The Pinecone Apothecary

by S J Amit

  We sat next to Lampharsella and Pontubelle. Choopster, who was sitting at the edge of the children’s group, leaned forward a bit, looked at me and waved hello.

  When the meal was done Pontubelle stood up. “Today we say goodbye to Choopster,” he said, and all the kids looked at him. He took a cluster of strings out of a big bag that was next to him, separated them and hung them on his arm. There was a pinecone at the end of each string. “I’ll escort Choopster to the other side of the river, and then return to you. Each child on whom I’ll put a pinecone necklace now can go over to Choopster and give her the drawing you made, and she has a keepsake to give you too.” He walked around and hung a pinecone necklace around each child’s neck. Choopster took her wooden board with all of her drawings piled over it, ran over to Lampharsella, and sat in the space between her crossed legs.

  Each child really waited for their turn. I had never seen such a moving goodbye ceremony between children. Choopster, who looked more and more radiant and restless with each drawing she received, had run out of patience to sit down, so Lampharsella supported her and helped her up. When the last of the children sat back on the mat, Lampharsella scanned them over with a quick glance. “And now it’s your turn,” she said and gave Choopster the wooden board with her drawings. This part was even more touching. Choopster walked from child to child, each one standing up when she reached them. She gave each one the drawing that she made especially for them, and then gave them a long hug. The little boys and girls seemed to me like little adults, hugging for a long time with their eyes shut. After she finished, Choopster returned to Lampharsella and sunk back between her crossed legs. “Pontubelle and I have also made you a keepsake,” Lampharsella enveloped Choopster within her arms and pulled her closer to her, and Choopster laughed with delight.

  Pontubelle grabbed something which he had hidden behind his back, came closer to us and gave Lampharsella a string from the same bundle, only instead of a pinecone, this one had a rectangular little mirror hanging off it. “This is a keepsake from all of us, until you return to us again,” Lampharsella hung the necklace with the mirror around Choopster’s neck, “So that you don’t forget that those who point at you, always point at themselves.”

  Choopster got up, turned to us and gave a big smile, she hugged Lampharsella, Pontubelle and Kelemance, and then came up to me and hugged me too.

  “We need to go,” Kelemance whispered to me and got up.

  With his helping hand I got up too. Choopster ran into the children’s tent and came back out with a bag on her shoulder, a big bag compared to her little body. Her curly hair covered the top of the bag. Her face was saddened. She went over to Pontubelle and held his hand. She looked at me with squinted eyes, as though she were deliberating about something, or maybe she was blinded by the sunrays that had filtered through the treetops. She let go of Pontubelle’s hand and quickly put her bag on the ground, took a piece of paper out of it, gave the bag to Pontubelle and then approached me with conviction, as if she had just decided to do something she wasn’t sure about beforehand. “I drew this one for you, Julian. In case we never meet again. I’ll probably never get to the pinecone apothecary.”

  I looked at the drawing. Sun, water and a little boat. I lifted my eyes off the paper, “Choopster, wait,” I wanted to say, but by the time I managed to get a word out, she had already gone off with Pontubelle.

  “Shall we make a move?” Kelemance bit into an apple and handed me one too.

  I held the drawing with both hands and continued looking at it, I lifted my head up in fright, I’ve seen this drawing before!

  “Hello? Julian, do you want the apple?”

  “Oh, no, no, thank you,” I folded the paper as Kelemance walked away, I caught up with him and walked next to him. Pontubelle and Choopster weren’t too far ahead of us.

  “How will they cross the river?” I asked.

  “Pontubelle has a few boats in the little dock, near our boat.”

  “Kelemance, she doesn’t want to go back,” I said. He didn’t answer and just kept walking. “She told me her father listens solely to you,” I said more loudly.

  Kelemance glanced at me and looked ahead. “He doesn’t.”

  “What do you mean he doesn’t?”

