by H C Turk
A suitable tree we therefore sought. Ahead was a steep and rocky rise, one we would normally avoid to eliminate excess climbing, but the upper plateau was well treed. There I ventured, Marybelle remaining below.
“I study signs while awaiting,” she noted, and began examining roots.
“Upward I go in a most vertical mode along the stone stiffness to a tree of high scope, its selection dependent upon reachable limbs to facilitate my extended climbing and the desired viewing therefrom,” I mentioned while looking only toward Marybelle.
“I look at signs,” she replied, bending toward vines.
I began. Climbing this rock was easier than Rathel’s steeper wall, though the current journey was longer. And the climb was finer, for instead of boring brick, before me was a continuum of godly subtleties, none of which smelled of sinners, but of soil and insect trails and growing molds, living aspects too small to be noticed by a sinner, but of import to any respectable witch, even one corrupted by major cities. Carefully I climbed, my feet on hard lumps, my hands in shallow dents. Disappointed I was to find upon that high plateau no view of the desired mountains, for even higher ground lay beyond. I then sought an adequate tree, the common pines about being unacceptable, their lowest limbs beyond my reach. Therefore, I applied myself to a massive elder-yew, up its trunk limb by limb, looking down for footing only to see Marybelle looking up toward me. So I continued, manipulating myself up and around until achieving the best view.
A beautiful sighting I gained, the mountains so evident as to seem nigh. As though hurried, I attempted to view every complexity of their faces and myriad peaks, the trees there appearing as small as sprigs. Between the mountain range and myself was far more distance than I had reckoned. And here was that space of the Rathel’s roof, but connective instead of coercive. I sensed God’s extension from me to the mountains as though distance were an object, the substance of space. I could feel an equivalence in those removed trees: appearing the size of grass yet in fact the same mass as the tree supporting me. And between these positions was only atmosphere, unseen, though I felt each step of distance, felt the diminution of apparent size from remote perception, a separation not removing the details of that distant world, but holding the segments together, individual portions each living alone, yet forming together a wholeness sourced from God’s compatibility.
As another comparison with Rathel’s roof came to me, I received some disappointment, for I saw sameness. Similar to that extended view of London beyond which was only more of London, here as well was a scene of further rocky land, greys with not enough greens. The same as Rathel’s roof, the view afforded me no sight of home.
I viewed lower, seeing more ridged and stone hills. How far they continued, I could not tell, nor whether some superior land lay between the mountains’ foot and head. Slowly I climbed down to my sister.
“Since you return no bird, we both walk,” Marybelle said as I moved to her side. “Found ye a clear aim?”
“More of this,” I muttered, and we continued.
With an endless journey before us assured, we sought eating to support us. After lapping a bit at a tiny spring, we searched for food. Succulent mosses we found, but they would offer little sustenance. Reluctantly I followed Marybelle’s mealing on insects, the elder witch heartily chewing a few beetles. Though softer grubs were my preference, I accepted several young beetles that required no extensive toothing; and, no, I would never eat a spider. Because of my recent bugless diet, I first had to kill the insects by nipping off the heads with my fingers, then waiting for the kicking to cease. Then I pulled the legs and wings off as though….
“Plucking a chicken,” commented Marybelle, who popped a pair of bugs into her gullet like berries, a natural product not found in this locale, thank you, Satan.
In this manner, our days proceeded. After two or four or a hundred, I became filled with this life and longed for Man’s Isle, the comfortable terrain with abundant food, little stone ground battering one’s feet, no needed climbs and plunges up and down hard crests. London itself seemed nearly preferable, but the current environ so impressed me with its genuineness and peace that I willingly continued. But after additional days—six or a thousand—so wearied had I become that I required further understanding of our progress.
As we rested at the bottom of a long, rough slope, I found myself inquiring of my companion.
“If you would be so gracious as to aid my understanding, miss, so long was I in unnatural London that I remain these days uncertain as to the specifics of the environ we seek in permanency, in that seemingly we’ve been walking eternally with no likelihood of finding a foothold superior to these which currently puncture our backsides.”
“A clear and lasting stream,” Marybelle pronounced, attempting to eat a worm squirming from her fingers. “More and better things for eating than this. A shelter made by God, or things to make our own.”
“In London, miss, I came to understand that all of England is islandic. Therefore, we will unavoidably gain the sea if our walking continues, for surely those mountains are either illusory or beneath us this very moment. Since sinners love the ocean, we will have walked directly into their social maw.”
