by H C Turk
• • •
By noon we had exited the bog to enter less slippery land where we discovered a gritty creek that to the muck-witch sisters was surely God’s most graceful river. Lolling within completely unclothed, we became decently clean and laughingly pleased, washing all our clothes including the semi-lady’s underthings she would not bury, not if she had to dig in the mud, dry the frillies then into the bag for later secreting. First wash the luggage. Marybelle opened hers beyond my good view, though I saw items wrapped with waxen paper. She cleaned only her bag, not its contents, which had been made impervious to mud not from the owner’s great experience as a witch, but due to her opportunity to prepare, though I would have thought of no such wrapping regardless, therefore being inferior to this person as a witch even in a situation wherein such superiority seemed circumstantial. When we had been wet in the creek so long as to shrivel, out we came to lie on the stone bank, wordlessly deciding not to move until both our persons and our attire dried. And all the world was perfect, except for the starvation of those two witches somewhere in God’s wilds whom Satan had not allowed to eat in days.
“Might I suggest, miss, if only in the way of fond, optimistic impression, that the worst of our travels be ended?” I mentioned.
“You might not,” Marybelle replied, “in that Satan hears.”
Again we walked, no longer approaching the mountains. From ahead, a light breeze brought a greater smell of animal warmth. As the land became less moist, our spirits became less slimy, especially when we smelled some wild food, our small company of traveling theater witches ascending a rise to find and uproot groundbean plants, not a grand meal for Man’s Isle, but wonderful after eating Satan’s slime. Handfuls of the pale tubers we consumed, thereby gaining sustenance to support our further endless walking. Perhaps this eating was most satisfying because all our senses told us that the food ahead would be superior. Though bloated, we raised our bent torsos and attained a hearty rate of travel.
The drying marsh edge we traversed led to hilly land, gentle slopes of God’s greenery, not the devil’s stone. Eventually the gritty, grey earth changed to richer loam supporting plant life: clumps of the no-hue brush and wild grasses whose roots precluded a loosening of the soil with each rain. Low rockwood trees and brown oaks for birds and squirrels began appearing in our noses. Soon we spied a hickory, which promised glorious eating and elicited some cackling from Marybelle. More earnest was the second witch who at once began seeking broken limbs or stones for cracking the nuts to have at the meat. Finding no fruits on the ground, however, I sought to climb the tree, for too hungered was I in my lust to be waiting for gravity. Then, as all my plans for climbing and cracking labored industriously about my thinking, I discovered that my waiting would be into the next year, for the nuts were not in season.
No wonder Marybelle had passed with no interest but future pleasure, the blooming universal expert….
Into the day, I became concerned again, as though a business person worried of invoices and income. So improved was the land that I wondered of proceeding so far as to find worse. Unfit for sinners in that no flat space was available for them to drag their horses and carts upon, the locale revealed to me no gross features detrimental to our living. Then I sought my missing thinking, wondering what inferior trait of this region I had overlooked that Marybelle would instantly fling before me after I revealed myself as foolish. None found, I proceeded with my mouth.
“I might ask, Miss Marybelle, whether we are so set in our traipsing that we can no longer understand settling.”
“I would seek a stream instead of these ditches,” she informed me.
“Yes, miss, thank you, miss,” the fool replied.
The next day, we found an excellent brook—narrow and meandering, infinitely superior to the Thames—flanked by bright grasses and numerous trees. Into the rising ground the brook inversely disappeared, its source revealed by further walking: a bubbling spring producing a lovely pond with tiny fishes in clear water infinitely superior to Pangham Gardens or the Irish Sea.
So pleasing was this perfect water that my continued walking became quite lighthearted, for I hoped to discover further aspects of this land equally rewarding. Next encountered were additional hickories with empty but promising branches, bright blossoms and shading trees all about; and, yes, various berries and pecan trees and silkshoots for the nibbling. Most important was the greater fact of our being within rich forest land promising fine living for God’s good animals—and what could be better? To find my own answer, I proceeded ever more rapidly, bag on my hip, happy strides carrying me onward, ever onward, only to become aware in the following moment that I walked alone.
I turned. Behind me stood Marybelle by the pond, her bag on the ground. In the speckled shade of a yew, with the water’s crisp music behind her, Marybelle stood looking toward me, toward bright Alba in a spot of sunlight on her endless way.
“Why go farther?” spake loquacious Marybelle.
