind she halted, looking bemused.
The boy nodded ironically. He walked Hero over, murmuring baby talk all the way, and firmly placed a palm on the animal’s muzzle once her breath grazed his fingers. She stroked his hand up and down with her whiskers, gave a kind of curtsy, and waited on her knees while he helped his father mount.
At Hero’s touch a shudder ran down her body. She stood up straight. Her eyes became set, her back absolutely stiff. She put down her head and began the long trek northwest, never once breaking stride.
It was an amazing march, an impossible feat. For a little over three days and almost four hundred miles she progressed like an automaton, driving herself without rest, without food or water.
After trotting alongside for an hour the boy climbed on and force-fed his father berries and smoked meat, his dark eyes constantly searching the countryside. Occasionally he’d see a run of red foxes to their left, watching intently, padding cautiously. Sooner or later they’d vanish, only to be replaced by a train of feline or equine pursuers. Packs approached and receded while, high overhead, flocks formed triangular patterns that continually broke up and reformed. There was a peculiar rhythmic quality to this ebb and flow that lulled his senses further. The boy shook his head to clear it, but his exhaustion was deeper than he’d supposed—even the brush appeared to be leaning northwest.
That first day he grew numb with the pace, and that night the relentless pounding of her hooves drew him into a miserable slumber. He wrapped his arms around his sleeping father and lay half atop. When he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer he tore strips from his skins, then looped his tied wrists round her neck, his ankles round her belly.
On the second day she was breathing hard, but her back was still high and she showed no signs of faltering. Her eyes remained focused on the ground dead ahead. She always sensed the best routes; finding mountain passes, fording wetlands.
But by the third day they could feel her ribs quaking against their legs. Her breath exploded as she marched, blood frothed and caked about her nostrils. Still she pushed herself on, her pace so steady it was almost metronomic.
On the fourth day her legs were gone. She veered and stumbled, shuddering every few paces. The boy hopped off for the umpteenth time and tried to bring her to graze, but she wouldn’t be turned. He ran behind her as she staggered along, unwilling, or unable, to rest.
At last a foreleg gave and she went down hard. Sobbing and snorting, she plowed her muzzle back and forth in the soil, the useless leg repeatedly pounding the ground. After a minute she raised her head and brayed at the sky, her neck muscles taut, her head slowly swinging side to side. Her cry went on and on.
With a tremendous effort she pushed herself upright and butted the boy aside. Every part of her body was shaking. From her depths a low moan grew to a steady bray, and finally to a wild, pulsing howl. She came to a rise, but was too weak to climb without sliding. Stamping in frustration, she managed a few feet, reared feebly, slid some more. The boy got behind her and applied his back; it took all he had to assist her almost to the top. With a desperate lunge she crashed on her belly.
Amazingly, she dragged herself on, her howl now a scream, her head whipping left and right. When she could pull herself no farther she ****** forth her neck to its very limit and, with a shudder that ran from the tip of her nose to the tuft on her tail, shoved her muzzle straight into the dirt and died.
The boy hauled off his father and fell back. The animal’s eyes were fixed upwards, seeming, even in death, to be straining for a glimpse of what lay just beyond the rise. The boy half-dragged Hero the last few yards. They collapsed at the top, and together looked over the cold Baltic Sea.

At water’s edge a haggard fisherman sat on his boat’s ravaged deck, blindly staring out to sea. His was a queer vessel; a family structure built more like an aft-cabined barge than like seacraft typical of that period. The fisherman’s boat, like his mind, had been abused beyond repair.
He’d lost much in his life. Time had taken his dreams, pox his face, hardship his back and shoulders. And, more recently, a brawling band of drunken Baltic pirates had ***** his wife and daughter before butchering them along with his two fine sons, while he sat helplessly bound to the mast. Finally, to further their delight, they’d set the boat aflame and sent it crackling against the sun; knowing he could hear their hoots and howls, knowing he would drift undead, accompanied only by this last unspeakable memory.
But a squall, without prelude, had doused the flames and blown his home ashore.
There he’d remained for a full long day, staring at nothing, his shattered life caught on the rocks. On the second day he’d worked himself free and commenced staggering about in his memories, gathering shards. It was a pathetic claim. He made a pile of all the old bedding and linen and usable cords, and set about sewing a sort of mementos sail. All that third day he had sewn, and on the fourth he had hoisted this sail and been moved to see it billowing in a northwest-blowing breeze. Again he just sat and gaped. And later that day he’d become aware of a commotion taking place on the long grade leading down to the water, where a writhing mass of seagulls was proceeding like a tremendous slow-motion snowball. He’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t uncommon to find gulls in a group of many dozens or more, but there must have been two, maybe three thousand of the birds now swarming toward his boat. They were making an incredible racket. In the midst of this cloud could be seen a couple of slowly walking figures; as they neared he made out a small man accompanying a boy in his late teens, both dressed in odd skins. When they reached the rocks his eyes were drawn to the small man’s face. It was a foreign face, brutish and dark, with a deep cleft running from above the right temple to the jaw’s left side. Whatever instrument had felled this man had been devastating—everything in its path was smashed, and with permanence. The forehead was caved in. There was no bridge to the nose, the left cheek was completely collapsed, one side of the mouth was a mangled mess. The jaw itself had set improperly, so that it jutted to the side. The general impression, especially from a distance, was of some unforgettable circus freak’s countenance puckering at an angle. It was a face right out of a nightmare. But there was nothing frightening about the eyes. They were the eyes of a child.
Maybe half the gulls hopped screaming on the rocks. The rest circled overhead.
The boy considered the fisherman curiously before placing a foot on the charred deck. His gaze went around the boat, lingered on the makeshift sail, returned to the slumped figure. He passed a hand before the eyes. No response. He then leaned in close and placed his fingers on the man’s forehead. Immediately that bleak expression became fluid, brimming over with horror and heartbreak. Tears rolled down the fisherman’s cheeks as he gasped, shuddered, and backed up the scorched mast to his feet. Thus propped, he squinted at his visitors and was overcome by a wave of homesickness so strong he had to turn away. The feeling bewildered him, for this vessel, and this sea, were all the home he’d ever known. He clung to the mast while the boy helped his father board. Once he’d collected himself, the fisherman tore a heavy crossbeam from the toasted cabin. He and the boy used this as a lever, and together they shoved the boat off the rocks. The wind picked up nicely, and the little craft was swept across the water.
Exploding off the rocks, the gulls shot after the boat as if it were brimming with fish, the loudest and orneriest vying for favored positions directly overhead. The melee attracted additional gulls—they came shrieking in their hundreds from all sides, banking and calling in the oddest manner, until the mass grew so thick as to cast a permanent shadow on the boat. All day long the clamor continued, and all that night. The fisherman rolled with the rudder, listlessly, allowing the sea to control him. Eventually he let go, that the wind might bear them where it would. His sail ballooned but held firm, and the boat fairly zipped across a sea somehow smooth as glass, broken only by the vacillating ripples of bottleneck dolphins and migrating humpback whales. The three tiny sailors sat hunched together, motionless, all throughout the next day, until the black coast of Sweden loomed in the twilight.
As the boat neared land the cloud of gulls broke up, shot to shore, and landed in groups of a thousand and more; a dizzying, wildly uproarious reception committee.
The dung-covered boat slammed into the rocks, shattering the fisherman’s trance. He intuitively walked his **** up the mast and, swaying there, watched the boy draw his father over the side and lead him to a clearing at wood’s edge. There in the dusk he made out what appeared to be a hefty spotted runaway heifer hitched to a rickety wood wagon. He saw the cow gallop up to meet them, saw the boy look around warily, saw him help the little man into the wagon and climb in beside him. The animal immediately began picking through the woods, the large brass bell round her neck clanging forlornly.
The clarity of that bell made him realize just how quiet it had become. He craned his neck:  there wasn’t a gull in sight. He fell back against the shot mast and slid onto his tailbone with a clacking of teeth. His eyes were misting up. In the gathering dark a few sail fragments flew past and were ****** into the woods. The boat rocked and relaxed. After that there was only the sound of the receding bell’s sad, monotonous song being batted about by the wind.

The little cow strode through moonlit woods until she came to a path formed by the rutting of wheels over many years. She followed this broken, serpentine track throughout the night, and by morning was passing farms and, occasionally, crossing broader paths that might realistically be defined as roads. All day long she bore down that ragged track, until she came in late afternoon to a clearing near a village. Here many such tracks converged. And here the boy slipped away while she grazed.
Sometime after dark he returned with a load of straw, a couple of pilfered blankets, and a fat iron kettle. Crammed in this kettle were salt, tubers, cheese, a few loaves of rye, legumes, and a plump foot of lamb sausage. Most of this ***** he’d brought in tied to the bowed back of a huge, puffing, highly amenable black pig which, thus laden, now followed the boy’s every step like a fresh convert tracing the heels of the messiah. The boy built a fire under the stars, filled the kettle with creek water, and commenced simmering their dinner. While waiting, he couldn’t help but note an odd feature of the local flora:  plants, especially trees, all seemed inclined to a northwesterly disposition, though no amount of wind could account for it. He shooed the pig. But rather than run along, it backpedaled in a nervous circle, round and round in reverse, until it lost its balance and fell on its ****. There it remained, a yard behind the wagon. The boy fed his father and lined the wagon with straw. They settled in for the night. The boy must have nodded, might have dreamt, but while he was drifting he became aware of a stirring in the woods. He sat up, saw the pig’s eyes gleaming inches from his nose. And there were a number of animals, some wild, some strayed from farmsteads, arranged in a broad circle around the wagon, their eyes glinting with moonlight. Not a rustle, not a peep, was lifted from the woods.
In the morning he woke to find the pig still staring. The fidgeting heifer, impatient to roll, began her long day’s march while Hero and his boy were yet stretching and scratching, and the ******* pig, galloping heavily, fell in close behind. Each new day this routine was repeated. They banged past farms and small communities until the ruts intersected a broad rocky road wending halfway across the kingdom. The cow addressed this road with vigor. They picked up followers—a goat here, a couple of sheep there—which hurried after the wagon as best they could. The cow stomped on with resolve, mile after mile, day after day, her bell keeping steady time. That bell’s peal attracted foals, lambs, and kids into the wagon’s narrowing wake. Hares hopped between hooves and wheels, boars and blue foxes fell in and withdrew. White falcons, normally solo fliers, whirled into wedge shapes high overhead.
At night the entire train would camp on the road while the boy raided proximate farmsteads, always returning fully laden. And as soon as the fire died the colony grew, creature by creature, and the moment the sun broke the horizon the heifer came to life and moved on, but each day a bit more resolutely, as though straining to meet a deadline. The march took on a sense of real urgency. The cow pressed on with attitude, the clang of her bell more strident with each passing mile. Soon her followers numbered in the hundreds, as animals deserted their farms or crept out of the woods to tag along. Tillers and traders stood dumbfounded, amazed by the bizarre flow.
Once they’d crossed into Norway the frothing cow veered hard to the west. The pace really picked up; no longer were Hero and his boy afforded the luxury of a night’s sleep in one spot. Days blurred into a single variegated flow as the bashed and lopsided wagon continued building its entourage; the riders were surrounded dawn to dusk by a confused and confusing scurry. Word of the flow’s weirdness preceded it clear to the Norwegian coast, so that now plowmen and merchants, wearily gathering their goggling families, found themselves lined in anticipation along the king’s highway. Horsemen went pounding to and fro with news of the procession’s progress and particulars, children ran through the streets banging pots in imitation of the cow’s approaching bell. Livestock wheeled and stamped, fowl leaped and crashed.
The slobbering cow broke into a run.
Bystanders trotted behind, calling back and forth excitedly, while the wagon’s permanent following squealed and squawked between their heels. The cow made a hard turn onto a widening swath in the brush. This swath, seeming to strain against the soil, ran straight down to the crest of a low hill overlooking the Atlantic. On either side a crowd had been studying the phenomenon for some time, but now all eyes swung to the dark and disfigured man and his son, clinging to the disintegrating wagon behind the careening spotted cow.
The trailing people traded views as they ran. Most—at the very outset of the new millennium, with Christianity burgeoning throughout Europe—leaned to the miraculous. Others, just as superstitious but prone to a darker point of view, threw looks of horror at the deformed little man. Yet they ran no less eagerly.
The galloping crowd made for the seaside, where only one local event of any moment was brewing:  on the coast a Greenlander Viking was preparing his longship for the rough voyage home. Impetuous son of the great island’s first permanent European settler, he’d just been baptized in Olaf’s court, and was now eager to sail—but not as a warrior—as a missionary. While his spirit remained in a tug-o’-war between his father Erik’s will and that of gods old and new, his duty was clearly to his king. And Olaf had charged him with the Christianization of pagan Greenland.
Something on the wind now made this destined man turn his head. From behind the gentle hill to his rear came a kind of thunder. Heads popped up, followed by a confused explosion of voices, and seconds later a frantic bug-eyed heifer burst into view, dragging the wheel-less skeleton of a shattered wooden wagon. On the wagon’s splayed frame a man and teenaged boy clung for their lives as the spewing animal made a beeline for his ship.
The new missionary, still egocentric enough to assume his Maker might actually toss him a personal, surreptitiously rolled up his eyes. The sky yawned at his arrogance. At his side a smallish cowled man rose irritably, but the missionary sat him right back down. He then snorted, squared his shoulders, and signaled his men to halt their preparations.
Knowing it was expected, he gathered his hard Nordic pride and coolly made his way into the crowd.

The priest clung to port, gagging above the waves.
After a completely uneventful minute he leaned back and stared through tearing eyes at the distant backdrop of gathering mists. Weeks now…a man of his constitution had no business at sea.
Along, too, were a quirky little man and his fiercely devoted son.
Through his pantomime, the boy had been so persistent in begging their passage that refusal, under the circumstances, would have been unbecoming not only a man of God but a man of the world.
So there it was:  a priest who couldn’t hold his lunch, a witless eyesore who couldn’t sit still, and a surly teenaged protector who snarled at the first hard look. This crossing just had to be some kind of divine test—of mortal patience as well as moral values. Norsemen weren’t made for babysitting.
The mists condensed.
And the shifting shape became a hard familiar coast.
And the longship was mooring, and the crew were jostling and clambering, and the big missionary had booted off the haunted little freak and his hypersensitive son, and was condescendingly half-escorting, half-carrying, the green priest ashore.
And they were home.

Priest in tow, Leif quickly took up the Christianization of Greenland’s Western Settlement, as per Olaf’s command. The mangled little man and his son followed him around like dogs, slept outside his door and annoyed his visitors, ultimately proving far easier to adopt than to shake. Barely tolerable shadows…still, the lad was simply amazing with livestock…and though the youth’s useless father seemed time and again to be just begging for a whooping, his son’s presence bore some ineffable quality that always curbed the missionary’s hand. Several times he’d witnessed the father approached by settlers bent on abuse. Each time the boy had stepped in, and each time the troublemakers were mysteriously repelled. The missionary of course didn’t attribute any kind of celestial intervention to these episodes, and certainly the popular notion of devilry was a natural reaction to the pair’s outrageous exoticness, but…in the son’s company, and even under the sharp eyes of his fellow Norsemen, Leif more than once found himself oddly moved to protect the father. And so the deformed man and his boy day by day blent in—as village idiot and mystic guide. And when in time a ****** brought tales of an unvisited land to the west, it was only natural for the restless Greenlander to buy that ******’s boat and, before stalwart comrades, weary family, and whimsical God Almighty, reluctantly accept the eccentric father and son as sort of seagoing mascots.
Hero was from then on irrepressible. During preparations he would pipe and stammer in his half-mute way, brimming with a confounding anxiety that kept him underfoot and at odds with all. On frigid nights he perched on the westernmost rocks, moaning to the horizon in the strangest fashion while his son stood guard. He positively spooked the locals; they’d gossip, nervously and with bile, of an answering wind that came wailing off the sea like a banshee in labor. The whole island wanted rid of him. And when his champing beneficiary, still clinging to the notion of Christian charity, bundled him aboard with his son and a crew of thirty-five, not a single settler was sorry to see him go.
Almost from the moment they cast off everything went wrong, as all attempts to control the longship were met with some kind of unknowable countermanding force. Vikings were not renowned for passive resistance—they fought, squaresail and steering oar, leaning oarsman to oarsman, until the ship rocked on the waves like a bucking bronco. An erratic weather system pursued them, worsening dramatically at each minute variation in heading. The Norsemen doubled down, and when the clouds finally burst wide, the cowling sea went mad. Dervishes whirled about the hull, crisscrossing winds bedeviled the sail. Patches of kelp belonging to much warmer waters came heaving alongside, fouling the work of the oars, while far to the west a humongous fog bank formed, eradicating the navigable field. The lightning-streaked horizon was a throbbing gray slit.
The longship became locked in a slow westerly current.
Fatigued crewmen complained of headaches and hallucinations, and of a nasty, slightly metallic tang to the air. There were numerous walrus sightings; bobbing flippers and snouts amid drifting ice chunks that came prowling the North Sea like a circling pack of famished white wolves.
Worst of all was the boy’s father—instantly agitated by everything and nothing, prey to some primitive impulse that caused him to periodically incline his head, shudder to his feet, and loop his arms as though embracing the sky. Leif would watch him scrabbling at the prow like a cat at a tree, furs snapping in the wind. He’d watch the boy re-seat him for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time be filled with an immense contempt. By now he’d acknowledged that it takes a special kind of strength to shoulder charity and tolerance. That brown little freak struck him as an enormous malformed barnacle, slowly working its way back up the prow. Trying so hard to go unnoticed, looking and listening so intently, though there was nothing to see other than the growing shelves of fog, and nothing to hear save the rising, almost hysterical voice of the wind.
Leif sniffed the air, his ******’s instincts nagging him. This was a foul current, and a fool's errand; he took a deep breath and tentatively ordered the longship brought about.
The ship kicked twice, as though an enormous submarine hand had seized and released the hull.
A whirl formed in the water, causing the keeling ship to sweep around like a clock’s second hand. All about them, those drift-ice ghosts cruised dangerously near.
But they’d been liberated from that accursed current. Leif fiercely urged on his rowers, and at last the ship broke free. They made a bead due north.
Night came and the temperature plummeted.
Small sheets of ice converged, drifting between the hunks. The Norsemen, instinctively huddling amidships, passed out one by one in a massive pile of fur and flesh. In the freezing silence the floes bumped and recoiled, bumped and gathered, bumped and bonded. The tiny ship, swallowed whole, was dragged along in a labyrinth of black sea and interlocking slabs of ice.