“We would smell it first,” she replied, and downed a dry, useless leaf.
“Of course, we will not achieve the sea, for we starve first. If not, in winter we freeze in slush at the bottom of a gorge.”
“We feel winter coming and prepare.”
“Well, praise God for a change in weather, in that the current lovely clime is so grand I can scarcely bear it for another million days.”
We continued. One day ended and the next began. The nights were separated by rocks. The rocks were connected by our feet. Whenever I found sufficient energy at day’s end, I climbed a tall tree for observation, always viewing sameness beyond. Though I found no joy in exhaustive hiking, this dynamic situation was superior to my static state in London. Mainly in the great city I had suffered emotional lethargy when not out seeking salvation, which usually turned detrimental. Since I had neither the chores of Elsie nor the business of Rathel, I was often bored. But in these wilds with Marybelle, I relearned a witch’s occupation: living. Gathering food and caring for one’s home had been our need even on Man’s Isle. And when no vermin nor sinners were in season to bother us, living remained an experience: wading in a creek or trekking to the shore to watch the sea waves, examining the changing states of God’s seasons. Then I understood how much the sinner I had been in London. Rathel and her ilk could undertake their chosen activities because the tasks of daily sustenance were accomplished by subordinates. Chores were the servants’ living, but witches were all peers. And by accepting the position of a lady in London, my living had been that of a social sinner; for as long as Rathel had servants, so had I. Dear God, please allow Elsie to forgive me.
We witches remained shy of boredom, in that our systems had space only for exhaustion from clambering across the land and weakness from our meager eating. A perfunctory momentum carried us as we walked and listened for telling animal cries, as we walked and smelled for water, as we walked and ate whatever was so defiant as to seem edible.
As though in a delirium, I found myself contemplating London’s better aspects: the fine foods, the dewless environ of Rathel’s house, the days devoid of extensive treading. Then I received holy enlightenment in the form of objective truth. London consisted of criminals and other gents to attack me. Animal flesh fried and metal burned. Beggars and drunks and tarts. Rathel and her plans for me to kill whomever. What a place of torment was London compared to the wild and wondrous land wherein God had now graced me to live! With this improved deportment, I continued with Marybelle for several more thousand days before I tired of forced comparisons, and my travel again became plodding.
Awakening late one day as though a socialite, I found Satan’s worst witch, for there sat Marybelle gnawing a lizard.
I was sickened.
“You eat an an
imal of God as though a sinner?” I blurted.
“God would not have me starve,” she replied, and swallowed. “You find no similarity between insects and lizards?”
“I find similarity between witches and sinners, but not enough for me to build a city. If in our travels we find a horse, might you not consume it? How similar they are to lizards, with their equal number of legs and the single tail.” And I snatched a handful of grass to stuff into my mouth as I leapt up and began walking for another epoch.
The world changed. I cannot say the change was soon, for nothing came soon in this era, not the nights of exhausted sleeping wherein I dreamed only of walking toward exhausted sleeping; for each evening was elongated by rocks slipping up from the earth to punish my back though I had cleared the soil below before retiring. Nothing came soon: not the next step when the first of each day was an effort, not any hungered bite since the creatures being eaten were neither gratifying in their flavor nor satisfying to my starving bowels. Eventually, however, the terrain began changing: first smelled, then seen, finally felt with our battered legs. The terrain became flatter, and we achieved our best view yet of the mountains, though they seemed no nearer. Some green thickness was seen at their base, but viewed we hill or forest or imagination? One full day of traversing the lowering land revealed flat greenness immediately beyond, which from my initial, distant espying seemed a satisfying field. But this emotion left with a good smell and one word from Marybelle.
“Swamp.”
With no satisfactory trees about for the flexible witch to climb, we depended on alternate perceptions.
“My sense is that we should best proceed in such direction,” I noted, pointing away from the swamp, “for there lies drier land.”
“But I have seen kites and a swallow flying,” Marybelle returned. “Their patterns say richer land direct ahead.”
“Ah, following the blooming birdies has to be better than remaining with the ruddy rocks,” I submitted, and tramped toward the swamp.
