The Wise One
by Luke Dumas
At the end of a winding
path, through a dense and mossy forest, stood a cabin of small stature and simple
charm, where weekend vacationer Gary Blant, having been roused from sleep,
though he did not realize it, by a faint and distant scratching sound, was seated
alone at the table for two, enjoying a breakfast of eggs, toast, and cheese.
The eggs and toast were typical components of Gary’s morning meal, but the
cheese was a new addition. He had learned on a television documentary that
cheese stimulated brain activity: an outcome Gary greatly desired, being, at
the present moment, engaged in the deepest and most serious kind of thought.
For months Gary had been plagued with a single question, a question whose importance was matched only by its unanswerability. No matter how hard and long Gary had pondered this question, he could come to no satisfactory conclusion. His entreaties for advice, moreover, had gone unheard; everyone he knew seemed to agree that this was one problem Gary needed to solve on his own. Finally, a close friend and work colleague had suggested it might help him to get out of the city for a bit, clear his head. This had seemed to Gary a reasonable enough recommendation (rarely did such recommendations seem to him unreasonable), but now he was beginning to fear he had not ventured quite far enough outside the city, for even as he munched his last cube of cheese, his head remained as muddled as it had been these many maddening months.
It was then, as he sat rolling the question over in his mind like he did the forkful of eggs in his mouth, that Gary Blant first registered the scratching sound that had woken him not thirty minutes before. The noise had started again, so loudly and in such close proximity that it could not be missed. He turned in his chair toward the source of the racket, but found nothing other than the empty solitude of his rented accommodation: one small open space that was bedroom, kitchen, and living room all in one. The noise, he detected, was coming from the living area, where a faded red couch sat under a large window, beside a low-standing bookcase half full of Westerns and fishing guides and perpendicular to a stone fireplace with a knobbly chimney. When another vigorous bout of scratching ensued, Gary felt sure it was from this, the fireplace, the sound was emanating.
He crossed the room and, bending at the waist, peered down into the grate. When he could make out nothing in the blackness of the cavity, he got down onto hands and knees. There was nothing inside the fireplace but ash. The scratching was coming from above. About halfway up the chimney, it sounded like. Never having been the lessee of a chimney before, Gary did not know what a damper was, but it was clear to him that the flue was sealed by some such means. With the sole intention of opening the shaft so that he could peer up inside, he located the small metal lever over the grate, forced it from the right position to the left and with a creaky scrape and a sudden poof, a great ball of feathers toppled out into the grate.
After lying motionless for a second, it revealed itself to be a member of that wise and noble avian group called owls, when it popped up onto its downy, taloned feet and shook the ash off its mottled brown and black feathers. As it did so, it momentarily exposed such a wingspan as caused Gary to startle backwards, yet he remained hanging on in fascination and, after a moment, inched forward to admire his visitor in all his regal beauty. The striations of earthy color across his barrel-shaped chest, the patch of white beneath his thin sharp beak, the russet sheen of his disc-shaped face, the feathery tufts pointing up over his black and amber eyes. They latched onto Gary, full and bright, as if to beg forgiveness for this unceremonious intrusion. Then, in an expression of gratitude that Gary would have believed beyond such a creature, the owl began to bow, clicking his beak in rapid succession as he lowered it to the hearth and held his wings out from his body. Like a gentleman, the creature never broke eye contact.
“You’re very welcome,” Gary replied. Then, striding away from the bowing bird, he unlatched and swung open the large window over the couch.
“All right now,” he said. “You’re free to go.”
The bird leapt into the air with his wings spread wide, but, to Gary’s surprise, did not soar out into the cool spring morning. Rather the bird set down with a flutter on the table, where he began to gobble up the scraps of Gary’s breakfast.