  “He doesn’t listen to me, and I can’t force anyone to leave the Colony of the Lost. I can’t convince anyone to want to make a decision, and I can’t obligate anyone to act. All I can do is say the things which are worthy of being said, the rest depends on the person listening to me.”

  Pontubelle and Choopster turned right. “Wait a minute!” Kelemance called, “I’m coming to help you,” and he ran towards them.

  I walked ahead on my own and stopped a few feet before the river and Kelemance’s boat. I unfolded the drawing and looked at it again. Sun, water and a little boat. I looked up and over to the horizon. Sun, water and a little boat. Just like in the drawing.

  Kelemance and Pontubelle appeared from behind the trees to my right, pulling a boat to the water. Choopster was sitting on a bench in the boat, looking straight ahead. What was happening to me? Why did I care so much about that child? I tried to let go, but after a few moments I approached them. “Pontubelle, you’re going to speak to them, right?”

  “To who?” he asked as he pulled the boat.

  “To her parents.”

  He stopped and Kelemance did too, they exchanged looks and remained silent.

  “Kelemance,” I insisted, “She doesn’t want to go back, I don’t underst--”

  Kelemance pulled me aside gently and then took a few more steps towards the river and waited for me to follow him. I sat on the edge of the water. Kelemance stood over me. “It’s not possible right now. She was born there, they’re her parents. Neither I nor anyone else can decide for them, and in general, no one can ever make a decision on behalf of another human.”

  “I’m not talking about deciding, just about trying to explain to them.”

  “They won’t listen to anyone,” Kelemance raised his voice a bit, and unlike his usual behavior, he started to lose his patience.

  “But yesterday she told me that her parents listen only to you.”

  “They don’t!”

  “Her father, why did she say he list--“

  “Julian, I was his Challenge Bearer!”

  In the meantime, Pontubelle was dragging the boat by himself, and only the sound of the boat’s friction against the sand could be heard. The dragging imprinted a path on the sandy ground up to the water’s edge.

  “He knows where he could have reached. But he chose not to cross the Mountains of Freedom, and to remain nonetheless in the Land of the Mosaic,” Kelemance continued.

  “Well now you’re my Challenge Bearer, and if you go to speak with them, I’ll come with you.”

  “Julian, what’s gotten into you? Don’t you want to continue sailing the river that flows through the Valley of Abandoned Issues?”

  “We’ll continue. I’ll continue with you. But… Look at the drawing she made me.”

  He glanced at the paper. “Don’t you prefer to go deeper into the Land of the Mosaic, cross the Mountains of Freedom and reach the pinecone apothecary? I mean, that’s what you’ve come here for.”

  “I feel that I can return to the river whenever I want to. Even if there is another storm, Kelemance, I won’t get off the boat. But something is telling me that I have to go there with her,” I pointed at the distant riverbank.

  Kelemance sat next to me. He went silent and stared into my eyes piercingly. “Are you really willing to jeopardize the remedy for your pain? A pain that reached all the way to the land from which you came, for a girl from the Land of the Mosaic, a girl you don’t even know?”

  I didn’t know what to tell him, I didn’t have the answers even for myself, I just sat and stared at the water.

  “Julian, I can’t dec
ide for you where it is you should go,” he turned to the river, placed his hands on his knees and sighed. “But if we go there, you’ll have to be prepared for the fact that people in the Colony of the Lost will try to convince you that you can’t reach the Mountains of Freedom, and that the pinecone apothecary doesn’t exist.”

  “Kelemance. You told me that once I feel that I’m part of the Land of the Mosaic, I’ll develop courage to be at peace with the present moment during my journey to the pinecone apothecary.” I looked at him. “When we battled through the storm, you said out loud that courage is a decision for the heart to make, not the mind. When I was injured and exhausted on the ground, you told me to practice being a part of the Land of the Mosaic. You said that I’m allowed to think about that which I do not understand, without fearing that which I do not know. You said that even if I don’t know the direction, it’s only a natural stage on the journey to the Mountains of Freedom.”

