So here’s the end sequence to a novel badly unread somewhere. Yet how absurd to make an editor a muse. They wanted to control and edit, to compete and to win. To write the story they think is culture:
“Death,” whispered Tarlar, “you do not fear it, Fell, by water or any other way?”
“What is there to fear?” answered the Black Wolf, “if it is an end, then so be it. For there is no pain in that, except the pain left to the living. I once thought, and felt with The Sight, that I could see the pain of the whole word, and it grew and grew like the sea. But though all feel pain, it does not join together like individual droplets in a pool. A million deaths is really only one death. And if death is not an end, then what more wonderful journey. If we do not fear it? We must have the courage to face the truth, and the future.”
“Come, Fell,” said Tarlar, “we’ll run happy and free through the world, togther, until we two must walk the Wolf Trail in our turn. For that is as it must be.”
“Wait, Tarlar, there’s something I must do first.”
“Do?”
Fell had stepped away again and raised his muzzle.
“I must howl, Tarlar. For I must ask forgiveness too. Only they can let me go, I think.”
Fell’s sleek, black muzzle lifted and his cry rose in the air. Aaaaoo. It sang in the night, weaving a mysterious wildness over the revellers below, as if casting a wild spell to protect them from any harm. But Fell was not talking to them alone.
“For you,” cried the black wolf’s howl, “For all who are lost, or alone, or frightened in the world. For we are all lost, and all frightened. For any in pain too, or in sorrow, and for any who can no longer tell the light from the darkness, the sadness from the joy. I must leave you now, for I’ve found my way, for a time at least, and I wish you well.”
The howl went on in the night, like a wonderful song, yet both more and less than a song, and as it did it seemed to the black wolf as if the world was changing. As if the things he saw about him, the trees and the forest and the palace, he no longer had words for at all, and so he no longer knew what they were.
“But I let you know that I too have seen what you have seen, suffered what you have suffered. For all things walk the same way. But now, for the last times, I, Fell of The Mountaintops, give you my blessing. So listen well, for love’s greatest art is to listen.”
FELL
Hmmm, perhaps we need the story and words of The Zen Master, ‘We’ll see!”
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