Puddle: A Tale for the Curious

by Elena "Birch" Bozzi

  “Sure,” he did another grin. “They are alive in their own way. They breathe, for one. Different entities breathe in their various ways. Stones expand with heat, contract with cool. They breathe temperature. Also, if you paint an airtight waterproof sealer on them, they tend to crack more easily after a while. They suffocate.”

  “You said they have particular language. Neither stones nor plants exactly have vocal chords. The herbs in my garden speak in, well, colors maybe. Or shapes. I feel it in my mind when I concentrate on them. I have learned to tell when they’re pleased or upset. A lot of it has to do with chemicals and physics, too. Drooping. Discoloration.”

  Puddle nodded, “Language is limited. Language without words can be complex, and difficult to translate into words. I have not been able to find an exact translation for the language the stones speak. One way the stones speak is with energy. They are made of those tiny particles-”

  “Atoms,” I interrupted silently in my mind, then listened further.

  “-that vibrate at certain frequencies. The stones resonate if you listen right, and you can hear without hearing. I have been listening to their overtones. They hold memories that float through space and time. Those memories are always available to hear without hearing, if one knows how to listen.”

  “Wait. What overtones? Memories. What do you mean?”

  Puddle turned his palms to the sky, as if holding solid invisible matter. “You know, the thoughts that float around. They come from everywhere. Rocks themselves, seas, people, trees, lizards. Past. Present. You can hear the plants. This is similar, where time has less relevance. The language is generally not heard in words. You have to be careful. It gets loud.”

  I supposed I had never tried to listen to… everything. “What do you do? I’d like to hear.”

  Puddle sat cross-legged and pulled his feet above his knees in the lotus position I had learned through yoga. I sat facing him and did the same, but soon repositioned because the lotus is a beautiful flower, but can be difficult to imitate.

  “Listen to nothing,” he began, “and you will hear everything.”

  I closed my eyes and heard the traffic. It turned to wind and leaves in my mind. I imagined time away and felt the plants quickening, their sap flowing against gravity, awakened by spring. The forces of the moon and planets, and influences unimaginably far, came together in a cosmic dance. The sun that lit the Earth was a freckle on the elbow of the Milky Way.

  I saw the seasons slowing down and falling asleep for the year. In their slumber, I heard hints of stories, somewhere in the ether. Then, wakening again in an unchanging, ever changing cycle, the stories searched for actors and an audience. I felt the revolution around the sun, oscillating at a distance I could only half imagine for an instant. The ellipse of our path brought us closer then further, while the tilt kept the cycles turning.

  “Know that energy is flowing up your spine,” said Puddle in his slow, deliberate voice. “Hear what Earth is saying.”

  I heard skittering squirrels scavenging fallen acorns. The rumble of passing vehicles drifted through the forest, disguising their noises as the restless zephyr. The sounds were blending, becoming part of the whole. My breath filled and escaped my lungs at the rate of spinning worlds. The noises blurred. A soundless moment approached, in which I felt like I was inside a bubble of everything. It formed around my body that was both resting on the forest floor and in a place that felt like either nowhere or everywhere. All was still, yet all was in constant motion. A dust piece floated close, tickled my nose, and *achoo!* sudden earthquake broke the connection.

  “I could almost hear,” I said, wanting to try again.

  “You will,” assured Puddle. “Soon enough. Would you show me your world? I have been walking about on my own, but I would like to share your experience.”

  I have been waiting what seemed like several small eternities for someone to come along and ask to share experiences with me, or for someone who understood the kinds of experiences I wanted to share. The world was such a beautiful place that I sometimes felt I could explode with experiencing life solo. I appreciated time in silence and stillness to think, though the silence was never quiet. While in the garden, I was with plant friends. While walking, I was with the wind. While at school, I was ignored and talked at by the instillers of lessons. We were not to think or have unplanned experiences. My job was to be quiet, so I retreated into my head. To share an experience with another person who was interested: glorious.

  Puddle had seen other worlds. I was thinking of how exciting a sojourn to another world could be, but that had to wait because Puddle wanted to look about this world.

  “Hmm,” I began. “All I had planned for today was to create an adventure and graze the spring forest. That may not be the most thrilling sort of experience around, but the fiddlehead ferns are at their tenderly delectable stage.”

  “Let us have an adventure, then,” said Puddle. That boy was nice to have around.

  “We’ll need hazel sticks for protection. There are dragons in this forest, and not all of them are friendly,” I pointed to a fallen tree whose roots twisted about, which were the hide and horns and terrible teeth of the wrinkly reptile. “That dragon is friendly.”

  “Oh, good,” Puddle pronounced as he jumped up. “Where are we able to find a hazel?”

  “Back down this trail and over here. It’s this shrubby tree. I’ve never liked taking sticks off trees themselves, unless they give their permission. I always carry my knife in case I need a branch. They deserve a clean cut, or else the ripped bark could hurt them more. It could get infected easier.”

  “How would you know the tree is giving its permission?” asked my dreadlocked companion.

  “You should know. You speak with them, too.”

  “True, but you may know a different way than me.”

