The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

I read this book on my phone. Specifically on a Kindle app on my phone. I remember downloading it so that I would have something to read in places where I had no access to my books. As experiments go, it was a dismal failure.

I find it really hard taking notes on my phone, so I’m not sure that I’m going to have much of an overall thesis to share with you. But here’s Harris’s central thesis for this work as he describes it:

Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds -- and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe. Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena, of course, fully constrained by the laws of Nature (whatever these turn out to be in the end). Therefore, there must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.

And, a few “pages” later:

In my view, morality must be viewed in the context of our growing scientific understanding of the mind. If there are truths to be known about the mind, there will be truths to be known about how minds flourish; consequently, there will be truths to be known about good and evil.

Essentially, there are right and wrong answers to moral questions that are discoverable by science. There are, as far as I can tell, only two presuppositions that undergird that view. The first, when we say morality, we mean the well-being of conscious minds, and the second, there is no such thing as magic.

If you agree with those presuppositions, then Harris’s statements about the scientific discoverability of peaks and valleys on the moral landscape come to little more than a tautology. It is very much like saying A is A. But if you don’t agree with those presuppositions -- and many people do not -- then the ideas in this book can be subversive, and maybe dangerous.

Harris tries to deal with these criticisms in the text itself, addressing himself frequently to philosopher and literary critic Russell Blackford.

By analogy to the rest of science, I have argued that the value of avoiding the worst possible misery for everyone can be presupposed -- and upon this axiom we can build a science of morality that can then determine (yes, “determine”) myriad other human values.

But it is exactly this presupposition -- that “avoiding the worst possible misery for everyone” is a morally valuable goal -- that Blackford, and others, seem to disagree with. Here is Harris quoting Blackford directly.

“[W]e usually accept that people act in competition with each other, each seeking the outcome that most benefits them and their loved ones. We don’t demand that everyone agree to accept whatever course will maximize the well-being of conscious creatures overall. Nothing like that is part of our ordinary idea of what it is to behave morally.”

It seems kind of bankrupt to me -- and to Harris. The Blackfords of the world seem to be saying that “doing what’s good for me and my loved ones” has to be the basis of morality, because we are forever lost in our subjective view of things and can never actually determine objective reality.

Contrary to Blackford’s assertion, I’m not simply claiming that morality is “fully determined by an objective reality, independent of people’s actual values and desires.” I am claiming that people’s actual values and desires are fully determined by an objective reality, and that we can conceptually get behind all of this -- indeed, we must -- in order to talk about what is actually good.

There’s a lot of back and forth like this in the book. In my view, Harris’s critics don’t understand the point he is making because they are dualists. They say our values come from magic and your science can’t touch them. But Harris says, no, your values are science, they have to be, because magic ain’t real.

That’s about the best I can do. But here are a few other paragraphs that I managed to highlight in the text, with the commentary I was able to attach to each with the “notes” function.

Muslim Algebra

Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, we will see that there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality.

Such an amazing point. The morality of human flourishing is a science, not a culturally-derived practice. The parallel to math is insightful. Just because you were taught 2 + 2 = 5 does not mean it’s true. And just because you were taught to stone unruly children does not make that right.

Getting a “What” from an “Is”

While I agree with Moore that it is reasonable to wonder whether maximizing pleasure in any given instance is “good,” it makes no sense at all to ask whether maximizing well-being is “good.”

Is the problem really this easily resolved? Science doesn’t tell us what we ought to do, it tells us what to do to increase well-being. From the “is,” not an “ought” but a “what”?

Pleasure Does Not Equal Moral

What if certain people would actually prefer the Bad Life to the Good Life? Perhaps there are psychopaths and sadists who can expect to thrive in the context of the Bad Life and would enjoy nothing more than killing other people with machetes.

Sam doesn’t give the most obvious answer of all. Just because one person derives pleasure from it doesn’t mean it’s what’s best for human well-being.

It seems clear that ascending the slopes of the moral landscape may sometimes require suffering.

See previous note. Just as human well-being may require things that most people find unpleasant.

Exorcizing the Noble Savage

Robert Edgerton performed a book-length exorcism on the myth of the “noble savage,” detailing the ways in which the most influential anthropologists of the 1920s and 1930s -- such as Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict -- systematically exaggerated the harmony of folk societies and ignored their all too frequent barbarism or reflexively attributed it to the malign influence of colonialists, traders, missionaries, and the like.

Get this book.

Grotesquely Confused

It seems clear that the Catholic Church is as misguided in speaking about the “moral” peril of contraception, for instance, as it would be in speaking about the “physics” of Transubstantiation. In both domains, it is true to say that the Church is grotesquely confused about which things in their world are worth paying attention to.

Amen to that.

Because most religions conceive of morality as a matter of being obedient to the word of God (generally for the sake of receiving a supernatural reward), their precepts often have nothing to do with maximizing well-being in this world. Religious believers can, therefore, assert the immorality of contraception, masturbation, homosexuality, etc., without ever feeling obliged to argue that these practices actually cause suffering. They can also pursue aims that are flagrantly immoral, in that they needlessly perpetuate human misery, while believing that these actions are morally obligatory. This pious uncoupling of moral concern from the reality of human and animal suffering has caused tremendous harm.

Another amazing point. Religious morality measures against God’s happiness, not against the happiness of conscious creatures. Is it any wonder then why it can actually cause suffering, while still being touted as moral?

The Problem with Trolley Problems

I am arguing that everyone also has an intuitive “morality,” but much of our intuitive morality is clearly wrong (with respect to the goal of maximizing personal and collective well-being).

Yes. Like the trolley problems. They measure our flawed moral intuitions.

It seems to me, however, that a science of morality can absorb these details: scenarios that appear, on paper, to lead to the same outcome (e.g., one life lost, five lives saved), may actually have different consequences in the real world.

The essential problem of the trolley problem. They don’t measure the real world.

The Solution?

Would it be possible to design a video game that could help solve the problem of homelessness in the real world?

The big idea. Build things that people want to do that actually solve problems -- homelessness, climate change, etc. What would they be? And what effect would knowing the solving was taking place have on people’s desire to do them? Would they play a game they knew was solving homelessness?

Societal Insecurity

While it has been widely argued that religious pluralism and competition have caused religion to flourish in the United States, with state-church monopolies leading to its decline in Western Europe, the support for this “religious market theory” now appears weak. It seems, rather, that religiosity is strongly coupled to perceptions of societal insecurity.

Big idea -- if true.

Mental Illness?

The boundary between mental illness and respectable religious belief can be difficult to discern. This was made especially vivid in a recent court case involving a small group of very committed Christians accused of murdering an eighteen-month-old infant. The trouble began when the boy ceased to say “Amen” before meals. Believing that he had developed “a spirit of rebellion,” the group, which included the boy’s mother, deprived him of food and water until he died. Upon being indicted, the mother accepted an unusual plea agreement: she vowed to cooperate in the prosecution of her codefendants under the condition that all charges be dropped if her sone were resurrected. The prosecutor accepted this plea provided that that resurrection was “Jesus-like” and did not include reincarnation as another person or animal. Despite the fact that his band of lunatics carried the boy’s corpse around in a green suitcase for over a year, awaiting his reanimation, there is no reason to believe that any of them suffer from a mental illness. It is obvious, however, that they suffer from religion.

God. Go back and read the diagnostic criteria. How are they not mentally ill? Is it just a semantic definition?

It Is Always a Continuum

What if mice show greater distress at the suffering of familiar mice than unfamiliar ones? (They do.) What if monkeys will starve themselves to prevent their cage mates from receiving painful shocks? (They will.) What if chimps have a demonstrable sense of fairness when receiving food rewards? (They have.) What if dogs do too? (Ditto.) Wouldn’t these be precisely the sorts of findings one would expect if our morality were the product of evolution?

What is unique to humans never is. Always a continuum.

Harris at His Best

Thus, Collins’s faith is predicated on the claim that miracle stories of the sort that today surround a person like Sathya Sai Baba -- and do not even merit an hour on cable television -- somehow become especially credible when set in the prescientific religious context of the first-century Roman Empire, decades after their supposed occurrence, as evidenced by discrepant and fragmentary copies of copies of copies of ancient Greek manuscripts. It is on this basis that the current head of the NIH recommends that we believe the following propositions:

1. Jesus Christ, a carpenter by trade, was born of a virgin, ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the collective sins of his species, and then resurrected from death after an interval of three days.

2. He promptly ascended, bodily, to “heaven” -- where, for two millennia, he has eavesdropped upon (and, on occasion, even answered) the simultaneous prayers of billions of beleaguered human beings.

3. Not content to maintain this numinous arrangement indefinitely, this invisible carpenter will one day return to earth to judge humanity for its sexual indiscretions and skeptical doubts, at which time he will grant immortality to anyone who has had the good fortune to be convinced, on Mother’s knee, that this baffling litany of miracles is the most important series of truths ever revealed about the cosmos.

