Digging Mud (3WW)

I am here, digging mud, to salvage myself.

I think back to when I stood on the threshold of manhood, gazing into the horizons of possibility. I understood possibility then, and that is why I surrendered the opportunity to be fully alive. That is why I was afraid to stare death down. I wanted to hold on to possibility, not to look death in the eyes.

Instead of fighting in the war, I went undercover, ignored the draft letters. Dad helped me find a new home in the countryside as a farm-hand.

I ran from death, driven by thoughts of possibility, of all the paths my life could take, of everything I could be. But the moment I ran - it was an irreversible decision - I realised I had, by running, sabotaged possibility forever. My life would be dictated by fear.

Years later, whilst reading, my condemnation haunted me. It was not in the Bible, but in a tome of theology that I saw the truth of my decision, of what I had surrendered:

"A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine."^[1]

I trembled as I read those words. I would never know that moment, a moment I have since craved with all my being. To numb the craving, I drink. I drink to forget this: The one chance I had, young enough to fight, the one chance I had to be righteous, to face death with furious indifference and thus to know the lucid effervesence of life compacted into a single, abundant moment, I squandered.

In secret, on my computer, I watch the videos uploaded by suicide bombers, and I understand. Yes, I understand. I want to be them. I watch their eyes, absorbing their eager hunger for life, for a righteous death. They, on the threshold of manhood, know all the possibilities of life, and they have made their choice.

We have dug deep enough now. It is time to use our hands, the sensitive touch of our fingertips and gentle brushes to feel the skeleton and remove the dirt from its skull, its axe, and its warrior helmet with Viking horns.

They believe this was an ancient battlefield. I am here, digging mud with them, as a volunteer. I'm retired, I've got little else to do. They appreciate the help.

One day soon, I will be rotting in the ground too, in a church yard. Died in his sleep, they'll say.

Before I go, I had to see this warrior, to salvage him from the death I wish I had. There is life in him yet - I can feel it - how lucid and righteous he was when he died, stabbed through the heart.

---

Notes
[1] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908).

The Proper Cure for Hiccups (3WW)

It is a queer fact, well known among even casual readers of magical history, that hiccups are a sign of the afflicted having recently stood near the Bleak Place, the threshold between the human world and the Otherworld.

This is why children are more susceptible to hiccups that adults.  Children, with their innate, uncorrupted knowledge of magical things, are more likely to believe in the truth of the Otherworld, and are thus more prone to infringe upon its boundaries.

A small number of children, the disappeared, have accidentally crossed the threshold.  These are always the children of un-schooled, simple folk.  So their parents, having no understanding of magical history and the ways of faeries, despair for their children.  They despair because they do not know that human children are upheld as Royalty in the Otherworld.  To faeries, children are Princes and Princesses.  One child, much beloved by the faeries, was made their honorary King and was seated on his own specially constructed throne on the days of faery festivals.

Human children can only enter the Otherworld accidentally.  No human being who has deliberately attempted to make the crossing has ever been successful. Faeries, on the other hand, can cross into the human world at will.  Their path into the human world can either be direct - though this is difficult - or via a human host.  When a human comes close to the Bleak Place, a waiting faery can fly across the threshold and into the human's mouth.  If the faery manages to stay inside their host's mouth until the human leaves the threshold, then it has entered the human world.

The problem, of course, is that a human with a faery in his or her mouth will be afflicted with hiccups.  The faery can only escape during a hiccup, or if their host receives a fright. 

Ignorant human beings, not knowing the cause of hiccups, believe a drink of water to be the cure.  This is a grave danger for faeries entering the human world.  Water cures hiccups by choking the faery to death.  Strong faeries can survive a good soaking, but many drown in this way.

The proper cure for hiccups is patience.  The faery will escape eventually.