Downwind

Heryshaf stood alone beside the rock.

Paulo was gone.

For the first time in a long while, Heryshaf did not immediately start walking.

He waited.

The wind moved softly through his wool.

He looked around.

There was nobody there.

'Oh mighty wind,' he said quietly.

Nothing happened.

Heryshaf felt ridiculous.

'You have seen everyone. You have been everywhere. You blow wherever you will. Please tell me. You must know the secret of life.'

The wind ignored him.

Heryshaf waited.

Then asked again.

The breeze strengthened.

He could hear it moving through the grass.

'Oh mighty wind. You have seen everyone. You have been everywhere. You blow wherever you will. Please tell me. You must know the secret of life.'

The grass bent.

Heryshaf waited.

At last a voice seemed to come from everywhere around him.

'I cannot give you the answer to your question.'

Heryshaf's heart sank.

'Of course you can't.'

'Neither I nor any I have met upon my journeys has known that answer.'

'Then Paulo sent me to ask somebody else who doesn't know.'

'Paulo is a snail.'

'I know.'

'They take a very long time to make a joke.'

Heryshaf smiled despite himself.

'However,' said the Wind, 'I know something that may provide a substitute.'

'What's that?'

'Not so quickly, Sheep. I observed you conversing with the snail. I am unsure whether you are ready for my truth.'

'Try me.'

'Why do you want it?'

Heryshaf was about to answer.

Then stopped.

Once he would have said because he wanted to know the meaning of life.

But that answer seemed too small now.

'I don't know,' he said.

The Wind moved around him.

'Better.'

Heryshaf frowned.

'A long time ago,' he said, 'I saw with sheepish eyes. When I realised it, I tried to tear them out. I left my flock because I didn't want somebody else's answer. I climbed a mountain. I flew with an eagle. I followed a river. I looked at other creatures and then I tried looking at myself.'

'And?'

'The more I find, the less certain I become.'

'Better still.'

'Is everything I say going to be better if it's less useful?'

'Usually.'

Heryshaf laughed.

Then became serious.

'I have found ignorance where I expected wisdom, and wisdom where I expected ignorance. Every creature has given me a different answer.'

'Which was the truth?'

'That is the problem.'

'Is it?'

Heryshaf thought.

'Perhaps all of them.'

'And?'

'And perhaps none more than another.'

The Wind circled him.

Heryshaf looked back at the road behind him.

'Thinking about these things wasn't enough,' he said. 'I had to leave. I had to climb the mountain and fall in the river and meet all of them. I had to do something.'

'Lead does not become gold by thinking about gold.'

Heryshaf smiled.

'I wish somebody had told me that before the mountain.'

'They probably did.'

'That is annoyingly possible.'

The Wind moved through the grass.

'And what do you seek now?'

Heryshaf thought for a long time.

'Something that doesn't change when I look at it from somewhere else.'

For a while there was only the movement of grass.

Then the Wind spoke.

'From cause and effect there is no escape.'

Heryshaf listened.

'A word spoken enters another creature and becomes part of what happens next. You may regret it. You may apologise for it. But you cannot climb into another creature's head and remove the thing you put there.'

The Wind passed around him.

'A hoof placed here rather than there changes the road. A kindness. A cruelty. A silence. Everything enters what follows.'

'Then everything is connected?'

'Yes.'

'By what?'

'Love connects all things.'

Heryshaf was disappointed.

'I was told that near the beginning.'

'Did that make it untrue?'

'No.'

'Then your problem is not with the answer.'

'What is it with?'

'You wanted a new one.'

Heryshaf said nothing.

'What is greater than love and faith?' asked the Wind. 'What more can you hope to find?'

'I once had a dream,' said Heryshaf. 'Love and faith conquered everything.'

'And yet?'

'And then the cycle continued. Everything rose again to fight them, and they conquered it again.'

He looked into the distance.

'And then again.'

The Wind became quiet.

'I don't want to know what wins inside the circle,' said Heryshaf.

'What do you want?'

'I want to know whether there is anything outside it.'

The wind stopped.

Completely.

Heryshaf had never noticed how loud the world was until the air became still.

Then the voice returned.

'Within the circle you cannot hope to see what is outside it.'

'Then how do I get out?'

'I once helped another sheep.'

Heryshaf's head lifted.

'Who?'

'Douglas.'

Heryshaf stared into the empty air.

'You knew Douglas?'

'I touched every hill he walked upon.'

'What happened?'

'He was already dead when I carried him. There was very little left for the world to hold.'

'Where did you take him?'

'Out.'

'Out where?'

'If I knew that, it would still be inside.'

Heryshaf felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind.

'I followed Douglas everywhere life could take him,' said the Wind.

'And after?'

'There came a place where I could carry him no further.'

Heryshaf waited.

'He went on,' said the Wind. 'I did not.'

'Was he the only one?'

'No.'

'Who else?'

'A man.'

Heryshaf looked up.

'A shepherd. The Good Shepherd.'

'And he went outside the circle?'

'He is the only other I have known to make that journey.'

'Where did he go?'

The Wind moved softly through the grass.

'You keep asking the Wind what lies beyond the place where even the Wind cannot go.'

Heryshaf smiled.

'It was worth trying.'

'Yes,' said the Wind. 'It was.'

'And Douglas?'

'You tell me. You are the one who says he came back.'

Heryshaf thought of the dream.

'He said he had found the truth.'

The Wind stirred around him.

'Then perhaps there are some journeys from which one can return without coming back.'

Heryshaf thought of Jeff.

Of the eyes upon the peacock's tail.

Of the place from which one might watch oneself.

Then he thought of Dorik, looking through his transparent body and finding reflections.

'What was there for you to carry?' he asked.

The Wind did not answer immediately.

