Lycanthropy

False dawn, a time for reflection. Omens persist, their images breed uncertainty.

Smoke fills the air. Golden-gray light presages wind and storm. The sun hangs in the sky like a disc of beaten copper tempered with blood. A fog obscures our vision, hot and choking rather than cool or soothing. The smell of last night's ashes fades to the scent of a week old camp. Does the grendel burn his wagons in preparation for retreat? Or is this a scorched earth tactic meant to slash and burn our fertile fields?

Yesterday, a crow flew from the forest to the battlement, it's feathers like the night, like the ink I pour upon the page, liquid, black, and flowing, a speckled egg cradled within it's beak. Nesting its treasure in a corner of stone, it pierced the shell and drank the nutrition within. We want to judge this bird, to say how wrong it was to steal some mother's child, to differentiate it from us. Where a crow sees opportunity, humans create an industry.

The People of the Dawnland, the Abenaki people, my people, believe each of us is guided by a creature in nature who reveals itself in a vision. Was this mine?

Often on this journey, we become lost in an enchanted forest. It appears across our path like a Celtic tower rising from the mist, sylvan, dense and Grimm. Here and gone, trapping us within its borders confused and disoriented until it reappears. Deep inside an armored knight guards a holy well, issuing a challenge until he is defeated and we might drink its healing waters.

Each time we enter this tangled wood, we are transformed a little further, more features of the creature guiding us emerge behind our eyes. This metamorphosis is unavoidable, a part of the journey. None escape the experience unscathed, unchanged. We cannot bypass this forest though most sane people do. A few risk the transformation beside us. Perhaps, they bear an amulet warding them against this form of lycanthropy. Perhaps, they do not fear it, perhaps they embrace this change.

Folklore or delusion, disease or just a dream? I am not sure.

By sleepless moonlight, I wonder what creature hides within me. Each has two faces, dual, competing images, one a native son revered in vision, the other a European construct reviled from an age of darkness. The wolf, loyal and devoted, the spirit of the wild, or a bloodthirsty killer, hunted, feared and outcast. The crow, clever and opportunistic, at worst a trickster, or the iridescent darkness, a harbinger of death. Perhaps the cat, curious and silent, a lone not lonely hunter, or a mark of shadow, the servant of a witch.

Each viewer interprets what emerges for themselves. Many fear our transformation, not realizing we, too, remain uncertain of who resides behind the faceplate of the guardian we seek to slay, a stranger or ourselves.

Until we know, we roam this ancient forest tossing breadcrumbs before us. Even with this trail to follow, we must be careful not to cast them too far lest the birds consume our markers and we lose our way again.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

One to Go

----- Original Message -----

Second to the last treatment today. Uneventful enough that Karen napped through much of it. Sadly, it's become routine.

One of our favorite nurses was out today. He's the one last week that told Karen last week he needed her to go from Omaha to Vegas, from Little House on the Prairie to Showgirl. In other words he needed one more shirt button undone to access her port to draw blood.

About a month longer before chemo is officially done, about two weeks after the last treatment. That's about how long after each treatment before Karen feels decent again. She will likely get a white cell booster the day after the last treatment and bloodwork and a red cell booster a week after. Then a month off before 6-8 weeks of radiation. So maybe this is over for us at the end of August (just in time for Dragon*Con, oh, and hurricane season). We'll get a referral for the radio-oncologist next week perhaps. Karen is thinking she will go with someone down by USGS (likely at St. Anthony's) so she can go from work during the day. She hasn't fully decided on that yet.

At least she gets her birthday off.

Two weeks and then one more time with feeling.

----- End Original Message -----

Reconnaissance

At dawn we weave spells of fire below stitched canvas, slowly inflating it into a bubble of air. As we climb into the wicker basket, thin lines tether us to the ground. We release the ropes and gently drift into the morning sky, our bodies heavy but our souls light.

Surveying the landscape, it becomes difficult to remember our purpose. In the low light of morning, the castle resembles a unique geologic formation. A thin mist shrouds the grendel's lines, rising from the furrows between the trees as a tract freshly turned for planting.

The canopy obscures the hive of activity our appearance has kicked over. Peering between the branches, archers bend their bows and loose. Gravity claims their shafts long before they near their mark. We drift overhead, unscathed, even their taunts falling short by a whisper. The grendel seems quite angry that we are this close yet remain unaffected by his presence.

Our conflict seems so small hidden among the trees, a charcoal smudge across pastel swells of forest and pasture, a slight mar on an otherwise Lucullan panorama. We sketch the grendel's dispositions on the map of our memory. Units of friend and foe seem so orderly, like illustrations of contests long settled, a game of miniatures, counters on a board. The scene is almost peaceful when viewed from high above, the frenetic activity below no more than leaves dancing in a summer wind.

