Silence and the Word (29 page)

“Take the left road,” Stephan replied. “If
you go as far as you can go, then you may find good paper.”

“Take the right road,” Nathan added. “If you
go as far as you can go, then you may find a good pencil.”

“But go quickly, and go now!” they
shouted.

7.

The poet took the left road. It rose from the
seashore, climbing up to the plains, up from the plains to the
hills, up from the hills to the foot of the mountains.

The poet met many strange people as she
walked, people of brown and black and pink skins, and hair that
curled like ocean waves, or hung straight like the falling sheets
of rain. She walked through cities of gold and silver, with
fountains of crystal and ivory towers. The road started rough with
gravel, but became as smooth as silk.

She ate vegetables as delicate as fresh milk,
and fruit that burned her mouth. She saw monkeys that walked on
their hands, and elephants that walked on two feet. She had never
known such cities as these.

8.

She saw wonders beyond belief, and in one
very beautiful city, where shining jeweled bridges connected tall
dark towers, she almost forgot about poetry.

A handsome young man sang songs to her,
leaning over a crimson bridge. He dropped rubies at her feet, and
promised to dress her in creamy velvet. He had dark flashing eyes,
and hands as slim as birds that fluttered when he spoke. Her heart
fluttered a little too.

But when she took the first step up the
stairs that led up to his bridge, she tripped on a loose pebble and
fell. Out of her bag fell a few sheets of paper, and on them a few
sad words that she had scribbled on the road, words that had never
quite become a poem. She remembered that she was a poet.

The poet turned away from the handsome young
man, and kept walking.

9.

Finally she reached the end of the road,
leaving the shining cities behind. It ended at the foot of the
mountains, at a huge, dark and smelly cave. She had nothing with
which to make a light, but she had come too far to want to turn
around. She went in, one hand on the cold stone wall, stumbling in
the dark.

As she walked, keeping the fingers of her
right hand always on the wall, a light grew ahead of her. In fact,
two lights—one cool and pearly, the other warm and golden. The
lights grew brighter and brighter, until she could barely see at
all. She stepped blindly forward, and her fingers lost contact with
the wall. For a moment, the poet was frightened, but then the light
dimmed a little, and she could see again.

She stood at the entrance to a vast chamber,
lit by a unicorn’s shining horn, and a dragon’s golden hoard. The
dragon lay atop the pile of gold, and the unicorn was still firmly
attached to its horn.

10.

The poet almost turned and bolted, but before
she could, the unicorn spoke.

“Don’t be frightened.”

The dragon snorted, and steam puffed out its
nostrils. “Why shouldn’t she be frightened? I’m frightening.”

“You’re frightening to look at, Kiera-drago,
but you have a heart of gold,” the unicorn replied.

“Hmph! Well, that’s as may be, Kaylei-corn.
Don’t you think she deserves to be a little frightened, though,
coming in here and disturbing us? Probably wanting to steal some of
my little bit of gold or chip a piece off your horn. It would serve
her right if I did eat her.”

11.

“Oh no!” The poet found her tongue at that,
horrified that the dragon would think her a thief (though the pile
of gold was so large that she also couldn’t help wondering if the
dragon would really miss a piece or two). “I’m looking for good
paper.”

The unicorn tilted its head. “Good paper, is
it? And why would you be wanting that?”

“I’m a poet. And I can’t write poetry,” she
explained.

“Ah,” they said together. “We see.”

Then there was a long time when no one said
anything, and the dragon and the unicorn only stared at her. The
poet found it quite unnerving.

12.

“You’ll want a good pencil,” the dragon
finally said.

“I know. The crows told me.”

“Oh, they did, did they? Well, if the crows
said so… .” The dragon looked at the unicorn, and the unicorn
nodded its head. The poet wasn’t sure what was going on, but it
didn’t look like she was about to be eaten, which was good.

“Here,” the dragon said. And it moved aside a
little, so that she could see what lay behind it. There was a huge
pile of shimmering stuff—at first she thought it was silk, but then
she realized that it was scales, shining cast-off dragon scales.
“Take some of these.”

13.

The poet stepped forward, slowly, and picked
up a scale. It was soft, like the finest parchment, and while one
side shimmered, the other side was palest white. If you could write
on it, it would make perfect paper.

She pulled out a pencil, and tried writing.
The letters and words flowed across the page. She wrote, “Nathan
the Crow.” It looked lovely. Then she started to try to write a
poem…but no poetry came out. She bit her lip in frustration.

The unicorn shook its head. “The pencil.”

Of course. She needed a good pencil.

14.

The poet gathered up a handful of scales. She
would have taken more but they wouldn’t fit in her bag. The dragon
said not to worry—there would always be another scale in her bag,
now.

Then she thanked them politely, and backed
carefully out of the cave. They had been very nice to her, but she
still wanted to keep an eye on them as long as possible. The dragon
looked hungry.

When she stepped out of the cave into the
wide world again, she felt at least a year older. For a moment, the
poet was tired, and thought longingly of her little house by the
sea. But she still had a long road to go. She started walking.

15.

She walked past the silver cities, and did
not pause to look at handsome young men. Before too long, she was
back at the crossroads. The crows were waiting.

“So, you have the paper?” Stephan asked.

The poet brought out a single shining scale,
and Stephan nodded. “Good.”

“You know where to go for your pencil?”
Nathan asked.

The poet said, “Yes, thank you.” She turned
to the right path. There didn’t seem anything else to say to the
crows, so she started walking.

16.

This path was very different. Its gravel
quickly turned to dusty dirt. She passed no cities as she
walked—instead, the land grew wilder and wilder. A few sparse birch
trees gave way to stands of sturdy oaks. Then the oaks were
swallowed up by pines.

