Silence

Eight months of battle has come to an end. The siege is over, the campaign won. The war transforms from hot to cold with détente on the horizon.

A few tasks remain unfinished. In the coming months, the sally port will be bricked up. Sentinels will be posted and auguries performed to warn of any impending threat. She will stand a five-year vigil in the chapel every evening, lighting a votive like a prayer to ward off the grendel's return.

But these are the duties of a garrison not the deeds of an adventure.

The lists have been disbanded, the debris of battle cleared away. On the bailey tents have been dropped, banners furled and horses readied for the road. Mercenaries have been paid and ride toward their next contract. Friends and allies drift away toward home.

In truth many left long ago, worn by fatigue from endless months of siege. A few never answered the call at all. Some sought answers to unanswerable questions in advance, wanting to know whether the battle would be won or lost before committing their energy behind it. Others waited for a victory celebration without wanting to confront the possibility of defeat.

Only a handful understood that, either way, we endured this adventure with only words to convey our fear and pain, with only words to comfort us. These select were far fewer than I had hoped we when set our feet upon this path. But, like gold, they revealed themselves against the sediment as the water swirled relentlessly around the pan. And remain as cherished as rubies tumbled from a mountain stream.

The dovecote stands empty. All the pigeons have been released, their messages delivered if some unwanted or unread. Only one remains cooing in my hand, waiting for this final missive to be strapped against its leg, waiting for its time to fly. I sooth it with gentle strokes, wistfully remembering its companions before I lift it to the air.

Nothing more to say, I raise her banner one last time and watch the horses retreat toward the horizon. The quietude of night descends like the silence echoing against my ears. Above the gate an armored figure leans upon her spear, her shield slung over one shoulder, her sword still belted to her waist, ready to fight again if necessary but hoping it is not. As twilight deepens and friends depart, she waves farewell and Godspeed. Framed against the battlement, her silhouette sets in my mind as the picture of a hero. A veteran.

A survivor.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Malaise

Hour by hour, day by day, time slips away in waiting. Waiting for the next day to come, waiting for the battle to end.

Keeping the sentries awake and on the wall requires effort with the battle beyond their sight. Defections have risen among the whites. The reds barely hold their numbers at the level to be called a company. At best the whites would be classified as understrengthed.

Battle fatigue has infected the veterans, pre-post-stress. Without action to engage them, they dwell on the details of what might have been and what might yet be. They think about returning to the routine they left behind, the coming harvest a distraction. The urgency has left them as they try to recall the puzzle of seven months ago, which pieces to pick up, which to leave lie.

Challenges go unuttered, rounds unattended. Orders go unwritten, unread and unexecuted. The discipline of duty becomes more difficult with the quiet of each day. The heat siphons our energy, our vigilance, our will. Dogs of summer have replaced the dogs of war.

The grendel becomes more ephemeral each week its once powerful army remains unseen and unheard. Only the most experienced warn of its specter lurking in the miasma behind the waves of humidity. One lightning raid could see our hasty retreat to the tower keep while the remaining whites conduct a sacrificial holding action in the chapel above the gate praying for an infusion of reinforcements.

But summer beckons with blue skies and long lit evenings. Squirrels chase and frolic on the front bailey, occasionally congregating in strange conclaves. Blue jays splash through sun showers by the water gate before teaching their young to feed. Turtles scoop burrows from cool, dry sand to insulate their eggs until they hatch. Snakes entwine around each other on the flagstones like caducei.

Life breeds life, and we long to forget what follows, as eventually we should. We want to linger in each moment, each sliding instant slicing past from future like a well-stropped razor. Adrift on this languid raft, the sea carries us farther from shore with each backward wave that slowly lulls us toward midday sleep.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Rearguard

She leads the company of White Shields streaming through the open gate, dragoons reinforced by heavy lances with a reconnaissance detachment from the Bloody Reds. These are her few remaining veterans, proud wives and mothers with silver mail and graying temples. Pennants dance from our spears as we ride to harass the retreating grendel, eager for the wind in our hair and reclaimed territory beneath our feet.

