Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls - Jane Lindskold [29]
I giggle. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.”
“Something like that,” she replies. “Abalone will teach you well how to build up the treasure we all need to survive in this sorry world—and she’ll do it far better than I ever could. But”—again the finger wags—“man does not live by bread alone. Sometimes, once those physical cravings are satisfied, the real hunger for ‘why’ rather than ‘what’ and ‘how’ awakens and that’s a much harder hunger to satisfy.”
We hurry across a Park to which cold has returned. Professor Isabella has a roll of charge slips ready in her pocket and whenever we pass a person sheltering under a roadway or in a door, she drops one. I can see the guilt on her face and know that she wonders why she, rather than one of them, is comfortable in an apartment with heat and plenty to eat.
Today, the Christmas tree and its soaring angels are gone and we concentrate on the medieval Christian art that is displayed in the gallery. Professor Isabella quietly tells me tales about saints, apostles, and martyrs.
I soak up the stories and look at the figures: Peter, well-meaning but humanly flawed; bald Paul, with the fanatic’s light in his eyes; beloved John, younger than the rest; Mary Magdalene, the Tail Wolf who loved Jesus. The novelty of face and form given to figures I know from the vast amount of Biblical lore in my memory fascinates me. My delight is so great that I can nearly ignore the voices that whisper to me from the gilded statues and the flat faces in the large-eyed paintings.
Wisps of prayers come to my ears, offered by the devout to the god and saints they could not help but believe stood before them embodied in stone or painted wood. Processional statues mourn the loss of garlands and finery and the pomp that attended them on their special days. Censers breathe out memories of the pungent scents that once seeped in heavy white clouds from the red/white charcoal within them to perfume cathedrals and small wood and thatch churches alike.
I shake my head and grab Betwixt and Between, letting their spikes dent my hand, the dull pain helping to clear my head. I concentrate on the pictures of the four evangelists on the corners of an altarpiece. The words attributed to them are engraved in my memory and I love these men for giving me tongue. Each is shown as a symbol: ox, man, eagle, and lion.
Professor Isabella comes up beside me, slipping easily into her role as lecturer.
“These symbols are probably adapted from the Assyrians, an ancient people from one of the regions through which the Hebrews journeyed. Archaeologists, that is people who study a culture by trying to guess what it was like from the ruins, have found these same emblems in the Assyrian ruins. They have painfully pieced together what we believe they represented for the people who made them: gods, heroes, sacred guardians. If only the stone and clay could speak!”
I wrinkle my brow. “The very stones prate of my whereabouts?”
She misunderstands my question. “Yes, exactly—the archaeologists study the stones to make them ‘prate’ of the people who once built with them. Come along, Sarah, I’m tired, and a cup of tea would ready me for our walk home.”
Still reflecting, I trail after her. As we sip tea and hot chocolate in the museum cafe, I am silent, busy making plans. I don’t believe that Professor Isabella, tired as she is, even notices.
The museum gives faces and personality to many of the people whose words live in my brain. Portraits show me faces of people famous and not. Some of these are only remembered because they were the subject of a famous artist. These continually mutter indignantly of their lives: the rooms in which they hung, the history of those they glorify. Over the course of many trips, I am learning to listen without becoming lost in the chatter of the inanimate spirits.
Sometimes I come out