by Annie Wald
WITH THE HONEY WOMAN
The stream grew wider and then a long rock cut the stream in half, but neither Peter nor Celeste noticed. They had traveled so long as strangers through the Plains of Distance and Way of Winter that, whether they were together or separated it made little difference to them. When Peter finally realized he could no longer see Celeste and the little travelers, several hours had passed. The gentle flow had turned into a rushing torrent, and as the River of Unfaithfulness plunged down the canyon, dirty foam sprayed into the air. Peter suddenly felt very thirsty, but when he knelt by a side pool and cupped some of the putrid water, he could not stomach the thought of drinking it.
Night came. As the faint light disappeared from the canyon, Peter sat by the water’s edge. He was happy not to have Celeste harping at him and the little travelers running around screaming. But he still felt lonely, and he wished there was someone to keep him company. Then, above the roar of the water, he heard a melodic voice saying, “Honey, honey.” He thought he was all alone on his side of the river, but the voice came closer and closer. “Honey, honey.”
“Who’s there?” he yelled. He heard a laugh that sounded so light and carefree, he was sorry he had spoken harshly. In a quiet voice he said, “I mean, who are you? Where are you?”
“Now that’s better,” the voice said.
All of a sudden he felt the warmth of someone sitting beside him on the rock. He was so surprised, he almost jumped up and ran away except the woman—for it was the warmth and the voice of a woman—touched his arm and said, “Don’t go, I won’t hurt you.”
He remained on his guard, afraid that Celeste might have sent the woman to trap him.
“I heard you say you were lonely.”
“No, I didn’t say that.” But he wondered if he had been talking out loud to himself.
“Maybe you didn’t, but anyone who comes down this path by himself has to be lonely.”
“I have a wife. I just am spending the night alone.”
“Then you won’t mind if I just sit here with you. I promise I won’t bother you. But if you want to talk, I’d be happy to listen.”
It had been so long since Peter had shared his thoughts and feelings with Celeste or anyone else. His heart was so full of things to say that the idea of talking with the gentle honey woman sounded appealing. So they sat together for awhile and talked about their journeys. Then the woman stood up. “I have to go. But I’ll come see you tomorrow if you want.” In a flash, she was gone.
When Peter woke up the next morning, he remembered the honey woman and hoped he would see her again. When he got back to the path, she was there waiting for him. He began walking, expecting her to come, but she just stood there. He could see in the daylight that she looked perfectly harmless and beautiful too, with long honey-colored hair and honey-colored skin. “Won’t you walk with me for a little?” he asked.
“All right,” she said.
As they started off, Peter realized how hungry he was because he had not had any breakfast. Before he said a word, the woman brought out a jar of honey. “You must be starving,” she said. She gave him a spoon of honey and as he ate it, he thought he had never tasted anything so sweet and delicious. Celeste never worried about whether he was hungry and the meals she served him were so unappetizing that he found them hard to swallow. It seemed to Peter that the honey woman wanted nothing from him except to enjoy his company.
“It’s so hard to walk with my wife,” Peter said. “She just doesn’t understand me. She whines and harps on me all the time.”
“It must be such a strain for you,” the honey woman said.
“It is,” Peter said, thankful he had found someone who understood how difficult his life was.
That evening she disappeared again before Peter fell asleep, and in the morning she returned once more. They walked together for another day, splashing at the edge of the water. With the honey woman’s soothing words and spoonfuls of honey, Peter no longer noticed the foul smell or remembered he was playing in the River of Unfaithfulness. The river was becoming stronger and the path was filling with small boulders, but the honey woman started a game of tag to make the journey more enjoyable. As Peter scrambled over the boulders, he thought how Celeste would never have done that; she would have only complained that he had brought her on another difficult path.
Soon he could not imagine a day without seeing the honey woman. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with spending time with her. After all, his chalice was packed away in his bag. What harm could there be just talking with someone? There was no traveler nearby to warn Peter of the danger, and he never thought to take out his guidebook to remind himself of the King’s rules and the Servant’s encouragement. All Peter could think about was the honey woman and the sweetness of her honey words, especially when the river was too loud and she had to stand on tiptoes and whisper them in his ear.
Once as he jumped over a boulder to tag the honey woman, he tripped and fell into the sand at the edge of the river, and the water splashed on him. Before he knew it, the honey woman was lying beside him. A gush of water showered down on them, and they laughed, not caring that their hair and clothes were dripping with the polluted water. That night, when it was time to sleep, the honey woman did not get up to go. She stayed beside Peter, talking and stroking his hair until he began drifting off to sleep. When he heard her get up and leave, he was too tired from playing to call her back. He fell asleep with a deep thirst.