The Norsemen came to in a surly, foul-smelling heap, lost at sea. While they were still groggy a voice cried out that a darker patch was developing in the fog. The men all fell to port. Under the confusion of their voices could be heard a distant rumble.
At this Hero hauled himself up the high curved prow. A half-light began to penetrate the fog, barely illuminating the irregular faces of drifting ice. The missionary stormed forward and indicated by gestures that if the boy didn’t restrain his father he would have the man tied down.
The longship stopped dead in the water.
The men found themselves regarding a perpetually frozen coastline swathed in bluish veils of mist. Directly before them loomed an immense ice cliff hundreds of feet high. Rising beyond this cliff were endless snow fields, where lean violet shadows seemed to drag about of their own volition. And upon those bleak fields a thin howling wind prowled, kicking up brief white dervishes, leaving a strange zigzagging signature.
Even as they stared, a darker shadow high on the ice cliff’s glistening face began to widen, accompanied by a cracking sound that could be felt before it was heard. With the illusion of slow-motion, a stupendous chunk broke out of the cliff and came screaming toward the sea. It hit the water like a bomb. The thunder of its separation and the explosion of its impact took a moment to reach them. Then, out of a spewing crater of crests and spume, the new calf came lunging, tromping the sea so hard the longship, fully a mile to sea, was swept out and ****** back in like a cork. The floundering mountain of ice bobbed and lilted, generating huge waves which continued to rock the ship long after the monster had settled. In a while the roaring in their ears subsided and there remained only the swirling, nerve-wracking howl of the wind.
The missionary’s eyes swept left and right. Whatever this place was, it sure wasn’t the fair shoreline he’d been promised. Hero again scrambled up the prow, and Leif again yanked him down. This time he made good his threat; he had the little nuisance bound, though he was half-tempted to let him take his chances overboard.
From somewhere deep in the haze grew a soulful, otherworldly call. It went on and on, electrifying the air, bottoming out once the ship had merged with that previously fought westerly flow.
By now Leif’s nerves were shot. He ordered the oars raised.
The longship began to drift. Ship and ice were pulled due west.
The clouds fell far behind as the ship embarked upon an amazingly calm sea—so calm its entire visible surface was featureless except for the faint wakes provided by the ship and its hulking ice companions. To the east a huge fog bank appeared on the horizon, and a while later a smaller bank to the north. Then a very dense one to the south. In time these banks converged, imperceptibly becoming a single mass that closed about the ship, bit by bit creating a slowly heaving dome. Tiny beads of water appeared on beards and eyebrows; in a minute everything was soaked. The only sound was that of the dragging steering oar. The men were now sopping ghosts, speaking only with their eyes.
Directly ahead the fog began to dimple. The dimple became a hollow, the hollow a cave, and then ship and ice were being towed through a low, ever-extending tunnel in fog. The current increased its pull. Ship and drifting ice accelerated through the tunnel.
After a while the missionary quietly stepped forward. He stood with one hand on the prow’s neck, listening to the mist, so motionless he might have been a carved extension of the longship’s aggressive design. Not a man breathed. The tunnel’s dilating and contracting bore was producing an all but seamless series of oscillating, near-phonetic sounds. Leif almost tiptoed back. No god, pagan or Christian, could account for the strangeness of this situation.
They were borne on a course that grew more southerly, and the following day beheld an inhospitable shoreline glazed by dazzling white beaches. Their course held. Two days later they came upon a far pleasanter, thickly wooded coast. Here the current released its hold, and here the missionary untied Hero and personally placed him and his son in a tiny oak faering. He was just as sick of them as he was excited by this promising new land. Once the rowboat had been heaved over the side, he and another man stepped aboard and took up the oars. They began rowing with easy, powerful strokes.
When the boat kissed sand the missionary stood unsteadily.
The first European to set foot on North American soil now placed one hand on his crucifix, the other on his sword’s hilt, and awkwardly plunged his leg into the thigh-deep, ice-cold surf. Before he could take another step the boat lurched as Hero leapt headfirst into the water, followed an instant later by his son. The Greenlanders watched sourly as the two splashed their way into a mad dash for the waiting pines. Leif wished them both good riddance and turned to grin wryly at his fellow Norseman. He must have blacked out for a second, must have been blinded by a shaft of sun, for he found he was staring stupidly at a point midway between his companion and the longship. It felt like he’d been kicked between the eyes.
Everything was dissolving.
He studied the beach and pines closely, but saw nothing of the man or his boy. He turned back, disoriented. With what seemed a superhuman effort he took up his oars. He rowed out sluggishly, in a dream, and the fog rolled in to meet him.

The boy broke into the trees and embraced a trunk, fighting for breath. What happened next happened so fast and so unexpectedly he didn’t have a chance to react.
Three savages stepped from behind the pines and beat him to his knees. They twisted his arms behind his back and hauled him to his feet. He’d barely processed the impression of a wild painted face when something sharp struck him ******* the temple and tore down his cheek to the jaw. Two of the assailants manhandled him into an upright position and held him in place while the third brought his weapon down again and again and again.
All but dead, he watched a nightmare countenance shouting through a shot veil of blood, and behind that image a reeling crimson sun. He lay there gushing while the savages went through his rags. They propped him against a pine and shrieked with triumph, tore the hair and gory scalp from his skull, threw back their heads and screamed at the screaming sky. Tooth and nail, they ripped apart his face and throat and, certain he would die, split what bits of fur were left and let his carcass lie.

                                                HERO

The weeks stretched into months while he fought his way back into the light.
He progressed in stages; only half-conscious, stumbling along in a blood-red stupor punctuated by a slow strobe of frequent blackouts. Days loomed and decayed, nights pounced and were gone; the backlit, swirling gray cosmos collapsed and expanded on every missed beat of his pulse. A thousand times he broke down to die, and a thousand times he clawed to his feet, driven to pursue a tiny, ghost-like figure fluttering in his memory.
Everything conspired to check him.
A bay like an immense landlocked sea was skirted over months or years—it was all the same. Cold locked him in, Hunger drove him afield, that rude ***** Wind lashed him blind, wore him like a shoe, screamed for his skin while he worked his way west.
Somehow he ate, somehow he avoided being eaten; the instincts that had served him halfway around the planet were still vital beneath the abused exterior. His simple burrows became sturdy temporary shelters. He relearned the art of fire, and began to cook what he killed. He manufactured crude snares and weapons and, when his recuperation was complete, paid closer attention to the on-again, off-again trail he’d been following…forever.
Sometimes this trail would call to him like a lover. Other times he stood peering uncertainly, trying to recapture meanings and aims. Then the ground would turn spongy and the sky revolve, and once again he’d be lying all but dead in the woods, while from the face of the sun emerged a vile winged horror, its ugly pale head lashing side to side, its cruelly hooked beak dangling something that glistened in the wild pulsing light…then the fat moon, rising like gas against the icy black night…the feel of the wind:  the slashing of her nails, the chafing of her hem…the sound of things crunching and pausing and sniffing…then the sun, blazing anew. And again that thing, descending, its wide black wings beating slowly, metronomically—but none of that mattered any more. For his mind had quit him, had flown howling into ice and pine to roost with things surreal. In the day his madness might muddle and run, or spend the light stalking, cat-like, watching and waiting. But at night it came creeping from all sides. Sometimes it came in waves. It could gnaw like the devil, or wrap around him like a warm second skin. But none of that mattered either.
The only thing that mattered was the trail—whether it was lost for good, or for only a while. He’d been following it through his episodes, always north, wondering just who and where in the world he was, and trying to shake a ridiculous notion of being led on a wild goose chase.
The cold was unbelievable.
The deeper north he delved, the more confused he became. He grew starved for colors and scents, finding nonexistent patterns in the stark contrast of shadow and snow. He thought he could detect a kind of otherworldly design in the overwhelming number of dead ends he encountered, and, too, in the diabolically frustrating locations of natural obstacles. He seemed to be forever fighting the wind—a hulking, despondent snowman, he hiked face down and focused, while another aspect of his attention floated just behind, disembodied, watching his silent pursuers…leaving no tracks, blending perfectly with the environment in their clever winter coats…not predators, but creatures that normally should have been hightailing it away from him. By the time he could turn, they’d become nothing more menacing than snowdrifts. But they pursued him nevertheless.
And so his paranoia increased…had there ever really been a trail…and when did this miserably cold, miserably anemic crusade begin…his long-term memory was falling apart a chunk at a time. It just got colder and colder and colder until at last, one snippet of a day during one blur of a year, he found himself utterly lost, and clueless as to his history or objective. His mind was a blank, as colorless and featureless as the endless world of ice around him. He’d come this far solely to learn that the only trail he’d been following was his own—and now even that trail was succumbing to ice. On all sides there was nothing to see but an infinite field of glaring whiteness, and nothing to hear but the ululating wail of the tubular polar wind. It was the loneliest, the unholiest, the creepiest sound imaginable. But it wasn’t insanity that made him wheel. It was his self-preservation instinct.
And then he was somehow on his knees in the woods, facing a furious setting sun.
Whole seasons had passed from his memory like chalk from a board. His only recollections were those of a broken, haunted animal:  of being perilously sick, of fearing the unseen, of blindly struggling across a solid-white wilderness. That he’d survived such an ordeal meant nothing to him. And that he had in some indecipherable manner stumbled across the cold-as-stone trail did not fill him with amazement or with thankfulness—there simply wasn’t anything visual or emotional left to draw on. A significant part of his life had been whited out.
But now he could focus entirely on the trail. And before he knew it, the fuzzy area between fantasy and reality found a seam. He began to analyze and plan. He paid attention to hygiene, and kept a kind of running mental journal. Things were sorting out. Yet there were nights when the old sickness would resurface, reestablish its hold, and leave him sweating and uncertain under the stars. Then, paradoxically, his perception would become razor-keen. And so he would see, on a distant hilltop, a pair of scrawny silhouettes, one on four legs and one on two, slowly crossing the faintly pocked face of the setting moon. He would become strangely excited, and thereafter retain crystal-clear images of himself, as if seen from above, hurrying with adroitness through the silent, graveyard-like setting of black and blue night and white-frosted trees. Then the fuzzy area would broaden, and it would be the next morning, and he would be staring at the prints of man and elk in snow. And he would see how the elk’s prints doubled back, and how the man’s prints terminated where he had obviously mounted his guide. An unfathomable glow would bring tears to his eyes. But, even as he gathered himself, a fresh snowfall would wipe out the prints. And once again the world would plummet into white. And the wind would howl as the snow hammered his eyes. And he would ***** on.

A haggard animal sat shivering in a small grove of frozen pines, watching his campfire die. His eyes were fixed. Like the fire, he was running out of warmth, running out of fuel. There wasn’t a whole lot of tinder round his bones, and not much feeling left in his limbs. The slowly heaping downfall was burying him alive, but he was too numb to care.
It had taken him six long years to cross an entire continent, and during that time he’d known only cold and excruciating pain. The pain was leaving him now. The cold was making it right. His eyes glazed over.
Along a narrow plain to the west a herd of caribou filed dreamily through the snow, cutting across a panoramic backdrop of dazzling white mountains. The slow-motion parade was hypnotic. After a while it occurred to the drifting man, in a roundabout way, that he was dying, that he was nonchalantly freezing to death. Concurrent with this notion there rose in his chest a wonderful liquid warmth. His eyes slowly closed and, once shut, began to set fast.
He was jolted from within. It was as if he’d been kicked in the heart.
He ****** to his feet, pounded his fists on his thighs, felt nothing. The breath spurted from his mouth in small white clouds as he stumbled downhill after the slow caribou train. He swam through the snow, hallucinating, imagining that certain individuals in the herd were mocking him by slowing and accelerating, while others glanced back with expressions of contempt.
As he burst into their midst the animals stepped aside indifferently. A few galloped ahead to keep up the herd, but most simply sidestepped while he danced there, stamping his feet and smacking his hands. The herd grew thinner, until only the old and infirm were filing by. The man desperately embraced a hobbling female for warmth, but she cried out and kicked, triggering a panic reaction in the herd. Clinging for his life, the man was dragged along beside her as the herd stormed into a maze of flying ice and snow. His weight caused her to stagger sideways until they slammed against the flank of a sick male. The man instinctively threw an arm over the male and, thus draped between them, was borne across the drifted plain for upwards of a mile, his freezing feet alternately dangling above and dragging through the snow. The herd broke into a hard run, forcing him to assume a broken trot. Soon his legs were stinging. Sensation rushed through his body.
Now the herd, still picking up speed, began to contract, jamming him between his bearers. There was a quick jolt to his right and he was lifted clean off his feet, nearly straddling the bucking female. It had become an all-out stampede. Through hard-flung snow he saw the cause:  just ahead, the caribou had run head-on into a solid wall of galloping wood bison, and both frantic herds had blindly veered to the east; were in fact running side by side down a deep, ragged canyon—were pouring over the canyon’s lip like a cataract. He was approaching, at breakneck pace, that very place where the converged herds so abruptly swerved. The hanging man snarled as he was borne inevitably to the point of deflection.
There came a concussion at his left shoulder, followed by a blast of snow. In an instant the ailing male was tumbling head over heels to the east, ****** into the stampede’s plummeting mass by the fury of its descent. The man and female, rebounding from this impact, were shot to the west in a crazy jumble of flailing legs. The caribou lost her footing, flew nose-first into a snowbank, and came up running. Kicking off, the man used the last of his strength to heave himself astride. At first she fought to shake him, but the spell of the run was too strong. She and half a dozen others went pounding in the opposite direction of the stampede, quickly joined by a number of bison that had likewise splintered from their herd. The riding man could make out their huge hulking shapes thundering by in a blizzard of flying ice, could hear their heavy gasps and explosive grunts. One passed so close he felt its massive flank brush his leg. He peered to his right and saw a black, pig-like eye regarding him excitedly, moving up and down like a piston as the beast ran alongside.
The eye shifted, focusing on the gasping, completely obsessed female. The bull dropped its head and slammed into the caribou’s side, sending her and the man careening down a ***** to the west. The caribou brayed hysterically and her backside went down, but she managed, despite the weight of her rider, to return to all fours and frantically continue along the *****. Again the bull charged, crashing into her shoulder. The man and caribou were launched sideways into the white searing air.
He sat up carefully. The huffing bison was straddling him like a bully laying down the ground rules. Its big wiry beard came right up to brush his chin. The stench of its breath was stupefying.
The bull stamped and snorted, thrusting its stubby horns left and right as the man used his elbows and heels to back away. The bull followed, move for move. When the man collapsed under his own impetus the bull shoved him along with its snout, bellowing furiously. Clear down the ***** they lunged, shoving and lurching, until the man lay sprawled on his back; up to his chin in snow, completely helpless. The ton of a bull butted and kicked, but only glancingly:  those hooves could **** with a blow. At last the man, in one clean sequence, spun on his rear, dropped to his side, and went rolling down the ***** using his elbows for ******.
At the bottom ran a narrow fence of frosted saplings marking an ice cliff’s precipice. He lay face down in the snow, too done in to do anything but **** at an air pocket.
And there came a high-pitched crackling, a sound like the protracted gasp of embers in a dead fire. He turned just as those saplings began leaning to the west, their frozen skins cracking with the strain.
The bison bellowed menacingly.
The sprawled man looked back and saw it still standing with legs spread wide, silhouetted against the sky. In a moment it began huffing downhill, lurching side to side, surfing the snow between lunges.
It chased him through the genuflecting saplings straight into a frozen gully where, protected by a few feet of insurmountable verticality, he was able to slide on the ice between its stomping hooves, downhill out of reach, then downhill out of control—spinning just in time to glimpse a breathtaking vista:
Partly framed by the gully-straddling saplings was a vast crescent of jagged white mountains seemingly huddled round a small stretch of snow-draped pines. The little wood these mountains surrounded was isolated in a broad lake of solid ice. Hundreds of fissures radiated crazily throughout this packed ice field, appearing to issue from somewhere near the frozen wood’s center, which was completely obscured by a ring of rising mist. Above this thumbnail panorama the sun showered gold.
Then the gully dipped radically, and he was skidding headfirst, slamming back and forth against its slick white walls. This uncontrollable plunge had the positive effect of getting his blood flowing. Yet it tore him up. Had the gully concluded in a cul-de-sac, or had further progress required a single calorie of uphill effort, his struggle would certainly have ended here. He would have been too weak to move, and death would have been swift.
But there was a glacier—a great river of ice pouring slowly out of the clouds. The gully, terminating in a little scoop formation near the glacier’s base, spat him flailing onto its gnarly glass hide. He went head over heels, bits of skin and fur flying like chips from a band saw. Somehow he gained his footing, and then he was running against his will, tumbling and recovering and tumbling again.
He didn’t catch much of that crazy run. He half-glimpsed whirling walls of ice, felt a fickle surface underfoot, and broke through an assaultive mist that clung to his ankles and arms. He remembered having the ragged hides torn right off his body, and then being skinned alive. And he remembered reaching the glacier’s base and crawling like an animal; round its sweeping drifts, past its peaked moraines, all the way to a twisting frozen gorge.
And he followed this gorge down; ricocheting wall to wall, delirious, small plumes of thrashed snow marking his descent.
Through a freezing wood he fumbled. In a veil of mist he tumbled down a steep and verdant grade. As cold consumed his closing breath, he fell upon, near-blind, near death, a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a pool.
And in this pool a man lay purged, his broken body half-submerged.
The stumbling man stopped. He knelt to weep, but lost his thread. One hand took a bicep, the other, the head. With a twist and pull the corpse emerged.
That visage…that face—misshapen mask, contorted, bleached; of life’s deposits fully leached. Essence dispatched—a void, sodden wretch.
He let it fall and the glass was breached. All a freak, all a stretch:  upon this act his grip detached.
And the bridge collapsed…one vagabond grasp…what were these feelings; recaptured and trashed…a span elapsed…who was this puckered mass…he hauled it by the waist and thighs…slid it in, watched the pool react:  purse and recover, expand, contract. The glass reformed, now silver-backed…a sudden mirror…the man leaned nearer…saw his reflection, just smashed, remade intact.
The pool grew still.
Within its depth a shadow stirred—visions gathered, some distinct, some obscure. What they meant, and who they were, was much too much to fathom. The glass became blurred.
He closed his eyes, let his heavy head fall, fell back on his haunches, felt the sweat seep and crawl. The air was a pall—as he struggled to rise, a nib crossed his wrist.
He opened his eyes.
Between his fingers the blades poked and crept. Round his knuckles they ventured, up his forearm they stepped:  they seemed to be triggered by prompts from the ground. He shook his head slowly and dully looked round.
There were jays grouped about him, their black eyes aglow. Red hens came running, their fat chicks in tow. Gophers engaged in a weird hide-and-seek. Bluebells and buttercups craned for a peek. Sparrows hopped past and, paying no heed, burst into flight. He watched them recede.
Westward they flew.
Bewildered, he slumped.
Bumped from behind, he jumped to his feet, flabbergasted to find an ancient gray moose near-eclipsing the sky, with grit in his snarl and fire in his eye.
The old moose took aim.
The man turned to flee and stumbled, then tumbled and fell on a palm and a knee.