“Poor thing must be starved,” Gary said as he closed and latched the window again. Crossing over to the rickety, freestanding stove, he tipped the rest of the scrambled eggs onto a plate, added three slices of buttered bread, and, when he had returned to the table, set the plate down beside the owl, who transferred his attention from the empty dish to the full one. Still in an admiring mood, Gary pulled out his chair and took a seat before his gorging guest.
“Can I get you something to drink? Milk? Some water?” Gary asked, over the sounds of the voracious visitor’s feasting. He chuckled at his silly suggestion and then paused with a start, for the owl replied as clearly as if it had spoken: fervently the bird shook his head as, throwing it back, he downed a beakful of egg.
“That’s incredible!” Gary exclaimed, staring with amazement at the owl. “I mean, people always talk about owls being wise creatures, but—”
“Who?” said the owl.
“Oh, I don’t know. Just people,” Gary replied.
Without further comment, the owl lowered his head back down to the plate. Within minutes it was completely empty.
“You were hungry, weren’t you?” Gary said. “You must’ve been stuck in there longer than I thought.” The owl shuddered at the reminder of his harrowing captivity, and Gary promptly begged forgiveness for his grave insensitivity.
“Mind you,” Gary added, as the owl began to explore the edges of the table, “I’m feeling a little stuck myself. Girl trouble, you see. I’m sure you know the feeling.”
The owl shot Gary a backwards glance as if to say, Don’t get me started.
“Hey, you’re wise; maybe you can help me,” Gary said.
He interpreted the owl’s silence as an invitation to speak.
“It’s about my girlfriend. Her name is Amanda. We’ve been together almost two years now. Sweet girl, Amanda. Pretty too. It’s just, well, things are starting to get really serious now and I’m not sure how I feel about that. If I’m being completely honest, she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, Amanda. In fact sometimes I wonder how she functions in everyday life, being so naïve and silly. I’m not saying I want to break up with her per se, but the thought of spending the rest of my life with someone so daft, so simple-minded . . .”
The owl leapt off the table and hit the closed window with a thunk, then began to drag his feet up and down the wall of the cabin, his wings flapping wildly behind him.
“Exactly,” Gary said. “I’m afraid she’ll drive me up the wall if I marry her. But what can I do? I already proposed and she said yes.”
The owl screeched, to which Gary replied, “I know, I shouldn’t have done it. It’s just we’d been together for a year, and everyone kept telling me it was time, kept telling me I was ready. And she was ready, so I figured deep down I was too. And now the wedding’s three months away and I don’t know what to do! Do I call it off and break her heart, the poor thing? Or do I go through with it and risk making a terrible mistake?”
The owl, to Gary’s minute displeasure, had moved on from the window and now was following a topsy-turvy path around the room, moving up and down the walls as if feeling for some means of escape, and reeking all manner of havoc in the meantime: shredding curtains, breaking lamps, knocking pictures off the wall, releasing the contents of his bowels onto the floor in hard pellets.
“Please, Owl, I’m asking for your help. What am I supposed to do?”
The owl careened into the kitchen and overturned a stand of dull, tarnished knives.
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not going to kill her! Please, Owl, something sensible!”
Swooping low over the bed, he caught a pillow in his talons and dropped it in Gary’s lap. Gary held it in his hands and considered its significance. “You think I should sleep on it more?”
The owl knocked a crucifix off the wall and it landed with a thwack on the table. Gary considered this too. “You think I should take a leap of faith? I’m sorry, Owl, but I feel like you’re giving me mixed signals here.”
The owl did not respond.
“Are you even listening to me?” Gary demanded, as the owl continued his madcap circuit around the room. Tired of being rebuffed by individuals with the power to help, Gary grew very angry indeed, and loud enough for the owl to hear he said, “Oh, what’s the use? He’s just a dumb bird. He must’ve been dumb to get himself stuck in a chimney.”
His intention had been to wound the owl and he knew instantly, with a pang of regret, he had succeeded: no sooner had the words been spoken than the owl alighted on the windowsill, where he stood with his variegated back to Gary and stared out through the glass, reeling internally, no doubt, from his friend’s cruel remark.
