Water be my friend..

Water be my friend
Be my friend, my guide, my companion, my saviour
I’m in need of a saviour
Water
Water
At least don’t mean to harm me
Not now
Not now with enemies without and enemies within
Wood and steel where flesh should be
Prying eyes, cunning minded, taking aim
Water…

The boy stoped. The voice in his head stoped. He looked around warily, searching through the forest for the one who had spoken. Yet, even as he searched he doubted he would find.
That voice had not passed through his ears to his mind, it was just there, visible like colour, inside his head like a scroll inside a box.
That voice wasn’t sound it was colour, it was feeling it was.. the boy lacked words to describe a voice that spoke without sound. ‘oh gosh that was creepy’ was about the best he could come up with.
Maybe the forest was playing games with him. Maybe a playful breeze was making the leaves speak and his own imagination was creating words from the rustling of little bugs and furry critters that were always scurrying here and there amongst the debris at his feet/on the forest floor.
Comforted by these explanations, the boy continued his pleasant wandering.
He was wandering with a purpose, supposedly.
He was ‘supposedly’ collecting mushrooms for a big stew, that was what he was ‘supposedly’ doing. What he was actually doing was exploring the forest. The forest was beautiful. It was alive, it was exciting and he yearned to wander ever further and ever deeper.

Mushroom collecting was just and excuse to explore beyond his boundaries’ set by his elders. Later, when he came home muddy, breathless, rosy cheeked and half a day late he could always claim to have gotten lost. Except, he always claimed to have gotten lost and he said it with such exuberance and joy that no one ever believed him anymore.
Repeating the excuse would earn him a good scolding. Fortunately, his parents were busy in the fields so it would be granny Dora’s job to reprimand him. She was a kindly old woman, at worst he would be severely muttered at.

Perhaps he should come up with a better excuse. Granny Dora said she gave extra marks for imagination.

In his defence, he was carrying a bucket for mushroom collecting purposes. There were even a few mushrooms rolling and bouncing around the bottom of it. There had been more mushrooms a while ago but, he’d gotten hungry.

The boy wanted to sing.
He couldn’t settle on a song so he began humming random notes. He put random words to the random notes and then stopped abruptly when he realised none of this was random at all.
The words being formed in his mouth by his own tongue were not his words. They were the words that had been speaking inside his head. He had never heard these words or this accent before and yet, he understood this strange language..

The chill of fear set ice crystals creeping up his bones.

He sought an explanation for this madness. To afraid to venture for answers inside his own head he searched the physical world around him. Trees, leaves, vines, shadows, forest, his footprints behind him, boots, bucket, mushrooms.
Mushrooms!
He picked one up and sniffed at it. He peered at it and prodded it with a finger. Maybe these were the wrong kind of mushrooms, the kind he’d been warned about. It was almost reassuring to think that it was they who were to blame for these strange thoughts and sensations.

He realized that he was alone in his head again. The words were gone, the melody gone, all of it drifted away like thistledown and dispersed like the fog of morning.
The boy remembered another song. It was loud and boisterous. Farmers sang it to keep their spirits up during the long hours of hard labour that took up most of their lives.

The boy sang.
Singing made him feel brave. His voice gained strength and confidence and volume. He stamped his feet as he marched along and he swung the bucket.
When he trode upon a stick and felt it’s shape beneath his foot he bent and picked it up and used it to tap out a beat on the air before him. He felt as if he were commanding the song with a wand like a sorcerer.
Little birds chirped as he sang. The zoomed acrobatically. The darted and spiralled about the forest canopy. They dived down through the branches. They swooped around the singing boy.
He laughed, for it seemed to him that the little forest birds shared his joy. They were celebrating life together.

A blur of speed proceeded sudden pain.

The song caught and died in his throat. The bucket hit the ground and several mushrooms rolled out and lay still. The stick landed on top of them.
The boys hand’s gripped his stomach. He looked down and slowly took his hands away. He expected a bloody wound to be revealed but there was nothing. He lifted his tunic. Nothing. Not a scratch, not a bruise not even a little red mark.
He straightened up and looked around the ground at his feet. He took exaggerated steps, placing his feet with care least he tread on the little bird that must have hit him and should be lying senseless on the ground after such a collision.
There was no bird. There was nothing to explain what had just happened.
Feeling very shaken and sober, the boy picked up his things and kept walking.
He walked in the direction he had come. It was definitely time to go home.