Drifting beyond the battle, the air is cool and still, almost motionless. Osprey hover above the treetops, hunting the shimmering reflections of lakes peeking through a veil of leaves. Cattle graze lush green fields contentedly, taking as little notice of us as of our distant struggle. Through this tranquil terrain, we track the cavalry racing from the postern gate to trail us, our escort home.

Our magic exhausted, we begin to descend. With a slight jar, we settle back to earth, our canvas bubble quickly deflating. Momentarily, the cavalry breaks from the forest, galloping toward us with a train of fresh horses. The ride home is a blur of trees and fields, chapels and farmer's crofts, our minds still floating in a memory of the sky.

Soon, we find ourselves riding through familiar streets then back inside the wall, awakening as if from someone else's irenic dream.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Countdown

Four becomes three, three becomes two.

Two more rounds before the arsenal is empty and this phase of combat operations is complete. Early on as with any complex task such as construction of a castle, we divided the process into small, understandable parts, separating surgery from siege, siege from radiating magic. Like a military campaign we keep each goal simple and attainable so one is always within sight, then reach, then grasp. Even fatigued and short of sleep we can count from four to one and then move on.

When the siege began and our mage-general wove the incantations around his potions, he instructed us that we only had to count from four twice. Four is easier than eight, less daunting than sixteen or one hundred and twelve. Four and four again, like our fathers counting to ten only less angry, each slightly more patient than our mothers counting to three.

In the stables beside the gatehouse, the horses grow restless. Bays, grays, buckskins and chestnuts shift impatiently in their stalls reflecting the mood of their riders. Once the trebuchet like the arsenal is empty, we will gather them in the courtyard. Knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder, our cavalry will charge through the unbarred and open gate, taking the fight to the enemy. Like Alexander’s Companions at Issus, we will charge the grendel's hill first with lances level then with swords, breaking enemy formations while companies of our infantry hold our lines against their pernicious assault, cutting down any enemy who stands in our path until their commander is slain or flees the field.

Destriers and chargers stomp and prance in anticipation, coursers and rounceys toss their heads and snort. No palfreys or hobbies, these are aggressive and energetic mounts bred for battle. It is too early for them to be saddled, too early for their lather. So we whisper in their ears to sooth them, reassuring them with tales of their coming valor when they will leap over walls and hedges, clearing fences and ditches in a perilous steeplechase toward our goal.

They believe our lies, our tales of glory, and settle back to munch their oats, waiting, as we do, through this protracted countdown.

As four becomes three, three becomes two.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Full House

----- Original Message -----

Karen's bloodwork looked good today, still low in the expected places but improving. No major side effects so everything is going as good as good can be right now.

It seems like every other two-week treatment is full. It must be the people on the three week schedules intersecting with the people on the two week schedules.

On the slower weeks, the nurses have more time to interact. Last week, one of them dubbed me the "full nerd package" (engineer, software designer, writer) after one of her colleagues ratted me out for expressing interest in their computer program. But they were more than interested in sharing the details of their system with us. This week, they gossiped and joked between tasks. They chased alarms indicating completed treatments that became duels of sound like the sing-song of a British ambulance siren.

We wave and nod to people we've seen there before. Mostly, people keep to themselves. Reading or napping, doing crossword puzzles or crocheting (Karen is not the only one), they make the best of their time and situation. In the quiet between low conversations, the infuser sounds like a busy colony of bees bordering on anger.

As always, the concierge at the building entry made an effort to say hello and goodbye to us. A few weeks ago, she pulled Karen aside on our way out to give her a flowering bromeliad with some words of encouragement. We planted it this past weekend, along with the other plants people have given her.

6 down, 2 to go.

----- End Original Message -----

Sacrifice

Exploring the basement beneath the chapel we uncover an older alter carved with abstract faces and arcane runes tucked in a vaulted alcove directly beneath the new. Unbidden, a dark and hungry god arises, an ancient incarnation demanding a sacrifice.

We offer it our preconceptions, expectations of a life unlived. From the darkness a vision of clarity emerges as images from a dream.

The walls, the trebuchet, our soldiers in their bright mail, the dark army arrayed against us, the lambs in our folds, the goats in their pens, each waiting to be slaughtered to sustain the next attack, allies and enemies, each possess a grace, all merely follow some inner compass, some voice that they alone can hear.

