So I set at around 8,000; I should be at 13,336. I shall be working to catch up and hopefully by next week will have the requisite 25,000 words for being half way through the month. Then we move. No literally. I have multiple doctors appointments and packing to do but I am also going to be trying to type 1700 words per day. On the day we move we should have done close to 37,000 words. Then while other people are enjoying Thanksgiving I will be unpacking and praying we have a home in Tucson before my husband has to go to work on the 30th at his new job.
Please remember that we do not have time to edit in all of the rush and be kind with the rough draft you are about to see.
Yogi Ramacharaka wrote of the seven principles of
man. From the physical through to the spirit. The principles of the physical,
mental and spiritual selves. As a spirit moves through them it learns, advances
and begins to choose, until, finally, it is done and joins with the whole once
again.
Part 1
Base Principles
Simple. Not right or wrong. Basic. There are no
complex thoughts. Often selfish for lack of thought and advancement. The spirit
either moves rapidly through these Principles or slowly. All depends on the
attachment that it has to it’s physicality. Reveling in taste, touch, and smell
is often a thing that slows the spirit’s growth. Only time teaches the lessons
of moderation. It is a simple test that takes a long time to understand. Enjoy
your humanity, don’t harm yourself or others while doing so.
Pure Physical
To live is to
experience. What we experience seems to be up to fate. How we experience it,
however, is up to us. Take two lives the differences are in the mind. One
literally slaves away; the other rejoices in the work. There are many lives
between the first and the last. Many ways to realize that things are not as
they first appear. Many times to learn, to KNOW. Then it is time to move on, to
learn the next lesson.
Slave
“Slave!”
It has been so long, I do not remember having
another name. No other job but that of lifting buckets filled with dirt and
rock and taking them to the fire building. The fire building is hotter than
even this desert…
“SLAVE!”
“Yes, overseer?” time enough for thinking after
dying. Thinking is bad for the doing.
“Take the water from the boy to the fire tenders.”
A special kind of torture this, to carry water in a
desert. I take the water from the boy and begin the hottest trek in a desert.
Carrying water across fire to fire. The fire tenders are lean dark men who have
given up trying to stay cool and just sweat freely and work in the smallest of
loin cloths. They waste no water in cooling themselves and drink deeply of the
water. The last one to drink, a man just recently moved from the mine, gives me
back the vessel with several swallows left in it.
“Thank you for bringing us water.”
I drink deeply of those brackish swallows, they may
be all of the water I am allowed all day. The other fire tenders laugh and say
to the new man, “over time you will learn not to share water with even a
friend.”
I shrug and head back to the mine. The man is not my
friend. I have no friends. I have the mine. The lifting, scooping, hauling.
Screaming muscles, a tightening stomach and swollen feet. This is my life. I live it under the beaming
light of Ra. I remember the life of complaining about the wet. If I ever escape
this desert I will never complain about water again. Heading down into the mine
I stop. Laid out before me is the vast pit. Sometimes we find stones, those go
to the overseer; he reports to the prospector; but this mine is deep already
and stones are rare indeed. Most of what we dig is dirt and sand. We dig and we
carry, we carry and we dig. The dirt and sand are loaded into baskets. The baskets are carried to the top. The
copper is separated and taken to the fire. The fire purifies. And we dig. And
carry. At the end of the day we sleep. We are given enough of everything to
stay alive. Enough water, enough food, enough sleep. Sleep on hard desert. Some
do not wake. Osiris takes them in their sleep. Someday it will be the same for
me. I do not know how I came to be here. I was once the water boy. I grew into
a man here. I will die here. Dig, Carry, Eat, Sleep, Die a miner’s life.
Lau Po (Wife)
The baby slid from me easily. I had been made for
this life. It was easy and I loved it. It was time to clean up though not to be
content. This child is a girl. It was not a great omen, but it was not bad
either as my first two children were boys and one was still with us. He had
lived through two cycles and was even now learning from his father how to reap
the rice we ate and sold. Small hands have a good touch for such things. I
cleaned my daughter and gently placed her in the sling that allowed me to work
and her to feed at the same time. Now I can clean the small hut where she had
been born. It was not our home; our home was nearby. None of that mattered now.