We track the grendel by the swath of beaten ground his decaying legion trails behind. Cast off equipment, backpacks, shields, helmets, anything that speeds their retreat, marks the tract like discarded toys strewn along the path of a petulant child. Through the rising dust, we spy the first stragglers strung out down the road. The grendel's forces lack cohesion now, his units dissolving into clumps and clusters. We preserve the discipline of our formation, a column abreast behind a thin screen of advanced and flanking scouts. Shadowing the horde, we maintain close contact, keeping ever-present pressure from barely out of crossbow range.

As the trail descends into the enchanted forest, the scene of so much of our recent fighting, a contingent of heavily armored hemogoblins emerge to form a shield wall across the road, their flanks anchored on well-treed knolls rising to either side. These gnarled and bandy-legged monsters hiss and taunt us, raising a roar of defiance accompanied by the cadence of their falchions ringing against the rims of their tower shields.

She studies their disposition, formulating a plan of attack as our horses shy and skitter at the noise. We could feint to either side, dismount and outflank them, force them to retreat through a series of set engagements. Instead, she chooses confrontation, a battle royal to end the grendel's final organized threat. Forming her heavy cavalry behind a vanguard of dragoons, we advance upon the enemy's line in tight formation, horns and gentle voices raised in a harmonious rendition of the company's battle hymn to counter the cacophony below.

Quickening to a trot, a canter, and finally a gallop, the sound of our hooves rolls down the hills like thunder from a swiftly advancing storm. Hemogoblins brace behind their sturdy shields to receive our charge. Just before the wall, scouts and dragoons peel away to either side, thrusting their spears at any exposed faces to sow distraction. Hemogoblins untense thinking this a probe, a mere demonstration until our hidden, heavy lances crash into their slackened shields, smashing their formation. The cresting wave of steel and horseflesh sends them reeling into uncontrolled flight, easy targets for the dragoons circling back around.

Red scouts stalk the pockets of survivors with sanguine glee. For months, the hemogoblins have predated their numbers, ambushing patrols, assassinating officers, raiding the settlements where replacements gather. While our pickets will skirmish with the dispersed clans for weeks, the war band's annihilation marks an end to the conscription of widows and orphan girls to fill her Red Company's meager ranks.

Though the grendel's remaining forces have melted into the sanctuary of the forest, we celebrate the destruction of his rearguard. Laughing and singing, we return to the keep victorious.

Our revelry is broken by a waiting dispatch from a distant sister in a land of gold and honey, a fellow amazon herself besieged. We read in dismay that her walls have been breached and most of her white company slain in a delaying tactic to secure her retreat to the great donjon tower. She endures six hard days of siege before a relief force can be raised to counterattack and reclaim her fragile walls. The breaches have been bricked over, but her walls remain weakened. How we wish we could spare our veteran column to aid our sister in arms, her allies and family now also under siege. We are reduced to sending messages of solidarity, smuggling through a handful of surplus supplies, exchanging strategies and tactics hard won in the prosecution of this devastating war.

Alone or in twos, our veterans drift away to prepare themselves for the next day's ride with only the crows on the battlements continuing to laugh.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

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

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

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

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

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

Strength

As I steel myself for the next attack, I wonder where to conjure greater strength, hers as well as mine. Though her garrison remains her primary defense in this siege, they are not her sole source of strength. Even in war, strength is not measured in steel alone.

My strength comes from her. Each morning she dons a gladiator's sleeve to armor her sword arm, performing tai chi rituals to control her new condition. Each day she confronts the scars on the two visible signs of her gender, her breasts and her hair. When the former betrayed her, she pooled the latter at her feet, shearing it away before it, too, could abandon her. Every other week she faces a fresh assault with a body barely recovered from the last.

For her, strength is delivered in the dispatches of a fellow amazon besieged by a more aggressive force yet still offering words of encouragement and compassion, in hearing the tales of her adventure, in the steel in her spine when she confronts powerful mages and generals who are reluctant to press her attack.

Strength gathers with her band of sisters who laugh in the face of their shared trauma. Like marines in a bivouac, they cope with dark humor, though, unlike the few and proud, their laughter intends to heal, not to harm.

Strength arrives with the courier bearing a daily message from a childhood friend whose love and humor remain untarnished like 24-karat gold.

These are the three faces of her personal Morrigan, avatars of the triple Irish goddess of war. They are the inheritors in Boudicca, immortalized for battling the Romans first as a mother then a queen.

