CHAPTER XVI: THE WISDOM OF THE EARTH

   It was rivers of light which, touching every crack, woke me up that day at about 10, and I had no courage to oppose their burning force. I unbuttoned the crystals of sleep and I stretched with hope and some sadness: I had only four dawns left with them. That day I intended to get to know then better exploring their permanent camp site. In addition, health made me signals so I dared to take it. Untangling those threads I was, when there came my daily coffee. It was Miguel again. He came with a blue linen jacket and a shirt of the same color. Later he gave me breakfast and good morning, and resumed the conversation from the day before as if we had left it unfinished.

− "Do you still want to decide your future thinking of the past?"

− "I don't think about it constantly. Mistress Oakes advised me to not consider goals that may be beyond my strength. And I fear if I contradict both of you a little. Because I don't know what my strengths are, if I have some, but if I follow you, to decide my future I need to have some goals. And some objective I have –I sighed. I thought about giving up alcohol−, but I don't even know whether I will have any resistance. I only know that I don't like my life, but I feel weak to change it. Sometimes I'll keep meditating, but I wonder whether I'll get somewhere. But I am grateful to have known you. Basically, Mistress Oakes advised me not to look towards the future, and you to not lose my time evaluating the past. And so, I only have a weird parenthesis, which is my present, where I can only see what I don't want to be"

− "That may be the first step. But I guess everyone is different. I won’t keep you any longer then with my inconsequential talk. You may meditate in peace. Or not. Or you may have breakfasts; or read something."

   And he left. But my goal was not then either to meditate or to read. I had breakfast in a hurry, because my dream was then to walk again. With some security, I walked up to the door, leaving my canvas prison behind. The sun, still in the east, but already traveling safely to the south, dazzled me with its shafts of light and heat.

   A scene which I do not know very well why reminded me of me some biblical passage appeared before my eyes. But first I have to make an effort to describe to you the Outskirt of the Torn Hand, now that my eyes saw it. They are actually two plains at different altitudes. The Torn Hand is the high plateau; and the Outcasts Outskirt is the low plateau. To go from one to another, there are roads, but impassable and insecure, so the best thing to do is going down a slope that I saw immediately out of my tent, which actually communicates with Millers' Lane, the only nearby street, but to reach it you find a halfway up path that descends to the Outcasts, a little wider than a funnel. The plateau of the outskirt is framed by ash trees in the east and several roads leading to the alders in the south.

   The seven were camping in only five tents. To the west was my tent, Bruce’s tent, at a short distance from a dangerous cliff five or six metres high towards Miller’s Lane. Nearby, the southernmost one was the tent inhabited by Miguel and John, somewhat larger and with fewer cracks. Of the same size, very close, bending to the north, Lucy and Luke’s tent, which would soon be for three. Further to the north, on the left, there is a small mound that had a giant and somewhat eerie ash tree under which they used to make bonfires. Near the ash trees, you can discover proudly a diminutive palace in misery, Olivia’s tent, with everything you need inside for daily cleaning, and even for a small vanity. When we lack something, we ask her, since she is the most likely to have it. Going down the mound, located almost in the Outcasts, the tent we call the circumpolar tent, that of Mistress Oakes, humble and yet, worthy and liveable.

   But I was speaking of a picture that caught my attention when I was outside. On the mound of Olivia’s tent, there was also a rock in the shape of an inverted slouch hat, in whose crown was sitting Bruce. On his hair there was a pair of scissors a woman was using. Redhead and with her loose hair quite long, she was as comforting as night, as magic as dawn, as burning as twilight, as beautiful as the morning twilight. Of the same stature as Luke and me I could not see her body, hidden then behind the rock, but I knew that it could only be Lucy. Seeing her, I was tempted to turn back my biological clock, up to the time when I thought I have fallen in love with several women. I knew that I could have felt really attracted to her and I would have never regretted that she was a beggar, wanting to be accompanied by her fire until death. With an effort, I tried to remember that in the last three days I had assumed that I was not going to love her. She and Bruce, in unison, made me signs to approach, smiling and welcoming.

− "Hi, Nike –greeted me Bruce−. This is my hairdresser: Lucy Rivers, my mate" -he said at the time that he spat his first phlegm to the ground. This is a habit of his quite objectionable, but we all forgive him.

   I soon noticed that nobody called her Lucy Prancitt, nor by her father's surname, which she never used, if it is that she knew it.

− "What is your surname, Bruce? –I asked.

− "Scully. And I was about to be Mistress Oakes’ son –he added in a mocking tone−. Yes, there are many things that you don't know. But she's like my adoptive mother."

