Zera and the Green Man (17 page)

Zera had released her hair from its ponytail so it could provide some warmth for her neck and ears in the wintry air. The mom and dad from the Texan family seemed particularly uncomfortable, hugging themselves and rubbing their arms. The boys ran to a huge snowbank and began packing snowballs into pink hands. “Mama” seemed to have overcome all her fears and was standing at the fence, grinning from ear-to-ear at the astonishing view.

Zera and Grandma Wren stayed at the overlook for ten minutes or so. Grandma Wren had told her on the train that they would wait until everyone had started down the mountain before embarking on their vision quest. 

Cosmic Dan walked up. “Enjoying the view, ladies?”

“It’s beautiful,” Zera said. Grandma Wren nodded.

“I just came over to tell you I’m going to take the others down, but I’ll bring the train back up with Nonny and Hattie in a little over two hours. We’ll meet in the café. I told the staff to leave it open for you.”

“Thank you, Dan,” Grandma Wren said. 

“My pleasure.”
 

Dan walked away and Grandma Wren said, “Let’s go.” Refusing Zera’s help, she picked up the large beaded buckskin bag and hoisted it over her shoulder. 

Zera followed Grandma Wren as she hiked across the parking lot to the back of the old stone station house/café, a place for Pikes Peak visitors to buy coffee, doughnuts, and tourist knickknacks. As they neared the building, Zera smelled the rich, yeasty smell of doughnuts in the crisp air. At any other time she would have wanted to stop for one.

“There it is,” Grandma Wren said, pointing to a steep, timeworn trail in the gravel leading down from the building. “We’re going to that group of rocks.” 

Zera looked to where she pointed, about a hundred yards down the slope. She was glad Nonny wasn’t here; it would have been almost impossible for her to get down that trail.

Grandma Wren began descending slowly. The loose fist-sized gravel made for slippery going but Grandma Wren, sure-footed in hiking boots and calm, made her way down slowly. Zera followed, not doing as well.
My flat-bottomed sneakers aren’t the best on this surface
. As soon as the thought registered in her mind she slipped, landing on her left leg and hand, sliding down the loose gravel five feet, nearly bumping into Grandma Wren.

“Goodness! Are you all right, Zera?” Grandma Wren had moved off the path.

Zera got to her feet, more embarrassed than hurt. “Yeah.” Her hand was scraped up, bleeding, but just a little. Still, it felt hot and stinging.

Grandma Wren continued on, and Zera shook her hand, wiped the dust from her pants. She waited until Grandma Wren got a good ten feet from her before she started out again.

At the bottom, the ground leveled for a short distance. They made their way across a grassy area to a group of boulders that looked like gigantic balls of whitish-gray clay stacked, then squished together, one on top of the other. The boulders made a large semi-circle that hid them from the view of the lookout point at the top of the peak, almost directly above. A dozen feet away was the edge of a cliff. It dropped off to the next semi-flat spot, many hundreds of feet below.

“This is the place,” Grandma Wren said, pointing. “See, there is Ute Springs, home of the Creator’s breath, and there are the bones of Mother Earth.”

“Creator’s breath? Mother Earth?” Zera stared quizzically.

“Creator’s Breath is what we call the mineral springs, used by our people since the beginning of their time as healing waters. The bones of Mother Earth were given a different name by the settlers . . .”

“The Garden of the Gods,” Zera finished. “They do look like bones from here.”

Grandma Wren opened her bag and took out a wool blanket. She unfolded the two-by-three-foot rectangle and laid it upon the ground in front of the boulders. The large central motif of the blanket was a white star, woven on a black background. Two borders framed the star, an outside border of white, followed by one of alternating red and black triangles.

“Sit down, please,” Grandma Wren said.

Zera began to oblige, but just then an eerie sound, a cry otherworldly and alarming, pierced the air. She sprang up. “What’s that?”

“It’s the marmots. There.”

