I'll go along as I am, on this broad pathway with all the signs and symbols of the arts. It's end is not in sight nor likely to be for some while yet, though leaves have fallen yet again to clog the steps. I've a wall to build later, in a month or so, and a tree to climb, a river to swim. And beyond that a muddy track, narrow with briars and birch boughs bent over, tunnel like, through a wood where there is a hut with a woman in it, curled up tight in coils of sleep, a long girl with longer hair...... than I can imagine...... wound, like her dreams, around her feet.

She has Autumn on her breath yet breathes so lightly, and pale blue eyes when she opens them...... as she will when the times is right, but not yet…… not yet…… not yet! Sleeping beauty? You might say so...... you might say more if you catch your foot in a root or stumble on a sharp stone in the pathway there...... where it narrows down on August’s bridge.......Then you’ll stumble, sprained ankled, sore kneed ......thinking of rescue, of soothing poultices but..... none will come and soon, if you stagger further you will be........ outside her door wet and crying, dying to be let in……

She will ignore you……for your times is not yet come.

Then……frightened bloodless, pale and shivering.....you’ll become the prisoner of Winter......

So stay away, leave her unwoken.

Meanwhile I’ll sit patiently and bide my time. She’s mine or will be soon enough, when summers done, when the last few yards of the years labyrinth is revealed, when the sunlight is longer, I’ll see her then.

Sleeping beauty? You might say so, but you’d be wrong for when she wakes, as she will, you’ll wish you had not seen her in all her glory. It is my time anyway, not yours.

………………………



I went along as I was on that broad pathway, noting this and that and ignoring others. Little need had I, nor desire for I could see what was coming. Up to date with all tasks I strode lightly, purposefully along the way, calendar pages like curled up leaves scattered in the movement of my feet. August was ended and the wheel turned inexorably, as if I didn’t know ‘twas all wheels within wheels, coils and curls and serpents hair.

September came, straggly, displaying her midriff, jeans torn to shreds at thigh and knee. She’d crabapple earrings and a pattern of pawprints across her breasts…… and a brown mouse hiding in her pubic hair. Oh its tail gave it away alright, curled like a question mark but…… the girl herself looked hungry and worn, weary eyed as she offered me a crooked leer.

That was……the first week and part of the second. Then……nothing. Except anticipation and a warning which……I took as a suggestion. Perhaps I should have shaved……changed by shirt…… washed my feet……

I shook the alarm clock to wake it, it had stopped, rattling tin bells against it’s case…… and my path on the labyrinth ended there, in that shady hollow wherein stood the Lady’s hut.

The beech leaves had turned by then and, squatting, shrivelled, the effigy of a path less trodden peered at me from the porch. The mouse had fled her now, the pawprints wrinkled…... the leer displayed only missing, blackened teeth. Spurned she’d lie, a prisoner of her own making, sleeping in turn until her time came again.

As mine had now when at last the door opened and I slip’t past her and in.

She’d brown eyes now……they matched mine and a body which exuded love in maturity. She shook out her hair and it……it cascaded, sweeping a broad circle around her feet. Sleeping beauty? You’d be mad to think so! She was the embodiment of maid mother and crone.

“You’re early!” she smiled

“Only a little” I apologised “I was anxious……”

Should I bow? Kneel in deference?

“Sixty four?” She laughed. “That’s no age! I’ve older wines laid down, older cheeses!”

“But I was anxious” I told her again.

“Older books, leather bound, dusty. Lore and knowledge made manifest!”

“But…… will you still love me now I’m sixty four?” I asked.

That was the really worrying question.

“Well how old do you think I am?” Autumn said.

How old? Who could say? Certainly I, in all innocence, had no idea.

She stood taller than I, by several feet I think, though it wasn’t her height that bothered me for, unclothed as she was her hair still hid her, concealed all but a hint of her beauty from me.

“Shall I guess?” I asked her softly.

“If you like” she replied, “but really there is no need!”

There was nothing more for me to say.

“Take off your sombre, worn out garments” she instructed. “Come eat and drink and lie with me”

I needed no second bidding.

Smiling she looked and saw…… all there was to see.

Then she kissed me.

© Aahlu. August 2010.

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