Walk With Me (8 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous,” her father said. “We can’t leave Slouching City. How would we survive without all our comforts?”

“Your father is right, Celeste. And I’ve never understood why you allow yourself to take orders from this King.”

“But I gave up my citizenship to the Slouching City. I’m an alien now.”

“Don’t worry,” her father said. “With my connections, it will be easy to get your residency back.”

“No, we’re going to the King’s City.” Celeste was glad Peter was right next to her, for she was very sad to leave her family behind. She might not have had the courage to go on without him.

For a good while after Celeste left her family, accusing whispers tormented her for being so selfish and abandoning her family. Peter and Celeste both began to look up to the ridge, hoping they would see Peter’s parents encouraging them on. But one day, to their surprise, they bumped into his parents sitting right in the middle of the path.

“What are you doing here?” Peter said.

“We thought we would come and see how you are doing,” his father said.

“And I brought all your cleaning supplies.” Peter’s mother handed him a bag. “Spot remover, a dustpan and brush, and a strong disinfectant.”

The four of them spent a quiet day together. Peter told his parents how much they were enjoying their journey and what they had seen along the way. Peter’s father argued with him, saying the way to the King’s City was too hard. If Peter and Celeste ever had little travelers, they would have to come back right away to Upright Village, where they could be protected from the storms and thieves and all the other dangers they would encounter.

While Peter’s father badgered him, Peter’s mother cornered Celeste. She began pointing out what Celeste needed to change: her clothes were too fancy, her hair was too long, the songs she sang were too sprightly. Poor Celeste stood listening, too polite to plug her ears. When Peter came in and found his mother lecturing Celeste, he stepped in front of Celeste. “Mother, when you criticize Celeste, you are criticizing me.”

“I don’t know where you learned to be so unkind,” his mother said. “You should be more respectful. I’m your mother.”

“Yes, you are my mother, but Celeste is my wife. We are going to leave if you keep scolding her.”

“I see. Well, if that’s the way you want it …”

“No, I would prefer that you would honor my choice and accept Celeste for who she is. You might even compliment her. But if you refuse to care for her—”

“Oh, I do care about her, very much. That is why I am pointing out her errors. How else will she be corrected?”

“The logs, dear mother, the logs,” Peter said.

“What logs?”

“The ones in your eyes.”

At that his mother went off in a huff.

That night, Peter and Celeste talked about what to do. “It’s too bad,” Celeste said. “Your parents are so conscientious about following the King’s rule. I’m sure they’re only acting this way because they miss you so much.”

“Telling me to stop going to the King’s City? Criticizing you for the way you sing? If we stay here any longer, I’m afraid it will harm us. I can’t put their happiness above our partnership. We’ll have to leave tomorrow.”

In the morning, they packed their bags. Peter’s parents wept, for they were convinced Peter and Celeste would be killed before they reached the King’s City.

As they started on the path, Peter took Celeste by the hand. “Will you walk on with me?”

“Certainly,” she said, smiling.

And they traveled on through Echo Gap, listening carefully for each other’s whispers until they came out on the other side.

The path became smooth and grassy as it had been at the beginning of their journey together. They collected things for their basket of remembrance, and every morning before they set off, they read the guidebook together. They stopped whenever they met other travelers, so Celeste could talk with them and find out their news. Peter didn’t mind because they were making such good progress. But one night Celeste stayed up quite late talking with some travelers. In the morning Peter woke her up early, as he always did, then set out on their usual brisk pace. Celeste started to fall behind, but Peter just kept hiking. Celeste started
to feel cross that he never looked back to see if she was all right. Finally she ran and caught up with him.

“Please stop,” she said, sounding a little more cross than she intended. “You got so far ahead I couldn’t see you anymore.”

“Sometimes I think you just want to play all the time.” Peter sounded just as cross. “We have a journey to make.”

“Do you always have to go so fast?”

“Why don’t you ever keep up? Why do you always drag behind? Sometimes I wonder if you really want to walk with me. If you did you’d go faster, instead of being so lazy.”

A patch of burr bushes began to border the path.

“You’re always in such a hurry.”

“If you were more disciplined and focused, you could keep up,” Peter said.

“If you weren’t so rigid about reaching a certain spot,” Celeste said, “you would slow down.”

As their voices grew heated, the burr bushes started to crowd them on both sides of the path.

“We’d never get to the nice campsites.”

“When we keep your pace, I’m too tired to enjoy them when we get there.”

By then, the burr bushes had surrounded them completely. Each time one of them said something unkind, a burr jumped and stuck to their clothes.

“If you didn’t talk so much, you could concentrate on keeping up.”