“Owl,” Gary called after a moment of stony silence. “Owl, I’m sorry. I know you’re smart. I was just trying to hurt you. It’s me that’s stupid . . .”
Though he did not turn away from the window, the owl ruffled his feathers in a way that indicated he was listening.
“Please let’s just be friends again, Owl. I really need a friend right now.”
It was then that Gary realized that owls were not just wise but uncommonly forgiving creatures. In an act that confirmed his visitor as a being of superior intellect and a supreme judge of character, the owl fluttered back onto the table on which Gary lay slumped, leaking tears of mourning onto the wood.
To see his friend standing before him, Gary smiled, and wiped a tear from his eye.
Then the owl let out a blistering screech as if to say, So what are we going to do about Amanda?
Gary heaved a sigh and looked down at the table in thought.
“You know, I almost wish she were here now. You’re such a good judge of character, I’d be interested to see how you find her. She’d never come, of course; she hates nature. But maybe,” Gary said, as an idea struck him, “maybe there is a way to find out.”
The owl looked baffled, even alarmed, as Gary rose to his feet.
“This is what’s going to happen,” Gary explained. “I’m going to pretend to be Amanda and you be you. I know it’s hard because we’re such close friends now, but use your imagination, really try to believe I’m Amanda, and just, just do whatever feels natural to you. Okay? You got that? Okay.” Then Gary spun around, dropped his head, closed his eyes. Really tried to get into that headspace. “Amanda, I’m Amanda,” he chanted to himself, drawing on a deep well of childhood stage acting experience to slip ever deeper into that consciousness, really become that character. “Amanda, ohmigod I’m like so Amanda,” he said, when finally the transformation was complete.
She, being Amanda, turned. And perceiving the owl standing before her on the table, she clapped her hands to her face and let out a blistering scream of cinematic protraction. The bird beat its wings and scurried backwards, toppled off the backside of the table, continued to scramble backwards in fright.
And in that instant, Gary returned to himself.
He rushed forward to comfort his friend, but, as he approached, the owl shrank back, holding his feathers to his body and cowering against the wall in terror. It was almost more than Gary could bear. He held a hand over his mouth and stepped well back; he did not have the words to communicate the sorrow and remorse that he felt.
Then Gary stopped where he stood, and cocked his head in surprise.
No sooner had he stepped back from the owl than, for the second time that morning, he popped up onto his feet and shook himself off. Except this time the owl was not shaking ash off his feathers, but the character of the frightened fowl: all of a sudden the owl was fine, completely unruffled, as if he had sustained no fright at all. Just as Gary had returned to himself from the body of another, so, it seemed, had his visitor.
And Gary was outraged by this dastardly trick. “What are you doing trying to scare me like that!” he exploded.
And in the eyes of the owl he found the answer. Those big, black-and-amber eyes, which flashed with an intelligence that knew no human bounds.
He knew. Somehow or other, the owl knew. It would not be enough for Gary simply to be told his fiancée was a monster; he would have to learn that lesson for himself, witness with his own eyes the terrorizing effect of her absurdity, see reflected in the owl’s feathered features the horror that would haunt every hour of their life together.
“You know me, Owl,” said Gary wistfully. “You know me better than I know myself. All this time I’ve been a fool, simply doing what others tell me, when really what I needed was a friend to show me. A wise friend. A friend like you.”
The owl accepted the compliment with a sharp nod of his head.
“Alas, it is time now for me to let you go. No, no, don’t object,” Gary insisted, for at the sight of his reaching out to unlatch the window, the owl had jumped up and begun to flap his wings. “It’s all for the best, I promise. A fine friendship ours has been, but we are not meant to be together. In time you would grow to resent me. And so, difficult though it will be,” Gary said, pulling the window open at last--
A squall of brown feathers blew past him through the opening and, ascending the shadowy heights of the forest, disappeared.