But there lies a world (so the lullaby goes) where rivers ever run.
Poked from behind, pushed out of his mind, he staggered into sun.







Copyright 2020 by Ron Sanders.

Contact:  ronsandersartofprose(at)yahoo(dot)com

Solent in Expiationem Animarum

Saint John the Apostle says: “Zefián, the computer of the Duoverse of the Verthian world, indicates the order of his creation of the world, according to the transcendental plant living matter, in the interstices of time itself that exists within sidereal time. Noting that matter and time, is governed by all mythological beings in a compartment with monotheism, will be defined by atavistic laws, which are the deity of the intense hiding place of procreation, endowing great contextual residences, for habitat and a world in which larger non-residential scales, which go from passerby between the lines of time, and cosmological phenomena, which in the Duoverse face vicissitudes of the stars and their physicality added to the arcs of memory and emotions. Thus the main task of how the structure of experience surpasses consciousness, to novelize the orthogonal movements of the Universe, but in a Vernarthian world with great explorations of matter, which are quantified and volatilized in the field of its ethereal existence. The laws will be governed by your Zefian computer, describing codes that will verify the fulfillment of pivots in the reactions of the universe, but with refractions when reasoning about the consummate phenomenon. Starting from here in the experienced biology that will overcome the laws of physics, since its value is above the limits that allow the bold line of gravity that bounces in the lines of time, and its distances promoting more discretion when resisting threats. of a possible tiring case, a product of some relative dominance not included in all worlds with each other, in some case that does not rescue us from loss of links of some omitted sidereal reminiscence, attracting us to a universe governed by hemicycles of merely material particles, and not existential biological ones. The dimensions emerge from the beginning of the same universe, but more delayed from the interval and the second limit of the space that rests, to inaugurate the one that comes. Being the orbit of translation twice rotating towards the sun, but nth times rotating on itself, to go out to another stellar dimension not present. Its geometry will be from the intendancy of the resumption of Cinnabar in Tsambika and Helleniká, to later cancel each other out, making their integration in Patmos, on the coast of Skalá, with curvatures that validate the nullity of successive expirations of material lives, between spiritual expirations alive.


Duoverso is born and will be reborn, every time the years are subject to the loss of everything quantifiable and not, under the light that will be lit on all the darkness, Zefián being, in paronymy in which they lack to appropriate the support and merit of to have it absorbed in the tabernacle of Vas Auric, in the privilege of nothingness itself and nobody, adding itself in what is preserved of the physical support of itself. For just sidereal speed, in which it will have to travel on its same axis of rotating time on itself, in paradoxical of the One-dimensional Beams, these coexisting with the same low and high universes, reconverted into angelic vital luminances, creating orbits and optics in the visions of Christian temporality. By empowering them to enable them in the overexcited that derive disorders of intermittency of memory and physics of time, to reinsert themselves in the sequence that inhabits the residual of the speed of the Beam, as a Theo-Philosophical entity, of cellular multiplicity or cells of seasonality. of retrograde times, for the independence of temporality, under the regime of the past made up of an unbelievable yesterday. Overcoming the conserved immediacy of conviction in the One-dimensional Beams (Kafersesuh), it is observed denser when every mortal admits to being due to integrating and later brooding, dissecting organic matter into inorganic matter, suspended in the richness of a world of Faith and Prayer, of the most anti-gregarious desert and lost in the world, but supported by hollow walls, which do not exist in Vernarthian emotional matter.

The movements being physical, they take us on conjectured layers to discern their magnitude, emphasizing the rigor of their measurement on us, instead, the ambivalence of Zefian, delivers in both chromatic the Dark and White Duoverse, under the reference of the behavioral alternations of the Diospyros, source of the arboreal, for the procreation granted in the hands of Leiak. Relying on this equational exercise, with less time to design for its genealogy, but rather on its apocalypse, reinstalled in abolished primary unknown spaces, to have it once again in the light of consciousness, recognized as an inert matter of the past, but living off the immanent eternity of nebulae that personalize the earring of the Caltrop, taking temporality, but not snatching any hand to tear it from his own.

Vernarth says: “In the rhetoric of the Universe-Duoverse theorem, it is worth noting the past with entity, present and future also, connected to the time of Verthian inspiration, Holderlin-Heidegger, on issues of physical habitability, as a complement to the entity, which anticipates the present/future in the vicinity of death in the past and future, but tangentially in lively whims of existentialism-mortality, for a way of being rented out at death, as a way of being, dwelling in death itself and in the act of embodiment having existed, but with its own mandate after having been rented. The Vernarthian World appears in this current, prolonging existence from non-existence, granting complementarity of more past existence, before an unlived death. Ontologically, This theory stems from the One-Dimensional Beams of Kafersesuh, in Ein Karem. Essentially Christian, as the matrix of existence between Ein Karem (Nativity of the Messiah) and Gethsemane, as an interconnection of materiality in metaphysical reflections, a product of the immaterial of life not lived, as an urgent sacrilegious death, and of the anticipated dimension of the life process- death-life of Christian Messianism.

Vernarth says: "with the slaves in my disparate hands, one picked up what the other was carrying. With my right hand, I took the Duoverso, and with the other my porter; I held my reins on the maxims of Elpenor, before falling to the cliff. One naughty day but with the worst pain in my chest, I went to see him in his room, and I structured him as an immortal, at the time of forming the world, "knowing not even being part of an identity" favoring him to be part of me. combustion and ignition due to the friction of the Universe on the Duoverse. Such was that fearlessness and affordability that it decorated me with unexpected tears of belonging by imprisoning me with superfluous boastfulness. But his courage will be mine, and he will have to anticipate being in the middle of grace, as in Gaugamela wounding my two hearts, one deleterious and the other not..., verbatim saying:

Says the Carrier: “I have to agree to your mandate my lord Vernarth, I have arranged my emetic knights to take him to the empyrean, more remote at nightfall. I know that my own death will also take him, for we are double lives loving death, which falls on a night given to the seventh Falangist soldier. In the midst of souls already disheartened by the misfortune of life, in the figure of eternal death that refuses to receive us discouraged "

Vernarth says: "I do not know if I am or will be brave, because I have forgotten to die, rather I do not know what it is ?, but in the midst of the horses and the hosts of the block, from the anvil of Gaugamela that I have not felt it again..., which is death after feeling my hands and legs severed, but not felt when appropriating some amputee. I know that among the Hypaspists we used umpteenth arrows to mobilize their war apparatus 665, but from the wasteland jump we gathered the delirium of the Falangist command in the Seleucid 666 row, rather detached from every man, in a substantial way in favor of the Alexandrian life, "Of course he was already in the hands of eternity, which hurts more than the tip of an arrow, even being unfaithful to his mortality"

and not in the Universe chained to its fractality, rather of its present-present of the new universe for those who make it negative of itself, towards a clone and neatness, granting it recklessness, who continues to sweep its entity, its dimension, its space, the distances, the matter to receive it in their being. Vernarth, besieges the discursive thinking, under the tides of the tenements and the fears of late emotionality, changing to all the best heroics of the follow and all the experiences of harassing flat lights of the target, in the necropolis that speak resurrected, not being chimera in the best leisure districts live, but immortal of a district..., with steps to constitutive slogans of "succumbed cities, but..., with eternity", connoting after all abolished transference, in eternity present between two beings of mortal rank, the Carrier and Vernarth, Vernarth and Heidegger, but here the last one bringing him the closest radiogram between expiration and eternity, with significant death (End and chaos) and eternity (creation), in the limbo-purgation ratio, as the source of the potion. His total contention and affinity in Heidegger's dialectic, passing through a moment that marks his reincarnation, in the rambling of finite eternity, moving away from Vernarthian ontological and metaphysical reasoning. It was attached magnetic in the Universe, feverish kiss in ambitions of the temporal Being, as substantial of perpetual objectivity towards the unworthy survivor of the Vernarthian theories. So far no similarity is compared to whoever wants it or not, it is part of any estimate or spreadsheet of a complex Duoverse, Within the emerging frontis of progeny, there are ranks derived towards the first to form compound swaths of shelters in the Camels Gigas, who from Jerusalem escorted them with their plantar consciences to Ein Karem, then returning to Gethsemane, to finish in the port of Jaffa. Originally arranged by the children of Israel and the strongholds; Vernarth, Saint John the Apostle, Eurydice, Raeder, and Petrobus with animality, Etréstles, and Kanti, to finally mention King David, who goes to his catafalque before leaving for Jaffa, to return winds to Patmos. Of this primogeniture, the legatee is Vernarth, being presented as co-first-born by giving his portion to Saint John the Apostle, for trust assets of the benefit of a third party for both, and granting the patriarchal and reimbursement to each of his inheritances, being of expeditious aim the liberation of the world that lodged them not authentically in the mediocrity of ascendant ancestors. This prerogative will be decisive to define the dimension of the Duoverse and the One-dimensional Beams as consanguinity, simultaneous nascent and mortal worldview, to radiate them in the beams that support the universe, and from this same, they are transferred to the vision of child-man, child-cherub., for the purpose of defining the Universe-Duoverse physically composed of four areas of its consistency. Time, Being, Divinity and the Four Wings of the Cherubim, as a concept of biodiversity in Lepidoptera, Bumblebees, Bees, Wasps, and Fireflies as tetra-winged animal entities, originating the warnings and impositions in cardinals and poles of their primogeniture, rising from chaos, up to now as mandatory Duoverso, constituting the alpha world, rising of the Animalia and the intermediate visions of the heights that guide the material essences of the imperishable spiritual elemental and structural physics. Being ineffable matter, in the stars that prostrate itself, before each pause of advent and of creations that ****** other creative flashes, in pursuit of a gnoseological doctrine, as a slavish instant, ending in another for the study of the meaning of conceiving in the diligently part of a new world, on the borders of the unknown and of repelled nothingness, suspecting itself in the living artery of nihilistic nothingness, without leaning towards nonexistence that endorses it, or perhaps from a twin Duoverso univitelino in the chaos of unfertilized nature..., rather empowered to the first heir by the law of the Messiah district. Allow yourself, in this way, in the face of this premise and history, to continue and be part of an establishing whole, looking for God in a new world and universe as well..., but shaking before the nothingness that sustains it, as a basic knowledge of value and of immobile Faith. The hypothesis Prosapy-Centric, defines blood lineage unifying the Duoverso as follows:

a)Eternal Existentialism:

He talks about how compassionate creation is and its factotum, that it will be better that way. At the entrance to the Vernarth mouth, within its buccal cubic meters, the Zig Zag Universe, the promoter that caused the Duoverse, broke out. Here your thoughts of eternity are born; not from your brain and discernment, psyche or mind. It exists in a present that will be distributed without end or beginning, in the holistic of the anticipated existence of the being itself, so that everything holistically arises from the mouth of Vernarth, becoming the light of his luminance-ejector thought, being in some way the Zigzag universe that emerges from the outgoing access of its mouth and that manifests itself in some change of quantum physics in a state of hyper-connectivity and always present. The Zig Zag, coexists in eclectic variability of angles, creating regularities in its time and displacement. For the sake of results and translational parallelism as a promoter of the Duoverse, based on the holistic that brings together the effect of the word-fact, but eminently aimed at the morphology of extra language of intellect, rather in the kinetics of the language of human zigzag and physical-material, typical in various line segments of lightning and space storms, resembling his lost and bleeding soul in full battle at the site of Arbela. The other meaning is his salvation from the Council of Patmos, being already Installed in the Eclectic and invisible portal of the Evangelist of Saint John, levitating in his sacred basaltic cavern in Katapausis, in the Patmos archipelago (Koumeterium Messolonghi, Chapter 16 / page 114. Editorial Palibrio- USA). They would find themselves in communion with the archaean clan, which would resemble its proper ectoplasm; thus each one forming a unique part in the masonry dictated to redirect them towards their messianic labors at this stage of the ascension. Vernarth; is aware that he will have to enter the cave, after having ceased his work on standby for three months. He continues to fester in myriad wars and parapsychological regressions, he will remain in a daze to dedicate himself to the beautiful landscapes open towards a horizon..., a neighbor to Palaeolithic and astronomical painting. In the flashes of mathematical prayer, you will capture the spiritual intensity that inspired Saint John to build the temple near his cave of the Apocalypse on the island of Patmos. The saint appears only on certain days looking at him from afar to encourage him in his progress..., Portal Eclectic and invisible is the facet of the face of light, after the invisible that manages to be appreciated with the principle of transferring its connectivity of the immaterial with the material, but done in the finished quality of "Merciful", deriving everything in what supports the splendor of the facts and their objective analysis, by no means the same, because the Zigzag universe, originates theory or thoughts from the perspective of external language and integrally unites it through the optimal results, always imponderable and categorical to follow them and attract them to eternal spiritual good. Being exhaustive of the fact of action, although it is subdivided into executability..., it will continue to be timeless, therefore eternal, in the hands of a universe of thick eternity and stationary death.

The final communion of Zig Zag with the Duoverse, will make this key momentum to replace the Universe of the former Vernarthian world, for inflections of the continuous present, more in the distance of the limits that have to originate than by a simple gesturing stupidity of disbelief, abounding more than a universe that is created in eternity, and that will never again resurface as a physical dimension. The successive potentiality of this theory of holism subtracts actions and not facts, since it always culminates in the limit of infinity, always beginning and never-ending, to then restart in a present that is reintegrated into the access of the oropharyngeal and non-cerebral embouchure, since it has of limiting itself in its shock and subsequent confusion of language-emotion and feeling, to change all eternal emotion, always going hand in hand with the unequivocal and assertive light,

b) Being Universal multi-evocation:

Over Rhodes the auroras could be seen retreating, to attract the new luminances crossing between the atmospheres of the ancient worlds, with stars that were ordered among others, descending at great speed from the Universe, fascinating all Greece, coming from celestial bodies that brought from great Relative distances and proximity between the Duoverso and its satellite widening, allowing to grant subsistence, and routes to the nascent species of the Vernarthian sub-mythology. The Sabbath energy Light is overbreathed repair; here Saint John the Apostle influences through the conduit of the Cinnabar towards the Light of the Mashiach, with the intemperance of life on drops of crystallized water as gifts of Taphoric Light, with synoptic signs of transformation of all the green grass growing like a beard on the slopes of the Willows, where Saint John the Apostle goes back to prayer prayers; so such in repetitive sentences and prayers towards the Universe, which were falling as it was on Mount Tabor in the Transfiguration. All this in the fervor of the willow chins that fell from the galaxies, with their cascades one after another in orderly colophons of fervor making the sky a great source of Moshaic and Elijah voices. (Moses and Elijah) to Christianize the holy oils of the radiant glory of the Universe that was complemented by the Heliac Ortho that was appreciated in different coefficients according to this new position of the parameter of Greece, observed from the Constellation of Pisces, being symbolized as piece as SOS, since Eratosthenes tells us about the fish that saved Derceto (Goddess of Assyrian mythology), after falling into a large lagoon. Seeing therefore in the sky as Fum Al Samakah, Arabic for “snout of the fish” (or Fomalhaut star from the Greek translation). Pisces being bright and of the great dimension to mold it as a whole iris, which was rooted from the formal pelagic accent, towards a spectral affinity of the Duoverse, like leaves of Willow temperatures, on the reflection of the Multi-evocation. For antithetical referendum of the Pleiades between light-years that diminish behind the stars of the magnetic field and its exo-planet. It is necessary to consider that in the wisdom of God, there would be his ordering conscience, on each constellation, and then detach itself before each other that guards each one in centuries of light-years, and in each one of the children as light-years of millions, but of numerical present time quantum; that is to say, all translation on average over ups and downs of spatiality and in remote ages, to zero or from null numerals in the integrality of millions of non-existent light-years, but accumulated and equidistant between the Universal Being and Multi-evocation. An example of cartographic observation shows us Greece at Latitude 39.074208 and Longitude 21.824312, influencing the Duoverse as a complement to the rise of Greece with the latitude of the Heliac Ortho, being Sirius eleven days after the Ekadashi and eleven days before the other at 10 °, Maximizing the light herbalism of the unconscious, to systematize the rise of the Universe imbuing Greece. Refulgent and small electromagnetic systems, led by the Divinity, are freeing themselves of all the units that bind in the minimal Units that can expand with the apostolic energy, rather than a trans-human receiver, in blocks of circulation of waves, related to a Defined spatiality, divine and with its own energy of opening of small worlds of provision of light, and radiation emitted by the deleterious convex of invisible essences in properties that are released from overflowing stagnations of creation, and from the skylights that are more distant than the wavelengths than from a breath of Demiourgy in the chemistry of all multidimensional hyper-existential between frequencies of energy widely displaceable by lines of how many..., in static energy of rest. Ultra colors intensify on the coasts of Rhodes, as a sulfur photoelectric effect of Cinnabar, formalizing mechanics in those sedimentary particles, which undulate in anticipation of the precise amalgamation of both universes, evolving towards the matrix of origin of physical and non-biological state and period, but of eternal divine inspiration, from the mouths of Vernarth, as a resurrected Being electro vigorous, dwelling spacious and sinuosities of curvature and psychic spiraling, The Vernarthian nature will call this phenomenon the Son, since it is the similarity of the halo in the Taphoric Light and in its effect of the baptismal of this Christian Universe called Duoverse, in accordance with the presence of Saint John the Apostle light, among the attending raptor niveous. strangers, arrival-departure and between the nebula of pendency in the nimbus gaseous clouds of fields that mutually heard each other recognizing each other..., leaving only Saint John the Apostle in the perfection of the sky as a universal and Duoversal shadow, first of all being of light being baptized, crucified and risen-ascended, in the metaphysical transfer of his body, as a universal body, as a quantum point between the earth and the sky, between the universe and the Duoverse as a complement of gaseous and spiritual atmospheric earth. Ministering in the judicious and prophetic occlusion, being a juridical part among the myriad bundles of Constellar Pisces that supported the transfigured and converted prophets, before a brand new universe, "Duoverso", witness to the amazement at the proximity of the multi-evoked Universal Being.

c) Reflection space (Light-matter)