  “Ok. To ask a tree’s permission, you can think a thought at it, or ask out loud. Trees aren’t much for saying human words out loud, but I think speaking helps. You ask if it would consent to give a piece of itself to you, and then you pay attention to the feeling right after, the one in your guts. Sometimes my inner voice says no, and I move on. More often I get a yes feeling, but I always ask. Just because a tree doesn’t have nerve endings and feel in the same way as humans, doesn’t mean it will gladly let anyone tear parts off it any time they feel.”

  Puddle nodded and kept his everlasting smile resting on his face, “That is a good way. I was taught another way to find answers that may not be outright obvious using your body. Want to try?”

  “Sure.”

  “Stand comfortably with your spine tall, and hold a true or false statement in your mind. The way you sway shows the truth. Think or say: I am Birch.”

  I stood tall, and thought I was Birch. I swooned slightly forward.

  Puddle nodded. “Think something false,” he said.

  I thought how boring this experiment was. I swayed backward, nearly toppling.

  Puddle nodded. “See. For you, true things lean you forward, and false ideas push you back. Sometimes this can help you listen to yourself, and make decisions. If you are trying to lie to yourself, you will feel it in the pull.”

  I stepped forward along the path feeling pleased, “And here I thought you were going to think I was crazy asking for plantish permission. Though, I did see you come out of a puddle. Maybe I’m crazy still.”

  “No, you are quite alright. If either of us were crazy, I would say it is me. I might be in some sort of coma somewhere, in a body that does not jump from world to world. I do not understand what happens exactly throughout the entire process with the puddles, but I continue to figure out the workings more with each jump.” Puddle stood akimbo a moment, and looked back and forth in thought. “Jumping is only a mildly accurate verb to describe the feeling. It is like a force pushing away from another force, and then pulling back, but in a different direction. You seem to change directories somewhere in the middle. The jump, also, has to be inte
ntional. I often step in water without going through a portal, except for once. My first jump was not exactly intentional, but intention was there nonetheless.”

  “What, like you fell out of your planet? What were you doing to make that happen?”

  Puddle’s subtle smile left for the first time since I saw him in the garden, and he replied in a voice that would have made the first willow weep and the bleeding heart flower run red. “I have never been able to return, and I loved the people of my planet, and the creatures, and the places. I was arguing with my family about some trivial matter that I thought was important, and maybe it was important, but even then, the reasons were not great enough to have left. I cannot get back. I have tried, but cannot find the right pool. I left with such anger.”

  I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Saying it’ll be ok didn’t seem fair. Saying I’m sorry didn’t either, and I don’t like to apologize for things I haven’t done. I didn’t know his family. Perhaps they were still mad at him and thought he ran away on purpose. Perhaps I should offer a hug, but not quite yet. He may not be the hugging type. Not everyone appreciates touch. I laid my hand on his arm to see if he flinched, and felt that was enough for now to show my heart went out to him. He may just need to speak about his circumstances some more to feel better, so I paraphrased him to show I was listening, and hoped that would get more information, “Your situation is a heavy one. You didn’t feel your argument was worth leaving. Still, you wanted to be heard.”

  He paused, and kept pausing until I nearly decided to change the subject, but waited that instant longer that is essential for delicate situations. He breathed deep, as if taking in energy from the trees, and spoke in such a whisper that if a passing mosquito were to get too close, his voice would have been lost as he was, and he gave me his story.

  ~

  I remember the sunrise. Colorless, but, given time, would explode like so many sumac blossoms hurled in good nature between young siblings, before the children became wise enough to let them alone to grow to be food for others. The land jumped from desert to oasis to desert in hard drawn lines, circling the entrance to my home. My people loved and traveled the dunes of sand and grasses and scraggly trees.

  The hills rose up to let the sun and shadow dance upon elevation. I often stood on the oasis border, and watched the morning light give shadows to the raised sand tendrils, stretching horizontally toward the horizon. The wind lines were as tall as my toes, but to the ants, they were huge and rolling ridges. I liked to wake before the light overcame the dark, and watch the stars fall asleep in their gray blanket, before color returned to the world.

  The stars outlined the land and told us stories of our ancestors. The stars told the stories because they remembered what happened better than we could ever imagine. They wrote our stories in sparking permanence, so we could read them when the time was right. I wondered what stories the ants saw, if they happened to stay up so long. I wondered if they saw the stories of their ancestors, or if they worked too hard and had no time for tales. I needed them, the stories. I needed to remember, so I could know where to go. Sometimes, when I am traveling through worlds, I wonder if any of those stars are ones I used to see on my planet.

  The dawn has a secret aroma. The dampness of night and baked stone scent of day mingled in the dawn. That was the time for growth, before the sun stole the moisture from above ground. The plants knew each morning gave them another opportunity to grow. The Land was rarely in a hurry.

  We lived under the ground in the sort of way that we spent most of our time in the open air. Beneath the stone was water, safe from heat and evaporation. Without that lifeblood, we would surely perish, so we revered the water and it spoke to us. Water gave us life, and we respected its power. It taught us our priorities. If we respected water, we respected life.