One day the attacks will cease, the scars will fade, the rituals will transform to rote. Her hair will again weave fire down her back. Until that day she is grateful for their voices, as am I knowing that their altos and sopranos will balance the baritones in Valhalla when shining Valkyries ride to reinforce their numbers.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Ordeal

Every culture has its rites of passage, rituals reminding people of the structure of society, transitions when responsibilities are given and accepted. In martial cultures these tests, both physical and spiritual, are designed to segregate the weak from the strong. In that uncertainty lies the strength those tested will discover as they lay the foundations of community and prepare its members for the unscripted ordeals this life may bring.

At fourteen, I was honored by my peers to enter a society known as the Order of the Arrow. No fraternity in a collegiate sense, more a brotherhood of service. Those tapped had first to endure an initiation, a ritual known as The Ordeal.

It begins in silence and darkness, a circle of fire catching when a single flaming arrow finds its mark as the stillness is broken by a lone, piercing cry. Sworn to silence, we initiates gather our scant belongings, a bedroll and a knife, and return to darkness for a mile-long march that ends in isolation as we each pass the night alone beneath the stars.

The night is cold, half a decade below freezing. But the stars, sparkling pinpoints tinged from red to blue, spatter the satin fabric of the night, forming familiar patterns to an eye trained to connect the dots, a menacing bull, a hunter, defenseless sisters seeking his protection.

By morning my breath escapes in clouds. Frost encases my bedroll. As the day ages, the icy vapor turns moist. Trees drip dew frozen motionless mere moments before.

With the pale dawn comes my first test, a paper cup of water, two matches and an egg, a warm meal should I demonstrate my skill. Some choose to forego this challenge, satisfied with raw nutrition. I lay my kindling carefully, strike it with a single match and eventually am rewarded with a hot, hard-boiled breakfast to see me through the morning. There is an allegory in the paper, which only burns where no water backs it to quench the flames.

Together, we work the weekend in silence. The tasks set to us are physical and demanding: breaking, hauling and laying sod; repairing and roofing shelters; clearing roads; blazing trails. Our goal is to improve what others need, to leave better than we found, a motto of a sort. The work warms us where the day doesn't quite. At the end of two day's labor we return to a fire where we are released as initiates and welcomed in as brothers.

The lodge meets at the cardinal points each year, gatherings called Spring Conclave, Summer Service, Fall Fellowship, Winter Ordeal. The next winter we induct new brothers as we peer behind the curtain at the scenes that gave us such wonder the year before, reliving our experience as through a second sight.

I still cherish the patches, markers reminding me of a time I was tested and flourished. That was many years before the vision quest and the fasting and the scars to help remember other whos and whens.

Her experience is different, her selection not an honor but a trial bound in numbers, one in eight and one of three. Her days are filled with ritual: pre-dawn risings, demanding tests and the readings of vital signs. And waiting, always waiting, at each stage waiting, often hurrying to wait.

Her isolation is served one hour at a time, alone between 3 to 4 a.m. Silence is sworn by the few who increase their distance day by day until they shrink and fade, the shadow of their memories dispelled by the light of those who confront their fears and remain by her side as she confronts her own.

Her first task is to reconcile uncertainty with expectation, an unknown future with what she thought would be. Her labor comes in the wounding, the healing, the wounding again without complete recovery, some wounds leaving scars that will never heal. Fatigue sets in as she never quite regains her energy between yet is forced to shoulder her burden and continue as if on a marathon trail whose markers, if not whose destination, remain in sight.

She travels in the company of sisters, some known, some strangers, some physical, some virtual but no less real. Some labor beside her as fellow initiates, others instruct beyond the veil as I know she will once this phase of her journey is complete, a destination of a sort. Some simply bear witness, gifting her a daily dose of encouragement and caring, tokens she treasures more each passing day.

Our hero, like the phoenix, must perish in order to be reborn and rise victorious in the final battle. Only in that symbolic transformation is she equipped to defeat the enemy who stands before her. That is the cycle, the pattern of the wheel as it turns a circle, never twice touching the same point as it rolls along the road. Her journey, like the wheel, moves on as she surmounts one ordeal to be confronted by another, each begetting the strength to overcome the next.