The Duoverse having been pulled from its entrails from Vernarth's mouth, and objectual free fall is noticed after disengaging from the quantum Universe, rather than an elusive cacophony that unfolds separated from their bodies in all dimensions, except Vernarthian time, Alluding to the stoning him so that he ignores himself in agony and returns to look for him to revive him as Space-Light, in the presence of matter reflected from himself, which will unfold throughout the Hellenic Panagias, from Kímolos to Tsambika, to make the curves the direct passage that once again bends time towards a fragmented dimensionality. Barefoot was the apostle with Vernarth in the three quarters of the axioms and algorithms, where the conceptuality would overcome the low calculation of what was already ministered by them. Creating space for lapses in dreams of the Stairs, with steps of Topaz, in this particular case of Saint John the Apostle, "seeing open skies and angels of God go up and down on the son of man." Here some sidereal Solar gleams are illuminated that have nights for a sunny day, Vernarth resting on the side of the Monastery with a stone on its head and dozing to dream like Etréstles in the Hexagonal Baptistery of the Shepherds in Ein Karem, but of the compact sweetness of the famous luminous Cinnabar ascending vertically where the Yahvic Being, who was presented to him as the Abrahamic patriarchate nexus. Endowing him with celestial dreams about stones that inherit west and east towards the north noon, in space of hallucinations of Jacob's subconscious, for the satisfaction of the luminous pictorial ligament. Thus, a timid but decisive reflex pointer of space and reflection is detected, which includes fragments of spectrum and tonalities of a machine unconscious, to raise the Duoverse in a depressive day of the scathing moment.

d) Physical energy (molecular entropy)

From the bases of Theoskepasti, the physical system emerged in two sums after the movements of the pendular censers that exceed the elliptical of the Cinnabar and the potential of the ejectable force field, for ductility of its forces that emanated from the triad with the archpriest, helping him Etréstles and Kanti, who would take them to the Hellenika Necropolis. They make of their golden bodies the ephemeral speed mechanized in the originality of the homily system, to break in the guardian friction of the gravitational axial of the body of Light of the cinnabar, which received the sulfur kinetics of the defective organic matter that was wrapped in a bizarre alloy of sulfur light, and in all the forces gathered, not rubbing with the cinnabar obelisk, already invaded by the energy that made it superficial, between the shell of the Panagia Theoskepasti covering and the strange normality that made them physical-organic. No scrubbing would continue the movement of the fleeting angle of the anvil of Hephaestus, but the static on the surface, lay unchanged before the forces of the back and forth of the molecules that sank late, shooting from the pendular area of his bowl and then starting with full power for new angles that will take advantage of the mechanics of the forge and the friction clean and **** before the joint, and the resistance of the reactivation of the second period of the movement, to forward them to Tsambika in the response signal. Quantifying later between the inferiority and the intangible shock reaction in the light radiosities of the cinnabar re imparted towards Rhodes, forming resistance, but with immanent entropy, with a high degree of fineness, in such a way that once the conservation rays are fired, the response to Rhodes will come from Kímolos with the particles and combustions of sulfurous gas and mercury, generating entropy of two quantum and physical times between the Dodecanese and Cyclades, knowing that the inert matter is inactivated alive, thus envisioning the contingent presence of iron in the geology of both islands, with more than eighty percent, and of gravitating oxygen for the Vas Auric and its materialization, as a ****** impression reducing its physical dimension and enlarging its water content in pelagic beings of the Aegean. This would suggest the homogeneity of both island territories, appease the conception of substitutions that frolic from north to south, to break their normal balance, depleting what is island land towards oceanic land. In this way they will be mixed entropically for a new generation of fertile life that balances in chaos, already in the hands of Saint John the Apostle and Vernarth, in the main nave of the Monastery that seemed to oscillate atomized and vanished, but then atomically restructured, slyly dividing the canons of traditional entropy, and making it disproportionate to the biodiversity ordering of the sterile and the fertile, reordering itself as a mutable force excluding the reality of act-effect, invested in the integrity of life-death-life, as a molecular target in a double physical dimensional unit, making the prospective universe by splitting from any other format, to become another and another physical dimension. Universe-Duoverse, they shake like two spheres, almost joining each other, but separating into heterogeneous classics, as a panegyric, under the invocation of Conviction and Faith. The universes self-recomposed and redistribute themselves before our eyes, but before the consistent devotion of this homily, it makes them astonishing and phenomenal (everything that happens is recomposed - if the tree fractures, but then it straightens re-fractured, before our eyes being recomposed). Thus the chaos of the Universe is resolved, appropriating a new sequence of continuous creation, starting from the same creative property, but of molecular entropy, almost in adverse defect, but of constriction of the yielded body, to be incorporated into the Cinnabar beam of light. dynamic, generating ignition at the ends of each part of the structure obelisk, in order to release and stimulate on the absorbent..., of the Hexagonal Birthright in Tsambika,

e) One-Dimensional Beams

From the hexagon, everything is dimensioned on the peaks that can be seen in the starry nights from the curved kilometers of Bethlehem. Everything goes on top of the desert mountains and valleys, above the vagaries of climatic heights, and landslides of an entire believing community and its followers. In twelve advancing camels, of which the first six are exclusive to the Birthright, and then the seventh Giga camel is from King David of Bethlehem.

The beams are the architectural support portion of the physical-ethereal God and of his ethereal-physical word, supposedly of advent in grazing of the hardwoods, and the secret anomalies of a new Aramaic message, anticipating the vigor of insects and birds that were grouped together. in the journey that goes back and forth. The Beams are stars of heaven sustained by the Cherubim and the Archangels, through the paths of conversion and the support of the Christian time; haughty and implacable hegemony for the propaedeutic of phylogeny, but more on the very chemistry of creation carrying its winged Lepidoptera tetra, pheromones, and the obfuscation of an elemental nascent child in his own evangelical philosophy from an inter-sword dimensionality, and of the gloom of a manger shouted Kafersesuh, before compendiums of two pyramidal landmarks of inflection of his word in created animals, in the affinities of the world and the Animalia, personalizing shepherds carriers of pollinations, totalizing the generational of the language that is concealed so far, as well as the turns in the musks, and their legitimacies from the Baptistery of the Shepherds in Ein Karem, parabolizing their nomenclature and Polygonia of a child made man, already coexisting! but representing himself as a lifeless man in the fullness of a child of a distinguished canon. and his legitimacies of the Baptistery of the Shepherds in Ein Karem, already coexist! but representing himself as a lifeless man in the fullness of a child of a distinguished canon, that followed him towards the superlative moment of the bending near him, twisting and changing squeezable pressure in the cords that forged his path, towards the cornices and trusses of the upper celestial vault, where the shed of doubts was next to the Cherubs. Giving mechanics to the prism that arched the beams in the horizontal lines, taking them towards the amplitude of other lines, which remained solid before the variation, suspecting mutating to one of sudden two-dimensionality. The sections of the timber framework, which looked fatigued before the primary classification, which showed the attitude of the little Messiah, taking out effulgence from its beams, and rolling on other pillars, postponing the vectors of the tangential, contributing bits in rhomboid specialties, that blurred the cylinders of amplitude and field of vision of all those who remained in their nativity. Making diametrical glances so as not to be distracted and adore him with a broad and rectilinear heart, in transversal visualizing for all, the one-dimensional crossed wood, which in its geometry schematized letters and numbers of kabbalah, which differ in dissimilar resistance of Christic ambivalence, as a forerunner of martyrdom. on the wooden cobblestone of Golgotha. This presaged capacities to read them in the Torah and Zohar, gathering everything in a whole, in those vivid tormenting lapses that he felt in advance, as reversible entropy, turning their substance to prepare them for the day of an abolished martyrdom. Making diametrical glances so as not to be distracted and adore him with a broad and rectilinear heart, in transversal visualizing for all, the one-dimensional crossed wood, which in its geometry schematized letters and numbers of kabbalah, which differ in dissimilar resistance to Christic ambivalence, like the anticipation of martyrdom on the wooden cobblestone of Golgotha. This presaged capacities to read them in the Torah and Zohar, gathering everything in a whole, in those vivid tormenting lapses that he felt in advance, as reversible entropy, turning their substance to prepare them for the day of an abolished martyrdom. which differ in dissimilar resistance to Christic ambivalence, like the anticipation of martyrdom on the wooden cobblestone of Golgotha? This presaged capacities to read them in the Torah and Zohar, gathering everything in a whole, in those vivid tormenting lapses that he felt in advance, as reversible entropy, turning their substance to prepare them for the day of an abolished martyrdom, pigeonholed him towards a pre-existing Hellenistic aspect in characteristics of patronage as a representative figure of a male, and a lady of Ptolemaic Egypt in great iconic religiosity, coexisting as a priestess of a female order in the Greek protocols with him. Becoming inseparable in the preeminence of mother and son, as unilateral gender, and of substantial element for the social and political order that reigned in the ancient era. Laying here the unilateral gender indispensable for the social and political order, which is substantiated at the dawn of the empires of all the time, and the patriarchal society? Symbolically Joshua in this cogitabundant providence, adds the feminine value in the society in the Kafersesuh's outlet of the Judah manger, dispensing mainly to women, A great Zohar light, gathered all towards a whole in those errors that Joshua felt in advance, as reversible entropy, giving back his wise existence to prepare them for the day of his sacrifice. Pre Existing in catharsis and substance of divinity connected with the phylogenetic species, classifying up to an Aramaic pontificate of pheromones settled in the lithospheric site of Gethsemane, in a biological sense and in close coincidence in lapse wading, or the phenomenological simultaneity of Eukaryota and Glaucophyta until late Animalia, giving relation parental in characters of the vibrational timbre of the Beams, and its atavistic pedestal, readapting in evolutionary ellipticals of winged tetra species. Allowing to change the ancestral linguistic accouterments in processes of redesigning the divine genetic historical tree and increasing anomalies in the human earthly culture, and not human anthropomorphic in a reviving profanity of fruitive frequency amplitudes, for those who resort to it, monopolizing and synchronous in diachronicity of their specimens. The lights of Joshua's gazes are the Light of Christian Life and Time, in the entity of Joshua born and bloodless from the nature of Child-Man, but of mortal design in the same compulsion to see the luminescence of life in the manger Kafersesuh and only incorporeal unity. Being in exemption from Ego with its structure of living child and dead man, he rushes rebellious and ostentatious in the architecture of the One-dimensional Beams, yielding the glimpse of the aforementioned progenitor "Eye versus Eye", seeing himself like this..., son hovering in the arteries of a Universal-Duoversal life, from a single dimension of cyclical one-dimensional length, encompassing conjecture and biological, the symbolic-allegorical conception of extreme co-divinity, as an exclusive precept of the delicate infinity of the Being of a Messiah, with paraphrases or glosses of Aramaic exegetical affinity, tracing from a linguistic period. Here are the contortions of the Olive Tree Berna, transfigured into everlasting orality and refractory syllable, to incubate eternal rabbinic gifts of perpetual reluctance, beyond the reach of the ego-annihilating will and of apathetic, inert ultra-affections and of miraculous phenomena.

f) Hexagonal Birthright

Civilization has an arched inflection in its regency at the head of the favorable family caste in the blessing, whose hiding place will have to be entrusted to a clan, having to make inquiries that formerly only related to consanguineal minorities from the same family trunk, thus protecting the pantries and accessories in warfare to consolidate the economy, and invigorate its commercial coffers. The land would be and would be an essential partition insignia for the legitimate transmission of epochs and inter-seasons, which received them from its descendants for representation of geomorphological heraldry, given in its regional condition. In the noise of the seventh seal, heaven was silent for half an hour and the seven angels stood before God, and they gave seven trumpets, the other is to appear in front of the altar with a golden censer, to compile it in other prayers in all the saints, on the golden altar that was in front of and in front of the throne - And from the hand of the angel the smoke from the incense with the prayers of the saints - And the angel took the censer, and filled it with the fire of the altar, and threw it to the earth; and there was thunder, and voices, and lightning, and an earthquake - And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets got ready to blow them - The first angel sounded the trumpet, and there was hail and fire mixed with blood, which were thrown upon the earth ; and a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up - The second angel sounded the trumpet, and like a great mountain burning with fire it was hurled into the sea; and a third of the sea was turned to blood - And a third of the living creatures that were in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed - The third angel sounded the trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers, and on the springs of the waters - And the name of the star is Wormwood. And the third part of the waters became wormwood, and many men died because of those waters because they became bitter - The fourth angel sounded the trumpet, and the third part of the sun, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars were smitten, so that a third of them would be dark, and there would be no light in the third part of the day, and also at night - And I looked, and I heard an angel fly through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice: !!

"Being in six instants at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem with Saint John the Apostle, they reordered the majority for a protected subordination in the minor family descended from the eldest son, for the purpose of sustaining them to reach the possession of their theological morphology, in this door, being the only one that will remain closed…, until the second coming of the Messiah. The scheme of the camelids in their osteometry tells us that their heads before Advent! Distorted their calypso lights on the surface of their skeletons, locking the jaws of other camelids, thus bypassing the Apostle's strap, which through the foramen of the supraorbital, thickened the strides that pretended immobile before the opening of the Golden Door. Of course, they were prisoners of their self-denial for the length of their footsteps to the rhythm of the sensitive skulls, In the fourth camel Raeder, he cleared the margins that allowed them to increase their attempts to withdraw them from the golden doors, but the dislocation of the orbits of their ocher eyes, denoted their holes in the condylar fossa, distancing the vicinity of the Tehillim advocated by King David in the Seventh Seal of a stuck Giga Camel. The metric form innovates them of ubiquity, for omnipresence in the camels before the gates, and after the gates, thus leaving the site of the eighth gate, deserting the camels behind the gates and arcades pointing to the old cemetery. of the prophecies that Elijah holds, and in procuring generational stoning of inter camelids, which would be channeled into twelve plus another dozen, but behind all, appearing to be six, later joining King David, who would provide the parallelism of the Seventh Seal. This caravan was numbered from one to six, saving the vertices of the Golden Gate that joined modestly at the odd vertices, under the odd cross of the same vertex, which made the equilateral coherent according to the three angles where Vernarth and Etréstles went, and then joined other pairs of vertices in a crucified chain in the flat and secondary complementarily of the seventh angel, but with epilogue character of the Seventh Seal. Thus it would be numbered according to the Gigas Camels, the Golden Gate, governing them for a family of six family angles and a seventh seal, for the performance of the family sustenance of primogeniture in the reinsertion of Saint John the Apostle, since he was banished by Emperor Domitian. Making themselves succulent of the gold of the Seventh Seal, on the collective unconscious of the first-born, for the good of the sub-genitor son. Here the indication goes for the purpose of populating the consecration of granting greater goods to those who second and could lead forces of abandonment and secular sedentary, for the need to welcome sacrifices of goodness and preferences of lay annoyance and earthly secular strengthening. The kinetics would move the six numbered over the vertices of the Sun in three bevels, joining the pairs in vertices covered in the circumscribed mesh of vehemence, which is impacted with the solid Golden Gate of Jerusalem, depositing the concentric radii of the polarized magnet on the struts of the camel of the central ram, for the affinity of the contraption of a trajectory for all Judah, in six predestined latitudes to Ein Karem, in the Hexagonal Baptistery of the Shepherds".

With symmetrical scrupulousness at a certain time, the rounded bisector of the psychic lines of the peritoneum fold of the solitary flanks of the Camels Gigas, towards a vocal peritoneum set six times more than a seventh, was estimated, in the apothem of the two-dimensional figure of the Febo hexagon angel, with less centrality, for the foundation of the Apostle and Vernarth, regulating them by points and sides, on the perpendicular bezels, prostrating towards a more orthodox and straight line, mutinying with radials phases on the bisector..., giving a quotient of odd numbers, which cut the first round of anointing, among all those that were retained in the daydreams of catching them for involuntary deaths. From Gaugamela's stratagem, three thousand muscular Hetairoi descended, towards the implantation of heart nuclei in the camelids, on the Susa Gate and the oblique break marching towards the war site, creating a fissure between camels, and the sphinx of Alexander the Great breaking into the Left-wing of the Golden Gate. This was the casuistry of Vernarth's psychic advance impetus, who once was at the precise moment of stalking, hypnotizing the gap of the Achaemenides, but unaware of that mechanical moment, persists in going after the Giant Camels. He guided them with his right hand to both sides, equipped with heart irons that exorbitated the whispering of his pectoral canals, interrupting the dawn of the Cinnabar, with the antigen readjusting the hinges of the door before falling untimely. Vernarth, with his sinister, calls upon the Hindu family who tried to open the breach of Alexander with his Macedonian baggage, thus preventing him from lying in the reliquary in contrition towards Vernarth himself. The infamous moment must have passed through the swords of some who resisted when fleeing from the held Golden Gate, giving up the rear of Vernarth with the camels recovered and saved from the abandonment of their afflicted hearts, resigning themselves with empty hands and with an outpouring of victory, but with two units confronted in his Portal of Imagination.

g) Reflection temporality

In cavern series, the lava was converted into cations of hydronium, in underground pits that glowed in Tsambika's temporality when the homily was officiated. Some pieces and calcareous boulders rotated random by the humid and dark narrowness of the subterranean reflection, having lived in the heavenly paradise that formed them by the volcanic tube and its syngenetic, by the erosion of the subsoil of Rhodes. The speculative rock icons expired of the symptoms, with albuminous cliffs of the genetics of the Theoskepasti chapel, Etréstles carried under his arm the expiration contract of the Universe, to deliver it with his signature, for the dimensional transfer will. Everything flourished with attractive mineralization systematizations, under an astral posology, In the cognitive, Kanti memorized his wanderings in Crete, imagining his physical body united with his mind on the paths of the shoulder of his ancestry, with batches of clockwork that went and passed through his physiognomic, bathing with the piece wind, but also with the hard shoulder that came straight towards him, showing him new encephalic pathways, which surrendered in epistemological globes, but levitating in excess of the hard shoulder and the unknowns, for states of temporality that became mentalized in pursuit of a supra desire..., disease or typologies long-standing who used the supposed ontological formalization, gave functioning the property of body with the memory of advanced towards a new Duoversality. The officialization of Ars Choralis, is solemnized for processes of emotional property; In this way the cave of Being and its Temporality is made haughty, self-isolating for intra-cave investigations, as corollaries and agility in those who yearned for identity, being able to attach themselves to deities in dozens of epicenes, which would be from tens to ten, thus being seventy tens and a half, which would be seventy-five of the seven tens, and of the unconscious of the syntagm that Etréstles carried away, separating the syntactic of the Vas Auric hypothesis, so that they coexist..., although the pestilential decays before the rolled-up syntactic of Kanti's head. Untreated and conscious-unconscious to his instinct, resorting and harassing the procedural bars, of the Ergo Sum parameter. The temporality of reflection, In momentum ac Diadem, it shone from the third trumpets of the Seventh Seal to the potential of the twilight corrodes and their regions that made the shoulder of the shoulder the awareness of temporality reflected in required dismayed collectivities, to transcribe exhortations to the behavioral pattern of the temporality of love Faust. Little remains immobile, little drive when two masses of consciousness withdraw to the storehouses of the Universe, already advantageous of their exhaustion, but inheriting them in precipitous emotions towards the pre-consciousness factors in the heights of the mountains of Crete and Kímolos.