Since her speaking was obviously a witches’ test of some cruel nature, I paused to consider the ramifications hidden within Marybelle’s apparently simple verbalities, convinced that cryptic notions lay therein to flog me with my own ignorance. From my brilliance, I thus gained full comprehension, replying with an idea to save me.
“We stand on the sight line of a sinners’ roadway under construction and approaching this very moment.”
“I smell nothing of them.”
“Immediately beyond our sight, hidden by high ground and prevailing breezes to carry the smell away, lies a village populated only by bishops, magistrates, and tormented lovers.”
“Doubtful, but yonder tree will tell with its climbing,” Marybelle returned, and pointed toward a grand hill some distance removed that held a towering plane tree with branches reachable by a flexible witch.
“No taller tree nor higher hill I find about,” she added. “No better view would be afforded.”
“True, miss, but a journey will be required for me to achieve the hill, its upperside, and then the treetop.”
“Yes,” verbose Marybelle replied. So I dropped my bag and moved away with firm strides and the semi-satisfied sense of having appeared less of a fool than possible, for my possibilities were boundless.
What an odd hill was this to become no larger in appearance as I approached, my impression due to the hill’s being so removed and huge that I traveled an era and was blind from exhaustion by the time I reached its slopes. Around me I saw only forest. Taking no rest, I began the steep climb, looking behind until espying Marybelle, for her sight was my first goal. Halting to look toward my sister, I was surprised to find her so tiny as to be seen by only birds and witches. She stood without having moved since my first step away. Again I was thrilled by God’s great creation of distance, that material which is space, as tactile as water and wind, especially cherished by me then because nothing but distance separated us witches, no sinners’ smoke nor haze nor city street, only God’s singular color of multiple greens, only waving leaves and impassive tree trunks, only insects and birds and hiding marmots. With a brief wave to my sister, I turned to the hillside and continued climbing, cackling loudly, foolishly, lustful to be so pleased.
Once on the hill’s upper level, I became childish, intending to reserve my best sight for the end. Therefore, I only glimpsed the vista around me as I chose a tree and clambered, determining to be less giddy lest I miss a step and take a tumble down the hill to receive more of a beating than inconsequential Rathel had delivered. And this thoughtfulness was required, for the climbing was difficult with limbs too thick to readily grasp. So I proceeded in a businesslike manner, as though a widowed English lady plotting a bit of vengeful death for the day. But once up the tree and lodged in a crotch, I laughed at the thought of Rathel; for no sinner was in sight, nothing but a perfect view of home. The mountains to one side were so near as to induce my gasp. Here was God’s greatest exemplar of space, the mountains in fact being so distant th
at trees on their slopes seemed buds, though that impassive mass of grey and streaked green crowned with white seemed at the end of the limb that held me. And I laughed from the joy in my life and my pride in great God, then ceased cackling upon slipping to nearly fall and break my back on a limb paces below. Then behind I turned, seeing far away a bog, then a swamp, and I laughed at Satan’s rejected land, turning again toward God’s. The remaining views around me presented only forest like the land below, perfect land to require no more endless walking, only endless life.
No words had I for these sights, for this total experience—and none were needed, for I was composing no opera. I was alive as though only now living. The details of shadow and light, of dark green and wilted grass, of bugs and birds and furry creatures, were all delightful. Nothing seemed static. The trees had rustling leaves, the animals and clouds were moving uniquely, and Earth itself seemed to vibrate with life, as though having heart and lungs, fluids flowing warmly within. Though joyous and well satisfied, I understood my position to have been mandated by serious, saving concerns. Apart from a vantage of pleasure, I had the business of searching for sinners. Therefore, I carefully looked and smelled for any sign of sinning bodies and their products: cut trees, paths in the land, smoke from cooking, smells of droppings, unsensed activity causing poor growth in plants and fearful activity in animals. Thorough I was in waiting a true extent, long enough for the breezes to shift as they may and bring fragrant news: of a dead squirrel and a fox eating it before the carcass rotted, of the wild potato flower blooming, of a salt lick and some unidentifiable animal there I knew to be anything but a sinner. Then, being satisfied that creatures of God were alone in these wilds, I turned to glimpse Marybelle, the woman yet to move. Then down the tree and the hill I moved and through our home to my sister.
Chapter 23
Elephants Hibernate
“Either an especially damp, especially unseen cloud has passed by, or the beginning of cool weather I sense, do I not, Miss Marybelle?”