Mud with patchy, low grass was our changed terrain in the following hours. Then we traveled through higher, sharper grass that irritated exposed hands and concealed its deeper water until we were wet. Up to the waist we fell the first immersion, only I managing to keep my bag dry. Our next stumbling found the thin witch face first in murky water nonetheless cleaner than the Thames, with plant remains on the bottom instead of glassware. Thereby my bag became sodden and heavy, this wet collapsing continuing and never pleasant in its surprise. Being brilliant between us, we did consider removing our attire, but not until it had become inundated and therefore difficult to carry. The submersions ended when the swamp became consistently deeper, we witches walking for hours with our knees never out of the water; and when our thighs were clear, we yet had to drag our sodden skirts. For our buttocks to be in the air was a holiday, and to carry our soaked bags at our sides instead of our heads was cause for praising Lord God, Whose mess immersed us.
So lengthy was our traversal through this miasma that finally we had to rest standing upright, leaning against each other with bags between. Though living things were about us—darting water bugs and buzzing flies—nothing catchable proved palatable, the sharp grasses themselves as edible as metal blades. And so laden we were with wet attire and bags that we could not be searching through the swamp for shoots or pulling up sweet canes for the eating lest we collapse to be stuck with our heads in the mud and drown as per a certain witch’s nightmares.
Night was coming with only unclean water about us. A stand of trees we espied on higher, drier ground was too distant. Nearer was more of that initial low grass denoting a solid patch of earth. Perhaps. Without comment, we proceeded toward the expected dryness, hoping for a sleeping place whereupon we might drain. Because light was ending, we could not view well ahead, though the massive snake swimming at me was not missed, not with my response of near drowning from flinging myself away from the creature in fear, for had Mother not warned me of that shape of head? And when we reached the presumably drier ground and dragged ourselves up the bank, to no surprise but my utter disappointment I found myself collapsing onto mud.
Walking farther on this segment to find only similar mud, Marybelle settled anywhere. Before accepting this locale and falling into a sleep to claim my thinking, I offered a sensible notion.
“Might you deem it best, Miss Marybelle, to sleep standing upright in order to discourage poisonous snakes from attacking us?”
“Poisonous snakes attack no witches,” she returned, prostrate on the mud.
“I suggest you not eat them despite their safety,” I muttered, and slept in the dank and the mud and longed for the wettest cave in God’s universe, or a bridge to sleep upon, or the bottom of the bleeding ocean.
In this manner, our journey proceeded, only changing by becoming abysmally worse.
Gaining that previously seen stand of trees the following day, we seemed on a sinners’ ship to separate us from the surrounding swamp sea. Though the mountains were clearly visible, intervening land was not discernible due to the increasing trees, all unclimbable. Luxuriously we settled on dry soil a spell to contemplate our future course.
“Our simplest path to the mountains is unquestionable,” I averred.
“We do not seek the mountains themselves in that they will be no better than the hard land behind,” Marybelle offered.
“Oh,” I replied.
“We seek the best land near the mountains,” she continued, becoming as talkative as any sinner. “Farthest from sinners yet the best for our own living. Remote enough we are now to venture in any direction.”
“Oh,” I replied. “I believe the recent breeze brought a scent of the sea. Therefore, we should select a different direction.”
“The sea smelled is from over the mountains,” Marybelle returned. “Nearer, toward the low warmth, is more animal activity, thus better land for the animals that we are.”
“As long as we don’t follow the snakes that would eat us,” I sighed, and off I sloshed in Marybelle’s direction.
Exiting the swamp after another day’s walking, we achieved drier though scarcely superior ground. Before us lay a fog-covered expanse of soft, greyish brown, a gently rolling land that was visually comforting but stank of a different mud.
“In your vast experience with the wild lands of God’s particular world known as the British Empire, might you have gleaned knowledge, miss, of an area such as that before us, and can you now describe what we face?”
“Bog,” she said. “Slick and muddy.”
So it was. The greater part of that day we traversed this semi-firm land, our journey begun in a fog and proceeding through drizzle, which at least washed the scum away from our frequent falls down slick slopes into a thick, blackish material covered with lichenous slime. At least our bags sank slowly enough for retrieval upon such slippage, and what a horror the thought of swimming within the stuff to retrieve our submerged belongings. Grappling with one’s torso flat to the slick bank was required to emerge from this sticky material. At least no snakes were present to attack us, but neither was there food, though Marybelle suggested eating the more fibrous slime, some of which lay on her lips like Satan’s snot. No word had she for this material as she spat it away, but nothing of its kind did she willfully taste again.
At least the higher ground was acceptable for resting. As we departed one such island for further endless mucking, the glibber witch found herself so energized that she had to speak.
