II. The Stone Seat

The next morning, the traveller came upon a great stone beside the path.

It was flat on top and broad enough for a person to rest upon.

He sat down.

After some time, a child came along.

Without hesitation, she climbed onto the stone, jumped from it, climbed back again, and jumped once more.

“What are you doing?” asked the traveller.

“Playing,” she said.

“But it is a seat.”

The child looked surprised.

“No,” she said. “It is a rock.”

She jumped down and ran away.

The traveller remained seated.

A little later, an old man came carrying a bundle of wood.

He stopped beside the stone, placed the bundle upon it, and began to rearrange the branches.

“Useful table,” he said.

The traveller looked up.

“It is a seat.”

The old man laughed.

“Not from this side of it.”

When he had finished, he lifted the bundle and continued along the path.

The traveller was beginning to feel that the country had become unreasonable.

By midday, a fox appeared from the grass.

It climbed onto the stone, curled itself against the warmth gathered there, and fell asleep.

The traveller watched in silence.

Later still, a small bird landed upon the stone.

It pecked at an insect crawling across the surface.

For the bird, the stone had become a hunting ground.

By evening, rain began to fall.

The traveller crouched beside the stone, where its great bulk broke the wind.

The stone, he thought, was now a shelter.

The following morning, he found a young man standing beside it with a hammer and chisel.

“What are you doing?” asked the traveller.

“Breaking it.”

“But it is a seat.”

The young man looked at him strangely.

“Is it?”

The traveller stood.

“It is broad and flat. It supports a person.”

“Yes.”

“Then it is a seat.”

The young man tapped the stone with his hammer.

“It is also stone.”

“That tells me what it is made of.”

“And seat tells me what you do when you meet it.”

The traveller was silent.

The young man placed the chisel against the rock.

“I need smaller stones for the wall.”

He struck the chisel.

A sharp sound rang through the valley.

The traveller felt something almost like outrage.

“You are destroying the seat.”

The young man smiled.

“I thought you said it was a stone.”

And with another blow, he split away a piece.

The traveller walked on.

For several days he thought about the stone.

He remembered the child climbing it.

The old man using it as a table.

The fox sleeping in its warmth.

The bird hunting insects.

The young man breaking it apart.

He himself had sat upon it.

None of them had asked what the stone meant.

They had simply encountered it.

Yet none had encountered quite the same thing.

At last, the traveller returned to the place where he had first entered the country.

The wooden gate still stood between its posts.

He looked at it for a long time.

A fox passed beneath it.

A bird flew over it.

The traveller opened it and stepped through.

Then he stopped.

What was it?

A gate?

A barrier?

A frame?

A source of firewood?

A piece of timber standing upright in the ground?

He remembered the old woman.

What can happen between this thing and something else?

For the first time, the question seemed less like an answer than a door.

The gate had not changed.

It was still wood.

It still had hinges.

It still stood between two posts.

But what could happen there depended partly upon what approached it.

The fox did not need to open it.

The bird did not need to pass through it.

The traveller could open it, close it, lean against it, climb over it, or tear it down.

But he could not walk through it while it remained shut.

Something belonged to the gate.

Something belonged to him.

And somewhere between the two, possibilities appeared.

The traveller placed his hand upon the wood.

It did not tell him what it was.

It did not contain a list of uses.

It did not wait for him to discover its true purpose.

It stood there with its weight, its shape and its grain.

And he stood before it with hands, legs, memories and habits.

Between them was the possibility of opening.

Or not opening.

For a long time, the traveller remained there.

Then he smiled.

The country, he realised, was not made of things with instructions hidden inside them.

Nor was it made of shapeless stuff waiting for creatures to invent its possibilities.

It was something more troublesome.

Things met things.

And in the meeting, some ways became possible.

Others did not.

He opened the gate.

The gate said nothing.

But this time, neither did he expect it to.