Wandered he on roads of unbroken winter frost; down paths of snow-killed grass, he crawled the ones less traveled by. Drank he the urine of elk, or sometimes just licked off marked cedars. Only the furthest away villages past the woods held shadows that could offer the sanctuary of namelessness. And faltered the boy of nine when, by the seventh sunrise, the last plutonic creek could not be crossed, so vindictive as it was. And with eyes seeming to be dreaming, he plunged in towards the distant shore--- floating, softly hoping that he’d never reach the craven moor.

Just as the folds of the water veiled his drowning, moonlit face, he caught glimpse of a girl sitting on the moor. Blood flowed as he cried out, suddenly fearing death for there was a girl sitting on the moor. He swam, but sunk, and his near last thought was that he was not alone. Consciousness ebbed, drained from his small bruised body. Suddenly a waterman appeared before him, green even in the dark space of water, Neptunian dreadlocks in mottled rot, and he grabbed the boy of nine.

When the boy woke, the girl of the moor was over him, peering down. The waterman too was over him, dripping in rainwashed sternness. An ugly fellow, thought the boy of nine, but that moldy face was welcome. Strangers do not save lives.

“What name you are, boy?” grunted the waterman. His broad black lips half grinned at him, balancing a wet scowl.

“I am a boy who weeps blood,” said the boy of nine.

“Why did you swim an impossible current, brave friend?” tinkled the girl of the moor, who was wearing a tattered pink dress, a bow in her ebon hair, and a curious green scarf tight like a tourniquet around her neck.

He looked back at them blankly, not quite understanding what they were saying.

“What name you are, boy?" grunted the old waterman.

"The boy who weeps blood," said the boy of nine.

“And who are you, strangest of girls that chased after him?”

“I am the girl who has but a green scarf left in this world.” She looked down, and then quickly looked up at the boy of nine. "And you, why do you weep blood?"

"I weep blood because I've been cast from home. It's true," the boy whispered, vision failing for a moment. He laid back on the wettened Earth, swallowed by reality and then vomited out with the conclusion of the dream. The girl with the green scarf fed him a few breadcrumbs, nearly all she carried. Her dark eyes turned toward him and he saw wells of desolation in which lost souls were drawn and heartstrings unwoven.

"Do not do that. Do not look into my eyes, friend who weeps blood, or you'll be lost too. Like mum... and dad," and here she burst into tears. Her death black hair kept her secrets, and she told him no more.

The waterman regarded the two children, one crying with lost eyes, one with scarlet streams piercing the ground, and said instead "Childrens, come now, why cries when it will not make the sun set east? Come, I'll tell yous some hope. There is a great glass mountain a hundred leagues from here. Nows, takes my son with yous and seek to yon great beating heart of that mountain, and there shall find deep answers. My son is a waterman who cannot weave shirts out of darknesses, nor pluck dews to make necklaces. He can do no useless things and is a shame to me. Takes him, as he shall make a fine companion though he does this old man no use."

Sure enough, the two children looked behind him to see a young waterman in a sparkling frog-skin coat and a wary but innocent look on his plump sea-green cheeks. The waterman father croaked: “Seek the sphinx in the desert, and you shall find the path to the heart of the mountain.” With that, Waterman William leaped into the mist and dived back to his riverbed, for that is where watermen sleep.

So into the vast world they marched, three beacons of ailing light probing the country-sides for food to feed their famished minds and horse stables to rest their weary heads. The news of their coming wild-fired through villages that closed their doors. Something wicked this way comes said mothers to their firstborn sons, and gates were closed and lined with bones and walls were mortared with broken stones. As they three children plodded through, they were jeered at, cursed by town witches, and suffered sleeping near the little warmth that could be gleaned from the foots of front doors. They left a slug’s trail of blood, tears and sweat (the young waterman clutching his frog-skin coat for dear life beneath the northern gales).

And on the empty wind-shorn roads between villages, they would comfort each other with teasing and hopes. “We must walk through the next village we come to as kings!” giggled the boy who weeps blood.

“Yes, but also as queens!” tittered the girl with the green scarf, and with much excitement she made a fairy queen flourish. Running ahead a bit, she whirled around to give them a perfectly dainty curtsy. The boy and the waterman that does no useless things burst into gleeful applause.

Sometimes, when they passed through villages unnoticed, or after rogue rabbits just happened to die at their feet for a cold but solid dinner, they would even be so happy as to dance ‘round tiny tinder fires with the moon as their lantern, the stars their muses of imagination, and the rustling leaves their audience. And when their shoes burst from the miles walked, they found freshly dead mice to shove feet into. The still steaming muscle warmed their calloused toes. What kept them going was the slow creep of a distant star on the horizon, a lighthouse attracting discontent pilgrims. Verily, the Great Glass Mountain.