To keep dark thoughts at bay, the boy began making up a story as he walked along.
This was a common pastime for him, daydreaming, or 'wasting time' as his uncle called it. Quite often the uncle caught the boy perched up in the hayloft chewing a strand of straw and talking to his favourite cow Chipmunk. [There is a long, wondrously entertaining tale relating the events in which the cow got her name but that's another story.]

The boy often amused himself thus, dreaming up all of the adventures he was going to have. This one was turning out a little differently.
There were no dragons or Minotaur’s. He wasn't a mighty king of a hero with shining sword and flashing shield. Usually the boy imagined himself venturing off on some heroic quest, mounted on a silver steed, the emblem of some mighty kingdom emblazed on his breastplate, a long bright feather in his helm/helmet. The boy had quite a thing for plumes. They looked so impressive and made anyone wearing one look so important. The boy would quake with awe at the sight of a plumed helmet, should he ever actually see a real one.
He had tried to make his own plumed helmet once. There were no exotic birds to leave stray feathers around his farm or his village so he made do with long, orange, chicken feather’s. He tied the feather to a cap of rough wool that was sort of silver colored although everyone said that it was grey. After a day of being laughed at the boy succumbed to his beaten ego and the feathered cap away and only wore it in private, away from mocking eyes.

As the current fantasy developed, the boy realized that not only wasn't he in his usual daydreaming attire but he wasn't in it at all.

It was all about this girl...

Her ears were long and pointy. An elf. The boy knew that long pointy ears meant you were an elf. His knowledge on the subject of these strange ethereal beings ended there. Pointy ears equalled elf. He had never seen and elf. No one he knew had, (except Old Gruff, a grizzled elderly man who loved to sit on his veranda and tell stories to all the children. Some of his tales featured elves but everyone said the old man was crazy so he didn't really count.)
This girl, the elf, the one that featured in his fantasy bought about a strange and powerful effect on the boy. No sooner had he dreamed her up then he was aware of a great, beating, overwhelming, ocean deep, sky high feeling of love.

All the girls in the stories he heard were called maidens so he supposed that this girl with the long, pointy ears would be called an elven maiden. That had a nice romantic sound to it, elven maiden.

He wasn't quite sure of the meaning of the word maiden. It was defiantly a term for females, unwed might be a necessary state to qualify for the name of maiden and there was something else he didn’t quite understand. He was rather naive for the age of 15.his parents hoped that he’d stay naive for a while longer. They had enough problems.
The boy’s Grandfather had a variety of terms for girls and Wemen. There were different types of maidens. According to the boy’s grandfather, who seemed to be an authority on this subject and many others, a female could be a snow maiden, a beige maiden, an off white maiden a false maiden and a scarlet maiden. The highest praise he could give was to refer to a lass as a snow maiden. A scarlet maiden was at the other end of the scale. When the boy had innocently asked his Grandfather what the terms meant he had considered his words with great care and then deciding on a few he raised a hand articulately and said,

"A snow maiden Angus, my boy, can marry in white to show her virtue and purity. A snow maiden is a girl who says goodnight at the door until her finger is ringed with gold."
The old man had then sat back in his creaking rocking chair with an air of satisfaction. The boy, only a child then, gazed at him with round eyes full of wonder and a complete lack of comprehension. "Well, you'll understand when your older boy."

Now, viewing the world of his fantasy, the boy understood that his elfish maid could not marry in white. He saw her turn her face to the full moon, her hands ( notably unadorned with gold) swept around the gentle swell of her stomach, holding it and what lay within in a protective embrace.

Her heart was greatly troubled. The boy could feel the weight of her sorrow, he could sense the wind tossed torment of her mind, seeking answers, seeking solutions, knowing she had to wait. She looked into the depths of the sky. She was counting the stars, the boy didn't understand how but she was reading the lights in the sky.
The shape of the moon, it’s placement in the dark smoke of night, the position of all the twinkling stars, it all meant something to her.
The boy had the faint notion that this was a calendar of sorts, a time keeper, a gigantic clock.
She looked down at her self. Her hands slid aside to hold her waist as if moving out of the way so that her unborn child could hear her voice. She addressed the child with a voice of music. The boy could not translate the elfish tongue but none the less, he knew what she was saying. She was afraid, but she was making promises to be brave.

