The Hanged Man: Part 8: Lithia
Post #78: In which a lesson in surrender ...
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CHAPTER 29
ARTYOM
Artyom had fallen into the habit of caring for Gideon when they camped in the evening. He unhitched the animal, brushed the day’s dust and sweat from his coat, watered him, fed him some grain and made sure he had good grazing.
One evening, when this was done, he found a patch of clover, pulled it up and piled it near the wagon before gathering wood for the fire.
Later, after they’d eaten and sat at their ease while light faded from the sky, Artyom spied Surrender nibbling near the horse. Feeling a fool but determined, he held out a handful of clover to the rabbit, making a clicking, coaxing sound with teeth, tongue and lips.
Dar, observing this, put his flute to his mouth and played a silvery run of melody, inviting and playful. The rabbit sat up, regarding them, jaws moving. He hopped in aimless fashion, indirectly approaching the two men, pausing now and then to feed.
He meandered his way to Artyom, stretching out his neck to take clover from his hand, watching him out of shining black eyes. Dar continued to play the flute, the coaxing melody having shifted into an old ballad, like a man talking to himself or writing in a journal and taking no notice of anyone else.
Artyom never forgot those moments. Green bone and silver music cupped the evening. The sound of Gideon grazing came clearly, and the quiet sounds of the fire. Cooling air felt soft on his face and forearms. There was no discomfort, no feeling of want. What was present was enough. The rabbit pulled the last of the clover from his hand and Artyom thought of trying to coax it under the wagon to spend the night safely.
The piping stopped abruptly. He sensed sudden movement from above, soundless and swift. Surrender crouched and froze, ears laid back, eyes wide with fear. The owl struck. The rabbit screamed, a terrible, thin shocking sound. Artyom heard a scuffle, a flurry of wings within an arm’s reach, and both owl and rabbit were gone. A shadowy form flew low among the trees.
Artyom was wordless with shock.
Dar let out the breath he’d been holding. “Surrender,” he said sadly to himself.
Artyom lay awake a long time, listening to Dar tend the fire and then lie down in his own blankets. The fire burned and diminished and still he lay, thinking of ghosts and demons, yes and no, and wretched dogs with cans tied to their tails.
***
“How do we recognize the right thing to do?” Artyom asked Dar the next day. “I know what’s expected of me. I know what the rules and traditions say about what to choose and how to act. But those don’t shape a life I recognize as my own. How do I decide between yes and no?”
“I advise you to never follow rules,” said Dar carelessly. “I’ve told you before, always exercise your power to cheat. Who makes the rules? And who told them they could? Why do we think we can tell each other what to do? Pah!” He spat and wiped his mouth.
“But that’s not right, either,” said Artyom. “Saying no to rules just because they’re rules is as bad as saying yes for the same reason. There’s nothing wise or effective about rebellion for the sake of rebellion! Come on, man, I want to discuss this. How do we decide if no or yes is appropriate?”
Dar looked at him with amused irritation. “Well, if you’re going to ask me to be an adult about it…”
“Oh, stop posing,” said Artyom, feeling cross. “I want to understand this.”
Dar cocked an eyebrow, sat up straighter and gathered the reins together, which had been dropping out of his relaxed hands, Gideon having no real need of guidance.
“Very well. How do we judge if yes or no is appropriate? It’s easy. How does it feel after you’ve chosen? How did the choice work out for you?”
“But by then it’s too late if you made the wrong choice! You’ve already done it!”
“My dear man, perfection isn’t a goal! What do you want, a recipe? You simply choose yes or no, experience the consequences, and take that experience to the next choice. There isn’t any right or wrong, only whatever happens next. Are the consequences positive and effective or not?”
“Effective. Who decides that?”
“You. We’re talking about your life. If rule, expectation or consequence doesn’t work for you in your life, then it’s not effective for you.”
“It might be for someone else.”
“It might be, but that’s not your business. It doesn’t work for you. That’s enough to know. It’s the only place where you have power. And it changes, mind you. You might begin with choices that work well for you and then they stop working and you have to try something new.”
“Like Abu Kasem.”
“Exactly like him.”
Artyom scowled down at his boots. “It’s so messy,” he said resentfully.