“If you would slow down, I could sing better.”

They kept throwing barbs at each other.

“You’re too slow.”

“You don’t know how to enjoy life.”

“You dawdle.”

“You’re sour.”

Soon they were covered with burrs from head to toe.

“Stop it!” Celeste said. “You’re pinching me.”

“No, I’m not—you’re pinching me.”

“It’s all these burrs.”

“Well, where did they come from? We were fine until you started to complain about how fast I was going.”

“No, it’s all your fault.” But as she spoke these words, three burrs blew onto Peter’s pant leg.

“You started it,” Peter said, not caring that two more burrs stuck onto Celeste.

“What does it matter? The path is so thick with burr bushes, we can’t go any farther.”

“We can keep on.”

“Just because you are thick-skinned—”

“What do you mean?” Peter said. “Just because I don’t cry at the smallest bit of pain?”

Celeste was already feeling sorry for herself. When he said this, she stopped. She couldn’t sit because her backside was covered with burrs, so she just stood, arms and legs apart, and tried to think what she should do. “Look at us —” she said. “We’re both covered with burrs. We have to find a way to get them off. Will any of our gifts help us?”

“We weren’t given tweezers,” Peter said.

Celeste tried to pull the burrs off herself, but they clung as if
they were fastened on with glue.

Peter started to walk on, but Celeste refused. “I’m not going any farther until we find how to get these off. They are not just pinching me, they are digging in like they have teeth.” She pulled up her sleeve and showed Peter the marks the burrs had made.

He felt a twinge of sympathy. “Let’s look in the guidebook. Maybe it talks about a remedy for burrs.”

They searched the guidebook and came to the passage Lady Sophia had read to them about speaking to encourage other. Then they read, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another.”

Peter closed the book. He thought about how free he had felt when his chains of debt had been cut with the knife of grace.

Finally Celeste said, “I’m sorry, Peter. I shouldn’t have been cross.” As soon as she said this, a burr fell off him.

“Oh, I was wrong too,” he said, and a burr fell off her.

“Look, that’s how to do it,” Celeste said. “Every time I speak a kind word, a burr comes off you. You are such a good walker, strong and steadfast.” Another fistful dropped from Peter.

“And you remind me to enjoy the world, not just work,” Peter said, and a handful detached from Celeste. “It’s amazing. The power of words—I had no idea.”

They laughed and turned it into a game to see who could say the nicest words and get the burrs off the other person first. Finally they managed to free themselves.

“Whew. That was unpleasant. Let’s not do that again,” Celeste said.

“And it’s not very efficient either. We wasted an entire morning.”

“But we learned how to avoid getting burrs.”

Later that day, they came upon a couple covered with burrs. “So you got trapped in the burr patch too,” Peter said.

“Yes, sticky business,” the husband said.

“But you still are covered with burrs,” Celeste said. “How did you get out?”

“It wasn’t easy,” the wife said. “We finally just closed our eyes and pushed ahead.”

“Didn’t it hurt?” Celeste said.

“Of course,” the husband said. He turned to Peter and whispered, “Women are so soft sometimes. My wife complained at first, but I told her she just had to buck up and get through it.”

Peter noticed streaks of blood coming through the woman’s sleeves. “But she’s bleeding.”

“Just a flesh wound. On this journey, you have to take a little bit of pain. Can’t worry about every little burr that sticks to you.”

“But they’re still on you. Your backs are covered with them. What happens when you lie down?”

“We sleep on our stomachs.”

“Isn’t that rather uncomfortable?”

“Better than feeling the sharp pain when we lie on our backs.”

“You know,” Peter said, “if you spoke kind words to each other, they would fall off. That’s how we removed our burrs.”

The man shook his head. “I don’t go in for all that coddling stuff. And she has to learn to get tough sooner or later.”

“What am I supposed to do?” The woman shrugged. “I don’t
think he would even notice if I managed to take all the burrs off him.”

As Celeste watched the couple walk away, she felt sorry that they would rather suffer than learn to speak kindly to each other.

I
n my dream I saw that the path for Peter and Celeste became rockier and started to rise. Soon they came to the Mountains of Maturity that ranged all the way to the King’s City. Celeste felt her heart sag when she saw the first one, Virtue Peak, soaring in front of them. She was convinced she could never attempt such a rugged climb. Even Peter, who always loved a challenge, was daunted by the steep slope. In places it looked like the trail took them up an almost sheer rock face. That would be hard enough for him alone, but he’d also have to help Celeste and he wasn’t sure he had the strength. “There has to be another way around this mountain, don’t you think?” Peter asked.