Part I
War, disease, and famine struck my home. So I left for far and distant lands in search of a place my grandmother told me about when I was a little boy.
We had gone down to the river to look for firewood one mid summer day. There had been raging fires that summer and much of the wood in the forests had been completely burned. We decided our best bet was to look towards the water.
“Little one,” she said stroking my hair as we walked, “One day you might find the world so changed that you hardly recognize it.”
“When will that be?” I asked curiously, looking up from attempting to pick up a dry log far too big for my tiny body. I did not really understanding what she meant.
“When? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I’ll tell you where to go. You must go to the country where no one ever bleeds or starves, where there is light year round, and green rolling land as far as the eyes can see.”
“Where is that?” I asked with big eyes…I couldn’t believe that no one had ever mentioned such perfect place to me before. “How do you know about this place? Has anyone ever returned? Someone must have returned if you know but why would they return?” I bounced up and down full of questions.
She took my face firmly in her hands holding me still and rubbed my eyes, “This is no joking matter!Listen! I was shocked. So rarely did my grandmother, who was always so soft spoken, speak in this manner so I knew somehow that it was important and that I should pay attention.
“This is not a place where everyone can go, it isn’t just about knowing the way, you must be able to bear the journey.”
“I’m strong!” I yelled piercing the air with an imaginary spear. She caught my hand mid air and held it in hers, “ What you never see coming you could never kill with any weapon.”
My eyes fell to the ground ashamed. She lifted my face again to hers and smiled.
“Keep your eyes up here,” she said, “ on the horizon and you might have a chance,” she let go of my hand. I looked up and in my palm lay a little folded up piece of paper.
She pointed her finger at the river which flowed through the town. “You must follow that all the way until you reach the country where the water has dried up into the earth.”
“But grandma! Even I know that all rivers return to the sea. How could this river end in dry earth?”
“Who said anything about the end or returning?” she laughed. “Where you will go is to the beginning and if you can get there you can never return and neither can this river.” I looked at her skeptically. Her eyes were fixed now off into the distance to this land beyond this river, and for a split second I though that she had in fact seen it even though she had just explained that no one returned.
“So the river only dries when I get there, but before I get there it is flowing to the sea? How terrible it would be if I made the river go dry!” She just smiled at me again, signaling for me to sit beside her on a log by the river edge.
“Don’t worry so much about the river, it can take care of itself, the main thing is that you can follow it long enough so that you can take care of yourself.” I sat there with the scrap of paper in my hand staring into the cloudless blue sky. A heron came into view and my eyes followed it as it splashed down into the river bed, its long red legs like reeds and its blue body seemingly floating above them.
“You don’t need to worry about all this now, but just remember…for later…you might need it…and I am getting so old I might not live to tell you this when the time comes. So you must remember.” She pointed to the scrap of paper. I began to open it eagerly for the treat I believed lay within.
“No, No!” She said loud enough to startle me into stopping.
“You don’t have to remember now do you?” she laughed, “I just told you. Have you already forgotten?” she teased.
“Oh this is for me to remember? Did you write down the way? I will keep it under my pillow every night until I need it.” I said happily clutching it to my skinny breast.
“The message there is not for you. It is for a messenger.”
“A message for a messenger, who will the messenger bring it to?” I asked.
“To you of course!” she laughed again as if this was the most hilarious thing in the world.
“But why give it to the messenger when you could just give it directly to me?”
“ Memory is a tricky thing it doesn’t always remember the important parts, but the messenger will always remember because he doesn’t have to, he simply lives to carry the message.”
“ You can trust me grandma I will remember!” I clung to her eager to prove myself. She scooped me up in her arms and I felt so completely enveloped in her wrinkly skin soft and wrapped around me like a big brown blanket. I felt so safe and content in that moment. When I looked into her eyes I was captivated by the black ring around her yellow eyes, like standing from the inside of a barn in shadow looking out into a golden fields. I could almost jump into them and smell the sweet corn.
“I know little one you will try to remember, but if you have the need to go looking for the land of which I speak then you will have forgotten this moment. You must put that piece of paper into the river.”
“But grandma it will just sink and the ink will just run.”
“Then you must tell it not to and you must believe that it won’t.”
“But it will.”
“Well if you start with that intention then it will. Imagine in your mind that it does not. Can you do that?”
“Umm maybe,” I said scrunching my eyes shut.
“Do you see it in the river?”
“Yes” I said.
“Is the ink running?”
“No.”
“Ok, open your eyes. Can you still see it the way that you saw it in your mind a moment ago?”
“Yes” I said.
“Ok hold that image and then let it go, let it float away in your mind. Now put it in the river. Don’t think about it, just let it go.”
“I can’t, I don’t want to lose it” I said. I was suddenly afraid. Afraid that if I let go of this little piece of paper I might lose all of this, this moment, my grandmother, the wonderful feeling of the sun on my back and her warm hand on my shoulder.
“You won’t lose it,” she said, “you can’t lose it.”
I let out the breath that I was holding and relaxed my grip. It fell from my hand and it was gone, pulled into the current. My grandmother patted my shoulder, took my hand, and led me back to our home. It was time to bring the wood back to my mother to cook the evening meal.
I couldn’t imagine at the moment that I could forget what she had told me, but it was true, I eventually did. My grandmother past away that summer. I was seven years old. It was not until 10 years later that I began searching for what I had lost and another 10 years more before my messenger found me and I began my journey to the country at the end of the river.