Dar laughed. “It is that,” he agreed. “All the best things in life are messy, haven’t you noticed?” and he launched into a series of erotic stories he’d collected. For a time Artyom thought of nothing but the mysteries of female flesh.
It was a night of full moon when they talked about Surrender for the first time since he’d been killed, although Artyom often thought of him. Dar had been playing his flute and it seemed to Artyom the music drew the silver globe of Noola up from the horizon with threads of green fire. For a time after Dar laid the flute aside, they remained quiet, watching Noola dwindle as she climbed higher. The night filled with silver-edged shadows.
“Do you think Surrender regretted anything at the end?” Artyom asked.
“No,” said Dar at once. “He knew the inevitabilities of life. He accepted them. All he could choose was how to live.”
“He chose the yes,” said Artyom.
“I think many people are afraid to die,” mused Dar, “but more are afraid to live. That’s why they say no automatically. He wasn’t like that.”
He threw another stick on the fire and stretched out his legs, sighing. “Tomorrow you drive for a while and I’ll walk. I’ve been sitting too much. My legs are restless.”
“Whatever you like,” said Artyom absently, his eyes on Noola.
“Do you see the hare?”
“Where?” asked Artyom sharply, sitting up and looking around the moonlight splashed camp.
“In Noola. In some places, they say there’s a hare in the moon. I know a story about it. We’ll share a story in honor of Surrender, shall we?”
“Long ago, naked Noola looked down into a forest clearing. A brown hare whose young had long since grown nibbled a sliver of bark in the shadow of a rock.
Suddenly, the hare raised her ears, listening. Her whiskers twitched as she scented the air.
The hare left the clearing and moved through the trees, following the sound of whimpering.
She came onto the moon-tarnished plain. A mother jackal lay bleeding from a wound in her haunch under a Bodhi tree. Two small pups nosed around her, crying hungrily. The jackal panted and groaned.
‘You’re hurt, my friend,’ said the hare.
‘Why do you call me friend? I would kill and eat you if I could.’
‘Does that mean we aren’t friends?” inquired the hare. ‘I too am a mother.’
‘I am hurt. A man tried to kill me. Now I can’t hunt and my children will die.’
Noola shone blankly above them, dappling the ground with heart-shaped shadows from the tree’s leaves.
The hare looked kindly at the jackal.
‘Your children need not die. Do me the honor of eating me so you can feed them. I’m not young but you won’t mind if I’m tough.’
With that, the hare leapt straight into the jackal’s jaws.
The jackal caught the hare, white teeth gleaming. She leapt to her feet and flung the limp body of the hare into the night sky.
The hare whirled, wind in her velvet ears, paws open in surrender.
Far below, she heard the jackal call, ‘A creature as kind as you shall not die! Let all the world look up at night and see the Hare-in-the-Moon, and remember her compassion.’
A chorus of barks and howls rose from the moon-washed plain.
And so Noola, to this day, glows around the figure of the kindly hare. Those in despair find hope and encouragement when they see her there.”
“I can’t see a hare there,” said Artyom. He lay on his back with his hands under his head, looking up.
“It’s like making pictures with clouds. Sometimes I can’t see anything in Noola, not a man, not green cheese, not a hare. But sometimes I can see everything up there, every dream, every fey fancy.”
“She was rewarded for her compassion.”
“So the story goes. We wanderers under her light are also rewarded for her compassion. I like to think of that when I’m out driving late under the full moon. I think of compassion as a circle now, a big silver circle, complete and unbroken. I don’t think of myself as a compassionate man. I’m too impatient. But I know people with a wonderful deep well of it.”
“Me, too. I think Kunik is like that.” Artyom rarely referred to the initiation but he said Kunik’s name without hesitation in the silvery trickle of light.
“I think you’re right. Part of what was important for him to learn was being compassionate with himself. If compassion doesn’t include oneself, the circle is broken.”
“Humph,” said Artyom. Dar put his flute to his lips and Artyom imagined he played the ethereal light, Noola’s silver globe and the spangled dark night. He stopped playing after a time and Artyom pictured the last notes of music flying up to join the stars, perhaps seeds of new stars. Such thoughts made him feel vaguely womanish and ashamed.
“Compassion is larger than kindness to oneself and others, though,” he said, returning doggedly to more solid ground.
