Loneliness Has Nothing To Do With People

Loneliness Has Nothing To Do With People


The woman, bent and aged, who bequeathed me this fine armor and trained me in the arts of war, spoke words to me as I left that have clung like leeches, sucking all truths but hers from the world: loneliness has nothing to do with people.  I thought her wrong, and waved cheerfully as I left her walled courtyard.  She is with me yet, and I feel now the truth of her damnable – and damning – words.  With one sentence she devoured the best pieces of my life and left me with only the bones.
         But in those times I thought my life still had flesh.  I laughed at her and blazed my trail far from her walled courtyard.  Yet she is with me still, her words and their truth gnawing at the very bones of my soul.  I wound through the lives of others, touching them as I might, using the skills she had taught me.  They called me hero, and knight-errant, for I had no lord.  I made the days better, easier, sweeter for my touch upon their lives.  I grew renowned for my skill, for my daring, for my caring.  No one suffered at my hand, and I took a piece of each life with me as I forged new paths.  Everywhere I went, I gathered people into my life, however briefly.
         And yet the old woman was correct.  I was lonely.  And for every person I met, took into my life, the loneliness grew, as though people only fed this great leech that was loneliness.  I thought then to starve the loneliness.  I left the people behind me, and made a walled courtyard of my own in the deep woods, where people did not go.
         But still it would not abate.  It would not fade, but grew stronger every waking moment.  For five years I suffered alone at its mercy, until I received word that the kings had changed, that once more there was a need for knights-errant.  Again I rode to rescue others, and still the loneliness grew, until I was little more than loneliness within armor.
         I rode back to the old woman’s courtyard and battered on her doors until she answered.  I spoke words of pleading, asking against my heart’s hope that she would remove the curse she had laid on me for leaving her gates.  She refused, and drove the words deeper.  In anger, I seized her and carried her with me on my journey.  She merely smiled, and sat high in the wagon.  She spoke no more to me, deaf to my pleading, to my begging.  And so we rode on, and as I rescued people, they joined my retinue, riding in the wagon with my old teacher.  At every town I collected more people, hoping their noise, their words, would drive away the words of my teacher.  But under my skin I was only the bones of myself.  Blood, flesh, all had gone to feed the loneliness.  Inside my armor I grew gaunt, and weak, and too feeble to add to my retinue.  When they would have scattered I held them with promises, then threats, but their words grew shrill and grating.
         Others rode against me now, the men of a king unfit for ruling.  And my retinue spoke against me, called for help, for rescue from me. 
         And I understood the old woman’s words at last.  Loneliness has nothing to do with people.  I released my retinue, and they are at last silent, speaking no longer against me.  They have forgiven me.
         Their corpses litter the road, freed of the wagon-cage and the cage of their bodies.  They are no longer lonely.  Freed of their own minds they are together.  They will welcome my coming, who freed them from loneliness, but that time has not yet come.  I have learned how to break my curse.  Every man lives only in his own head.  There can be no joining of minds unless the heads are freed of their bodies.  I have hung the heads of my retinue from a great oak, and there they speak softly, conversing in their new freedom. 
         I am skin and bone, filled with words of loneliness.  I will remain here until another knight comes to seek me out, to see to my death.  I shall grant him my armor and beg the chance to end my own life – the last honor allowed even a fallen knight – and if he is a true knight, he will grant it.  I will wait until he has ridden away, and I will be lonely for the last time.  For in the oak there is a thing made of my sword and supple branches of the willow, which will take me from my cursed body and leave me free among the spreading branches. 
         Loneliness has nothing to do with people.  It is the fear of one’s own mind.  I have defeated my last enemy and go with pleasure to my own mind.  I will be lonely no more forever.