The story of the lovely creatures in the carriage, and the lovely lady who joined them on the long journey to the big city

All credit for this part of "The Lady of the Ring" must really go to esti, whose "Magical Forests" series is so very fascinating, beautiful and inspiring. The illustration for this chapter is esti's post "Circling". Without esti's artwork, this chapter would not exist.



The lovely lady and the lovely creatures went bumpity bump bump on the hard wooden benches as the carriage made its way along the rough dirt road. Halfway to the city, the carriage driver stopped his horses beside a small tavern and proclaimed it a rest stop. The group of travel-weary women slowly made their way out of the carriage, squinting at the bright sunlight and surveying this new place. This new place was the place between where they had come from and where they were going, and it was strangely beautiful. The sun was warm, the air was crisp, the grass was green, and in the distance were forests and mountains and clouds. Instead of entering the tavern they walked in a long straight line, as if in a trance, towards the greenest part of the small meadow. The women stopped there, formed a perfect circle, and rested.

The lovely lady sat down on the grass, crossed her long and elegant legs, rested her graceful ringless hands on her knees, and watched them. Directly opposite her stood a woman in a long black dress whose right arm was raised towards the centre of the circle as if to say “I hereby request my ring”. To the left of this ringless woman stood the youngest of the women, almost a girl really, with long blonde hair and eyes closed and refusing to look, and hands clasped behind her back in solitary independence. Immediately beside the lovely lady stood a couple of women attached to each other in an intimate embrace of secrets and truths. One of these women was listening with wide-eyed surprise while the other pressed her lips to her ear as if to say “Listen, quick, this is my story, quick, before we get to the city.” The lovely lady noticed all of this, but what she noticed most of all was that the story-telling woman’s hand was tightly tucked into a deep, padded pocket. The lovely lady smiled to herself a little sadly and thought “Ah, yes, indeed.”

Turning her head to the other side, the lovely lady saw a woman who was wearing a light, flowing dress of the finest cotton. She was the tallest of the group by far, with her back held straight, her hair grown long, and a water-pot perfectly balanced above her long, angular face. She was looking into the far distance and seemed preoccupied. “Perhaps she is looking for her well,” thought the lovely lady. She then tried to catch this well-seeking woman’s eye, so that she could show her another lady, a lady who was so much more fascinating than mere water. This fascinating creature was in constant motion, and the breeze seemed to touch no other woman, only her. The breeze touched only her shawl, only her hair, only her walk. She was walking, and then running, with a silly simplicity and a grinning frivolity, and she made the lovely lady smile and laugh.

There were sounds in this circle as well as sights, and the most haunting sound by far was neither the breeze nor the bees nor the birds, no, it was the hesitant strumming of a woman’s guitar, a woman whose back was turned towards the lovely lady. For you see, dear reader, the musician of the group is actually staring right at YOU, right now, yes she is, and she is singing your song while looking at you and waiting to see your reaction.

It is a very lucky thing that the musician has chosen to look at you and not to her right, for the woman to her right is completely oblivious to the quivering notes of the song. This woman is exhausted. Yes, this woman has laid her body down on the long soft grass and circled the back of her head with her arms like a makeshift pillow. Standing beside this sleeping woman is a worrying woman who is holding her hands together anxiously and bending forward in prayer to an invisible goddess. The lovely lady can almost hear this worrying woman as she chants her silent prayers of hope and strength, and this makes the lovely lady realise that she is no longer alone and that her little world is perhaps not quite so little after all.





[And, dear reader, if you do happen to recognise any of these rare and wonderful women, rest assured, it is no accident.]

Perspective

The illustrations for this episode of "The Lady of the Ring" can be found here, with many thanks to Alice C (Mrs M).