The boy saw and felt beauty and grace in every dimension of her sweet existence.

The moon swelled and shrank, swelled and shrank. It went through its cycle before his eyes. It seemed to be breathing or beating like a heart. Each pulse bleed inky blackness across the sky giving the night it’s colour. It seemed odd to the boy, and somehow significant, that whilst the moon bleed and bleed and stained the night the moon herself was never tainted. Her own silver, whiteness remained pure and pristine. Her light never dimmed. She was ever pure. Everpure.

“Everpure.” The boy whispered the words as a name, the name of the elfish maiden.

Time passed until the time had come.
Someone of great importance to her had at last arrived. Her tormented waiting was over.
Again the boy was aware of her emotions. They were colored red with passion and fear, they were a bloody, brilliant sunset. Her bravery was a small, steady rowing boat, alone on a brutal sea.
She delivered the news of her pregnancy to her lover, for it was he she had been waiting for.
He answered only with silence and a long endless stare as if he were gazing down into a bottomless well and slowly starting to fall.
She had prepared herself for this.
In the absence of his words she thought dismal thoughts to herself.
Her silent beloved was going to depart like the spring, gone in a single brutal storm that blows the blossoms from the trees. She would be left the eternal winter of his absence.
Left with only here’s kindness and courage to be soft rain and sunlight to nurture to bloom of her union with this mysterious man.

He would twirl into the saddle like a gust of autumn leaves and then there would be only dust and hoof beats, to which she would whisper goodbye.
And that would be that.

‘I should have bought a carrot as a parting gift for Gingerarlah.’ Everpure thought. The thought was very clear to the boy and he smiled. She was lifting her spirits with a joke. Gingeralah was the steed upon which the man rode. She tried to smile, after all, she had promised to be brave. The boy smiled, to encourage her, or maybe encouraged by her. He smiled with tenderness and admiration for her spirit for her courage. If he were with her he would have embraced her, he would have confessed his feelings and poured out his heart to her. This was what the man wanted to do, yet something held him back, something that bound him as tightly as heavy cold chains. At length, he did embrace her. However, it was not an embrace of joy or celebration, it was an embrace of despair and shared doom, it was two people clinging to a raft on a stormy sea. And then, just as she had imagined it, he flew into the saddle of his roan steed and galloped away, out of her sight and out of her life.

He hadn’t returned.

The boy was enthralled in the story that was playing out in his mind. He walked and walked, oblivious to fatigue or shadows growing longer. They forest was growing dark and swampy as evening set in. Night was creeping closer.

Where was he? ‘Chocking on blood and water I hope!’ The boy thought with unusual venom. He was generally a good natured boy but he was angry with this fool of a man for leaving Everpure they way he had. Still, his venomous thought made him uneasy. He swallowed thickly and looked around nervously as if afraid someone had heard his thoughts. Was is guilt for such a cruel thought that sat in his throat like thick syrup?.

No more of the story would come. The flow of fantasy had been stoped abruptly like a bolder tipping into a stream to cease the flow of water.
Who was this man? The boy wondered. He did not chase after the answer, he had the strange notion that it would come to him if only he opened his mind and let it come without force.

He was hunted like the deer of the plains and forest. Like those long legged beasts he was swift and allusive, his life depended on it. However, unlike the gentle, timid deer, this man was mostly on his one, a lone wolf, and he could turn from prey to predator with the speed and horror of a lightning strike.
The boy felt a little afraid as he came to comprehend just how dangerous this man could be.
The traits of deer and dog were entwined in his nature along with elf and human. Blood was a secondary thing to nature. The boy wasn’t sure he understood what this meant but he pondered it awhile as he walked and walked.
A deadly deer, a dog and a fawn. A stag and a hunting hound…
The boy ran words together until something clicked and he spoke a name out loud.
“Staghound.”
This was the name of Everpure’s lover.