As the child found the nipple and the drink that would nourish her it was time
for me to go back into the patties and harvest as she would when she grew tall
enough. Soon enough my husband joined me, trusting the boy with his task. He
did not ask and I did not tell. This alone would convey that the child was a
girl.
As the sun moved above us we moved through the
patty, our son moved from his task to playing with the birds we kept for their
eggs. When dusk came we moved out of the patty without saying anymore than we
had all day. Husband went to take care of those birds and the ox we kept for
milk and transportation. I moved to
finish our dinner. We ate our own rice and eggs with some meat from one of the
older birds. This was the last of this meat. We needed to trade our rice to get
more. The birds were too precious to kill another. We were eating a bird who
had stopped producing. Everything we do or have has more than one purpose. It
is the way. Husband and I plant, harvest, reap. Birds and Ox give of themselves
and we take care of them. Now that the sun has almost set I look at my new
daughter. She is sleeping. She has been quiet all day. Warm, well fed and
snugged by my side she had nothing to cry about. She is small and dark with the
round face of our people. I smile as I clean the cloth she has been in and hang
it for tomorrow.
“Our harvest is larger than I thought.” Husband
begins, “I think we will be able to get a young ox as well as more birds this
time.”
This is good. We are a growing family and having
more animals means much to us. War and warlords are far from us, but when we
travel to the villages to sell our rice we must pay taxes and levies. Husband
has been a good provider, but more he has been a careful one. We have saved and
are now ready to go on a longer trek at the end of harvest. We will go to a
place where rice is not so easily grown and trade for a new, younger male ox
and more, perhaps different kinds of birds. This will enable our small family
to grow and care for more patties, which helps us grow.
I was given to husband only 5 years ago. Three
babies and new animals so soon shows what my mother said was true. It pays to
be given to an older man. They care for the land and the land cares for you.
The whims and energies of a younger man are gone. The steadiness is what I need
and what makes our family so happy.
“We need to bring some ratters back as well. It
hasn’t made a difference yet, but it will and we need our part to make it
through until it warms.” It is my job to know this and keep track of the mice
and rats who could eat us out of food for a year. We will be traveling through
the beginning of the cold and that would drive them into our rice. I must go
with him to help bring home the animals and any food we trade for. Since I will
be going, the children will, of necessity, come with me.
“I am hoping for a young pup or two but even a cat
would be good.” I don’t like cats, one scratched me when I was young and I was
ill and unable to work for days. Puppies
would be good for children as well.
“That is an excellent idea Lau Po. We are going to
look like quite the prosperous family coming back with oxen, birds and
puppies.” He smiled, but he also looked nervous. It wouldn’t do to look to
prosperous when travelling there were always raiders. I hadn’t thought of this.
Yes, he was indeed a good husband.
“Perhaps, then it would be best for me to travel
back with the puppies and birds right after our trades and you can follow on
the oxen soon after?” A woman and two children with puppies and birds would not
be as tempting, nor would a simple man on an ox.
He smiled. “I am indeed a lucky man. Lau Po is smart
and a hard worker!”
It is settled then. We both know the harvest is all
but done and that the trek will begin soon enough. Our son is not yet old
enough to travel with and learn from his father on this trip, but he will be
for the next one. The puppy or puppies will ensure that we can keep larger
amounts meaning we won’t have to travel every harvest and can wait until we
have enough rice for what we need in the coming years. Yes, I was made for this
life. As I lay beside husband I smile up at the moon.
Astral
We aren’t going to talk about every life. We need
not dwell on all of those who carried the spirit forward. Not all of them
lasted for very long. Not all of them learned. Each of them moved the spirit a
step forward. Each of them made the spirit ready to go forward another step, no
matter how small. There is no falling back in this progression. Even if you are
only inching on, you are moving on. Wearing the spirit down from stubourn
ignorance to enlightenment. There is truly nothing like learning. Sometimes the
teacher is pain. Pain of the heart, pain of the body and pain of the mind.
Kassandros
“The number one thing is to trust in Apollo. His
divinity will insure your capabilities. Even when you don’t feel him within you
he is guiding your hand.”