The lovely lady rushed from one corner of the courtyard to the next, bent down, pushing at the snow, shuffling the powder with her feet, rifling through it with her fingers, desperately searching for the ring. Finally, the lovely lady accepted defeat, sighed, and turned towards the house. She reached out her hand to open the doors and found, much to her astonishment, that the entire house had disappeared. Yes, it was simply gone, gone, and in its place, standing beside her feet, was a tiny doll's house. When the lovely lady knelt down on the snowy ground and peered in through the little windows she could see her tiny bed beside a tiny carpet, a miniature staircase leading down to the shortest of corridors, and there was the breakfast table and the kitchen. In the kitchen was a doll-sized bowl of eggs waiting to be broken and whisked, a plate of triangular sandwiches and an iced chocolate cake the size of a ten pence coin. At first, she feared that she may be dreaming, and then she feared that her past may have been a mere dream. Perhaps all of her memories of the house, and the kitchen, the bed and the food and the staircase, maybe they had all been a twenty-year dream. Maybe her reality was, in fact, so very small that it she could pick it up with one hand and walk down the street with it. Maybe she could pick up her tiny reality and walk all the way into town with it swinging from her hand. Maybe she could walk all the way into town with it and find a fuller house to live in, and in which to store the tiny house.

Well, dear reader, the truth is that the lovely lady did not actually walk into town that day, as the sun began to rise and the birds began to sing. No. The lovely lady was met at her street corner by a large horse-drawn carriage which took her all the way into the big city together with a collection of other people from her local neighbourhood. The lovely lady’s eyes opened wide with wonder as she looked at each of her fellow travellers in turn, noticing the clothes they were wearing and the objects they were carrying, and all the time shaking her head in amazement that she had lived for so long in her big-little house with the Mother Ring and had never ever seen such living creatures before.

The statue, the mother ring and the strange visitor

After having discovered an illustration for Chapter Three through a lovely blogging coincidence, I realised that it would be most fitting to continue linking to illustrations in other people's blogs. My little fable is, after all, inspired by the many blogs I read.

Chapter Four's illustration can be found here, and I thank Julia very much for having inspired the statue-like pause experienced by my protagonist.

Chapter Four

The emotions contained in that one lovely lady as she stood before her mirror were so powerful and so chilling that they literally froze her into a statue of herself. The lovely lady remained a statue for a very, very long time. You will possibly not believe me when I tell you this, dear reader, but that is of no consequence, for the truth is always stranger than fiction. You see, the lady remained a statue for many, many months. In fact, for almost a year. Or thereabouts. Until, one bright morning, without the slightest warning, the statue liberated itself into the image of the lovely lady reflected in the mirror, and this lovely lady could hear, crystal clear, the sound of a horse-drawn carriage making its way down the pebbled driveway. She heard the carriage stop in front of her house. She heard the faint social mutterings of a visitor. She heard the brisk footsteps of her maid, a knocking outside her bedroom, and the lovely lady could now see her maid’s bright, pink-cheeked face peeking in through a crack in the door. Apparently, a visitor had arrived, insisting that she was expected. “A proper lady, ma’am, terribly tall with a long black dress and quite the strangest hat I have ever seen.” She had asked her to sit in the drawing room. To wait.

The lovely lady stood and thought, and thought some more, and then she remembered something, and forgot something, and she touched the ring. The ring was firmly lodged on her slim and elegant finger, and as she pulled and twisted it the ring simply became tighter and tighter, until the skin around it was red and swollen and chafed. Tears sprang to her eyes as she confronted her dilemma of the jewel thief, the precious ring, and the strange visiting woman waiting for her in the drawing room. As if in a trance, the lovely lady slowly walked towards her wardrobe and carefully dressed herself in the sprigged muslin dress with the pearl buttons, the lace collar and the deep pockets. Tucking her left hand into a pocket, she walked resolutely out of the bedroom, down the staircase and along the corridor. She paused for a moment, gave her hair a little pat, secured a loose pin, smoothed a rebellious curl, breathed in, and out, and turned the doorknob.

It takes two floors to make a story

Way back in August I wrote about going to a Jason Mraz concert with my daughter. You might remember that I added a second clip to the post, one which shows Mraz singing "Life is Wonderful". One of the first phrases of that song is: "It takes two floors to make a storey," and I just love that kind of wordplay.

I read an article a while back about how many of Mraz's most popular songs were composed as part of a game he played with his fellow musician friends. One of his friends would set a challenge - "Let's see who can write the best song about _____". A bit of competitive fun can really get the creative juices flowing, and because each person's songs are always unique to that person, it ultimately isn't a real competition, it only starts off as one so as to get the artists working.

Now, what was my point?

Ah, yes.