For a second Gary did not believe it, not until, turning away from the window, he perceived the empty space his friend had occupied. Gary could not believe it. He suppressed the trembling of his bottom lip, however, knowing that once again the owl was right. It was better like this. Easier if they did not say goodbye.
For months Gary had been plagued with a single question, a question whose importance was matched only by its unanswerability. No matter how hard and long Gary had pondered this question, he could come to no satisfactory conclusion. His entreaties for advice, moreover, had gone unheard; everyone he knew seemed to agree that this was one problem Gary needed to solve on his own. Finally, a close friend and work colleague had suggested it might help him to get out of the city for a bit, clear his head. This had seemed to Gary a reasonable enough recommendation (rarely did such recommendations seem to him unreasonable), but now he was beginning to fear he had not ventured quite far enough outside the city, for even as he munched his last cube of cheese, his head remained as muddled as it had been these many maddening months.
It was then, as he sat rolling the question over in his mind like he did the forkful of eggs in his mouth, that Gary Blant first registered the scratching sound that had woken him not thirty minutes before. The noise had started again, so loudly and in such close proximity that it could not be missed. He turned in his chair toward the source of the racket, but found nothing other than the empty solitude of his rented accommodation: one small open space that was bedroom, kitchen, and living room all in one. The noise, he detected, was coming from the living area, where a faded red couch sat under a large window, beside a low-standing bookcase half full of Westerns and fishing guides and perpendicular to a stone fireplace with a knobbly chimney. When another vigorous bout of scratching ensued, Gary felt sure it was from this, the fireplace, the sound was emanating.
He crossed the room and, bending at the waist, peered down into the grate. When he could make out nothing in the blackness of the cavity, he got down onto hands and knees. There was nothing inside the fireplace but ash. The scratching was coming from above. About halfway up the chimney, it sounded like. Never having been the lessee of a chimney before, Gary did not know what a damper was, but it was clear to him that the flue was sealed by some such means. With the sole intention of opening the shaft so that he could peer up inside, he located the small metal lever over the grate, forced it from the right position to the left and with a creaky scrape and a sudden poof, a great ball of feathers toppled out into the grate.
After lying motionless for a second, it revealed itself to be a member of that wise and noble avian group called owls, when it popped up onto its downy, taloned feet and shook the ash off its mottled brown and black feathers. As it did so, it momentarily exposed such a wingspan as caused Gary to startle backwards, yet he remained hanging on in fascination and, after a moment, inched forward to admire his visitor in all his regal beauty. The striations of earthy color across his barrel-shaped chest, the patch of white beneath his thin sharp beak, the russet sheen of his disc-shaped face, the feathery tufts pointing up over his black and amber eyes. They latched onto Gary, full and bright, as if to beg forgiveness for this unceremonious intrusion. Then, in an expression of gratitude that Gary would have believed beyond such a creature, the owl began to bow, clicking his beak in rapid succession as he lowered it to the hearth and held his wings out from his body. Like a gentleman, the creature never broke eye contact.
“You’re very welcome,” Gary replied. Then, striding away from the bowing bird, he unlatched and swung open the large window over the couch.
“All right now,” he said. “You’re free to go.”
The bird leapt into the air with his wings spread wide, but, to Gary’s surprise, did not soar out into the cool spring morning. Rather the bird set down with a flutter on the table, where he began to gobble up the scraps of Gary’s breakfast.
“Poor thing must be starved,” Gary said as he closed and latched the window again. Crossing over to the rickety, freestanding stove, he tipped the rest of the scrambled eggs onto a plate, added three slices of buttered bread, and, when he had returned to the table, set the plate down beside the owl, who transferred his attention from the empty dish to the full one. Still in an admiring mood, Gary pulled out his chair and took a seat before his gorging guest.
