The Warrior's Tale Resumes

Ascending from the mountain's belly,
like an arctic butterfly
from its cocoon,
the man left the cave to descend from lands frozen
to the plains of the seven streams,
where the mountain released its ice for water.

As the ground below went from steep to level
and the air above from bracing bare to aromatic
he found the boggy grounds where the streams took their passage,
and where the crushed mountain stone floated
powdered pewter
in the icy waters of the deeper streams.

He realized that
for the first time
in a long time,
he had occasion to think not only on being a man of war,
but also on being a man of prayer.

Few questions presented themselves
but what immediate answers were made plain
in the days when he raised the child.
But the boy was near grown now,
and nigh as much a child of the woods
as had been the Queen and her Beloved before him.
Some place within the man died to the task of raising that child,
making even more room for his warrior-self to be re-born.
But with all life-changes come
the questions.

"Which am I to choose? When these streams divide, which one do I follow?"
And the water seemed to gurgle back at him,
"Just keep walking."

"Sound advice," he answered the stream without reserve,
for he was a man now quite adept
at making inquiry and interchange
with all creation.
He walked, and the streams ran along together
for a very long time.

Though the waters of the seven streams neither spread nor shallowed,
not so the waters of his drinking skin.
They dwindled away until their housing
hung empty and flat against his back.
So, he looked about him for a place to re-fill it.
Spying a stone well, he thought--
"How like the gracious God of the Boy's and the Queen's people,
indeed the God of my prayers
to make provision for my needs."

Hanging from a peg on the stone wall of that well
was an earthen ladle, while
alongside sat a wooden bucket on a braided cord.
The water he drew up was cold and bright,
making the clay ladle gleam a silvered rainbow
in its dripping;
but the water was troubled, bitter.
The water was corrupt.
And his sureness of things evaporated a little.

"What now?" asked a chiming voice,
one just at his shoulder.

So consumed had he been with this providential resource--
this well--
that he'd missed entirely the approach of this maiden
until she breathed on his neck and spoke to him directly.
He was never more removed from being a warrior than now,
in his own estimation.

He looked at her freely,
as his shame had quick burned off
any indifference per chance prescribed
by pride.
Dressed in leather he likened to his water skin,
and with hair like fibres of ice and gold
that did clamour for space in the mountain air,
and with eyes like falling stars caught up again
to heaven's heights--
she repeated,
"Hast thou been confounded by water before?"

"Once," he answered, remembering his thirst in the desert
so many years before.
"I found a strange woman then, too," he mused.

She laughed. "But I'm not strange. I've been sent to you."

"I hope whoever sent you sent water, too," he muttered.
"I prayed for water and this pit of bitterness is all I got."
She tipped her head to one side and observed,
"Nay, you prayed for water; and I am what you got."

He grinned despite himself.
"Then, lass, what would you advise me?
I came to this well with this thought:
another has passed this way before me,
one who dug the pit, encased its mouth in stone,
gave a bucket for the drawing, a dipper for its drinking.
And all for naught but a mean joke?
Cruel effort if so, in my estimate.
Who is the man that would not but take such trouble
only for the good water?"

She nodded. "Twas water once good, indeed,
in the day of the well's founding.
But not all that starts good, stays good.
Your assumptions are contradicted by this--"
She dipped again the clay ladle
in the waters of the bucket.
"The oily silver hangs behind, hugs the clay to show
the water's dross afloat, invisible
but for when and where it hugs the clay."
Elbow to knee,
she looked up from a place of place squatting before him.
"Why did you not take yourself water from the seven streams?"

He moaned the lament that had driven him to the well in the first place.
"But which one to choose?"

She smiled,
and her eyes went a-sparkle like wind chimes in the sun.
"What says ye choose?"

He stared at her a moment.
Then purposefully
he went to each stream,
across the boggy marsh grasses
firmly setting sole to kiss each hospitable stepping stones,
taking patronage from each stream's bounty,
seven portions
until the bag was full.

When he returned,
she held the bitter cistern's ladle
so he poured from the bag, and they drank
waters sweet as honey.

Then the maiden put her hands on her hips and laughed,
her mouth open wide to the sky.
"Now I will tell you what you seem to already know.
You are a warrior in training, are you not?"
Surprised by this astuteness,
the man recalled former times,
and with the memory swelled a jarring new-wisdom:
in his own days of yore, he would remind others of his stature,
while now others came to remind him.
He simply nodded.

"In a multitude of counselors is safety, man who would make war," she quoted,
casting her gaze across each stream singularly.
And as she considered the waters,
he considered her, and believed
that every nuance of the taste of the combined waters
she could dissect and attribute
to the stream of its origin.

"Sweet Water--for that is what I shall call you
as you have offered me no alternate name for your personage--
Sweet Water, do you know where these counsellors might be found
who would train me well for war?" he asked
almost playfully.
What a different thrust in his quest
for apprenticeship this was
from that of his first visit
to the land of the Queen.

"I do know where to lead you!" she said heartily.
And taking a small timber from the ground litter
she stomped a break,
gave him half
and whipped the other half upright for herself,
a flourish that made a piece of tree-death
magically a steadying force.
Planting this newly born walking stick
one stride ahead of her feet,
she said,
"Come."