I really want to get back to that lady and her ring, and I am a bit annoyed at myself for getting carried away with other posts and losing the flow of the story. So, to make myself feel a bit better, I have decided to think of Chapter One and Chapter Two as being the two floors which are needed to make the story, now I need to entice you to come inside. So then I think to myself "I have to find a fabulous illustration". So far, I've been using the peacock feather pictures, and I like the way they brighten up the endless black words, but what will I use to illustrate Chapter Three?

No idea.

So I decide to put it off for another day. Instead of organising the next chapter, I visit my blog friends to see what they have been up to during the last few days. Imagine my surprise when I visit Suse and see that she has only just posted the perfect illustration for Chapter Three?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have kept the chapter, word for word, as I wrote it before seeing Suse's beautiful photograph of her own hand. Except for one little word. You see, I felt compelled to somehow add Suse into the text, as a token of my appreciation. Originally, the lovely lady slipped her small, pale feet into a pair of quilted slippers. Well...I changed them to knitted slippers, for Suse.

THE LADY OF THE RING

Chapter three

The next morning, she opened her eyes to see sunlight glittering in the crack between the curtains, and she saw a small sparkle of light on the wall. She slowly sat up in bed, and found that the light sparkle was following her. She brushed some stray hair away from her eyes, and there was the sparkle darting back and forth across the wall. She stretched both her arms above her head, and there was the sparkle, stretching across the ceiling in a hurried flash. She pushed the blanket off, folded her arms, and took a good long look around the room. She checked all four walls, the chair, the cupboard door and the lampshade. She was doubly careful when looking at the folds of the curtains and the frames of the hanging pictures, and she even scanned the mirror for a long time, although the likelihood of a sparkle hiding there seemed far too obvious to be true. The sparkle had disappeared as mysteriously as it had entered her bedroom.

The lovely lady stood up, slowly and carefully, and twisted her back, first to the right, then to the left, checking whether she was still suffering from the previous night’s injury. In her delight at discovering that she felt no pain, she failed to notice the little sparkle which mimicked her movements to the right and left and back again. Covering herself with a silk dressing-gown, and slipping her small pale feet into a pair of knitted slippers, she floated dreamily towards the dining room. Breakfast was ready and waiting for her, as it always was. There was the plate, the cup, the silverware, the neatly folded newspaper, all ready for her and her alone. As she nibbled on her marmalade toast and sipped her tea, the day’s headline suddenly came into sharp focus before her eyes. JEWEL THIEF STRIKES AGAIN. Well, oh dear, that was rather strange. Her manicured fingers moved towards the newspaper, pulling it closer to her, flapping the front page open, holding it up towards the ray of light which was streaming in from the large french doors, and then her eyes slid sideways and rested on her left hand. There was a ring on that hand which she had never seen before. The ring was very large, and it seemed to pull the light, and then push it towards the ceiling, where it left a shivering sparkle, not unlike the one she had seen in her bedroom.

Her hands were now shaking uncontrollably. She knew they were shaking because of that noise she was hearing, that rustle rustling dry shivering shaking noise the newspaper was making as its pages flip-flapped between her arms. She steadied herself by digging her elbows into the dining table and leaning forward, and it was at that exact moment that the small black letters gathered before her eyes and told her that the jewel thief had struck again, last night, at the masquerade ball, by opening a safe, and removing from it one item. This item was considered to be the most precious jewel in the entire world, which made it, in actual fact, priceless. The article referred to it as “The Mother Ring.” She gasped, the newspaper fell from her fingers and slowly wafted down onto her lap, and then the floor, and then she stood up and ran as fast as she could, kicking off her slippers as she went, back to the bedroom. She stood before her mirror and stared at her own reflection, then she slowly raised her left arm and held it up towards the mirror, as if to show an acquaintance a newly acquired jewel. Her reflection looked down at the ring and nodded. Yes. It was real.

Hide and seek

THE LADY OF THE RING / Chapter two

When she next opened her eyes, she was lying on a high, soft bed. She turned slightly and felt a piercing pain in her back. “Don’t move,” said a deep voice to her right, “Nothing’s broken, but still, don’t move.” She did move, despite the pain, and found herself straining to see a figure in the far corner of the room. She could see a large dark mass, and it was holding still, but then every so often wavering, becoming slightly smaller and then larger again. The dark mass made rustling sounds once in a while, and then a clicking, very tiny click, click, clicking. Then it laughed, very softly, to itself, and made a scraping sound, and rustled over and over again until it was suddenly standing right in front of her, beside the bed, in the shape of a tall woman in a long black dress and a peacock mask, holding something very small in her right hand, and smiling.
“Now listen to me,” said the peacock lady, “and listen well, for we have to be quick if we are to succeed.”
“What did you just say?” the injured woman whispered.
“You heard me, I know you did.”
The injured one furrowed her brow and grunted slightly as she tried to understand.
“Now listen here,” the creature continued, “In a moment, you will give me your left hand, and I will place a ring on your fourth finger, and then you will forget everything. It will be, for you, as if this meeting never happened.”
“What?” The injured one pronounced the word, and instantly the creature shushed it away.

