Chapter 6
The Birdsong and The Name
The last we read about Will, he found himself laid out, bleeding on the floor. The young woman apparently clubbed him. Her final words to Will, before he passed out were: “Will, can’t you see?”
NB - I remember during our second meeting at Brakeman’s Coffee Shop Will and I realized we shared a love for Oxford, England. There is an “otherness” quality to Oxford.
This quality was the topic of conversation between me and Will on several occasions. I find it interesting how our love for things in this world digs into our subconscious and colours our language, our actions, and even our dreams.
Has a town or landscape ever gripped you like this?
Though Will and I did not attend Oxford at the same time, the changelessness of the place allowed us to share our experiences of walking the Port Meadow, punting on the Thames, and drinking early morning pints with fellow undergraduates at the various ancient pubs which are tucked here and there all over the city.
And yes, I did say “pints” in the morning. It’s simply different in England. Something I came to love almost immediately.
The Port Meadow is an expansive grassland located to the west of the city. The Thames River outlines the western border and swings into Oxford. One can find two pubs for dining in the Port Meadow: The Perch and The Trout. I prefer The Perch, which is located at the southern end of the meadow. The Trout lies much further to the northern boundary.
The University of Oxford is laid out across the entire city of Oxford, one of the few remaining medieval cities in the world. To be in Oxford is to be at the University. Many of the alleyways are built out of ancient cobblestones and they meander in and out of new buildings and the markets and shops.
You can be at a bookstore and walk out the door, turn right and be in an alleyway that leads to one of the 38 colleges or six private halls (such as Wycliffe Hall) that make up the university.
Will’s college, Harris Manchester College, is one of the “new” colleges and was established in 1757 in Warrington. It moved to Oxford in 1893. University College, Balliol College (home to the controversial John Wycliffe who desired to translate the Bible into the English vernacular—how dare he!) and Merton College (the home college of the philologist and writer J.R.R. Tolkien), are the oldest of the colleges dating between 1249 and 1264.
Formal teaching, however, began in Oxford as early as 1096. The “colleges” began as medieval halls of residence for scholars and were guided by Masters.
Of course, you could Google most of this. But what you can’t Google, nor can I prove, are the myths of Oxford, specifically the myth that shrouds Boars Hill.
The myth of Boars Hill, however, will not help you right now in the story unfolding here in Will’s journal, so I will shelve it for a more appropriate time. Suffice it to say, you should keep in mind that Oxford is not always what it appears to be.
And I do realize, even as I type this memo, that “Will’s journal” is anything but. And that you are learning, as I did during those seven days at Blackthorn, the layered opacity that veils the contents herein.
Time: Morning. Oxford, England.
Place: The 4B bus.
I will always remember two things about my time living in Oxford. The birdsong and sky.
I sat on the 4B bus heading into the ancient city.
The doors opened and I stepped onto the High Street. I slung my leather messenger bag over my shoulder and walked off the bus. At 9:30 a.m. the town was fully alive with buses, tourists, and undergrads crisscrossing the streets and alleyways.
“If you want to really get the full feel of Oxford, Will, be sure to walk the alleyways. Just follow the undergrads. They’ll give you the best tour. It’s an ancient city. Not like all the rest you know?”
That was Nigel’s advice to me once he had learned I’d just stepped off the train and arrived in Oxford. I was buying his kitchen table for my “loft” apartment. But loft is a misnomer. An attic room in a four-hundred-year-old farm cottage is more like it.
But it had everything I needed. A washroom, a comfortable bed, and easy access to the 4B. Even better, easy access to footpaths.
I headed towards the square but took an immediate left on Queen’s Lane, one of Nigel’s ancient alleyways. More like a corridor of memory and fragrance. Eight feet high stone walls mostly hid what lay behind them, even as the gothic buildings of Queen’s College towered in medieval mystery just over their ivy-laden edge.
I met Jack, my thesis supervisor, in the foyer of Harris-Manchester College—he always fetched me in the foyer and walked me back to his office. He was a gentleman that way.
“Good morning, Will,” he said.
