REVISED EDITION of THE GREEN MAN of DESTINY — Part 1

Green Man 20: Poisoned Expanse

The Stench of the Pools

The Previous Chapter

The ancient gods who had constructed these pools had created a narrow path between them. In preparation, he had wrapped his mouth and nose with swath cloth and squeezed a bit of uru fat around his eyes. This left him enough vision to see no more than fifteen feet ahead, but it afforded his eyes some protection.

Gren walked forward. His fear said, Run! but he controlled the fear. He walked all day until there was no more light, and rested in the dark. After a very short time, he noticed a faint light, a glow rising from the pools. He decided to move on, going as far as he could by the available light, and then resting. He couldn’t predict when the wind would make the stench from the ground unbearable. In this land, Wind did not hear his voice, so he could not see it coming as sometimes he had done long ago in the desert. Gren hadn’t been completely accurate in his wind predictions, so his father had chosen not to believe him at all. This taught Gren to keep his visions to himself. He suspected that his father liked the drama of rushing before the storms.

On the morning of the second day, the fumes from the pools were overwhelming, and he had to stop. Exhausted from the trek he pulled the Spirit Coat around himself. He looked at the uru fat his aunt had given him — much more than he could want, he had thought at the time. He had thought to dump it immediately to lighten his load, but something had stopped him. Many considered uru fat a delicacy, but Gren found it disagreed with his digestion. It had become essential. He washed his face and eyes with reclaimed water from his Spirit Coat. He smeared uru fat on the inside of the swathing and his upper and lower eyelids. When he closed his eyes they were completely protected by the fat, and he slept a deep sleep.

He saw the Green Man in a lush forest pregnant with water. The Green Man was old and, although he seemed lost and sad, every sick plant or tree he passed healed itself. The plants seemed happy. The old Green Man seemed not to know this, nor to remember himself.

In another dream Gren awoke to see the Green Man restored to his vigor. His green eyes looked into Gren’s eyes. Was he searching for something?

It was dawn.

Gren peered out of the coat to the east. Under a large hat of dark cloud cover, the sun shone at the horizon. A sense of urgency overcame him.

“Hurry slowly,” the One had said once.

He took a deep breath. He removed his swath and cleaned it. He washed his eyes and reapplied fat to the swath cloth and to his eyes. He applied a small amount to his exposed parts — ears, hair, and hands. Then he stood, pulling the coat up over his shoulders and tying it to his waist. He took up the staff and went forward, the rising sun at his back. After less than an hour, the sun obscured by cloud cover, and Gren was grateful. The steady humidity was neither cold nor hot, pleasant nor unpleasant. The air mirrored the neutral state he cultivated within.

Step by step he walked on, and the humidity became irritating. He came to the path fashioned by the ancient Gods. He recognized posts and railings like those he had seen at the governor’s house in the Gusha. These rails — fashioned from metal, were not wood. The path shimmered. The visible and invisible transposed over one another. They alternated in the same space and time. Fashioned by Gods? Gren wondered. He dropped to one knee to make prayers. And asked Great Spirit how to proceed to protect against this magic.

The rectangular pools made into squares, circles, and other odd shapes lay in the path ahead. At first, the thought of walking over small noxious pools terrified him, and his mind and body froze. He forced himself to breathe and be calm inside. Calm, he looked out at this shimmering path that stretched into a blur on the horizon. It amazed Gren that under the overcast sky, the path shone with great luminescence. With fierce intent, he stared at the pools ahead to understand their magic.

It came to him: he saw what he had missed. He saw only as the spaces and the shimmering of the materials in the light, now appeared as a square grid of metal. The path appeared now as a solid grid-like structure. It seemed to go on forever. The magic shimmering changed to flat grey as fast as blowing out a lantern.

He raised his foot and lowered it onto the grid. It vibrated like a bell, echoing into the future. Were there beings chained in this path? His second footfall sounded with a tone different from the first. With each footfall on the metal grid, the being or beings sang back to him. He ran, listening to his steps singing beneath him. He looked out over the pools that now appeared as crystalline clear water without odor.