The boy wondered into the depths of the woods.
He absent mindedly stepped over rocks and logs that tried to trip him and he ducked beneath leave and thorn laded branches that tried to tangle in his clothes and hair. The trees creaked like old bridges, they arched above high above him, their spine like trunks and limbs like twisted bones sent long tendril’s dripping with vines and moss downwards towards the earth. They dangled in the breathless air as is suspended in time. Looking up could give you vertigo. It was like standing beneath a green waterfall.


Staghound was a messenger. Not all messages were verbal, some were delivered on the point of a sword.
He had few friends, many foes and a number of allies who differed from friends in that their co operation depended on circumstance. Should things change, allies could quickly become foes for the profit it should bring them.

He had only one love. Everpure.

She of the sterling silver soul. White and pristine as the moon/sphere of light that hung suspended nightly in the sky. Oh, how he loved her, the boy knew, they sighed in unison.
For Staghound, Everpure was the cause, reason and destination. She was everything. She was the sole star in an otherwise empty sky. It occurred to the boy, these elven folk sure spend a lot of time star gazing. If ever the boy was caught lazing about in the fields, (usually with Chipmunk.) or sunning himself on the roof of the hayshed looking into the depths of the sky with a ponderous expression  then he would be chided with phrases like, ‘time waster’, ‘lazy’ useless daydreaming’. But these elves, these strange, insightful and poetic people gazed skywards and poured their souls into the sky. And what did they get from this? They seemed to read meaning in the blackness and the eternity that was above and the boy came to the realization that blackness and eternity were not the same as nothingness. His interest was caught on this deep thought, snagged like a scrap of cloth in the reeds at the waters edge, rippling there like a frayed flag in the wind. What were those shining points of light? What was a star? The boy wondered. Something magical even though they were there every night,(except when it was overcast of course.) Maybe they were huge diamonds untouched by any hand. But how did they just hang there in the sky? Things in the air fell down, but stars didn’t. It made no sense, they truly were magical. Where did they go during the day? Did birds land on them and preen their feathers and look down on a world full of people to busy to look up and wonder anymore?

Maybe the sky was water. Maybe the sky was an ocean and the world was held in an air bubble, a tiny, fragile thing… The thought of being so small and being surrounded by all that water made the boy uneasy. He quickly moved on to another thought.
Maybe they were not diamonds or any other stone, maybe the sky was one solid thing, wrapped around the world like a blanket and beyond this blanket there was light, glorious bright, pure light, that which they called heaven, and it was this light that twinkled through the little holes in the blanket. Maybe it didn’t matter if he ever knew, maybe it was enough that he looked and wondered and felt amazed. The boy felt light-headed, like he was weightless, flying, soaring. He felt he had fallen down into himself, into a galaxy he had never known existed.

All of a sudden, the melody was back, bitter, melancholy, frightening. It played in his head and his heart and caused his every nerve to tremble like a plucked string.


Oh what i wretched life i lead
where love is an inconvenience
and the child that is a blessing
is a burden to my heart
so heavy
i might drown.

She must know i love her
I am coming home to her
She must know my rouge days are over
for her
for me
for us
for the he or she that is to come
our little one.
Oh woe is me
i have tarried to long.
Once apprehension held me back,
now boneless arms hold me down
water, never have you been my foe,
no, you have given much,
relief from heat, a cure to thirst, you give life itself
but now you take life from me,
Is this punishment for my wicked ways?
I am on my way to end them.
To kill me is to torture her
She is innocent,
Innocent of all
If I die here, alone, unheard
Then she will never know,
She must know
I love her…

The voice repeated itself, it faded in and out of hearing, it fell in and out of different tongues, it overlapped and echoed itself and eventually it faded away.
The boy supposed he must have continued walking for when he became aware of his surroundings the place where he stood was very different. He had never been this deep into the forest. The air was thick with the smell of wet soil and rotting wood and moss. To smell it was to taste it such was it’s potency. The tree’s were grey like cold flesh and serpentine. They coiled and wrapped around each other. There was the sound of squelching as the boy walked.
Time had passed as well as distance.

