TCOTNK Season 3.11
TCOTNK Season 3.11
The Castle Of The Naked Knights. The origins of the picture book that will change so many lives....
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back to chapter3.10 (last weeks episode)
IV
I'm really into that run. I need to sit down for a moment. I lower my medieval buttocks onto a cube-shaped signpost. I'm sweating like crazy in these clothes.
Actually, I should be panicking. I should kick over an oak tree while crying. But I sit there breathing, wondering what the forest smells like. My ears pick up a landscape of tiny sounds. Everything moves and is coloured. The filtered light. Birds that are on the move all over the place. The space in my chest swells. My head is so quiet. This could be any moment in time. There is no difference from ten thousand years ago. There is no difference from tomorrow. And everything is constantly changing. A hare crosses the road. Looks at me for a moment. I look back and wink. She moves her head down twice, I do the same, then sits down for a moment. Apparently finding this amusing. After observing me for a few minutes her ears go up and she straightens her upper body. She hears something further down the road. I get up. The hare takes a few lazy steps towards what she heard, then pauses and looks back. I follow her carefully. You're ten times faster than me, I think, with those legs of yours. She continues on the roadside. I increase the speed and she makes a few happy jumps.
We walk like this for a hundred meters.
Then there is a woman standing in the middle of the road. Hands on her hips. An old lady. Straight gray hair. A pair of denim dungarees that she has pulled up too high. Black clog shoes.
"Well done Hypathia," she says in a high girlish voice, "you picked her up." she’s talking to the hare, “Good boy, go get your cup of coffee. There's Swiss chard to go with it.”
The hare enthusiastically jumps onto the cart track that leads into the forest.
The woman sighs and looks up as if expecting something from there. Her hands massage her own back. Then she smiles at me, her eyes swimming past, “Hypathia always picks up the guests, she enjoys doing that. I hope you didn't mind?” The old woman takes my arm and we walk together after the hare. As if we've never done anything else.
“That ugly horse of yours is already at dinner. The fat guy had been hungry for a week.” Then she suddenly stops and emits a very high-pitched squeak. She reaches into the verge and pulls out a plant. Roots and all. She smells it and makes a dirty face. Holds it back a little and resumes walking with me.
'What's your name?' she asks. I hesitate. She notices that.
“Sapi,” I say.
"No," she says, "not just the first."
I sigh. Don't say anything. “My whole name is ridiculous,” I say.
That makes her laugh very hard. A very high hi,hihi,hi where you can't help but participate. “Yes, yes, yes,” she says,“ good for you, you have to laugh at your own name.”
I want to ask her what her name is, but she turns away abruptly when I just inhale.
We arrive at an open space. My cart is there. Uglee is standing next to it, gobbling greedily from a zinc container. Further on, a black-stained building. A strange shapeless box. Endlessly carpentered. The outside is full of decorations. Made from grass, branches and found objects. There is an apple tree that still has red apples hanging in it, even though most of the leaves have already fallen from the tree. When I look closer I see that they are hung with strings.
"They all fell out," she says, finding it incomprehensible. She is putting the plant she brought in a pot on a very shaky table under a canopy. Mumbling. Like she’s changing a nappy. A dark bookcase is completely full of those glass jars. All with dead plants in them. Roots and soil placed on top of their contents consisting of a wide range of nails, screws and other tidbits. She places her new acquisition in between.
"There," she says, "ridiculous name, I'll show you where you sleep."
I do not understand. I have ended up in a fairy tale.
The house is half in the ground. It is much larger on the inside than it looks from the outside and there are rods and large gears and drive belts everywhere. The stove is burning. Inside it is very neat and clean. There are cupboards with winter supplies. A bookcase full of old books. Strands of colored wool hang from the ceiling. There is a spinning wheel. I look through a window and suddenly understand. It's a watermill. I saw this in the distance from the bridge. The block of black carpentry that should have become my drawings’ focal point.
“Are you still coming?” she says, already halfway up the wide stairs. We go up two flights. Which I don't think is possible at all. The building is not high enough for that. The attic room is for me. A beautiful wooden bed with a flower bedspread. It smells of sage and mint. I look through the window. From there I can see the river all the way to the bridge. A picture for a picture book.
The old woman has left and I sit on the bed. It's very soft. I put my sketching supplies on the bedside table. A room of my own. Not being on the road for a while. A burning stove. Time to write. Time to draw. And maybe she has something to read.
Magic 😊