“Good morning, Jack. Doing well I hope?” I felt uncomfortable calling him Jack, but he insisted.
“Quite well, yes, thank you. And you? Are you getting along?” One tends to fall into the cadence and movement of the English accent, especially in Oxford where words feel important and said with more general care than in the state.
“Yes, yes, quite well. They’re really working hard on the college out front on the street. All that construction must bother you.”
“Not really,” he replied. “The colleges are built in such a way as to shield the outside sounds from the inner quad area. They mute the noise of the outside world so that all one can hear on the inside, here in the courtyard, is the birdsong.”
We exited the back of the foyer and walked into the quad along a narrow sidewalk, turned right, and into another hall of the college—a private hall that required a password to open the door. We entered, walked two flights of narrow stairs, and then stepped into his study.
It was walled floor to ceiling in books. All the walls but one, that is. The window wall. There sat his desk, jammed against the windowsill—a ramshackle display of books and tech, with a view of the quad.
He offered me his “comfy” chair, as he called it, and sat at his desk upon which sat a massive computer monitor, a professional-looking microphone—the kind you might find at a radio station—and an old mug lined with the remains of dark roast coffee. It was rather gross, but he kept it on his desk to remind him of what coffee contained and what went into his body when he drank it. I only ever saw him drink Irish Tea and a pint or two here and there.
His office was quiet. Just our voices, ringing out over the books strewn everywhere on the coffee table and shelves. A wood-burning stove sat behind me but was never lit. We chatted for forty-five minutes about my thesis.
Then he asked, “Will, do you know why birdsong is important?”
“Pardon?” I asked, caught off guard by the random nature of his question.
“The birdsong. Why is it significant?”
I thought for a moment before admitting, “I don’t know.”
“Do you not see?” he challenged.
“Well,” I stammered somewhat confused, “y—you mentioned birdsong and I thought how the birdsong floats all over this city. I always hear the birds. At least it feels that way. Unless, of course, I’m on the bus or in the square. But what do you mean by see—”
Before I finished my question, he stood up abruptly and left his office in a rush. Startled, I gathered my bag and coat and followed as fast as I could. I caught up with him in the quad.
A soft rain fell; the kind you can barely feel until you’re soaked. As soon as I stepped into the air from the private hall I heard birdsong. It was a Nightingale at midmorning.
The sound. And the rain. I paused, standing in it for the briefest of moments, closed my eyes and drank it in.
—So beautiful. So familiar, I thought.
That same sound echoed down my street in the middle of the night. Rain and song. I felt as though I was always stepping on the notes of birdsong.
Then I quickstepped it and caught up with Jack. He walked me back to the foyer without a word, shook my hand, and wished me well in my research.
He never answered.
I stepped out of the college and onto what should have been Mansfield Road. But it was instead the grass of the Port Meadow. Quite strange, because the Port Meadow lies northwest of Harris Manchester College—the port side of Oxford if you were looking at it from above or on a map—and acts as a sort of natural barrier or boundary to Oxford. And it’s quite a walk from Harris Manchester to the meadow. So when I stepped out of the college and found myself in the meadow, you can imagine my alarm and surprise and utter shock.
All was upside down. What should have been, wasn’t.
And then there was sky.
It is a myth that England is grey and bleak and sad. Myth is too strong a way to put it I suppose. Something more subjective perhaps. Try this: My experience in England showed me a sky not soon forgotten. One soon discovers how and why Coleridge and Wordsworth fell into rapture in the English countryside and spent so much time in The Lake District. The sky possesses an unexplainable luminosity.
Perhaps it is the latitude, 51.75, of Oxford, or the island nature to always be interpreting the winds through clouds and light. Though I’m quite sure it is the movement of the clouds that makes me want to run into the horizon chasing on the kingdom of daylight.
Hard to say, but it lured me on more than one occasion out into the countryside for a ramble. When the sky moves with regularity it makes being outside something of an enchantment.
So, I walked in the charm, from college step to meadow lark in the blink of an eye and felt the swoop of the sky above me. And what did I see?