He ran and laughed in the dank air, freed from noxious odors by the speed of his gait, aware of feelings of death. He imagined that he was laughing at death along with the ancient beings. He ran and ran until exhaustion and the light failed. Several miles farther on he came to a second path that intersected his east-west journey. He felt his way through the dim light. It was a few hundred feet to the crossing of the paths. He collapsed inside his Spirit Coat, and dove into the abyss of sleep.

It was a fitful sleep of jerking limbs and shooting pains. His deep cries echoed across the strange landscape. He awoke before dawn under the cap of clouds, with pain in his hips.

Run, was the impulse. The walkway clanked in the endless maze of pools cascading out beyond eyesight. Midday — he rested. Breathless and dizzy with hopelessness.

Days of running slipped into nights of shouting trances. After the last of the light was blotted out, a glow appeared in the distance. The glow fascinated him and seemed to draw him toward it, walking through the night on the catwalk. He noticed that it pulsed like an undulating heartbeat. The light, irregular like a wounded uru dying in the desert sun, he longed for the clean expanse. The stench permeated his nostrils and filled his head with noise. He ran down the days and into the nights. The glow came to resemble strong moonlight.

One day, blinking, he found he could see the catwalk in two different ways. One way it seemed a constructed walkway, stretching out in tired monotony. In another way, he saw the shiny ribbon of light winding out into the distance. Strange gaps appeared. The shiny ribbon fell flat into nothingness and glittered again.

At night the undulating glow, whose center appeared to be in the northwest, was intense at its source. Bright as the sun. Gren tried not to look at it. Too far away, it was. The brightness and the pulsing gave him a sense of trepidation about this god. Which meant it was no god, he thought. His forward progress was smooth and unimpeded. Gren did not stop to ask about it from within. In the day he ran in bursts. Sprinted along the metal path. Winded beyond endurance he stopped. His lungs stung and his breath labored. Still, he pushed through the knife edge of this pain. He longed for the clean expanse of sand. I did not know the sand was so good compared to this.

Gren was running fast in the morning. Stopped short as if by a giant hand. He stumbled forward through a corroded gap on the path. Gren landed on a hard, gruel-like sand-turned-to-stone that abraded his skin. It ripped open his flesh. He dragged himself under the grating of the catwalk. He tended to his wounds, rubbing the last of his healing herbs into the flesh to stop the bleeding.

He gathered his Spirit Coat around him, using the broken parts of the path as support, and rested. There he slept in fits and starts through three cycles of day and night. On the third cycle, the sun broke through, as if its bright orb had burnt a hole in the clouds, and hammered down upon him. He felt grateful for the change. The sun — dried the mixture of oozing blood and herbs and helped form a scab. He began to sweat and felt impaled on the spot, unable to move.

The clouds returned by mid-morning. The heat had activated the stench of the surrounding pools. Vapors rose and sliced through his skin and the newly scabbed wounds. He cried out against the knives of these ancient ghosts. The grey sand of the ground hardened like a potter. The hardened ground — useless for protection. In the agony of re-opened wounds, he screamed. He managed to get under the Spirit Coat.

“Oh Great Spirit, help me,” he murmured. His guttural moans seemed to comfort him as he fell into a deeper trance.

When he awoke the small bird with wings that blurred spoke to him in his mind. Great Spirit has sent me to you. See the golden sparkled field of light I have woven ‘round you?

You are a bird, not a bug, Gren realized in thought to this tiny bird.

May I give you sweet liquid from my beak? It will freshen you. The bird thought in Gren’s mind.

Am I mad? Or not?

Yes, I accept your gift. Gren thought to the bird.

Next Chapter:

Green Man 21: Hurtled

Contents:

Thank you for joining me in the hero’s adventures across a dying planet ready for resurrection through the ways of alchemical magic. And in search of the Being to restore the world to greenery once again.

Blessings, Passion, and Grace on your journey. May whatever or whomever you looking for — find you.

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K. Pearson Bradley | Rebecca Romanelli | Joseph Lieungh | Dr. Preeti Singh | Pene Hodge | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Kris Bedenian | Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀 | Blaine Coleman | Lee David Tyrrell | DL Nemeril | David Price | Rip Parker | Annelise Lords | Libby Shively McAvoy | Alison Hollingsead | Bruno T. | Vlad Casian