4. Every other member of our species, past and present, from Cleopatra to Einstein, no matter what his or her terrestrial accomplishments, will be consigned to a far less desirable fate, best left unspecified.

5. In the meantime, God/Jesus may or may not intervene in our world, as He pleases, curing the occasional end-stage cancer (or not), answering an especially earnest prayer for guidance (or not), consoling the bereaved (or not), through His perfectly wise and loving agency.

Harris at his best. More of this, please.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens

This post was originally published on a now-retired blog that I maintained from roughly 2005 to 2013. As a result, there may be some references that seem out of date. 

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Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,

Born under one law, to another bound;

Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,

Created sick, commanded to be sound.

—Fulke Greville, Mustapha

So goes one of three epigraphs Hitchens chose to precede his polemic against belief in God and the role of religion in society. And in it, he comes out swinging. This is on page 7, in his introductory chapter titled, sardonically, “Putting It Mildly.”

While some religious apology is magnificent in its limited way—one might cite Pascal—and some of it is dreary and absurd—here one cannot avoid naming C. S. Lewis—both styles have something in common, namely the appalling load of strain that they have to bear. How much effort it takes to affirm the incredible! The Aztecs had to tear open a human chest cavity every day just to make sure that the sun would rise. Monotheists are supposed to pester their deity more times than that, perhaps, lest he be deaf. How much vanity must be concealed—not too effectively at that—in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan? How much self-respect must be sacrificed in order that one may squirm continually in an awareness of one’s own sin? How many needless assumptions must be made, and how much contortion is required, to receive every new insight of science and manipulate it so as to “fit” with the revealed words of ancient man-made deities? How many saints and miracles and councils and conclaves are required in order first to be able to establish a dogma and then—after infinite pain and loss and absurdity and cruelty—to be forced to rescind one of those dogmas? God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.

Reading Hitchens’ prose is a delight in and of itself—he is a master at turning a phrase. But it becomes all that more appealing as he uses that razor wit to skewer the religious rituals and taboos of our human societies.

Across a wide swath of animist and Muslim Africa, young girls are subjected to the hell of circumcision and infibulation, which involves the slicing off of the labia and the clitoris, often with a sharp stone, and then the stitching up of the vaginal opening with strong twine, not to be removed until it is broken by male force on the bridal night. Compassion and biology allow for a small aperture to be left, meanwhile, for the passage of menstrual blood. The resulting stench, pain, humiliation, and misery exceed anything that can be easily imagined, and inevitably result in infection, sterility, shame, and the death of many women and babies in childbirth. No society would tolerate such an insult to its womanhood and therefore to its survival if the foul practice was not holy and sanctified.

Time and again, he sets it up just like that—illuminating the sickening folly of it all in ways most would rather not see—and then drives home his telling and crucial point.

Richard Dawkins created quite a controversy when he wrote in The God Delusion that indoctrinating a child into a religion was a form of child abuse. Hitchens goes even farther and, even though both men are clearly eloquent, Hitchens makes the point much more savagely than Dawkins probably dared.

Now, religion professes a special role in the protection and instruction of children. “Woe to him,” says the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, “who harms a child.” The New Testament has Jesus informing us that one so guilty would be better off at the bottom of the sea, and with a millstone around his neck at that. But both in theory and in practice, religion uses the innocent and the defenseless for the purposes of experiment. By all means let an observant Jewish adult male have his raw-cut penis placed in the mouth of a rabbi. (That would be legal, at least in New York.) By all means let grown women who distrust their clitoris or their labia have them sawn away by some other wretched adult female. By all means let Abraham offer to commit suicide to prove his devotion to the Lord or his belief in the voices he was hearing in his head. By all means let devout parents deny themselves the succor of medicine when in acute pain and distress. By all means—for all I care—let a priest sworn to celibacy be a promiscuous homosexual. By all means let a congregation that believes in whipping out the devil choose a new grown-up sinner each week and lash him until he or she bleeds. By all means let anyone who believes in creationism instruct his fellows during lunch breaks. But the conscription of the unprotected child for these purposes is something that even the most dedicated secularist can safely describe as a sin.

And when Hitchens turns to the child molestation and abuse scandals currently rocking the Catholic Church, his arrows grow additional barbs.

“Child abuse” is really a silly and pathetic euphemism for what has been going on: we are talking about the systemic rape and torture of children, positively aided and abetted by a hierarchy which knowingly moved the grossest offenders to parishes where they would be safer. Given what has come to light in modern cities in recent times, one can only shudder to think what was happening in the centuries where the church was above all criticism. But what did people expect would happen when the vulnerable were controlled by those who, misfits and inverts themselves, were required to affirm hypocritical celibacy? And who were taught to state grimly, as an article of belief, that children were “imps of” or “limbs of” Satan? Sometimes the resulting frustration expressed itself in horrible excesses of corporal punishment, which is bad enough in itself. But when the artificial inhibitions really collapse, as we have seen them do, they result in behavior which no average masturbating, fornicating sinner could even begin to contemplate without horror. This is not the result of a few delinquents among the shepherds, but an outcome of an ideology which sought to establish clerical control by means of control of the sexual instinct and even of the sexual organs. It belongs, like the rest of religion, to the fearful childhood of our species.

Part of me feels I should comment on this, but Hitchens states the case so well and so clearly, I’m not sure my additional commentary is necessary. Perhaps I’ll settle for my own tired refrain. When will the Catholic Church be held responsible for its crimes against humanity?

In this same vein, Hitchens attacks a lot of religion’s other sacred cows, and the myths it has perpetrated about itself in our culture. An extended section is about religion’s role as the source and supporter of slavery, despite the fact some of the abolitionists of the 1850-60s were motivated by their deep religious faith, and the resulting cultural myth that it was religion that brought slavery to an end. Hitchens draws a much different conclusion when he takes into account what the deep religious beliefs of generations of people on the pro-slavery side had done.

Whatever may be the case, the very most that can be said for religion in the grave matter of abolition is that after many hundreds of years, and having both imposed and postponed the issue until self-interest had led to a horrifying war, it finally managed to undo some small part of the damage and misery that it had inflicted in the first place.

Another section examines male circumcision. I mention this only to correct what I think might be a mistake in Hitchens’ text. In addressing objections to interference with something that god must have designed with care—the human penis—Hitchens says that believers of long ago invented the dogma that Adam was born circumcised and in the image of god.

Indeed, it is argued by some rabbis that Moses, too, was born circumcised, though this claim may result from the fact that his own circumcision is nowhere mentioned in the Pentateuch.

Well, here’s a few verses from the English Standard Version of Exodus 4:

24 At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. 25 Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” 26 So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.

I quote this because I’ve heard at least one Bible expert say that “feet” is a purposeful mistranslation of the original “penis,” changed by some of the more puritan defenders of the faith. Supposedly, the reason the Lord sought to put Moses to death in this cryptic little story is that he was uncircumcised, and Zipporah’s actions placated the violent Yahweh, symbolically circumcising her husband by touching the bloody foreskin of her son to his member.

And if that’s not true, then at least consider this version from the King James Bible:

24 And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the Lord met him, and sought to kill him. 25 Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me. 26 So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.

In which it can be more reasonably argued that Zipporah’s actions are meant to show Yahweh that Moses had been circumcised, the proof of “his” bloody foreskin lying at his very feet.

Whatever. It’s a minor point and I’m probably misremembering what I heard. It’s hard to fault an author too badly who fills his book with pithy little observations like this:

In the United States, we exert ourselves to improve high-rise buildings and high-speed jet aircraft (the two achievements that the murderers of September 11, 2001, put into hostile apposition) and then pathetically refuse to give them floors, or row numbers, that carry the unimportant number thirteen.

In other words, if we lived in a world where the number thirteen had to power to harm us, it wouldn’t be very likely that we could master the engineering and mathematics necessary to build tall building and airplanes. Those things work because the world is orderly and predictable, operating in ways that can be understood and leveraged to the advantage of our own internal visions. Despite the protestations of the faithful of all stripes from the beginning of time, the world is not run by magic.

The various forms of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people to be equally true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the magistrate as equally useful.

—Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK TWO:

THE FORGOTTEN TEMPLE

In the time that Gildegarde Brisbane II spent as the Squire of Sir Reginald Ironshield, he learned more about what it was to be a Knight of Farchrist than in all the time he had spent in the King’s School for Boys. In no man since the death of his father had the young Brisbane found the proper guidance and authority he needed to grow and mature into something akin to what his father had been. Under Ironshield’s tutelage, Brisbane learned about such difficult concepts as honor, faith, and charity, not through lessons and lectures as they had tried to do at the King’s School, but through action and observation. For Ironshield was a Knight of Farchrist, and there was no better teacher for a maturing young man than such a figure.