A veteran is merely a blooded warrior who has survived her first battle and maintained the ability to fight. She enters the siege a veteran, the survivor she has always been. She will exit fully fledged in her lodge, ready to pass her wisdom to the new genesis of initiates inexorably chosen to repeat her ordeal year after year.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

In the Mines

On Saturday fortnight, a wizened gnome led a team of craggy dwarves before our gate, itinerate assayers drawn to the craning engines our alchemist erects. Mercenaries, true, but discriminating, their love of gold rivaled only by their enmity for dragons, trolls, and grendel-folk.

Surveying our fortifications, they focus first on the mortar bonds between the fieldstones of the gates, walls and towers, inspecting every joint, ensuring none has crumbled. Eventually, they declare the structures sound, but offer a gem of experience: grendels tend to burrow. Though our foundation appears solid, to their eyes it is full of fractures, veins and subsurface ducting that leave it vulnerable to mining, a perennial of siege. The surface war, while important, will be lost if the grendel undermines our defenses.

This diminutive quartet has a nose for minerals, scenting a thin, quartz fault beneath the overburden, just there within the wall. A trio of test wells are sunk from the sub-basement of each tower. Technetium is poured and traced through every fissure, cleft and crack. We descend the darkness by knotted rope and ladder, delving deep within hidden chambers, spiral stairways, sumps, and crystal caverns, mighty halls to these mountain kings. Finally, we stand at the heart of the stronghold's granite core.

Listening, they each press an ear to a different wall, attuned to the muffled ring of steel striking stone like hammer upon anvil at the distant center of a malignant forge. In silence we watch as they cock their heads first one way, then another, conferring in low tones between, then moving on until the entire castle rock has been assayed. Only after several more whispered moments do they declare the rock is strong, that no mining has begun. But they warn us to prepare the shafts for countermines deep within the fortress, a precaution.

Within the matrix they scatter arcane instruments, invasion drums that amplify the sounds of chisels so even our ears can hear the booming, a multi-headed dragon jar that indicates the direction of subterranean activity by dropping a pebble from one of its many mouths. The venerable gnome warns us not to tarry underground. Trolls lurk in ambush along dead-end tunnels, feeding on ignorance and isolation. Grendels derive power from the silence and the dark. We deny them victory by taking our place among the living, by interacting with life, not dwelling in the cold places beneath the earth.

Ascending a twisted stair, we emerge on the back bailey near the water gate. We read with the cats in the warm spring sun, watching as blue jays splash in a knotwork basin surrounded by blooms of lavender, pink and white, a monument to the familiar friend whose radiance guides us through the darkness, glad for any companions who choose to wander by.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Griffin

Events settle within me like silt in cloudy water: stillness eventually reveals clarity. Waiting for the port to open, I survey our camp in the quietude of morning.

Through the mist many banners are obscured by distance. Others are withdrawn, allowing us peace while their owners wrestle with private shadows of this conflict. A few remain close and visible in the gray half-light: a coiled dragon, always welcome; a buffalo and crossed hammers beneath which several tents cluster; two bright, pink pennons looped atop banner-staves, signs of solidarity in sorority.

Above me hangs the most familiar banner, my banner, adopted as her own, a black griffin rampant on a field of gold. Half eagle, half lion, all razor talons, claws and beak, a fierce ally were hers a strictly a mythic fight. In the pre-dawn silence it is difficult not to become superstitious, attempting to read meaning into random events to make sense of the cold, sometimes cruel, pattern to this life. At times for solace, we are reduced to seeking omens, divinations of the direction this struggle might take, holding onto them like lovers in the night. By day, we scour the sky for talismans, raptors, her touchstone in difficult times. They favor us on every journey.

Mornings, osprey line light poles like soldiers at attention awaiting her review, or like sentinels guarding the causeway home. As we enter the bastion of a lab, one slews above its canopied entrance then drifts around a corner out of sight, its cries for a mate still piercing the sky.

Evenings, we catch the brown and amber hues of hawks, red-tails, red-shouldered, others whose names only she can recite. Some larger, some smaller, all are restless, lighting upon a wire only a moment before taking wing again, transient, migratory blessings.

At noon occasionally eagles glide the air, white heads and tails flashing, eyes hunting, their mere presence driving lesser birds from their demesne. They lend her their bold nobility, their strength and vigilance, signs that give her hope.

