The Frontier and the Farmstead

We knew each other by the light of the eyes. In fact, before we'd even had a chance to observe such an intimate element of expression, we could have told each other by pace, posture, even direction. I walked on the road up from Hect to Posst, and she on the road down from Posst to Hect. Inevitably, we passed for it was the same road.

The light in the sky had gone yellow a good long while previously and now eased into medium grey on its way to a full-bodied darkness. The woman and I had seen each other on our respective horizons as dark flecks stretching into speck-silhouettes and gradually becoming figures. It had been a journey of steps, one after the other, just as described in Wisdom: a repeated motion so tedious that the mind drifted above the slave body and let it work, taking its own smooth course via memories intrusive, futures built of hope and assumption, images delineated by clouds painted large upon the sky and the treetops and the birds.

We met without imperative or plan, without even knowing the other's name, outside the small village of Tarn. I looked at her with the gaze of a man who seeks rest and repast. She looked at me with the scorn of a woman who'd keep walking till she wore the leather off the soles of her shoes, but in me she recognised an opportunity, and in her I recognised someone much younger, perhaps by only seven summers, but still much, much younger.

'Excuse me, miss. Do you know of any good hostelries in this village? I have walked all day, and now the sun's molten gold ebbs on the low horizon,' I asked the woman.

'Alas, sir, I do not. Indeed, I had not planned on quitting before the night might have earned the right to call itself so.'

'If you do not know the way, I suggest you repair for the night. Bandits have the advantage from dusk till dawn, and the road is in poor condition once one is east of the great forest.'

'Your words are smooth, young master. I hope they are not searching for anything of their own kind in me.'

'Miss, I seek four small luxuries: nourishment, water, repose and cordiality. Perhaps you would be cordial with me. In return, you will approached less often by rough persons if we join together in fellowship.'

'I have no fear of rough persons!'

'I would not suggest that you did. Nonetheless, the boor can vex an honest soul.'

'And you would gallantly save me such a trial?'

'Gladly.'

'It is a fair trade.'

We went then and found a house from which the low thump and grumble of men met our ears. It was adequately lit, and I thought I spied a house girl through a small, thick square of glass. The door yielded when I put my hand upon it, and we entered. The wind and percussion of the house persisted, but I saw eyes come out from their resting places and go back in again, and I knew that behind some such reciprocations lay contingencies. Thus I escorted the young lady to a well-positioned corner where our fellow travellers might be watched.

'So you have quit the frontier,' whispered my companion once two plates of meat and two cups of ale had been placed between us.

'Just as the rose clouds grow dull in the sky tonight, so sets the sun on my dream of a good life in the badlands.'

'Making good from bad? Sir, I pray you do not put yourself to drawing fresh water from the privy in this house.'

I felt a blush that could have blossomed into fury, but instead I delighted in her boldness. A spirit with no flame cannot set the frontier ablaze, and only fire could purify that place.

'It must seem that a mild man speaks to you in this candlelight, but I assure you I was hard as leather and quick as a whip. I meant to rule that lawless land and always assumed I would win.'

'What stayed your hand?' she asked, chin resting on fist, eyes aglow.

'What stayed my hand? It was Wisdom that failed me.'

'What wisdom can you mean? I had not thought to find wisdom amid the snakes and scorpions of the borderlands.'

I had thought so long of the Wisdom of the Extraordinary that it took me aback to find my young companion knew nothing of the world inside my soul.

'What they tell you when you mean to let your own blood to purify the festering hearts of others. Colatus wasn't built in a summer. Many a skeck makes a skondle.'

'Do you mean to tell me that these trite words put a cap on your flame?'

'No words assured or diverted my course, but there is something in a word that is not a word.'

'A breath,' reflected she.

'Aye, in the old tongue, a pneuma. And that is what you reach for when your ears are hungry for Wisdom. You add the breath of others to your own wind. They say, "Forge your own fortune", "Set sight upon the stars, and fall no lower than the mountains." and you gather it all up and send it blowing through you.'

'Do you tell me that the winds of wisdom failed you?'

'Some winds are gyres, and some Wisdom chases only its own hind.'

I did not speak of the dens of greedy men serving a smaller number of even greedier men. I did not speak of how one must meet the demands of the greediest of men to even spend a moment with a girl. I did not tell her how my spirit was caught on the beauty of one such youth, and how I sought and sought to free her, but she did want for freedom and, in the end, I put my silver into the hard hands that knew the key to her cage, and that is where the Wisdom of the Extraordinary carried me, to that low, dark vale.

'It is my own story in its way,' she offered.

I almost retched to think of this good heart in any manner associated with the night when corruption took hold of me.

'What in the blazes do you mean?'

'Well, sir. I do not mean to impose my worthless reflections upon you.'

'No, I apologise. Please continue.'

'Very well. I meant to recount that where I come from, a gyre is a blessing for it is a cycle like a day or a year. Those winds that cross the cycle bring - I mean brought us itinerants who stayed the summer, worked for broth and bread and slept in the barn until those same winds blew them on to other farmsteads, other townships. We neither respect nor trust those whose pneuma doesn't bring them back around as the cycle of the year lifts the frost and ripens the crop.'

'I was raised and lived all my life in a town before I went to the edge. I have never lived in such rural idylls. What of the Wisdom in a land of pleasant cycles?'

'Not so pleasant, sir. Not for one like me. But all the same, the wisdom in such lands is a repeating music with such verses as "Scope before you spring", "Better intact than in tragedy."'

'Ah, they are beautious!'

'They are wretched!' she scowled, '"Mend the rail, and save the fence," "An egg in the pot is worth ten in the nest!"'

She spat out these words which I found so lovely with such contempt that I could hear the untold tale of a wildflower stretching up from seed and opening its flower in the hedgerow of a distant pasture. I felt I could see a spirit that so naturally soared toward the horizon that being forced to walk around in circles made it stumble over its own boots. I imagined an escape from a high window at midnight. I envisioned beatings meant to tame a wild spirit but only rinsing it with sorrow briefly. The Wisdom of the Ordinary, which made my eyes soft and my lips part in longing, to her was a pleasant childhood song so oft repeated that it hardened into the walls of a prison. I could not know really without her telling me, but I was sure hers was such a story, if not in its details then of that ilk.

'And so now you go on to the badlands.'

'I do,' she affirmed, and in the grate of the hostelry, coals were turned to show their white hot cores, but I felt the heat of them from much nearer.

'Then I will do two things for you. First, take my sword. You will need it, and I will not as I have silver enough for a ploughshare.'

'That is very kind, but I can accept no gifts, so I trade my key for your sword. It is the key to my cottage named Windflower in the village of Sop, a half day's walk from Posst.'

'Very well. It is a good trade.'

'And the second thing.'

'I offer you no wisdom, not a shred of advice, only my hope that you succeed where I failed.'

'I offer you the same and wish the same for you,' she replied.

The following morning we broke our fasts early and left the hostelry together. She felt the weight of the sword and looked at the sky, and I felt the shape of the key and murmured 'Windflower' over and over in my heart. And then we parted. She walked on the road from Posst to Hect, and I walked on the road from Hect to Posst, and we sighted one another never again for it was the same road.