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The day had finally come. Roystnof woke Brisbane before sunrise and told him to get ready quickly. It was a needless reminder, for Brisbane had prepared everything he needed the night before. In less than an hour, as the sun rose out of the Darkmarine, he and a small group of friends would be marching southward in search of a legend.

He began to wash up at his dressing table, just washing his face and smoothing his hair, really. He had taken a luxurious bath the night before, figuring it would be the last one he was to have for quite some time. He tried to contain his excitement about setting off on this new adventure, but he had a hard time doing it. He had only two regrets about the upcoming journey. One, he wished Roundtower was coming along and, two, he wished Dantrius wasn’t.

Roystnof had gathered everyone together the night before and had informed them that, by his invitation, Dantrius would be accompanying them on their trek. No one seemed happy about it, Stargazer especially, but no one put up a major fight about it and the matter was settled.

Stargazer. She had spent the night in the guest room to facilitate their early departure this morning. Brisbane still thought about what had happened in the Shadowhorn, the meeting of Ellahannah and the way he and Stargazer had shared the tent that night. Nothing physical had happened then, but emotionally, Brisbane had reached the point of no return. He was in love with Stargazer, he knew that and he had no trouble admitting it to himself, but he was still fearful to reveal it to Stargazer or to anyone else. He hoped there would be plenty of time in the upcoming journey they could spend together, and in all that time, maybe he would work up enough courage to tell her how he felt.

Brisbane had also thought a lot about Stargazer’s belief that she was a medium through which Grecolus acted. Frankly, he didn’t believe it because, frankly, he didn’t believe in Grecolus. He thought it was a genuine magic power that she had, much like Roystnof’s, and because of her theological beliefs, she had rationalized it into something more acceptable. The only thing that bothered him was how she came to have this power. If it was magic like Roystnof’s, someone had to have taught her how to do it. But according to Stargazer, this was not the case. The first time she had healed someone, she claimed she had simply prayed really hard to Grecolus and the healing had just happened. Brisbane didn’t know. Maybe it had something to do with her elven blood.

Brisbane quickly changed out of his nightclothes and dressed himself for hiking. He was lacing his boots when there was a knock on his door. He sat up and told whoever it was to come in.

It was Shortwhiskers. The dwarf was already dressed for travel and he was lugging with him a heavy burlap sack. “Morning, Gil,” he said and he plopped the sack on the floor.

“Morning, Nog,” Brisbane said. “What’s in the sack?”

“A present,” the dwarf said. “Open it.”

Brisbane looked at Shortwhiskers suspiciously and moved over to the sack. He opened it and saw the gleam of metal inside. He turned the sack upside down and a quantity of chainmail fell to the floor. Brisbane picked it up and found it to be a poncho of sorts, meant to be placed on the shoulders and hang down to the thighs. There was even a belt to cinch it at the waist.

“Try it on,” Shortwhiskers said.

Brisbane placed his head through the hole and settled it onto his shoulders. It was heavier than his leather jerkin had been, but not burdenly so. As he was tying the belt, Shortwhiskers left the room and shortly returned with a helmet and an undecorated shield. He gave them to Brisbane and Brisbane strapped them on. Shortwhiskers took a step back and surveyed him.

“Now,” Shortwhiskers said, “you look like a warrior. Except that you’re too clean.”

Brisbane laughed and thanked Shortwhiskers for all the gifts. Shortwhiskers said it was no problem and told Brisbane to come down and meet everybody out front. He then left Brisbane alone.

Brisbane looked at himself in the mirror for a moment and he decided that he did look more the part of a warrior, but one essential piece of equipment was still missing. He went over to his bed and drew Angelika out from her hiding place. He unwrapped her from the cloth and strapped her to his side. When secure, he drew her slowly from her scabbard. He returned to the mirror and examined himself again, this time holding Angelika in a threatening manner.

Better, he thought. He sheathed Angelika and went downstairs.

Everybody was already gathered out front. Roystnof stood in his red and black traveling clothes, a large black hat placed on his head, shielding his face from the sunlight. Dantrius stood next to him, dressed plainly in earthy colors, his clothes hanging on his thin frame like tent fabric. He wore no hat and his black hair flapped around his sunken face like a tattered flag. He had a line of daggers tucked into his belt. Shortwhiskers stood between two laden pack mules, strapping pieces of his chainmail to his body, and Stargazer stood by him, dressed in warm hunting clothes and shouldering a heavy pack. Like Roystnof, she held a long oaken staff in her hand, but hers was topped with a metal holy symbol, the hand of Grecolus.

They were all rather quiet in the still morning air. Brisbane exchanged looks with each one of them in turn and then settled back to see who would make the first move. It was not going to be him.

It was Roystnof. “Well,” the wizard said. “It seems the time has come. We are off chasing a rumor. Nog says all he knows about the temple we are searching for is that it is reputed to be full of treasure and that it stands at the source of the Mystic River. Both are fine with me and I hope that both of them are true. Our way is obvious, we’ll just follow the Mystic into the Crimson Mountains, but that way will not be easy. The Windcrest Hills lie before the mountains and it is said the Hills are the home for countless orks. No doubt we will bump into a few along the way.”

“Orks are no problem,” Shortwhiskers said as he tied a heavy battle axe to one of the mules. “We should be more worried about the mountains. The southern branch is largely unexplored territory.”

“Quite true,” Roystnof said. “There’s no telling what we will encounter there. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Today, I think we should set our sights on the walled garden in which we found Dantrius last fall. I would like to make our first camp on its southern side. Agreed?”

Everyone readily agreed.

“Fine,” Roystnof said. “Then let us be off.”

And then they were. They quietly left the sleeping town of Queensburg in the wee hours of the morning and started on their journey south by following the shoreline of the Sea of Darkmarine to the mouth of the Mystic River. It was the same route they had taken months ago when they had gone off in search of Ignatius Roundtower, except now they had Illzeezad Dantrius and Allison Stargazer with them.

With the sun rising out of the Darkmarine, they left Queensburg entirely behind them and struck out into open country. As they all settled into the pace that would regulate the long day’s march, Brisbane reflected on their situation.

First and foremost, he was not at all happy that Dantrius had weaseled his way into this expedition. He had never liked the way Roystnof had gotten along with the mage, but he had put up with it through the long winter because he thought it was to be a temporary situation. Roystnof had assured him they were only together to see what they could teach each other and then they would more than likely part ways. So why was Dantrius tagging along now? Admittedly, Brisbane had not followed them closely over the winter so he wasn’t really sure what kind of relationship had developed between the two men. Brisbane feared that Dantrius was becoming a permanent wedge between himself and Roystnof.

But as much as he hated to have Dantrius with them, he was that glad to have Stargazer along. He looked at her now and she gave him a smile. Brisbane was sure she was even more beautiful now than when he had first met her.

“Well now,” she said to Brisbane, eyeing his new armor. “Don’t you look menacing. Isn’t all that heavy?”

Brisbane looked at his chainmail. He shrugged. “Not really. Ask me in a couple of hours. Maybe the answer will be different.”

Shortwhiskers came up behind them. “That’s right, Gil. It sure doesn’t get any lighter.”

The conversation throughout the day remained mostly in the same vein, as all were in good spirits about the prospects of their adventure. Brisbane purposely avoided Dantrius during the march and, unfortunately, that meant he had to avoid Roystnof as well, as the two wizards were practically inseparable. Brisbane again wondered what Roystnof saw in Dantrius that was worthwhile and discreetly kept his distance.

Around noon they stopped for lunch and Shortwhiskers told Brisbane that they were feasting upon the same hill on which his battle with the ogre had taken place.

“How can you tell?” Brisbane asked. The hill looked like any other to him. There weren’t even any remains left of the ogre he had killed.

Shortwhiskers tapped his nose with a stubby finger. “I can smell it,” he said mysteriously and went back to his meal.

Stargazer was very interested to hear the story of this battle and Brisbane sat quietly by while Shortwhiskers recanted the events as he remembered them. When the dwarf was finished, Stargazer came over and sat next to Brisbane.

“That was very brave of you,” she said. “Taking on that ogre alone like that.”

Brisbane shrugged it off. “It had to be done. It was either me or no one.”

“It was still brave,” she said. She put a hand on Angelika’s scabbard. “That must have been before you got this.”

Brisbane pulled away from Stargazer to get her hand off his sword. The action was too severe and he was immediately sorry he had done it. Stargazer looked hurt and Brisbane quickly apologized, saying he didn’t know what had come over him. And he didn’t. It was irrational, but something inside of him did not want Stargazer touching Angelika. But he overrode the irrationality and drew Angelika from her scabbard to show her to Stargazer.

“It is a lovely weapon,” Stargazer said, admiring the large emerald and the intricate carvings on the pommel. “Did you say it used to be Roundtower’s?”