“How long might you say we’ve been traveling, Miss Marybelle, in that I’ve not been counting the days: weeks, months, or years?”
“Counting days?” she quickly replied. “Have you a sinners’ schedule to keep?”
With this rapid response, Marybelle nearly lost her characteristically even calm, yet I sensed no distress from her. Certainly I sensed nothing via smelling, my nose clogged with the stench of the black muck surrounding us, an odor most offensively released when the scum surface was pen
etrated by the misplaced body of a slipping witch.
“How talkative you become, miss,” I continued. “How verbal to reply so lengthily. Have I upset you with my sinners’ ways?”
“Being a common witch, I count poorly,” was her simple reply.
“Praise God for your being so superior a witch in matters besides mathematics, lest we be traipsing toward wasteland instead of heading for Paradise,” I added. As though punished by God for my meager humor, with my final words came a false step, the white witch no longer upright and muckless, black in the sludge again, up to the nipples absorbing scum.
Through necessity, we slept in the bog one night, on the firmest ground we found. The sole dry area available to collapsing witches, however, was scarcely large enough for our bags, much less our bodies. Therefore, we both accepted immediate, total stillness, since any tossing about would have us rolling down a slope toward appalling circumstances. And fully static I remained after falling asleep, for my mud coating dried to stiffen me, the sporadic drizzles that night only enough to irk my face from the moistened mud drooling into my eyes, such an annoyance as to attack me unconsciously; for one drop of mud I thought a blinding torrent set me into a common state of nightmarish foolishness wherein I believed that a water snake was eating my eyes as I proved myself the sinner by swimming hellishly away. Then I semi-awakened only long enough to comprehend that the true difficulty was no more than stinging rain even as I rolled over to shield my face with my fingers, finding better use for that hand as I lost balance and began tumbling down the slope with no ability to cease, a mere witch’s limbs inadequate for overcoming God’s own gravity, into the muck, through the layer of slime, gagging at once in anticipation of having the stuff on my tongue and therefore spitting it out in advance, which only opened my mouth and thereby allowed a true ingestion, a most effortful and required gagging ensuing as I immediately threw myself upward in a harsh awakening; for at first I thought myself in a dream wherein I slid from the sinners’ ship into the Irish Sea to drown along with Elsie, whom I had adjudicated the witch for failing as a servant to clean the Thames’ sludge flowing beneath my bed and over me. But so common was this nightmare that I ignored it until finding myself asleep breathing mud, up and awake and gagging in a flash, clambering up the slope to collapse face down, arms spread across God’s mediocre earth for support, mouth in the dirt, but how to tell with all the muck on my tongue from immersion? Marybelle did not bother to awaken through this, my only consolation being that at least my bag had not accompanied me, for I was determined to retain it, not losing nor abandoning it until Marybelle lost hers. But being so superior a witch as to sense a sister’s thoughts in her sleep, Marybelle next rolled over while retaining her balance, though she nudged my bag with her sinners’ shoes enough for it to roll away and down, lost in the mud, the entire remaining night finding me concerned with the horrors of retrieving it in the morning, of having to dig through the muck and not discover the bag for hours, having to search the sludge with my face below the surface in order to reach bottom, eating scum all day only to sleep above it at night and again swim within the bog during dreams of swallowing slime and swimming in muck the evening long. Therefore, at first light, having suffered through the unending night with partially conscious anticipation of waking horrors, up like a frog I leapt to tear myself from thoughts worse than nightmares or even operas in being true, worse for their describing not the past left behind, but the future to suffer through twice, once in the foretelling and the second in the upcoming experience, the former always worse by seeming endless and being repeated throughout the era of worry. To end this nightmarish foreboding, up I leapt at dawn to throw myself into the scum and thereby begin my torment immediately so as to end it as soon as possible, God willing, which He was not, though in a manner I was most successful, easily reaching upward from my position mired to the guts in the mud to grasp my case where it had lodged on a stone, remaining dry and muckless. But a failure I was in attempting to crawl out of the sludge with the bag instead of tossing it upward or asking Marybelle to remove it from my grasp, for too great was the weight for me to overcome the slippery bank, sliding backward and down, both myself and the bag well mired again in the mud, this another instance in my doomed life of finding a nightmare come true to torment me, Marybelle by then awake and on her way, surely having reveled in the finest night’s sleep of her lifetime, I bloody well hoped.