That is the first thing you learn here. It is
repeated by you, to you and around you several times every day. In the 10 years I have been here it has
become a part of my blood and my bone. I was only 5 when the first fit took me.
My parents led me to the temple the next day. I had told them to during the
fit. I had actually said quite a few things. My father followed the things I
said and my parents were now rich and well-respected elders. From that first
temple all the way to Delphi have I traveled. I have been here now for almost
20 years. One of a very few oracles who continues after their manhood has
arrived. The priests were worried that
the fits would leave me. I am the only oracle here who foretells via fits. The
others rely on the words of their mentors and “the guidance of Apollo’s heat
within” to tell those who come what they want to hear. Any more I am not allowed
to speak to the general populace. My fortunes are only for those who not only
want them, but can take them. Come to the temple and ask about the future of
your child? You don’t want to hear that he won’t even grow to manhood, but will
die in a freak accident. People don’t want the future told to them, they want
gentle nudges and suggestions to the “right” way of things.
I doubted this when I first came here. Actually I
doubted this until the man tried to kill me for telling him that it wasn’t his
son that his wife was bearing. It was a daughter, but he didn’t wait for that.
Neither did the woman. She jumped from the mountain because she thought it was
a demon child she carried. I could do nothing to prevent either thing for I was
taken by the fit.
The fits are inconviences to fortune telling. I
don’t fall down and wail incoherently, nor do my eyes roll back in my head and
I speak an anciently language that only my “handler” can intreprit. No for me
it is only a blank face and the truth. I never remember the truths. I am also
now never left alone with anyone and I tell my futures in a locked room so no
one ever dies again.
A woman killed herself because some idiot inside me
told her that she was carrying a daughter in a vague manner. She and her child are
gone. They cannot climb back off the spire they do not rise and be glorified.
They are dead. Because of me. Apollo and I.
The locked door hasn’t stopped them by the way.
Hearing of the absolute veracity of my fortunes people come from all over our
known world to hear from the mouth of Apollo. Sometimes what I say isn’t good.
Sometimes it has nothing to do with what they want to ask. Generals told of
cheating wives when asking of battle plans. Gossips told of incoming severe
weather not the local news. Whosoever has the geld may speak with me. There is
no guarantee they will receive the answers they seek. Sometimes even I,
Apollo’s Mouth, am forced to “rely on his divinity moving through” me. I am
just the only oracle who knows for certain that I am just giving advice or
making it up as I go along. If I don’t have a fit Apollo isn’t in the room.
Why does Apollo need geld for his oracles? Apollo
doesn’t. The oracles do. It is said that when fortunes were first told they
were told for free and the tellers died of starvation. Tell a tale and get
paid. It is good enough for bards it is good enough for the gods mouthpieces.
Building a temple to a god is a great way to make certain you draw people to
you. What god? Well which god do you
want to build a temple for? Are there temples to that god already in the area.
It doesn’t really matter because the gods are vain so what’s one more
temple? Actually it does matter-to you!
You aren’t going to be making any money if you don’t have something to sell.
Of course we aren’t in this to make money. We are
here to serve the gods. I serve thus I have cloths, food and a place to sleep.
We eat well here, we sleep well here, and we are clothed well here. That part
is hard to complain about. Accidentally killing people? I never know how to
deal with that. After all they came here claiming to want to know. Once they
know they obviously didn’t want to know.
After the first incident I found that even when
Apollo stayed away I could tell what the questor was wanting to hear. Not really
wanting to hear, but what they needed. I realized that the colors around the
people weren’t something others could see. The bright red as the man who
attacked me was pulled off of me The deep darkness around his pregnant bride as
she ran screaming from us. Even just coming out of the fit I knew nothing good
would come from either color.
Others did not react the same way. The priests told
me later that this was obviously a new gift from Apollo; that her sacrifice had
been made so that the mistake would never be again. I was old enough at this
point that I questioned that rationalization when they moved my oracles from
outside to in and gave me an interpreter I didn’t need and who carried a
weapon. I started to use the colors. I can’t stop the fits if they are going to
come; but if they don’t come? Well, I tell people what they want to hear. Again
not what they say they want to hear; but what they have truly come looking for.