“Yes,” Brisbane said. “He, uh…he gave it up when he left for Farchrist Castle.”

“Why would he leave behind such a wondrous blade?”

Brisbane met Stargazer’s eyes.

—Careful, young Brisbane. She may not want to hear the truth.—

It was Angelika’s voice, echoing eerily in his head. It was the first time she had said something to him in many weeks.

But Brisbane decided not to lie. “She is a magic weapon. A Knight would not carry her.”

Once again Brisbane was struck by the irony of the situation. No Knight would carry Angelika because she was magical, a trapping of Damaleous. But, if what Roundtower had said was true, then Angelika bore the enchantment of Grecolus. Like Stargazer’s healing power, Angelika was supposed to be some kind of good magic.

“She?” Stargazer asked, not understanding Brisbane’s use of the word. “Her?”

Brisbane nodded. “Her name is Angelika.”

Stargazer gave him an uncomfortable look. “How do you know ‘she’ is magical?”

“She told me,” Brisbane said, hating how ridiculous it sounded. “She can talk to me. Ignatius says she has the enchantment of Grecolus.”

“Grecolus?” Stargazer said, seeming astounded. “Gil, don’t tease me.”

“No, Allie, seriously. That’s what Ignatius said.”

“I have heard of such swords,” Stargazer said. “Ancient legends speak of three of them. They were supposed to have been crafted by ancient clerics of Grecolus for use against the forces of evil. Are you trying to tell me this is one of those swords?”

Brisbane had never heard of these legends. “Allie, I don’t know anything about it. All I know is that Angelika talks to me inside my head. After I killed that demon in the shrine she—”

“Wait a minute!” Stargazer interrupted. “I just remembered. Those ancient legends describe the three swords, and each has a gem set into its pommel. One has a ruby, another a sapphire, and the third an emerald. Gil! This is one of those swords.”

Stargazer suddenly took Angelika from Brisbane and held the weapon up in front of her. For just a moment, as Stargazer took the sword from him, Brisbane had an almost overwhelming desire to hit her.

“Gil,” Stargazer said as her eyes bulged in awe. “Roundtower should not have given this sword to you. He should have taken it with him. With a sword like this at his side, he could rise to be Captain of the Knights. No evil could face him!”

Brisbane became suddenly aware of the eyes of Roystnof, Dantrius, and Shortwhiskers upon them. He stood up, took Angelika roughly away from Stargazer, and sheathed her. Stargazer looked up at him with hurt eyes, still kneeling on the ground.

“It wasn’t up to Ignatius,” Brisbane said. “There was no way they would let him become a Knight with a magic sword.”

“A holy sword,” Stargazer corrected.

“No one would see it that way,” Brisbane said, all of his frustration suddenly coming to the surface. “All magic comes from Damaleous, that’s what theologians say today. They would take one look at Angelika and say she was a tool of the Evil One, disguised as a relic of Grecolus, and all who use her are his servants. Why do you think people at the Temple in Raveltown sent you to Dragon’s Peak? You say your healing power comes from Grecolus, but they must have thought you were a sorcerer of dark magic, and they saw the quest against Dalanmire as a good way to get rid of you.”

There was absolutely no noise on that hilltop for perhaps as many as ten seconds. Stargazer stood up in front of Brisbane, her bottom lip trembling and her eyes brimming over with tears. Brisbane realized he had said too much and he opened his mouth to apologize, but nothing came out. Stargazer suddenly turned away from him and ran down the hill to the Mystic.

“Allie, wait,” Brisbane said, starting to go after her, but there was a strong tug on his arm that held him back.

It was Shortwhiskers. “Let her go, Gil. You’ve said enough.”

Brisbane turned to the dwarf. “I didn’t mean to hurt her, Nog. She just started talking about Ignatius and Angelika and I just…I mean, the way she was talking was so…I just…”

“You just told her the way things are,” Shortwhiskers finished for him, “and the way things used to be. You weren’t very gentle about it, but that’s all you did. I think she’ll see that, eventually. Give her some time alone.”

Brisbane turned away from Shortwhiskers and saw Stargazer kneeling down by the river bank. He had not meant to hurt her. That was the last thing he ever wanted to do. It’s just that she was kidding herself if she thought Roundtower could have taken Angelika to Farchrist Castle. They’d have burned him at the stake. Times had changed. No longer did Grecolus and Damaleous fight their battles on earth, each with their own champions and wizardry. Religion had changed. It had become more cerebral and idealistic, and the magic Grecolus might have once worked had been abandoned by the pious as disadvantageous to their position.

But Stargazer would not change with the system. She maintained the religion of Grecolus according to the ancient legends, and ran away from the changing mindset of the day. In her own way, Brisbane knew Stargazer saw herself as justified in her insistence on the old traditions. In her mind, her healing power, Ellahannah, and even Angelika supported her position. To her, they were proof that things hadn’t changed, that Grecolus still had his own kind of magic that would one day drive Damaleous to his doom.

And suddenly, seeing the situation through Stargazer’s eyes, Brisbane realized that perhaps it wasn’t Grecolus who had changed after all. He had always been taught that the holy creator was infinite, immortal, and unchanging. If this was true, then why do the ancient legends no longer apply? Why do the priests and clerics of today consider all forms of magic an evil warping of Mother Nature when, centuries ago, the counterparts to these priests and clerics worked healing spells and forged enchanted weapons in the name of Grecolus? It was not the immortal who had changed, perhaps it was only the mortals running his religion.

Brisbane felt a hand drop on his shoulder. He spun around to meet Roystnof’s eyes. Over the wizard’s shoulder, several paces back and seemingly out of earshot, Dantrius stood with his thin arms folded across his chest.

“Nog is right, Gil,” Roystnof said. “She will see you meant no harm.”

“I don’t know, Roy,” Brisbane said. “I just don’t know. There’s something about her. It’s like she’s living in another time. She doesn’t understand how most people see magic. Any kind of magic. It scares them.”

“She’s a relic of another time, Gil. Perhaps the last of a dead race.”

“But she’s more than that,” Brisbane said.

“Yes,” Roystnof said with obvious second meaning. “She is much more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are in love with her,” Roystnof said. “That is plain for all to see.”

Brisbane took the defensive. Later, he was not sure why. “Is there something wrong with that?”

Roystnof laughed. “Of course not, Gil. Love catches us all eventually. I am actually happy for you. She is quite lovely.”

“Yes,” Brisbane said, looking back at Stargazer by the river. “Yes, she is. Did you know that she is sixty-seven years old?”

Roystnof nodded. “Her elven blood. I understand she will live much longer than that.”

“Do you see anything wrong with that?” Brisbane asked. “I mean, I’ll be dead and buried and she won’t look much older than she does now.”

“Love is for the moment,” Roystnof told him. “Never forget that. If you have love for the moment, hold it tight and treasure it as much as you can. The day you start expecting and planning to have your love always there is the day you will lose it.”

Brisbane was looking at his feet. That sounded awfully pessimistic and cruel to him, but then he realized that life could be pessimistic and cruel. Was it any wonder that love could be, too?

“Come on,” Roystnof said, clapping Brisbane on the shoulder. “It’s time we got going.”

They packed up their supplies and got ready to continue their march. Shortwhiskers went down to the Mystic to tell Stargazer they were leaving. Brisbane had wanted to do it, but both his conscience and the dwarf thought better of it. Shortwhiskers came back and reported that Stargazer needed some time alone and, when they left, she would follow at a discreet distance.

Brisbane felt miserable about the whole affair. As they continued on their journey and Stargazer continued to stay ten to fifteen paces behind the group, his stomach began to churn more and more uncomfortably. Why did she have to take so much offense to what he had said? Why did he have to have said it all? Roystnof and Shortwhiskers had said she would eventually see that he meant no harm by his statements, but Brisbane wasn’t so sure. He wondered if he and Stargazer would ever be as close as they had been.

—Forget her,— Angelika’s voice rang in his head, dark and sultry. —She will only get in the way of your true crusade.—

Brisbane mentally told the weapon to shut up and that she was the cause of the whole problem. Angelika did not talk to him again that day.

They arrived within sight of the walled oasis and still Stargazer had not rejoined their group. Roystnof stopped the march and called everyone together for discussion. Stargazer remained apart.

“We should strike camp on the other side of the garden,” Roystnof said. “In the morning Miss Stargazer can go in and explore what she wants, and then we can be on our way again.”

Dantrius looked at Stargazer. “Maybe we should send someone out to the princess to see if that’s all right with her,” he sneered. “Perhaps the Ambassador,” he said, turning to look at Shortwhiskers, “can say something to her so she won’t become even more estranged.”

Shortwhiskers curtly told Dantrius to shut his trap.

“I’m only concerned for the girl’s welfare,” Dantrius pleaded innocently. “If harsh remarks can cripple her so, I would hate to see her reaction when others start making decisions for her.”

