REVISED EDITION

Green Man of Destiny/6 Desert’s Anvil

Moorings of the Past Dissolve in the Desert’s Heat

The moon as my guide, he thought, and with care he re-packed the sack. He pulled the cords up around his shoulders and wrapped the Spirit Coat snug. He hefted the crystalline staff in his right hand. And marched northwest through the bone-crushing chill, under a waning moon.

He forgot the discomfort of the cold. It chiseled against his clothing and threatened to brittle his bones. His breathing reached husky proportions for a boy, as he settled into the pace in the sand and salt. With vigor he strode, drinking nothing all night. Near daybreak, when the moon had set, he stopped to gaze at the distance. He took the last remnants of water from the pouch Great Grandmother had given him. His nose to the bag, he sensed more moisture there and decided to save it in the pouches of the Spirit Coat.

“At this hour, the desert is darkest. I remember father always saying this. It is the coldest, the One has said,” Gren remembered aloud the words of his mentors. He settled onto the sand, pulled the Spirit Coat up around his neck, and waited. He was dozing as the sun spilled up from its place in the east. Climbed into the sky but soon woke with its heat striking against his face as a hammer against an anvil.

Rousing himself, he pulled the Spirit Coat over his head. Propped it up like a tent, curled up inside its coolness, and drifted into the world of sleep and the dreamtime.

A green forest sparkled in a reflecting pool. Inside the pool was the face of a woman. He did not know her name. A breeze disturbed the mirrored surface, then stilled. He stared into the pool again. There she was now, but younger, a girl. He looked up to see the girl. She shimmered. The pool, reflection, and forest, dissolved in the burning sun of the desert heat.

He screamed against it, but no sound came from his cracked lips. The sound of the scream instead ripped from the earth below. The ground shook and rumbled. The shuddering of the earth rattled the bones in his head. The ground began to split, gashes opening into orifices that sucked sand into the body of the earth. Rocks and ledges shoved upwards, releasing jets of hot water. All the ghosts of all the trees breathed fire. Buried in the ground the fire roared out of the gut of the earth. Seeds born of fire flung out over the lands. Dormant.

He was awake and alert. He could feel the heat come over him in waves and his stomach rebelled. He opened the Spirit Coat to see whether the desert was on fire. It was the setting sun he felt, its orange-red light drilling into the coat. He squinted against the light as he watched it go. Gren’s belly craved food, but he chose instead to walk with the light of the moon.

Gren stood and wrapped the Spirit Coat around his waist and neck. He tied it in, and moved northward, waiting for the waxing moon to rise as a guide. As it rose he paused to take water, then continued on his way. The energy of his family filled his step, as he tried to imagine the forests that he thought lay beyond the desert. The steadiness of the One focused his intention on the present. His step held him focused on forward movement. The cold hand of the night seized his throat, trying to paralyze his lungs, he continued his steps. To keep alert he focused on the stars in the sky, spread over him like the sparks of the One’s fire. This alone kept him warm as he walked, crunching over the coarse sand and salt beneath his feet.

He thought of the smiling light of the mists. His heart stirred as he remembered the small girl. She peeped out from her mother’s skirt, who had danced in the mists and puffs of sand or nomads on a distant horizon. Everything in his memory shifted and blended.

Vague feelings ran alongside him as he remembered Silken coming to him, hazy, as if in a dream. Quick envelopment in a place so warm and delicious that he thought he would never want to leave. Delirious with recalling pleasures of the flesh, of eating, bathing in a pool of water, and the deep green of the wood. Gren fell into a somnolent stagger. He was moving in the right direction. But ready for change whichever way the wind blew. Through the night he wandered in the void of loneliness. Indistinct memories rose and fell.

His mind was steady through the night, and he rested in the heat of the day, and the night again. He tracked the days, moving the leather-thonged peg down the marker at the top of the One’s crystalline staff. He counted, using the exercises his father had given him to keep his mind steady and fixed on the goal. Half-whispered stories about those had attempted and failed rose from the desert. Only one or two had returned from the wastelands farther out. Many had told of the hill of bones where humans had collapsed and died — rotted and crumbled into a field of dust. Death. He shuddered against the thought, shivering with cold in the night and prostrated by the sun in the day. His youth and his resolve protected him from deeper fears as he marched on. Hope, he thought. How to avoid the field of bones.

On the eleventh day, dust devils appeared on the remote horizon at dawn and sunset. By the thirteenth day, six to ten small whirlwinds were dancing along the whitening sands. Gren worried as they grew closer. They seemed to be alive. He thought of speaking to them but decided to conserve the moisture in his body.

In the heat of day, asleep enveloped in the Spirit Coat, he startled awake. A whirlwind danced around his shoulder, howling with laughter and mocking him.

You …. You are a fool, sent by this Tradition of yours that based on fibble-fabble long ago distorted. There is no Green Man, only the one you invent and project from your mind! The whirlwind laughed and swirled away, flinging sand in his face.

He awoke to his waking. The dream had spoken.

What could it mean? he wondered with his wakened mind. Could it be that there is no Green Man?

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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.

(If you do NOT wish to be tagged, let me know, and I’ll tag you not):

Barbara Murray | 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 | Marcus aka Gregory Maidman | Alison Hollingsead