macblaze.ca

5:15

The rat paused at the top of the stairs and looked all around in panic. Recent events were proving all too much and he didn’t know what everything meant.

His home, however new it had been, was lost to him now, and outside was never good. He could hear rustling below and ducked into the corner behind an open door. And there he sat like a rabbit caught in the open. He paused and then realized he had to leave. There was a hole in the wall in the massive meeting room that led eventually to the outside. He made his way slowly, fearfully, through the dappled light, hardly daring to breathe until he reached the safety of the space between the walls.

A few minutes later he was in the wooden porch at the back of the building. Cold but dry and mercifully alone. As he calmed down slowly, he knew he had to leave again. He crept to the dirty window and saw the unkempt grounds, all overgrown lawn and rambling shrubs. All was quiet. He moved slowly out through the milkmaid pass-through, battered doors swinging on rusty hinges, and then ran for the nearest shrub. He would be safe here for a moment. No one ever came back here. Soon it would begin to get dark and he would move to the front of the building through the clearing and then on to who knew where. Somewhere. And so he waited.

Waited for something, anything, to make some sort of sense to his rat sensibilities. Waited for something to make it all good again.

Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t going to happen. No sooner had he crouched down low in the shadows when around the corner swung a figure: a cold, wet wind and a monstrous human roared into the rat’s already confused existence. Looming out of the rain, the enemy approached from the rat’s erstwhile destination. The rat shrieked. And ran.

The human, startled by the grey shape hurtling towards it, also shrieked and stumbled back. Thankfully, for the sake of the story, the rat managed to avoid yet another collision and darted under the long-legged intruder and out into the wet rain. He spun ninety degrees to the right and hurtled under a bush, along the concrete foundation and slowed to a stop before he hit the massive stairs at the ground of the building.

His heart fluttering like aspen leaves in a windstorm and his lungs heaving like tiny bellows seemed to block all of his other senses. Afraid, confused and lost in the moment the rat huddled down in the wet, cold soil under a scraggly rose bush and panted.

As a rat’s life went, this was not the best of days.

 

5:13

Rowan’s phone binged. She rolled over on the ratty brown couch and reached to grab it off the side table. A quick glance revealed a text from Gareth

Srsly thx.

She smiled and replied:

no prblemo. Its nice to be nice to the nice

Then she added:

G’night

A few minutes later, Gareth’s reply popped up on the screen:

Yah… But u kow
Thx
Night

The typo made Rowan smile again. Where was autocorrect when you needed it?

She dropped the phone on the end of the couch and fumbled for the remote under the green velvet pillows. “Time for a bit of decompression …”

But her mind really wasn’t on the TV. After all these years, I can’t believe I still act like a kid around him. She stared through the screen and saw herself and Gareth as children in the neighbourhood playground. What a klutz. Good thing he had me to take care of him. She leaned back into the pillows and closed her eyes with a wry smile. He really did need me today, didn’t he? The thought brought a wave of contentment, and she abandoned the TV in favour of her own personal dialogue.

I’ll just sit here, I think. Sit here and think.

 

5:12

I’ll give him this, Edward mused, he spins a good tale. Tail…huh. You’d bloody think a beaver would know a thing or two about tails. And that bit about the flowers. I don’t know whether he’s pulling my leg or he’s really that clueless about things botanical.

The beaver droned on, swinging into a sidebar about leaf drop and poplars.

“My dear beaver,” Edward began in his professorial voice. “Fruit is formed from the fertilized flower. Your young protégé was never going to get any lemons if you continued to … ’nip them in the bud’, shall we say.”

“Really?” the beaver asked earnestly. “I had often wondered what Gareth was going on about. Do you suppose if I had let them go, stink and all, that he would have actually gotten some fruit?” His tone implied a sad mix of regret and genuine curiosity. It was the kind of situation Edward could rarely resist.

“Well. I believe this particular variety of lemon is known as a Meyer lemon. Citrus × meyeri, the Meyer lemon, is a citrus fruit native to China. It is commonly thought to be a cross between a true lemon and a mandarin orange. In 1908,it was introduced to North America by the agricultural explorer Frank Nicholas Meyer. Meyer was an employee of the United States Department of Agriculture who had collected a sample of the plant on a visit to China.”

