A Gift
Ten years ago, I wrote a good man a story for his 30th birthday. Today is his 40th, so I think another story is in order.
Somewhere in the west, where snow-robed mountains tumbled slowly into waves that were both green and grey, a wheelwright knocked another wooden spoke into a carved hub.
His iron chisel was no monster-slaying stake, but it had the words WHAT WILL BE inscribed along its length. His mallet may not have been a mighty warhammer, but on the wooden head the words WHAT IS were burned upon either side. And the thin metal rims that he heated, then knocked into shape along the wooden wheels before dowsing them in cold water, were all cunningly embossed so that the words WHAT WAS were pressed into the tracks his wheels left behind them.
The wind whistled through mountain slate, like the signal of shepherds trying to herd the waves. The waves themselves alternately roared forwards and rattled back uncaring, and above all the blows of hammer and chisel, the hiss of metal and creak of axles counted out the days and tides and changing winds.
"Hmm," said a voice above the wheelwright's head, "It's a little restrictive."
The wheelwright started. Perched on the mountain's lowest slope was a woman, travel-aged and wry-smiling.
"It goes where it's pulled," shrugged the wheelwright. "Just as time pulls along people's lives."
"Until the day that your waves count an hour, or your fire counts out a minute,you'll find it's people who pull time along." The woman looked down at the completed wheel, set it upright with kindly hands, and then whispered to it, soft and long.
What passed between the wheel and the woman, nobody knows. But where she stroked the metal rim the letters embossed there changed as though soft as lead, and when she released the wheel it leaped up once, like a lamb in the spring, and then rolled off to places unknown.
As the woman nodded to him and then wordlessly walked away, the wheelwright read was left in the wheel's tracks.
THERE WILL BE BETTER TURNINGS.
Somewhere in the west, where snow-robed mountains tumbled slowly into waves that were both green and grey, a wheelwright knocked another wooden spoke into a carved hub.
His iron chisel was no monster-slaying stake, but it had the words WHAT WILL BE inscribed along its length. His mallet may not have been a mighty warhammer, but on the wooden head the words WHAT IS were burned upon either side. And the thin metal rims that he heated, then knocked into shape along the wooden wheels before dowsing them in cold water, were all cunningly embossed so that the words WHAT WAS were pressed into the tracks his wheels left behind them.
The wind whistled through mountain slate, like the signal of shepherds trying to herd the waves. The waves themselves alternately roared forwards and rattled back uncaring, and above all the blows of hammer and chisel, the hiss of metal and creak of axles counted out the days and tides and changing winds.
"Hmm," said a voice above the wheelwright's head, "It's a little restrictive."
The wheelwright started. Perched on the mountain's lowest slope was a woman, travel-aged and wry-smiling.
"It goes where it's pulled," shrugged the wheelwright. "Just as time pulls along people's lives."
"Until the day that your waves count an hour, or your fire counts out a minute,you'll find it's people who pull time along." The woman looked down at the completed wheel, set it upright with kindly hands, and then whispered to it, soft and long.
What passed between the wheel and the woman, nobody knows. But where she stroked the metal rim the letters embossed there changed as though soft as lead, and when she released the wheel it leaped up once, like a lamb in the spring, and then rolled off to places unknown.
As the woman nodded to him and then wordlessly walked away, the wheelwright read was left in the wheel's tracks.
THERE WILL BE BETTER TURNINGS.