~Part III~
She remained there, at the fork in the road, for some minutes. Weighing her choices.
To descend to the valley, plentiful with food, with bubbling springs, with welcome shade, or to remain on the ridge, nearer the knight.
She did not notice at first that he circled round to join her again, to wait beside her as she made her choice. When he spoke, she assumed it would be to urge her to remain.
Instead he said, “If you choose the unseen More of the ridge over the obvious plenty of the valley, you will face hardships you have not yet seen.”
She blinked and looked away from him. What was this? To choose More, to choose the knight, was also to choose hardship? It was a paradox she could not grasp and it troubled her. She opened her mouth to question, but he was gone ahead again, leaving her to her decision.
In the end, it was only the earnest desire to be near the knight that made it for her. She urged her horse forward at a trot until she drew close to his smiling face once more.
“I am afraid,” she said simply.
“I am here,” he said.
Until now she had only seen others traveling the path far ahead and far behind and far below. But within minutes they traveled in the midst of a group, and all the travelers hailed her knight, and she knew that he had freed each of them as well.
They were in various degrees off newness, she thought as she looked upon the group. Some of them still wore the dungeon rags close around them, as though afraid that someone would strip them and reveal even more filth beneath. Some of them wore clothes still ragged but washed clean. And still others had somewhere, somehow, exchanged their rags for fine fabric that gleamed white in the sun. She looked down at her own clothing and saw that it was becoming clean, and there, at the frayed edge of a sleeve, she wondered if perhaps the torn edges were beginning to mend themselves, as though healed. But she could not be sure.
As the days passed, her fellowship with the other travelers grew sweeter still, and there began to be some that she found she preferred over others. None of them did she prefer over the knight of course, but the journey was made easier by the laughter and the conversation of these new friends. In time, one of the travelers, a man only slightly older than herself, on a dappled horse, seemed to prefer her as well, and often their horses were found walking side by side along the rocky path. She would have perhaps decided that this camaraderie too, like the beauties of the valley path, was enough unto itself, if the knight hadn’t continued to remind her that they journeyed to a kingdom far greater than anything she had yet experienced.
Once, when speaking of the kingdom and the king who reigned there, her knight seemed to forget himself and called the king “Father.”
She looked away and smiled, her earlier suspicions about the knight’s place in the kingdom confirmed. And yet, he often said that she herself was a child of the king, and so still she could not be entirely sure.
One morning the sun did not shine so brightly. Their path narrowed and grew steeper, and the knight called back to the group. “There is danger ahead, my children. Stay close to me, and to each other.” He began to pair them off, and she was partnered with her friend on the dappled horse. “Watch over each other,” he told them, and she was glad.
The sky grew threatening with dark clouds, and a wind rose up to push them backward, and they bent their heads to it and continued on. Sometimes they rode in pairs, but often the horses would group together in fear, and she found at one point that she rode nearly touching another traveler she had not yet met. His rags were still very dirty and she thought he must be newly redeemed.
“How can we trust him to lead us to safety?” the man asked her.
She opened her eyes wide at his concern. “He has always done so.”
“Do you really believe you are a child of this unknown king?” His voice was not accusing but sincerely questioning, as though he himself could not believe it.
She tried to smile. “The knight says we have been set free and adopted. That the king loves us.”
The dirty man shook his head. “How could he love us? What have we done for him?”
She bit the inside of her cheek and said nothing, for the thought had often occurred to her as well.
“He wants more servants for his kingdom, that is all,” the man said. “More servants to do his bidding, to build his walls and fight his battles.”
“He loves us,” she said, but already the words were hollowed out by insecurity. Who had ever loved her? Who ever could?
And as they pushed their way through the wicked weather, her thoughts ran on ahead, to the coming day when she would face the king, and she realized that if he had purchased them to serve himself, that she had done a very poor job of it thus far. She chastised herself for the days of frolicking with forest animals and resting in flowered meadows. When they reached the kingdom, news of her frivolity would be told and she would shamed.
“It is not too late,” she thought. “I can get busy serving now, before we reach the kingdom, and the king and his knight – they will be pleased.”
And so when the weather at last broke, and they journeyed once again in the sunshine, she began to search for ways to make herself useful. When the horses halted to rest and drink, she would search for food for the group. At night when they stopped to sleep she would mend rips in the bedding and fetch wood for the fire. She often sought out the gaze of the knight as she worked, looking to see if his approval of her increased. But he looked at her as he always had, as if her efforts to please him meant nothing.
But her efforts were not completely wasted, she found. For as the days passed, the others in the group began to praise her for her hard work. She could find berries that others never saw, they said. She could coax a flame from wet wood, and carry more water than most men. Her heart reached out and grasped this praise, and it began to warm her, to make her feel as though she were worthy to travel to the kingdom. Well, almost. Not all the travelers were impressed with her efforts, but these, she found, could be won over with kindness, with friendliness, even with humor. It wasn’t long before she felt herself the favorite of the group. It was gratifying. It felt like what she had longed for. Well, almost.
Still she looked to the knight, wishing and hoping for his commendation, but still he looked at her as he always had, without regard for all she had accomplished and all she had become.
She tried to content herself with the goodwill of her fellow travelers, but… it never seemed to be enough. Soon she was waking much earlier than the group, and working later into the night, to keep up with all the tasks she had taken upon herself, for it was expected of her now and she did not want to disappoint any of them, for fear they would no longer care for her. Before many weeks had passed she was exhausted and confused, but still she could not slow down her efforts and in fact it seemed she must do more and more if she were to retain the good feelings of the group. And still the knight looked at her just the same.
And then one night, as she stumbled back to the fire where everyone else slept, her arms filled with wood for the morning, the knight met her, and took the wood from her, and looked down at her with those same eyes, and she realized something at last. His look did not change, his love for her did not change, no matter how much she did, because it could not. He loved her as much as anyone could and he could not love her any more than he did, and he had always loved her thus. Her efforts could earn her no more love because there was no more love to be had. She had it all, the moment she had emerged from her dungeon.
And she wondered, in that moment by the firelight, “How did I not see it?” and she remembered the ragged traveler who had spoken to her on the path on that stormy day and told her that she could not be a true child of the king, that the king could not love her as she was, and she saw at last that his words had been a lie.