“Can I get you something to drink? Milk? Some water?” Gary asked, over the sounds of the voracious visitor’s feasting. He chuckled at his silly suggestion and then paused with a start, for the owl replied as clearly as if it had spoken: fervently the bird shook his head as, throwing it back, he downed a beakful of egg.
“That’s incredible!” Gary exclaimed, staring with amazement at the owl. “I mean, people always talk about owls being wise creatures, but—”
“Who?” said the owl.
“Oh, I don’t know. Just people,” Gary replied.
Without further comment, the owl lowered his head back down to the plate. Within minutes it was completely empty.
“You were hungry, weren’t you?” Gary said. “You must’ve been stuck in there longer than I thought.” The owl shuddered at the reminder of his harrowing captivity, and Gary promptly begged forgiveness for his grave insensitivity.
“Mind you,” Gary added, as the owl began to explore the edges of the table, “I’m feeling a little stuck myself. Girl trouble, you see. I’m sure you know the feeling.”
The owl shot Gary a backwards glance as if to say, Don’t get me started.
“Hey, you’re wise; maybe you can help me,” Gary said.
He interpreted the owl’s silence as an invitation to speak.
“It’s about my girlfriend. Her name is Amanda. We’ve been together almost two years now. Sweet girl, Amanda. Pretty too. It’s just, well, things are starting to get really serious now and I’m not sure how I feel about that. If I’m being completely honest, she’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, Amanda. In fact sometimes I wonder how she functions in everyday life, being so naïve and silly. I’m not saying I want to break up with her per se, but the thought of spending the rest of my life with someone so daft, so simple-minded . . .”
The owl leapt off the table and hit the closed window with a thunk, then began to drag his feet up and down the wall of the cabin, his wings flapping wildly behind him.
“Exactly,” Gary said. “I’m afraid she’ll drive me up the wall if I marry her. But what can I do? I already proposed and she said yes.”
The owl screeched, to which Gary replied, “I know, I shouldn’t have done it. It’s just we’d been together for a year, and everyone kept telling me it was time, kept telling me I was ready. And she was ready, so I figured deep down I was too. And now the wedding’s three months away and I don’t know what to do! Do I call it off and break her heart, the poor thing? Or do I go through with it and risk making a terrible mistake?”
The owl, to Gary’s minute displeasure, had moved on from the window and now was following a topsy-turvy path around the room, moving up and down the walls as if feeling for some means of escape, and reeking all manner of havoc in the meantime: shredding curtains, breaking lamps, knocking pictures off the wall, releasing the contents of his bowels onto the floor in hard pellets.
“Please, Owl, I’m asking for your help. What am I supposed to do?”
The owl careened into the kitchen and overturned a stand of dull, tarnished knives.
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not going to kill her! Please, Owl, something sensible!”
Swooping low over the bed, he caught a pillow in his talons and dropped it in Gary’s lap. Gary held it in his hands and considered its significance. “You think I should sleep on it more?”
The owl knocked a crucifix off the wall and it landed with a thwack on the table. Gary considered this too. “You think I should take a leap of faith? I’m sorry, Owl, but I feel like you’re giving me mixed signals here.”
The owl did not respond.
“Are you even listening to me?” Gary demanded, as the owl continued his madcap circuit around the room. Tired of being rebuffed by individuals with the power to help, Gary grew very angry indeed, and loud enough for the owl to hear he said, “Oh, what’s the use? He’s just a dumb bird. He must’ve been dumb to get himself stuck in a chimney.”
His intention had been to wound the owl and he knew instantly, with a pang of regret, he had succeeded: no sooner had the words been spoken than the owl alighted on the windowsill, where he stood with his variegated back to Gary and stared out through the glass, reeling internally, no doubt, from his friend’s cruel remark.
“Owl,” Gary called after a moment of stony silence. “Owl, I’m sorry. I know you’re smart. I was just trying to hurt you. It’s me that’s stupid . . .”
Though he did not turn away from the window, the owl ruffled his feathers in a way that indicated he was listening.