Kanti the steed says: “Deus Nostri Pontificatus Annis et ad eum, God is my pontificate and my way to Him…, Adonis in the relative absence of credit, before Ephebos with absolute deafness, surprising me here in the Diospyros and neuro archetype flight. I ride farther than my physical-emotional, contributing in the micro-fusions of the tubules, in quantum, and interacting with the fineness of the minuscule substance, within themselves. Almost injuring the storms that vibrate in the mine of a risk prop of a steed, in pursuit of a trance that only ends up being the architect and augur of knowledge..., of when and where it agonizes more than once, but within the limit of the Duoverse crushed at his own peril, continually evaluating himself to transfer a genetic force into my hooves of solid steel, but ornamental and of Reflected Temporality.


h) Expansion and Aramaic Taxonomy

Organic taxonomy, as a pre-ordering order, classifies the harmlessness of language before the invasion of Alexander the Great. Although there were implosions of the Greek language, its transboundary taxonomy would be shifted towards Judea. Pre cited is its variant pharyngolaryngeal tracheo, in this assertiveness and occasionality, it predisposes emphasis on orthographic rather than phonetic incidents, citing Galilea as a precursor of the Aramaic and taxonomic thesis of Gethsemane, prior to its expansive conventionalism of enrapturing her in her differentiation, and in the expansive hotbeds necessary to channel the basic axons of commerce, between antiquity under the prerogative of supplied ethics and pre-classified inputs, such as food and geographic furnishings of economic arts, as well as, the syntax of words that could have curvature and geometry in the forms or linear designs of the time. Any letter could be interpreted as a physiognomic form or as tools of manifest imperialism, coexisting execrable or blessed as languages or keys of immunological communication, with symbolisms of languages spoken in rituals of systematization, and of obfuscation of a metaphysical Messiah, always an angel, for when this is the case. In other words, the water speaks to him in dialects and adults with an oriental language, appearing cryptic in the appointments that are related to the language of the great Extra Universal heritage.
Vernarth's Aramaic is an ***** composed of valuation graduation and generational expansion, opening evolutions combined with the matrix of “Ethereal Spatiality”, towards a channel or rib with a common end in what is done on the margin of Faith. and it is predestined on the basis of object and substance, as a regulatory organism, for groupings of species within the biological language or not, as well as in the fissure of a Cladia of lichen fungi, forming the optics of expression as spelling and not as a utilitarian concept. Amplifying what a camel is; this is how it is importunate, being its **** consensus with the "S" backward in a perfect camelid, the "T" also being a perfect Cobra approaching the three S's of the Syriac Aramaic alphabet. The “Y with L fused” of the Aramaic alphabet with a large elephant, and finally the “H” as a pelican simile, like the pelagornithids or Pelagornithidae, fossilized in the emotional collective of rock tribes, progressing from elephants, camels or pelicans in the search for a literate language and consonant shapes that are attributed to their jaws and pharyngolaryngeal substrates..., observing long vowels, as in the language of an organic universal alphabet. The matrix is timeless, branching out of the mechanics of natural and phenomenal selections, if it is metaphysical or is contributing Demiourgy on the infinity of the encodings or depending on the size of its geo-referencing, it will contribute energy exchanges with predictive purposes of information of orders, and adaptations of the calcified scientific space, Vernarth, dives into the ponds or Naídes of the Aegean and survives, just when the networked volcanoes were swallowing all the seas in the world. It braced being only part of the laps of the sea, tattooing with its gaze the chthonic nymphs, before envious and backsword ogres with gills, which multiplied more than any myth-poetic. Its power of convergence is inhibited by the poetic myths of primordiality and of cosmology as a natural branch in nautical miles traveled by its arms, without knowing who crossed them, survivor, in its advance, and treasuring the arm plunges on and under the scalded clay objects, perhaps as implantation of the muddy and hyper-flood lexicon, empowering itself in its translation from Syria to Patmos, and from linear B Mycenaean to Syriac Aramaic languages,


i)Sub - Verthian Mythology (Camera Obscura)

Adhered to the ancient parallels of the cult, the mythology of Horcondising lashes out. Stale and axiomatic source of pragmatic and rational earth that emanates from this constrained fusion of the Universe in the metamorphosis of Duoverso-Horcondising. Social and genealogical plates date more than seven hundred years from Lombardy and northern Venice in Italy, Spain, and France. The mission of the Horcondising is the transhumant myth, and Chaos of the ancestral family cenacle, in view of a family rule, succeeding in continuous litanies that consecrate rites beyond genetic archaeological death. The consolation of souls will revive and will be under the edict of the Sub-mythology in repose landing in successive parapsychological regressions, which will speak of deaths suffered at the edge of their test tube lives, Under the mythology, there is the sub-fable, prone to boundaries where the statement innovates the entire structure of hermeneutics, as a written notification and complacent verb, for lords of the grass and granaries of granaries, narrating myth-stories in messes of revived verbality. Thus in Rhodes and Patmos, Andronicus of  Rhodes will guard the doorway of his hobbies again, so that these disciplines are conducive to sponsorships of words under reasons of a nature concerning Saint John the Apostle risen in flesh and spirit, in contrast to the conclusions of the reason to leave breathless the destiny that the just cheer and disapproval of diction of not certain science, under ships that cover the commendable salvation in exegetical storms that go from a liberated shelter, as well as in what differs from the et Grammatica institutione arithmetica in that each one writes what it understands, and adds what humanistically makes existence in a biblical alphanumeric dimension, from the imaginary in some of its leaders such as Zefián, Borker, Leiak, Kaitelka, in Hyperdisis and the Zig Zag Universes. Making the mythical an ensemble with deities that rule the infinite, achieving more secular religiosities than in a radius of religion, founded by characters that are already pagan mythology. This is the raison d'être of the sub-mythology, which springs from one already narrated and rationalized, but in the contradiction of what underlies under the very observance that unites itself, forging itself creditor of very new myths within others, with characters that have never been or have been parasitizing on another source of cognition. Thus becoming extensive and prolonged in its passage liers sumptuousness of other arcane myths, within the same ones that inhabit the mythological lie, without blemish from veracity belonging to the living-lie in pursuit of a dead-truth. Even if it is in this way or hermeneutic method, continue to beat and go to meet the Castellar Imaginary del Horcondising and the Camera Obscura, which always live and revive in the sub-imagination, but from a mythical truth in a regime of multitudinous voice. and myth-poetics.

From the sooty Camera Obscura the spindle was obtained over the diameters of each edge, Vernarth of the same chaos, converged from the square but not the spherical world, from this sooty box together with his master Zefián, who polished and shot vines of light over the projection of the same box, and of the quantum ark on the acropolis of Leiak, simulating entelechy in its projection with the ultraviolet light of light similar to the earth, but not square, rather appearing to be a square sphere. After repeated intervals, Vernarth opened the slits of his hands, also hollowed, here other globules appeared but not spheroids, rather quadrilaterals at the end of the third phase in the last three series that showed the complete reflection of a tiny world, that just clamored for amnesty as a matter that had been beginning to form with another factor on a large scale, from this fractality that would appear as Vernarthian sub-mythology. Camera Obscura, in a combination with twelve atomic masses, stands out starting in the irradiation of sexagesimal nomenclature; imagining fractionality between sixty microseconds to sixty in the hexagonal polygon of the Primogeniture and the Baptistery of Ein Karem. Being used in the elevations of the stars and the Heliac Ortho of dawn, which would find the black box that was nailed in its twelve apostolate angles. The whole times were divided into more exact numbers that surrounded him in his Camera Obscura doing trigonometry with other rectangles of three equilateral, making multiples of twelve on the line of the hypotenuse of sixty, dividing by the hexagonal, which is the angular line of the six sides of progression of the Duoverse becoming a spheroid square, for an analogy of Hexagonal Birthright with the multiple of twelve for the sake of the Giant Camels, leading them to the obfuscation of the Horcondising fused with the Duoverse, by means of Pi (π), in the diameter equidistant between the Universe and the Duoverse disintegrated in two by the concentric radius of both geometric units. In the same way, Vernarth multiplied the existence of his new sexagesimal world in nths by sixty followed by infinite numbers of zeros, canceling the radical time of the masses of anodyne particles. The corondels or watermarks, overflowed with all the irregularities of the system, showing the decimal after the comma.


j)Verthian Apostolic Conception - Kashmar

Vernarth, was in Sardinia in the megalithic complexes Nuraga when he conceived his apostolate as a messenger, biologically entrenched in the taxonomic stasis, with a merely profane and urban framework. Whose classification he would transmit to his relatives after long periods in Macedonia, sailing and doing his falconry and philosophical avant-garde chores with Aristotle, in a laxity that invited him after long rejoices to record and sculpting messages with the doves of his village. Near Pella, in the central region of Macedonia, where his general Alexander the Great resided, south of the Axio River, his abode was nomadic and was on a hill near the lakes and mountains surrounded by Greco-Barbarian inhabitants, tracing the Chalkidian league., after the Peloponnesian War. He was in great campaigns in the former Pella, His will as an artist is precisely to be an apostolate of a thought that would intersect with the Yahwist gift to an apostolate of the Apostle Matías, whose connection would provide his transliteration of the post-mortuary link of the Jesus of Nazareth, replacing Judas Iscariot, due to his apostasy. Vernarth, distressed by this episode, became Commander of Alexander the Great, lying already primitive in his ranks of Hetairoi, transcending over the scourge of Judas Iscariot, to face in the arena of Pella. In a reverie near the Thermaic Gulf, he genuflected under the sacrosanct trees near some illustrious Kashmar Cypresses, channeling his furious and tramontane spiritual into the gulf, to take him out of a banal summer in the transition of an immolated soul, and make him walk for thirty days barefoot, without sweet potatoes in his hands to ego stone him, only naming him slavish stubble of the crops in the deleterious nesting places of the Ravens of Kashmar, bidding him so that his blood is ****** by the heels of the rooted trees of Thor forest, usurping his "Gift of Iahvé ”In dishonor of its Hebraic appellation, for the onomatopoeic of its rhetoric, resulting from the feckless roar of black lineage, which will emanate from the mouth of the Aulos, whistling inside the Cobra. In the aforementioned link, the group of twelve was recomposed, being in the gulf and in the incidences of the re-indoctrination of the twelve apostolates, he is with his prayer and atonement in the mystical character for the community worshiping the Kashmar; which roots hardened towards the silent immolation portent as Judas entered the black night, for excessive twists of the bifurcations, intertwining with the Beams of the Thermaic cliff, like a lynx observing the height and its prominence in that of Judas dwindling over the stained areas of hell..., thus its remains were scattered by the synod of bustard birds in the sprayed sky of globular creation, faded by conclusive hordes of the late Neolithic Druid and by the deity Belinus, with ingots of sooty petrified poplar from Hecate boiling in the Underworld. We shoveled over the holm oak groves and their trees, sacralizing their factotum after the ritual of the sanctuary of the thus his remains were scattered by the synod of bustard birds in the sprinkled sky of globular creation, faded by conclusive hordes of the late Neolithic Druid and by the deity Belinus, with ingots of Hecate's sooty petrified poplar boiling in the Underworld. We shoveled over the holm oak groves and their trees, sacralizing their handyman after the ritual of the sanctuary of the thus his remains were scattered by the synod of bustard birds in the sprinkled sky of globular creation, faded by conclusive hordes of the late Neolithic Druid and by the deity Belinus, with ingots of Hecate's sooty petrified poplar boiling in the Underworld. We shoveled over the Holm oak groves and their trees, sacralizing their handyman after the ritual of the sanctuary of the Dodona, in uniformity towards a murmur in the leaves from oak in the spell of man towards an oracle, to consummate it with the mendicant count of the Ziziphus Spina-Christi; hawthorn of the crown of Jesus but with implants of Kashmar, on the crown of Judas already immolated.

Vernarth walked alone through the inlet of Skala, on Patmos, when he had to undertake a trip to Judah, even so, he also walked bi-location in the inlet of Sardinia, after being in the megalithic complex Nugarhe, Vernarth, Etréstles, and Walekiria, they approach matching Tuscany. Once they were instantiated in Sardinia, a coastal sailboat transported them in the middle of a stormy day, it was a great happy day to arrive in La Spezia. Here they parked at night following the Liturgy, standing out those that coincided with Lent of Holy Week, where one day they were seen talking with Petrarca and Laura de Noves. The olive trees keep pietism with the phantasmagoria of the Kashmar, who made the double murmur of the spell of the Duoversal man. Always in Tuscany, the tracks below the garden have been occupied, which has a distant view of the roofs and towers of Florence. The monumental fountain set on a steep hill on a side flank of the garden terrace has a seated god flanked by lions in relief of stucco from a niche decorated with pebble mosaics and padded masonry. " Here at the Verbena of a long feast day, all together with Vernarth get drunk with Corinth Wine, which they brought and did not stop swinging to the rhythm of the music that made them foresee multi-existence beyond limitless sensibilities, turning their role closer to from the instigated destiny to Patmos in the hands of the original Duoverso with translation, rotation and Duoversal Theurgic orbit, for the spell-dogmatic invoking ultra-sensory powers of angels and gods, in order to signify with his country land near Pella,

k)Fractality and Spirit-Cinnabar Dynamics

In the black camera obscura, certainly connected blues made other dark holographic areas that were enlarged super connected to the optical perspective, conceiving of the infinity of a luminescence that was fractalized, the black-blue pre-existing towards the Z pattern = Exp (Z / OB ^ 4), what is the equivalent to the set of the Bernese Olive Tree Rapa, on the border of its Lipogenesis, which would appear in the chromatic version and final maturity of the olive tree, for the fractal exponential of Z =; where all the points of the complex plane Z = (OB, iy) are iterated in the corresponding function Olives Berna in a set of IY, and in all the iterations where an arbitrary constant (Cx, iCy) is added Cinnabar in lines of orthogonal sets X and Y, in such a way that the choice of the constant "seed" will determine the unique shape of the profile and the color of the fractal, once the chromatic pattern has been defined. In the paradigms shown in this continuation, a constant has been chosen, as it will only produce divergence and will have been qualified with the escape velocity algorithm, to contract exact self-similarity stratagems in this, which is the most restrictive type of car. -similarity; requiring the fractal to appear identical at different scales.

The holistic spórtula of the Cinnabar in some pecuniary exercises, are impelled for a tacit and absent society, in Every night beginning at dawn, everyone retreats and the Cinnabar appears like a kaleidoscope apostolizing in glorious joy, where the Aramaic synergy between the Garden of Olives and Gethsemane, is concatenated with the entirety of the Phylogenetic species with the homily in Tsambika and Theoskepasti, such as the new relationship of the link between species that were improper and endemic to the region near the stable in Bethlehem de Kafersesuh, to be inter-inseminated in the banks of the slopes of Gethsemane, in such a way, that the linguistics would begin to be absorbed in Joshua, and it would go for a closer shortcut towards the classification of the traditional and omnipotent variants, which migrated through the Olives to renew and preserve the Aramaic or Aramaic languages, from a shared origin now, for the omnipotent salvific languages that were to be addressed in Gethsemane. Once starting the splendor in the city of the eight gates, and from such interference, involve the Lepidoptera taxon, inseminating the populations of organisms related to lexicons to shed life and language,

l)Vas Auric – Cinnabar (Φ)

The pecuniary prerogative of spórtula, makes the Vas Auric and the Mandylion its residence, tending towards an algebraic sense of the two diametral in a cross by the perpendicular, towards the tension of the shortest segment by the long, tracing a circumference of radius and a half. Homologating in the interposed eclipse of the golden or golden number, for the divine proportion in consequence of irrational fractioning numbers. Shortening the passage of the algebraic numbers with the infinite decimal towards the Cinnabar with seven arches in parentheses reflecting in the partition of the apse in both temples of the homily, making the period of antiquity, files registered in mega center of the quantum memory of Cinnabar, before disrupting the genesis of the Duoverso.

The First Treatise of the Vas Auric fell into the hands of Vernarth, one day of heavy plutonium sheets en masse of the golden number. The vertical avalanche was segmented when the dichotomy of another line that collided with the segments was not altered, or rather omitted by certain temporary blindness of the Duoverso world that it just boasted. Compositions of number Z are made, and subdivision in its cinematographic optics, divided into two slow shots of a small element that became part of the controversy of Vas Auric as a medallion and Auric as Mystic Gold, with distribution laws.

"Zeus wakes up shaky, full of headache saturated in Pro-headache Herbs
Jophiel is speaking this time in the Kabbalistic Torah language...
with its golden commoner and super zone of Organikon Sorousliston Papadikon….
secular music that supplies Zeus with protein albumin,
to make him more human... Zeus accepts Jophiel placing him in his discernment
over the house of Jophiel; divine island to throw cartomancy...
bring the second ray to the Sahasrara on his crown,
pacified love that is the suspicious and risky loser of everything...
risk in the head, especially when condemnation is born!

