A Green and Ancient Light

by Frederic S. Durbin

  I’d scarcely started across the glade when I heard Grandmother loudly calling my name. Approaching the arch, I saw her on its other side, standing in front of the dragon and dogs, apparently waiting for me. Just as I drew up with her, a voice called, “Good morning!”

  On the slope leading up toward the parachute glen, I glimpsed someone advancing through the shade and sun-flecks. A military uniform.

  I had a wild hope and shielded my eyes, squinting against the glare.

  But it was the major.

  “Is it still morning?” He checked his pocket watch. “Just barely.” Striding down to us, he tipped his hat and smiled. There was a sprinkling of seeds on his shirt, and he’d loosened his collar. He carried his jacket folded over one arm. His pistol rested in its shiny leather case at his side. “I hope you’re not leaving already?”

  I looked around for other soldiers, but I saw no one else.

  “Major P ——,” said Grandmother. “It is a fine day for a walk.”

  “That it is, Mrs. T ——. And so here you are, and here am I.”

  “It’s a very long walk from the garrison,” she said.

  “I only walked from the village. From your cottage, in fact, where I left my car.”

  “Your car is parked at my house, and neither we nor you are there. Major, you are clearly determined to start the most interesting rumors.”

  He laughed, swatting at a mosquito on his neck and examining the blood-smear on his fingers. “Just as you are determined to ignore any order or request not to come up here.”

  Grandmother looked startled. “Does that order still apply? Surely, any danger has passed.”

  The major examined us. “You are well aware, Mrs. T ——, of the standing directive against interference with cultural treasures.”

  “Ah,” said Grandmother. “The ban on art. We are not inter­fering, Major. This stonework has always been a part of our forest, and it will be here when the laws have changed again. I am a good citizen who loves her country, and I’m an old woman. Let me walk in my woods, sir.”

  The major’s face was hard, his eyes unkind. I saw the bear in them again. He walked a few steps past us, toward the arch. “So, since nothing I can say will keep you away, I decided to pay you a visit. I was hoping you might show me just what it is you do here.” He turned back and stared at us each in turn. “Come along. Share with me what is so intriguing about this place.”

  “Major,” said Grandmother, sounding patient and instructive. “The sacred woods are here in plain sight. You’ve been to the grove quite a few times already, haven’t you? You yourself said it was intriguing on the first day we spoke. Beyond what your own eyes can see, there’s nothing I can tell you that will help.” She looked at me. “Can you? Can you help the major understand why we come here?”

  I shook my head.

  “Sir, let me ask you this,” Grandmother continued. “Suppose my grandson and I were to walk into your headquarters. Do you have a war room there, with maps and pins and telephones and reports, and a big black book full of secret codes? Do you believe that we could understand what you do there? Could you explain it to us in an hour or a day?”

  The major regarded her, then raised a hand and curled his finger several times, beckoning. “Let’s walk,” he said. “Let’s see this place.”

  “As you like,” said Grandmother with a shrug. “We’re not nearly as busy as you.”

  “Indeed? My own observation would suggest otherwise.”

  Grandmother gave a dismissive wave. “If one stops going and doing, one may as well be in the ground.”

  He offered Grandmother his arm, but she declined with a gracious bow. “There are a few rough and rooty places where I will gratefully accept, but on the whole, I’m less dangerous if left to my own devices.”

  This answer amused the major greatly. “Madam, I know of no one more dangerous when left to her own devices.”

  “What do you know of it, sir?”

  “Enough to come armed,” he said, “even if I come alone.”

  Now Grandmother rewarded him with a chuckle.

  I tagged along behind them as they passed through the arch, and Grandmother launched into what promised to be a tour of the garden. Showing him the statue of Neptune, she pointed out the subtle carving of Scylla and Charybdis and made sure he knew the story.

  “And this word?” he asked. “Narrow?”

  Leaning on her stick, Grandmother angled her head and raised her brows. “A very narrow strait, I suppose. A narrow passage between the certain deaths on either side.”

  “H’m,” said the major, eyeing Neptune carefully before they moved on.

  After allowing Grandmother to explain to him the boar, the pool of the four women, and the Angel of the Bottomless Pit, he announced that he wanted to have a look inside the “tower,” as he called it.

  “It may make you queasy,” she said. “It leans.”

  “And it has an unpleasant odor,” he said, “I know.” Excusing himself, he climbed the stairs, his boots clicking on the stone, and glanced down at us from the terrace before vanishing inside. I believe he expected to find something in the upper chamber that would solve the mystery for him, something that would condemn us beyond any doubt—though what he suspected us of is anyone’s guess. He appeared briefly at the window, which meant he had edged along the catwalk beside the forward well. All the evidence against us was just beneath his feet; he’d walked across the top of a compartment filled with bedding and medicine and a bucket of R ——’s pee. I was glad the stone house still reeked with the other stench.

  After another minute, we heard the scrape of the roof hatch, and he stepped up to the crenellated wall. From atop the leaning house, the major surveyed us and the whole garden. He moved from end to end of the roof, studying all the ancient figures arrayed before him in their cloaks of moss and leaves—all the images crafted by those long-dead artisans at the bidding of the long-dead duke.