As Peter slept, he dreamed he was drinking from the chalice with the honey woman. It was such a sweet dream, but when he woke up in the morning and remembered the dream, he was disturbed, for it had revealed his hidden desire. Then the Breath of the King reminded him what the Servant had said: wanting to drink the chalice with the honey woman was the same as doing it.
Peter sat on a rock, holding his head in despair because he knew that was true. Though he had not drunk from the chalice, he had given his heart to another woman and betrayed his vows to Celeste. Worse, the honey woman would be coming soon to spend another day with him, and he had never been so thirsty in all his life. How could he resist his desire to drink from the chalice with her? He wished there was a friend he could talk to, for that would give him strength. But he was all alone by the River of Unfaithfulness.
Peter got out the guidebook from the bottom of his pack and opened it. What he read turned him cold: “The lips of a honey woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as a lemon. Her way goes straight to death. She ignores the way of life. She takes crooked paths, but she doesn’t know it.”
What am I to do? Peter wondered. He kept reading: “Keep to a path far from her, don’t spend any time with her; otherwise you’ll be giving away the best part of your life to someone who is not your wife. If you do that, at the end of your life you will groan in agony. You will say, I refused to correct my way, I would not listen to the guides or the guidebook. And my error will be visible to all my fellow travelers.”
And in my dream, I saw that the Servant sympathized with Peter’s weakness, for the Servant Himself had been tempted in every way. But Peter condemned himself for his failure and could not forgive himself. Though it was the King’s grace that had cut through his chains of debt, Peter had always taken pride in his righteousness.
“Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin?” he cried. Then the Breath of the King reminded Peter that he could approach the throne of grace with confidence to receive mercy and to find the grace to help him in his time of need. At that moment, Peter heard a powerful voice echo through Desolate Canyon. “Thanks be to the King! For there is now no condemnation for those who follow the King, because the law of the spirit of life set them free from the law of sin and death.”
However Peter’s battle was not over. Soon he heard the honey woman calling again, “Honey, honey.” He put his hands over his ears and started down the trail without looking back.
All day long she called after him. Peter kept his ears plugged as he walked and continued to cry out to the King. Once he caught sight of the honey woman on a boulder waving to him, and he hesitated for a moment. He could smell her honey coming on the breeze, and it was so sweet, he ached for it. What difference would it make if he just talked a little more with her? He was so thirsty, so incredibly thirsty. He started walking back to her, but again the Breath of the King spoke to him: “Flee, flee.”
Peter held his nose so he would not smell the honey woman’s fragrance; then he turned around and continued, not jubilant but distressed, for he was carrying a burden as heavy as a cross. When night came, he lay down exhausted. In the stillness he heard the honey woman still sweetly calling—and suddenly she was beside him again, like all the other nights.
“Why are you walking away from me? I won’t hurt you. I just want to give you some honey.”
Peter began to weep and again he heard the King. “Do you not know that your body is home to My Breath, which you have received from Me? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor Me with your body.”
Peter knew he could not stay next to the honey woman. But he couldn’t pull himself up. “I can’t,” he told the King. “I am too weak.”
“Not in your strength, but by the power of My grace,” the King said. “Remember the Servant. Remember I have given you My very Breath.”
Peter, knowing that the Breath of the King was filling him, staggered to his feet. In the darkness he could see a vision of the way ahead of him. There were angels and demons, heights and depths, the now and the yet to come—but he saw nothing that could pull him away from the grip of the King.
“I will not leave you,” the King told Peter. “I will love you. Nothing will be able to separate you from My love.” Then Peter remembered something he had read in the guidebook:
“When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant;
Yet I am always with you, you hold me by my right hand, you guide me with your counsel and afterward you will take me into glory….
My flesh and my heart may fail, but the King is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
Peter trudged through the night, as if crossing the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but he was no longer afraid. He held on to the King’s love and faithfulness to protect himself from the urge he still felt to go back to the honey woman. By dawn he had walked some ways from the River of Unfaithfulness and found himself in a dry canyon. He still felt lonely, and he struggled again with the temptation to go back and find the honey woman. Peter had to remind himself that the Servant had died to rescue him—and that it was his duty to care for the little travelers.
Resolved to find his family, he began to shout for Celeste as he made his way back to the water. But the River of Unfaithfulness roared through the canyon and drowned out his cries. Finally he climbed a path to a small overlook and saw dozens of travelers bobbing down the river, separated from their partners with no hope of getting back together. As Peter surveyed the dismal scene, he saw a traveler wading along the shore get swept away by the current. Peter shuddered to think he too might have been taken away by the River of Unfaithfulness.