I have no need of faith. I am touched by Apollo’s
hand. I doubt everyday that I serve any good or purpose in this world. I have a
purpose. I know the care that the gods take towards their creations. Is it all
just a game? Am I just a piece to be moved to be played?
After 25 years alone first among equals, not a
priest and not a simple man how do I continue to serve after yet another loss
and such a large one at that. They wanted to know how to move their troops.
They came to the great oracles at Delphi. All of the oracles except one told
them not to move, to stay safe within their city walls. That one, me, I told
them to move out and when and how and apparently so very much more for I was
drawn to sleep and eat for days following the prophesy. All of the men lost.
The city sacked and taken. I told them what they wanted to hear. I know this.
They had so many other opinions but they wanted a reason and I gave it to them.
Still it stings. Still it burns.
There is only one thought as I stand at the
precipice and look down upon her bones.
Why?
Why did I get the gift? Why couldn’t it be anyone
else? Why does what I say cause so much pain and fear and strife? So much death. Just why?
There, for the first time, is an answer.
Because you care.
What? You are there?
There is no fit. Have I gone insane?
No Kassandros, my son, you are not insane. You
aren’t blessed either and I have seen that. I must stop you from taking that
step though. You are needed. What you do
is not just important it is essential. People must be in certain places at certain
times for things to happen the way they should. You are the way I have to get
them there.
So, I am a pawn.
If you chose to be such. For me, you are a path.
When those with destinies choose a path away from them I use you and others
like you to point them back towards the path. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it
doesn’t.
Are you Apollo?
I have used that name.
Was the war necessary?
Yes. It became such when they became so arrogant
that they thought they couldn’t lose. Anyone can lose. I have lost. All of
those who died were losses for me as they were for you. Worse for I heard their
cries and felt the slices as the blades went through them. You have just
imagined it in the aftermath. I have mourned and buried my dead and celebrated
with the living, so now I come to you and ask what can I do for you? Would you
have me take the gift…
Gift? Really, don’t you know this is no gift to me.
I would that you could take it. But I know the truth as well. You cannot take it. Not really for I didn’t
just advise one side. The priests knew what I had said to both groups. One came
to hear of their victories. One came to protect their people. I know the truth
and I keep the “gift” you say I have.
Is there nothing?
I want a family. A life outside of this temple. I
need a breast upon which to lay my head at the end of the day. Lives that share
with me and allow me to know that there truly is a reason to live. That we
define the contest not in the dying but in the living. I want a family. Where I
can be, just a man.
What of your “fits”? Do you not fear passing them on
to your children? Would you wish that upon another.
No, no I wouldn’t. I do not ask in vain though my
lord. I have seen a woman and her two children. She is a recent widow. I do not
ask for her specifically, for she is courting in our yard nightly with another
man. No I do not lay specifics upon you, but I ask that I have a family. A
woman. Her children. One who has survived this war and needs a tired oracle to
lay her head upon the shoulder of and weep with. Speed does us no harm as it
does us no ill. The largest problem is that the priests fear losing me. I
cannot leave the grounds. How am I to ever meet anyone? For 25 years I have
been held here neither a prisoner nor a free man. How do I NOW say that I want to
meet and wed a woman when I have not insisted before.
A family you shall have Kassandros. It will be
arranged. It has been arranged. It will not stop the prophecies but perhaps you
shall rest easier. Remember you do not do the killing. You only do the telling.
What they choose to do with the words depends upon how closely they have
listened to them.
I turn back. Now I must have faith. Now I must
believe. I cannot be insane or I would have jumped. Surely this isn’t a lie.
There is the kind blonde widow and her herbalist suitor, her children play in
front of them as they talk quietly. There is the priest come to get me for my
latest fortune. I smile. For the first time in years I actually smile and I
feel it. The thing that I thought I had lost forever. Hope.
Mercy
I know what I am. I can be honest; at least with
myself, I just prefer not to be. Honesty doesn’t pay for a cot and a meal.
