At night magic is most often abroad.
Listen to the glimmering source of feeble rushlights while above the ordered
patterns wheel silently.
The moon herself rests upon the tangled branches of the trees -- stout vows, arguments, sighs and threats:
oak, wailing when cut; hawthorn, fairy dominion; Northerners say ash holds up the sky; and always, a willow, shuffling to grab travelers to encase within a dense trunk.
The name of the old man has been rendered unimportant in this story. His eyes are a boy on a winnowing floor surrounded by similarity.
A moment all is still the name spoken under the sun when words float cheap thistledown in a daybeam -- with only distant echoes of the power they once possessed.
Lasting perhaps only a night, words gave shape. Knowing a name of a thing was essence perception, therefore a moment's mastery. Name the thing of absence -- a summons of being, encased alive in words.
"I am a musician, an artificer like the wren. I was many things before I was released, I was a word in letters."
This night sings, faint in falling mists. The ground dampens thick with wet under a canopy of trees. Before the sun rises with bursting light, listen:
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