A ring was placed on the finger as was predicted, and just as predicted the injured one forgot everything. It was just as well she did too, because the very next second there was a great knocking on the door of that grand bedroom, and then a doorknob was turned and a crowd of men with concerned masks of fresh-faced affection came rushing at her from all directions. She laughed, and then cried out at the pain in her chest, and several of the men came forward claiming to be doctors, only too willing and able to heal the lovely lady. However, as luck would have it, the hostess of that grand masked ball, owner of the grand house, and concerned friend of the woman currently ensconced in the guest bedroom, bustled in and quite delightfully waved away the lovely lady’s many suitors, insisting that only one of them was needed, the one who was tallest and strongest. This chosen man would help the lovely lady out of the bed and into the waiting carriage, a carriage which would carry the lovely lady back to her own home and her own little bed. And that is exactly what happened.

Virtual inspiration

My imagination thrives on reading blogs.

As I travel around the world at the speed of light, flipping through journal pages that are not mine, I feel both elation and a sense of loss. Comment boxes seem to have become smaller and smaller; they close in on me, and at times I am unable to write anything at all.

So then my imagination kicks in.

That is how I started seeing peacock feathers. It didn't make any sense, really. Oh, and I saw a masked ball with dancing figures and the colour black.

So here is my really long comment, which would not fit into any box, no matter how much I tried to squash it in. Well...I did try to fit it into a hat box (as you will see later on, probably) but even that was quite unsuccessful...those feathers are so very long and delicate.

The story is not really mine at all. It belongs to several different bloggers whose words and images sparked my imagination and gave me much pleasure.

THE LADY OF THE RING

It was not for lack of trying that she felt such an emptiness in her heart, and it certainly was not for lack of men, for there they were, everywhere she looked. A glance to the left, a blink of the eye, a glint of the candlelight, and there they were before her, so many, all ready for her at a moment’s notice. “Come dance sweet darling, come take my hand,” she heard them whisper in her little shell of an ear. But all is never what it seems at a masked ball, and those men would have done better had they recognised the lacklustre turn of her phrase, and the soft white hand laying limp and lifeless in theirs.

Dance after dance she found herself swept away in the arms of yet another masked man. Dance after dance she bit her bottom lip and held her dress as she swirled round and round and round. Feeling dizzy and slightly sick, she begged off the last dance and steadied herself on the wall, which soon became the platform of a whirling carousel, pushing her on and on until, suddenly, it stopped, and she was enveloped in a tight blackness which squeezed her chest and then opened her eyes, with a pop.

Directly above her, almost too close to see, were two round eyes, staring down at her curiously, and then, oh my, one of them winked. She propped herself up on her elbows, stretching her neck up to see the strange animal properly. What was it? A bird of some sort, perhaps, or a beast. Peacock feathers, she thought to herself, lovely multicoloured peacock feathers gathered around a deep purple velvet covered in tiny jewels, and a glistening black beak, curved and sharp. Then blackness again.

“Why don’t you put them on Mama’s night-table darling boy?” said the grandmother, “and then we’ll have some lunch.”

After lunch, Grandma supervised the two little ones as they cleared the table and stacked the dishwasher. The eldest was sent off to hang the washing on the line, “And then, all of us are going down for an afternoon nap,” Grandma said, in a tone that was already reprimanding in anticipation of rebellion. But on that day, nobody complained, for they were all feeling a little frayed around the edges.

So she was sent off to her room, and she stood there and just stared for a little bit at the queen-sized bed which had been made up with her beautiful linens, and then covered with one of Great-Grandma’s quilts. Sure enough, Baby really had placed the notebooks on the night-table. She took a deep breath and smelt the scent of her personal history, that scent of the yesterday that she had known and left and then returned to. So that was enough, and she finally knew she had come home.