Tall tufts of tethered grass gathered light on their dew drops. I didn’t step, I hovered. I hovered over the grass, then over the dew.
I was miniature—the size of a blade of grass, then grand and skimming along the rippling Thames—the size of a magpie, watching the crew boats slicing the water that held the clouds and light, like the dewdrops, like the birdsong.
“Bark, bark, bark,” sounded the orders from the coxswain. The crew oars lifted out of the glassed river, caught the air—splashing daylight as they rose, and dove again for the pull and the grunt. A line of water. A line of boat. A line of oars and men. Moving and symmetrical.
I was now my earthen size walking along the footpath. The Perch pub peeked from the tall grasses. People crowded the footpath. The first passersby was an older lady with short white hair, very red lips, and wore heavy blue eye shadow. She held her right arm bent at ninety-degrees, so she could tote her enormous green bag.
I nodded at her. She nodded back and said, “Don’t you see?”
As she passed I craned my head and followed her, surprised by her greeting. When I turned my head, I collided with a tall man with long hair. He wore faded overalls and a tattered flannel shirt, and blue wellies.
“Don’t you see?” he shouted at me as he dusted the collision from his chest and walked on.
I stopped in bewilderment.
Suddenly the crowd of people on the footpath vanished.
And a westerly wind blew and knocked off what looked like millions of leaves from the trees. Voice carried in with the wind. A hearty laughing voice, familiar but far away, and a soft voice, what I perceived to be a woman’s. I walked slowly into the falling leaves and followed the voices.
The leaves fell thicker, with great noise and color. The wind felt like mountain wind and blew the leaves into swirls, then columns. I walked among the columns until I faced a wall of leaves hovering in front of me. They rustled in a dance that seemed childish. Not the childishness your parents scold you for. The kind you feel when you’ve just entered the backwoods and you know the adventure is about to begin. Old fogies call it childishness. Children don’t call it anything, but if they did, they’d call it delight.
I stepped through the wall of floating leaves. As I passed through I heard the leaves shout. I felt like a champion. Of what, I have no idea.
And there, sitting at a small white wrought iron bistro table was Jack and the girl with the raven hair in all her sensual glory.
“Jack!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing? Don’t you see that she’s naked!”
Jack, who’d been smiling at me, turned his head quickly to the young lady for a moment, then back to me.
“What are you talking about my dear friend. Of course, she’s not naked. What a thing to say. A fun start to our conversation, Will, no doubt. Do have a seat and join us.”
“But Jack. I’m not trying to be funny. She’s …”
But the word did not leave my mouth. She caught my eyes with hers and looked into me. The kind of look lovers give to one another when they want to say something with their eyes rather than with their mouths. The kind of look a married couple uses to say, “It’s going to be okay.” The kind of look a child gives a parent when their expectation is about to be betrayed. A knowing look.
“What Will? She’s … what?” said Jack.
The leaves lifted over her now, dancing their pleasure as if she were Eve herself. They moved like a murmuration of starlings, transitioning from shape to shape until each leaf attached itself to her skin covering her completely. Her head, her face, her form, covered in shimmering leaves.
She stood and walked towards me, a blaze of autumn color. Then words came from behind the mask of leaves where her mouth should have been.
“Will, don’t you see?”
And the leaves burst from her body and fell listless to the ground.
She was gone.
Place: At Uncle Joe’s cabin.
Time: Unknown; fire low, Will waking.
I woke with a kick—slamming my right foot into the end of my uncle’s green couch.
The pain felt real enough. I wasn’t miniature lying in a mountain of cushions. I was under Grandma’s quilt, and cold. The fire, mere embers.
—A dream, I said quietly to myself. One no doubt influenced by the girl with her glowing blue sword.
And there she was leaning forward on the cold stone hearth, asleep. Her arms wrapped around the sheathed sword. The shadows covered her.
—She must be freezing.
I rose from the couch and winced. The left side of my head and face ached and felt warm. I felt my cheek and head—tender to the touch. I walked to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. A long bruise ran from my cheek and into my scalp.