“Fall coming,” she replied.
“Now that we have tacitly accepted this locale for living, I must suggest that shelter of some nature be sought; for though I well appreciate the advantages of our wild environment, let us not suffer therefrom. Let us not become inundated with the rain and snow, the hail and sleet, the ice and slush of winter.”
“A cave might be sought.”
“Having familiarity with such cliff holes from my past on Man’s Isle, remaining within them long enough for a telling experience, I have come to understand that against my preference, the average cave is not only damp from nonabsorbency, but also too often dripping and puddling.”
“Not so wet as the Irish Sea,” Marybelle replied.
“No abandoned hut is to be found?”
“Not where sinners have never been.”
“Therefore, we concede that the sinners are alone amongst humans in their ability to use God’s given materials to their own sheltering benefit.”
“Say you this after condemning me for a single lizard eaten?”
“My meaning is not to promote the destruction of God’s complex creatures with our teeth nor the vanquishing of trees with any extremity. However, not only multiple limbs but entire trees are known to fall without a witch’s aid, and lesser branches can be broken away without crippling the bearing plant. As well, have not the sinners displayed the potential of laying stones together or making bricks of clay?”
“No mason am I nor carpenter,” Marybelle mentioned.
“Can we not learn how to construct an abode appropriate for our natural imaginations? After all, do not beavers build dams for themselves and ants their mounds and birds nests? Do not gophers dig tunnels?”
“Many birds live in the voids of trees from broken limbs.”
“Your preference for caves, then, is above the inventive labor of building in the manner not of sinners but of God’s animal creatures?”
“No mason I am nor carpenter.”
“But fine cave finders we shall prove to be,” I declared, “even though our days here have not revealed the first crack expansive enough for a half-eaten lizard,” and I stomped toward the nearest hillside.
Together we sought a stone cave for our dwelling. An era was required to search the local hillsides, Marybelle having to overcome her difficulties with climbing; and how fit for the earth she was in her solidity and stiffness, like a stump. And though I desired no cave, neither would I accept defeat in another challenge, having previously lost those of exiting London, selecting the proper town in Wales, determining the best direction for walking, halting at the obvious homesite, surviving the bog, and so on. But after too many days of seeing countless fallen limbs and stones of a size to be handled, no more than several cracks in the hills had I found, some large enough to hold a single, folded witch, but no chamber to make even a cramped, uncomfortable dwelling.
Marybelle concluded our search by saying, “The land never did smell like one for caves this far from the mountains.”
“Yet by your own suggestion we passed weeks or months in fruitless search when you never expected to achieve success?” I wondered.
“My expectation was to be on Man’s Isle until my death.”
“Mine was for you to reside in the Irish Sea forever, and praise God for that mistake. And since we’ve both been proven imperfect in our expectations, let us attempt to progress with intellection instead of dreams. Rational examination of the lost past you mentioned is that on the former island, you had a home of sorts as built either by yourself, some other witch, a herd of sinners, or other living creatures, did you not?”
“Built by God himself. It was a cave,” she said.
“Ah, and thus your predilection for wet holes. But since we’ll not be transporting your former home here, and lacking both a selection of caves and a desire to live on the bare mountainside, might we not activate some further attainment of shelter? Though of course you be no carpenter nor mason—as I surmise from the great randomness of my guesswork thinking—might your vast and deservedly gained though less than ebullient collected knowledge contain details of how we might construct a type of shelter without being considered sinning carpenter nor blinking mason, neither of which you likely be, as I might presume without further intimations on your part?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“And thank you, miss, for such relief, in that no longer do I fear becoming either a craftsman or an ice floe.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied.
During the following days or decades, we proceeded to construct an unnatural shelter. My first notion was to duplicate Mother’s cabin on Man’s Isle, though I had scant desire for such an oppressive manse as the Rathel’s. While proceeding with Marybelle, I thus retained the thought of my original home as a concept. First we selected a locale.
“Here, miss, where the ground is firm and flat to allow us space without interference of growing trees,” I suggested.
“Too low, it’ll flood.”
“Thank you everso, Marybelle, for saving us from a bog of our own making.”
After further search, I offered an additional proposal.
“Up yon, Miss Marybelle, might be an acceptable locale, in being high to obviate flooding and the onset of glaciers, though protected from blowing snows by the surrounding trees and additional thick foliage.”
“They be runningvine bush, which grows so fast as to overrun us during first spring.”