Trees have tongues for those who have ears to listen.
An animating breeze streamed through the forest canopy, the cedar and Douglas fir gyrating and murmuring in solemn dance. Buddy smiled Apologized for treading on the gripping claws of their roots, which clung to the forest floor, even as their limbs creaked and swayed high above.
Welcome!
“Thank you?”
May the day come when you do not need words to give thanks, when you will become a sigh in the branches, or the chirp of a varied thrush, or the slither of an earthworm.
Who are you?
Silence. Not the silence of stones, or dead branches, or gnawed bones, but the defying silence of a voice refusing to formulate answers. The knowing silence of words unspoken on the verge of truth…
My name is Iam, the spirit of the place teased at last.
“Sure you’re not Charlie Abbott,” Buddy guessed.
I am that Iam, the spirit insisted.
“And who am I, then?”
Ah! Because you cannot know me yet, except in a cloak of words, you must have two names: Iwuz and Iyllbee. You are nothing and everything combined.
“Gee, thanks!” Buddy groused.
There is a word you should know. It might help you understand.
Tell me.
Antinomy.
What does it mean?
Everything and nothing.
The trail forked. Buddy felt he should head southwest, following the contours of the land, but he turned northwest instead, drawn toward the distant sound of water rushing over rocks. Deeper in, the land tilted, and a set of stone steps descended toward the gargling brook.
How long did it take to put these in place? Buddy asked.
How do you measure time?
“Enough with the riddles, already!”
What is there but riddles?
“Answers, for Christ’s sake! Plain, straightforward answers.”
Every answer contains its question, does it not? Unless you, Iyllbee, are prepared to decide what’s truth and what is fiction… In which case Iwuz will surely object, and Iam will vanish… again.
You’re crazy.
Urmad might be my sometime-name. Shall I tell you a story?
Buddy refused to answer.
When I was a young man, I met a woman, and we fell in love… Have you ever been in love, Iwuz?
Stop calling me that.
Then what should I call you?
Try Buddy. Buddy Hope.
That won’t do. I’ll dub you Yewar, a being that must be named by others because he dare not know himself.
Buddy laughed… nervously.
Love is a form of gravity ten times more powerful than the force that binds our solar system and its galaxy in their orbits. It infuses living matter. Sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, they are all most intensely activated by love. Isn’t that so?
Anyway, Izzy and I loved completely. If there was ever a moral truth, it was our love and the child we created in the magnificent throes of our passion.
Her parents were appalled. Their hatred proved even stronger than our love. They insisted we marry—for the unborn child’s sake—before their daughter’s ‘condition showed.’ A church wedding was arranged. With all due ceremony, Izzy glided down the empty aisle, the picture of innocence in her white gown. And I made my vows, got up in a new suit, which I would never wear again.
After the ceremony, they drove off in their hired auto to their home in Notting Hill, I walked home to my rented room in London’s East End. A month later, I was in uniform and off to war, where I’m sure they hoped I’d do the honourable thing and get myself killed. I never saw Izzy again. None of my letters were answered, and I didn’t ever set eyes on our child.
The stones you’re looking at had lain in Askew Creek, ready for placing for who knows how many centuries before I lugged them one-by-one up this embankment and set them, firm as teeth in this ground. So you could say these stairs have existed forever, only waiting for me to do my penance by laying ‘em.
Penance? Buddy asked.
For not standing up to Izzy’s parents. Not eloping with my love and my child. We’d have got by, but I did the decent, cowardly thing and let ‘em have their way.
Buddy allowed the pull of gravity to take him down, step by step, to the narrow terrace the hermit had built beside Askew Creek. He settled onto the rough-hewn bench set into the embankment, closed his eyes, let the cool air and the gentle babble of the stream saturate consciousness.
I know why you’re here, the spirit said. I know Harry’s story and yours. People come here to think their stories.
Who owns this place?
Why do you ask?
It seems private to me.
I don’t own it, if that’s what you mean. Not in any sense of that liar’s word. It’s not mine; it’s no one’s, which makes it everyone’s.
Another antinomy?
Buddy felt the spirit’s smile.
How do you know my story? he asked. And Harry’s.
Come, the spirit said.
Step by step, they made their ways back up the embankment, Buddy’s laboured breathing and sudden weariness adding to the trudging weight of his sadness. He’d been content for the few minutes they’d sat by the brook and was reluctant to leave. They stopped at a levelled area on the escarpment overlooking Askew Creek. A second flight of steps continued to higher ground.
Why have you done all this if you don’t even own the place?
Look around, the spirit said. Remember White Raven’s teaching: Let your eyes feel the light, your ears be touched by sounds. Your soul imagines the places it has been and invents the places it wants to go. You hear the thud of hooves in a forest and conjure up a deer; see rocks in a creek bed and imagine a stairway.
“I don’t understand?”
Look round, Yewar, and imagine the place you want to be, the spirit insisted.
Buddy sighed, impatient with the instructions but willing himself to obey, willing himself to let go, to deconstruct the harmonious equations of a lifetime’s experience.
That’s it, the spirit coaxed. Gather up Iwuz, let Iyllbee unfold, become Iam, all in the same instant!
You’re crazy! Buddy reminded.
Urmad agreed. And Yewar, too, he cautioned. Be aware. Beware!
The warning unsettled Buddy, fear seeping like a constricting gas into consciousness.
I’m afraid, he said.
You came here to find Gypsy. This is his grove, where the earth remembers him.
Buddy shivered. The breeze still whispered in the canopy above, the brook babbled, but they seemed distant sounds now, the hum of a far-off highway, its travellers unaware of his grove and its unalterable story…
When it came, the vision composed itself around Harry’s anguished cry, his last retreating call from the surrounding forest for Gypsy to follow, flee the terrible place they’d stumbled into. The nightmare took shape, then, as if it had lain dormant in the soil all those decades. Buddy witnessed the vagrant hunched over Gypsy, his left hand clenched round the dog’s throat. He plunged his knife into Gypsy’s side, then released his grip, letting loose the agonized howl of the dog’s death-throes—the howl that would torment Harry from that day forever.
Stooping, Buddy placed his hand on the spot where Gypsy had died, as if he could soothe the creature that haunted his ancient friend. Be still, he pleaded. Sleep. Then he got up, turned and walked away.
Your friend Harry, he’s a good man, Urmad said. They had left ‘the scene of the crime’ and branched onto the main Hermit’s Trail.
“What you have done here, it’s amazing,” Buddy said. Urmad made no answer, letting Buddy’s praise radiate out into the stones, moss, and ferns that defined his modest paradise. “I understand now and am truly grateful.”
Oh?
“Yes!”
Harry came here often when I was living. But never once did he venture down to Askew Creek, Urmad said. There, he would not go—at least not in body. He did not want to know what was imprisoned there. I hope you have stilled that tormenting voice for him by witnessing its truth.
Then Urmad was gone. Merged back into the memories of his place in time.
But the trees still whisper his secrets for anyone who has ears to hear, Buddy thought.
Next: Companions