− "And like my grandmother –Lucy said unexpectedly. Her voice was like a cascade of living water. And then she came to me and I could see her belly. Her waning strength germinated a new creature and her waxing womb was already nearly full. All her clothes are rather free, and not only during that pregnancy. Hippie clothes were no longer fashionable, but in her they always looked nice and seemed to be the latest trend. Her dress was almost completely orange, with a print of many daisies−. Welcome, Nike –she greeted me warmly and kissed my cheek−, Luke never stops talking about you, and for good, in spite of your poor opinion of yourself. I wanted to meet you. And now you can lecture me as everybody does. But Bruce needed a good haircut and I had to go outside. I felt like I was drowning out of my normal life."

− "I will not be the one who blames you. I can perhaps understand you better than anyone else: I haven’t been able to remain in my prison either, and your child will understand your small rebellion: it won’t want her mother to despair."

− "I think my child is in a hurry to get to know us. I feel it every minute. It doesn't stop moving. It is impatient. And it will be born earlier than we expect, I'm sure."

   She had almost finished with Bruce’s hair, which was so shiny that I hardly recognized him. Lucy had advised him to wash it previously in the river. Now she was going to continue with his beard.


 

−Tell me, Protch. I see you want to talk again.

−When you came the first day and I saw you, I hope that no offense, ragged and somewhat dirty, it struck me as something incongruent, the good order and cleanliness of your hair and beard. So Lucy is your hairdresser.

-“She is. I already told you that she learned when she was younger. She takes care of our hair lovingly. And she would never feel good if it were untidy or dirty. As you can see, we have basically everything. And she also knows how to take care of her own hair, all of the color of the Earth.

-“One more mystery solved. You can go on whenever you want, Nike.


 

   The tidying up of Bruce's beard did not take more than ten minutes, since Bruce's hair was not very long or really curled. But that singular picture was joined by a new white flare: it was Tessa, which I finally knew, like all cats going where his friend Bruce was. He called her by her name and she immediately went to sit in his lap. Little more could this cat do now, which as I was told, had been a swimmer and an acrobat, yesterday a burst of rebellion and today a cat-like assumption of weakness.

− "Olivia and Luke are in the ash grove, talking about books, I think. I will greet them a while before I go to my daily duties."

− "Where are you going today, Bruce?" –I asked.

− "Today I change to the north. I'm going to Heathwood and perhaps to Northchapel. But first I will go to St Mary, to the twelve o’clock mass.

   Those great pagans used to speak of going to mass, but they stayed out. Bruce left taking Tessa on his lap, and behind them Telemachus, who arrived just then, without me having any time to greet him.

    At that moment, Lucy appeared in all her fullness next to me. Her round Selene filled paradoxically to give birth to a universe that was already beating impatiently. She invited me to touch her belly so that I could perceive the life soon to come. I should not have done so. I could never move away from that latest shock. A small queen or a little king was moving forward towards me, as if calling me or summoning me. To distinguish a planet in the sky from a star, I'll tell you, Protch, that the light of the former is permanent, and that the latter twinkles. And that creature trembled with its own light and burned, moved along my ecliptic, drew me constellations. He left me his wake, and for the first time I felt an infinite desire to cry. So full of life, so eager, so brilliant... and I wouldn't surf the skies like a star of the same drawing. Little life who is wating, who are you waiting for?; and how could I meet you and forget you, if your white twinkle already inaugurated the wreck of my nebula heart that never could from then on understand life without you? Wait for me, you little star which is born blazing, that perhaps one day we are navigating the same sky together. But then this brief reverie faded because I understood that this little star had other milky ways to fly in, other parents that would prevent its eclipse, and two friendly gods who would be responsible for his journey to Earth. His mother, Selene seemed to understand me, asking me to wipe the tears I unwittingly had dropped.

− "You will not understand –Lucy told me−, but somehow I feel it was really interested in getting to know you. Now it does not move. And when it swims again, I'm sure that it will do it with much more confidence. It has the same interest as its mother in meeting our guest. Nicholas, or Nike, you sit now. There is not much hair to be cut, but I could manage. And I will not make you go to the river: it is still very clean. Your hair speaks to me of a clean life, and watching what beneath it lies, I would say that cleaner than you suppose.  Believe in yourself, Nike, now it's not the time to clean but to give it a shape. Do you trust me?"

    I was going to rely on her, because I sensed that she could fix my hair and my life. For the latter I do not know when she began with the scissors, but she, like the six before smoothed and ordered it, cut me some bitterness here, some distrust on the west, some disorderly hair of preliminary boredom or permanent nausea. A haircut maybe unnecessary but very timely, and now the seven as hair decoration and continuously spiky hair. Lucy the sculptress, massaging my twilight landscape with a life source and sedative words falling like a cascade into her bowl. Hail, Lucy, a summer star, a summertime of trembling stars, fiery rivers of sun that soaks in them, waxing Earth, daughter of the wind that rocked my scarce hair, light in my darkness.