Other trees appeared that she could not name,
and she was embarrassed, because it was part of a poet’s job to
know the names of trees. She had studied many as a little girl,
when she first trained to be a poet. But these trees were too much
for her. She didn’t know them at all.

She tried to name the flowers instead, but
soon the lady’s slipper and mugwort and daffydowndillies had all
disappeared. No flowers grew by her road—it was just the poet and
the trees.

17.

The branches grew thicker and thicker
overhead, shutting out the light. The road became a path, and then
the path grew hard to find. Finally, she was simply trying to find
a way through the trees, which seemed to grab at her with sharp
branches. Sometimes the branches grew so low and thick that she had
to crawl on the ground, which was covered in pointy rocks that cut
her knees.

The poet had gotten hungry too. There were no
cities here to buy bread or jam at, and the berries had disappeared
long ago. Mushrooms grew everywhere, but she knew that eating the
wrong mushrooms would kill you dead. Her stomach had been rumbling
for a while, and now it seemed to be trying to climb its way up
into her throat.

When she tripped over a pebble in the road,
falling down and cutting open both her hands, it was just too much.
She sat back on her heels and cried.

18.

She cried for a long time, alone in the
woods. She wanted to just lie down there, just give up poetry
entirely. She did lie down, pressing her face into the dirt. She
was so tired, and she had paper but no pencil, and she wasn’t sure
she had ever really been a poet anyway.

As she lay there, the wind came whistling
down through the trees. It slipped its way between the branches,
and ruffled her tangled hair. The world was silent, except for the
wind, and for just a second, she thought she could almost hear a
poem being whispered. She sat up, wanting to hear what it said, but
the wind disappeared.

The poet took a deep breath, and then got up
again. She kept walking, and when she couldn’t walk, she crawled.
She wasn’t sure if she was still on the road…but she kept
going.

19.

The trees became less thickly packed, and she
walked faster, eager now. She could see sunlight ahead, streaming
down into what must be an empty space. She started running, and
burst into a clearing, empty except for one tall tree.

This one she could name—it was a hazel tree.
There was no sign of any path beyond it—no sign at all. Was this
the end of her road? She walked up to the tree, and cleared her
throat.

“Excuse me?”

20.

“Yes?” Was that the hazel talking? Or just
the wind in the tree’s branches?

“Excuse me, but I’m looking for a good
pencil.” There was no answer. The poet raised her voice a little.
“The crows sent me.”

“The crows, is it?” It was definitely the
hazel tree. The poet couldn’t tell where its mouth was, but the
voice had sort of a woody tone. “And do you have good paper?”

“Yes. From the dragon.”

“So. You’ve been to the dragon, and spoken
with the crows. Well. I’d best give you a pencil, then.”

The hazel tree dipped down one of her long
branches. “Break off a twig.”

21.

The poet reached up, and then paused with her
hand on a hazel twig. “Are you sure? I don’t want to hurt you.”

The hazel chuckled a deep, wavery, woody
chuckle. “Bless you, child. You won’t hurt me.”

The poet wasn’t a child, but she couldn’t
take offense—the hazel sounded old, as old as the mountain, or the
sea. The poet carefully broke off a twig.

She stood holding it, not sure what to do. It
was only a twig, after all. Not a pencil. How could she write with
it?

22.

“Just try writing, child,” the hazel tree
said.

The poet pulled out a shimmery scale, turned
to its white side, and pressed the tip of the twig against it. A
black mark appeared on the paper! She drew a line with the twig,
then a few letters. It worked just like a pencil, and the letters
were so smooth, so flowing—it wrote like the sharpest, best pencil
she’d ever seen!

She bit her lip, and then tried to write a
line of poetry… .

23.

Nothing. It didn’t work. The words came out
all jumbled, nonsense, useless. The poet was too upset to cry—she
just stood there for a moment, not sure if she could breathe.

“Why can’t I write poetry?” she finally asked
the hazel tree.

The hazel sighed—or was that the wind? “I’m
sorry, child. I can’t answer that for you.”

The poet felt like her heart was breaking,
but she’d been raised to be polite. “Well, thank you for the
pencil. It’s lovely.” Then she turned and walked back the way she’d
come.

24.

The forest path seemed much clearer going
back, but the poet didn’t care. She had her paper, and her pencil,
and she still couldn’t write poetry. Could she still be missing
something? And would she ever find it?

She walked with heavy feet all the way back
to the crossroads. She ate some berries along the way to keep up
her strength. When she arrived at the crossroads, the crows were
waiting.

“Well,” Nathan said, “did you get the
pencil?”

25.

The poet just stared at the crows for a long
minute. Then she started to speak, and her voice was low and
angry.

“I walked up into the hills, past the silver
cities and their wonders and marvels. I almost fell in love with a
handsome young man, and I entered a dragon’s cave. I spoke with the
dragon, and with a unicorn, and I found very good paper.”

“Then I walked out into the woods, into the
deepest, darkest woods, filled with trees even a poet could not
name. I stumbled on the rocky path, and cut my knees and hands. I
fell and cried and picked myself up again, and finally I found the
hazel tree. I have a very good pencil.”

“I have seen much of the wide world, much
more than I thought I would ever see, much more than I imagined
there could be. I have been hungry and tired and I think I have
walked for years, so that my feet are now as tough as leather. I
have been so homesick that I wanted to lie down and die, but I kept
walking.”

“I have done everything you said I should
do.” The poet’s voice had grown soft, and quavery. “But I still
cannot write poetry.”