Week 31.95: Story time

I picked my way up the mountain crags. Gusts of wind howled about me, yanking at my tattered cloak. I set my teeth and pulled the rags tightly about me, tensing my muscles against the chill. The trail was hard to see in the dark. I had never come up here at night before, but my soul was burning with unrest and I had not been able to wait for the morning. 

Slowly I approached the summit, the moon glimmering weakly between grim chunks of grey cloud. Deep in the black yawn of the cave mouth, I could see the dark-red embers of a sleeping fire, twitching like a tongue in an endless stone throat. I knew the firepit and its flames very well, knew the scope of their intuitive power, had often been subject to both enlightenment and scorching in the course of my tentative experiments; but it was strange and intimate to see them reduced to coals, small and vulnerable.

I stepped quietly over the stone floor towards the firepit, away from the raging winds outside. Silence. Low hissing from coals, distanced wind at the cave mouth…..but the silence comes from the rocks.

The figure who crouched close to the coals was wrapped up in a black cloak which made him difficult to see. Even his white hair did not gleam in the dim light. He made a small movement as I approached, raising his head to me without surprise. I halted before him.

“I have a confession to make.”

“Go on.”

“My work. On the art.” I took a deep breath. “I think the work is boring. Does that mean I should leave here?”

His eyes glittered, even in the dark. Light from within. He spoke to me then about art, about stories and singing, but I did not want to listen because my unrest was overflowing and I answered him with doubts, with worries and with frustrations.

Suddenly he made a brusque movement, and pushed himself to his feet. His black cloak flared and then settled on his shoulders. With one hand he reached out and twisted his fingers around my wrist.

“You can look to the right or to the left, but if you keep on looking to the left, then that is the way your horse will turn. And if there is a great heap of offal and refuse to the left, then that is where you will end up.”

I stared in his eyes and could not answer.

“You studied art with Tanya today. Was that useful to you? Did she help you?”

I nodded.

“You have been spending a lot of time in the Valley, learning from the King. You have also been studying at the Palace. Is that inspiring? Have those people helped you? Have they given you ideas on which to work and reflect?”

I nodded again.

“Then is that not enough for you? How much do you need? If you really are so needy that a full day of learning is not enough for you, then I am concerned.”

His eyes were burning me away, shriveling me down to a flake of ash. I whispered that it was enough…it was all enough for me….

His head bent towards mine. Immobilized, I smelled sharp ginger and living pungency.

“Then maybe you should quiet down.”

I could not move, even to nod. Truth seared across my brain so that I could not formulate an articulate thought.

“Tanya provided you with some useful directives. Perhaps you should work on them.”

I nodded without blinking, without thinking.

He straightened up and released my wrist from his grasp and my eyes from his gaze, and continued to speak. He told me what was wrong. I should treasure everything I learned, and I should work without intention or ulterior motives. I should take what I was taught and focus on it, and not on my self-pity, on my useless doubts and worries and frustrations.

“I am learning as you are. I am learning to enjoy art, and life, and all of you. Go and sleep now. And tomorrow you will tell me what Tanya said to you.”

He did not smile, but his eyes on mine were keen and kind. I bowed slightly, without speaking, and received his nod, and I turned and retraced my steps to the cave mouth, and went out into the wild night without glancing over my shoulder. The wailing wind was whipping no less lustily than before. I slammed myself gratefully into the gusts.

I believe I have just woken up.