AN END
And so they travelled on, short in the telling, long in the doing, until they arrived in the town they sought. It was far more cheerful than before, all the people were fresh faced, better clothed and fed. We made our way to the house and, welcomed in by a very familiar large man, found two others there ahead of us, waiting to see her. She entered and began with those who first arrived.
'How many wishes did the little boy make?' She asked.
The first thought for a long time. 'Three.'
'Wrong. You will find refreshments in the kitchen.' she said. The contender protested but the guard soon picked him up by the scruff of the neck and showed him the kitchen.
She proceeded to the next, 'And you - what is written in the book that contains all wisdom?'
He pondered for a while and answered, 'All the words of every great philosopher that ever lived.'
'You will find refreshments in the kitchen.' He departed quickly, looking warily at the guard.
'And you.' she turned to my companion, who was smiling gladly to himself, 'Can you answer these questions?'
'Yes. The answer to the first is infinity and one. To the second, nothing.'
Recognising him the girl also smiled gladly, 'I have waited a whole year for you. I wanted to reward you for saving me and help you save your city but feared that you were dead. I knew my announcement would draw you if you heard it. Now, this last question is the most important. You must look me in the eye and consider it well before you answer. Of all the things in the world, which of them means the most to you?'
The boy looked into her eyes and, as I know because he confided in me afterwards, first thought it a stupid question, for if he knew, surely he would have found it by now, and then that perhaps it was a trick question, perhaps after all it was his city that meant most to him, but that could not be because his city was ill, it had to be something he could take back to it. The only thing that came close to his quest was his desire to free this girl. There was another reason that he had wanted to find his way back here. It was not only to save his city. He remembered how he had been affected by their conversation, alone in the darkness, when they had first met. The answer was standing right in front of him, staring at him.
'You.' he said.
She embraced him and in tears she spoke, 'Yes. As you are to me. And so I will give you what you have always had. Love.'
And so it was. She distributed half the wealth that she had not already carefully used to raise the town to proper health and kept the rest to help the boy's city. They shared the boy's horse, which she had stabled behind the house and fed and groomed herself, and I was provided with a new one. We rode back to the city and as they entered colour came with them and all the people arose from their long slumber. We told everyone what had happened and a festival was declared in honour of Love, special invitations sent out to the girl's home town.
Long into the night, as I sat in a peaceful corner, watching the revelry and contemplating an arrow that had been etched into the concrete, the boy sought me out. 'We owe you everything. Without you none of this could have happened. Whatever you ask we will give. We would be happy if you stayed with us.'
'I'm sorry,' I said, 'But I have found another arrow. I must follow it. It is my whole life. I am too old to change my ways. I too am deeply indebted to the person I follow, and I cannot let their life be meaningless. I cannot let them be alone.'
'Well, we will always be happy to see you return and you know you will always have our love.'
'And you have mine. Goodbye.'
'Farewell.'
And so I travelled on, short in the telling, long in the doing. Eventually, one day, reaching the summit of another mountain, I met a woman sitting cross legged, staring into the distance.
'What are you doing?' I asked her.
'Looking that mountain. What are you doing?' Her hair, grey as an overcast sky in late afternoon, was like wind. Her face was wrinkled, eroded like the Earth, full of valleys and vast ranges. Her eyes swam with life like oceans and her voice crackled like fire.
'Just passing by.' I said. I looked to where she looked, somewhere out there. I saw no mountain, only a few clouds. 'What mountain?'
'That one out there.' She pointed. Still nothing but clouds. I watched for a while anyway, either there was a mountain I couldn't see or she saw a mountain that wasn't there.
"I heard a story." she said, "Not so long ago. It was about a little boy, who escaped from a colourless land that ran out of luck. The boy followed a bird to a city. The bird was the pet of a girl held prisoner by an old miser. The old miser threw the boy into a pit, and the boy took the treasure with him. The miser followed the treasure to his doom, but the boy was washed along a river to safety. But the boy did not know where he was. The girl he had rescued inherited the miser's wealth and used it wisely, but longed for the boy who had rescued her. She announced a challenge to answer three riddles that only the boy could answer, in an effort to find him. The boy learned of this, found her and correctly answered the three riddles. They lived happily ever after. There was another character in this story, an old man who travelled with the boy and told many stories. They were stories he had heard on many travels but none of them were his own. Now he is part of a story that other people tell.
When she had said this I saw the mountain. It had been there all along, occupying a whole third of the sky. I had been looking for something smaller. What I thought were clouds was its snowy peak. It was so big I hadn't seen it. The mountain itself was an arrow. The tips of blades of grass, the leaves of trees, the point of my nose, the tips of animals' ears and tails, the footprints of birds, the corners of bricks, shards of broken glass, shoulders of my shadow, the cracks in rocks, edges of grains of sand and constellations all form arrows.
I looked at her face again. There was a deep vertical crease in the middle of her forehead and together with the deepest lines above her brow it formed an arrow pointing to her face. The intersections of every crack and furrow, from the crease in her forehead to the smallest scratch, all were arrows marking endless paths and in the lines of that face I read every memory.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leonardo Lunanero wrote his first book before he could read, asking his father to write down the words so he could copy them. After travelling extensively as a teenager, visiting and living in 23 nations on 5 continents, he remained in Australia and began writing novels and short story collections in 1994. In The Light of Memory is an early work.
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