#54: of Wickedness

Spin the wheel of chance tonight if your joints will allow it, young one, then somersault to your respected position in bed, on your side, hand buried deep in your hair to cradle your thoughts, palms massaging clouds under the scalp they hover in comforting circles, fingers weaving through coarse clumps of braids

Rainstorms feeding apple trees from sapling through dark-barked age producing nine thousand apples before the lightning strike fells this one over the well-beaten path, obstacle to some and then opportunity in the making: a warm place a home a chair a door, and always you dream of the woodsman in these circumstances of apples and trees though not always breadcrumbs, you know where those lead, but the constant woodsman who protects this place in broken sunlight and darkness, the one who will ward you from the bad apples and fingers who grasp them attached to clotted boils and shredded features under dark robes, and the wart proudly protruding above a crooked smile - you the seasoned young story listener will know the justice served to any with warts, the oven the chopping block the poison apple returned, in this place where colors in cloth match those of character and the disfigured ugly contain concentrated evil under the grizzled lump on the face of terribleness, the mark of Cain in slumber land

And this you consider at length upon finding a hard spot on your toe which is frozen with air from a can and falls off in minutes, evil caused by a minor transgression perhaps but nonetheless doing damage in the dreamscape, the warted wicked holding a debutante feast in your honor at their crooked banquet of fawn bones discarded with meat still clinging, bodies covered in clustered warts, laughing in pain and stinking spirits while you sit not among them but in their honor on high throne above their smoldering masses of red in black, your sight unhindered, you spy with darkening eyes a woodsman retrieving his axe from wide stump and returning to the light, he weeps the loss of your innocent goodness as would you if your tears had not cracked dry between goblets, had you noticed your fingers creaking out of sync with hand, the blisters and blotches spreading as through tainted water across your childness, warts unimpeded sprout in masses through the autumn of your body across your hands which greedily snatch fruit from feast to devour through screams, the screams turn from delight, the shrouded figures fall by threes, apples rolling from their gnarled fists banging stony ground, ragged sighs

Spin the wheel of chance again and cast your lots for who will fall under spells of words tonight, young one, under covers when the spines of stories fold dark on pages and books are laid to rest, who sees the woodsman's goodness fade under the hunter's moon, even the good kill on empty stomach, and while warts may spread in evil on one spinning wheel, the sheen of beauty in another, on soft skin and strong feature, in muscle and protection and hands for holding axes that lead you from danger to the place called safe, in a bed to rest between red flannel sheets your trusting lids fall heavy, and he is all the more beautiful for his actions tonight, you will stay young here, young and trusting, free of warts in this eye and covered in another, but sleeping in common and always young