   She moved on my hair from my tropics to my equator, while she noticed that I still had not recovered of my former shaking.

− "Maybe you can understand it better, Nike, if I tell you that what you have felt is the call of the Earth. His powerful voice is never announced and always startles, but the sound that you hear is a fertile stream that can be waiting for you."

   Water. A flow with no sluice gates took me with her to my Rivers' Meet. Air. At the tips of the wind she whistled my new name among her thickets. Fire. Purifier there it was destroying my weeds, which the other six had started to drag, but had failed to pull up. Earth. With her, I started to feel its telluric call, its stony sound, its voice of roots and clay. Crystal clear like water, intangible like the air, bright as fire, creator as the Earth, mother of the children of my hope, frons leonis, terroir of the tree, gold vein, Lucy of my call of the Earth.

− "Thank you Lucy. I will get better. I am finding my heart now and everything happening to me electrifies my blood."

− "I know, Nike. But fear not your heart. When it starts receiving strange messages, it is that blood is calling. Live the hours with hopes. You will never be the same."

   I could not help telling her what I was thinking: what I had been advised by Mistress Oakes and Miguel, asking her where I had to look at.

− "Number three is, as you already know, my number here, and these days I begin to feel that one day I will give my love mainly to number three, and past, present and future are three. But the winds are, at least, four. And the cardinal points. Or the four elements. And it is also the half of our magic number eight. You can look at the timeline as an arrow which is thrown in the past and reaches its target in the future, but the line is the fourth path, the perfection of a whole. Right before your eyes, look at those marks on the floor, and tell me what you can see.'

− "They look like furrows."  −I doubtfully answered.

− "They are –she confirmed− furrows, which sometimes a rain invigorates, and then we see new wheat ears. Your heart, Nike, although you may not believe it, was one day a fertile land and there are still the furrows. New ones are coming to you, planting your earth. Your past and your present. But the Earth is your timeline and he is already shaping up the target of your future. Don't think either in the past or in the future, only in not wasting the rain, and one day you will see the wheat ears, wheat and bread. This Torn Hand of ours could one day have been the backyard of a Manor House, where surely they planted wheat. You'll see mills if you get close to the river. The furrows are witnesses of its former glory. Let them shape you and don't be afraid of wind or water. My land waited patiently for years, until Luke came, watered my wasteland and started to shape me, and that harvest you can see has not stopped because it is fruitful and transforms hearts, and our hills no wind will devastate."

   Maybe she knew some of the uncertain and the hidden, the fog in my heart which I thought was thick and unreadable. But I wanted never to stray from her ancient wisdom. I had supposed her to be the energy of everyone here, but perhaps she was also the matter of her fertile soil, where I had been taken by a snake to creep disoriented, also on the river, also on the furrows, as crept the star that was inside her universe. But I suddenly remembered a different snake, a different villain who crept and was not announced.

− "I can see now. Love has created your furrows and you will soon have a new harvest."

− "And it will be a good harvest because we have not allowed our love to be extinguished by a destructive wind that many, however, desire. An unnecessary angel that many call fidelity."

− "Don’t you believe in fidelity?"  −I incredulously asked, at the same time I wondered why she was saying this to me.

− "I think, however, that there are love affairs that may be eternal. And I believe in loyalty. But just as a mind needs contact with others to fertilize a thought, I think there are some love relationships that are destroyed for not allowing a body, such as Earth, to germinate with all the rains, all waters. For me it is not important if the body I love touches the blackish earth of other bodies, or if the battle is not between two when the war, or love, is. The romantic idea of fidelity has destroyed great loves. Luke and I have not taken that ruffian into account and our love germinates, grows every day, and has already spawned its first fruit. So if one day you feel love biting your bones, always be loyal to it, Nike, but not necessarily faithful. But do not pay me much attention if you do not want to. My mother handed down to me a different idea of family, other lessons of what is and what is not love. I am the daughter of her winds, which almost swallowed in violent whirlwind my uncle Gerald."

− "Do you know your uncle Gerald?"

− "Keep the secret, Nike. My uncle did not want to say yet who my father is, or was, and I am sure you have already heard that I never met him and I was born in the street. I never met my father, or my grandfather Gerald, or my aunt Kirsten, but I met my uncle when my grandmother Linda died, whose funeral I attended because she sought me out on her deathbed when she paid attention to the rumour that she had a granddaughter. My uncle has since been busy in reconciling with my mother, but she should not know anything of what I have told you. Now see –she said to me when she had my solemn promise that I would tell her nothing− that my timeline also has strange furrows, some still sunk in the ground, and other ones that may be coming to me not knowing very well where their arrows are pointing."