It was night. It was night and he was alone in the woods. He was lost and alone in the woods. He simply hadn’t noticed how far he’d gone or how dark it had gotten. He had been so keen to see what would happen next in the story.
The boy was scared, he was very scared. Searching for a way out or something to do a part of him suggested he sit down and cry. He ignored it and kept walking. If he kept walking he might come upon something familiar, after all he knew these woods quite well and he’d have to stumble upon a pathway soon enough. He hoped.
Being as scared as he was it was very easy to slip back into the distraction of his day dream.

So, Everpure’s with child, Staghound run’s away like a big sook on his steed Gingerarlah.
The boy could feel the power of the horses body. The strength that gathered and sprung and muscles coiled and unloaded their power for every stride. They gobbled up the miles. Gingerarlah’s mane and tail rippled with the wind made by his own speed. They rippled like rusty water.
Staghound had a mission. The boy was back into the story. It picked him up and swept him along like a little leaf caught in an underwater rip.
Staghounds heart was consumed with the urgency of this mission. The boy pried deeper, trying to wrestle the purpose of this mission out of obscurity and into the light of understanding. Staghound had to do something, no, he had to undo something. He had to stop something, free himself from it. It was to dangerous to be allowed to continue, not now, not now that she was…
This would be the mission to ensure that there were no more missions. If he succeeded, then he was free, if he failed, then he was nothing. Failure meant death

The story was gone again, so abruptly that the boy gasped. It had been snatched away by the wind, it had been swept downstream on a current. The woods were darker and the boy was even more lost and afraid then before. He stoped and started to sob.

‘Listen to me!’ A harsh voice demanded. It was the voice that had stolen into his mind and taken over the lyrics of his song. This was Staghound.
‘Stop fighting me. Come closer.’
The boy could feel the pull of the river. He wanted to go there. He had to go there.

The boy walked beneath the shade of green trees. The shadows thickened, they held him in the grip of cold. They swirled around his ankles and surged upwards. The world tilted. All he could see was sky. He couldn’t speak, he could scarcely breath. Water and blood stole his voice and his frightened cries could not escape, they drowned within him. He flailed and took hold of a branch just for the comfort of feeling something real and familiar. He took a long deep gasp just to prove that he could still breathe.
The river would be his only relief and he didn’t know why.
He started to run. His mind leapt back into the sanctuary of fantasy and imagination, but now, the boy’s predicament was to much to ignore so he had to write himself into the story. OK. So what did his running through the forest at night have to do with the lovely Everpure and the shady Staghound?


Staghound was not in this dangerous business for fame or fortune. Staghound was paying off a debt. And he had been on his way to finalize payments.
He was going to buy his freedom and secure a safe future with Everpure. But first, he had to get out of this river, out of the tangled clutch of reeds, he had to wipe the blood from his mouth and pluck the arrows from his body and find Gingerarlah. He needed help to accomplish these things. Although he loathed to ask for assistance, he loathed to associate with a non-elf, he had reluctantly submitted to the fact, he needed help.

He lay in pain. He lay in water. His mind reached out through the forest like a hunter, a hunter who had found his prey. The boy stopped. Cold understanding crept upon him. It was all real, or maybe it was all fantasy, but he had passed into a place where reality was banished. He felt the presence of the man enter his mind and look around through his eyes.

‘To the river.’ Staghounds voice spoke coldly inside Angus’s mind.

So this was it? He had been summoned. This is what it had all been leading to.
Staghound had gotten into trouble and was calling the boy to come get him out of trouble.

Something scurried in the trees nearby. The boy hurried on. To the river then, he thought. Really, there was no where else to go.

