Argument: Lathynarn is lost amongst the trees and then finds something to follow.And the moon rose.
A gap in the trees showed the distance at horizon – what that distance contained and where the horizon sat we never knew…
Who knew where we were?
Not I, nor Lathy, could read the maps we had not brought – forest paths of fallen beechnuts and beech leaves browning crunch and squirrel rustles underneath.
“What path
should we follow?
Past to our first destination?
On to our terminus?
Which way to go?”
There were no paths – only ways to go and no reason to go any way, and so – aimless, in no particular direction – we craneflyed, Jenny-long-legsed, Daddy-long-legsed through the trees (the irony apparent) – catching glimpses of a moon, a setting sun, a crushed pastel sky and one star piercing our passers’ eyes.
Tree from tree, under branch under sky, the forest flowing as water in a jar that contains it fully – no room for movement in an unrunning wood, leaf and sky construction.
Lathy walked out as he thought he should – look at his eyes through his visor: he rarely blinks – blinks gives thoughts away and Lathynarn thinks as rarely as his eyes allow – a mouth can also be seen – the tongue inbetween the searching teeth hungry for his fame and biting out his knightly name.
Sometimes he would raise his helmet to talk to me – to mutter euhn with a nod to the left or right – and like the best faces of little emotion we can see:
sadness,An inverted cone meeting at the point of his chin…
anger,
a little arrogance,
and little empathy.
“Stop, boy.
My face is blank –
remember that and scrub it clean.
Now pick up the paper
you see down there.”
A cheek to talk of down there as it was only feet from his hand – but I scrambled over the leaf litter to pinch the abandoned, damp-sweat forest letter.
“Well, boy?
Read it to me –
big words or monosyllables?
addressed to me or no?
what does it say?
“Speak, boy!
Or pass it up
and let me, myself, decipher
the wooded truth it seeks
to speak to me.”
I gave him the paper and muttered map as I did it – a poor map, surely, showing tree trunks as points arranged in a random presentation clustering more to the north at the compass rose’ suggestion.
“It’s crap,
Sir Lathynarn.
A map, my lord, of quite nothing
and nowhere and no cross
to mark our place.”
He didn’t listen, but said:
“Follow
the map! the map’s
just the thing to follow the route
to find our way, our way
to find our way.
“Forty
trees behind us…
this is easy and obvious –
take four paces, ten trunks,
and jump at wood.
“Follow
fifty trunks down,
take a left at the opened glade
and go on, take your speed
and ramble on.
“Simple.
An easy map
with ample room for manoeuvre
in this dark, blank forest
set to harass.
“And boy,
tell me quickly:
what place are we heading towards?
what city? what castle?
where on the map?”
Before I had a chance to tell him we neither knew nor dared conceive of a destination before we’d started, a noise and rustle erupted behind us – a shape, a person in the forest, dark and shadowed against the lighter trees before it and lightened by the darker trees behind.
It ran along from us, almost circular, surrounding us and hoving in its shape towards us.
“But what?
and who? and how?
Say: how could we have been unaware
of another body
in the trees here?”
It ran fast, swinging, slingshotting itself around the trunks – we spun as it spiralled towards us, brightening as it grew closer and bigger and larger, more severe and terrifying and more formal, rightly formed in its approach - she was a woman who turned to look at us as a slalom through the trees, worked her way around and fifteen paces from ourselves and ponies.
And then her spiral grew again and again and back to distance black and darkening.
“Follow!
Follow and chase!
Speed your pony and race that shape
womanly and distant
(and shapely too…).”
We went after her as the moon rose a little higher, the moon sang a little higher and took its cue from us to shine down a path to follow her by.
prev - Intercessionary ballad (one)
