JOURNEY TO THE MIDNIGHT SUN
James Sheldon
LOVE CONQUERS ALL
Book 1 of 3
Chapter 26
Perhaps those ancient wolves that chose to come along with man on the long road out of the wild, and who along the way became man’s best friend, the dog, so loyal that it refuses to leave its master’s grave, but alas, perhaps the process of how such a thing happened is not given the attention it deserves. Not to forget our friend and ally the horse. Not to forget the knowledge, skill, discipline, balance, and dedication needed to evade nature’s cruel indifference while retaining the freedom to walk in the midst of its amazing harmony and beauty. Truly a most remarkable feat, which is not to romanticize our primitive past, nor to discount the achievements of modern science, nor to deny the work of a higher power, but simply to stop, realize, and appreciate the wonder of it all.
Fortunate was the family to have a pair of crystal clear nights one after the other. On the second night they reached the north end of the lake where they entered the mouth of a medium-sized river. Continuing up the River Montreal, they struck camp at midday whereupon seeing how approaching clouds signaled an end to their night travels, Emma sent John out hunting. She did not send him because they were dangerously short on food but rather to avoid such a situation by making the most of the afternoon. Cody was assigned the rifle and made guard among other camp chores. The twins were unloaded. The sled was unhooked. Laureal chopped a water hole in the frozen river. The tent went up and a campfire crackled to life. John returned with a wolverine weighing about 50 pounds. The elusive animal had not been his choice but what nature offered. Emma, however, was delighted in the knowledge that at that time of year, the wolverine’s meat would be sweet and tender, a rare and particularly palatable treat. Laureal helped John skin and butcher it while Mia and Jessie built a simple rack to hang the meat and begin the aging process. The hide was rolled up for a later day.
The river, being modest in size and therefore not too terribly windy, allowed for ice fishing just a stone’s toss from camp. Cody and Noah pulled in a stringer of trout destined to become the main course in the evening meal. When done fishing, Cody covered the ice hole under a pile of snow to keep it from refreezing. Sophie helped Emma and Jessie prepare supper. Ellie dug and ate buried grass. And just a hundred yards downriver, the newlyweds fed the wolf and made out against a quaking aspen.
At last with chores done and stomachs full, all that remained was to retire to a good night’s sleep. But no one wanted to do that, for tired though they be, the setting sun had illuminated a vast cloud bank across the river to the west, making for a spectacular sunset. Emma proclaimed it a sign, one in which the hand of God had pulled back the sky like a curtain at the end of the day to reveal the promise of paradise.
The afterglow that followed, short-lived though it be, presented the Matriarch with the opportunity she’d been waiting for—
“John.”
“Yes Ma’am,” tired but happy, his arm around Laureal, he smiled across the fire.
“Regarding what you call, ‘the riddle of the ruin.’”
“Yes,” visibly perking.
“If I may, I believe I have come to understand the final verse.”
John looked on in anticipation, as did the entire family.
“As you know,” Emma began, “I believe the first verse is intentionally simple and straightforward for a reason. It establishes goodwill. And now I need to ask you, John, are you certain the first line of the third verse contained the word, ‘the,’ as in ‘the knowledge,’ as opposed to simply, ‘knowledge’?”
“Yes,” John replied, “I am certain of it. The first and second verses did not include the word ‘the’ but were simply, ‘need of shelter’ and ‘hunt for treasure’ whereas the third verse was, ‘seek the knowledge.”
With a nod, Emma continued, “That is important to know, seeing as the nature of a riddle requires careful construction. Safe to assume then, the third verse is not referring to just any old knowledge but to the knowledge. Now let’s go back to the second verse, ‘look not in tomb nor mine.’ It tells us that the treasure is not to be found in the realm of the dead or anywhere in the earth, but rather is some mystery to do with life; ‘the life within that consumes the dead.’ I do not understand that line, but I suspect it holds the key to unlocking the mystery.
“Now, let us return to the third verse. To me, it suggests that the knowledge leads to or is somehow connected to the treasure mentioned in the second verse. The third verse tells us the knowledge has died but still lives elsewhere. Not only does it live, it lives forever. ‘Forever in the wolves,’ it says. So why did the author or authors point us towards the wolves? What did they want us to see?
