Bone Pattern

Gwendolyn Will Be a Mermaid- September 10, 2014

 Still wandering.  No holes in my skin yet.  Still trying to keep myself away from the cavern in the earth and the watching bones.  Everything seems to be in a lull.  Waiting.  I can't help but feel as though the world is waiting to see what will pour itself from my skin.  If anything.  

I have still been walking the streets at night.  Looking for oddities, but my mind is occupied.  I carefully set out in the opposite direction of the temple.  Wandered down toward the south of Denver.  I made it as far as Englewood last night, and had to take the bus home when I realized how far I had come.  

Slept most of today, then set out to visit August this evening.  Took him some more papers from the room above the bones, and a book.  He was pleased to have them.  We sat together in his basement.  It was almost chilly down there, since the heat broke for today.  Gwendolyn sat still on her rugs, this time wearing a grey sweater of some soft yarn.  She pushed her polished stones and crystals across it, knocked them together.  Babbled at us in her thin baby voice.  Today, I had the nerve to ask where she had come from.

"She was given to me," August said.  "Her mother knows I will look after her."

"But why did she give her to you?"

He shifted his eyes away.  "We made a bargain."

"Why did  you want her anyway?"

This got his attention more fully.  He wanted to talk about Gwendolyn's future much more than her past.  "There are places almost lost in the deep, you know?  Places beyond the reach of anyone still in contact with the shallow world.  I can't get there.  You can't.  The Weaver can't.  None of us who touch this part of the world can.  But I have read about them.  And there are people who can get there."

"People like Gwendolyn."

"Well, not now," he smiled at the little girl who burbled back at him.  "But people like she will be, yes.  People raised in the deep.  With no ties to the shallow world.  It almost never happens now.  Not since computers and the internet.  But Gwendolyn will never set foot in a chain store, if I can help it.  Never touch plastic."

I don't like the idea that there is so much I can never see.  That I am tainted by my contact with the world I grew up in.  Even by this blog.  

"Computers might lead people back to the deep too,"I said.  "I wouldn't have found a way out without them."

"You found your way this far, like a swimmer taking deep breaths to dive for pearls.  But Gwendolyn will be a mermaid."

We both looked down at the little girl with her dark skin and large liquid brown eyes.  She caught a finger between two stones and began to cry.  Her face crumpled and her face began to ooze. No one has ever looked less like a walker between worlds.  I don't think she can even walk yet.  August fussed over her, kissing her finger and cradling her in his arm.  Her destiny is laid out before her.  A long path running straight into unknown passages and dark woods.  Shortly after that, I took my leave and came home.

I forget sometimes how much there is that I will never see.  The tiny wonders I have found have blunted my appetite.  Taken the edge off.  Am I so easily sated that the sight of a sleeping man will drive me up on shore?  I wanted to leave this world, but I have merely dipped a toe into the vast ocean of possible experience.  Gwendolyn will always know where to go.  What paths to tread.  I can't have that. But I can learn.  

I will figure out what the bones beneath the streets do.  Why Fisher put them there.  And if my flesh gapes to let the night spill forth, I will welcome it.   

I will find new labyrinths to walk.  

August hopes Gwendolyn will lead him into the dark.  I think she has already pushed me into it.  Just a little.  She has given me courage.