“Yes?” Dar said.
“The hare…she had compassion for everything in the story. The night, Noola, the jackals and herself, too. She held it so…tenderly. She didn’t mind sacrificing herself because it was somehow what had to be, what everything else in the story needed.”
“You express it well. It’s hard to put words to it, isn’t it? It takes us back again to recognizing the right thing, that which must be done, the choice that serves all in the moment.”
“Acceptance,” said Artyom.
“Oh, yes, that too. Another important piece. Acceptance and compassion for what is and what must be, ourselves included.”
“Surrender,” said Artyom with certainty.
“Does that help you feel better, seeing it clearly?”
“It does. It gives his death meaning. And his life, too.”
Dar began to play his flute again.
***
Noola had waned to three quarters when the Firebird returned.
Artyom woke one morning from a confused dream of blood and fighting. He rolled over, stretched, and opened his eyes. The sky showed a tender dawn color and the Firebird perched in the tree under which he lay, his head under his wing.
Artyom lay looking up at him. The long golden tail feathers trembled slightly as the Firebird breathed in sleep. The wings were darker flames of smoky red and orange, tipped with feathers of copper and gold. He looked, as always, too beautiful to be real.
An hour later he sat in the tree and preened, carefully tweaking every feather into place, paying no attention to either of the men as they went about their morning routine.
Artyom took time to gather his belongings, which had slowly spread into the cart or been mixed up with Dar’s gear, and packed more carefully than he had in weeks, rolling his bedroll tightly and tying everything together for easy carrying.
He and Dar didn’t speak about the change they both felt, but Artyom was conscious of a sad feeling of farewell as he fed Gideon and smoothed his coat, ate breakfast, and cleaned the pots and pans.
When the fire was buried in earth, the cart packed, Gideon harnessed and Artyom’s pack on his back, the two men looked at one another and then up at the Firebird.
“Where to?” Artyom asked at Dar.
“My road is that way.” Dar pointed.
“Let’s go, then,” said Artyom, settling his pack more comfortably. Dar sprang into the seat and picked up the reins and Artyom fell into step alongside the front left wheel in his usual place.
With a rustle of feathers, the Firebird landed on Artyom’s shoulder. It felt surprisingly heavy, landing with a thump. It gripped tightly and Artyom winced.
“He’s heavier than he looks,” he said to Dar.
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Dar with a grin.
“I hate to leave you.”
“Maybe you won’t need to. Let’s try, anyway.” He chirruped to Gideon and slapped the reins gently. The horse stepped forward.
The Firebird tightened his grip. Artyom didn’t move.
“No,” he said to Dar. “I’m not to go with you.”
The Firebird took off heavily, brushing the side of Artyom’s face with a wing. It perched in a tree, staring at Artyom out of shining black eyes.
“I’m sorry to part,” said Dar. “Go well, my friend.”
Artyom felt a lump in his throat. “Goodbye, Dar. Thank you. Perhaps we’ll meet again.”
As he followed the Firebird through the trees, the sound of the horse and cart and Dar’s merry whistle died away behind him.
he Firebird took him across country. They crossed a road or a track from time to time, but Artyom thought they traveled as the crow flies and it was slower going than if he’d had an open road or even a path or trail to walk on. He didn’t mind. He missed Dar’s companionship but his mind was pleasantly occupied with new ideas. He found himself whistling, quietly content, and felt a kind of amazed gratitude. His irritation and anger had fallen away. He could almost imagine his grandfather, striding along beside him, naming trees and forest plants, pointing out birds and animal tracks. His child self ran ahead or behind, weaving among trees, splashing in creeks and streams, exploring and discovering. He had no feeling of wanting to get away from either of them.
He accepted each day as it came, not thinking much about where the Firebird took him, or why. For the first time, he discovered the simple peace of surrendering to what he needed to do in the moment without thought of the future.
They came over a low forested ridge and spent several hours descending gently into a wide river valley. It was the biggest waterway they’d come to. Artyom had no more than glimpses of it, but he could smell water and the geography told him water had been running here a long time. As they drew closer, he could hear it. He lengthened his stride, eager to come to it. The Firebird was taking him through a thin forest of birch when he heard a woman scream.