There is beauty in that simplicity, in that order, that understanding. Even as they clash, dying like a prayer on the lips of an uncertain priest forced to confront firsthand the atrocities of war, that is, prematurely, they embody a connectedness. In their struggle to be free of one another they remain linked, inseparable as sides of a coin. Slice one from the other and you end up with two, each blank face ready to be imprinted with a new darkness to balance its light, a new demon to embrace the angel from which it struggles to be free.

These are the threads that bind us to this life, that hold us to one another. When we close our eyes, they strip their clothes and frolic, chasing each other like nymphs and satyrs through an enchanted wood on Beltane, collapsing in giggling exhaustion to breed the empathy that allows us to die neither naked nor hungry though certainly alone, always alone, embarking on an eremitic journey even in the company of friends. Empathy that makes this life less solitary, less poor, our existence less nasty and brutish, each moment sliding toward infinity as we focus on it exclusively. In that way, less short.

We place our sacrifice on the alter to divide between false mothers. Siamese twins linked by a complex knot we would rather slice through to examine its entrails than spend the months or years to untangle, uncreating it in the process.

Even as we raise the knife, we hope some unseen voice will stay our hand and spare our aberrant child.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Adjusting Fire

Scanning the horizon, our mage-general pinpoints the next target for the trebuchet, a distant hill, a likely command post for the grendel to oversee his assault.

Artillerists adjust the trebuchet, extending its range by loading rocks into the counterweight, reinforcing joints with stout winds of ropes. Each modification is risky. The tolerances are sensitive, requiring constant monitoring after each shot. Alarms are set as assistants constantly survey each cross-member for any sign of stress or fracture.

Our arsenal is half empty, the terracotta pots of Greek fire and wineskins of naphthalene that have created the blasted landscape beyond our walls have been replaced by a new munition, this one encased in globes blown of glass. If the naphthalene was clear, this one is crystal, almost sharp and pointed in its clarity. Less caustic than the Red, more deadly than the Clear, its alchemy is insidious, infectious and mutagenic. The artillerists ease each round into the leather sling for firing.

The trebuchet creaks and sways as we release the catch, increased tensions threatening to tear the machine apart. As each impact rattles the grendel further, our mage-general warns us to expect changes in his operational details.

The grendel's primary tactics remains unchanged, waves of assaults behind a curtain of night followed by harassing fire each day to deny our hero sleep, keeping our forces off balance and fatigued. Shattering glass brings continued queasiness as bitter vapors mingle with the screams of dying partisans trapped beyond the wall. Should the wind shift, that poisonous fog could envelope our position, mutating her own white company into a undead army that heeds the grendel's call, defecting like Genovese crossbowmen gifted bags of de' Medici gold. We sprinkle counter-bribes among her citizen militia, hoping to shore their loyalty with scant distributions of silver.

Necromancers to unleash new spells, imps and familiars. Their elemental magic manipulates the weather, targeting our hero with flashes of stultifying summer that only she can feel. Invisible gremlins dog her heels, bludgeoning her legs and back with shot filled saps and miniature truncheons cored with lead. Between beatings, they steal her salt and sprinkle her food with copper. Giggling maliciously, they release pet leeches to sting and numb her fingers, and rats trained to gnaw her nails or carry them off completely.

After the round, our scouts report a change in the grendel's disposition. The bulk of his forces retreat to a rise at the edge of the trebuchet's range, seeking to draw our undisciplined infantry into the valley. Our veterans are immune to this deception, holding ranks of energetic recruits from surging into a slaughter. Dark cavalry sits astride the roads, congregating on our flanks in ambush, seeking any opportunity for a lightning counterattack. Instead, her housecarls pound spear to shield in resounding defiance that echoes into a taunt before transforming into a song as thousands lift their voice in a unified chorus like Anglo-Saxon partisans in an alto-soprano rendition of "Rule Britannia!" to drown out opposing hooligans at the site of a beautiful game.

As the grendel retires to the relative safety of distance, our forces raise a cheer. Our isolation is broken. Innumerable white-cloaked girls pour through the water gate now perpetually open to visitors and supplies. Her red company remains depleted, the postern their only route for reinforcement until the main gate stands open and the road unbarred.

Despite the celebrations, our war council reminds us that we are neither at the beginning of the end nor the end of the beginning. We stand at the middle time of history, the fulcrum of a battle turning yet unwon. A time when we must redouble our vigilance lest the grendel recapture the initiative and scale these walls anew.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Rusty Pictures

----- Original Message -----

Subject: Rusty Pictures

Sent: 5/1/07

From: Karen

A friend of mine sent me this. She made it herself...Rusty the Chemo Bear...

And Rusty wearing the Jayne Hat (the chemo hat). Nice match...

----- End Original Message -----