DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
He had chosen the old ways. He with no name. He with a name once, though never scribed, though never etched, so ever forgotten.
The old ways were this: Leave. Remember. Return. Forget.
He contemplated these four tenets while grass probed the splits and holes in his sandals, if they were ever his at all; while a palette of flowers bent in the wind as if acknowledging his passing, his returning; while trees plumped along a white stone fence, all bathing in the shower of the sun; while a house sat at the center of these majesties, its broadest wall facing him with nothing but a window and a chimney, a raised hand, as if waving. Goodbye or hello?
But towering in bulbs of churned creme, ruled a cloud. Too small a word, he decided. Five letters weren’t enough to describe what he saw, what gave him pause in this meadow of flower and tree and home.
Home.
Leave. Remember. Return. Forget.
The Four came to him again, with the wind that tousled his hair, which had grown long with curls, billowed his cloak which had grown weary in thread, forging the air into knives to whittle his flesh.
He waited in the center of the meadow, if there was one, looking for a path he had trod when he had left. Because he had left here. He remembered. Or was it the Four playing tricks on him, giving him hope, because they knew that he was worn thin, his body naked to their eyes, and his soul all but naked as well, because his skin was worn thin, too.
He tried to remember more. The flowers, the trees, the white wall divided by faulty stones. Had he placed those stones? The house itself did nothing to jostle free the treasures the spiders had trapped in their webs and sucked dry and wrapped their empty shells in silk. The spiders had what he sought in their bellies, swirling with a head of scarlet hair and rose-kissed cheeks, with a doll hand reaching for his with pale and eager fingers, with a cold nose and a—
The spiders folded their legs and closed their eyes and all was lost to him.
The Second had given him all it would.
He broke his petrification by taking a step toward the house that stared at him with its empty window, where a child of its own, small and feeble and in shadow lurked at its side with an eye of its own. Not a window. A door. A passage. Into his home, where he wouldn’t need memories. Where what the spiders held existed in flesh and bone and blood.
Return. The third. It should have ended at three. Four are two pairs, and two pairs can separate and still not be alone. Odds were more pleasing. One in the center, two to either side, where no matter which left, one would be alone. He had been the one left alone, so he had to be the one to return. Could the two, if there were two at all, still be here? He had left, after all, but that was his calling, his duty, his purpose. A Traveler must leave to return, to—
He would not utter the Fourth. He would not think of it. But the letters of its making formed in the shadows of the trees, in the patterns of the flowers, in the bulbs of the cloud. Everywhere he looked, it lurked. He was without armor in this meadow, without shelter, though a shelter stood near.
He gripped his walking stick and worked his gnarled fingers over its gnarls to massage the courage from it he could not muster. Perhaps it was more than a walking stick. Perhaps it could call forth fire from the Below. Perhaps it could sprout a blade and rend the Fourth in two. Perhaps it was just a walking stick, and perhaps that was enough. All he had left to do was walk, after all. The shelter hadn’t moved, and he had moved one step. Why did he call it a shelter? It was a home. His home.
Remember.
No, he had journeyed to the Second already. He couldn’t go back. Mustn’t go back. It was forbidden. Shunned. He would be shunned.
Return. He had returned, was still returning, tangled in the woven grass that had become a ribbon to lure him, that had become a rope to ensnare him.
He took another step, and his sandal split in two. Two is a pair. He shook his head, he shook his fists, he shook the walking stick over his head, anticipating lightning to bolt from the great cloud on white spider legs so broken yet precise to smite him.
All that happened was nothing. He lowered his arms, lowered his gaze, and took another step, the sandal leaving that foot as well. He staked his walking stick through the flowers and grass, deep into the soil and grubs. A connection was there, rooting him.
He let go. Of it all.
He strode to the house with nothing but his cloak and the spiders in his mind, who had drunk his memories, cocooned the shells. Those cocoons of what used to belong to him unfurled into ribbons not unlike the ones that had paved his path to this house, this home.
Each step unfurled another until his mind was full of shreds colored with the palette of the meadow’s flowers, which bobbed on swells of grass. The structure sat patiently beneath a cloud like no other, sculpted by the gods, everything so lush in its beauty, like a painting made just for him, a man with no name, who had chosen the old ways. To inspire travel, for he was a traveler. To capture the memory of home, for it was his home. To abstract reality enough to separate him from what it truly was. To make him forget.
He dropped his walking stick and stepped inside.
Leave a Reply