She undressed, leaving her musty travel-stained clothes in a pile on the bathroom floor, and then she bathed. She lay in a clean bath full of hot, fragrant water and every so often she cried, and then she dunked her head under and stopped breathing for a few seconds. Each time she came up for air she felt a little more cleansed, and a little more real. As real as someone imagining herself could ever feel. Then she dried herself with the large plush towel her mother had left for her, wrapped it around herself, added another smaller one in a knot on her head, and padded softly back to her room.

Again she stopped and stared. Her mother had been in the room in her absence, and had turned down the bed. Her flannel nightgown was laid out for her, and a silver-wrapped chocolate lay on her pillow as a joke. It had been a long time since she had seen as good a joke as this, so it made her laugh out loud, which sounded strange. She put on the nightgown and settled herself under the covers, only worrying a little bit about wetting the pillow with her hair. Footsteps could be heard coming down the corridor towards her room, then the door creaked very very slightly and someone looked in on her, but she was fast asleep by then, so that someone simply turned off the light and shut the door.

The next morning, a few rays of light managed to sneak into the room, and a couple of them began to move ever so slowly along the bed. But it was only after the door handle was slowly turned, and the door was pushed open, and Baby stood in the doorway, that she opened her eyes. Baby walked towards the bed and stood next to her, whispering “Good morning Mama.” She stared up at him and shivered, she felt a bit cold and a bit scared because it was strange to be so clean and so comfortable, and so motherly, once again.

Baby put out his little hand and held hers, and it was then that she noticed that he was dirty. His fingers were covered in a dark, damp soil, his t-shirt and shorts were streaked with mud, and when she leaned over the edge of the bed she could see his two dirty bare feet, and a trail of muddy footprints leading from the door to the bed.

She sat up, moving the pillows back and the blanket away, and remembered a role she had played before, and returned to it, “Baby, what IS that on your hands? Have you been playing in the mud?” Baby shook his head, “No Mama, not playing Mama, finding something for you.” She looked at Baby closer now and said “What have you been finding for Mama my darling?” “I found you a present,” and Baby now brought out his other hand, which until now he had hidden behind his back, and opened his little fist and turned his palm up, and there, for his mama to see, was a large, twinkling jewel, with some mud clinging to it. “Where did you find this jewel Baby?” she asked, her voice a quaver hanging in the air. “In our backyard Mama,” Baby answered.

...she sent a brief email to her mother explaining what had happened and when she would return.

After landing, and collecting her luggage (one rucksack, that’s all), and after a twenty minute taxi ride, she found herself standing outside her old home. The little house on the hill looked the same as she remembered it. There was the green hedge, the bay window, and that little button set into the pillar beside the gate, which she pressed. She waited. Soon enough, that familiar silvery-grey door opened and her three children raced down the front path, and her mother stood firm in the doorway, buzzing her in. She pushed the gate open, and it almost swung into the smallest of the children as three pairs of arms and three scruffy heads pushed into her from all directions. Then, just as quickly, they disappeared under the rucksack, which now seemed to move by itself, the three of them hidden under its bulk as it levitated towards the living-room where it seemed destined to be opened and searched for presents.

“I didn’t bring them any presents,” she whispered in her mother’s ear as they embraced in the corridor, “I didn’t have time,” and her mother stroked her hair and patted her back and said “Of course you didn’t, and you weren’t meant to.” A pause, and then her mother broke away from the embrace, “Those children need to learn that returning travellers do not always bring back pretty presents.” They both walked down the corridor, past what was now a living-room mess of clothes, shoes and notebooks, past the three children who were busily unzipping smaller and smaller bags, and into the kitchen.

The children were told that their disappointment was of no consequence, that they needed to take all of the mess and tidy it up. They were to put all of the clothes in the washing machine to start with, but their mother said that it would probably be better to burn those stinky clothes. The children laughed and laughed at this, but their grandmother didn’t laugh. Their grandmother simply raised her eyebrows, only very slightly, and busied herself very carefully with kitchen work. She took out the vegetable soup from the fridge and heated it in a big pot, then she toasted the fresh sourdough bread she’d baked only yesterday. She had the eldest of the children set the table. “It’s lunchtime, and you should all remember that your mother has travelled very very far, for many many hours, and we all need to take care of her now.”