  As Grandmother calmly returned his gaze, I understood that the sacred woods had defeated the major. The commander of men and trucks and dogs, he stood high above us, his pistol in its shiny holster. His jaw was clenched in anger. He had penetrated to the very heart of our world, this place of green stillness; it was all around him and under his boots. He looked upon the mystery, and it was opaque to him. Grandmother’s face wore an expression that I later understood was pity.

  When at last he left us, having insisted on escorting us back to the cottage, he shook my hand and bowed to Grandmother. “I wish you good health and good fortune,” he said as he opened the door of his car. He’d come today without a driver. “But be reminded, Mrs. T ——, that no matter how clever we are, nothing is indefinitely sustainable.”

  Grandmother answered with quiet sincerity. “You mean that nothing lasts forever. Of that, Major, we are painfully and constantly aware.”

  He replaced his hat on his slicked hair. “The last word is yours, Madam.”

  Neither of them quite smiled as he closed his door and started the engine.

  * * * *

  In our conversation that evening at the cottage, it was clear that Mr. Girandole liked the major even less than my grandfather would have. Before Mr. Girandole would stop grumbling, Grandmother had to apologize for serving the major lunch from the carpet bag on the terrace steps—the lunch she’d packed for us all.

  When the mood had returned to normal, the three of us discussed what was to be done about R ——.

  “He’s clearly getting better physically,” said Mr. Girandole. “M ——, you should have been a doctor.”

  “That’s divine Providence,” said Grandmother. “My sewing projects don’t usually turn out so well.”

  “But what’s he going to do,” I asked, “if we don’t find the door into Faery?” I was thinking that he couldn’t stay in the leaning house during the win
ter.

  “He’s almost well enough to walk properly,” Mr. Girandole said, pouring us each a cup of tea. “I can always guide him over the mountains to ——. From there, in a boat after dark, he could row to ——, which is enemy territory—friendly for him.”

  Grandmother frowned. “That’s too dangerous for both of you. There must be patrols all up and down the coast.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Girandole, “every other path looks worse.”

  “The war can’t last forever,” said Grandmother, settling back in her chair. “If it would just end . . .” She heaved a sigh and appeared to study the ceiling. “Suppose we could hide him in this attic . . .”

  I nearly choked on a mouthful of tea, and Mr. Girandole set down his cup so abruptly that I thought it would break.

  “All right, all right,” said Grandmother. “I guess it wouldn’t work. Mrs. F —— would hear him playing his flute, or he’d go tromping across the boards when I had company.”

  Mr. Girandole nodded, his eyes round. “You absolutely cannot harbor an enemy soldier here, M ——. Promise me that.” He lowered his voice to a whisper on “enemy soldier.”

  “I withdraw the suggestion,” she said. Then, seeing that he still wasn’t satisfied, she added, “I promise, I promise.”

  “But you could,” I said, and they both looked at me.

  Mr. Girandole shifted uneasily. “I could what?”

  “You could harbor him in your cave, couldn’t you?”

  Now Mr. Girandole looked slightly ill. Grandmother failed to suppress a smile.

  “I don’t relish the idea. But . . . if it comes to that, I suppose . . .”

  Grandmother touched his wrist. “The better alternative is finding that fairy door. It’s what R —— wants, and it’s what you need.”

  * * * *

  The next morning, it was Sunday again, and I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. I was to leave the village on the following Friday. Though I wanted to see my mother and sister, and I longed for the day when my father could come home, I was already missing Grandmother and Mr. Girandole . . . and even R ——. I had reached a way-marker on the path to adulthood—the first dividing of my heart. To live in this world, I realized, is to leave pieces of your heart in various places; and to move toward any place is to move away from another.

  I groaned, covering my head with the pillow. I didn’t want to get dressed up and sit among people and mind my manners—it was too much like going to school again. I asked Grandmother if I might skip church, since this was my last Sunday here.

  “Skip church!” she cried, dragging off the pillow. “Shall we just cancel Christmas and next Easter while we’re at it? Look,” she said, prodding my back: “we’re asking God to help us get Girandole back to his people and keep R —— from a firing squad. You want two miracles, but you can’t be bothered to pay God a visit?”

  I blinked up at her. “Do you think God stays in the church more than in the woods?”

  She dragged off the light summer blanket and began to tug on my arm. “I think He sends us messages in both places. And I think we need to start this week in the best way we can.”

  So, I tamed my hair and put on my starched shirt with the strangulating collar; I jammed my feet into the shiny, pinching black shoes that made me think of beetles’ carapaces, and all the while, I wondered why showing respect to others required physical discomfort. When I grumbled about this to Grandmother, she reminded me that we lived in a sin-dark world.

  On sunny days such as this, the small stained-glass windows blazed with their rich colors high in the gloomy vaults, telling stories of Heaven that we could just glimpse if we stood on tip-toes and squinted. I liked the glowing patches of color they cast on the old stern pews and the dank floor.