Selling myself leads to more trouble than I want to deal with and the men who
“run” ya take most of the money anyway, if they don’t get you addicted on
somethin’ and take it all. Nope, lying is my game and I’m a professional! With
the black death all over the place the best thing to lie about? You guessed it,
how to not die. It’s easy to set up on a street corner selling “professor blah
blah’s magic elixer.” The hard part?
Doin’ so on a corner where the people can afford to keep ya’fed and
clothed. People in me neighborhood can’t afford their own so they not gonna
giv’it t’me. S’meh corner is a good one. Merchants for people with just a
little more who will give me somethin’ for a bottle of flower juice n’ alcohol.
I use meh big words to show them I gots some education and sez the professor
saved me with his elexer and how I drink it everah day. I do ya know. That part
isn’t a lie. I drinkz it right there in front of ‘em. Tell ‘em I was on deaths
door and was saved by the magic flower bits. I sell each small bottle for a
sixpence an for returning custom I get a groat, a three pence if iz just
fillin’ the bottle. I have a pretty good
return bizness and mosa dem keeps dere bottles. Bout onctweek I go to the
country and gets the flowers. I process them and mix the juices with enough
alcohol to mask the horrible taste. The elixir is can make the weak constitution
stronger. Often the difference between life and death is simply the ability to
make it from one day until the next. When I see someone who is especially ill I
make certain to stay strong by taking another swig. Better to need to beat an
addiction to the stuff than to lose to the death they carry with them. This is
a terrible time to be alive, it is worse to be alive and poor. I am doing my
best with it. The cold, the death, the hate is laid thick over everything that
happens. When one in three are dying there need to be scapegoats. For those who
live, for those who have lost. First it was the cats. Now that they are almost
all gone and it is just getting worse they are looking for larger targets.
Witches and demons and such. I don’t sell my potion to just anyone because of
this. I can’t take a chance on someone who is too sick tryin it and their
family saying it didn’t work because I was a withc with a grudge. I don’t haz
no grudges. If the money spends my customers are good customers. I gots to stay
clean too. No one wants to buy potions from someone who sticks or is filthy.
That means I gets washed everyday, the clothes and bed stuff once a week. It’s
a cost of my business. I was well on my way to moving up. Making the leap. My
potions and lotions smelt good and did the simple things I said they would. I
was gonna open a shop. Have a flat over it. I was gonna be respectable. Then
the death came. No one wanted simple. They wanted miracle cures. Me gran’s
simple flower recipes didn’t handle cur’in. The recipes were the only thing I
had from me gran. I like to imagine what she would have looked like. Apparently
pretty angry really. M’mum came to London following her own “Professor” I was
already in her belly and gran had kicked her out. Ma never found the professor
but she couldn’t go back either. So she took a job at an inn. She cooked and
served custom until I was born and weaned. Then she earned her livin’ on her
back. I didnna have to turn to that after her death purely cuz she saved ever’
penny she made so that I could have a better life than her. I gots some
education from one o’ her fellers for free. Well not really free if ya gets my
drift, but Ma said it was worth it if I never had t’do it to. She taught me how
to make gran’s potions and lotions and how to pick what I was gonna use in
each. What she didn’t teach me I kinda picked up. It was like a knowin’ when I
lookt at certain plants I was known’ what they could be good at. Ma said I had
gran’s gift. That it would help me climb. Then she went bout seducing an
apothecary…it was that which kilt her. He taught me lessns alright. He also
slit her throat when he found out she was a whorin on the side still. Hez the
one who taught me t’lie. He was so good at it that he almos didn’t have to pay
for killin Ma. That’s when I learnt myself how to make poisons. Those sell well
too now, but that clientele is pretty elite and very sporadic. When you are
dealing with assasins you make sure you deal with the right ones or you are
going to end up on the wrong end of one of your own potions. The right ones
found me after the apothecary “mysteriously” died. They knew it was me. They
knew it was one of my mixes. The hadn’t ever seen one like that. They wanted
it. The first offer took my breath away. It was the assasins who was gonna pay
for the store front. I just had to wait long enough for it to look like I had
earned the money on my street corner. Then the death came. We had heard stories
of course. People were fallin down dead everywhere. We jez thought Londontown was
safe. So much was here…it had to be safe right? Well itz not. I lost two
assasins to sumthin they couldn’t kill before I found the elixir. I’m pretty
good at elexin’ and I knows it. The assassans knows it too. We worked together
to make sure it was right. Nobody died who wasn’ gonna already from it. That’s
not the stuff that does it. They jus snuck it into peoples ale and watched em
for a few days to make sure they were getting’ better. With there help I
figured out how to do dosages and stuffs. Now I sells it and they get a
percentage. They deliver it to some folks who can’t be seen buyin’ from me and
tell me if’n we will make more money simply by given people plain alchohol
instead of the elixir. If we all live we have created an amazing network to run
out of my shop and apartment. So far so good on the livin’ thing. The ones that
did it was before anybody knew it was the Death. We all felt so safe. Now no’un
feels safe. I have to have a stable place to brew and live. I have to have the
‘bility to go to a place that isn’t city. What I have chosen is expensive, but
it looks like it’s going to keep me alive and safe if anyone can be. The elixir
is a good bribe. Everyone knows it works. Or at least everyone who’s tried it.