The beaver tuned him out. “I swear that rabbit swallowed an encyclopedia, or spends all of his time surfing Wikepedia. But I’ll take what I can get,” he mumbled to himself. “Three or five more minutes should do, I’d guess.”

“Citrus × meyeri is reasonably hardy and grows well in warm climates. The plants are also fairly vigorous; a tree grown from seed usually begins fruiting in four years, potentially yielding thousands of lemons. Meyer lemons are popular as ornamental plants due to their compact size, hardiness and productivity.”

Yup, definitely Wikipedia. Probably word for word, knowing him. The dumbest bunny I ever met. Come to think of it, the only bunny I ever really met. And boy, do I wish I never had.

“Meyer lemons are highly decorative and suitable for container growing. While trees produce fruit throughout the year, the majority of the crop is harvest-ready in winter…”

But that should just about do it…

“One more point and I suppose I should get on with business …”

5:11

The light was fading in the little grove and Edward, while possessed of slightly better night vision than the beaver, didn’t want to take any chances.

“First things first. Why the lemon?”

The beaver regarded the nosy bunny for a moment and replied, “Why is that any of your business?”

“Just curious. It certainly looks tasty but not what I would have termed ’your thing’.”

“And what would a long-legged busybody like you know about ’my thing’? In fact, what the hell would you know about anybody’s ‘thing’ outside of your own little, self-righteous world?” the beaver spat out with an acid tone. “Seems to me you aren’t capable of seeing anything beyond that twitchy pink nose of yours.”

“But as for the lemon, I think I will indulge your curiosity.” The beaver thought hard: he needed to buy some time. It’s not that he was afraid of the hare — at least not very afraid — but Edward was dangerous and handling this wrong could be disastrous to the beaver’s plans. And while manipulating humans was all well and good, the phrase ‘animal cunning’ wasn’t just a saying. The bunny had teeth, both metaphorically and literally, and knew how to use them.

“Well,” the beaver began, “it’s like this. When I first arrived in the city and was searching for the boy, I was struck by the different nature of the trees around here. I’d never been to this part of the world before, you know …” The beaver could see Edward’s ear relax and knew he had the time he needed if he could just keep the bunny’s attention.

“And well, I thought to myself …” he continued …

 

5:10

Rowan pondered the the ice-cold glass of water slowly dripping condensation on the old wood table. She always kept a mug or two in the freezer so that on those evenings she needed an extra cold drink she could grab a beer from the fridge and pour it into a frosty mug. She enjoyed watching the ice on the glasses slowly melt, and her furniture was nothing she ever worried about. A few more rings or stains just added more character.

This particular beer was a pale ale she had picked up on the way home. She’d never had it before but the scruffy older guy behind the counter at the liquor store had recommended it. The store was fairly well known for its beer selection, so she took his advice and picked up four 500-ml bottles. It had been a good pour and she’d nailed the head; it had just barely dribbled over the rim, the excess quickly turning to half frozen beer slush and adding to the overall pleasant esthetic.

It was at these times, with a cold beer in front of her that she had not yet tasted, that she always felt in the moment. The moment before the next moment, the next phase, and she like to savour them. The anticipation of the ice-cold mug with its frosty contents soon to be quelling her thirst. But she knew that the instant she grabbed the mug, the picture would change and would become irretrievable. That wasn’t a bad thing, but somehow she always felt melancholy at moments like this. By reaching for that thing that would satisfy her, she would change that little piece of the world. Forever.

She sighed and leaned back with one more appreciative glance at the slowly pooling liquid. And then she reached out and drank.

 

5:7

There is, he thought, the old solution. The one that cures all ills. At least for the moment.

While all this change and turmoil and dedication to freedom had quite revised his basic outlook, much of the old still clung to him like an old, worn, familiar cloak. And so with a shrug and a twinkle he smiled and pulled the silver-chased flask from that not-so-metaphorical cloak, spun the top off with practised ease and partook of a healthy swig. “Elixir,” he murmured. “Elixir indeed.”

He gave his head a little shake at the strength of his taste buds’ reaction to an old friend and took one more long swallow before spinning the top back on and slipping the worn container back whence it had appeared. “I think,” he began, “I think I shall enjoy this. I think I shall just bloody well sit here and enjoy this.” His voice was rising to thunderous levels. “I do believe I shall take this time for myself, you bloody bastards!” he shouted, although even he had no idea who these bloody bastards might be or whether they even existed outside of his own paranoid delusions.

