Blackthorne
The three lovers adopted the gesture. Whenever one left the farm to do something brave or difficult or dreaded, two watched from the porch.
Or even in the everyday, banal comings and goings, they’d text each other: Watched until I couldn’t see you anymore.
Because you are much woman. Or, Did you a Kiku-san, because you are much man.
“Liko-san,” Dane said, staring at the empty road. He didn’t bow, but his eyes closed and his chin dropped a bit. Whatever had brought Liko here, it deserved honor.
He opened his eyes, no longer sixteenth-century samurai but modern schmuck.
If he doesn’t remember me, then what is he doing here?
He went back inside. Changed his mind and went out again. Decided he should get a jacket and went back in. Glared at the bewildered Salma. “May I help you?”
He bundled up, got a flashlight and opened the door, this time waiting for Salma to go first. Only a little streak of lemon yellow lit the western skies, and a single star had emerged over the Pub.
Dane headed through the pergola walkway and up the farm road.
He passed a low-slung stone outbuilding and its sign: The Spa at Schoenfeld’s.
Two cars were parked in its small gravel lot and the upstairs windows glowed with a dim, peachy light.
Dahlia Bridges was obviously with her last massage appointment.
They walked on together, the Australian Shepherd and the Great Dane, past the big barn, the greenhouses, the chicken coop.
Taking the trail that split off and meandered through the woods—a path beat into the earth from all the years Ethan, Dane and Nomi walked to their most sacred place on the Schoenfeld’s property.
When Dane emerged into the clearing, a crescent moon was rising above the treetops.
The space was about two hundred yards across and almost perfectly round.
In its center was a block of rough granite.
Weirdly solitary, as if placed by aliens, or a massive stone wall had been meticulously dismantled rock by rock until only this monolith was left.
No one knew how it had gotten here. John and Mary Schoenfeld said it was always here and Mary’s parents confirmed.
The rock was part of the farm, a favorite picnic and play spot for generations.
It remained unadorned until Ethan took a chisel to it, because whenever an artistic medium threw down a gauntlet, Ethan couldn’t not take it up.
He experimented on a natural depression in the top of the stone, enlarging it into a shallow bowl, perfect for little ceremonial fires. Next he wanted to carve a Green Man on one short end of the block, and a Three Hares motif on the opposite end. Because how hard could it be?
“Fuck a duck, this is hard,” he grunted, sweating and swearing over his labors. He only managed a pair of crude eyes and a couple of leaves before walking away in frustrated disgust. It was one of the few times Dane and Nomi saw him start something he couldn’t finish.
Ethan was Ethan though, and when an artistic endeavor was thwarting him, he threw information at it. The man was a genius, but he had no need to be the smartest person in a room. He made some calls, read some books, talked to experts and gathered intel.
“What the hell are you thinking,” a friendly but gruff stonemason said. “No experience whatsoever, you just leap right into intricate, freehand bas relief? Good lord, even Michelangelo drew out a plan before he started cutting.”
“Yeah, I’m definitely out of my league here,” Ethan said.
“Take my advice: It’s way easier to chisel into the stone than chisel out of it. Don’t be Michelangelo. Be Hammurabi. Keep it simple and draw a guide, for crying out loud.”
Ethan came back to the block with a better set of chisels and his humility.
He drew a simplistic version of his beloved Three Hares sigil.
He gritted his teeth and made it even simpler.
Almost a pictograph. He worked on it a month, but his expression was far from pleased when he showed the finished triskele to Dane and Nomi.
“Dude, it’s fantastic,” Nomi said.
“It’s okay,” Ethan grumbled.
“It’s perfect,” Dane insisted.
“Meh. The triangle of the ears is all skewed.”
“What, by like a millimeter?” Dane said. “I think it’s amazing.”
“Yeah, well…” Ethan sighed, running a finger along the ear that made the top of the triangle. “This bugs me. Doesn’t line up right.”
“I love it,” Nomi said. “The rabbit with the weird ear is me. Dibs on imperfection.”
Dane turned off the flashlight and approached the stone. The three friends called this clearing the Hare Ring, and this granite chunk was their altar. The umbilicus of Schoenfeld’s. The fulcrum of Ethan, Dane and Nomi.
Dane brushed out the bowl depression, clearing bits of twigs and dead leaves. He crouched and ran his gloved fingers along the long end of the granite block, where Ethan, after gaining confidence, had chiseled a line of respectable block letters:
YE THEN DEIGN TO KNOW ME
Dane traced the words, feeling he was visiting a grave. But in a way, he was. Nomi was gone from existence. Ethan was gone for good. Leaving what he started unfinished.
Only I am left. One hare chasing itself.
We are left, Diane reminded him. She put arms around his mind and squeezed. I’m always here.
Dane sat on the block. The Hare Ring was in near total darkness now, but he could make out the edges of the woods, ringing him like a panorama.
The pines scratching the skies. The winter skeletons of deciduous trees like lace.
Invisible to the eye was the thick layer of naturalized wisteria that crawled, wended, wove and twined its way through the undergrowth, seizing anything it could coil around in the journey to the treetops.
Come spring, the woods would explode with the long, dripping, purple blossoms, wreathing the Hare Ring with their beauty and scent.
Wisteria time. The best time to be a hare.
The best time to be three.
The cold stone was working its way through Dane’s jeans and chilling his butt. He couldn’t stay much longer.
Why was he even out here?
This was stupid. He got up and almost walked away, but looked back at the short end where the unfinished Green Man was carved.
Ethan had diligently tried to course correct his first efforts.
He fixed the eyes and roughed out the shape of the face, but the leaves were tedious, difficult and painstaking work.
He managed only one or two a year, so only half the poor fellow’s face was complete.
But in a way, it was part of his charm. A half-faced pagan nature spirit emerging from the rock.
Just as Liko Greenman emerged from nowhere. Half the man he used to be.