The dress maker let’s me sleep in ‘er attic. The junk man who took over the
apothecary let’s me use the basement to brew. They keep me secret and they and
theirs stay alive. There are times I feel bad. Like I’m doin’ sumthin wrong.
Should I be profitin’off of other’s misfortune? Then I remember the blood of my
mother running into the dirt floor and the ease with which everyone but me
forgot about it. I am sellin’ my wares publicly. You can buy them or not.
Doesn’t matter to me. I’m clean. I’m healthy. I’m warm. ‘n I plan to stay that
way. Meh stashed money is growin’ again. I don wanna be noticed so I’m not
buying the shop right away. The junk man isn’t doing as good as he should be;
no one buyin other peoples stuff cuz it might have the death on it. He’s gonna
need to sell soon…and I’m conveniently right here ready to make my mother’s
killers house my home…he’s in the river so it’s not like he’ll need it.
Maria
I have no more tears. I have laughter and smiles;
they are not hollow. Loss is a part of growing old. I have lost two husbands,
six children and already two grand children. My mother and father and my
brothers and sisters all died of the cholera. I had already married Tomas and
we were on his land when the dirty water killed most of the city. Tomas’ family
land had a deep spring well. We survived because we didn’t go into the city, we
did not even know what was happening until it was too late.
I remember that I went into town to tell my mother I
was pregnant with her first grand child. The city was quiet. I had never heard
this kind of quiet in the city; the quiet of Tomas’ land had kept me awake most
nights as I wasn’t used to it yet. When I turned down the lane on the donkey
that Tomas’ father had given me for the errand and in congratulations I saw the
smoke. The entire section that my family had lived in was burned. We had not
been poor or my parents would not have been able to afford to have me married
to Tomas. They had agreed to use their markets to sell the products of the farm
and stables. They and their markets were gone now. Burned to the ground in the
earliest attempts to stop the march of disease. Not knowing it was in the
water. They learned what it was after they had killed many people who had been
stuck in the markets. A family friend consoled me by telling me that my family
had been long dead by the time the fires happened.
I never rode into town
alone again for as long as Tomas lived. He was always a very protective man. He
had already been married twice and lost them both before there were children.
When we married and I was pregnant so quickly he was so excited. I remember him
picking me up and spinning me around. He was such a large man and I am indeed
small. He had been made for the work he did. His parents were gone soon after I
gave birth to Juan our first child and the eldest boy of six living children
within the decade that I had Tomas. Tomas had a heart seizure soon after we
celebrated that time together with the birth of Rosita. Our property was large
enough with enough people working it that we had our own chapel and priest.
Tomas’ grave and those of the three children who did not make it to their first
birthday were the first of a graveyard that has grown beside that chapel and
the three priests who have served here are buried beside our family. Now I have
grown grandchildren who run the ranch and even a son who is the priest here. He
has just finished laying my Miguel to rest and like all of my children looking
at me as though I will fall apart. I have no more tears.