 

   Arrows. Lucy moved on the ecliptic and wanted to join Nike in his slow navigation towards Leo, and Lucy with Nike and Nike next to Lucy, unexpectedly entered the mansion of the Archer. Strange arrows of uncertain drifts, with restless targets, with which the Archer had reached Nike, who however took months to pour that blood. There was no doubt that he was sailing fast and that August 2 he came by surprise to Sagittarius.


 

    The scarce mantle covering me had already been chopped, and Lucy approached me a mirror so that she could watch her work. She had managed to give me an attractive shape without leaving my ears too exposed, those I was mortified by. I sighed in satisfaction. She also offered to fix my beard, but I did not consent in mowing the furrows of my body without knowing yet whether the furrows would ever solidify that were creating inside my soul. Since then I have not shaved, Protch. Think that on 26 July of my year 29 it was the last time, and now you know that Bruce, Miguel and I are the bearded three of the Torn Hand.

   I did not find a good excuse to stay a little longer with her and I went away somewhat crestfallen and defeated, germinating furrows, knowing that the seven, all of them, already were. That August 2 I wanted to be brief in reflections and extensive in reading. I was already advancing in Great Expectations. I stopped from time to time absorbed watching Luke in Pip and Lucy in Estella, who after all was the way the mother of the woman that she had called her grandmother was called. But it was an unfair parallelism, because that Estella was not distant and inaccessible and the only impossible love was mine. At times I was again wondering about the black idea of my money, my Achilles heel. I had felt the child slither on the fertile ground of its mother and absent then its father, I knew it would come with new rains and would be swimming proudly towards the harbour of life. I could, perhaps, illuminate its dark current with torches, or fill it with slime. What could I do? Then I wasn’t waiting for it, like a satisfied spectator surrounding the victorious swimmer with his arms, just as the judge waited with his laurel wreath. I didn't think then that I would be allowed to accompany it with my fatigues, efforts and lessons learned, as its parents would accompany it. Small evanescent goblin, magical and pagan, as the next night without fog would be, in the timeline of that August that was creating my furrows. I wish I could accompany you from the bonfires to the ecliptic without money being necessary! But I went back to cover that black well which I could not leave. He or she deserved that I spilled my blood, not the gold of my birthplace.

   On August 3 I was surprised with new vigor, but with the same roots. Of that astonishing day the most unique was the night. Of the rest I have little to tell. One other day that I managed to always get a rhythm to reading, where I almost ended Great Expectations. Luke brought me the coffee and I will tell you something of the most important of what we spoke. In fact, I expected his new difficult question:

− "Now that we have all met you, Nike, I will tell you that we are impressed. So I saw my wife last night and she told me that she had already sought a warm hole in her heart for you. I would like, of her also, to know your opinion."

− "Seven warm holes I will have to find now. Now I think I have a heart, but I don't know if whether it will be able to throw so much heat. But I have to search, because these past few days, in your hive, you have a strange insect flying over who doesn't know what to do to become a bee for a while. About her I will tell you that I thought that the Earth speaks through her voice. I had supposed her, for what you have all told me, to be energy, but now I see her more as matter. The Earth has nourished her, has educated her, and she, used to crawl on its lap, has become its interpreter."

− "For us it will also be increasingly more difficult to understand our hive without you. Thanks, Nike. And remember that as long as you want to fly over here, all our hexagons will be free for you. She also told me that you've felt our child."

− "Yes, I felt it, and I know that he will be born well. Lucy bears it. I understand now that both of you have earned each other's love and that you deserve each other. And your daughter or your son deserves you now and with you it will be full. And you'll be happy, my friend, in your seven and your three. And I will leave without having any sacred numbers, with a new heart a thousand times bitten and will never know who I am. I will tell you that these days it has happened that I am for the first time."

− "And after now you will always be, and the seven largely with you, if you allow us. And your future road will be sweeter than the coffee you're drinking –he said greeting me with a last good-bye, my friend−. I'll see you soon."

   If you allow us. I spent much of that day 3 thinking how to allow them and already intuited that if I didn’t, my only number would be 0. More dejected than optimistic, more thoughtful than a reader, with a physical health recovered as my energy or my life strength diminished, with furrows maybe open, but with my timeline lost, the night I reached with a low mood, but not with so necessary tears. But a sweeping boost moved me at night to dare leave the sheets, because an unknown magic was calling me.