Wrenogal: Act III, xxii-xxvii
xxii
“If I remember right, you’ve sung four songs,”
Fair Lya said as they flew in the sky.
“Of your four friends where your true heart belongs.
You praise them for the way they had to die.”
It was not question, though it framed that way,
and Wrenogal knew not how to respond.
“I do not know what you wish me to say,
I have indeed sung to those who are gone.”
“But you said, once, your songs would tremolo
the words they would have said. ‘Songs they’d have sung’.
You sing to them, but have you learned to grow
past ode to giving dying lips a lung?”
The Wren now knew he was not to correct,
but learn, despite her canny intellect.
xxiii
They now descended at Lya’s request,
down to a lake that spanned a valley, full,
that was an eye within the Wilderness
because of a great tree in its middle.
“There is a boat on this close shore,” said she.
“You and I two will take it to the tree,
and you will feel, and you will see with me
the truest thing that there will ever be.”
They landed down upon one of the banks,
where there indeed sat idly a boat.
The Wren took oar while Lya stayed the planks
that took them. Eerily they stayed afloat:
for down beneath them, to the valley’s floor,
they saw, clear through the deep, what it once wore:
xxiv
A village of a very humble size,
yet brim with a fair hamlet’s family,
was set in water, pure, and crystallized
into an image, now permanently.
And in the middle, that great pupil-tree
grew long its tendril roots down to a place
beside a trail from the community
to where lone homes outside its edges grace.
But when they reached the tree, Lya had eyes
for only the fay leaves that grew on it.
That were but of a very humble size,
and drifted down to settle where they sit.
And Wrenogal gasped when he saw them flood
the boat—for they were each dipped as in blood.
xxv
A crow flew from the tree and rested by
fair Lya, who reached out to pet its head.
It looked to Wrenogal with one black eye
that did not, oddly, fill him with more dread.
“Seria is his name,” she said, and gazed
with love into its face. “He supervised
this village always, and has never fazed,
sitting inside this tree, so long unprized.”
“Why bring me here? To such a dreadful place?
What can I learn from this forsaken tree?”
“Forsaken now,” she said, her tender face
now teary. “But not after now. You see.”
She once again did not ask, but did tell.
He was to see it now, and see it well.
xxvi
To see it now, and see it well. He looked,
into those bloodlike branches, where the breeze
blew softly into leaves that loosely hooked
into their twigs that moved with humble ease.
And in a branch about the top he spied
a brooch with fingerprints upon its face.
It did not make any attempt to hide,
but made no boldness for its high-up place.
“A boy once tried to reach that jewel,”
said she who held the crow. “He fell, and broke
upon the roots. And it was harsh, and cruel.
He was a tender boy,” she faintly spoke.
“But Seria came to, and brought along
his lullaby, and soothed him with his song.”
xxvii
The Wren looked back at Lya, haunted now.
“You’ve shown too much. You are more than you say—
an apparition come, I know not how,
but more than what you are, and far more fay
than anything I might have guessed before.
Do not continue like this—who are you?
Tell no more stories, not a dread scene more
than this one, ‘til I see you and see true.”
She gazed back, lost in tears for what she’d said,
still thinking of the boy. “I do not hide.
I am what I have always been, but wed
with what I always should have been inside.”
She kissed the crow upon its head, and drew
the oars, while to the tree Seria flew.