Miguel was the husband
of my heart. He came for the land. Despite the fact that I had been running the
ranch on my own just fine for five years men would come and try and convince me
to sell. They said it was not good for a woman to be doing the work especially
with six young children. Ha! The childers were growing up knowing their
father’s land as intimately as they knew the color of their skin after working
under the field master’s eye all day. We had fields and horses. I had men I
could trust. The homes and food I provided for them and their families were
nice and comfortable. The fact that we paid as well and gave them land of their
own to work was a bonus, but Tomas’ family had taught me well. Take care of the
men and they will take care of you. Their women and children helped with the
house and small kitchen garden. The children took their lessons beside my own.
They would go on to work for us in different capacities OR go out on their own.
We had favorable deals with many a ranch owner due to those policies as they
were owned by former workers or their families.
Oh, I am sorry, the
mind wanders now and again. Miguel, even now the thought makes me smile. First
he came, like the others, to tell me to sell to him; it was interesting that
while we talked he changed his mind. He had thought my land would be easy for
him to take over and begin to make his name with. He found a woman who knew her
lands and raised her children and had no need for a strangers interference in
either. He has always said he fell in love with me while I told him off that
day. He certainly became a quite earnest suitor from that day until the one in
which he died. We married long before that day came, but every one of those
days was special because Miguel was in them. We were seldom separated and he
even encouraged me to continue managing the land asking only that he be able to
work with the horses as that was what he had wanted of the land. The man rode
as though he was part of the horse. There was never a thought to say no.
All of the children
loved him as dearly as I did. Manuel, my eldest, took longer to warm to him but
in time was the closest to him due to the love of horse running through both of
their veins. It was that love that killed Manuel before he could marry. He went
out in terrible conditions to try and save one of the prized breeding herds
that had been turned out to summer pasture.
The lightening burnt him into a statue upon his favorite stallion and
they both swept away in the wind upon the first touch.
Miguel and I had five
children to add to our large family. Thus before Manuel’s passing we had 11
children who were running through our house at any given time! Finally we built
a new bunk house closer to the stables and turned the old one into a room for
the children connected to the main house via the kitchen. This was a good choice, as with 8 of those 11
being boys they thought with there stomachs more often than they didn’t. The
bunkhouse also became the classroom for all of the children on the ranch. My
parents had believed that education was essential to everyone and I had
benefited from an education that enabled me to hold onto the ranch and make
profit with it after Tomas’ death.
His brothers and
sisters mourned Miguel, but they also learned from him. All ten were married
and working sections of the land with their families or committed to God before
they had hit their 18th birthdays. My son Pablo was the priest upon
our lands and seemed contented to go no farther with his calling. He was our
youngest and often lost inside his head. When he spoke of his calling it was an
explanation, he was hearing the Lord’s voice as it moved through him. Elizbet
and her brother Luciano had left long ago however. Elizabet to the convent were
she spent her days in devotion and Luciano to Rome where he was now a Cardinal.
I must say I am proud to have given so many children to god. That they are
grown and safe is also a dream come true for a mother. Their brothers and
sisters are good people who work the land with joy. None of that generation had
the touch with the horses that Miguel had had. It was Julia’s first boy who was
riding by the time he was two. He could work with any of the animals even the
mostly wild ones who were brought in would calm to his touch. He feels their
pain with them when they ail and seems to feel too their joy as he rides upon
them barebacked at top speed in the field. He is named Miguel after his uncle
that he never met, and a more appropriate name I could not think of.
It is Fernando’s son
who rules the land now. We have grown into an empire or so it seems. For as
long as one can ride in a day it our land, that of mine and my children. On
this imaginary ride you would have to take much longer before you reached the
borders of land that wasn’t worked by men and women and children that owed
their allegiance to us; some of them for multiple generations.
Miguel had passed in
his sleep. Growing cold beside me until I woke of it and screamed. The witching
hour was upon us and Miguel was with God. There was nothing anyone could do. I
spend a lot of time in this small chapel and the burial plot next to it now. I
talk to those who were lost. I know the children worry, I am sorry for that,
but it feels like what I need for now and I feel god and their ears with me at
those times.
