Interstice

The stone-lined pool on the back bailey has transformed from ice to liquid stillness. The sun glances across the mirror of its surface through a narrow wedge between retreating clouds and the horizon, past and future parting, an opening for reflection.

Six months ago, Cassandra stumbled into our camp stammering a prophecy of coming days of darkness, a prelude to the grendel's challenge, a prologue to chapters now read.

The siege has finally lifted. The final round has found its mark. During the night the grendel's army abandoned their camp, some deserting, others dispersing to their caves. Scars mar the hills and fields where fighting raged and army's slept, black reminders that will green and fade with time.

On battlement, the trebuchet lay in pieces, disassembled so the mage-general and his mercenary band can load it onto wagons in preparation for the next battle, someone else's battle. Stacked as unshaved timbers, it looks less martial, less deadly, perhaps a watchtower, a wellhead, the skeleton of a hall. One day.

Though the arsenal stands empty, the fighting has not ended. Hemogoblins still conduct commando raids at twilight. Cackling imps still pilfer her salt, occasionally stealing a memory. Minor elementals still torment her with flame without warning. Sentries remain posted. Pickets patrol beyond the wall. Where we thought to grant leave in the brief respite between phases, our timetable advanced with the enemy's retreat. Even as we clean up the detritus of siege, cloven shields, shattered swords, rent links of chain, we service our equipment for seven weeks in the field.

Wandering through the now open gates it is difficult not to feel a sense of loss. There has been purpose to the months of fighting, our time scripted, spontaneity reserved for sanity and riposte. The narrow spaces between buildings echo with ghosts of that activity, pale specters of the loneliness and fatigue. Shades whose translucent faces mouth a haunting question: is where we were still where we want to be? The answer requires time and contemplation, luxuries that remain in short supply.

With our eyes focused elsewhere, winter turned to spring, spring to summer. And midway to autumn before this campaign ends.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Ghost

I am the ghost that roams the battlements, waiting for the final preparations to begin, waiting for this siege to end.

The battle is not over once the last shot is fired. It takes time for the round to become effective, time for her to recover from its effects. The siege is finished when all our gates to stand unbarred, the main as well as the posterns. Only then will the first phase of our celebrations begin.

I pace the walls in anticipation, wondering how to chronicle this phase of her journey without relating some of my own. Like a child playing hide and seek, I know more of me has been visible than I would care to believe. Though I close my eyes as I write this, it helps only in my mind.

In the yellow light of twilight, I review my equipment one final time. For months, a satchel with provisions has lingered near the postern, easily snatched for fighting. Experience has winnowed its contents to the essentials, a handful of rations, a flask of water, a few squares of chocolate, a tiny apothecary, cotton to shield my ears from the noise of battle, a pad and pencil to note reconnaissance and orders, a book to relieve the inevitable waiting boredom. Tucked through one strap hangs my only armor, a padded jersey emblazoned with the name of a foreign land to ward against the cold. The mage-general's magic strips the air of warmth as did the captain-general's before him. At times its hood lends me anonymity to watch and listen unobserved, a brief refuge from the flurry of activity on the battlements to note my observations. A steaming flagon remains my only weapon, a caffeinated potion that keeps my eyes wide and my senses sharp, a witches’ brew of coffee and cocoa laced with sugar, like the experience, both scalding and bittersweet.

It is hard to know which has been more difficult, the weeks of ceaseless fighting or a break just long enough to restore a few days of normalcy before the battle resumes, shattering the illusion into a cracked and jagged reflection of reality. These furloughs, while welcome, serve as both history and foreshadowing, reminders of what we have lost and what we hope to regain.

I am the ghost that roams the battlements, clinging to living in hopes of being made whole or dispelled and finally allowed to rest.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

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

Mile 5

I began these missives alluding to a company, a journey, a destination. I return to my allusion reminded of younger travels, more physical than allegorical.

Several spring to mind, mountains, pastures, streams, shores, some successful, some nearly disastrous. Assets and liabilities, each revealing inner details formerly unknown, credits and debits on a balance sheet of experience to draw against as equity of a life.

The first is a ten-mile trek with three days of food and equipment strapped across our shoulders. A company of twenty, we set out from familiar territory. Asphalt, concrete and stucco are softened by the green, suburban view to which we've grown accustomed, schools, churches, neighborhoods interspersed with the semi-wild outskirts of development.

We are young so most start quickly, their exuberance outpacing their stamina. My feet are last upon the path. An elected leader, I ensure the youngest and least experienced are ready for the road ahead. I find myself encouraging stragglers early on only to trail them before the first mile is behind us when a piece of my equipment comes unraveled.

By the second mile, the company is strung out before me. All eyes remain forward with little interest in what, or who, lay behind. Past the highway, trees conceal our ragged line as orchards of houses are replaced by the maintained wilderness of windbreaks, lakes and pavilions that transitions into the pasture, pines and palmettos lining the dirt track near mile three.

