|
The Crone Pointed to a Spot on the Map
This was so cliché. She had all the trappings. The sign outside her
storefront said “Former Lovers Reunited.” We sat on opposite sides of a
round table with a blood red tablecloth and a crystal ball in the center. A
beaded curtain separated us from the back room. She wore a long flowing
robe and a turbanesque head scarf. Her nose curved like a bird of prey and
on the tip was a wart, with a single black hair curling from the summit.
“Here’s where the world comes to an end.” Her long boney finger stabbed
the deep blue ocean.
“The Mariana Trench?” I asked. “Is there a black hole that’s sucking the
earth inside itself?”
She cackled. “Not the whole world, and not everybody, just you. Everyone
has his own end of the world.”
I was beginning to feel sorry that I ever visited Madame Trousseau. It was
the sign outside that drew me in. Who doesn’t have someone from the past
one longs to see again, if only to see how time taken its toll. But this
had turned into a journey into eternity. “Good, all I have to do is stay
out of the trench and I’ll live forever. It’s better than knowing the time
of death. We can’t avoid a date. We’re prisoners of time.”
She shook her head. A shock of her hair fell free from her scarf. It
wasn’t dingy gray as I had expected. It was blue-green and waved like sea
weed, like the tentacles of a Portuguese Man-O-War. “No bother. When it’s
time, she will find you. She’ll take you there.”
“Who, the lost lover on your sign out there?”
“Yesss. She’s the one.” She smiled and the red light of the dying sun
refracted by her crystal ball gleamed off her gold capped tooth.
“Which of my lost lovers is she? Tell me that.”
“She is the Morrigan. She comes for you, ready or not. Come to claim the
souls of the dead and dying.”
“I never loved the Morrigan.”
“She’s every sailor’s lost and last love.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not a sailor, was never a sailor.”
“It’s written. All men will be sailors.”
“Where?”
“In a song.”
“What song?”
“You should have paid attention in the sixties. She’s every man’s last
love. You lost her at birth. You’ll be reunited in death. Say you’re not
a man. You can’t do that, can you, sailor?”
I reached into my pocket, picked a twenty out of my money clip and laid it
on the table. “That was fun, but I have to go now.” I walked to the glass
door and pulled on the handle, but it was locked.
“Too late,” she said.
Outside the sky grew dark faster than I’ve ever seen before. I turned. The
crone was gone. The beaded curtains were lit by an inner glow from the
crystal ball. They parted. A woman stepped through, hair of fire, leather
wings, definitely not an angel. She crooked her finger and echoed, “Too
late.” She took my hand and we floated, down, down, down, into the deep.
This isn’t so bad, a bargain for twenty bucks.
John A. Ward was born on Staten
Island, attended Wagner College in the early 60's, sold his first poem to
Leatherneck magazine, and became a scientist. He is now in San Antonio
running, writing and living with his dance partner. Links to his work can
be found at Blog.
Email: John A. Ward
Return to Table of Contents
|