  He remained silent.

  I turned to him with my entire body, “Something about that girl makes me feel that I belong here,” I waved the drawing to unfold it again, this time right above his knees. This time he looked at it more carefully. “You tell me, Kelemance, because I really am trying to feel like I’m part of this place. I’m trying to be at peace and not be afraid. Is there a specific path that awaits me here in the Land of the Mosaic? A path that I’ve been meant to find since the moment I arrived here?”

  “What do you mean? Your own path? One that was meant for you since before you arrived here? A path to the pinecone apothecary?”

  “Yes.”

  His look softened and he gave a little smile, “There is no path in the Land of the Mosaic which is awaiting you, it’s the movement forward which creates your path.”

  “Kelemance, let’s take her back home, speak to her parents, I’ll speak to her parents, and then we’ll continue to the pinecone apothecary,” I got up and gave him my hand.

  Kelemance looked up at me, stared, then grabbed my hand and stood up with his back to the river. He placed both his hands on my shoulders for a few seconds and turned towards Pontubelle and Choopster. We walked towards them. She was collecting little stones, and Pontubelle was sitting on the sand near the boat, waiting for us.

  “We’ll take her back,” I said.

  The Colony of the Lost

  From the river’s center, during the late morning hours, the visibility was excellent. Kelemance was slowly rowing towards the riverbank ahead of us, serenely pushing the stick in and out of the weak current. The river was flowing from my left onwards, the water’s blue crawling and disappearing into the tall mountains in the distance. We had approached from the right, but I could no longer see the point from which we started, nor could I see the edge of the river. I had no idea how much distance we had covered.

  “We’ll get there in a moment.” Kelemance, who was standing on the bow with his back to us, turned around and smiled at Choopster. She was sitting to my left on the bench, her little hands placed on her thighs, her legs swinging in the air. He glanced at me and turned to face forward again. I checked that the drawing was still where I had kept it, still held between my underwear and my right hip.

  The more we neared the riverbank, the more it looked similar to the one we had left. The same trees, the same shade of sand, the same leaves on the ground. Kelemance took the stick out of the water and leaned it against the bow, jumped into the shallow water and pushed the boat forward. It brushed against the bottom of the river until it stopped. I got off and we pushed it onto the shore. He helped Choopster get out, grabbed her bag and handed it to her, and then pulled the two bottom bags from the back of the boat, opened one of them and poured out its contents. Shirts, pants, woven tote bags, dozens of colorful fabric circles and carved wooden masks, all dispersed on the deck.

  “I’ll wait for you at the gate,” Choopster said, waved to us and walked ahead towards the trees.

  “I always have supplies in case I pass by there, take these.” He gave me brown pants and an orange shirt which tied with string around the hips, as well as a bag and a short cape, and then he looked through the round fabrics. “What do you want to be?”

  “What, did you pass by a theater supply store before we came here?”

  “Wear them, put them on. I’m changing my clothes too.” He got up and gave me a round piece of fabric.

  “Huh?” There was some sort of symbol embroidered on the circle, and in the back there was a little square of Velcro.

  “Get dressed and press this circle on the front of the cape at chest height, otherwise they won’t be able to identify you.”

  “Why?”

  “In the Colony of the Lost, if you don’t wear clothes with familiar decorations that they find acceptable, they won’t let you roam freely. Prepare yourself, they’ll have to approve you before they let you walk around among them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You need to be someone that they can identify in order for them to allow you to get lost among them, otherwise they won’t grant you entrance.”

  “I’ll just introduce myself, nice to meet you, I’m Julian, and I came fr--“

  “It doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from, all that matters is what you are and what decorations you have.” He tied his shirt above his brown pants. “After countless visits there it’s clear to me that in the Colony of the Lost, you don’t exist without a cover. And most important,” he pointed at the fabric circle I was holding, “Most important is the decoration. The one you’ve got is what they call the ‘Palace Wisdom Decoration’, and it allows you to walk freely around the colony. If you prefer, I can give you the ‘Profession Decoration’ as well,” he lifted another fabric circle from the deck, “But you’ll have to put it right next to the ‘Palace Wisdom Decoration’, because the ‘Profession Decoration’ alone won’t grant you access to the areas where they’re only allowed to speak the language of the Palace Wisdom.”