  Beneath the stone surface wound caves that held magic condensed into solid form. Crystals of blue and purple, red, green, and yellow grew, and would reflect light down into the dark caves on certain days of the year. Only a few people could read the ancient signs illuminated on the cavern walls. The marks were not cut by hands and tools. They were light reflections from the minerals. They were like the wavy patterns water reflected, only still. I was learning to read them.

  The Land itself raised its children and we knew we were one. All of us, with each other, with the lizards, the feathers, spiny, fuzzy, clawed, toed, toothed, tailed, and the very rocks. We raised each other and spoke the same speech, though not always with words. Our language went deeper when we concentrated, to the place where only thoughts and feelings resided, where intentions were conceived and reactions were birthed, grew old, and died. Raised thus, we experienced life through eyes and fingers not only our own. We shared energy just as we shared water, and perhaps more readily. We were not free of misunderstanding, but nearly.

  See, the Land held more magic than we could learn. It taught us only that for which we were ready, and kept secrets until we understood well enough what we already knew. We practiced those skills with respect learned from our connection with all, and in doing so, gave the magic back to the Land. It rewarded us with increased strength. Our relationship was symbiotic.

  The people would gather often, though life was difficult and we grew tired throughout the day. But as the sun rolled near the horizon, we shared our stories and were filled with fresh strength. We walked our stories, danced our stories, and gave them freely to one another because we trusted each person would respect ours and give us theirs in return. Stories kept us alive and connected us with the Land, with ourselves, and with all others. This is what I thought, but sometimes stories are not enough. Stories lead us in many ways and to many places, but do not always bring us to answers as quickly as we may need them, or think we need them.

  She was beautiful and friendly. Her family and mine had been close friends. She was skilled in the areas held in esteem with my people. Many sought to be near her. She could manipulate any situation with her grace in order to fulfill her desires.

  Her name was Amaryna. She could speak with the lizards, and retold their stories when the families living in our oasis would get together in the evenings. When we were young, she would direct the games the children would play. She was always good and fair with her instructions, and everyone had a pleasant time. I would join the games at times, but my toes always had a wandering step in them, so I would also join in conversation with the elders, and walk about on my own for long moments.

  As we grew, Amaryna noticed me more, especially when I was not with her and her games. She was the very essence of courtesy when all fell in place with her plans, and her efforts grew to keep all in her control. Amaryna noticed me, and noticed how I meandered about during the gatherings. I am sure that was what caught her attention. I did not hand her my full attention, and that was what she wanted. She expressed this to our parents. They made arrangements. We were to be joined.

  That she should choose me surprised our families initially. She had many followers, and I tended toward wandering. They expected an attentive follower for her that would please and appease all her will. I did not consent very readily, and this surprised them further. I was going against tradition. A deal had been struck, and our union had been decided.

  It was not that I did not like Amaryna. Quite the opposite. I loved her for who she was, and her family because they were always so close with my family. But I could not handle the lack of respect shown in not conferring with me on such a decision. I tried to keep peace for as long as possible because my family was pleased, and our union was a logical one. Our union would solidify our families. My heart fought with itself. My whole being began to fall apart. I grew irritable, and spent more time studying the crystals of our caves. I attended the evening gatherings with little frequency.

  I did learn significant workings of the crystals. The tree agate you hold was one of the stones from the roots of our caves. It helps connect anyone near it with the spirits of the trees, and aids in subtle com
munication that goes beyond language. I gave this one to you to strengthen your connection with the plants further.

  While in the caves, I came across this other stone. It is of the same sort you wear about your neck. I found it on the bank of an underground lake on a day when the amethysts that reached up to the surface caught sun rays and carried them down. The walls glistened with indigo glory, and ribbons of light reflected off the water.

  This stone called to me. It waited on the shore, and resonated with something in my soul. The underground gifted me this secret. Nowhere else on my planet had I encountered this sort of stone. It was something lost as well. It wanted me to find it.

  When I picked it up from that underground shore, I felt a strangeness. It was as if it had known a different world. It spoke no language I grasped.

  Over time, I learned that it was a form of tektite, which formed when a meteor melted its crash zone into glass. Thus, tektite held the power to travel far.

  Since I had not seen it on my planet, I tried to guess how the piece of tektite got to the shore of that underground lake. Who could have dropped it? Where had they gone? Did they wander the caves until they grew too tired to wander?

  I was able to escape to the caves for most of my waking hours. Still, I was obligated to meet with Amaryna’s and my families, and act civil, if not joyous. I had little practice at faking joy, and I would have been too obvious if I had tried. Not one noticed my utter distress, covered with civility. There was too much planning to accomplish.

  I think, now, that I would have been able to learn to be happy with our arrangement if it meant I could have remained with my family and my world. If not happy, I could have learned to be content. At the same time, attempting to assume a content life while I tore myself apart inside was contradictory.

  I felt Amaryna did not fully love me. I felt she wanted to control me. Perhaps I was only a part of her games, a part to keep her in practice. Instead of discussing it with her directly, I turned inward and my core died, hardened, and turned to coal.