By mile four, I achieve the middle of the pack, closing the distance with dogged determination. Cliques of preference have been replaced by groupings dictated by pace. Straps rhythmically rub out any remaining banter as the weight of our journey settles upon our aching shoulders. Breaks become too frequent, too extended. Our timetable begins to tatter with our goal nowhere in sight.

With more miles before than behind, exhaustion drains encouragement into mere example. As I shoulder my pack after too short a rest, an old formula surfaces, pick a point near the horizon, perhaps a mile away, rest a moment beside it, then scan for another.

At each respite stiffness seeps from the ground like clinging Lilliputian vines that fatten the longer I tarry. Ignoring the protests, mental, physical and from others only arriving, I rise, my vision constricting to a pinpoint surrounding each interim destination. The road tunnels to a distant curve, a palmetto brake, a sapling that grows into a tree as I attempt to close on an ever-distant horizon. Fatigue fades to numbness as ten thousand steps narrow to a seesaw rhythm of one followed by another.

By the end, half our number succumb to the temptation of the tailgates trolling our line with water and the equipment our adult leaders can't survive a weekend without. I am not among them.

At the edge of a stand of pines, a shallow stream, no more than a rivulet, marks the boundary of our destination. A dozen paces on, I drop my burden to claim the first unmarked and unadorned campsite chosen from the random wilderness, then return to the water to cool my burning feet and greet the others as they stumble past.

Five years later at dusk in the mountains, I would scout ahead to report the distance left uncovered, then light a hot meal to greet the five behind me. Fifteen, and I would linger to ensure each of the ten who set out made the miles over cobblestones strewn with driftlog timber, extending a silent hand across each obstacle to those trailing while others raced ahead.

But that first day all I had to offer was my back, soldiering on so others could see what was possible. We were children then, incapable of masquerading as adults as we sometimes do today. I wasn't the strongest or the fittest, even the oldest or the most experienced. I was just the one who endured.

Some days on this journey I carry her pack as well as my own. That day taught me there are times when I must ignore the ache, the fatigue, the silence, the miles left untrodden, shoulder my burdens and move on.

Mile 5, and we lever each other from the ground, tottering entwined in a 2 a.m. embrace like derelicts down the Bowery, not looking back to see who still follows.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Fatigue

Fatigue comes in trailing waves of undissipated energy reflected after each attack, each trough an opiate numbing my mind one memory at a time.

Perhaps this is a gift, blank pieces fitted into a puzzle whose picture I wish I could not remember, night and fog obscuring the gothic ruins atop the dark mountain from which the enemy emanates, each missing moment an amnestic victory though the mountain remains unmoved.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Vigilance

The logistics of siege centers on the marshalling and rationing of resources. Time and energy become commodities. In the calculus of caregiving, each earns its own spot market where futures are traded and options bought and sold as they compete in a zero-sum game.

In this realm, sleep is the fundamental currency of exchange. Like a soldier, I know my duties must be performed regardless of fatigue. Enemies, like infants, rarely schedule their activities during convenient daylight hours. That is the first lesson every recruit in every military is taught the first day of training, one every mother learns without instruction.

Sleep changes during crises. Subconscious filters engage separating need from distraction. My ward stirring rouses me where the music from an errant alarm has not. Her rising to silence it snaps me awake wondering what is wrong while my dreamy consciousness thinks, oh, music, how pleasant, never connecting the two events. A gasp of pain after midnight from the drain biting has me instantly alert and on the move, unable to sleep again until her pain has been relieved and her breathing steadies and deepens. Only then do I feel it's safe to drift again.

I become a thief, a corporate raider, as sleep becomes a stolen treasure. Afternoon, evening, morning, night, none better than the other once the siege begins. Chair, floor, car, bed, like a world traveler, I improvise with what's at hand. Waiting room and bedroom become interchangeable. Like a cat, I squander no opportunity. Time has no meaning except in terms of hours of energy remaining and hours of reserves replenished, a running tally fluctuating from day to day like the index of a stock.

When sleep closes low, fatigue flows over my thoughts like molasses, slowing them, obscuring them, pulling them down toward slumber. I must not let it until the job is done. Each action is taken carefully; frustration is magnified by exhaustion. Like a veteran, I understand my duty must be performed regardless of distraction. Heat, cold, fatigue, darkness, none may interfere.

On the eve of each procedure, my mind races through minutes into hours, running through preparations like a mantra, a compulsive checking and rechecking of lists until my consciousness becomes bored by the repetition and sleep nuzzles in until the alarm sounds too early.

In time of war, human sentries stand watch regardless of how many clockwork sentinels and tripwires lay beyond the wall. Vigilant, I sleep with one eye open, the other dreaming of a happier, more restful future.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III