So, Staghound was in need of a saviour and he, Angus the farm boy, had been chose to be that saviour of one worthy of a plumed helmet.
‘So’, the boy thought, ‘I guess that makes me a kind of hero.’ He liked the sound of this at first but the dashing image rapidly diminished. Despite the fact that it seemed feasible to suggest that the act of rescuing someone would thereby mean that you outranked them the boy couldn’t believe he could ever be anything more then Staghound’s squire. One who walked behind. One who fetched things. One who stood waiting, rarely dared to speak their mind. He was born to be one who walked behind.
‘And, let’s be honest’, the boy thought, ‘I wasn’t exactly chosen was i? I mean, I just happened to be wandering through the woods. I’m the closest at hand is all. It was me or a squirrel.’ The boy sighed and kicked a stone. Staghound is older then me, wiser then me, more smart then me and better then me in every way.
‘He is not as nice as you’ A voice addressed him. It spoke as Staghound had spoken, appearing in his mind, a thing of feeling and sensation as appose to sound and vibration. However, this was not Staghound, this was her. This was Everpure. The boy’s heart skipped, his spirits lifted. He looked around, was she here? Was the lady of loveliness here in the woods? But no, he felt sure that she was far away. His shoulders slumped once more.
So, Everpure, far away though she was, thought he was nice? ”Nice” The boy said aloud. The title lacked certain splendour, especially when compared to the grand titles of Staghound. ‘Nice” The boy mumbled and took his depression out on another luckless stone. He supposed nice was a good thing and all but it was hardly the name of a knight. ‘Halt, I am the Knight of nice! The mighty knight of mighty nice.” No, no… It was a joke, it was insignificant, it was a cry in the dark.
‘Perhaps there you have found the definition of a star?’ Everpure spoke again.

The boy was so happy, Everpure had spoken to him, not just once but twice. Everpure…
Either this was all real or he’s gone mad. Oh well, he felt her urging him on to the river, so to the river he went.
The boy gave a little skip as he hurried along in the woods at night. The moons had come out from behind the trees so he could see a little better now.

It was not sight that was guiding him anyway.

Staghound was out there somewhere. He was nearby. The boy knew it.
Although it was Staghound that had instigated their meeting and was now constantly calling the boy, it was not with a welcoming voice. Staghound was not pleased, nor was he grateful.  It wasn’t pride alone that made Staghound so reluctant to seek assistance. The last time he had accepted help from a stranger he had been horribly betrayed. That offered hand of friendship had turned into the vice grip that made Staghound the rouge he was. It was to this betrayer he was indebted.
The boy understood then what few did. Staghound had not always been bitter.
Everpure knew this. She alone believed that he could shed his bitterness like an old coat or be washed clean of it as if it were mud and her love the rain.
She believed and hoped that he would not be the biter rouge forever. The boy prayed that she did not hope in vain.
It was a strange thing to wander through the forest, pondering the nature of a man who’s existence was so far from his own humble lifestyle of harvest and watching the weather and coming up with excuses for his lateness and daydreaming.

The boy stumbled down a sudden decline, his stumbling ended with a splash. The coldness of the water that filled his old boots made him shiver. He regained his balance, caught his breath and looked around.

The boy already knew what he was going to see before he saw it, but that didn’t make it any less shocking. This was the moment when fantasy became reality.  He saw…
Water. He saw it he heard it he smelt it and he felt it, and so did the elf lying in it.
The boy stood a foot deep in the stream, moonlight made the water silver and an elf struck by arrows lay still and tangled in the reeds.
Staghound. A stranger to the boy’s eye’s but he was a familiar presence in his mind. He had been talking to him, guiding him, altering his fantasies to bring him here and when all else had failed he had flat out ordered him to come. He hardly looked to be in a position to be making commands. He was soaked, half drowned, partly submerged like a sinking island. He was bloody from the trickles of red that fell from his mouth and the two arrows stuck fast in his flesh.
The boy remembered the sharp pain he had felt when he’d thought a bird had flown into him. It hadn’t been a bird, it had been Staghounds memories. The boy had experienced his pain and the shock of being shot.
The boy stood ready to sprint away, a gape of amazement that refused to shift from his face. He could not believe that it was all real. He was standing in a stream with Staghound. The mighty Staghound, in ruins but still proud, still intimidating and still dangerous.

He was angry. His mind and consciousness had been invaded by this stranger. Mighty though he was it didn’t give him the right to invade a persons mind and soul. They boy had been tormented and terrified by illusions and sensations. He had a right to be angry. And yet, he felt timid and sheepish. Intimidation made him feel very small and silly and like a little child. So even though he had a worthy claim to disgruntlement he was helpless to stop himself gushing and lowering his head like a humble puppy.
“Humble puppy.” Staghound said. The words did not come easy.
“Staghound.” The boy answered in a whimper .The boy couldn’t tell where the words were born and who read who’s mind but evidently they were connected the farm boy and the rouge elf.

With a whimper and a shaky smile the boy raised the bucket and said politely. “Mushroom?”