Shortwhiskers took a menacing step towards the thin man but Roystnof interceded. Brisbane watched the whole scene like a distant observer.

“That’s enough,” Roystnof said to Dantrius. “It’s been a long day. Let’s just go make camp.”

They marched around the walled garden, with Stargazer silently following behind, and struck camp when they reached the southern side. While they were all busy constructing the tents and securing the mules, Stargazer quietly came in and set about preparing a meal. Brisbane thought about going over to talk to her but quickly thrust the idea aside. He had no idea what to say.

When all the work was done and the sun had set, Stargazer dished out plates of stew for them from the kettle hanging over the campfire. When Brisbane came to take his from her, he softly said he was sorry and then quickly moved away to eat his meal. Stargazer showed no reaction.

They drew lots for guard duty. Brisbane lucked out and was given the chance for a night of undisturbed sleep. It took him some time to fall asleep, however, even though he was exhausted from the day’s march. He was worried about what Stargazer thought of him now, and he could only hope things would be better in the morning. When he finally did fall asleep, it was with this thought heavy on his mind.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor

Another one of those Pulitzer Prize winning novels added to my reading list without knowing anything about it. 

And this one left very little impression on me. For the sake of posterity, here’s the summary I found on Wikipedia:

A Summons to Memphis is a 1986 novel by Peter Taylor that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1987. It is the recollection of Phillip Carver, a middle aged editor from New York City, who is summoned back to Memphis by his two conniving unmarried sisters to help them prevent the marriage of their elderly father to a younger woman.

As the story unfolds, Phillip reflects on the major incidents in the life of his once well-to-do family, which was forced to leave Nashville during the time of the Great Depression after the older Mr. Carver, a distinguished lawyer, lost a great deal of money in failed investments with his then-friend and business associate Lewis Shackleford. Though this happened when the four Carver children were still in their teens, they recall the event as a great betrayal, and the resulting move had a major impact on them and continues to affect their abilities to build stable relationships and function as adults. Their lives were further dominated by their father as he ended romantic relationships for his children if he disapproved of them for any reason.

Ultimately, the oldest Carver son joined the army and died in World War II. Neither Phillip nor his sisters ever married. His sisters maintain an odd continued adolescence well into their fifties, dressing as though they were still attractive teenagers. Phillip moves to New York and lives with a younger woman whom he will never marry. The "summons" to Memphis in the book's title refers to several events, but chiefly a call by Phillip's sisters to return and help them block their then-octogenarian father from remarrying after the death of their mother.

The book is a rumination on the responsibilities of parents, friendships between men, the relationship between the "old" and "new" south, the nature of revenge and the possibility of forgiveness.

Rumination may be the best word -- a wandering kind of narrative that never seems to settle on any one thing that matters. The only dogeared passage I noted comes very near the end.

By this time of course I accepted Holly’s doctrine that our old people must be not merely forgiven all the injustices and unconscious cruelties in their roles as parents but that any selfishness on their parts had actually been required of them if they were to remain whole human beings and not become merely guardian robots of the young. This was something to be remembered, not forgotten. This was something to be accepted and even welcomed, not forgotten or forgiven.

Too bad I’ve already forgotten it.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Shiloh by Larry J. Daniel

This post was originally published on a now-retired blog that I maintained from roughly 2005 to 2013. As a result, there may be some references that seem out of date. 

+ + + 

The subtitle is “The Battle That Changed the Civil War,” and the author argues that this is the case since no one after Shiloh thought the war would be a thirty-day fight.

It’s another one of those battle histories in which the movements of every unit at every moment is described and mapped, another one of those battle histories that I’m becoming less and less interested in.

Forgive me, sometimes they get so far down into the details that I lose track of which units are Federal and which are Confederate.

Two ways of looking at that.

One. How can I ever hope to understand the war if I get lost on such a basic separation?

Two. When all is said and one, does it really matter which are Federal and which are Confederate?

The war taught them and should teach us that such artificial separations are what caused the war in the first place.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

FARCHRIST TALES

BOOK TWO:

THE FORGOTTEN TEMPLE

At the age of sixteen, Gildegarde Brisbane II stood in the audience hall of King Gregorovich Farchrist II with a slew of other young men to be reviewed and chosen for the elect position of Squire to one of the Farchrist Knights. At sixteen, he was one of the youngest ones there, but he also had some of the best credentials. He had graduated first in his class from the King’s School for Boys, he knew most of the Knights personally, and, perhaps most importantly, he was the son of Sir Gildegarde Brisbane. That year, five Knights had positions open and the first one to choose, Sir Reginald Ironshield, chose young Brisbane to be his new Squire.

+ + +

Brisbane had mixed feelings as the winter passed into spring. On the one hand, he wanted the spring to come so he could set out on another adventure. But on the other hand, he was sorry to see winter leave because he had really come to treasure the moments he spent alone with Allison Stargazer.

Ever since the night of his nineteenth birthday, Brisbane had been spending a lot of time with her, going to her cottages in the morning, spending the day with her and her patients, and going back home again at night. It was a winter full of surprises for him, and the more he saw Stargazer, the more he was sure he was falling in love with her.

One of the first surprises he got came on the first day he visited her. He knocked on the door to the cottage where she tended the ill and it was answered by an old man with a short white beard and a bony frame.

“Hello?” the old man said gruffly. “What do you want?”

Brisbane stammered in his surprise. “I’ve…uh…I’ve come to see Miss Stargazer.”

The old man eyed him dubiously as Stargazer’s voice sounded from the background. “Who is it, Joe?”

Stargazer then appeared in the doorway behind the old man. “Gil,” she said when she saw Brisbane. “I’m so glad you’ve come. Let him in, Joe.”

The old man named Joe stood aside slowly. “I don’t like the look of him,” he said.

“Don’t be silly,” Stargazer said as she pulled Brisbane inside. “Go chop some wood.”

Joe gave Brisbane an intimidating look. “Mind your manners,” he said purposefully, and then left the cottage.

Brisbane couldn’t help feeling nervous. “Who’s he?”

“Oh,” Stargazer said, “you remember him. The old man I was treating when you first came here with Nog.”

“Skinner?”

“Yes,” Stargazer said. “That’s his name. Joseph Skinner.”

“But he looks so different,” Brisbane protested. “So healthy.”

Stargazer nodded. “Amazing, isn’t it? I have a hard time believing it myself. The day you and Nog came to see me was the last time he has had a drink. He’s a changed man. I don’t know what came over him, but I thank Grecolus that it did.”

Not only did it seem that Skinner had given up the drink but he had informally appointed himself Stargazer’s helper and now he did any number of chores around the place without complaint or expectation of payment. He chopped wood for her fireplaces, he washed bandages for her patients, he did just about anything she asked of him. Stargazer would often comment that she hadn’t known how she managed before Joe Skinner had decided to help her.

Skinner’s first assessment of Brisbane was premature, and throughout the winter, as Brisbane spent more and more time there, Skinner’s perception of the young man changed and he eventually came to like him. A boy with his head in the clouds but his feet firmly planted on the ground, Skinner would often say about Brisbane, and Brisbane, despite himself, began to find the old man’s cranky mannerisms likable.

But a healthy and helpful Joseph Skinner was not the only surprise that winter had in store for Brisbane. The second came one day as he and Stargazer sat quietly in her living room watching the snow fall outside. They were just sitting there, Stargazer paging through a large picture book of mythical creatures and Brisbane staring in wonder at her beauty, when they both heard a disturbing sound rising from the threshold of their hearing. At first they couldn’t recognize it, and they spent a few moments looking at each other in confusion, but soon it became apparent the sound was that of many approaching human voices.

They quickly got up and ran to the window. Over the crest of the hill a large group of people appeared, all hurrying along and shouting incoherently. At the front of the group, two men were carrying a third between them, and this third man had a bundle tied around one leg, a bundle that was wet and dripping with blood.

“Dear Grecolus,” Stargazer exclaimed as she pushed her way out of her cottage and into the one next door. Brisbane quickly followed her. Skinner was gone to town for some supplies and it looked like he would have to take the old man’s place in assisting Stargazer with the injury.

“In here, in here!” Brisbane shouted to the men as he stood in the doorway of the second cottage. Behind him Stargazer was preparing the things she would need to treat the man.

Brisbane stepped aside as the two lead men arrived and brought the injured man inside. Brisbane could now see how badly off the man really was. His makeshift bandage—it looked like it had once been someone’s shirt—was tied around the lower part of his right leg, and was absolutely saturated and actively dripping with bright red blood. The man’s flesh was ghostly pale and his eyeballs flickered in his head as he moaned in desperate agony.

