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I know you've been asking me to get this down on paper for some time now, but I've really not had the chance to let it breathe. Now it's over, now I'm a continent and an ocean away, now I have a job and an apartment and before it turns into the popped soap bubble of remembering a dream - I guess now is the time, now it's already starting to seem kind of filmy and iridescent and unreal.
Of course I don't know where to start. The most real moments are in the middle, but would you have the same view on them without the context?
The time when I said, "You knew, you knew all this time?" And they said "Yes, dear," and went back to chopping some herbs, to let me deal with my reaction without them watching me, even though there was only one room and we were living on top of each other and there was no privacy, except there always was, when they thought I needed it.
I'd hidden it, you see, when I arrived. When I woke up. I don't know why I thought they hadn't seen it, when they'd clearly carried me all the way from where I finally keeled over, but it was kind of hidden in my clothes, it was kind of believable. I didn't know who they were and I didn't know how they'd react, and the more I knew of them, the more I was worried about it.
Because… you know. The little crazy patched-together 'cottage', moss and bark and woven branches and it somehow worked even though everything, everywhere, was damp forever; a little fire and it was dry enough inside, dry enough not to rot. The herbs hanging up to dry everywhere, the… the Cauldron.
Yes, cauldrons are just a practical way of keeping the stew going. You know what? When you're damp all the way through, and you think you'll never be warm again, and you've eaten nothing for days, then stew is a kind of magic.
I don't want to say anything that isn't true. I never saw anything that I couldn't explain away. If you feed crows in the same place every day, just out in your back yard, they will talk to you; they will start to include you in their family noises; they will bring you things.
I can't trust my memory fully either - there was always something aromatic on the fire, exhaustion and fear and... displacement, there was nothing I can commit to words, that I can swear on, that I can vouch for. I know it'll disappoint you, I know what you are searching for, but honestly - honestly, I have seen more inexplicable things in the places they call them miracles, rather than that they call them magic.
I don't think they'd want to be known for that, anyway. Even though I'm fairly sure that my predecessors would… would get the fire ready and lay the accusation.
There are things I'm not proud of, in our history. Just because I cannot not believe, does not mean I vouch for all previous who would claim the name of believer.
And that was enough that I tried to hide it from them.
Those first days I was… polite. Tried to do things before I could, just to show willing, even though that frustrated them more than anything. "All I ask from you is to return honesty for hospitality," they said, and it burned in the inner pocket I'd slipped it into, I couldn't possibly feel it and yet I felt it all the time, even though that wasn't what they were talking about.
I asked them why they were doing this, why they were looking after me, and they never answered me. Or maybe they did. "Wouldn't you?" they said. "Why shouldn't I?" they asked. "Would you rather I didn't?"
I didn't ask why they were out there, because they had not asked why I was out there, and I didn't want them to know. Still thought that might be it, not my clumsiness, not my need, not my stubborn refusal to believe that they could be just doing this out of the kindness of their heart, that they really did just want me to lie back and get better, but knowing what I had held so important that I would let everything else go - and what those before me had done to those who resembled them.
It wasn't even clear that they would know. We shared a language, so it was likely we shared a fate, that they had been better prepared for it, perhaps, or someone else had sheltered them in turn and then moved on. But they seemed old - no, not old and frail, but with that timeless security of many successful years, or many survived years in any case, and out there it seemed one and the same. And they never mentioned anything like it - not that they mentioned much that was not prompted, not required by the activities of living.
But they did say they knew, in the end.
When I was back on my feet, and learning, and taking up space. And they arranged for me to move on - somehow. They said that the birds told them, but that is a phrase that has meant all kinds of secret communication, and another wise saying is not to look a gift horse in the mouth - especially when it has not yet arrived, or is that chickens? It makes more sense with chickens, I suppose.
I'm sorry. I should just bring the facts together, if facts it is that I can bear to write. After they administered the ceremony, after I'd had my final chance to recant and my final chance to choose a certain or uncertain fate, after I'd said those defiant words about my life not being my own to throw away - they sent me out and told me to be out of sight by sundown, and never return.
I had the clothes I was wearing, the many layered robes I had been grateful they let me set out in until the hems soaked up the water, the symbol around my neck which they let me keep so that I might disavow it in those last moments, and the foam-soled sandals that could not be turned to weapons.
All of our whispered plans and training were nothing against the reality of the swamp. Everything was the wrong colour, the wrong season, too willowy and yielding to take my weight, to lift me out of the mire and let my sodden body rest, to make a platform for fire even if I had found the means to light it. And the inhabitants, the reptiles and the fish and the insects, were all much better at hiding and living and planning to consume me, than slow and unsubtle enough to let me take them for sustenance.
Then, well. You know the one about the climber stranded on the cliff, and the helicopter? I thought I could survive on song - inner song, after not too long, given the need to conserve my strength - and prayer alone, and in a way, I suppose I did?
Not that I ever accused them directly of being providence. I am still not sure whether they would have approved. I think they would just have laughed.
In any case, when the haze around my vision dragged me down, when I could not move any further and the cold soaked deep into my bones, and at last I surrendered to the discontinuity of that death of consciousness that attends us every night, if we are lucky - after that I woke to warmth, apparently undisturbed in raiment, and I have no idea how they did it to this day.
When I could speak, I said "Thank you," and they said "You're welcome".
Can you call someone a friend when you don't even know their name? I asked, and they smiled and said, "You can call me the swamp witch, if you like," but - there were only the two of us, and there was no real need for names, or anything else where you would refer to some uncertain person to make it clear who you spoke about.
But they slept on the chair, even though they had clearly spent so much time and ingenuity in carving a comfortable spot to sleep out of the damp and the endlessness. What can you call someone who does that for you, with nothing to move them but their own kindness?