The children could feel that Grandma meant business, so they all got down to it, starting up a load of laundry, setting out the shoes to air in the sunny patch of the back garden, lining up the toiletries in the bathroom. Then the smallest one, Baby, came up to her with a pile of notebooks in his arms, “Where shall I put these Mama?” he asked so sweetly that both mother and grandmother looked at him, and then turned to each other smiling. “Why don’t you put them on Mama’s night-table darling boy?” said the grandmother, “and then we’ll have some lunch.”

It was her face, framed with a mass of auburn curls, and with a smile that was almost a sneer - a true likeness.

That certainly stopped her in her tracks. She felt her face flush and her blood run cold as she stood face-to-face with her true likeness. Without really thinking it through, she raised her right arm and ripped the poster off the tent, bunching it up in her fist and walking away. She didn’t dare turn her head right or left, but her eyes slid back and forth involuntarily, and that’s when she saw the other posters.

There were fields and fields of these very same posters as far as the eye could see. Most were tacked to the sides of the tents, many were also waving back and forth on makeshift flagpoles, others were blowing around in unexpected gusts of wind. She tried to grab as many of them as she could, but the wind became fierce and, before she knew it, she found herself standing in the middle of the dusty path, surrounded by flurries of jewel thief posters swirling thick and fast. Jewel thief posters became tangled in her hair, slapped her in the face, and paper cut her hands as she desperately tried to beat them away.

It was around this time that the tent-people started to notice her, and a small circle of curious onlookers gathered around. Soon, as crowds tend to do, the circle got bigger and wider, and then one scrawny little man pointed his scrawny little finger at her and yelled “She is the jewel thief, catch her, catch her, jewel thief.”

Now, she may have been naive and silly in the past, but she had learned many lessons during her months in the camp, so she turned on her heels and ran. She ran as fast as she could to her little tent and grabbed her rucksack, gesturing to her neighbour women to remain silent and hide her, please, have mercy, for heaven’s sake, help her hide. Then she sat, a tiny huddled ball of fear, in the back corner of another woman’s tent, listening to the crowds outside racing and yelling and shrieking as they searched for her – the jewel thief.

As night descended, her husband returned home. He found the tent dark and empty, there was no fire, and no dinner. As he stood there, outside the tent, looking around in anticipation of some sign of life, a neighbour woman peaked out of one of the little tents. “Pssst....you....poor little darling’s husband...come here you....” He looked around, curious, until he finally noticed the faint, white glow of the woman’s face peering out at him. He came closer to her, and suddenly a ghostly white arm joined the face and grabbed his hand, pulling him forcefully into the tent.

As the husband’s eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he saw his wife sitting in the back corner, her arms circling her bent legs, her hair a huge mass of curls, and her eyes the colour of blood. As he leaned towards her in an embrace he noticed the pieces of paper strewn throughout, so he stopped, and picked one up, and took a moment to look at it, and read it. “What? A jewel thief? Who wrote this? Who drew this picture? What, in heaven’s name, is going on?” But his wife was unable to speak, she had been shocked into speechlessness. All she could do was reach into her rucksack, take out her passport, and show it to her husband.

Her husband understood, but he did not agree. “You can’t run away from this. This,” he picked up one of the offending posters and flicked it across the tent, “this is a very stupid prank, and we need to address it and move on. We have come here, the two of us, because we want to help these people. We do not want to steal anything, only give.” His wife looked at him and wondered to whom he was speaking. Was he speaking to the oil-lamp or the rucksack or maybe to the tent-flap. Then she realised that he was speaking to the woman who owned the tent, the neighbour woman. “Oh well,” she thought, “what does it really matter? He isn’t talking to me.” And so she stopped paying him any attention, and before the sun rose that morning she managed to sneak out of the camp, and find a taxi, and travel to the airport. At the airport she bought a ticket for the very next flight home, and while she waited for the boarding call she sent a brief email to her mother explaining what had happened and when she would return.

and she remembered for a fraction of a moment the way things used to be, before they had decided to journey, before they had started saving the world.

As time went on, her husband encouraged her to get out more and to heal and help the tent-people. She thought that was so sweet and kind of him, because it reminded her of what they had discussed so seriously and hopefully prior to their arrival in the camp. But then, when he was asleep, or when he was away on one of his medical missions, her smile turned into a sarcastic glare, and the sparkle in her eyes was transformed into a spark of dreadful, cynical knowledge. Sure, she could go off for the day with her own little black bag, but what would happen then when they would both arrive home late at night, exhausted, to a flooded tent, a fire gone cold, and nothing to eat? What then?