I walked back into the great room, took the quilt, and wrapped her in it. I lifted her slight frame from the floor and carried her back to the couch. I walked back to the bedroom and retrieved several more blankets. I covered her well and laid the sword by her on the floor. I wedged my feet back into my boots, grabbed my wool hat, and threw on my heavy fleece that hung with all the coats on the hooks by the door.
We needed more firewood.
The flakes continued to fall small and wild. It was going to be a big snow.
I piled the wood high by the hearth. I stoked the fire until it raged. Once again, the room glowed orange, and the shadows shifted on the walls. I lit the gas stove and boiled some more water for tea and soup. I’d brought my favorite pepper broth soup, so I dumped the whole container into a saucepan, thinking my guest on the couch would be hungry soon enough.
I ate a large bowl of soup and gulped my tea down. I felt warm; better. Though my face still ached. I rummaged through the small pantry at the back of the kitchen and found an old bottle of port.
—Uncle Joe, you dog, I laughed to myself.
I poured a glass, found her journal and, once again, sat on the hearth facing the couch. The surprise of our confrontation—her with her sword, of the journal that seemed to write itself and send magic images into the air, the bear and wolves, all of it had begun to coalesce into the reasonable assumption that something beyond me, beyond my experience, beyond anything I’d imagined to be real was taking control of the moment.
I didn’t believe in magic, but I was open to the supernatural—or at least I once was. And this felt like that.
I had experienced other moments of spiritual epiphany in my life. But nothing sustained, nothing tangible. Nearly always in a kind of dreaming vision or extra sense that woke in a random moment.
I wanted to learn what I could of my guest, and her journal seemed the most logical place to start. Though I can hardly use the term logical in any formal sense here. How do you describe a person who speaks and writes as though from the pages of the great poets and prophets?
I tucked the first loose pages into the back, folded back the front cover, and began to read again, braced for whatever “light-magic” might come. I read aloud, and as soon as the first word left my lips, the dancing light broke into the dim cabin.
The shimmering image before me was the girl sitting beside a river. She looked sad outlined in gold as she was. I could hear the water of the river, and her words as I read them rang out in the cabin like a chorus of perfect bells.
Entry: first untorn page one
Chronology: unknown (to Will)
Genre: verse
How will they know me—
In a world so chiselled
Of stone?
Cold, they move from forms
And glory
To tepid halls of isolated
Vision—
My King, in love, and with steel
You send me—aflame, musical, and lithe.
You send me dancing,
Carousing,
Shadow-laden and supple—
To a Kind, unhinged, dim, and distant from Your lumen.
They—this Kind—trample my sister, Vereti,
The wise and free, and forget me,
Sending me to the back-alley of their desire.
Yet you arm me—
Blue steel and noble steed,
Empowered, ablaze;
Only to find my foe full-faced
And frenzied: The Bear, The Reviler, he is Abbadon.
He chases me with all his rage,
His Bear-mounts raving
In their sickening snarl,
They come, they come, they come.
And I am tired of fighting.
No desire strong enough to keep me from
The darkness that drives them,
The rank that tantalizes their jaws.
But you give me the wolf,
Their flight saves me,
Their song warns me,
Feeds me strength.
I rest in their haven—
Though they are driven to chase,
Forced to fight.
I am a couplet desperate for verse,
I am a note fallen from melody.
—More …
He comes.
—Poems. I can’t believe she writes in poems, I thought and took a sip of port.
When the image vanished, I looked down at the journal page. And there she was sitting upright, cloaked in the quilt, staring at me.
“Is this better for you? This covering?” she said with earnest eyes and a smile, her voice soft like the golden light from her journal.
Surprised, I quickly closed her journal and slid it beneath my leg. “I’m not sure, honestly. I think for now, yes. Are you okay? And, did you club me with your sword?”
My words came calm. My tone, even. I surprised myself with how calm I’d become. Maybe it was the dream. Maybe it mellowed me? I felt, I don’t know, better. Not more comfortable about the weirdness of the situation, just better—more myself.
