Relaxing and then meeting some fellow travelers

For today's episode of BRYAN THE TYGER, our fourfold of friends spends a day by the side of the road, just enjoying the passage of time. Then we get up and start traveling again, and we meet a group of characters coming our way.

P.S.

In other news: my Public Private Diary is fully printed; also I made a list of my latest novels that have been printed but not included in any collection.

Chapter Twenty-Two

We do not tire of reclining among the daffodils. Emily Dickinson is leaning her head against the Panther Myala’s belly. Myala herself is lying in the grass with her forearms supporting the crossed legs of Emily Brontë. Brontë’s head is propped against my Tyger-belly; and, while she talks, my own outstretched forearms are being playfully stroked by the feet of Emily Dickinson.

The women take turns voicing their poems and telling us all the secrets behind them. They also each compose fresh verses impromptu, for the occasion.

Interspersed between these bouts of conversation and poesy, we enjoy long stretches of comfortable silence. During one of these quiet intervals, a fawn wanders out of the nearby woods and comes and trots up to our group. She absentmindedly steps her hoof right on my hind leg and walks thru the middle of our circle, then passes directly before Myala’s snout, even brushing against her whiskers. Once this fawn is a few steps away, we all begin to laugh, and the sound startles her — she freezes in place and looks back anxiously; then sets off at a full gallop.

“Bryan, chase her!” laughs Emily Brontë. “Catch her and eat her!”

I make an offended face: “Non, Mademoiselle.”

“C’mon, what!” Ms. Brontë nudges my ribcage with her elbow; “has our Burning Beast become tenderhearted?”

I shake my vast head “Oui, Mademoiselle.”

We all laugh some more and then eventually fall asleep in the warm sunlight.

§

Hours later, upon awaking, Myala exclaims: “We better get back on the path, if our plan is still to make it to the city before sunset.”

“What’s wrong with walking at night?” sez Emily Dickinson. “I like the night.”

“So do I,” I say; and my soul-fire crackles a little louder.

“Well I’m not against traveling after nightfall, if the rest of you are fine with it,” Myala sez. “I myself fear nothing. But I just thought that we were aiming to reach the Shining City on the Hill before the vampyres come out, because it always burns up several hours whenever we meet them, being that their sermons are always so interesting: we hate to break away.”

“But we are ourselves eternal beings,” sez Emily Brontë. “Are we under any time constraint that you’re aware of?”

Myala cocks her head: “No, I guess not.”

So we all lean and loafe among the daffodils for the better part of the afternoon; then, early in the evening, we finally get back on the yellow brick road.

We trot forward at a pleasant pace, conversing in depth about Nature and the Soul. Then, just before twilight, when our parley’s subject turns to the role of fancy in messianic transmogrification, we notice a group of travelers approaching us — all four appear vaguely humanoid in form: they have locked their arms together and are cheerfully skipping and singing.

Once this group spots us, they halt immediately and break off their song.

“Oh my gosh,” I say to my partner Myala and our riders, “I recognize this posse from a film that I recently watched — The Wizard of Oz (1939) — let’s maul these four zoas!”

Myala and Emily Dickinson hold back while I pounce and go to work, with Brontë hugging tight on my back and whispering soothingly in my ear all the while. But my idea doesn’t pan out well, because the zoas that I end up mauling do not contain any nutriment. The Scarecrow is basically all straw, which is provender fit for Horses not Tygers. (Recall Blake’s proverb: The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.) The Man of Tin is like a can of tomato soup, except without any soup inside; for, when I maul him open, there’s no heart to eat, and thus no blood to suck (blood is my all-time favorite food). Then the Lion-Man mistakenly assumes that I am his double, so, when we meet eyes there in the twilight of the garden, he cancels himself out and becomes a blue phantom, which cannot be devoured because my saber fangs chomp thru tinted air and not into tasty flesh: it’s as vain as the shady couplings of Achilles and Patroclus.

And I cannot bring myself even to attempt to maul the innocent everygirl Dorothy: she’s just too earnest! I’m simply won over when she scolds me for slaying all her travel-mates:

“What have you done, you Terrible Tyger!” Dorothy screams. “Don’t you know that my three friends were the salt of the earth? Lo, I myself am but a farmer’s daughter — I got thrown into this dimension by a tornado from Kansas: I did not ask to be in this dream-book . . .

“And my Scarecrow friend here,” she continues, “I found hanging on a cross, so I took him down and released him from his torment, because I could tell that my father’s kingdom was within him. As Franz Kafka sez:

The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows.

“Yes, my dear friend the Scarecrow, whom you’ve scattered, was a fellow farmhand: he had no brain, therefore he got foreclosed upon by the bank.

“And the Woodsman here, whom you so cruelly pried open with your Tyger-claws like he was a tin of sardines, represents the industrial proletariat, because his congenital heartlessness deprives him of enjoying solidarity with the rest of us suffering workers.

“Finally, my latest acquaintance, Mr. Cowardly Lion, before you caused him to do himself in, stood for the political representatives that are too scared to attempt to solve any of these economic dilemmas for us working-class people. So it’s not too sad that he gave up the ghost — I don’t blame you for his demise; he pretty much deserved to effervesce.”

I listen to Dorothy’s impassioned speech with my Tyger-mouth agape. Then I say:

“I’m truly sorry that I killed and ate your friends; but I am a Tyger of Wrath: I know not what I do. Please forgive me. My name is Bryan, by the way.” (I bow majestically.)

“Did you say ‘Bryan’!?” Dorothy’s eyes widen. “As in ‘William Jennings Bryan’?”

“That’s right!” I smile proudly. “We share the same name.”

“O my stars!” sez Dorothy. “Allow me to apologize for berating you — I assumed that you were Aslan from that stupid book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

My eyes ignite. “Why does everybody keep mistaking me for these fraidy-cat lions!?” I roar. “I slew Aslan back in 1977. Like all chickens, he tasted of guard-dog.”

“Please don’t be upset,” Dorothy steps forward and scratches me behind my ears.

“I forgive you,” I say.

“And I forgive you for eating my travel-mates,” replies Dorothy. “Now that this misunderstanding is behind us, will you allow me to join your quest?”

“But weren’t you coming out away from the Emerald City?” asks Emily Dickinson.

“Yes,” sez Dorothy; “we just finished visiting the Wizard. It turns out that the word ‘Oz’ is short for ‘Ounces’, which is the unit of measurement that bankers use for gold ingots — like this yellow brick road that we’re traveling. I don’t mind going back to the city, if it’s alongside you all — my deceased comrades and I didn’t know what we were doing anyway. Our little dog Toto ran off with a white, pink-eyed rabbit that came racing by; then the four of us beheld a star fall onto Mount Horeb over there, so we were just heading out to investigate, thinking that maybe a savior had been born.”

“Well, our team here just returned from the site of that crash,” sez Ms. Brontë; “so, we can assure you: there is no savior. And you can trust us; we’re all magi. — Hop on, Miss Dorothy,” she pats my haunch and then scoots forward a little.

So Dorothy climbs up onto my strong, wide Tyger-back and straddles me, right behind Emily Brontë. She wraps her arms around Ms. Brontë’s waist and rests her head on her shoulder.

“Gyah!” yells Brontë, and Myala and I both sprint toward the Glowing Green City with our trio of travel-mates.