There are three young men walking quickly along a road.\u00a0They\u2019re in a hurry. They\u2019re going to a wedding. The music has already started.<\/p>\n
They pass an old man who reaches and out touches one of them on the shoulder. The young man stops but his friends don\u2019t notice and continue on.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are late, old man,\u201d the young man says. \u201cI have to go.”<\/p>\n
The old man gazes at him with glittering eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a ship\u2026\u201d<\/em> he says, at which the young man steps back with a startled look on his face and pushes away the man\u2019s boney hand.<\/p>\n \u201cLeave me alone, you loon!”<\/p>\n But the look in the old man\u2019s eyes disorients the young man, and as he steps back, he trips, slumping backward onto a bench.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe sailed into the ocean,\u201d<\/em> the old man continues. \u201cSouthward, with the sun coming up to our left in the morning and setting to our right at the end of day. We sailed, and we sailed until the midday sun was high above us.”<\/em><\/p>\n The wedding music drifts on the air. The young man looks up the hill and can see a light in a door and can see the guests at the wedding. He shifts nervously and tries to get up to leave. But he can not.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd now a great storm came upon us. Black teeth of cloud dipped from of the sky. The tempest whipped the sea and tore at our sails. Crashing swells battered us. The prow bit into towering waves. And the wind sped us far, far to the south, where the air was cold and snow fell from the sky.”<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIce mists bit at our skin. Mast-high icebergs, emerald green, towered beside us and over us, before us and behind us. The ice creaked and groaned and froze our ship for many days. We were doomed.”<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBut then…,\u201d<\/em> the old man says.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then?\u201d the young man asked.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026then out of the bitter winter of that place, an Albatross came flying. And as it circled our ship, the ice around us split. And a wind came up, and the helmsman steered us thru that ice and out into clearer seas.”<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cFor days we sailed, leaving the ice behind. And as we went, the Albatross would circle our ship and sometimes land on the deck and eat from our hands.”<\/em><\/p>\n And now, the old man\u2019s gaze leaves that of the young man. He looks down at his feet. He brings his hands to his face.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I did a terrible thing,\u201d<\/em> he said. \u201cOh, what was I thinking? I did a terrible thing.”<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d says the young man. \u201cWhat did you do, old man?”<\/p>\n \u201cThere on the deck of our ship, saved from the storm and ice, I took out my crossbow, and I\u2026 I shot the Albatross!”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. There are three young men walking quickly along a road.\u00a0They\u2019re in a hurry. They\u2019re going to a wedding. The music has already started. They pass an old man who reaches and out touches one of them on the shoulder. The young man stops but his friends don\u2019t notice and continue on. \u201cWe are late, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3306"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3311,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3306\/revisions\/3311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}