Divination

          The wind licked the gray caul of sky over Hob's Lane. We hurried with our sacks deeper into the moor. My name was Chalkman then. My brother was a thickheaded lad whose sole gift was this horrible method of interpreting the universe. He was cursed with a lesser talent. He could find gold by divinition. Under marble threshing floors and barley fields. Tiles would be chipped up. Crops would be yanked up. Anywhere he sensed the presence of  forgotten coin.
          Far and wide his notoriety spread. The greed in men's souls caused him great pain. In his wake, civilization grew even more corrupt. It festered like a plague victim.
          Once he pointed a thorny twig toward the sea and fools dove from the summit and were smashed.
         When ever he felt that hot tugging in his brain, his blue eyes rolled like robin's eggs, and he would cry a garbled complaint. Then, within minutes, he would recompose into his familiar idiot self. Hard to believe, he found coins from civilizations no scholar from London, Paris or Rome could trace.
         Some 20th Century entrepreneurs got filthy rich off him. But that is a story for another time.
        


                                                                                   *


         Darkfall caught us midway. The peat fires were burning and the will-o'-the-wisps were dancing beneath a horned moon.  We were carrying a load of manifacture from the glassblower to Magister Mundanus. The glass globules reminded me of innards. Able to hold and to drip liquids. Delicate membranes, yet brittle. Each month we would deliver them as requested. He owed no explanation. However, he told us he was seeking Veritas of a most ancient variety. I never laughed.
         "Hello to camp!" I shouted as we approached his starblasted place on the moor.
         Fumes from his rough lodge reeked of transmutation.
         Legend told of his coming. He arrived in a black stone from space. The impact killed flora and fauna within a mile radius.  Even today the air about him remains wild with phantoms of both beast and vegetation. Ghostly odors and mushy earth. Now, to these I attest, simply because a septic river flows beneath his ground. Toxic chemicals and raw sewage. His industrial and personal wastes are astounding. Science marches on!
         "Good evening, Chalkman," he responded. "Greetings to your brother too."
         He was a tall gaunt man with unshorn oily black locks and beard. Dark sad eyes. Too long had he been bound to our earth. His name was Zedek, Sadeek, Siddi. Something like that, hinting of magical powers and perhaps holiness.
         He had seen much pointless suffering during his stay among us. The rigmarole of appelations seemed to amuse him.
         Tonight he wore a mauve cassock and a burnoose the color of desert dunes. We could only imagine the world of his origin. Were there pyramids and sphinxes? Temples and oracles? Lighthouses and colossi?
         The avatar thanked us for our punctuality. He paid us in exotic stones. Stones that grew like plants. Crystals. Most of them refracted sunlight and when properly placed upon the human body they cured dissipation. There were others, not as clouded or opaque. Special ones my brother called Seer Stones.
          My brother fashioned a leather cap that would position a Seer Stone over each eye.
          "You look like a fool," remarked Magister Mundanus. Although he preached compassion, he poorly abided  idiots, fools and precocious children.
          "Give him a chance!" I bleated. "He has odd genius. Why, once he designed woolen slippers that massaged the soles of troubled feet. Soothing as well the internal organs of the body."
          "Reflexology."
          "They still sell well."
          Just then, resembling a giant bug, my brother tittered. "Tee-hee-hee."
          "So what do you see?" asked Magister Mundanus. He was beyond sighs.
          My brother gazed about, eyes magnified to a silly degree. His face fell slack-jawed with ecstasy and rapture.
          


                                                                                      *


          It was a balmy day. The Siberian gales had retracted from my lovely green land of chalk and sod. Sun warmed my neck as I labored with scythe, rake and hoe. It had taken a whole hillside for me to complete my new work of art. I etched pictographs, huge ones. This one was of a robust man with an erect engine.
          "'Tis Nature, my lovelies!"
          My lovelies all laughed, and ran off to play.


                                                                                      *


          I found my brother atop a windy hillock beneath a sentinal oak tree. He was watching two frisky bullocks gamble in the high grass. Together we could see fertile land undulating with hills and dales toward the fresh horizon.
          "I have met a woman," he whispered. Brown-faced and strong now.
          "Is she wise?"
          "Very much so. Not book-learned, but wise."
          Did I ever say my brother was thick-headed?
          "I am glad to hear this," I said, ruffling his thatch of golden hair. "I am pondering a far journey to an unknown country."
          "Oh, I wish I could go with you. But I love this place. Its very elements flow within me."
          "I know."
          "When will you depart?"
          "The day after your wedding. How's that?"