The noise stopped as Zera’s eyes followed Grandma Wren’s outstretched finger. Peering through a gap in the boulders
, she saw a pile of rocks in a nook about twenty feet away. On top of a footstool-sized rock stood a very large marmot. He and seven others had apparently been enjoying a late afternoon outing before being so rudely interrupted. The others, like their look-out, stared at the old woman and girl, who stared right back at them. For a moment no one moved.

“We surprised them,” whispered Zera.

“They are not too frightened. It is odd that they’re up this far. There’s no food for them here.”

Grandma Wren eyed the creatures. They stared at one another, in wordless communication, and Zera could read Grandma Wren’s body language as clearly as the marmots could: “Go,
now
.” They began to lumber downhill. Zera sat down.

The wind blew and the cold air felt harsh on Zera’s hands and cheeks. She put her hands into the pockets of her jacket, finding a pair of gloves in one and a purple crocheted wool hat in the other. She put on the gloves, wincing a little when she put on the left one. She noticed when she crossed her legs that her left leg was sore, too.

From above came the whistle blow of the train and Cosmic Dan’s voice calling, “All aboard, all aboard!”

From what Zera could hear, most of the tourists had, by that time, sought shelter and warmth in the café. She heard them coming out, exclaiming about the cold, their voices traveling clearly through the thin air. After a few minutes of activity, Zera heard the sound of the engine whirring and the cog mechanism click-click-click-clicking like a large clock as the train began its descent down the mountain.

The sky grew dim. Zera heard the workers from the café begin to depart right after the train did — calling out their goodbyes and starting their cars. Within a few short minutes Zera knew they would be completely alone on the mountaintop. She wished she had brought something to drink as now her mouth was dry.

Grandma Wren squatted at the edge of the cliff, her back to Zera, her head bowed in contemplation.

The wind gusted, and it seemed to be the only sound left on the mountain. Even the marmots had gone home to their rocky burrows. Zera watched the bright blue sky turn pink and lavender tie-dye. She gazed at the splendor of the sunset while shivering lightly. 

Grandma Wren got up, took off her hat and sweater, then her boots and baggy sweat pants. Zera caught her breath. Grandma Wren stood, facing the multi-hued sunset in brilliant red
long underwear
. With her white, streaming hair and dark lined face, she looked thin, ancient, and powerful. Even with her thinness, she did not shiver. Zera choked back an urge to giggle. She couldn’t help it; nerves combined with everything being so serious and somber created an anxiety in her that threatened to bubble out in crazy laughter.
If the kids in Piker could see me now, sitting on top of a mountain, watching skinny ninety-year-old Grandma Wren in her red underwear!
Zera cleared her throat.
Stop it,
she scolded herself.
Don’t you dare laugh.

As if reading her thoughts, Grandma Wren looked back and said, “This is the only clothing I could find that represents the favored color, the color one should wear when addressing the Creator.”

Grandma Wren’s seriousness killed Zera’s urge to laugh. Her cheeks grew hot in embarrassment and she looked down at her red sneakers.

Grandma Wren pulled a thick, long bundle from her bag, along with a lighter. Crouching and cupping her hand over the cloth-wrapped stick, she lit it. The dried sage flamed for a moment, then died out and began to smoke. She came to Zera and slowly waved the white smoke around her, then herself, chanting as she did so.

“Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey! Hey-a-a-hey!”

She
placed the still-smoldering bundle on the gravel and turned around again. She knelt directly across from Zera on the blanket, facing the open vista. She sat motionless for at least a minute, and Zera viewed her tiny outline with admiration and respect.

Grandma Wren raised her hands to the sky. “Creator,” she said in her gravelly voice, “I ask permission to receive the vision foretold. We sit at the four points of the earth: north, south, east,
west. We are open: mind, body, and spirit. 

“Creator, behold us and hear our feeble voice. You lived before all, older than old, older than prayer. All belongs to you — the two-leggeds, the four-leggeds, the wings of the air, and all green things that live. Day in and day out, forever, you are the life of all.”

