The brute pawed the ground and, dreaming he’d drowned, shook his head sharply and slowly looked round: Deeper he peered, but, as his mangled face neared, the sun smote the pool and the shapes disappeared. 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. But that thing remained-that face…in all creation…surely there could be…no other creature so ugly as he.īeneath the surface were…images…swimming in currents of shadow and light. Revolted, the pool sought the succor of sky. The glass read his features: that durable eye pondered the wreckage and probed the debris. Beholding the pool, the beast tumbled down.Īnd there this wretch plunged his thirst, drank his fill, fell back on his haunches. There it labored for air, wiped the blood from its eyes, lashed at illusion, looked wildly round. Such a grievous wound…the pool watched it stagger, on two legs and four, thrashing about till it came to a rise. A deep welling rift ran temple to chin, halving the mask, caving it in. As for its face…it had no face only a look: of shock frozen in time, of horror in amber. The pool was appalled…what manner brute-what kind of monster was this? Furless flank to forelimb, hide obscured by blood. The symphony, forever endeavored to soar sublime, fluttered, plunged, and, for all of a measure, ceased. There was a crash, and a shriek, and a naked, bleeding beast burst stinking through the fern, fell stumbling on its face. The grass stood *****, all blades pointing east.
Bees mauled the tempo, birds lost their place. Moose tensed, their coffee eyes narrowed, their patient brows creased. And on that day (so the lullaby goes) the wind brought a scream, and Dissonance was born. For, though all in the glade may lean to the light, they must bend to the maestro’s feel.Īnd yet…there was a day, long ago in a dream, when this ongoing opus was torn. Now the performance is lively and bright, now full, now almost still. Dulcet and warm are the strains they perform. Mellow and round are the timbres they sound, sweet is the music they bring. As ever they have, as they shall evermore.īees do not hum here they sing. They do not bind or wilt or brown-they gesture, spreading the mood, the mind conveying, indeed, the very soul of the glade. They do not wither with fall, for in the glade there is no fall. All the glade’s flora are bearers of news). (In this wise the glade weaves its word, airs its views. Roots render the rhythms, blades bend without breeze, as signals ascend from the glade’s tender floor. Wind screams like a flute in her white, white sleep).īut in the glade are tall, stately grasses, sunning raptly, spinning lore. Wind gnaws her hide, wind wracks her dreams. (Outside the glade there lies a world where rivers ever run, where ghastly calves in random file revile a bitter sun. And ever thus this pool shall peer: a silent seer, reflecting on-all that Is, and all Beyond. They lap in peace, assuming blear, not knowing it is seeing. All who sip find solace here, for this is the Eye of Being. But once in the glade he is dove, and has no taste for blood, running freely or otherwise).Īnd in this glade there nests a pool: a dazzling, blue-and-silver jewel profoundly deep, pristinely clear. There the eagle, that thief, is a righteous savage, a noble fiend. (Outside the glade are shadow and prey, are ice and naked death. For in this timeless, taintless space, the Wild has ceased to be. Here rabbit and fawn may linger, no longer need they flee. Here the field mouse draws no shadow, the eagle seeks no prey they spend their while caressed by rays, and halcyon days are they.
And there, forking, its bent and broken arms embrace a strange, enchanted glade.Īnd in this glade the black bears sleep, though salmon leap fat between falls. It wanders and it wends it brakes and all but ends outside a clearing wet with sun. There is a wood, an island locked in ice. It works its jagged way downhill, round ragged rifts and drifts until it comes upon a little frosted wood. There is a gorge, its walls shattered by cold a once-green thing that, in dying, birthed a thousand aching fissures. Its blue tongue’s tip just tastes a frozen gorge.
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