Another bird seems drawn to her as well. Crows follow, collecting like unpenitent Black Friars, gossiping like Poor Clares fallen from their vows, haunting our trees then darkening our skies with their laughter. In numbers they pay little heed to raptors, harassing hawks and osprey, even the lone eagle for sport. Tricksters of the Americas rather than their European counterparts presaging death or defeat, they point to our folly of setting a future in our minds and naming it a birthright, cackling at our outrage when life's pattern intervenes.

In the past weeks, both our hero's wings have been clipped. Once healed, she will rise again to flight, scattering their mocking murder like the mythic beast fluttering on her banner overhead.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Interlude

Something from while we were waiting this morning. Last one like this for a while. Thanks for indulging me.

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Over the weekend we wandered out into the park to relax and reconnect. Here are my impressions of the day.

Veiled sun sparkling intermittently off the crests of ripples raised by paddling waterfowl. A brighter swath as silver rays blossom beneath heavy gray clouds. Close to shore reflections dapple until bright spots spatter across the dark reflections of trees like spring rain upon the water.

The bright green of grass and oaks interspersed with darker pines above dark water contrast with the hints of blue peering through the white and gray above. Sandstone buildings blend human structure to nature.

Herons stalk the shore. Loose sprinklings of marsh hens hold station effortlessly against a warm, light breeze. Flocks of crows laugh in transit south to north. Mallards take wing on a long practice circuit around the fringes of the lake. Turkey buzzards soar without stirring a wing. A red-tail hawk cruising low, hunting shadows of bass lurking beneath the edges of yellow-green lily pads. A bald eagle circling high, surveying his domain with approval.

We swing lazily back to forth and back again watching kayakers part the scattered flock of marsh hens as they paddle around the lake. A new mother and infant lounge in the shade of the shore enjoying a warm spring-like picnic. Bocce bowlers seek the next intriguing impromptu court for their lightly clacking sport. Joggers, walkers and riders circuit quietly through the landscape. Couples absorb one another like sun in winter sheltered beneath pavilions.

Memories of beauty immersed in a few hours of living. Remember to live the moment.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Eve of Battle

Weapons have been sharpened, supplies have been laid in. Karen's mandated fast for clarity has almost begun. Now is the waiting time.

Were we a physical company, one with a physical camp, I would be performing a ritual I've performed many times before, wandering from fire to fire in the dark, burning restless energy by reassuring those who were apprehensive about the morning, accepting the conversation and reassurances of those who thought I might need them.

Then I was not responsible for the another, merely a leader elected by my peers, the anxiety of the morning the outcome of a competition, nothing of lasting consequence. Tonight, perhaps there would be a pair of us wandering. Or perhaps I would be sitting with Karen by a fire as others wandered by, reassuring both her and me as has been done through the exchange of electronic messages these past several days.

But we are only a virtual company, so tonight is somewhat different, harder in a way. This is my wandering, my burning of energy in anticipation of the dawn.

Three battles with the dragon have been laid upon our hero, one physical, another magical, the final alchemical. Tomorrow is the first time Karen enters the dragon's lair. The morning brings a physical battle, the battle of steel. This battle is the easiest, the most direct. In this one the dragon will be carved from its lair and slain without a doubt.

Naming it a dragon may be granting it too much power. If it is a dragon, it is a small one, not the white, English dragon of St. George or the red dragon of Wales. This is but a small, young thing, Grendel's mother as an adolescent girl, a thing easily vanquished by razor steel if our vision is correct. Unmolested, it would grow into a powerful beast in time. Time is an ally we mean to deny it. Its fertility is more in question than its survival, its eggs a greater threat.

Tomorrow we cast a divination to reveal whether this dragon is attempting to spawn a reptilian brood. A simple sentinel will be interjected into our story, a clockwork mage to alert us if the perimeter has been breached. If the alarm is raised, the eggs will be excised in the lymph chambers where they lay.

Those eggs will the goal of Karen's second entry into this cavern, this time armed with a potent spell for a battle of magic. An enfeebling ray, a word of power that stuns or kills when repeated like a mantra, egg by egg, so that no future grendels grow to hatch. But that encounter is weeks farther down this road during which Karen will have time to heal from the wounds she will sustain in the morning, however minor they might be. That battle will be one of endurance, a fatiguing day-by-day affair, a campaign of weeks rather than mere hours.