I felt like I was watching a flannelgraph story unfold. I loved those felt boards, growing up. During Sunday School at church, when the teacher would tell us Bible stories, she’d always use a large square board covered in felt. As she told the story, she’d add a paper cut-out of the character she was introducing into the narrative.
I felt like I was already on the felt board as one of the cut-out characters. And now someone had placed this girl onto the board without introducing her into the story. Not only was I on the board as a character, but I was also sitting in the audience; one of the little kids watching the story unfold and making up my own storyline about the odd-looking paper cut-out characters.
I guess getting knocked unconscious with the hilt of a sword by a naked woman can have that effect on you. I was more relaxed and less hostile. I just wanted to know what was going on.
When my mom wanted to dig into how I was as a teenager, she’d always make me some food, or put on some music she knew I loved. Maybe that’s why my automatic response to my curiosity about this girl manifested in me making soup and trying to make her feel comfortable.
She wriggled in the quilt, like a child getting comfortable before sleep.
“I am warm, thank you. Though I am tired. And I am hungry. And yes, I did club you, Will.”
“Yes, you sure did,” I said, rubbing my head. “Well, I made some soup while you slept. Can I bring you a bowl?”
“That would be lovely. Thank you, Will.”
“Of course.”
I walked to the kitchen and scooped soup into an old blue bowl. When I handed it to her she cupped it in her hands and let out a groan of pleasure.
“That feels so pleasant upon my palms.”
“Careful, it’s still hot,” I warned as I returned to the hearth. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, Will.”
“How do you know me? You call me by name and yet I only just found you sprawled out in the freezing mud at the edge of our property.”
“I’ve known you most of your life. You just forget because you’ve grown old.”
“Old? I’m 32. How old are you?”
“My age? Oh, I have no age. Not according to your measurement as it is. This world runs along a line, fixed and ragged by the tempest you call time—a storm on the human soul.”
“This world? Tempest? What do you mean? Is there more than one world? What world are you from?” I said, trying to hide my quasi-mocking tone.
“I am not from a ‘world’ as you would call it. I am from a kingdom, Thuaidah (pronounce ‘thay-you-duh’). In your language, it might be called a more general name like, “The Kingdom of the North.” The true meaning, however, cannot be fully expressed in your tongue I’m afraid. Though you can journey to it from here, it yet remains quite far. It is my source.”
“And tempest? Time? What’s that about?”
“Do you not feel it, Will? The violent storm of days passing. Their memory? Their futility? I’m only describing what I hear your kind say about time. In this age, the one in which you live, I feel a great weight of sadness. I can hear that sadness in words like ‘mundane’ and ‘ordinary.’ It pains me to hear such words describe so glorious a place, so wonderful a people.
“Do you not see how daily life can grind a person down and feel so vacant, so mundane?” I said.
“As compared to what? For all its advances, this age suffers from the spirit of constant comparison. Think of a child and how they behold the day. How everything is new all the time. And suddenly, when they begin to digest this culture of screens they believe there’s always something more, something they need, something better than what already falls before their eyes.”
“Are you suggesting we all live in the woods?”
“Mr. Thoreau did. And you’ve immortalized him for it,” she said matter-of-factly, lifting the soup bowl to her lips and slurping. “This is delicious, Will.”
“Thanks,” I said still chewing on her words. She wiped her mouth on Grandma’s quilt and continued.
“I find myself in the simple things of this world, Will. And Mr. Thoreau understood the simple things. He knew who he was. It is the tempest that annihilates, Will. Your kind has discovered ways to move time off its spot, to push it, or at least to make yourself believe you somehow control it. You value the pace of this life over truly seeing this life for what it really is. And so you trample through this world blind, annihilating all that is good. Time is a tempest because you have stirred it so.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that. I can see where you’re going with it—I guess. But what do you mean when you say I’ve ‘grown old’?”
“I mean you have forgotten your goodness, Will.”
“My goodness?”
“Yes. Your kind’s own best thinker, the North African, he gave you the phrase. Have you forgotten?”
“St. Augustine you mean? The fourth-century bishop?”