The sight sickened Brisbane. As the two men placed the injured man on the nearest bed, it suddenly occurred to him that this could be almost anyone he knew. Shortwhiskers, Roundtower, Roystnof, Stargazer—even himself. There was no real protection against this kind of thing. In the spring he would be setting out on a dangerous adventure with some of the most important people in his life, and there was no guarantee they would all survive. He tried to picture Roystnof dying here before his eyes and it made him so dizzy he had to sit down.

“Gil,” Stargazer said. “Shut that door.”

Brisbane snapped back to reality and forced himself to stand up. He offered an apology to the concerned folk standing outside and slowly shut the door in their faces. They quickly moved over to one of the windows and peered instead through that. Brisbane went over to Stargazer to see if there was anything he could do to assist her.

The two men who had carried the injured man in stood at the end of the bed, one with his hand over his mouth. Stargazer sat next to the bed on a small stool and Brisbane stood over her right shoulder. Stargazer carefully untied the bloody shirt and removed it from the man’s leg.

The wound was horrifying. Something had cut deeply into the man’s leg, something huge and heavy, and it had left nothing behind but destruction. The layers of flesh had pulled away from each other like the walls of a canyon clear down to the bone, which was broken and jagged in several places. The two men at the end of the bed turned their heads away from the sight.

“It was an accident, Miss Stargazer,” one of them said with the accent of the uneducated. “He was chopping wood and the axe glanced off the block.”

Brisbane thought of all the times he had watched or helped Skinner cut wood for Stargazer. This really could have been himself or someone he knew. Brisbane found himself in a state of amazement over the idea of how fragile people sometimes seemed to be.

“Gil,” Stargazer said. “Hold him.”

Brisbane looked at her gravely and she gave him a knowing nod. Brisbane knelt down beside the man’s bed and placed his arms across his chest, pinning the injured man’s body and arms.

Stargazer took a pitcher of liquid from the table beside the bed and began to pour it onto and into the man’s wound. Brisbane saw the man’s eyes fly open in sudden agony and his body seemed to jump off the bed. It took nearly all of Brisbane’s strength to hold the man down, although if they had arm-wrestled in a pub somewhere, Brisbane could have beaten him easily. Brisbane realized Stargazer was pouring alcohol into the man’s wound to cleanse it.

When the man began to scream it became too much for the men at the end of the bed. They fell over themselves trying to get out of the cottage and they left Brisbane and Stargazer alone with the injured man.

It seemed like hours but finally the pitcher was empty and Stargazer had put it aside. The entire bottom half of the bed was soaked with alcohol and it reeked like a distillery. The fumes went directly to Brisbane’s head and made his eyes water.

Then, Stargazer began to sing in that odd language she had used when she had taken Skinner’s pain away. She placed her hands on either of the man’s grisly wound, in a way Brisbane was sure would hurt the man, and she sang softly in a sad melody.

But the man did not flinch at her touch. He lay back quietly in the bed and gently closed his eyes. At first, Brisbane thought the man might have died, but with his arms across the man’s chest, he could still feel it rising and falling with the man’s feeble breath.

Brisbane took his arms off the unmoving man and sat back on his heels. Stargazer’s singing was growing louder and sadder, and Brisbane sat mesmerized as he watched her. The gentle curve of her throat as she formed the sounds and the swelling of her bosom as her diaphragm pushed air slowly out of her lungs—they both seemed enticing to him in a way he could not explain. But even with these exciting sights, the sounds of Stargazer’s singing brought a sensation of unmeasurable sorrow over Brisbane, tears welling up uncontrollably in his eyes.

And then the unbelievable happened. Brisbane saw some movement in the man’s wound and, when he looked closely, he saw that the shattered bone had become smooth and whole again, and the flesh that had been cleaved apart by the axe was slowly drawing itself together.

Brisbane looked at Stargazer’s face as she continued to sing and he saw that her eyes were fixed intently on her work. He looked back to the wound and it was almost entirely closed. A bloodless, shallow split in the skin was all that remained and, in a moment, that too drew shut and all that was left was the thinnest of lines of scar tissue where the wound had once been.

Stargazer took her hands from her patient, stopped singing, and collapsed at the beside.

“Allison!” Brisbane cried as he rushed to her slumped-over form and lifted her from the floor. He picked her up and cradled her like a child—privately amazed at how light she seemed—and as her head fell against his chest, Brisbane heard her say one simple word.

“Rest.”

He kicked the door open and took her next door while the crowd slowly filed in to see what had become of their friend. Brisbane entered her home cottage, carried Stargazer back to her bedroom, and placed her on the bed. He fumbled off her shoes and threw a heavy quilt over her.

“Allison,” he said. “Allison, are you all right?”

Stargazer kept her eyes closed but even in the darkened room Brisbane could see a smile spread across her face. “He’ll be hungry when he wakes up, Gil,” she mumbled to him, drifting off to sleep. “Make sure there’s plenty for him to eat.”

“I will, Allie, I will.” It was the first time Brisbane had called her that.

When Stargazer had fallen completely asleep, Brisbane went back to the other cottage and found the people gathered silently around the bed of the injured man.

“Will Miss Stargazer be all right?” one of the townsfolk asked him.

“Yes,” Brisbane said. “She just needs to rest.”

“She really can work miracles,” another one of them said. “Can’t she?”

“Yes,” Brisbane said. “I guess she can.”

Brisbane asked the people to leave because the injured man needed his rest, too. He thanked them for their concern and for their assistance, and they silently left and made their way back to town.

Brisbane thought a lot in the following weeks about what had happened that day, and he decided that if what Stargazer had done did not count as magic, then he knew of nothing else that did either. What she had done made Roystnof’s spells look like parlor tricks. Brisbane wondered how Stargazer explained her powers in the debate over whether or not magic truly came from Damaleous, but he knew he would never have the courage to ask her about it flat out. Regardless of how Stargazer felt about it, however, Brisbane felt more strongly than ever than magic was not a tool of Damaleous. Here was Allison Stargazer, after all, former high priestess of Grecolus and still a devout servant of her lord, working magic. To say that she worshipped the Evil One in exchange for her powers was even more ludicrous than saying that Roystnof did. Roystnof wasn’t just a fluke. Brisbane felt that he now had two strong cases in which the scriptures were wrong in their assertion that magic was nothing more than a device of Damaleous to make his influence be felt on earth. And, in Brisbane’s mind, if the scriptures were wrong about this one thing—this one thing that seemed so crucial to so many other beliefs detailed therein—who knew in what other respects they might also be incorrect?

But even this experience was not the greatest surprise that Brisbane received that winter. The greatest surprise came late in the season when the temperature was rising and the snow was melting. One day Stargazer came to him and said that she wanted to take him somewhere in order to show him something. She was very close-mouthed about it and would say nothing else except that what she wanted to show him was wonderful and that it was something he would never forget. On both counts, as it turned out, Stargazer was right.

So it was that at dawn on a Friday morning, with the night chill still in the air and the dew frozen upon the ground, Brisbane found himself standing with Stargazer behind her cottages with a pack full of supplies looking at the trees of the Shadowhorn Forest.

They started their march into the forest and although Brisbane asked her many times where they were going, Stargazer continually refused to tell him. She did say it would take most of the day to get there, but she would not even hint as to what their final destination was. Eventually, Brisbane gave up on his curiosity and simply enjoyed the walk and Stargazer’s company.

Even in the shade of the trees the day grew quite warm. The only clue they had that winter had recently been there was the few remaining pockets of snow that clung to life in the more shadowy parts of the forest. The Shadowhorn was, all in all, a pleasant place, with its trees far enough apart to filter some sunlight down to the earthen floor. Brisbane saw all kinds of woodland life, from colorful birds, fresh returned from their southern climes, to small foxes and groundhogs, and even a few deer.

They did not talk much, for somehow their voices seemed too loud in this quiet place, but they did carry on short conversations about the things they saw in the forest and other innocent things.

“How did you do it?” Brisbane asked after a particularly long period of quiet. It had taken him a long time to figure out just how to ask her about the way she had fixed the man’s leg and he hoped she knew what he was talking out.

“How did I do what?” Stargazer said.

Brisbane swallowed hard. “How did you fix that man’s leg?”

“I didn’t, Gil.”

That set Brisbane back for a moment. “What do you mean?” he said. “I was there. I saw you do it.”

Stargazer smiled. “You were there,” she agreed. “You saw the man get healed. But it wasn’t me who did the healing.”

“Then who did?” Brisbane asked.

“Grecolus.”

Brisbane was stunned. “Grecolus?”

Stargazer laughed. “Gil, you didn’t think I could do that kind of thing all by myself, did you? The power belongs to Grecolus. He just sends it through me. I pray to him and he sends it. I’m his medium.”

Brisbane did not like the sound of this at all. The scriptures made mention of special people who could act in this manner for the creator, but they also said that the time of these people had passed long ago. It had been many centuries since the last one had died. Modern theologians had decided Grecolus was so powerful that he didn’t need a medium through which to channel his power. Damaleous did, they said, and that was a sign that he was weaker than Grecolus.