It has been 80 years
since I left my parents home at 15 to marry Tomas. Miguel and I had had 50
years of joy with our children around us. I believe Tomas would have been
pleased and I know that my parents would have been. I have great grand children
who bounce on my knee and smile up at me. I feel my husbands and their children
calling me to them. I will be sleeping forever very soon with little worry for
my immortal soul. I have lived a good life. I have given to my church and my
world with mine own blood and with coin earned upon this land. I believe I have
just enough time to say goodbye to each of the children here and give them the
gifts I have set aside for them. Bits and pieces, not as valuble as what they
already have, but a memory or two. The top that Tomas carved, Miguels’ favored
halter and leather reins worked and patched many times over the years they hold
beauty and I know they will be appreciated. The pictures they drew when they
were young at my feet. Remembrances I have kept for them. Things they can point
at in coming years and remember. They should remember with joy. I have no tears
left. Not because I grieve, grieving is short lived when you have faith. You
miss those who have gone before you; but you know they will greet you when it
is your time. Perhaps Tomas, Manuel, and Miguel will have horses in heaven
waiting for me. No I have no tears left because there are no further things to
grieve. I will be with the Lord and my men soon. There is no grief. There are no tears. There is only joy. I know
I will be welcomed into his bosom. There are no doubts. Soon there will be no
breath and I will break free to the joy.
Prana
Time moves much more swiftly now. There
is little need for many lives. The lessons are learned quickly and well. We use
the breath force of life to move quickly and learn faster. Which lessons are we
learning and which are we teaching others moving through their own evolution.
Adele
Men don’t expect intelligence from a woman. Put some
color on the skin and speak with a creole accent and they barely think you are
human. It is this that aids me in making the money and learning the secrets
that keep my community safe. I am their “Voodoo Queen” when they want a show.
It is ridiculous really as even the darkest practicioners would not do the
things these men think of to see me do. Slaughter three goats to determine a
fortune from their entrails. Work “magic” to make things “disappear” and “re-appear”
this is my job. In the sticky heat that is New Orleans I spend my evenings on
stage making men drool and lose their minds while I stay out of their reach.
The show is a dark burlesque. We have fortune tellers and strippers and clowns
and I stand amongst it all and the money rolls in.
My husband did not expect intelligence either. He
says now it was a pleasant surprise that his “creole wife” was so much smarter
than his white wife. It’s a marriage of convenience for me. I am convenient for
him and he pays for the house and the theater. He is an idiot who has never
thought to ask if we are making any money with the show so I have managed to
gather quite a fund for the times when I am not young and beautiful.
It is not vanity to call myself beautiful. My looks
are a commodity as much as my skills in stage magic and my knowledge of the songs
of real magic that the performers and I dance to upon the dark of the moon. Voodoo
is not what the white men thank it is. It is beautiful and dark, simple and
wonderous. Voodoo is men and women working together to create magic; it is not
killing and blood and scaring the white men. None of that matters though, as
being what they think we are makes all of us money! To them I am a voodoo
queen, to myself and my performers I am just another traveler on the road. We
all sing the songs, we all learn the lessons.
My mother was the treasure of her white master and
now I am “married” to his cousin. There
will be no children from this marriage as I have no desire to increase that
family. I am young still I have another decade of being ripe. My husband does
not have so long. He was old when my mother gave birth to me. He has gotten no
younger, he has his son by his white wife. His children and his wife will
inheret everything. I will get nothing. I know this because I am careful. He
has no need to leave me anything. He has already deeded the house to me. I have
boxes upon boxes of useless baubles he has bought me to sell when the time comes.
My father died in the war. My mother still serves his wife as a housekeeper,
she doesn’t know how to be free; she never learned. I did. It is a lovely
feeling.
Women don’t make the decisions in most partnerships.
For me it is easy. I don’t pretend and convence him it was all his idea; I
simply don’t consult him at all. It is my home and my business thus there is no
need to consult anyone.
We meet for church in the theater. Unlike on stage I
do not take the lead. I follow Gerard. He is a powerful man. He is magic. He
was brought here from Haiti to be sold on the block as a young boy. He survived
the war by hiding and calling upon the mysteries. He still has the gift. Soon
he will be mine and I will be his we are matched in spirit. Our children will flourish.