“I… I wish… wish that maybe should we reach the Great Beating Heart’s palace, it will let us play there. And it will teach me to turn oak leaves into crow wings. And recite the alphabet in the randomest possible order,” bubbled the waterman that does no useless things. “And… and a huge pool of refreshing murky water to bathe my poor dry skin.”

“I wish there will be tasty foods like cakes and tarts. I would love to have a sweet goose down pillow too, for my head is falling off from weariness,” chimed in the girl with the green scarf.

" And I," said boy who weeps blood, "would just like to happy. Why, we are already friends, we must stay so and be kings together!"

So onward they walked and walked and walked. They came to the foot of a great sand valley, a desert of vicious countenance, and the poor waterman cried that they must rest before trying to cross it. His skin had lost its healthy green hue and had dried out dangerously pale. The children agreed, for they too felt the burn of distance through their bodies.

That night as they huddled against the desert frost until the dusk, a man called out to them and woke them with the sun. He was a strange thing, wrapped in a medieval blanket, with blood drooling out of one eye socket.

"Say there, children, what lonesome quest of yours is it that draws you to these forsaken desert shores?" He cackled.

The boy who weeps blood leapt out of his sleeping sack, rubbed his grubby eyes with grubby hands, and asked "Good father, are those bleeding eyes? Are you one who weeps blood like I? Please tell me good sir!"

"Alas young boy, my curse is not thine, as a sphinx of giant stone is the cause of mine, deep in the desert is sat in wait and pounced on poor me when it was too late." The man shook his head and wiped his eyes. The man shook his head and wiped his eyes. “And told me three cruel riddles rued that shall haunt me ‘til my last day through!”

“Poor old man,” said the girl with the green scarf, “mayhaps we children can help you, we three who have no home no weight of old age, and no friends but ourselves. Lead us to this unreasonable sphinx.”

The old man was joyous, and led the children to the sphinx. The desert sun seemed to grow angrier as they neared it, the sand hiding lost evils, whispering in grains.

“What’s is this?” cried the astonished sphinx. “So how shall I riddles theses?” It hissed and its great tail lashed and the ground trembled from stone. “And the old mans, hee ho hee hay, back to rhyme me one more day?”

“No, sphinx we came to solve this poor man’s riddles that you cursed him with,” said the boy who weeps blood. The children all nodded, even the dismal waterman with his dried up hat. The sphinx face became impassive, and in a deep voice intoned:

The dumb read to the deaf
A letter that the blind man wrote,
Which then was swiftly stolen
By the dead man in the boat.

Greensleeves I have not
My gossamer dress bare with thread,
Yet ever warm and evergreen am I
Who only deep in dark shades tread

What swims with one leg in the morning, four legs at noon, and a two in the evening?


“You beastly thing! I can tell you the answer to the first. Secrets! Secrets even the dumb can tell, the deaf can hear, and blind can see quite plainly are things that dead men take with them to their graves.” The boy who weeps blood pouted his lips, and the sphinx grumbled.

“And I know the second,” sang the girl with the green scarf, “you frightful thing. The forest is what you speak of, and even in the dark of forest shade, the thicket heat makes even leaves too much to bear.”

“Y-you awfuller thing, you,” bubbled the young waterman, “what swims with one leg in the morning, four legs at noon, and a two in the evening is a f-frog, a frog it is. A tadpole, a green green froggyman, and then the farmer’s meal of m-meal of legs.”

The sphinx scowled. “Then shall I give this old man back his joy? Where will I go from there?” The beast rumbled and shook and the great bricks of its making fell apart. In its heart was a hole, and as he children picked their way through the stone head and hand and tail sunk in the sand, they bid farewell to the happy old traveler.

They journeyed many days in the dark and musty tunnel. Often they would feast on rats and light small fires to cook them, sometimes they would eat the damp mold on the rocks. The waterman who could do no useless things taught them how to prepare the mold into a tasty pie and was very ashamed. The girl with the green scarf would then sing soft songs of the clockmaker imp in a faraway land hungry for humbugs, or the snow princess who could only see her lover in winter. These stories were so sad that the young waterman would give the boy who weeps blood some tears to cry with.

And then one day they poured out of an opening and into the light of the center of the mountain, the cavern ageless and crystal, shimmering with the glint of a lake of eyes.



(To Be Continued...)