But, the thought suddenly occurred to Brisbane, what were centuries to an elf, creatures who could live for thousands of years? This was, in effect, why elves stayed so secluded from humans. They had a hard time associating with them because a human could live a full life and die in the time an elf spent going through adolescence. Stargazer was a half-elf, and Brisbane did not know how long she would live, but Shortwhiskers had said she was sixty-seven and she looked no more than twenty-five. At that rate, Brisbane supposed, she could live for several hundred years. He would live and die before Stargazer was through middle age. The thought scared him.

“Gil?”

Brisbane looked at Stargazer, tears in his eyes.

“Gil, what’s the matter?” She stopped walking and grabbed Brisbane’s arms.

Brisbane shook his head helplessly. “I don’t know,” he said in choked voice. “I’m just so sad.”

Stargazer quickly embraced him, her head resting comfortably against the swelling of his chest, and Brisbane dumbly brought his arms up to return the embrace.

“Do not be sad, Gil,” Stargazer said. “I am taking you to a happy place. What you see there will fill you with so much joy. It really will.”

“I hope so, Allie,” Brisbane said. “I really do.”

They broke their embrace and continued quietly on their trek through the Shadowhorn. Brisbane did not bring up Stargazer’s healing power again, but he thought about it a lot to himself.

The power was Grecolus working through her, she had said. Brisbane knew a lot of people would consider that to be a statement of the insane, like one of those people who kills their family and then claims that Grecolus had told them to do it. He appeared to me in a dream, they would say, and told me my wife was evil, she was possessed by demons. I had to kill her. I had to. The problem was that Stargazer did not sound crazy when she made her claim and, if she had, Brisbane wouldn’t have believed her to be anyway. She honestly believed Grecolus was working his will through her. She believed magic was the tool of Damaleous and believed, in effect, that she was the tool of Grecolus.

But Brisbane knew just because she believed it was so, that did not make it true. Roystnof had told him years ago that there were plenty of people who worshipped Damaleous because they honestly believed that was where their magic powers came from. It wasn’t true, Roystnof said, magic came from within the individual, but they believed it anyway. And in their minds, the believing is what made it true for them.

Brisbane supposed it was the same with Stargazer. She believed the healing power belonged to Grecolus and not to her, and in its own way, that belief alone made the healing power Grecolus’. Faith was a very powerful thing, whether it was misplaced or not. Brisbane was sure Roystnof would tell him that if Stargazer ever, for some reason, believed Grecolus no longer wished to use her as a medium, she would suddenly be unable to heal so much as a paper cut, even though the power still remained within her.

Eventually, their journey in the Shadowhorn came to an end. The day was ending as well and the sunbeams that came through the foliage were becoming more and more angled. A clearing was up ahead, Brisbane could see it through the trees, but it was small and Stargazer stopped him before they entered it.

“We have arrived,” Stargazer whispered as she crouched to the forest floor.

Brisbane knelt down as well. He was obviously expected to do so. There at first seemed to be nothing special about this particular place in the forest but, as he looked closer, Brisbane saw that the trees ringing the small clearing were fruit trees and were wholly unlike the oaks and maples they had been walking amongst all day. Brisbane could not tell what kind of fruit they bore, it was unlike any fruit he had ever seen, but the trees were all at the peak of fullness. Their fruit was plump and ripe, and they seemed to be covered with tiny pink flowers, whose petals would gradually come loose in the light wind and rain down upon the small clearing, covering the floor like a new-fallen snow. A small creek meandered through the center of the clearing and some of the petals fell onto its surface to be lazily borne away on the gentle currents.

“It’s beautiful, Allie,” Brisbane whispered. That, too, seemed expected.

Stargazer smiled. “Now, Gil, you must stay here. I’m going into the clearing to call Ellahannah. If you come out to soon, she will run away or never even come.”

“Ellahannah?”

Stargazer’s smile broadened and in that moment Brisbane saw just how much elf and how little human she was. She might have genetically been half and half, but at that moment she seemed nearly entirely elf, a capricious and lovely creature, more magical than mundane, who watched the toil and pain of every man’s life and thought it the ultimate joke of mortality. A creature whose longevity was only surpassed by her happiness and her love of life. Brisbane expected her at any moment to float off the ground, too mystical to be affected even by the planet’s gravity.

“You’ll see,” Stargazer said. “Just don’t come out until I call you. Promise?”

“I promise, Allie.”

Stargazer stood up and picked a few pieces of fruit from the nearest tree and then crouched back down next to Brisbane. She quickly kissed him on the nose and then skipped out into the clearing, her feet shuffling through the fallen petals. She went right up to the edge of the small creek and stopped on its bank. She looked around mysteriously and, when satisfied that no danger was near, put her fruit-filled hands behind her back and lifted her chin.

“O, Ellahannah,” she sang, her voice washing back to Brisbane like a warm breeze. “Won’t you come and play today? I have some fruit for you; so won’t you come and play today? O, Ellahannah.”

Brisbane watched, and nothing seemed to be happening. Stargazer waited patiently and then sang her verse again. Brisbane searched the trees for something and, as Stargazer finished her recitation, he began to see movement deep in the trees on the other side of the clearing.

He crouched even lower in the underbrush in which he was hiding. He watched the shape move among the trees, weaving between them effortlessly. He actually saw what the creature was several times, but his mind kept refusing to see it, refusing to believe it could possibly be seeing what it was seeing. It wasn’t until Ellahannah stepped into the clearing, and into Brisbane’s unobstructed vision, that he fully realized what manner of creature she had to be.

The glossy black hooves, the shining white coat, the wisps of gossamer hair that wafted from the neck and the hind and the backs of the legs, the spiraled horn of gemstone gold—it was all there. Ellahannah was a unicorn.

Stargazer looked back at Brisbane and smiled. She then turned to the unicorn and held her arms out to show her the fruit. Ellahannah nickered, her voice sounding like a summer breeze drifting through wind chimes, tossed her head back, and trotted over to Stargazer. She came to stand on the other side of the small creek and stretched her neck across to nibble at the fruit in Stargazer’s hand. While the unicorn ate, Stargazer stroked the animal’s nose with her other hand, talking to her in soothing tones. Brisbane could not hear what Stargazer was saying, but she seemed to talk for quite some time. After Ellahannah had finished the fruit, Brisbane would have sworn the unicorn responded to what Stargazer was saying in much the same way a human would have. Although Ellahannah never spoke a single word, the two of them certainly seemed to be carrying on a conversation.

Finally, Stargazer turned back to Brisbane. “You can come out now, Gil,” she said. “I’ve told Ellahannah all about you and she wants to meet you.”

Brisbane stayed where he was. He looked cautiously at Stargazer and at the unicorn standing behind her, both looking directly at him and waiting patiently.

“Well, come on, silly,” Stargazer said. “And bring some more fruit with you.”

Brisbane slowly stood up. He reached up and picked three pieces of fruit and then stepped out into the clearing. He kept his eyes on Ellahannah as he made his way toward the center, expecting her to shimmer and vanish at any moment. But she did not. Before he realized it, Brisbane found himself standing next to Stargazer on one side of a trickle of a stream with an honest-to-Grecolus unicorn standing not two feet away from them.

Ellahannah was small, that was the first thing that struck Brisbane, much smaller than all the legends he had heard about unicorns would have led him to believe. She was more pony-size than horse-size, with her nose only coming up to Brisbane’s chest and her horn up to his eyes. She nickered again and began to eat the fruit right out of Brisbane’s hands.

“She likes you,” Stargazer said.

Brisbane was amazed. He had only heard of unicorns before in legend. They were supposedly creatures of such incredible goodness and magic that they could not even be touched by evil. He never expected to have one eating fruit out of his palm.

“Allie,” Brisbane said. “How could… I mean, how did…”

Stargazer chuckled. “It’s a long story, Gil. Let’s just say I always knew she was here. She used to call to me before I knew her, call to me to come and see her. At first, I thought I was going crazy, but one day, her call became so strong that I just followed it into the Shadowhorn. That was the first time we met.”

Ellahannah continued to eat.

“When was that?” Brisbane asked.

Stargazer smiled. “Years ago. Before I met you. Before your father’s death. Before the expedition to Dragon’s Peak. Even before I entered the Temple of Grecolus. It was before everything.”

Ellahannah finished eating and raised her head to Brisbane. She nickered again.

“She’s accepted you,” Stargazer said. “Now you can come here, too. You can call her like I did.”

“I can?”

“Certainly,” Brisbane said. “Isn’t she beautiful, Gil?”

“She is,” Brisbane said.

Ellahannah turned to Stargazer and the woman patted the unicorn on the nose again.

“Goodbye, Ellahannah,” Stargazer said.

“Goodbye?” Brisbane did not want the unicorn to leave.

