The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday Essay — страница 2

began to sing… he said, “i come from the land of darkness, i come from the land of doom,” he said, “i come from the land of gamehendge, from the land of the big baboon. but i*m never going back there and i couldn*t if i tried, ’cause i come from the land of lizards and the lizards they have died.” he told me that the lizards were a race of people practically extinct from doing things that smart people don*t do, he said that he was once a lizard too. his name was rutherford the brave and he was on a quest to save his people from the fate that lay before them. their clumsy end was perilously near. the lizards would be saved, he said, if they could be enlightened by the writings of the helping friendly book. in all of prussia only one existed, and wilson had declared

that any person who possessed it was a crook. the helping friendly book, it seemed, possessed the ancient secrets of eternal joy and never-ending splendor, the trick was to surrender to the flow. we walked along beneath the moon, he lead us through the bush *til soon we saw before our eyes a raging river. he said that we could swim it if we tried. and saying this the night dove in forgetting that his suit of arms would surely weigh him down and so he sunk. and as his body disappeared before me, I bowed my head in silence and remembered all the thoughts that he had thunk. But rutherford and forbin weren*t alone, and suddenly an unexpected movement caught his eye. on the far side of the river he saw a shaggy creature standing in the weeds who stared across at forbin with an

unrelenting gaze. a gigantic mass of muscles and claws, the hideous beast reared back and hurled himself in the water and swam toward the region where rutherford lay. in a flash the beast was gone, underneath the surface to the frosty depths below while forbin, bewildered, waited alone. the seconds dragged by in what seemed like hours *til finally the colonel felt it all had been a dream. defeated, he bowed his head then turned to go. suddenly, with a roar, the creature emerged before him and held the brave knights body to the sky. the creature laid the knight upon the shore and the colonel fell beside his friend in prayer that he*d survive, and rutherford, brave rutherford, was alive. forbin and the unit monster were crouched over the soggy knight carefully removing his bulky

helmet when the colonel heard a sound behind him. he turned and came face to face with an enormous, shaggy, horse-like creature covered from head to tail with alternating blotches of brown and white. it was a two-toned multi-beast, and atop the multi-beast sat the most beautiful woman the colonel had ever seen. after fifty-two years of undaunted bachelor hood, the colonel felt a feeling rush over him as he had never felt before… the sky is burning in this lonely man, and i kneel by the river and i feel the sand and the wind. the wind from beyond the mountain. and she comes to me in this lonely land, and looks down from the multi-beast on which she rides like the wind… tela was born in a vulgar crooked hut in the shadow of wilson*s castle. venomous scorn from the life of

bitter toil, glory esteem fueled by her hatred it grew, swelling to the point where it would burst at the seems, there was nothing she could do. tela, tela, jewel of wilson*s foul domain, a lullaby the breezes whisper. i look into her eyes and my frozen heart begins to thaw, and it burns, *til layer after layer melts away into a pool, a sky blue mirror of her eyes. my soul is made of marble, but in her gaze i crumble into dust and drift away on the wind. tela grew strong, her struggle to endure, time touched her wounds and shelter proved the cure. each passing day seemed to feed the brazen serpent locked inside and liberate the spirit she*d concealed for so long. there was no place left to hide. Tela reached out her hand and helped forbin onto the back of the multi-beast, and

together they rode off into the forest. as they rode, tela explained to him about wilson and the helping friendly book. she told the colonel that she was part of a revolution to overthrow the evil king. the leader of the revolution was a lizard named errand wolfe who was out to avenge the death of his son roger. roger, she said, had been executed by wilson at the age of fourteen on suspicion of treason. he had been abducted from his home and hung in the public square. the two rode on in silence, deeper and deeper into the heart of the forest until they came to the outskirts of a small community. tela explained to forbin that they had reached the base of the revolutionaries. the colonel looked up and there in the center of the clearing stood errand wolfe. he was a small man but