She paused. Zera stared at the back of the tiny, red-clothed woman, her white hair blowing against a kaleidoscope coloring the sky.
I will remember this moment if I live to be a hundred years old.

Grandma Wren continued, “I send my small and weak voice,
Creator, Grandfather, forgetting nothing that you have made; the stars of the universe and the grasses of the earth.

“You have shown us the goodness and the beauty and the strangeness of the greening earth, the only Mother — and there we see the spirit shapes of things.

“You have sent this young woman, Zera, a sign of the snake. Symbol of eternity, of life, rebirth. We ask you in our ignorance and humility what we should do. We have come to receive vision.”

They sat for some time, breathing in the sweet, smoldering sage, watching the sky.

Grandma Wren began to quietly chant again. “Hey-a-a-hey. Hey-a-a-hey. Hey-a-a-hey.”

Zera closed her eyes, listening to Grandma Wren’s voice. Then, silence. She opened her eyes. Grandma Wren was gone.

“Grandma Wren?” Zera looked around.
Where did she go? She was on this blanket. Right here!
A panic swept through her.

“Grandma Wren?” she called louder. She waited.
Nothing. Only the darkening sunset. The sage bundle lay in the gravel, no longer smoldering.

Zera scrambled to her feet, her heart pounding like a tribal drum.
Where was she?
She ran to the edge of the cliff, looked all around
. There was nowhere else for her to go.
“Grandma Wren!” she yelled out to the darkening sky.

The air temperature changed. The wind now blew warm. The sky began to change, growing brighter, lighter,
bluer, as the sunset disappeared. With it, Zera’s fear evaporated. An excitement and expectation in every molecule within her grew as thoughts of Grandma Wren melted away. It was day again. Clouds rolled in, just beneath the cliff. Soft, round clouds, first hundreds, then thousands, stretching out below her like an ocean. Zera’s mouth was open, watching. 

Through the clouds crept a thread of green, and Zera’s heartbeat again quickened. The thread became a tangle of vines, growing larger, stronger. Leaves emerged from the rope-like vines, and the vines took form as they twisted, writhed, turned. They were forming into the shape of a
man
. Zera could not take her eyes away, she could not think. She could only stare, transfixed. Within seconds, a giant stood before her on the clouds, the Green Man.

Zera’s heart thudded. She wanted to run but found she could not move. The Green Man, fifty feet tall, was all
leaves
. Giant rolled leaves made up his enormous fingers, his fingernails, his colossal legs, his massive chest, his long, twining hair. Only his verdant face, peering through the leaves, was smooth, the texture of human skin. He walked across the clouds, and as he did the clouds thundered and the rock beneath Zera shook. 

Zera’s forehead and palms beaded sweat. A gasp escaped her, yet she could not take her eyes away, not even for a second. The green titan looked at her with a fierceness that undercut the kind undertone in his deep voice.

“Everything is sacred and divine,” he said.

“You are in the land I live in always. Though I may appear to sleep in the winter, I am very much alive, growing, changing. The same is with all that live!

“We are all one. Star-stuff!” He smiled at Zera, a smile that was both friendly and menacing, and his arms and hands outstretched to embrace the cosmos.

“We are all related. We possess each other in our natures and in our bodies.

“We are all part of the tree of life. We are kept in place by our spinal column.”

The figure began to change. The Green Man’s legs grew together, turned darker, brown,
bark-rough. Soon, they had fused into one thick trunk.

“We are anchored by the roots of our feet and legs
,”

Roots curved downward from the base of the trunk, stretching along and down through the clouds. 

“. . . we stretch toward and welcome the heavens in the branches of our arms.” He raised his massive arms. They turned into two thick branches that brought forth more branches, smaller and smaller, up and up and out. Buds popped out along each stem in profusion and became full, fat and pointed, before gracefully unfolding into leaves.