“Please let’s just be friends again, Owl. I really need a friend right now.”
It was then that Gary realized that owls were not just wise but uncommonly forgiving creatures. In an act that confirmed his visitor as a being of superior intellect and a supreme judge of character, the owl fluttered back onto the table on which Gary lay slumped, leaking tears of mourning onto the wood.
To see his friend standing before him, Gary smiled, and wiped a tear from his eye.
Then the owl let out a blistering screech as if to say, So what are we going to do about Amanda?
Gary heaved a sigh and looked down at the table in thought.
“You know, I almost wish she were here now. You’re such a good judge of character, I’d be interested to see how you find her. She’d never come, of course; she hates nature. But maybe,” Gary said, as an idea struck him, “maybe there is a way to find out.”
The owl looked baffled, even alarmed, as Gary rose to his feet.
“This is what’s going to happen,” Gary explained. “I’m going to pretend to be Amanda and you be you. I know it’s hard because we’re such close friends now, but use your imagination, really try to believe I’m Amanda, and just, just do whatever feels natural to you. Okay? You got that? Okay.” Then Gary spun around, dropped his head, closed his eyes. Really tried to get into that headspace. “Amanda, I’m Amanda,” he chanted to himself, drawing on a deep well of childhood stage acting experience to slip ever deeper into that consciousness, really become that character. “Amanda, ohmigod I’m like so Amanda,” he said, when finally the transformation was complete.
She, being Amanda, turned. And perceiving the owl standing before her on the table, she clapped her hands to her face and let out a blistering scream of cinematic protraction. The bird beat its wings and scurried backwards, toppled off the backside of the table, continued to scramble backwards in fright.
And in that instant, Gary returned to himself.
He rushed forward to comfort his friend, but, as he approached, the owl shrank back, holding his feathers to his body and cowering against the wall in terror. It was almost more than Gary could bear. He held a hand over his mouth and stepped well back; he did not have the words to communicate the sorrow and remorse that he felt.
Then Gary stopped where he stood, and cocked his head in surprise.
No sooner had he stepped back from the owl than, for the second time that morning, he popped up onto his feet and shook himself off. Except this time the owl was not shaking ash off his feathers, but the character of the frightened fowl: all of a sudden the owl was fine, completely unruffled, as if he had sustained no fright at all. Just as Gary had returned to himself from the body of another, so, it seemed, had his visitor.
And Gary was outraged by this dastardly trick. “What are you doing trying to scare me like that!” he exploded.
And in the eyes of the owl he found the answer. Those big, black-and-amber eyes, which flashed with an intelligence that knew no human bounds.
He knew. Somehow or other, the owl knew. It would not be enough for Gary simply to be told his fiancée was a monster; he would have to learn that lesson for himself, witness with his own eyes the terrorizing effect of her absurdity, see reflected in the owl’s feathered features the horror that would haunt every hour of their life together.
“You know me, Owl,” said Gary wistfully. “You know me better than I know myself. All this time I’ve been a fool, simply doing what others tell me, when really what I needed was a friend to show me. A wise friend. A friend like you.”
The owl accepted the compliment with a sharp nod of his head.
“Alas, it is time now for me to let you go. No, no, don’t object,” Gary insisted, for at the sight of his reaching out to unlatch the window, the owl had jumped up and begun to flap his wings. “It’s all for the best, I promise. A fine friendship ours has been, but we are not meant to be together. In time you would grow to resent me. And so, difficult though it will be,” Gary said, pulling the window open at last--
A squall of brown feathers blew past him through the opening and, ascending the shadowy heights of the forest, disappeared.
For a second Gary did not believe it, not until, turning away from the window, he perceived the empty space his friend had occupied. Gary could not believe it. He suppressed the trembling of his bottom lip, however, knowing that once again the owl was right. It was better like this. Easier if they did not say goodbye.
Artwork by Laura F Jones.
©' The Treacle Well 2013