And the floristics, over the stolon of the veins, moves synchronously with the prolongations, speeds, and acceleration of the emancipated leaves of the first order of the upper crown, up to the lower ones, thickening the golden spirals of a certain type of inflorescence, confining the umbilical zones of Vernarth, and the plantar area of its feet between three and more than a hundred steps that come from certain metamorphoses, creating peduncular areas, acting as a support for Vernarth and its Elder areas, brought from the Bumodos stream, after a string therapy, creating psychic supports to endorse globalized neuralgic. Understanding that the line of his neuralgia oscillates the greater analog of the Messiah in the cross pierced by the Hastae Praetorian, in the most remote of the elliptical of pain, reduplicated by accumulated energy, almost like mystical suffocation. On the part of the growth of the tangent in growth and of the evolution of the reflection, where the attenuation of the opposite effect is unleashed, allowing convalescence zones in signs of propeller blades around the Vas Auric, crossing vertical and horizontal beams of lights, in search of Light Angled and refractory solar, for the palfrey of the Kanti Steed, abstracted from excessive rain, which uncrossed the tempos of the aura of the organic and aerial underground, towards the duplicity of curves of the multi-cloned numbers and angered by their industrious dynamics of skewed movement, towards the effective solar..., tending to the effects of successive trends of the vaporous numeral of Vas Áurico Cinnabar.

m) Psychic Trisomy

The species and somatic acquired deposits of DNA spirals, given their characteristics, will make transformations in more than one cellular taxon for a homologous pair. Here Kaitelka the whale down from Sub-Mythology, will circle in the Baltic Sea, compromising neuralgia in it as a superfluous essence due to its trisomy, making a comparison with psychic trisomies that Vernarth suffered at least four times a month, from the first and eleventh day, after his parapsychological regressions when he sailed over abysses and anesthetized zones on glacial plankton in the North Sea. Kaitelka individualized her cellular regressions, becoming a prehistoric cetacean and when she lagged beyond or before her creation, she transferred psychic trisomies due to her twenty-one chromosome. Kaitelka's karyotype was directed towards the crease of her eyes, due to an infection in the area of her basal inter fins, which disturbed her heart rate in a short interval where Poseidon magnified her coefficient in high amplitude, after being inseminated in a tempered state and gifted as a Super Goddess. Kaitelka in nativity in the transversal valleys sailed in the air atmospheres of Hyperdisis, and she was always seen in the company of Leiak; the omnipresent and vague spirit of the watery ductile dancer, living on the liquefied element with his astringent slimy chin..., seeing him with his grotesque back-breaking swampy lines between knuckles, and hedges of tricks collected before the first station, in one of the first of the three Remaining nights before reaching Joshua de Piedra del Horcondising volcano, that upset her heart rate in a brief interval where Poseidon magnified her coefficient in high amplitude, after being inseminated in a moderate state and gifted as a Super Goddess. About seven hundred meters high she becomes Kaitelka Down godmother, adding the psychic chromosome twenty-two that contracts in the connection with Vernarth, in the extravagant massifs when in the autumn afternoons they collect Ceratocystis fagacearum Fungi, and irradiating them with insects such as the borers. When   Kaitelka recovers its chromosome by detraction in the natural selection of Trisomy, express is spilling on the dry and gelatinous Laurus leaves of all its dead cells, which are promptly seeped from the retracted membranes in frank adhesion, causing regeneration of the disease. After wanderings and ringed symptoms of lesson in the atmosphere of the ecstatic Horcondising, the wooly will be magnanimous and challenged from the chromosome spilled in the emulsion, is contained in the alpha proteins in the transverted Vernarth genome, as a warned whole and abundantly diploid, before reaching the lethal processes of reciprocal adversity, both as a zoo-anthropoid or a triple zoo-anthropoid-botanical effect. Pre-Existing Kaitelka Down with forty-two chromosomes (22 pairs) and the Lepidoptera Agrodiaetus (134 pairs), in its haploid, that is, half remains vitalizing between two species of the sub-mythological world, and in its psychic cellular compound, and later implant it in germ cells for the effect of Venarthian ambivalent psychic transmission and vice versa. By discard, there are four fewer chromosomes than the hommo sapiens and 222 less than the Lepidoptera Agrodiaetus, for a meta sense of flourishing with the power of Poseidon, brother of Zeus, Meta sense and discernment, encephalic they will be cogitated by conscious where their sensory cognitive is interrupted, towards an unconscious through the photons of hypocaloric temperature, to define in the prehistoric psychological memory of their psychic, more than random brain, coexisting of habeas corpus content and remote brain energy, before the magistracy and power of Poseidon that confines him. Graduated from southern impassable seclusion, their memory is isolated in their E-Cloud. Namely; stored in electromagnetic and electrophysiological stimuli, incontinent and weighted in the square miles of floating Poseidon outbursts, in the category of super cetacean down, with only four meager chromosomes from the remnants of the human procedural genome. The trisomy field, On the fourth of August of the year of the Lord, 1617, when Klauss Rittke was cleaning the main stained glass window of the Cathedral of Avignon, he heard heated dialogues between a Friar and a Gentleman, who was once an assistant to the clergy. Klauss could come closer and listen to their conversation more clearly, until the Friar Andrés Panguiette, babbling, demanded of Raymond Bragasse indulgence or one or the other. (Compendium of Marielle Quentinnais). Relating in its narrative evolution, about some Albigenses of this work set in Avignon, time of the Antipopes, crossing with the psychic waves that have just been mentioned, and of prophecies of who precisely Guillaume Bélibaste was born into a Cathar family. Having noted that 1321 in 296 years apart from Marielle Quentinnais, it takes place in Carcassonne on the same day as Bélibaste was executed, given his licentious life breaking Cathar dogmas, incriminating himself with civilians from the region, marrying women in exile, etc., was condemned by the Holy Inquisition, where many were purged for the sole fact of holding biblical books in their abode. Among the flames of his bonfire the prophecy of the laurel will be homologated, whose shadow will fall on the centuries to come. Note the coincidence 3, 700 years ago, where the first signs of life were appreciated on our planet and in the Hylates Forest in Cyprus (700, 000 thousand souls) in the imprint that unifies the Christian scrolls, blowing gold dust on Walekiria's hair..., and being liberated, as a tantric body of physicality. No one spoke, not even the 700, 000 thousand souls who also claimed to be liberated (Vernarth, page 313 - paragraph 2). And finally the seventh portion of the sea, with Poseidon. Here the Psychic numeral of Vernarth and Kaitelka coincide, who appears with the laurel of Guillaume de Bélibaste after almost seven hundred years, facing the unification of the prophecy of the Laurel, whose shadow will hover over the centuries to come. Templars, perfect bone Hommes and Cathars meet, in this historical feat, through the secret path safe from traitors and conspirators thanks to the most surprising allies. Bélibaste's fast-paced story will allow us to get closer to the most unknown ceremonies and rituals of his confession, showing us his revelations in the flames and turning green in the Laurel of 1321 in sync with 2021. Given the little and nothing that exists of the revealing enthronement and the psychic environment, it should be noted that historical facts fly like pollen, with the waves in their same vibrations of the aeolian autogyro. This entails physical vibrational material, which is in every corner of existentialism, without beginning or end, only rewinding through the infinite axon of karma and samskara, for physical-ecological convulsed means and intermediates, in revealing semblances of the primitive psychic field before us, like the Aspís Koilé, as a shield or as an omnidirectional parabolic antenna, bringing us events after events that strangely interchange phases, and intertwined efforts over time in quantum physics and subsequent biophysical changes in the genome chain, especially in its Psychic Trisomy.

to be continued...

A nervous shiver rippled briefly across his shoulders as Dunstan peered over the balcony, it was a long way down from his penthouse suite he guessed, shrinking back from the handrail... at a rough guess somewhere between the upper observation deck, Eiffel-Tower, Paris, France and lower basement mezzanine at Miss Selfridge, London, England... and Dunstan was terrified if heights.
  
     It scarcely seemed anytime at all really since he'd relocated to his new and upwardly situated des-res, yet for all that he could hardly recall living anywhere else, once you'd seen one, well... you got the idea,  after a while they all looked pretty much the same, you just had to be able to haggle, but for now at least he was obviously safe enough where he was, sunning himself on the balcony watching the world go by as he scribbled down a shopping list... but lunchtime was almost upon him and then all hell was sure to break loose.

     Having finally determined to put down roots and raise children of her own, his mother Elvera, finding herself in the family-way had wasted no time at all in tearing several well thumbed pages out of her mother's book, then taken both Dunstan's father and his gene-pool straight to the cleaners, just to keep them, so page three informed her firmly in the family... so Dunstan grew up knowing a great deal about laundry and dry-cleaning, but very little about his father, just the occasional anecdote cast to the wind like so much bird seed, about their early courting days and how they'd both wanted him to grow into a strong, healthy lad and do well at school, climbing the corporate ladder, so-to-speak and go to Boy-Scouts every Tuesday evening just like his father had done before him... and learn all about knots, but Dunstan had vertigo and couldn't tie knots for toffee.
                                    
     All hell was certainly dead set on breaking loose that lunchtime, or rather Houdini were they to continue and remain on first name terms... and there was nothing Dunstan loved more than a captive audience.   Reflecting deeply and never wanting a repeat of the previous week he studied the hastily bound swaddling, perhaps the odd tweak here and there just to be on the safe side should ensure the safety of his dinner guest for the remainder of the afternoon.   As Dunstan snipped the final thread he considered that simply nothing was too much trouble where todays 'entree was concerned, he now sat before Houdini smacking his lips in anticipation, quivering in the front parlour waiting for the dinner gong to sound, the Sunday lunch however, now in a mounting state of frenzied agitation continued bouncing around on the embroidered tablespread.  

     Dunstan could never understand what the fuss was all about... I mean, it wasn't as though his dinner guest hadn't been invited, he argued and that for the umpteenth time, as he reached for the carving knife and steel, he simply wasn't going to take no for an answer, leaving his dinner guest still bouncing about, insisting that he'd merely dropped in for directions... and that he, The Great Houdini, currently billed at The London Hippodrome for the remainder of the season had a far more pressing dinner engagement elsewhere, with a diary for the foreseeable future distinctly at odds with those of his host... leaving Dunstan so he hoped, far behind and in no uncertain doubt that not only had he been left hanging in stickier corners than this one, but had every intention of extracting himself from being principal dish of the day before third curtain call... and having done so, wish Dunstan a very good day and remit his professional fee by return of post.

    Meanwhile, insisting that his guest needn't feel obliged to dine elsewhere when they could both enjoy a really splendid one right here, chewing over happier times together, although should Houdini wish, then Dunstan felt confident that his dinner guest was more than capable of punching his way out of as many wet paper bags as he liked... and just what were the Marquis of Queensberry Rules anyway... so encouraged, Dunstan continued sharpening the knife. 

     "Well really", thought Dunstan... 'and without so much as a by-your-leave' carefully examining the damage to his new lace tablecloth, torn in Houdini's haste to depart, he really must be careful as he rummaged for his darning needle, not to fall through.  It had been the shortest dinner party in living memory, Dunstan sighed, it simply would not do, what would all his neighbour's think, he'd never hear the last of it, his reputation they would whisper, well... it would all end in ruins, mark their words it would.  Dunstan's tummy rumbled, he'd been filled with nothing but anticipation that day and very little else, but other than a torn tablecloth and superfluous items of Houdini, shrugged of in his bid for freedom, no one would be any the wiser... having said that, Dunstan would have to make do with a cold repast for luncheon instead, hanging quite still in the larder.

                                                        ­     ­ ...    ...   ...**

A work in progress.                                                        ­                                                               831

Farewell Govan -
bathed in a baking sun
littered with betting shops
and no win/no fee criminal lawyers
and a myriad of pubs caked in years of libation
steeped in history of industry and shipbuilding
blackened smoked walls etched with gangland symbols:
tooled-up local carnivores who ride shotgun on a BMX
swapping discrete envelopes for indiscreet wads of cash.

Farewell Govan -
you fractured my ribs once in a moment of mistaken identity
I didn't heed the advice to not walk through the park at night
I didn't hear the pitter-patter of adolescent feet
speeding my way in brand new trainers across the grass
but I did feel the clunk of something solid on my head
as the ground rushed up to meet me in a concrete embrace
and watched as 4 bags of overladen shopping spewed out
lying face up spread-eagle in Lilliput fashion
and a mobile torch-app in my face with the repeating words
“Ima tellin’ you man its naw him, its naw him”
I reassured them frantically that I was definitely not him!
as the hooded troupe picked up what was left of my shopping
and even gifted me a couple of cans of super strength lager,
a cube of dubious council estate hash
and an usher to leave immediately
(and think myself lucky).

Farewell Govan -
you got me blazing on cheap beer at the local pub
which had recreated a holiday beach scene
with a hand-written sign that read: Better than Ibiza!
awash with carefree children
and pit-bull terriers wearing bespoke Barbour dog jackets
and brand spanking new Adidas white trainers
purchased from Tam out of a nondescript blue plastic bag
who always passes the day's pleasantries
while topping up his pension
chatting with auld Billy who was in the war (don’t you know)
via the Merchant Navy
and the version of how he was gunner on an oil boat in Vietnam
via the umpteenth pint that afternoon.

Farewell Govan -
your late night shadows harbour an underlying tension
masked with comic humour only if you can understand the lingo
words that are distasteful anywhere else are in fact a term of endearment here
I shall miss the odious vernacular and doth my cap to your spirit
the Salt of the Earth and the Lifeblood of the Community
with at least 40% proof liquids mixed with Irn Bru
purchased at the 24/7 corner store along with a can of processed peas;
one of your five a day.

Farewell Govan -
I go to the sunny side of the Clyde
where it rains just as much
but you don’t get mugged for carrying an umbrella
or asked for the time from a watch-wearing tattooed sailor
and joy-of-joys there will be actual fruit & veg shops
where I don’t have to explain what fresh coriander is
and what you use it for, other than on a pizza;
I was offered dried bottled parsley instead.

Farewell Govan.

Do you know what *****?
Not being good at everything.
I sat down at the piano
To practice for the umpteenth time
Millions of thoughts rush through my head:
My form *****
I can't hit the right notes
My fingers don't want to work together
I can barely read the music
I will never be able to do this
I ****.
I was born to believe that I needed to be the best
At everything I did
To please my parents
And get the recognition I deserved.
The truthful "well done" from my mother.
But there came a time where getting A's is all they expected from me
So when I would get above and beyond 100 percents
I got nothing
No well done, no good job.
Yet my brother who would narrowly pass his spelling tests
Would get commended for his work.
Pushing myself harder and harder to be the best
Every second of every day
Has lead me to be unhappy whenever something isn't to the level I think it should be.
I know that perfection is impossible
And that you can't be good at everything.
But every time I fail
It feels like I'm dying a little inside.
Frustration. Anger. Depression.
I can barely hold it all together.
This pressure to be perfect may seem unbearable,
But it's my way of life.
Without it, I have no idea who I would be.

The Talmud Teaches...
With respect to his son, a father is obligated to circumcise him, to redeem him [if he is a firstborn], to teach him Torah, to marry him off, and to teach him a craft...he is also

obligated to teach him to swim...(Kiddushin 29a)


lay awake when the house is silent,
doing maths furiously in the head,
sleeping can be keeping while doing my calculus,
knowing in advance a conclusion comes coined
in only two colors, black or red

the question simple, did I meet my obligations?

and your read the passage for the umpteenth time,
and the same thought interferes as always,
should the order not be reversed,
the first thing to be fulfilled,

teach them to swim

based on experience life arrives in sequential, repeating waves,
purposed to drown the weak with no pretending that waters,
salt or sweet matters, so first order is business ought be survival preparation and

teach them to swim

if they can swim, stay afloat, then they can then comprehend
the glory of distinguishing right over wrong,
get their priorities straight, that saving others,
especially those you placed on the starting line of life,
is the first principle and overplants anything else when you

teach them to swim

my eyes see the tally, why, they are red! could it be lack of sleep?

I am smiling when I am lying,
teach them to swim always first,
but not enough, one must do it well, well,
and even then, better, 
as all else will, from the well, follow, when you