But she never said this to her husband, because deep deep down in her heart of hearts she knew that he would never fully understand.

After three long months, her new life became routine, and she thought that she might, perhaps, with time, and practice, be able to erase some of her bitter-hearted blood-pumping disappointment. So when she woke up one morning to see that it was a lovely spring day, she decided to go for a walk, by herself, just for the fun of it. One of her favourite pastimes was to walk through the camp and stop every so often to read one or two of the many signs which were tacked onto the sides of the tents. They were mostly in the refugees’ language, which she was not yet able to fully understand, but at least they was decorative, and she liked to imagine what they might mean.

Perhaps this one says “Souls repaired, no job too small or too big,” and this one says “Prophet will tell your fortune for small fee”, or maybe even “Holistic pain-free dentist”. She amused herself this way for almost half an hour until she suddenly came across a small, handwritten poster with English writing on it. It said “JEWEL THIEF – THIS WOMAN IS WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE” and under these words there was a small sketch of a woman’s face, and it was her face. It was her face, framed with a mass of her auburn curls, and with a smile that was almost a sneer – a true likeness.

A Cache of Jewels

I have recently discovered an intriguing blog which has as its primary goal the artistic exploration of collective nouns. To quote Gracia Haby's introduction to the blog: "I find collective nouns beautiful and evocative both." I was intrigued by this blog's recent exploration of the phrase "a cache of jewels". Featured in the "cache of jewels" post are regular participants Elaine Haby, Louise Jennison, and Gracia Haby, along with guest artist Esti.

I began trying to capture some of my thoughts on the phrase "a cache of jewels" by writing little stories, simply because I was so inspired by these artists' work. Soon, these stories seemed to gather and connect themselves into a series. I have therefore decided to post my cache as a series of daily posts, with the hope that you may be patient and trusting enough to go along on the story journey.

A CACHE OF JEWELS

After landing, and collecting their luggage (only two rucksacks, that’s all), they walked out into the muggy heat of the new country, and after a two-hour bus ride they arrived at the refugee camp. A couple of men were waiting for them at the bus-stop, they were embraced and then led to what was to be their new home. It was nothing more than a tent for two, with just enough room for their sleeping-bags, and it was surrounded by a sea of makeshift tents and sheds which were the homes of the others. The two of them had travelled here so as to help these others, and they were full and fresh with hopes and dreams of world peace and love.

Her husband’s eyes sparkled as he grabbed his little black bag of medical supplies and told her that he would return before dark. He went off with the two men, and as she looked after the three figures walking confidently into the mass of tent-people, she (for the very first time) felt that being a woman might effect the way one sees a tent. Maybe the tent meant something different to her, something for which her husband didn’t have a symbol, or a gesture, or a code.

She couldn’t imagine going off with her own little black bag, although that had been the original plan. She could only imagine trying to unpack, then discovering that she couldn’t, looking for a bathroom,and then finding that there wasn’t, and searching for food, and then seeing that it was scarce and difficult. Shelter and food were basic commodities which she had enjoyed her entire life, as had her husband, but he went out for a walk, and she was still at home, in the tent.

Weeks went by. Then months. The oppressive heat of summer made way for for the freezing rains of winter, and needless to say, their flimsy tent-for-two did not hold up very well to these extremes. Having arrived in this strange land under the pollyanna assumption that she would help the poor and needy of the camps, she soon discovered that she was in fact the one who needed, and received, help from the women around her. They started calling her “darling” and “poor little one”, and every day the refugee women taught her something new. They showed her how how to dig a trench around the tent so as to prevent flooding, they shared their flour and spices with her, they taught her how to bake bread on a campfire, and cook soupy beans in a rusty pot overnight on the coals.

When her husband came home he would tell her about the people he met and the places he’d seen and the healing he had done. She showed him her coal-pot, and he laughed and said it was just like her crock-pot at home. She said “I know, I think actually that I am turning into a bit of a crock-pot myself,” and they shared that laugh together and she remembered for a fraction of a moment the way things used to be, before they had decided to journey, before they had started saving the world.