The third battle, if required, mandates the greatest power and, as such, the greatest ally. Before that encounter, we will seek out a powerful alchemist, one who can brew us a deadly potion potent enough to seek out and destroy any remaining eggs no matter how deep in the cave they have been secreted. But that is another battle, weeks distant, one we need not prepare for now, one we may never need to fight if tomorrow augers well.

Those are my musing by this electronic fire as Karen chats with kindred spirits online, stroking her familiar cats. The ethereal voices give her comfort. Soon, it's time for sleep: our day begins before the dawn.

I will send out an update tomorrow once we're home and settled.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III

Message 1

A brief preamble: You are the people who have asked to be kept informed of what is going on with Karen. I'm not sure this message will be the norm or how many like it will follow. Certainly, there will be information-only messages and updates, the less fanciful, normal traffic you might expect.

Karen reminded me this morning to write, just to put pen to paper and see what came out. For those who don't know me well, this is how I cope, by writing, reshaping reality with metaphor, carving understanding in allegory. For those not comfortable with my analogies, nearly every work of fiction, however mundane, uses much the same structure and many of the same terms. But ignore that man behind the curtain.

Most people who write about cancer and treatment portray it as a journey, a path none take willingly but many find themselves stumbling along. Me, I see Karen and I as starting out on an adventure. Not the "company of companions out to save the world" variety of more successful writers than myself, more the hero cycle of myth and legend, a classic quest. Some dark and chaotic lich lord has laid a geas upon my wife, setting her a task, a dragon to be slain as it nests in its dark, deep cave awaiting the hatching of its evil brood.

In this casting, Karen is the hero, the central figure, the focus. She is the Celtic warrior queen, the Norse shield-maiden, the Greek amazon in a classical, left-handed sense. This is her quest. Regardless of the guidance we give her and protective spells we weave around her, the final battle is hers and hers alone. This victory, like most, requires intelligence and endurance as much as or more than sheer strength.

I enter as her sidekick, her constant companion, in my case part warrior, part minor mage and not a small part pickpocket and thief, one not above fighting dirty to win, with sharp knives in the dark if necessary. The one who won't leave her side, the one who always guards her back. A Norse skald, a Celtic bard. The one who commits her deeds to paper and, hopefully not literally (for you and me), to song.

Among other roles to be cast are mentors and guardians, shield men and spear carriers, heralds, companions, confidants, perhaps the odd minstrel to be eaten later, each as important as the other. Along the way there will be side adventures, dead ends, ambushes, backtracks, switchbacks, distractions, danger, anxiety and boredom, a lot of anxiety and boredom. Unlike the heroes of screen and page, we don’t have the luxury of skimming past the parts where we're hungry, cold, wet and alone on the road listening to unidentified predators snuffling through the last of our food outside the tent that partially collapsed two hours before in the wind and rain, the bulk of what real-life adventures are made of. That and blisters.

Not all who set out with us will arrive at the destination. This I understand from experience: people, unlike characters, have their own lives, their own crises, their own adventures to face. More will join us along the way, some we've never met before, others long away. All are welcome for as long as they are able to stay.

As with all adventures, we begin by gathering equipment, stocking supplies for uncertain days ahead. With our focus elsewhere, we prepare as if for extended absence or siege. There is rarely time to shop or complete even minor repairs once the ravening hordes encamp outside your door. We settle the house in a way reminiscent of both anticipating a trip and preparing for a hurricane short of locking the doors and boarding the windows. From basics to specialized equipment, pastimes to quick and simple meals, we try to anticipate our needs on the road ahead.

Before setting out into unfamiliar territory, we consult a variety of sages, fellow adventurers, rumor mongers, mercenaries, artisans, apothecaries and cartographers hoping to discover the lay of the terrain, the trials to be faced, the obstacles to be overcome. We consult tomes, some well thumbed, others quite dusty, in search of a weakness in our enemy, perhaps the incomplete portion of a map. Divinations in the form of lab tests are cast, bribes as co-payments are paid, drinks in chatrooms are bought to loosen reluctant tongues.

Armed with knowledge, good portents, a sharp knife and a stout walking stick, we armor ourselves for this long, perhaps dangerous path, dressing for both comfort and protection, shielding ourselves behind both hide and mail, remembering comfortable shoes. After all, the journey of the thousand miles begins beneath our feet.

I hope you walk with us a while.

© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III