REVISED EDITION of THE GREEN MAN of DESTINY — Part 1
Green Man/9: Thirst
Dueling with Death
[Warning: PTSD memories of a short scene of physical torture.]
Not much water, he stumbled against his thoughts.
He knew he would have to find another source. No one from the Gusha had been out this far. Search for signs of small oases as his father and the One taught. He decided to stay the night where he stood.
“Please guide me Green Man” he whispered in his shattered, cracked voice at dawn.
By midday he was asleep, napping in and out of the highest heat of the afternoon sun.
After the light, he ate a bit of the green cake with water in it. He would take no water from the skin now, he decided.
The stars spread out, jewels against the black. They winked and sparkled at him.
After a moment of disorientation, he located the North Star. It was the right path. He remembered the old songs about a lush paradise. A place where harmony wove through mountains, rivers, streams, watersheds, and trees. Green grasses waving in breezes over vast plains — clouds in the sky every day. A body of water huge like the desert. It was difficult for Gren to imagine these wonders, for no one he knew had ever seen such magnificence. The songs told of this, and of the Green Man who would bring the old forest back where now — only desert. Story and song told of the trees of the first forest that were miles high. Gren listened as the voices and the songs of his younger days drifted through him.
The snap of nighttime cold bit into his face and body. The choice now was to stay beneath the Spirit Coat or to move on. He thought about his water supply and decided to gather all the stores together and go into the night. The songs of the First Passage filled his chest and warmed his heart against the flint cold of the night.
Sunrise revealed an expanse of sand that sparkled. It was a sliver of sand in the bizarre white gleam. The salt flat. It seemed without end. He searched his mind for stories to help him as he persuaded his feet into the heat of day. His great-grandfather had encountered sand such as this far to the south. A hard surface and easy to walk upon. One could not dig into it for cover. In the daytime, the heat reflecting from it could make water boil. The great-grandfather had told a story of the wind that had cooled his face and body. How the wind blew him into the air like a bird and transported him to a one-tree oasis. He had dug into the sand to be cool and found water.
Water … Gren became delirious with a waking dream of water.
Dream water flowed into the cavern and out into the other world beyond the veil of his sleepwalking. He traveled along its surface through the Gusha. The underground cavern appeared. And into the light of the marsh and the Great Green Forest where the rivers rushed. Its sound was the sustained sound of his aunts and all the ancient family crones shushing him all at once. This delirious stumbling carried him to distant lands. All sorts of beings — strange little people and big ones too — rushing past him faster as he flowed with the river.
How long he had walked over the hard surface of the salt flat? He couldn’t remember. The water skin — empty, dry. Was it the day before or the day before that day? He tried to think in the cool of the night as he strode still further north and west. The days were filled with intense heat. The Spirit Coat gave some strange insulation against it. But only if he found his spot before the sun rose. On this new sand of salt, the ground never cooled completely. During the day as he huddled within the great coat, he could feel the waves of heat rising all around him. Sweat rolled off his body from the sun’s rise to near its setting.
How many days? he asked his brain, which fluttered at the question, at a thought stuttering through his body.
Only habit kept him walking northward and west without hope of ever seeing a mountain or a forest — one more pace. One more leg swinging in front of the other. On and on. Too much, one part of himself called out to another. The core of him forced him on northwards and west, night after night. He longed for the return of the soft tan of the cold desert floor. Enough of the continuous white, which seemed almost to glow at night. In the beginning, he had been so excited to have reached this flat spot, the hard packed surface. It walked easy, his stride was long. He was confident, yet he knew to pace himself. After the appearance of the moon there was water aplenty. He suspected it was the crystalline staff that had transformed the water in this way. The sweet idea of water turned foul and salty in his mouth. When the moon waned and a darkness oozed from the sky, despair hung close to him and colored part of his thinking. The scant remaining water kept him from the consuming thoughts of despair. The remaining water in its sack grew thin and diminished in the dark sky.
The two of him. The one who conserved water almost to the point of collapse. The one who drank too much when drinking became inevitable. In the second waning of the moon and the salt flat stretching ever onwards, all the water ended. He could not place the waxing moon in his clouded memory.
His skin dried and withered like the skin of the eldest of the crones in the Gusha. He squeezed handfuls of the green cake for moisture until even the cakes dried. Even great-grandmother’s empty water sack was bone dry inside. Only the water in his Spirit coat remained. And not much of that remained. His memory grew fuzzy and clouded in confusion. As he continued each night toward the northwest, his pace weakened and slowed.
One night, soon after the sun had collapsed out of the sky, when he rose to walk he could not. After only a few paces he fell into a heap against the hot salt floor. His breathing; labored. A phrase welled up within him and eked out as a thought: Can’t go on. He heard his voice speaking to himself — the stranger. A withered boy stretched against the glowing white salt bed.
Then sleep took him down into the Well of Darkness.
None of his people had ever dared to go to this place. All feared it. Even among the bravest of the Tradition of the Eight, bragged about the well. None had done so and lived. Only the One and others of his line had been able to approach the Well of Darkness. The One whom Gren had known had penetrated through the layers of the Well close to its core. The first layer was known to all. The first and second rites of initiation. Everyone had some experience of the first layer. The second layer was the truth in the core of one’s being. To see that was the first step to entering the lineage of the One.
Gren’s transition through the first layer was almost effortless. These were the Monsters of the Light and Dark. Monsters of Shadow that guarded the first light of truth. Brazen, Gren pierced this and stood on the other side of the river. He looked down a line of withered trees and strewn boulders. Beyond he stared into the churning cloud of darkness He strode down the slope with care. He wound the way among the boulders to the edge of the second field of darkness. A wave of power struck his face, lifted his body, and threw him backward into one of the gnarled trees. The cracking branches cushioned his fall.
He remembered.
He awoke from the dream field, in the salt flat in the night, still hearing the sound of a shrill scream. When he looked back a pull seized him into the jaws of death. Anguished pangs of body pain and terror roared at him. In him.
His Spirit floated above the men he knew. From an unfolding memory, he watched as black-hooded men of the Tradition of the Eight. They made incisions in his back and placed small hot, glowing spheres of ore into his young flesh.
The screams were his screams.
Horror rattled and choked him.
Next chapter (awaiting publication):
Green Man/10: The End, or…
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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
Thank you editors all for you work. I am grateful to you.