“Well, let’s look at the wolves. Wolves live in family clans, like us. And within their clans they have different roles, like us. They work together, like us. And like us, they have a hierarchy with a patriarch and matriarch. It is their way. And while they may not have the intellect to question what they do, they run for days on end, swim rivers, love, fight, kill, die, and even babysit to live free like us. Vast is the reward for their hard won success. And in it they go where they please. And when the mighty grizzly comes to take what is theirs, they do not roll over. So, looking at wolves, it would seem they are symbolic of our own hard won freedom, and, the knowledge necessary to live free had been lost. Whomever wrote that riddle, they knew their words would not be unearthed without survivors. Without knowing us…he, she, or they knew what we would be.”
Pausing, Emma looked from one family member to the next, “We, are the wolves in the riddle.”
In silence, they sat exchanging glances. The last of the day’s afterglow, having slipped away, left the firelight free to dance on the Matriarch’s face.
“The riddle,” she continued, “says the knowledge lives forever. Well, that which lives forever is not bound to this world. So the knowledge is not bound to this world. And the wolves in which the knowledge lives are not bound to this world. Therefore, if I am reading it right, the riddle tells of a freedom that only our souls can know. And that freedom is the ‘treasure’ in the second verse.”
Leaning forward, Emma pushed the burnt-off end of a log into the fire, “These past two nights as we traveled the moonlit lake, the riddle played in my mind like a voice that calls across a great expanse of time. And I could not help wondering if finding those verses was meant to be. Then again, perhaps I’m just an old crackpot.”
“You’re not a crackpot, Grandmother.”
Scooting back in her seat, Emma gathered her gray hair, for it had fallen out of her hood, “Thank you, dear.” The lines in her face, cast in shadows by firelight, seemed exaggerated, like the keen quality in her large green eyes.
“When I was a little girl, my grandmother who was Matriarch told the Spirit Story at the hearth for us children. Now, sitting in her place, I understand the characters in the tale are but symbols of the good and evil inside as seen through the earthly limits of my mind’s eye. And yet, with every year I age, the portrayal becomes all the more fitting as my sense of the spiritual battle grows.”
Emma again looked to her granddaughter, “Laureal, would you recite the beginning of the Spirit Story for us?”
“Of course, Grandmother,” and speaking the first verses of an epic poem known to every soul in the realm, Laureal looked from one family member to the next until at last, her eyes came to rest on John.
“Come forth from the glades of heaven.
Seven wolves ever loyal to the Lord of Light.
Their patriarch and matriarch, Truth and Love.
Leapt out from the black void of hell.
Seven wolves enslaved to the Lord of Darkness.
Their patriarch and matriarch, Hatred and Deceit.
.
Two wolf clans locked in a territorial war.
Flashes of light, and darting shadows,
deep within the contours of my soul.”
“Thank you, dear.” And turning her eyes to the fire, Emma gazed cryptically into the flames, “The riddle tells of something lost, but not gone. Something that died and yet, lives on. Something beyond this earth. For within every life, there is something of immeasurable value to be gained…or lost.”
In the absence of conversation, the sound of grass being chewed between the giant’s teeth seemed louder than one might otherwise expect.
Jessie was first to speak, “So, even though the knowledge in the riddle ultimately speaks to a treasure that’s tied to our existence both now and in the beyond…attaining it, as we already know, is within our grasp, providing we seek guidance from The Great Spirit, and feed the right ‘wolves.’”
“Yes, but the riddle suggests there’s more to it than that. It’s a riddle, after all. Something is hidden in it for a reason. And as we know by the riddles first verse, it begins with goodwill. So why is it hidden? What is it hiding from? What is opposed to goodwill? The obvious answer is, malice. Perhaps the riddle was written in a time of evil so pervasive, the treasure it tells of had to be concealed in an enigma.”
John, being more scientific minded and closer to the truth than he knew, spoke from the edge of his seat, “Could there be something actually hidden in the wolves? I mean in the real wolves? Something the authors put inside them?”
Emma only shrugged.
“You mean like some kind of magic?” Mia asked.
Cody’s eyes nearly bulged from his hood, “If they put some kind of magic in the wolves, then maybe all we need to do is, drink wolf blood.”
“Why on earth would we do that?” Laureal asked, visibly grossed out.