Taking a deep gulp of air he stretched his arms out to the sides and threw his head back. “I shall take now, you soul-sucking parasites. I shall decide.” And then, so quiet as to be a mere breathe to the inattentive: “I decide.”

He bowed his head and drew his arms back in to wrap himself tight. “I shall wait.”

Then he lifted his chin and stared across the plain, eyes absorbing the play of sunlight across the grass, the patterns of clouds racing along the hillsides, the play of colour and texture as a distant river wound its way towards the glimmering body of water that took up half of the horizon. His ears opened to the sound of the wind ebbing and flowing across the features of the land, to the distant calls of birds floating unseen in the endless sky, to the brief, tiny moments of utter silence that punctuated the life he beheld in those moments he waited.

In that moment, in a odd sort of way, he regretted that drink for stealing even a little of this from his mind’s eye. It was in truth more glorious than any of the petty fears of imagined injustices. It was more heady than the rarest of brandies. It was, he admitted to himself, quite simply the real reason to be. To be here in this moment truly did justify all the other moments, for without them, there could be no now.

And so he took the time for himself. He breathed and he gloried. And took all that the world was prepared to give him. And you know, that was quite a lot.

 

5:8

It all came back to that infernal machine, he realized. A deal with Satan’s worst could not have spun a more Byzantine web around him. It was not so much that he lacked the sheer strength to break free. It was more the incessant compounding of barriers: monstrous doors, cavernous moats, unscaleable walls … No matter what triumphs he found, no matter what hard-won successes he contrived over these blockages, another and another and another stood before him.

Though he stood on the precipice of change, a net beyond any mythic description lay in front of him, removing even the possibility of flinging himself into the void.

Yet somehow, even though he knew himself trapped, even though he realized he had no further resources to move himself forward, even though deep in his curdled bowels he understood that the only way was the way back, even so: he could not move from this place. He could not abandon the hope that had brought him so far before seemingly abandoning him to fate.

He stood under that final span, not yet outside nor any longer inside. And he imagined himself removed altogether from the pushes and pulls of his existence. Free in that moment of non-action.

5:7

The span of the great Gothic arch framed the vastness that he had thought would spell escape. Out. To shrug off the insidious weight of responsibility and tedious pressure of day after day, all he had to do, he had oh so foolishly thought, was to go. To go out into the unknown. To leave the the cloisters of his current existence and join the broader scope.

But he couldn’t.  He stood there gazing out on the desert-like landscape, with hills that gently undulated across the horizon and vast grassy plains that stretched so far one’s eyes blended them with the grey sky to create the illusion of infinity.

Behind him, up those countless stairs and through those twisting passages, lay his responsibility. A life of ease and luxury, punctuated with bursts of fear and dread. A machine that controlled not only its own mysterious imperatives but also his life and the lives of everyone dwelling in this vast manse. An unknowable and unsolvable riddle that permeated the mortar of these cold stone walls. Only by slowly drinking himself to death had these years past reminded endurable. The peaceful blanket of inebriation had wrapped him lovingly in its arms and provided solace and peace: blocking out the absence of hope, gentling burying the anguish of his own helplessness.

But no more. The sweet taste of drink had left him bereft.

The shame and self-loathing had emerged from that tiny little box that had held them hidden away for so many years, and he had sought to break free and once again regain some semblance of control. He had mustered up all of his resources and called upon all of his diminished reserves, and had left the tower that had been the only home he could remember. Why could he not remember? What was it that came before? Doubt drove him outwards. A small but growing sense of righteousness pushed him down the long stairways toward the nearly forgotten courtyard. The merest gleam of hope enticed him to the huge wooden doors that guarded this ancient and mighty fortress from the rest of time and space.

And so he found himself standing in the looming passage, staring at everything that was other, and could not find that last key, that last impetus, the missing force that could compel him to make one more step. And so he stood, balanced by forces that no man could sway, poised on top of the blade of destiny, unable to move forward or back, but assured that not to move doomed his soul to a slow death as he slowly was pulled onto the uncaring and impartial razor that was the deadly edge of the moment.

He felt the wind from the plains blow gently across his brow and he felt the warm of the courtyard on his back and he felt …

… despair.