InkStains January Read Online Free Page B

filled stone vases. But by the time the
blooms faded, nothing had changed.
    The third god gave the youth fermented
grapes, from which he made the first wine. Like everything else, he
gave this to everyone, and though it was deliriously delicious,
still nothing changed.
    Despite the three gifts of the gods, the
youth had failed to win his love. He wandered hopelessly through
the woods until he came upon a river, and there he sat on a boulder
and wept. They were brilliantly intense, those tears, and the skies
cried in sympathy.
    After some time, he looked up and saw the
girl. She had come after him into the woods. She was smiling.
    “ You brought me dinner, and
that was nice,” she said, in the language of their time so the
translation is approximate. “You gave the whole world flowers, and
I know that you gave them to me. You brought us wine, and I don’t
think we’ll ever celebrate anything quite the same as we did
before. Did you think I wanted these things?”
    “ I don’t know that I was
thinking at all.”
    “ You weren’t,” she agreed.
“And you aren’t now. I appreciate those things, but they are not
what I want.”
    “ You want my heart,” he
said.
    Her smile grew larger then. “I want your
heart.”
    “ It’s yours,” he
said.
    But the girl shook her head. “It’s not so
easy. Convince me. Tell me. Use every word you can imagine, and
make up new ones, but to show how much you love me.”
    And that is how poetry was created.

9 January
     
    She gathered all the things she thought might
be necessary: an assortment of spices, a candle and matches, dried
rose petals, wine, a bottle of ink and the right pen, a small
silver mirror, a tiny bell, two Russian thimbles, and a photograph
of her grandfather.
    She didn’t actually need any of those things,
but she clung to ceremony. She lit the candle, she spread the
spices and the rose petals, she even served herself tea. She filled
the thimbles with wine and rang the bell and said a few ancient
words in the proper order. Then she waited. She was prepared to
wait a long time, and he made her wait a very long time indeed,
past midnight, until the clock chimed three the next morning.
    The third chime hadn’t finished its echo when
he bent down, picked up one of the thimbles, and drank the
offering. “Hello, my little Mouse.”
    He looked nothing like the young man in the
black and white photo, but he still looked strong and solid.
    “ Grandpa,” she said,
drinking her thimbleful.
    “ You’re getting to be quite
the talent,” he told her.
    “ I’ve been sitting here
three hours,” she said.
    “ I had a long way to go.”
He sat in his favorite rocking chair, which of course was still in
the living room. It creaked gently.
    “ I’ve been studying,” she
said.
    “ I know.”
    “ I brought the
rain.”
    “ I’m proud of you,
Mouse.”
    “ And I’ve met a
man.”
    “ Do you love
him?”
    “ No.”
    “ But he’s good to
you?”
    “ He is.”
    “ And you want my
help?”
    She got suddenly shy. She looked away,
lowered her voice. “You promised you’d come and help when the time
came.”
    “ I expected something
different, my little Mouse, but of course I will help
you.”
    “ Thank you.”
    So her grandfather told her the things she
needed, the precise measurements, the order of inclusion, the
method of consumption. “Best in a hot drink,” he said, “but not
tea. Chocolate.”
    “ I can do that,
Grandpa.”
    “ Of course you can. I
taught you well.”
    They got up and hugged goodbye. Her
grandfather stepped sideways, out of sight, to begin his journey
back to the place from which he came.
    She realized, then, her mistake. In Seattle,
she was three hours ahead of her grandfather’s Florida home. He had
made the journey at precisely midnight, his time.
    The next night, she prepared a special dinner
for the man she’d met. He was gentle and courteous and
complimentary. He was smooth and cool and he did all the right
things. At the