teach them to swim

3:10am

~~~

Amid the glory times of darkness,
Sitting on the edge of the white tablecloth,
Brilliant white from bleached soaking, and stained with yesterdays
Clouds and air of desperation, was the cup, the coffee cup,
Its broken flower coloration, its yellowish hue,
Half full of what was once blistering hot, now the juice of warmth
And the morning begins its wakening time.
Four burners atop the gas stove, each with its black *** stand,
Covered with blackened skillets, grease from the bacon, popping
And sizzling and bringing the best of the day together,
With the tablespoons of lard, from the five gallon silver bucket,
Covered in white stained T-towels, and the shallow bowl in which you washed your hands.
You dried your hands, loosely, leaving each damp and warm,
As the biscuit dough was rolled, and broken up, and pinched into the skillet
And then placed, with ringing noise,
Deep within the ovens hole, no light there, and you could smell
It all cooking, and see the hands that made it,
With their wrinkles of days of and months and years,
Making the breakfast of today, just as if it had made, no; it had made
For many years.
Bacon grease taken up on the tablespoon, and poured into the other skillet
Black, and hot, and making that little sizzling noise, as the bacon fried,
The biscuits backed, and the flours was spread in the skillet,
Browning, hard little clumps; stirred around, spoon on the pan,
And the milk poured from the quart jar, which was left on the porch this morning with four others,
Before life as we knew it began, and the spoon turning, the heat from the stove
Almost too much, and the gravy was stirred and turned, and stirred,
Thickened up, burner down, and a dozen eggs cracked into the fourth skillet,
Bubbling and popping, bacon taken up, put on a plate, the gravy stirred again,
Biscuits pulled, placed on a potholder, their greasy tops looking fine and brown,
Fresh butter, salt and pepper, breakfast was made again.
For the umpteenth time in this umpteenth world.

It seems winter has come early.

November is barely here and already it's snowed.

The once warm summer breeze that rolled in with the tide, has been replaced. Replaced by a frigid wind that just hits you and keeps on going. Blowing right through you as if you were no more than the leaves that it was here to strip away.

The Autumn leaves.

Natures finest hour.

Clear blue skies and green grass have their place and their appeal, but when the leaves turn red and gold and yellow in no particular order, the world is truly beautiful.

Its peaceful, serene.

Its a time of change.

Its like the world is getting ready for bed. Its putting on its pajamas and slippers and warming the milk for the hot chocolate to see it through the long nights sleep that is winter, with its white feather pillows and soft blankets.

This year its been different.

This year summer came late, stayed for coffee and then all of a sudden fall had passed in the blink of an eye, as if to get things back on track so that winter wouldn't have to wait til next year to show up. What a row that would cause.

But as I sit here above the rocks and look out at the cape, at the setting sun and the dark green sea. Watching the white horses gallop up the beach before disappearing into the sand, I feel that so much more is changing than just the seasons.

I guess nothing stays the same anymore, anymore than anything lasts forever.

At home a letter awaits me that I dare not read. As if not doing so will somehow change its contents.

It sits there above the fireplace, waiting.

Taunting me.

I caught myself the other day walking down the hallway rather than going through the lounge because I couldn't bear to see it.

Its the handwriting that scares me.

Its the same handwriting that used to be on letters that could lift my soul from the deepest abyss and raise it aloft to soar above the highest mountains. The same handwriting that has now become the bearer of all news that is bad.

I know its from you.

And I know what it says.

It says that you do still love me and that you probably always will, but that its not enough. It says that there's no way you can see this working with me here and you there and it says that you're sorry. It says that you wish sometimes we had never met because before we did you didn't know that this existed. You didn't know how much it would hurt to be without it, and now you do....

But whats missing are the questions.

The "can we make this work with me here and you there?", the "if we can't would you consider moving?", the "how do we get to keep something we both want so god ****** much?" questions.

I know they're missing because I have the answers. I have all the answers, but nobody is asking the questions.

And because you write, and not call, I don't even get to ask them rhetorically just so that I can get the answers out in the open where you can see them and hear them and know that we can do this, and that we should do this.

But thats not in the letter.

The letter can't see that I'm in purgatory.

It can't feel like I do. It can't feel that that bit of me that all my ribs connect to in the middle of my chest, that bit feels like its been ripped clean out. Now all thats there is this big empty space. A space full of nothing but longing... regret... unshed tears and sleepless nights.

Why didn't you call?

Even if you'd called to tell me all the things that are bound to be in the letter, all the things I didn't want to hear, then at least I would have gotten to hear you... to hear your voice.

It used to be like a switch. It triggered some Pavlovian response deep inside me, just the whisper of it would make me smile, just the rumor of its presence was enough to make my pulse race a little quicker, make me breathe deeply, savouring the imminence of it all.

Maybe I should have told you all this before it was too late. Before the letter. Before the conversation that pre-empted the letter.

I should have told you this every day.

I thought you knew.

Maybe you did? Maybe its only in books and movies and fairy tales that it works that if you love someone then they have to love you back. Maybe its only in make believe that any of this really matters.

I wish I'd said no.

When you gave your speech about time and distance and **** getting in the way I should have said "NO!" I should have said "So what!? Yes you're right, its driving us both crazy but lets fix all that. Lets decide what WE want and take that instead?" Thats what I should have said.

But I didn't

I don't know why.

I loved you then like I do now.

Nothings changed.

You can use that one to start the list. The list of things in my life that I regret. Number 1, top of the page, the only thing to make it to the list my whole life. "Not saying no to you when I should have"

Why do I always have to be so ******* agreeable all the time, where does that come from?

I think I was shocked. Stunned into total inaction, like a deer that freezes in the headlights of certain death. That was me.

I remember feeling like something was draining away from me, the way maple syrup does from the bottle that gets knocked over just after you've told your kids for the umpteenth time to put the lid back on it when they've finished. There it was, slowly pouring out, leaving a mess behind.

Only the mess was me, is me. The syrups gone and the bottles empty but the mess is still here.

And the only thing I can do is sit here and conjure up this story of a letter that never got read, that never got written, in the hope that one day you'll read this letter and then you'll know.

You'll know all the things I never got chance to say, because the questions never did get asked. But the answers are real. Just ask me.

my legs
scrape together.
like the ears of an elephant
they slap against each other
against the cool vinyl seat
they have chained me into
with a medical observance.
i squirm for comfort
for completion
for complacency
but all i feel is the rustle of fabric.
the woman stares,
her eyes caring
but cold
unblinking
mirroring a skeleton back at me.
the doctor
(what number, i cannot remember;
there have been many
nameless faceless coats
trying to help)
the doctor looks deep
deep down
his eyes clocks
sundials
scoreboards
ticking away
the hours
the ninety-three pounds
i have left on this earth.
the air compresses.
a whale in a bottle,
i rip the chain into squares
and run
run
run down the street.
i am fine.
i am invincible.
a crack
trips me up.
the world seethes red.
a stranger's hand rights me.
His eyes are kind.
and for the umpteenth time,
someone asks me.
and for the umpteenth time,
i feel my mouth
shaping the word
so empty and sterile
habitually.
"not--"
but then
i stop.
and words come up
like my offering
after meals:
forced
necessary
raw
apologetic,
just
needing to
come out.

At once at the top of the Estinfalos, Marie des Vallées avoided all of them being injured and being swallowed by the strait. The bronze birds with great vigor avoided being part of the vast shore that hit them as Nephelleidae Helles. Here they were compelled by the Myth Frixo and Hele, in the process of their sacramentals. They took the assignments before running with the same fate as the children of Atamante and Nephele. Ino the second wife of Atamante wanted to get rid of them by burning the grain so as not to have crops. This is where the soul of the Herophilus Sybilla appears to them, consulting the Oracle of Delphi. The Children of Atamante were destined to be sacrificed, being Nefeles who sent a Golden Ram, the children were saved by climbing Ram's spine, taking him away from the executioners. When Heles was going to a great height he looked towards the sea that caused him vertigo, falling into the sea in its celestine waters, remaining from this instance with the patronymic Hellespont. His brother, Phryxus, clung tightly to his back and arrived safely at Colchis. Marie could see some Gerakis and then react in search of Heles, taking time to decide and enter. It was only a few hours before dusk, and the lacerated seventy were lowered from the Stymphalos to cross the waters in search. Marie joined the bronze birds with the interaction ratio of all the times that they would intertwine in the lines showing exploration, supplying what Theus and Vikentios did to grow in number, and with all the occurrences that occurred for the contemporary coincidence of thousands of years, for the current figure of millions of light-years that reacted towards the sky crashing in everything that a maximum roof allowed, and then allowed them to be in the interaction when crossing the Sea of Heles, where she always was, only being diverted by the bronze birds from above, and only being tangible by Marie's conscience when she saw that she had never fallen from the Golden ram, but had been only a weightless creature among the clouds of her mother Nephele, hanging around her neck some remarkable telesomatic beings sent by herself, in egregious tributes to her most adorable daughter. She subsequently falls into the sea, unblemished that Vernarth would go to rescue her from her. The Lacerates, Theus, and Vikentios gathered in the circular area of the Gerakis, leading them to the ancient Phrygian city of Dardania. The crowded currents of the celestial realm became ocean currents that lifted Heles's living body as Gerakis with her wings signaled to the Stymphalos to grasp her with precision. Silently the psyches of the bodies of the Trojan War were able to make Heles's rampage measurable, doing Vernarth's medication at a distance with Heles when her death throes accused her rejection of the balsamic intentions of Marie des Vallées. Then is she resorts to the bilocation of Vernarth managing to see from the surface the reckless surface of the sea, seeing a figure with a snowy white outfit and also a light blue tunic, in addition, she wore a crown of cocoons as a Diadema.

Nothing made it possible to presume that quantum was not bending in kilometers that separate Patmos and the Sea of Heles when this sacred figure was sighted that was glimpsed as psychosomatic physiology, for the good of the Second Age that Vernarth brought for them, noting that it was Bernardette Soubirous, which became immediate like a Benedict Akashic field. The small and large units of Massabielle's universe were pointed out from where this quantum elitrophic wave came, with living palpitations of Heles granting the inquiry of her by convulsions of his brain with small akashic vibrations before falling into the icy Sea. Non-local logic became arcane before this telepathic event, and the figure of Bernadette notified them by its coherence of subtle connection, that lately the light that she carried when she escaped from Ino will be rekindled, with the oblation for her was subordinating her, and that it would be supremely since there from where they would uproot her and then free her from the Akashic field from minor to major storm, where Marie des Vallées would let them know that she was safe. This space was already local, but it was detached from the terminal that made it originally from it for the connections of having it already on Patmos so as not to have to be transported by the Stymphans. Everything happened synchronously in unison, after the transpersonal boundaries of consciousness that were united among all to free it from these bonds in the freshness in Heles. All the micro-dimensional organisms became more than clairvoyant with the endowments of the falls and the uprisings after the rescue of Heles by Vernarth and the Akashic fields, applying the material field that was transposed in great extensions of material-immaterial time, before the immanent Electromagnetic gravitationally that could only be seen, heard and probed by Vernarth when he was meditating between the hemispheres of Aullós Kósmos, justifying nth parapsychologies where space is not empty and does not have a percentage mass in this case, and what has been called the quantum vacuum is in fact a cosmic plane (Akasha). Thanks to this information, it was conserved and transferred by the Akashic field, from the coherent universe of Heles, where it could be reconverted into a Sub Mythological being, thanks to a superhuman being happening at the site of the Dardanelles and which will also take place in another place in Patmos.

Marie des Vallées says: “everything that happened in one period also happened in the following times here at the Hellespont. Nothing was local, nor limited to where and when it happened. All things are integral, cosmic because everything is connected and the memory of all things extends to all places and times. Here is Vernarth who is the object and subject of his umpteenth parapsychologies, which are the replica of the joyous songs of Bernadette Soubirous's Rosary "

Vernarth sensing that Heles was in frank danger of life, mounts Alikantus and heads for the Strait of Dardanelles. Here he manages to specify that it was compared with the anachronism of the Bronze Birds, who had sailed through the upper Dodecanese, then over the Marmara counterclockwise from Kairos, meeting again with the Helladic period. Here it spread over Hellen; with the eponymous hamlet that boasted of the Stymphalos, as a coerced premonition in the pre-Helladic, towards the end of the Bronze Period. Thus, with this changeable phenomenon, Vernarth was directed, while he flew in the seconds of Kairos time as a symbol of subsisting in each deleterious life, almost with the powers of not getting intoxicated with any substance transited by the sea of the strait. Here Vernarth went to Alikantus, being this one from Thessaly and Sudpichi, right here among them Kanti appears with Etréstles, they came to tone up the survivals that would bear Heles after recreating the two great Ionic and Doric hydric colonnades. While Alikantus being of Cretan, the roots he had to emit breaths from the Eighth Cemetery of Messolonghi to revive the colonnades, to separate the waters and molecules that increased in density to move Heles from the depths of the ocean. Kanti was a super steed, he plunged under the Marmara, like a tiny sea to leave the waters of the Black Sea from one of the abutments of some seams of some Achaeans, which were disengaged from the seas that joined them. In this instance, the Helén together with Vernarth continued to release the ropes of a great Kizara that Nefeles had woven for her daughter, from here from the dean cloud and from the distress where she freed herself to go to her Gaugamellian aid. The Kizara was a Eurythmic wire rope, therefore its sound elucidated the sea and its celestial kingdom, magnifying and complicating Poseidon in the sea that actually resembled the sky. Therefore, Heles was with his ethnonym Hellespont who snatches her and redirects her to Helén, which was similar to her name, in such a way that the sky was embroiled by the point, from Helén by Heles creating the watery element of the Flood of Heles that was retracted by the impetus of Kanti and Alikantus when Vernarth increased with all his vivification when he saw her near the shaft of the Doric colonnade, organizing the waters that would rise from the susceptible Heles wrapped in a Himation that Vernarth had dispensed near the Vas Auric.

I met my neighbor today.
Well, he's not my neighbor yet,
but he will be when I'm forty-two
and have that burgundy four-door.
He'll have two kids by then,
one from a previous marriage;
loud mouth little *****,
always reminding his step-mother
that his real mom wouldn't stand for
what she wants to call discipline.
I should really remind his dad to return
my rototiller when I see him next.
-
The meteorologist called for sleet
and I still don't see any ****** sleet.
I walked to the fuel station and got a fountain soda;
I counted six stray cats on the way back.
One of them used to belong to a woman
by the name of Jamila who moved back to Atlanta
in July of last summer.
The cat never liked to come to her,
so it stayed behind to chart star patterns.
Sometimes, when no one is out on the street,
the cats meet in alleyways to gossip
about the state of affairs in the soy city.
-
I buried seven heads-up pennies
underneath the yield sign on Union street
last Wednesday, I believe it was.
I'm still waiting on a reply,
but Mr. Cuttlefish isn't known for his punctuality.
No one is around here;
it's bad for your health if everyone knows where
and when you'll be.
They say one of the neighbor kids
found a piece of amber the size of a plum
in a box of Rice Chex from the corner market.
I knew someone would find it eventually.
-
Every umpteenth sidewalk slab has an "X" engraved
in the top, right-hand corner.
It signifies a meeting zone, and if you wait their long enough
I can probably convince one of the
silver men from the condemned apartment building
to let me borrow their aural symphonizer
so I can finally see what it's like
to extract one while it is still alive and roily.
It wont be too long of a wait,
as the men are always brief with conversation
and always seem to blink and breathe
at the exact same time I do.

Try your best to escape and free
Your mind is not your identity
Your genetics, your family tree
Your looking glass eyes can see
Through the window an fatefully
Change your perception of reality
And redefine who you are to be

My new persona is in a coma down in Barcelona
Now I'm Jonah in love with Mona from Arizona
Drinking corona with Fiona in the streets of Verona

Creativity is a proclivity that unshackles our identity free
Journey with me far from the vast sea of mental captivity
Exclusivity of proactivity creates a glorious life of festivity

Consent to your dreams to the absolute umpteenth degree
Augment your schemes and forget about the no guarantee
Reinvent thee extremes, and you will never be a life absentee

Remember as you read that we are all connected eternally
On this marble together spinning we are all just guests
Wandering around trying to solve our personal quests
Humans being we happened to be, but only temporarily

May as well attempt and squeeze life to death and manifest
All your aspirations and ambitions should be put to the test
All so blessed with a mind, and a beating heart in our chest
So why not invest the rest of our time to aspire to be the best

busybodies made the sign
center mass
of imperceptible crosses over themselves
and swore we were jane and joe
for the umpteenth time..

God as their witness

the re-embodiment of ***** slaves
evident by the way we run.. instinctively
and sometimes in dissimilar directions
afraid to feel since their intercession

i'd straighten up against the wall
so you could measure
if the nervous system was my major
or some simpler thing to interpret
or i could make gravity forget
and you would see that i'm taller than my dreams

there's no make pretend at the roots of my poems

as honest as a kiss
as fair as the day you fell from a door in the sky
wearing a cloud for a parachute
singing something about giving good love

these applications were hardly suspect
before the mistrustful mouths of boys and girls
without enhanced halves of their own

for whatever reason
they need to see us segregated
and claim to have "the goods" on my ghost
but can uncover no more than what i've written

the world was unsightly before i met you

i was a thief and a liar
and peddled too many types of toxins
so even uglier
and was irresponsible in love and life
but this season'll be brighter than former editions
even without the ginger and gold
that made the trees attractive  
or the banks you made angels in

what more can they tell you

who i was is the bogeyman beneath the bed
that will steal your eyes if you let em
and because love battles..
i've since removed it's overweight tongue
buried it's spirit alive
and kept no past account so sacred
as to raise any uncertainties from the dead

what you've seen is all there is to me

but i'm almost sure beauty can't be taught
and you must care for some secret all your own
in the silver locket maybe
you wear around your wrist

is why they'll rumor about its contents as well
and unapologetically so
if history or the natural order of things
is any indication
until you swear you're no root woman
because someone had to have convinced the village
"it would take a drop of his blood and an unholy spell..."
for you to have me
but we're only imperfect apart
so our music makes more sense
mean in the throat of a hummingbird
or on old vinyl records

static is a metaphor for the arduous nights
and only makes us stronger
if it doesn't **** us in our sleep
we were predestined and earlier than this life

i committed your profile to memory
in a carolina rice field
beneath a haze as warm as hellfire
more than a decade
after the  emancipation of the grind
when you bet everything on your wedding ring
and was taught there ain't nothing complementary about (free)dom

they couldn't break us
they never will
this thing we've comprised is a gift
from the Gods who gave us mary and mahalia
and stars like vanilla chips
embedded in a dark chocolate sky
even before we could read
and i could write you poetry
about ordinary things as soft as your smile

there are no plantations in heaven
though death is some thing less than a formality
when true love is as relentless

for the umpteenth time
if we come back without our papers
i'll wait for you, barefoot in the churchyard

ready to run

Corpus Mortalis in the Greek, Hellenic, and Egyptian pantheons, in the vaults they were filled with marble by all the gangs that tried to find them, because it would soon be the longest night in the Aegean world, where it was propitious to indicate places where to spend the night because the Corpus mingled with the Souls of Trouvere in the Apennines, Ghosts of Shiraz from Jaffa, Almas Christi from Leros with the Gerakis, and finally the souls of the Necropolis of Helenikká to support all believing proselytes of the Hexagonal Birthright. They were attracted to the theorization of fragmented intelligence in every being that fears their own, without the opinion of those who leave them alone and hostages in their isolation, and of a corpus characterized by persuasion in the first objects of twilight, which only left distinguish the moons of the nails and not that of the firmament, the intelligence became lethargic and closed itself in its own object of ideology, of the individual and of the gods who administered everything without a Corpus Mortalis, rather they challenged three-quarters of the day, and three-quarters of their spiritual acuity, to resist the siege of space that disrupts the pause in the hour that excludes all gadgets, to counteract the detonated and not rescued exception of the challenge. The voices of the Moiras were tuned in with Circe, under Zefian's ordering principle, who was already delivering the ergonomic ****** of the fourth arrow, to leave it in the carelessness of Vernarth and Saint John already revived, encompassing and assuming three-quarters of the day they glossed to attract them the threshold that behaved in immovable demiurgic, where men stopped being men with intelligence, rather they dialogued about initiations of the cosmos, but without human centrism that acquires it for a dialogue of Timaeus, wherever they may be. the non-existent things, where he splatters her with nuances of science would bring serious stenches of his erudition. The saga was made of the Ekev of causality that explores from an understood cause already issued, but of the Samaritan philanthropist who shone more at this time, than anyone who closes his eyes so as not to open it after the eternal Aegean night. The philanthropic sense was sensitized with reason in the hands of Zefian, after delivering the Saetas knowing that his personality trilled from the Timaeus, not to disagree with it from a human conscience, but from bilocation of the Beit Hamikdash, attributing his conception with low resources of whoever restrains him by rationalizing, but is under the clinical resource of the one who is recovered from his stuttering and dyslalia.