It was completely unexpected and before his ears had registered the sound his heart began to hammer and his breath came short. The Firebird darted through the trees toward the sound and Artyom began to run heavily in the same direction.
Another scream tore through the quiet afternoon, a mingling of terror and despair. Artyom, without pausing, flung off his pack. He burst out of the trees, branches whipping his face, onto a track running along the river. A large man in a shapeless assortment of dark ragged clothing struggled with a woman. His broad back hid most of her from Artyom’s view, but he had an impression of a long plait of wheat brown hair bound with a gleam of gold. The Firebird shot between the faces of the two like a golden beam of light, faster than thought, but the clenched bodies were not divided. The woman breathed in ragged gasps as she fought. The man muttered, cursing and fumbling with one hand at his crotch. With the other he took the woman brutally by the neck and flung her onto the ground. She fell hard, making a sound like the dry snap of a branch, and lay still in a boneless sprawl. The man fell onto his knees over her, tearing at her clothing.
Artyom, as soon as he came into sight of the struggling pair, left the shock and chaos of panic and entered the silent, icy killing room many soldiers carry within themselves. Fear, disbelief, doubt, were suspended. There was only the stark choice between kill or be killed. His grandfather’s knife was in his hand and he had a moment to be glad of the hours spent honing and cleaning the blade.
He ran across the track, his heavy body light and silent. His left hand grasped a handful of greasy, clotted hair. He jerked the head back and away from the face beneath it, the empty face, open eyed, of Jenny. His eyes saw, his brain registered, but his hands went on with their work, with what must be, with what the story demanded.
His right hand, holding the knife, passed under the exposed throat. He felt the thick flesh and muscle of that living column under the blade and used all his strength and skill to cut into it. Jenny’s face and eyes disappeared under a gush of red blood. The man let out a horrible, gurgling, gasping cry of surprise and rage and heaved under Artyom, catching him by surprise with his strength. Artyom lost his grip on the knife and they fell sideways. The iron smell of blood was in his mouth and nose and he felt warm spray on his face. The man reached, groping, with one hand, still making the choked sounds Artyom recognized as final breaths, and then the hand, clenched around a stone, came at him like a piston and a terrible crunching blow caught the side of his head. The bone of his skull broke like an eggshell under it. The hand fell away.
For a moment Artyom drifted in a warm fog, feeling sleepy and peaceful. When he came back to the track and haze of blood, he noticed the silence. There was something important about silence. He groped in his mind for what it was… Something heavy pinned him uncomfortably to the ground and he flung it away. A thick arm, sticky with blood.
Ah. That was it. It was silent because the man was dead. Not silent, though. He could hear the river flowing nearby, clean and fresh. It would be clear and tea-colored over rocks. Jenny was dead, too. He’d heard the snap of her neck and seen her empty face before a wave of blood flowed over it, filling her open eyes…
With a great effort, he sat up. The glare of sunlight stabbed at his eyes, flickering and painful. He couldn’t see well. He wiped roughly at his face with his sleeve. Jenny shouldn’t lie with her killer. He must drag the man’s body away.
With some difficulty, he struggled to his feet. He felt unsteady and his vision was definitely queer. He bent carefully over, swaying, and picked up the man’s feet. He was a big man, larger than Artyom himself, but Artyom was hardened by weeks of walking, on top of his innate ox-like strength. He kept his eyes averted from the gaping neck wound, got a good grip on the thick ankles, and heaved with all his strength. The body slid across the grass and Artyom dragged it slowly around a knot of bushes, out of sight from where Jenny lay.
He thought he would rest, lie down for a minute and gather himself. He staggered back to where she lay and tried to smooth down her clothing. His hands felt numb and he couldn’t do much of a job, but he fumbled at her leggings and tunic, straightening them and covering bared skin.
He didn’t want to look at her again. After a rest, he’d wash the blood from her face and hair. He lay down carefully next to her, closing his eyes against the jabbing green and gold of the summer day. The sound of water was cool and soothing. He’d listen to that and rest, maybe sleep for a few minutes. He put an arm protectively over Jenny so she’d know he was there and feel safe.
He thought, I’m not a ruler. I’m a soldier, and felt a burst of joy. He smiled as he drifted away to the sound of flowing water.