How the North Wind Lost

The north wind came into town one day just before the autumnal equinox. A Shepard boy leading the flock out of the pens into the crisping pasture saw her come down the road in a small chariot pulled by two woolly goats; their hard and ridged horns were adorned with bells of silver.

The Sheppard boy heard the bells and the clip-chopping of hooves from some distance down the road. It was from there that he could see the shadowy figure traveling its way down the road. He thought it queer that someone would be coming down the path so early in the morning. The mountain passes would have been more than cold at night by this time in the year and the next place of refuge was at least a day’s walk from his stables and pens.

But there she came, all billowing and with snapping fabrics. She traveled at a brisk pace, the goats tromping gallantly on the gravel path. The sound of the silver bells rang clear above the gentle breeze which moved tall grasses and over the clapping of hooves which roughed the rocked ground. The boy stood there, transfixed. Even a few sheep with their black and white faces, lifted their heads to see what the strange sound was. Certainly travelers and tradesmen used the mountain passes but none were ever decked in bells like these goats were. They rang high and clear, like metal over a lake.

The boy looked up from his tending to see the goat duo striding down the trail and witnessed the women all wrapped in heavy, dull colored cloaks. A conical hat sat atop her head and was strapped securely beneath her chin. The wind she brought with her threatened to pull it from her head at any minute; its point stretched out behind her along with the ends of her shawls. The fabric whipped and sapped in the space behind her causing consternation in the young boy.

He had heard stories of her from all the grandmothers and grandfathers. These were children’s tales of course and were told every year as the sunlight waned and the best apples became ripe. Oh to hear to hear the tales of The North Wind in the air surly meant that autumn had arrived and the time of winter squashes, sweet apples, and the best preserving spices---cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg--- would be added to every dish imaginable certainly was upon them. The shaggy goats were a commonality in all tales. Once he had been told it was a team of horses with long tusks whose whinnies and bays were said to sound like the winter winds crashing against panes of glass. But this was told by a passer-by who was given shelter for the night and was clearly from other parts of the world. His accent was thick and muddy and was hard to understand. But the man worked for his stay and in the orchard the boy was picking apples along side the him. He got most of the story right except for the sled was pulled by horses instead of the usual goats.

Lord of Shallot

A grasshopper bounces against the road side curb, attempting to reach the tall grasses and the waist high weeds. A cigarette butt is thrown from a red truck and it smolders in the ditch. The tobacco gives of the last puffs of sweet smoke into the breeze, never to a light a single blade of grass. And a young man sits in an apartment attempting to write a story about a fantastical universe. He looks up and sees a small field. Button tansy blossoms wave next rusty brown yarrow dead heads. He remembers they use to be so white when they were first in bloom. He crossed the road and picked a few to add some wild life to his studio. But that was months ago and where the summer had its numerous stories told, his pages remain blank, blank as snow.

Across from the field is a small stand of trees. Pines, beach, bitch and maple so densely grown together they give the illusion that a real forest stretches out from behind them. But the storyteller knows better. Beyond the field and the trees are not more trees and more fields but a subdivision. And behind that, a church, a mall, two gas stations and yet another subdivision.

He contemplates this as a vanilla scented incent stick burns away. Smoke twists and dissipates in front of him and the blinking cursor on the screen, but he is lost in thought and pays no attention to either smoke or computer.  He wants so much more than this repetitious stench of urban, suburban sprawl. And so he attempts to write in the words of his favorite author “I want it all to be true because the world really does need griffins and monopods and unicorns and fire-breathing dinosaurs and rivers of stone and impossible and beautiful stories in it. And so she wrote a book”. And so did he. Or at least he attempted to.

When not writing or attempting to write or thinking of amazing and awful things to write about, he tried to make his world as impossible and beautiful as they are in the fairy tales. He grew his hair long and got an apartment on the top story of a six floor building. Surly with his hair bushing his belt loops and with his desk by the window, this would attract a prince or two to come along and rescue him from the monotony of twenty-first century living. And really, it doesn’t even need to be a prince. The floor length mirror and tapestry would certainly be reminiscent of The Lady of Shallot. Gazing at the city in the distance, his Camelot, the stream two blocks over, the wild flowers and grasses with the amber seed heads. All of these reflected in the pages in books of poetry and prose upon his bookshelf.

And so he works by night and day, weaving stories and sending them to publishers to pay rent and student loan debt. Slowly altering his world to include all the wondrous thing which the pages in his books project into the theater of his mind. Perhaps one day, he will get up from his desk, break his mirror and leave the apartment. He will get a canoe and paddle down the stream, to the river and to a place where the world is new and fresh and renewing. Away from his Camelot and his high towers. If he can over come the curse the lady or all those princess who sleep forever and are incased in glass coffins. He will shatter all the glass and tear up all the pages and truly write something new.

He might find himself in the middle of a wooded glen, alive and not dead. Build a hut and raise chickens and a hog. A summer sun will shine through the canopy and autumnal leaves will church breath feet, cloven or otherwise and he will be happy; the baba yaga before she grew old and wicked. And perhaps he will give shelter to a hunter and will repay him with a stag and with his happily-ever-after love. And ivy will climb up the chimney and he will cut his hair and grow pumpkins, as big and as round as the moon.