'What do you mean?'

'If Douglas was dead, what went on?'

The grass whispered.

'Something of him.'

'His spirit?'

'If you like.'

'That isn't an answer.'

'No.'

'Does everybody have one?'

The Wind moved past him.

'Every creature begins with the possibility of becoming more than the collection of things that have happened to it.'

'Begins with?'

'A possibility is not a possession.'

Heryshaf stood very still.

'What happens to it?'

'What happens to anything that is never fed?'

Heryshaf did not answer.

'It weakens.'

'And then?'

The Wind moved through the grass.

'It withers.'

Heryshaf felt suddenly cold.

'Can it die?'

There was a long silence.

'Yes.'

Heryshaf looked around him as though something might have disappeared while he wasn't watching.

'How would you know?'

'You wouldn't. That is part of the danger.'

The Wind passed through his wool.

'Most creatures spend their lives building the part of themselves that other creatures can see. They learn what pleases the flock. What pleases the shepherd. What earns approval, safety, admiration.'

'The outside.'

'Yes.'

'And whatever is inside?'

'Is easily neglected. There is less immediate reward for feeding something nobody can see.'

Heryshaf remembered Jonnie opening his magnificent tail.

'Dorik looked inside himself and found almost nothing.'

'Perhaps he looked correctly.'

'Jeff found something watching.'

'Perhaps he looked correctly too.'

'They can't both be right.'

'Why not?'

Heryshaf opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

'A thing may be empty of what it imagined itself to be,' said the Wind, 'and still contain something unfinished.'

'The observer?'

'Perhaps.'

'A spirit?'

'Perhaps.'

'What is it, then?'

The Wind stirred around him.

'Something that must be fed if you wish to discover what it can become.'

'Fed with what?'

'Attention. Effort. Honesty. Will. By choosing sometimes not to follow the thing in you that shouts the loudest.'

Heryshaf remembered things he would once have called himself.

His anger.

His vanity.

His fear.

His certainty.

And the strange place from which he had sometimes been able to watch them.

'And if I do that?'

'Perhaps it grows stronger.'

'And if I don't?'

The Wind was quiet.

Heryshaf already knew the answer.

'It withers.'

'And if it grows strong enough?'

'Perhaps it requires less of the flock to tell it what it is.'

'Independence.'

'If you like.'

'Will?'

'If it can choose.'

Heryshaf swallowed.

'Can that thing survive death?'

The Wind passed softly through his wool.

'I followed Douglas everywhere life could take him.'

'And after?'

'You already know my answer.'

'There came a place where you could carry him no further.'

'Yes.'

'And he went on.'

'Yes.'

'What went on?'

The Wind was silent.

'That is all I know.'

It was not enough.

For once, Heryshaf did not demand more.

After a while he said, 'Then what am I supposed to do?'

'Live.'

'That sounds suspiciously simple.'

'Most difficult things do.'

'But how?'

'Do you remember what the mountain told you?'

Heryshaf smiled.

'Which part?'

'That the perfect question will always be answered.'

'Yes.'

'I cannot give you the meaning of life. But perhaps I can give you a question by which you may understand the meaning another creature has given to his.'

Heryshaf listened.

'Do not ask what a creature says he believes. Do not ask what he claims to love, or fear, or serve.'

'What do I ask?'

'First, watch.'

The Wind moved through the grass.

'Watch what he does when nobody is praising him. Watch what he protects. What he sacrifices. What he repeatedly chooses.'

'And then?'

'Ask what all he has learned is worth.'

Heryshaf frowned.

'How does that tell me his meaning?'

'Because his answer will not be the words he gives you.'

The Wind rose.

'It will be his life.'

Heryshaf said nothing.

'You wanted to escape being a sheep because you thought a shepherd knew where he was going.'

'I did.'

'And now?'

'I've met shepherds.'

The Wind laughed through the trees.

'Then you have learned something.'

'A little.'

'A shepherd may be as asleep as his flock. A sheep may become more awake than its shepherd. The stick proves nothing.'

Heryshaf thought of the Queen beneath the earth.

'You can lead or follow,' said the Wind. 'You can sleep or awaken. But neither is decided by what you call yourself.'

The Wind pulled gently at his wool.

'Learn not only to listen to what creatures say. Watch what they do.'

Heryshaf closed his eyes.

'And remember: once you can see another creature clearly, you will be tempted to use what you see.'

'To control him?'

'Yes.'

'To make him my sheep.'

'Yes.'

Heryshaf opened his eyes.

'And then I become the shepherd.'

'You become a shepherd.'

'Isn't that better?'

'Only if you are awake.'

The Wind became stronger.

'Otherwise you have merely changed places in the same flock.'

Heryshaf stood against it.

'So what do I do with what I see?'

'Choose.'

'To lead?'

'Perhaps.'

'To follow?'

'Perhaps.'

'That's not much help.'

'No. But the choice must be yours or it is not a choice.'

The Wind swept around him.

'The meaning of life cannot be found in words alone, Heryshaf.'

The grass bowed.

'It is revealed in how you act.'

The Wind began to move away.

'Wait!'

It weakened.

'I still don't have the answer.'

'No.'

'After all this?'

'No.'

Heryshaf almost laughed.

'What am I supposed to do with that?'

The Wind passed him one last time.

'Live, my friend.'

Then it was gone.

Heryshaf stood in the stillness it left behind.

He thought of Ordok.

Aldwin.

Jonk.

Reggie.

The Queen.

Jonnie and Jeff.

Dorik.

Paulo.

His uncle.

His father.

His mother.

His flock.

So many answers.

So many creatures certain, uncertain, wise, foolish, awake and asleep.

All of them true.

None of them the truth.

And somewhere among all of them, himself.

He breathed.

Then he began walking again.

Not faster.