“Yes. He and I used to speak with one another as we walked the streets of Carthage.”
“Right,” I said in a hardly veiled patronizing tone. “The phrase. Do you mean his idea that we humans are bent in on ourselves?”
“The scholar in you lives yet. Yes, Will!” she said smiling, then sipping her soup with her blue eyes dancing over the corner of the bowl.
“So, you believe me to be bent in on myself, do you?”
She continued to sip her soup. “Mmmhmmm,” she moaned. “It is not a matter of believing, Will. I know. I can see it.”
“You think I live life for myself and not for others, which makes me grow old in my spirit because I’m selfish? Is that what you mean?”
“That is the way for you in this time and place, Will. You bend in and grow old. But I can make you young again. I can help you see out there, further than you’ve ever seen before. What astounds me, Will, is that though you have tasted this youth I speak of and could once see into the night sky as if it were day, you live so old, with blind eyes. Why is that?”
“I don’t know exactly what you mean.” I lied.
“I know the human heart grows young again when it understands this world’s lumen—what you call, glory. Oldness happens when a person forgets to move closer to the glory. When you drift from the glory, Will, you see only yourself and your own needs and hurts and failures and desires. You could be so young, but you have forgotten so much. That is why you do not recognize me.”
“I think you’re losing me,” said, feeling more confused but also a little embarrassed. Embarrassed, I guess, because I was lying about not understanding her fully. I knew she was right, but didn’t want to admit it. Why? I’m not sure.
“And, you?” I continued, “Who are you?”
“Do you want to know who I am, or simply my name?”
“Both. I don’t know. Let’s begin with names, shall we?” I said feeling impatient and probably sounding impatient as well.
“But I’ve had many names since I’ve been here.”
“What is your name right now in this cabin?” I blurted. Her eyes widened, like a hurt puppy. “Sorry, it’s just, well, just forget it. Yes, what is your name at this moment in time.”
“My name is Aylin,” she said raising the bowl to her face again, her eyes stuck on me like a scared child.
“See that wasn’t so bad.”
“What wasn’t so bad?” she said, wiping her mouth on Grandma’s quilt.
“Never mind.”
“I hope not.”
“No, it means don’t worry about what I just said—anyway, it’s too hard to explain. Nice to meet you anyway, Aylin. Are you feeling better? And how are the cuts on your arms?”
I tried to make the conversation feel normal as if we’d met by chance at a café. But Aylin was not the kind of girl you’d meet at a café. She was a walking novel, or an indie film, all nuanced and simple and mesmerizing.
“I see,” she said relaxing. “Yes, thank you, I do feel better, and my arms—they will heal. And you. How is your face feeling?”
“It throbs, but it’s fine.”
“I’m sorry I had to do that.”
“What exactly did you do?”
“You touched me, and your thoughts tried to get inside of me. Your bent thoughts. And I can’t let you do that. It is bad for you, though I realize along this string of time it makes you feel a certain kind of pleasure. You’ve been using this pleasure as a substitute.”
“For what?”
“Me.”
Her smoke-blue eyes looked me full in the face. She spread her gaze over me. I sat suffused in the longing of her look.
“It pulls you still doesn’t it Will? Your rustic appearance does not hide your inner decay from me. You are quite threadbare.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, lying again.
“Lust I believe you call it.”
“My aim is just to get you somewhere where they can tend to the cuts on your arms—a place you’ll be safe,” I said, interrupting and feeling more uncomfortable as the conversation wore on. “But for now, we’re socked in, and it might be for days. You’re different for sure, but can we at least attempt a normal conversation?”
“And still you do not see me,” she said as she placed the empty bowl on the hearth. I could see the frustration on her face.
She gathered the quilt around her, stood, and walked to the front door. I turned sideways on the hearth and stared into the fire. After a few awkward minutes passed I tried to move the conversation to something more practical.
“We should see if we can use the Rover to get you to town.”
But she did not respond.
I turned toward the front door, but she had vanished.
To be continued …
Join me for the next instalment, “Chapter 7: The Wolves and a Vow.”
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