Witnessed the End

Follow this back to: For the Second Time

BB slept and dreamt of Mab and the stories she told him. How she found him in a basket by the stream. How the woods parted and led her to him. How she came into the woods, an exile from her own people. She was a messenger sent to gather the power of the woods to herself so she might make the world for them; so she might turn the seasons of the year; make the bread of life for them. She lived and made life for herself in the woods until BB came. Basket Boy. Could that really be his name? Surely not, it wasn't a name; it wasn't even a story or a description. Surely if Mab loved him, and he was certain that she did, she would have made a name for him the same way she made everything else.

In the morning, the courtyard woke and the people readied themselves for the day. The woman came out of the room where she had tapped and summoned the men. Now she called out, summoning them again, laughing as she did so. Laughing and calling out to the other two women as they all gathered round the hearth, lighting the fire, heating water, the smell of smoke, steam, cooked grains and cut fruit spreading through the courtyard.

The younger woman smiled at him and later brought him some food. She showed him what to do with the pots, taking him out of the courtyard, carrying one of them; out to a structure on the edge of the village. She showed him where to empty the pot and then led him back a different way through the village to the courtyard.

It was a grey beautiful day, the colors of the walls glowing in the bowl of light made by the sky. Light came from everywhere, everything reflected everything else, each color around them being taken up by every other color, every surface a reflection of the other surfaces they passed as they walked back through the village.

BB was lost. Not that he couldn't find his way through the village, rather that his sense of who he was had left him, leaving him with no point of reference to use as a path home. The grayness of the day softened the world around him, softening his perception of himself, his sense of the people around him.

He heard odd snatches of conversation as they passed through the village. They all seemed to speak the same language as the language of the courtyard. It was the same unintelligible stream that in the grayness of the day merged into the sounds of the world around him, like the birds, the tree frogs and cicadas; an indecipherable hum of sound that spoke directly of the lives of the creatures making it but did not speak to him.

The grayness of the day reassured him. It began to rain, a soft change in the texture of the air, as much mist as rain. BB turned his face up into the air and smiled. For the moment, he did not need to know anything; he followed the younger woman back to the courtyard and took up the other pots when she pointed to them.

He wandered round the village quite lost for a time, eventually finding his way to the structure where he had emptied the first pot. He emptied the second one and made his way back to the courtyard, following a different route again. He wondered how many paths there could be through the village.

He smiled as he imagined the younger woman as a path. A series of twists and turns running through the alleys of the village, passing different doors, various marks on the walls, places made memorable by some encounter, some incident that lived there now, etched into the landscape of her life, revisited each time she passed by. Her path crossed other paths, sometimes running along the same route for a time, sometimes just touching theirs briefly. BB wondered how many paths there were in the village. He wondered if one for those paths was for him.

BB found his way back to the courtyard. The women all looked up as he came through the gate. The younger woman said something and laughed, the others joining in her laughter. She spoke again, pointing to the remaining pots. BB obediently picked another one up and headed out the gate again, finding his way back to where he had emptied the first two pots.

He made the trip four times, each time making a different way back to the courtyard. He felt like he knew where the courtyard was relative to the rest of the village, even as though he could find it quite reliably; he also realized he was utterly incapable of explaining to anyone else where it was.

Each courtyard was separated from those around it. It was rare for two courtyards to share a wall. If they did, who would be responsible for it? As a result, custom and circumstances dictated the distance between one wall and another, some of them leaving a wide gap, easily broad enough for two carts to pass each other. In some places, the gap between one wall and another was barely wide enough for a single man to pass.

BB wandered through the village, wondering what the walls were for. It seemed to him that where the gap was narrow there was no point in the wall as a way of keeping the neighbors out. The near neighbor merely had to stand on the top of their wall and they could see in to the neighboring courtyard.

There was something hostile about the walls standing close to each other. They were like the men who shouted at him when he was carrying the water on the previous day; coming too close, their voices much louder than need be for the simple purpose of being heard; they didn't want to be heard, they wanted to intimidate. Like the walls standing too close to each other, there came a point when it was hard to tell who was intimidating whom.

There was something big and wild about BB. The younger woman laughed at him as he came and went carrying the pots. She heard him sing and knew his voice. She looked at him and spoke to him, even in a voice he could not understand. BB wondered if he stood forever outside her walls, never to be invited in. Maybe it was never possible for him or any other man to be invited in. Perhaps that was the significance of the walls between the courtyards. They never invited each other in but just stood; some cordially distant, some confrontationally close.

Perhaps that was the significance of the two men in the night. The other woman rapped her knuckles on the balcony, summoning them. It was not an invitation. It was a dark magic in the night, she called them out of the room on the right of the gate; like walls moving in the village in the night. A dark impossible contact between otherwise immovable, irreconcilable beings that stood distant from each other as life flowed around them.

BB emptied the last of the pots and went back to the courtyard, wandering round between the walls, not seeing anyone this time. The village seemed to have settled down for the day. Earlier he had heard people talking and shouting as they made their way out into the fields. He heard sounds of activity in the courtyards as he passed by but he saw no one.

There was a sense of purpose about the space around him. The purpose had been absent the previous day in the afternoon when BB arrived. He realized, walking through the village, that he had witnessed the end of it. Returning to the courtyard he stood in the gate a while, watching the younger woman.

She set up a loom on the platform she had shared with the old man and the other woman and she was busy adjusting the frame, getting the warp properly stretched. She looked up and smiled at him, beckoning him over. She had brought the loom out of the room below the room where the other woman had spent the night, where she rapped with her knuckles on the balcony.

She beckoned him over and pointed to herself, saying "Manueline" and then looked at him expectantly. BB didn't know what to do so he just looked back, a slight smile on his face, looking puzzled. She laughed quietly and spoke again, again pointing to herself, "Manueline, Manueline."

Then it occurred to BB that she must be telling him her name. He tried saying it back to her, "Manueline," pointing at her at the same time. She smiled and nodded her head and pointed at him, a question on her face, eyes wide open, eyebrows raised.

BB pointed to himself and said "BB".

She now looked puzzled and repeated, "BB" with the tone of her voice rising between the syllables. She laughed, a loud flowing sound in the empty courtyard and shook her head. She stopped laughing and sat looking at him for a while, a thoughtful look on her face. She pointed at him and said "Wals" and then pointed at herself and said, "Manueline". BB pointed at himself and said "Wals" a little uncertainly.

To follow this thread in the story go to: 'Field', 'Boundary', 'Friend', 'Lover'

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