The Argive constructor Tecton already came with his builders, while the Corpus Mortalis hit who or who would hammer from the plexus, or who or what would be the first network of his linear for the Vóreios de Zefian, adjusting to the beginning of a Corpus Mortalis when it began the constructive principle of the Argivo tecton. The arches were deconfigured in irrational measures, which with their sixth sense they could foresee from the trace of the Platonic Philebus, as he nodded with a refined tiresome bustle, but he appropriated it in presupposition, going to settle where everyone goes together to pick the berries of the field frank, next to the Mataki who was already putting an end and closing the Phaedo that was encircling, with the feverish organization of the trembling desire of the philosophical den, not determining to die like Corpus Mortalis in the breviaries of the ellipsis, where everything remains in nothingness or in the outcast of the one who treasures it with more contingents of memory, and of the same one who is reborn from the slags, having had an insight that remains empty in the cliffs, under the figure of a marked man who revives in the lightning bolts that enabled royal wisdom, while his Corpus Mortalis was leaving with his soul that was embracing vast fields of his thesis. Where what he removes when he pulses from the heart, he adds what the dying person adds, although it is not known where he is going, it will summarize his ontology more than a prison inhabitant who poses free on his profane neighbor from the rhetoric that manifests position in his trajectory who will remember him and will not locate him in the next scene of the challenge of a new life. The Phaedo is on the ex-Voto of him with two institutionalized powers, he will have to know who will dare to cure him of his sieges and his demons that resurrect him but not make him his captive. The spell already inaugurated that knowing or deciding in the nomenclatures of a Platonic Demiurge, who from all past life made it ulterior, but not processed from the Seventh Heaven, between both coincidences from an astral magistracy that will take him through the lawsuit of self-exorcism, wild for the greatest mountains that protect him when he wants to warn, that beyond them he will come umpteenth more monumental than themselves, but with his, Phaedo contained in his soul written and rewritten by him and by his Corpus Mortalis.

I'll probably cry myself to sleep again
It just can't be helped.
I've burdened those around me
With my happiness.
Am I not strong enough to stand on my own two feet?
Do I not trust myself?
I am despicable.
Ugly.
Worthless.
Why, why must I hate myself?
Because I don't trust myself?
I am alone. I have always been alone. Hiding inside the books,
Wearing multiple masks that no one
Bothered to take away.
Say something I'm giving up on you

Bugs are crawling all over my hands; yet they're the kind only I can feel and see -
the germs I visualise as cockroaches covering everything around me.
A 3rd change of clothes in 5 hours to protect myself against their power to bring me harm,
my umpteenth hand wash trying to get rid of them; my brain turbulent with alarm.

My head is noisy; full of chaotic sadness and voices,
peculiar images and blurry characters are all I can see - not by choice.
I cannot sleep or think let alone live,
waiting for The End; I went mad with the battle so determinative.

Sitting on the shower floor
with the water raining down on me more and more.
A map of water induced wrinkles trace my skin as if by disguise,
with a river I cannot stop running from my eyes;
intoxicated with madness, these voices I need to **** -
so with a bottle of ***** I wash down a pretty little pill.

Tonight I lay with just my teddy to hold dear; loneliness creeping in - no doubt,
feeling like a child who just wants to be loved and cared about,
wishing to be protected from the monsters inside my head
as I bury myself under my covers and cry myself to sleep in bed.

Bathtub music and drums played on the surface
of Davy Jones's mirror: the ceramic holds
the sea, the sea, and all within it: ***** me.

Scrubbed you off my skin again for
the umpteenth night in a row. Row
row row our boat away from the constant,
constant rows. Stormy arguments and
weathered mistrust. You'll break me,
won't you? I'll break you, won't I? Won't you
come drown with me Ariel? Won't you
come up with me to the kitchen and lock up
the door then lock up the oven then lock up
ourselves in carbon-monoxide poetry?

But then how does cooking gas end up as sass
in a library? How did sustenance turn into
asphyxiation?  Why are our hands on
each other's throats instead of being binded
by the absoluteness, the certainty, the assuredness
of palms within palms and fingers interlocked
and question marks dispelled.

Splash! as way in and over my head
is the bathtub music
and my absorbent curls are
drinking, drinking, drinking, thinking
about the why you only call me when
you're drinking, drinking, drinking; thinking
about the way I cannot suppress you when
the cellphone has long gone quiet and
your Hughes of blue are still loud but
your red is dead.

Ariel, Ariel,
I want to be your dark-haired prince.
Ariel, Ariel,
my country is landlocked but I still see you in the sink.
Ariel, Ariel,

gurgling away as the bathtub music fades
into ugly brown rings around the ceramic
pause button
that shows no hope of continuation
Ariel, Ariel, you are the final splash!
as the false sea drifts away, the final splash!
that scatters bathtub music past the drain
and into the air. Ariel, Ariel,

you are the false rain
that my landlocked country never prayed for.
Ariel, Ariel, toneless, begotten and forgotten
Ariel, Ariel. I cannot sing for you. I cannot.
You will not sing for me. You will not.

The final splash! past the drain and into the air
is you Ariel. The false rain.

The rain song of our endless games.

Ella Fitz’s rendition of Dream a Little Dream for the umpteenth time.
Louie comes in tune with that righteous horn.
I drink more as I sing along, off key.

There could be an entire SECTION of books written about us.
How we fell into that great whirlwind.
How we learned to hate the world when we didn’t have each other.
How we re-kindled, for that brief, brief time.
How I thought maybe we could love again.

We had hours that turned to days that turned to months.
We were the perfect piece of short fiction
An art form so gloriously undervalued,
(by both the audience and the creators)
Until we found ourselves in the Middle
(the worst feeling in the world.
Because like purgatory or super glue:
you're stuck.)

We said goodbye.
And I found I had residual emptiness.
I became residual emptiness.

I loved again, but it wasn’t anything
Like the masterpiece we had.
I knew because
Every day with him felt real.
Every day with you
Was a dream.
Something rooted in intangibility
Something I was astonished to find
happening to me.

It happened again-
We found ourselves in the same place
At the same time.
And after just a few weeks,
You gave me the greatest gift:
The indignity of silence.
And you gave me it
For the most ignoble reason—
You’re afraid.

Honey bun,
We’re all afraid.

It made me think
That maybe  the story of you and I
can only have a happy ending
in a place where it’s not so scary.

So me, Louie and Ella all ask you,
That
In your dreams
Whatever they be
Dream a little dream of me.

[Because that's the only place you'll find me now.]

i was behind the wheel and you were sitting on the passenger seat. your hair was knotted in a tangled mess and your favorite korean music was blaring over the speakers for the umpteenth time. i watched you as you tilted your head back and closed your eyes, letting the murmurs of the engine and breeze of the night cloud your thoughts. you held my hand and started to hum the lyrics of your favorite song and in that moment we've never felt so much more complete, we were more than invincible. the tenebrific night swirled into a blur of headlights, and car honks, and whispered wishes and stolen kisses, nevertheless, we didn't care, because we were in love, and nothing else mattered.

Your voice,
It echoes through my head
like a broken recorder,
banging the insides with,
"change,
change,
change..."

I,
did not fit.

So,
I twisted my limbs and
squashed my head
to fit into your little mould.

Umpteenth effort;
days of churning and weeks of wringing.

I,
winced in pain and groaned in despair.

The crucifixion happened as,
I,
heard me snap.

Now it chews on my skin
and clings onto my flesh,
as if it was all tailor-made beforehand.

I stride towards you with assurance
that now,
I am perfect.
That now,
maybe you'll love me more.

But,
you looked at me
with a gaze so familiar
that it pierces my heart
into crumbs that resemble oatmeals and dust.
You said,
"you've changed".

You could say he hates her,

From the way she talks to him, how every rose is ****** at him thorns first - millions of little slashes - battle wounds of the everyman adding up day to day week to week year to year the river of blood leaks to the ocean big enough to drown them both.

He fires back though, and across the battlements of the dinner table sits the enemy shaking a half empty bottle of depression pills, basing how much happiness was left for the month off of the rattling of white capsules against the orange bottle.. She, how could she have ever given birth to him? Some might argue that was all she ever did for him, too preoccupied with her reflection to see the mirror image her son had become with his suken eyes, a rotton apple, a cyanide cynic at the ripe fresh age of fifteen.

So six months later when they both led the cavalry in charge for the umpteenth time throwing dagger words laced with poison aimed high at heads ducked below cover to a safe place (but of course there is no safe place),

Who would've thought when he told her to start taking her pills she'd take them all. Tip top of the bottle bottoms up for the bottle plain white capsules and blood red wine because when she goes out  she goes out like a lady.

Its a sad sight seeing all her family weep at her grave, cry true tears clear and pure. All her family but one, her beloved boy. How dry face and stone visage were oh so heart wrenching.

But perhaps worst of all, is that you could say he hates her even now

I.

The door stands outlined in white:
in this dark night, a presence
weighs in from the corridor.

The fan holds a garbled reflection
of stray light on its illusory blade-disk.

I'm talking about parthenogenesis.

How can renewal be born, when
creativity loses her companion,
freedom?

This monotone life lugs on.

II.

The tree shrugs the question off
by her parting arms half-illumined
by the streetlamp.

The late bird of five calls flew away
to a far-off tree, couldn't be
bothered more.

I hear a voice
soft in the setting chill of the distant autumn:
choked eyes beaming in love.

I seek palingenesis.

Check all emails and ensure zero
unread. But
answer none, follow up
nothing.

Umpteenth time through the day.

III.

Autotomy all over again.
Habits
die like tails, to be grown
all over again.

This is an etiological myth.
An apocryphal story that
renews itself on the palimpsest of life.

I must cut my nails.

This tea has brewed too dark.

Not slow -
But patient,
Like love is patient.
Patient like watching the ark being built
And staying His torrential hand.
Patient like letting His friend Lazurus die
Knowing greater glory was planned.
Patient like explaining for the umpteenth time
How He must suffer at the hands of men.
Patient like watching Judas scheme
Waiting for His preordained end.

Not impatient to come again
Yet not slow to keep His promise,
Simply yearning that all might be saved
That salvation might be accomplished.

Delia who had bedded her
French nanny at fourteen
and had hot *** with the head

girl at boarding school, now
lies beside the arts tutor named
Ms Shopton in college. She has

explored the woman’s body from
top to toe. Invaded each orifice
and landed her ninety ninth

plus umpteenth kiss. Sunlight
pours through the high window,
the woman’s scent and body

odour invades the bed. She has
kissed most parts that can be kissed,
scanned the woman’s skin, taking

in the freckles, the spots, the mole
inside the left thigh, run her finger
along the spine. She watches the

woman sleep, the mouth slightly ajar,
the perfect teeth, the tongue (who
knows where that has been) touching

the corner of the lips. She may well
get a high A for this piece of art work,
the effort put in, the juices taken out,

the ******* and touching, the final lay.
She breathes in the air, runs her tongue
across her own damp lips. She hears

the college bell, the time to get up, the
breakfast call, the wide awake stare.
The woman beside her sleeps on, lying

worn out, out for the count, lying there.

her grandmother        stood at the window in the kitchen

             the corners of her mouth turned up into
                  an unconscious slight smile
                  at the sight
                             of a spinning yellow blur  
                              under the big oak
                              in the middle of the pasture
                              surrounded by green grasses
                                                       wonderous hues of wildflowers

she quietly called out to grandad
                             come see this

                the lanky cowboy sauntered in
                             from the breezeway
                             with his umpteenth cup of coffee
                              peered at the blur of yellow
                              
                              opened the side door
                              stepped out on the deck beside the metal glider and
                                   called out in his smooth baritone voice

                                      sheeeeeelllllliiii...
                                      sheeeeeelllllliiii  lllllloooooooooo...
                                      


she might have
                             been 4
                                   or perhaps five

              precious in the way
                  innocent girls that age are


               dressed in smocked yellow lawn
                                                white lace
                                                patent leather

                                                  up to her shins in spring grasses
    
      slowing her spin
      she turned toward her name

       her face radiant she took a wobbly step or two
      then broke into an off kilter run
                                                 arms stretched out before her

      he took a few long strides
bent his tall body low
offering a bent knee
                 wide open arms


she flew into them with all her might
                   knowing she would be caught
                   rough housed with
                   and given a wickereye

            





                   from the window her grandmother took it all in
                                sighed
                                said to herself
                                         hold this dear
                                         hold this snapshot of the soul
                          

                                         for.                           ever.

I have been, I am and I will be documenting the complexities that run rampant within.

It’d be easier if my mind and heart spoke
the same language. Most times they’re in conflict.

So I’ll cope in the best way I know how.
I’ll keep posting...

Because no amount of sentences...
Can succinctly form the verses that fully capture what I see and think.

No amount of metaphors...
Can successfully mask and satisfy what I truly feel.

No amount of poems...
Can accurately draft the blueprint of what and why I am.

Do forgive me for I have fallen far and deep. And for the umpteenth time, I am looking for that window or door so that I could see and taste purpose again.

So please bear with me...
There will be more to come as I indulge in my quest for equilibrium.



Yours in ink,

ryn

.

Remind me, please
Write me one more letter
One like letters 16 through 53
The golden ages
Write the last paragraph
Like you don’t want it to end
Squeeze out the lines
You were planning on holding back
Like you did
For those 37
Teach me how to fall asleep before midnight
Again
Teach me how to wake up without hangovers
How to wake up with ideas
Show me everything
Like our poetry collections
Volumes 1 through 3
When we alternated days
And submissions
For 188 straight days
Minus the 14 days
We wrote four-letter poems
Remind me, please
When the bar was a date
And 1.75 liters was a dinner party
Not a Tuesday
Make me pay you back
The $65.00 in make-up
That I used to paint
“You’re too beautiful for make-up”
On the bedroom wall
Make me buy your little brother beer
For painting over it
Put 7,640 new songs on my itunes
Because these 7,640 are played out
Make sure we see every movie
Nominated for best picture
Before your cheesy award show party
It’s up to ten now, you know
Stay with me
For nine more minutes
While I hit snooze
Awake and right at it
Like ’04
Baby snores and blanket wars
Like ’05
Up before the alarm
Like ’06
Or at least in my dreams
Like ’07
And ’08
Rub it in my face
For the umpteenth time
By taking extra good care of me
When I’m sick
Even though
I never get sick
Pose for me
While I paint
And stare
Like that one time
When you were feeling so brave
Let’s spend our last $8.00
On yellow tail
Our last $18.00
On Sebastiani
Our last $38
On Veuve Cliquot
Because every day is a celebration
*******
Let’s reminisce on the 414 times
Our bodies became one
And the 671 times
They were at least in the same bed
Inspire me
Call attention to my capabilities
And caution to my chaos
Instigate that ******* in me
That made a jealous appearance or two
At christmas parties and night clubs
Hum me all 162 times I teared up in ’06
At the exact same time
Like a drumline
Of being lost
Because baby i’m lost
Point me
Point me in the right direction
Send me on the right path
You know, the one with you at the end of it

Hey over there you gods of the earth and other planets
Your creature like I, a human mold suffices knowledge not,
As you mightly rove all over the sphere and share domains amongtst thyself
To reign over the whitenes, Jewry, negritude, sinotude plus  yakeetude of mankind,
Enjoying  your ethereally eyeview onto the earth at your creations,
Permit me to shoot up  a guestion to you over there in your deitly realm
Be you  jehova of the jews or amadioha of the igbos,god of the english or anything dogmatic,
What happened to your clay mud and tools pertinent in trade of human ****** creation,
So that you of late on umpteenth scale  have created men who are women
And beautiful women who are aggressive mefolk and then ubuguitous earthwise ?
What has gone heywire with your human architecture ,when *** organs and feelings
Are center stage beckoning for their traditional orientation ?
Is homoeroticality your new creation technology  ?
Or it is man recreating himself ?
Don’t you have enough clay ?
If material matters do you honourable deities
Come to Africa , chief Mugabe bob will guide you to copper-belts
Of chimurenga fields were clay is beyond any control,
In such quests you will go back to goldenly old
Human ****** creation topography
That will glorify your deitiness
In the old manner of hetereoeroticality.

A chest of boardwalk
and nails unscrewed,
an arsenal of rusty
marching faceless
graffiti, musty
multi-eyed designs and grinning
tiny men right beside,

with lips rose-pearl, sharp-end.

Right beside small carriages to lend.

Wall art wiping off like a fresh tan
once winter comes, scrubbed
with air-carried sea salt,
reabsorbed into brickish mortar and tin-ringing
structures that overlook sweezshing shoals;
dough-rolled hats kneaded on shake-grain shores.


This is where the wolf pup goes
after it snatches the children of my wide-eyed games,
figments of nativity babies
and their red-cheeked discord.
Wailing betrayal
in a swaddling maw,

Vanishing into these walls,
and like that, more pinched-lipped mini-men
lull this predicament into a then-ling
ceased, ignored as the child-pile
rises in the wolf's den.


The umpteenth hour:

i flip through old calendars and
fill in the boxes of dates and
reassemble daily fates
in my head with pink marker
tracing my palmsandpickingupsomethingwhatisthat—

oh.

just child #62
all plump and fat

growing in my throat,
rapidly birthed
with a nasty cough.

spit in my lungs.
and she cries
and then it's novoctuary (or just june)
and the paws claw kindly, schlep-ripping
my featureless form like knocking at a door,

and this is the departure
of my never-was newborn.

As I stare at you staring back at me
from my desktop background
I begin to realize
that closure is far from found.
If Da Vinci were a graphic designer
you would be his Mona Lisa.
With a smile harder to read
as it barely reach the eyes, you'll beat her.
Before I travelled thirteen hours
to be with you for just five
it somehow didn't
cross my pathetic mind
that there was no we
that you were never mine
and that I've done the ****** math wrong
for the umpteenth time.
You're a fortune cookie
empty inside
I'm blindly superstitious
and cannot stop trying.
It's skepticaly obvious
I'm most definitely just a friend,
what you are though
is simply impossible to apprehend.
Your image is like a paper cut
shallow yet agonizing
lurking in my sub-conscience
painfully reminding
how even after all these years
I'm shamefully prone to deceive
and keep sticking the broken pieces
of my heart back on my sleeve.
Like a nicotine rush at midnight
I crave you, I'm an addict,
but it's dark and cold, and all the shops are closed,
I'm left frustrated and feeling tricked.
However, amidst last evening's drunken frenzy
my hypothesis was proven untrue,
for I do not regret
kissing you...

It started on March 8th.
You asked me why I didn't mention
That I was raised by a strong woman.
And I bit my tongue so hard I worried I might bleed.

I realised for the umpteenth time that my first female role model
Came into my life when I was in high school.
In the form of an all girl punk band.

I'd never seen anything so inspiring.
Strong.
I picked up a guitar for the first time that year.
I felt like I finally knew who I was.

I'd never had anyone to show me the ropes.
How could I?
With a mother so dependant on a father
who doesn't understand a **** thing.

Strong women hold themselves
And others
up.

You showed me how to tear my sisters down.
You tore me down.

It wasn't until high school that I felt supported.
I made a friend who would become family.
She's one of the strongest women I know.

She lifted me up.
Still does.

I became the woman I always needed.
No thanks to you.

Or maybe thanks to you
Since I didn't get what I needed
And now I'll never let the women in my life suffer the same way.

I stand before you now with a girl gang who never fail to catch me when I fall.
And I do the same for them.

This is my Pack.
We've built this family out of dreamers and doers
And I finally feel like I'm gaining ground.

Working towards the life I won't let get away.
So when I look at you with that mouth full of blood
From years of biting my tongue
it doesn't hurt so bad.

The tang of it tastes like strength.
Like perseverance.
Like dreams coming true.