  There was a traveling guest organist this morning, a pale young man with his hair combed straight back, who seemed to know things about the organ that usual organists did not. I imagined him learning to play in some towering castle-college, where all the turrets and corridors reverberated with sound. He unleashed some exceedingly low notes that drew a strange ringing from the altar area; he played a wild introit with crisscrossing scales that evoked stairways in my mind, endless stairways going up and down. I craned my neck to stare at the ranks of organ pipes, dull and glinting in the shadows behind the empty choir box. The pipes stood like a forest there, like many forests growing on slopes, and the organist seemed determined to use them all. At one point, I was sure I saw plumes of dust shooting from an obscure bank of pipes on the side wall.

  At the end of a hymn, Grandmother cupped a hand to my ear and whispered, “Do you suppose his playing is for deception or merely for art?”

  Grandmother’s church was not much accustomed to music; it had no choir, and I could barely hear anyone singing, even beneath the subdued playing of the regular organists. Today, I saw some frowns when the music got too loud, or when the organist would pause between hymn stanzas to deliver thunderous interludes that scattered the melody, as if the hymn had been snatched up by a whirlwind. During one such magnificent interruption, I heard a lady behind us mutter, “He should have done his practicing at home.”

  I sensed relief all around me when it was time for the sermon, and the little priest ascended to the pulpit, gave us a kindly gaze, and delivered his soothing, mostly inaudible message. His whispery voice ebbed and swelled like the rhythms of the sea, and it was to such rhythms that the people here awoke and slept and spent their days. Today, the sermon was entitled “The Long and the Short of It.” I gathered, mostly from reading the Scripture text, that he was telling us how all the Commandments boil down to just two, that we are to love God and love our neighbor. But the only words of the priest’s that I was sure I understood were those of the title. After a susurrus of explanation, he would hold up a finger or throw his arms wide and announce, just within the range of hearing, “And that’s the long and the short of it!” Near the beginning, when he was presumably telling us the Law, the sentence came out severely: we fall short, we are found wanting, we deserve to die—that’s the long and the short of it. By the end, when he got to the Gospel, he was declaring it with joy, bouncing on his toes: we are redeemed; eternal life is ours—that’s the long and the short of it.

  Then the organ storm began again, and the congregation hunkered down like mountain-climbers on a bare saddle.

  Afterward, people drifted out of the sanctuary, greeting one another and chatting. Mrs. C —— appeared from across the aisle and latched onto Grandmother, and their conversation gave me plenty of time to wander over to the neglected choir gallery.

  At some time in the church’s past, its congregation must have been wealthy and dedicated to musical splendor. Those long-ago people would have appreciated the pale young organist. The organ pipes towered over me, ranging from huge ones like factory smokestacks to some as tiny as a pocket whistle—and every size in between. I didn’t know at first why they captured my interest. Perhaps it was because I’d been thinking of R ——’s reed flute and hearing its voice hidden in the hymns, drifting behind the voluntaries. Maybe I was looking for that flute now, half-expecting to see it—or one like it—tucked among the proper metal pipes, abandoned there by some goat-footed piper who’d been lurking in the shadows, accompanying our worship with a wink and a dancing step. As I crept closer, I thought about how the organ pipes were like the statues in the sacred woods: the pipes occupied that great dark alcove behind angels and saints—once built with highest craft, now mostly forgotten . . . and frowned at when they thundered out their ancient music.

  * * * *

  In the heat of the late afternoon, Grandmother was taking a long nap and I was moping and drowsing on my favorite shady bench behind the cottage. A bee buzzed nearby; in the middle distance, a squadron of our country’s planes followed the mountains. I sighed, feeling sluggish, and watched clouds floating in the endless blue.


  With a suddenness that would have startled anyone seeing me, I sat up, and the notebook on my chest flopped to the ground. As clearly as if the priest had been beside me, I heard his voice say:

  “And that’s the long and the short of it.”

  Snatching up the notebook, I flipped it open to the latest, most complete list of inscriptions from the statues. Pressing a hand over my mouth, I stared at the transcription, not reading now, not seeing words—but seeing instead lines of gray pencil marks on the page.

  A fact about the lines had always nagged me like a thorn in my sock, but it had never risen to my conscious mind. Some of the lines were very short; some were very long; and they ranged in all lengths between, like the organ pipes. But, unlike the pipes, my lines were not arranged in a neat, graduated rank.

  My heart pounding, I began counting the words in each line. I leaped to my feet. Counting, I paced to and fro, unable to sit still. I collided with a wrought-iron chair and knocked it over. Ignoring the pain in my shin, I counted.

  The shortest line, Narrow, had a single word. The next longest, Reason departs, had two. Sure enough, there was a three-word line: Behold in me. Then came I am a gate, with four. And so it went.

  Kneeling at the garden table, I fished the pencil from my pocket and, in shaky letters, copied out my discovery:

  1—Narrow

  2—Reason departs

  3—Behold in me

  4—I am a gate

  5—The path beyond the dusk