The Girl and the Guardian

by Peter Harris

  Next morning after a breakfast of maize porridge, Shelley, Rilke and Korman said their goodbyes and got directions for finding the doorway to Baz Apédnapath. The artists’ colony was hard to leave, especially for Shelley, who had fallen in love with its bohemian lifestyle, its intoxicating freedom and its creativity bursting forth in endless inspiring forms. She told this to Azure.

  ‘The only thing I don’t understand is why there aren’t any women and children,’ she said.

  ‘Some of us came from strict sects that do not allow marriage. Others, like me, could not persuade their womenfolk to come out with them. They begged us not to leave the security of the Canyon for the outside world. They told us we were dreamers, deceived, mad. I replied in a poem:

  Are we dreaming?

  Then do not waken us.

  Are we deceived?

  Then do not correct us

  Are we mad?

  Then do not cure us

  For we are dreaming a new awakening

  Unweaving a worn-out lie

  Healed by a new-found sanity

  Like lightning from a clear blue sky.

  But they replied, ‘Driven mad by lightning to the brain, more like!’ And so we parted. We still live in hope that one day we will lure them out with the beauty of what we create here.’

  ‘They don’t know what they’re missing!’ said Shelley. ‘Good luck with everything, Azure. I hope I can return some day, and your wife will be here too, and I can meet her!’

  ‘Perhaps you could try to meet her before that, when you go through the Canyon? Her name is Goldheart, G-Goldheart the Fair. I got a present ready for her in case…’ He blinked and stammered.

  ‘I’d love to!’ said Shelley. Azure gave her a small package wrapped in hessian rags and tied with flax.

  ‘It is a new poem, and an icon of you as the Chosen One of the Lady, an image of love and hope,’ he said. ‘Tell her I love her and count the days until she comes to me.’ Shelley blushed at the thought of herself as a sacred icon, and at this young man’s passion for a woman.

  ‘I hope one day I’ll have someone who feels like that about me,’ she thought as she tucked the icon into her pack.

  Korman brought out a sheet of papyrus, on which he had copied a page from the Ennead in the library at Barachthad’s cave, and gave it to Azure as a present, saying, ‘This tells of the Makers and the arts that flourished in the Golden Age of the Order. It reminds me of your community.’ Azure thanked him, and they all embraced. Piping and chanting a new song about new beginnings and the coming of the Kortana, the artists waved from the cave mouth as they left. Shelley felt very inadequate, and a lump was in her throat as she wondered whether she would ever see any of them again. ‘If they are right, and I fail, Goldheart will never get back with Azure,’ she thought, and she had to wipe the tears from her face with her sleeve.

  It was an overcast morning, with restless puffs of wind swaying the junipers, and rippling over the wild wheat and the patches of wildflowers. A pheasant called its warning of rain. Following the artists’ instructions they turned off a mile or so down the valley and hurried down the narrow winding path that lead to the door of Baz Apédnapath.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  The Bottomless Canyon