He persevered through Desolate Canyon. Eventually the channel narrowed and one day he finally spotted Celeste and the little travelers tramping along on the other side. He called to them, but the river was louder and stronger than before. He feared he would never be able to reach his family. He was not strong enough to swim to the other side, and he had seen the shattered remains of rafts that other travelers had used, trying to cross the river. He walked on, and around the next bend he found a rope of mercy that had been tied to a tree so despairing travelers could reach the other side. Peter grabbed the rope, and with one strong shove he pushed off the bank and swung over the water, landing in the soft sand.
He expected Celeste would be overjoyed to see him. When he reached her, he was ready to ask her to walk with him, as he had done at the start of their journey.
But when she saw him, she just said, “Oh, so you’re back.”
Irritation flared up in Peter. Although his heart was again clean, it was still empty of love for Celeste. “Yes, I am back. You have no idea how much I struggled to get here.”
“You struggled? And what do you think I have been doing this whole time, left alone with the little travelers? Having a picnic?” She kept on walking as if he wasn’t there.
Peter turned to the little travelers and hugged each one, pouring out his love to them, for he thought it was hopeless to care for Celeste. She would never change.
They turned away from the river, and as they walked on, the canyon became quieter. But they were not yet free of river’s grasp, for one of the little travelers noticed a woman following them. “Who is that woman waving to us?”
Celeste looked behind and saw the honey woman.
“Honey, honey, how are you?” the honey woman called to Peter.
When Celeste saw Peter break into a sweat, she knew something had happened between them. She told the little travelers to sit down for a moment and marched over to Peter. “So is that what you were doing while I was taking care of the little travelers?”
Peter swore to Celeste that the chalice had remained deep in his pack the entire time and that the honey woman had never even looked at it. But Celeste did not believe him, for the honey woman was still calling after Peter, “Honey, honey, won’t you have some more honey?”
“Do you mean to tell me she’s following you for nothing?” Celeste asked. “That you never had any of her honey?”
Although Peter didn’t want to admit what he had done, he knew he needed to confess to Celeste. He told her how he had walked with the woman and taken some of her honey, but that he had left on his own to find Celeste. He knelt before her and pledged to keep walking with her—and her alone—to the King’s City.
Celeste was not impressed. “How can you expect me to trust you again? You have hurt me so much; I will never be able to forgive you for how you have betrayed me.”
The honey woman finally gave up and left Peter and Celeste alone. They continued through Desolate Canyon with the little travelers. And once again in my dream I saw that if it had not been for the little travelers, Peter and Celeste might have given up and returned to the River of Unfaithfulness. For they never considered the vows they had made or the cords around their wrists.
ALONG REVENGE CHASM
The path out of the canyon led Peter and Celeste straight to Revenge Chasm. They looked across the deep black fissure that cut far into the earth. On the other side, for the first time in a long while, they could glimpse the Highlands and the King’s City beyond. The view of the Highlands did not inspire them as it once had, but they still wanted to reach the King’s City. However, the chasm was too wide to swing across with a rope of mercy. They followed along the edge, looking to see how they might continue their journey. After a little while they came to a bridge of forgiveness that had been built across the chasm by the Servant.
The little footbridge was the narrowest track Peter and Celeste had come to, a single plank of cedar wide enough for only one traveler at a time. And though it appeared sturdy, there was no proper railing to grasp. The only thing travelers could hold on to was a single rope of mercy that had been tied onto trees on both sides. It didn’t look very taut or strong, and every traveler who contemplated the crossing wondered whether the rope would hold if he lost his footing.
Celeste was the first to reach the plank and when she did, she drew back. She knew that before she could walk across, she would have to bandage her wounds, otherwise she would fall. Most of her injuries had been caused by her partnership with Peter: the blisters from his relentless pace, the bruises and sores from his uncaring, the gashes from his anger. Whenever she felt sorry for herself, she liked to stop and catalogue her wounds. Then she would take a pick of resentment and scrape at the scabs so they never had a chance to heal.
For as strange as it sounds, she had grown fond of her blisters and cuts and gashes, especially since giving up her postcards. Her wounds made her feel superior to Peter, and by keeping them fresh, he could always see the pain he had caused. And now she had received the most painful wound of all, his betrayal with the honey woman.
She had left behind her rag of compassion soaked with the Servant’s tears when she had made her way up Loveless Peak. But there was another one at the bridge that travelers could apply to their wounds. Celeste didn’t want to take it. To bandage her wounds and cross the bridge, she would have to forgive Peter. But then she would have no more power over him. No, she thought, she could not give that up. She wanted to punish him for what he had done to her. She had to find a way to make him pay. Until then, she would hold on to her wounds.
“We’ll have to find another path,” she told Peter. “My blisters make me limp so badly, I’ll never make it across the bridge. If you had let me rest so they could have healed, I might have been able to cross, but I don’t see how I can now.”