“To get the extra everlasting freedom into us,” replied the boy, looking about as if everyone should know it was worth a try.
Jessie, Mia, and even John, all shaking their heads with faces of doubt, nevertheless shrugged at one another like it might be a possibility.
“We are not drinking wolf blood!” Laureal forcefully interjected, scowling at her little brother in particular.
“Could it be,” John began, “that the author, or authors, sought to safeguard critical knowledge for future generations in a way that treasure hunters could not find and destroy?”
“Perhaps we are reading too much into it,” Mia put in. “Perhaps it’s only a riddle with some local meaning, and beyond that it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Well,” Jessie began, breaking the silence, “all we have to go on is what the author has left us.”
Shaking his head, his expression baffled, John echoed the passage, “Look not in tomb nor mine, but in the life within that consumes the dead,” and looking round the fire, “What is the life within that consumes the dead? Is it my stomach?’”
“I too am stumped by that passage,” Emma concurred. “And as I said, I suspect it holds the key to unlocking the riddle. After all, it tells us where to look to find the treasure.”
“Could it be,” Cody began with trepidation, wondering if he should open his mouth at all even as he put two and two together, but alas, he asked, “perhaps we should cut a wolf open so grandma can look in its stomach?”
Glaring at Cody with frightful resolve, Laureal spoke in hushed tones, “You so much as touch Weya, and I will cut you open.”
“That’s enough!” snapped their mother.
“Perhaps we should forget about the riddle,” Mia interjected. And with an added measure of gravity, “After all, it came from a Nith…and just look at us.”
“It comes from an ancient civilization,” Summerfield rebutted.
“A civilization that God destroyed,” countered the Matriarch.
“And if he has destroyed something,” Mia added, “it must have been evil, and we have no business digging around in it.”
“If it is as you say,” John began, “he still left its pieces scattered in such a way that we cannot walk in any direction without finding them.”
“Yes, as a warning.”
Looks went round the fire, the flickering flames casting their expressions in ever changing shadows.
Seeing himself outnumbered, John doubled down, “All right then, let's say it is a warning. Is a warning not also a form of lesson? And is a lesson not part of a formula to build from?”
Crossing her arms, Emma gathered her parka in against the cold that came with the dark, “It has gotten late, and here we are arguing in this remote and unforgiving place. Let us get the rest we need, and agree to take this up at a later date.”
Gazing into the flames, John could not let it go. And yet, lifting his eyes, he showed his softer side, “Emma, if I may ask one last thing. Let’s say you are right about the Nith and those verses come from dark times. Would that not add all the more weight to what you yourself have said, being that they were written in goodwill? And could it not then be possible, as you also eluded, that they are a treasure map to lost knowledge? Knowledge that might light the dark?”
When at last the Matriarch replied, her tone reflected the sum of her years, “Well, awful as it seems that we not only entered a Nith but actually dug down into it, I confess, I cannot shake this feeling that we were meant to find those verses. That said, we must not allow ourselves to become so distracted that we forget where we are.”
“Agreed,” concurred the horseman, looking round the fire, “out here, we cannot afford to lose our focus.”
“If I may get something off my chest,” Mia began, “what if, as we plan to do, we eventually return to the Nith and use the glass treasure to acquire horses. And we put every member of our clan on horseback. And we grow strong, perhaps even stronger than in days of glory past. What if the word then got out that we did so by way of a treasure dug from a Nith? Would our people not say we made a pact with the devil? Would they not turn on us? Would we not end up hated?”
“We had no choice but to take shelter in the Nith,” Jessie countered, her large emerald eyes filled with resolve. “Who among us could ever forget that day? Who among us believes that our finding the treasure happened by chance?”
Summerfield raised his mitten albeit only halfway.
Taking his mitten in hers, Laureal smiled as she brought it into her lap. Then, looking around the fire, her countenance turned so severe as to be nearly witchlike, “The treasure is ours! We found it fair and square!”
“Darn straight it’s ours!” Cody put in.
“There’s a far bigger treasure,” retracting his mitten, “a trove of lost knowledge. I am certain of it now more than ever. And I mean to find it.”
Sophie’s little voice came out of the dark, “Emmy.”
“Yes, dear.”
“Mommy always says that when we lose something…it’s often right under our nose.”
Chuckles broke out around the fire.
Thank you for reading!