Stargazer nodded. “She can never stay long. I’m not really sure why. Her visits are short, but they are healing. Don’t you feel better just being around her?”

Brisbane reflected. He did feel better. He seemed more at ease. His heart and mind seemed tranquil and they had stopped their usual arguing.

Ellahannah turned to Brisbane.

“Touch her, Gil,” Stargazer said softly. “Touch her and you’ll feel even better.”

Brisbane extended a hand and placed the palm against the unicorn’s nose as Stargazer had done. His vision blurred and for a moment he could not see. But he could feel, and what he felt was not himself. For the briefest of moments he felt Ellahannah, not just the softness of her hair or the warmth of her body, but Ellahannah herself, the consciousness held inside the shape of a unicorn. She was special, so brimming over with love and goodness that evil and coldness were not only unacceptable, they were unthinkable. Hers was a life of joy, a rejoicing of everything, an existence that was blessed and would never end. When that moment was over, and Brisbane could only feel himself again, he quailed, for never before had he felt the full extent of his loneliness, never before had he felt the true magnitude of his uncertainty, never before had he felt the ever-pressing demand of his own mortality.

“Healing,” Brisbane said, insanely savoring the irony of the word.

Ellahannah turned and trotted out of the clearing, seemingly oblivious to the condition in which she had left Brisbane. In moments she was weaving among the trees of the Shadowhorn again, and moments after that she had disappeared from sight. Stargazer led Brisbane out of the clearing, back the way they had come. They walked a respectable distance from the clearing and then stopped. The sun was setting.

“We’ll have to camp here for the night,” Stargazer said and she began collecting wood for their dinner fire.

Brisbane unshouldered the pack he had been carrying, which contained the bulk of their supplies, including a small tent. He went about the business of setting it up. The experience of meeting Ellahannah was heavy on his mind for the rest of the evening, so much so that he had not even considered how awkward he would feel sharing such a small tent with Allison Stargazer.

“Allie,” he said as they ate the dinner she had prepared. “Why you? I mean, why do you think Ellahannah called to you?”

“I don’t know,” Stargazer said. “I suspect my elven blood had something to do with it. I was raised and have lived among humans all my life, so I know surprisingly little about my father’s people, but theirs is an existence deeply rooted in mystical forces and creations. Ellahannah is also such a creature. Perhaps she could sense me so near. As far as I know, there are no others of her or my kind in the valley.”

Brisbane absorbed this. “What do you think she is?” he asked, knowing that this was an important question. In much the same way she viewed her healing power as important, Brisbane knew she would see her visits with Ellahannah as important.

“I believe,” Stargazer said, “that Ellahannah is an angel, a messenger from Grecolus to me, to help me do his work and to live by his word.”

Brisbane nodded. He could understand why Stargazer thought that and he had suspected such a response from her. “Has Ellahannah ever revealed herself to you as such?”

Stargazer looked at him narrowly. “What do you mean, Gil?”

Brisbane paused, searching for the best words. “When you two…communicate. Has she ever said specifically that she is an angel sent from Grecolus?”

“No,” Stargazer said. “But I don’t doubt it for moment. I feel the truth of it in my heart.”

Brisbane nodded again and they both went quietly back to their meals. Ellahannah, Brisbane realized, was the force that had pushed Stargazer along her path of service to Grecolus. Raised by her human mother, Stargazer had been given the rudiments of Grecolus’ religion as a young girl and, when she had heard and followed Ellahannah’s mysterious call, she had tied the unicorn’s existence into the mythology her young mind was forming. For angels on earth, like mediums that Grecolus used to channel his power, were things that were spoken of as commonplace in the scriptures, in the long ago, but were all but unheard of today. No wonder Stargazer was rooted so deeply in the ancient worship of Grecolus. She found herself surrounded by ancient things.

“Gil?”

Brisbane looked at her in the firelight. “Yes, Allie?”

“What do you think Ellahannah is?”

Brisbane finished his cup of canteen water, knowing as he drank that this question was even more important that the one he had asked Stargazer. “I believe,” he said slowly, “that she is a unicorn. I’m not yet sure what that means.”

Stargazer seemed to accept that response stoically. They ended their meal and their conversation about Ellahannah and prepared themselves for the night’s sleep. The thought of winter returned with the darkness as the temperature dropped to a chilly extreme. Even with the blankets in the tent, they would sleep with most of their clothes on to combat the cold and, for Brisbane, what could have been a painfully awkward situation became one of surprisingly little discomfort.

When all was cleared and stowed away, Brisbane and Stargazer shed only their shoes and crawled into the small tent and under the blankets. Contact was unavoidable in such a small space and rather than try hopelessly to preserve her personal space, Stargazer actually encouraged that they huddle close. It would help to keep them warm, she said.

As far as warmth went, however, Brisbane was sure Stargazer got the better part of the deal as her small frame fit neatly in the pocket created by his arms and bent legs. But Brisbane did not and would not complain. It felt good to hold Stargazer so, and once he got over his initial shyness, he reached a state of relaxation he would have scoffed at the possibility of before. Upon reflection, Brisbane decided to himself that only thing better than falling asleep with Stargazer in his arms was waking up with her still there.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Black Boy by Richard Wright

This is a complicated one.

One evening I heard a tale that rendered me sleepless for nights. It was of a Negro woman whose husband had been seized and killed by a mob. It was claimed that the woman vowed she would avenge her husband’s death and she took a shotgun, wrapped it in a sheet, and went humbly to the whites, pleading that she be allowed to take her husband’s body for burial. It seemed that she was granted permission to come to the side of her dead husband while the whites, silent and armed, looked on. The woman, so went the story, knelt and prayed, then proceeded to unwrap the sheet; and, before the white men realized what was happening, she had taken the gun from the sheet and had slain four of them, shooting at them from her knees.

I did not know if the story was factually true or not, but it was emotionally true because I had already grown to feel that there existed men against whom I was powerless, men who could violate my life at will. I resolved that I would emulate the black woman if I were ever faced with a white mob; I would conceal a weapon, pretend that I had been crushed by the wrong done to one of my loved ones; then, just when they thought I had accepted their cruelty as the law of my life, I would let go with my gun and kill as many of them as possible before they killed me. The story of the woman’s deception gave form and meaning to confused defensive feelings that had long been sleeping in me.

They call Black Boy a memoir, and autobiographical account of Wright’s youth and young adulthood, peppered with honest and awful accounts of racial prejudice, oppression, and violence.

Perhaps. In its bones the story is undoubtedly that. But more to the literary point, I say Black Boy is actually the weapon that Wright had long dreamed of smuggling into white consciousness, unfolding it from its sheet just as it was convinced that he had been crushed, that he had accepted its cruelty as the law of his life.

In this regard, its power comes far more from its emotional truths than its factual ones.

For example, if you can, read the scene in which Wright’s white employers engineer and egg him on to fight another young black man working nearby. Read that one with this perspective in mind, that what you are reading is less a description of what actually happened and more a crystallization of what is emotionally true, and you might get a sense of what makes Black Boy so powerful.

I had to make my rounds of errands to deliver eyeglasses and I stole a few minutes to run across the street to talk to Harrison. Harrison was sullen and bashful, wanting to trust me, but afraid. He told me that Mr. Olin had telephoned his boss and had told him to tell Harrison that I had planned to wait for him at the back entrance of the building at six o-clock and stab him. Harrison and I found it difficult to look at each other; we were upset and distrustful. We were not really angry at each other; we knew that the idea of murder had been planted in each of us by the white men who employed us. We told ourselves again and again that we did not agree with the white men; we urged ourselves to keep faith in each other. Yet there lingered deep down in each of us a suspicion that maybe one of us was trying to kill the other.

“I’m not angry with you, Harrison,” I said.

“I don’t wanna fight nobody,” Harrison said bashfully, but he kept his hand in his pocket on his knife.

Each of us felt the same shame, felt how foolish and weak we were in the face of the domination of the whites.

This is not a story about the facts of two men fighting. This is a story about the emotions of shame and weakness they feel.

Eventually, Wright and Harrison do fight.

I lashed out with a timid left. Harrison landed high on my head and, before I knew it, I had landed a hard right on Harrison’s mouth and blood came. Harrison shot a blow to my nose. The fight was on, was on against our will. I felt trapped and ashamed. I lashed out even harder, and the harder I fought the harder Harrison fought. Our plans and promises now meant nothing. We fought four hard rounds, stabbing, slugging, grunting, spitting, cursing, crying, bleeding. The shame and anger we felt for having allowed ourselves to be duped crept into our blows and blood ran into our eyes, half blinding us. The hate we felt for the men whom we had tried to cheat went into the blows we threw at each other. 

And that’s really the allegorical key to the scene. The fear, the shame, the hatred -- expertly turned against each other by the power that they are both defenseless against.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.