  “The language of the Palace Wisdom,” I repeated the combination of words without understanding it.

  “Except for those two, there’s another important decoration, the ‘Coin Decoration’,” he lifted another circle, a more prominent one with thick silver embroidery, it was also bigger than the other ones. “I’ve seen this decoration in various sizes, and it too allows you to walk around freely, but it attracts too many people to get near you, and then they always repeat the same conversation which I never understand.” He returned the two decorations to the deck and lifted a tote bag, passed the strap over his head and his shoulder, and stretched it diagonally across his body. “Every time I come here I try to understand what it is they talk about, but each time I try, I lose track after a few sentences.” He wrapped himself in his cape, tied it and picked out a decoration for himself.

  “So they actually use a different language here? They have their own language?”

  “No. I understand the individual words. It’s relatively clear to me that their conversation deals with items that they’ve managed to accumulate or that they hope to accumulate, and that it corresponds to the size of the decoration, but I don’t understand its essence, how one becomes involved in it, and what the decoration precisely represents. In my opinion, considering the excited tone they use when they speak about it, it’s connected to something which they find holy. From what I’ve already gathered, I know that they have intense emotions towards objects which they collect in honor of some sort of God.” He pressed his decoration against the cape until it stuck to it, “I think that their belief is incredibly strong because the way they worship their God through certain objects has been intensifying. The object that interested them the most during my last visit no longer interests them now, and they’re already after something else.”

  “And what’s your decoration?” Kelemance’s one had the embroidery of a house, and within it a circle of spread-out hands, placed one on
top of the other.

  “Oh, this is the ‘Family Man Decoration’.” He slid his right hand over the circle and pressed it against the cape again, “I haven’t yet managed to decipher how important it is and where precisely it allows you to go, I’ve only noticed that when I wear it, the people in the Colony of the Lost constantly look at me with a satisfied expression, no matter where I go or what I do.”

  I lifted a mask from the deck and put it up to my face. “I understand that there are more things I need to know,” I laughed for a moment and knocked on the wood that covered my cheeks.

  I saw him smiling through the eye holes, “We may need them later on. There are places and moments where they prefer to be faceless.”

  “Kelemance, you’re joking, right?” I put the mask back in the boat.

  “No.” He patted me on the back. “You wanted to speak to her parents, right? So, I’m making it easier for you to access them.”

  “Can I at least wear my shoes, or is it customary for them to walk barefoot?”

  “Soon. This bag has a few shoes and a bag of socks. Not only is it unacceptable to walk around barefoot there, but the color and the type of socks are of high importance.” He opened the other bag. “Oh, yes, and they don’t call their colony ‘The Colony of the Lost’, they call it ‘Anteballegaria’, named after the first man who had arrived from a faraway land and decided not to leave the Land of the Mosaic. No one there knows who that man was, but they’re writing their own history.”

  “Anteballegaria. Complicated name, I’ll do my best to remember it.”

  “Try to fit in, otherwise they’ll push you out.”

  To my surprise, the shoes that Kelemance gave me fit me perfectly, only they weren’t comfortable enough because their soles were very high, as though they wanted whoever wears them to seem taller than they actually are. The socks were the same orange shade as the shirt, and they had the same embroidered images as the ones on the decorations. “Put one of the masks in your bag as well.” He put a mask into his bag, adding the jug of water, and I put a mask into my bag as well as the drawing. We covered the boat in fabric sheets. “Stretch them properly so that it’s covered on all sides,” we tightened the sheets to the side panels with rope, tied the boat to a tree, and went on our way, walking in the direction Choopster had headed to earlier.