Ruby looked at the sky looking for Yun Feng or light to show the weather, but they showed heavy snow and cold.
Did she say you still have pants in your room?
Kuada said
Either wool or canvas will do. I want two.
It’s my father.
We have to wear it, Ruby said.
Asked Ada, the man’s trousers
You can wear whatever you like, but I won’t be blown into my clothes by the cold winter wind. Who will see us there?
They found two pair of trousers, one black and one gray, which they wore when hunting. Then they put on trousers, rolled up the corners of trousers, and tightened the belt around their waist, so that the redundant parts hung down like a coat pleat. Ruby noticed Monroe’s wide-brimmed hat and said that they could keep snow from falling on their faces. So they took two hats from the rack. If it was in a happy environment, Ida thought it would be like a costume contest to see who dressed up more like a man, draw ashes on his face and imitate men smoking with an unlit cigar.
Before they sent their hair, they painted beeswax on their boots and knocked the cowshed door of the henhouse on the ground, which was full of hay. Ruby estimated that Waldo would shout for milking when they came back. They gave the boy food and bedding and told him to sleep in the hut until it was dark. When they went to lead the horse, the boy was still sitting in two boxwood trees and waving at them, just like the master sent his guests away.
In the evening, snowflakes came down through the mist, and Ada Ruby walked in the dim light of fir trees. They were moving in a place with no color except different levels of darkness. Two fuzzy shadows were near them. The trees looked like real trees, but they were a little farther away. In Ada’s view, they had a freehand tree shape. She seemed to have no actual scenery at all. She was walking through a cloud and had a little knowledge of the scenery of one arm, while others were unaware of it. Ralph was very nervous. The horse poked its neck and ears back and forth to detect the threat.
After walking in the dense shade of hemlock for a long time, they crossed a low ridge and walked along a river valley. They were far away from Ida’s familiar fields. The ground of their feet was very soft and dry as coarse powder. Snowflakes fell through the crown of the tree. They curved or circled as if they didn’t want to fall to the ground. They carefully stepped on the water and the stones crossed a black stream. Ida watched that the stream was blocked by rocks, broken wood and moss around the shiny narrow ice layer along the coast. However, the rushing water always moved forward quickly.
When it gets to a shallow place, the speed becomes slower, which is where it is frozen. Ida thinks Monroe will teach such things. He will say that this stream symbolizes that the emperor of life needs us to spend this way. Everything created by the emperor is just some carefully designed metaphors. In this visible world, bright images are projections of sacred things, so people’s paradise, high and low, high and low can be strangely matched in form and meaning, because it is actually overlapping.
In Monroe I, you can find this kind of thing: roses, thorns and flowers symbolize some kind of difficulty leading to the dangerous road of soul awakening. Babies come to this world in pain and blood, symbolizing our pain. Where life is full of violent crows, it is dark and unruly, and its carrion-eating nature symbolizes the evil power of waiting for people to be recruited.
Ida naturally thinks that the ice on the surface of this stream has given the soul a weapon or a warning, but she refuses to believe that she will explain or benefit them, saying that what is lacking in essence will be as flawed as a door hinge without rivet eyes.
After crossing the stream, the horse stopped and shook its fur until the bottles and cans clattered in the bag. Then it stretched its neck and breathed softly, breathing long and long into the world, eager for a partner who would reassure it to return the same breath. Ida put her hand on its smooth nose and stuck out her tongue. She held her thumb and forefinger and swayed gently. Then they moved on.
Because the stream came from the mountains, they walked along the stream. Later, the path turned into a fork and entered an oak forest. There were still some withered leaves hanging on the branches. These are some ancient oak trees. The trunk of them is still covered with clumps of mistletoe. The snow is getting heavier and heavier. The path has become a straight path through the forest. When night comes, it is easy to get lost. Even the wild boar has no footprints. It seems to be a forgotten Indian path that people have been walking for a long time, connecting a string of places that have long since disappeared.
They walked until the night fell, and the snow was still there. The thick clouds covered the round moon, but the snow reflected the light and people could vaguely see the black trunk.
Ida’s first thought was that wherever she went to the rock ridge, she said that we could sleep here, but Ruby said that she knew or at least remembered a better place nearby, so they continued to walk.
Soon they came across a pile of huge stones, and Ruby patrolled around until she found the place she was looking for. Three huge stones were built together to form a house. It was a naturally formed stone shed, and its wall was straight. The angle of a coping stone was properly pressed against the surface to keep out the rain. The water surface was not bigger than the chicken coop, but it was enough to sit and turn around. Ida thought of pi, which was symbolically covered with thick hay. Twenty yards ago, a spring spring spring gushed with chestnuts and oaks, which had never been cut down. Ruby said that it was the best sleeping place people could think of, although it had not been here for
Ruby asked Ida to get a bundle of dry wood. In less than half an hour, they lit a warm bonfire at the mouth of the stone shed. After they made a pot of water to make tea, they sat there drinking tea and eating biscuits. The rings were not small enough, but their taste reminded them of the warm season that had just passed.
They didn’t talk much when they were eating. Ida said that Georgia boy seems to be different from ordinary men. Ruby said that he is no different from ordinary men, which means that he has to kick behind people every minute when he is awake.
After they finished eating, Ruby brushed the leaves on the ground and dug up some dirt. Then she got close to the fire and showed Ada that it was charcoal fragments, flint fragments and ancient firearms abandoned. How tiny the cracked arrows were? They were all fragments left by the ancients.
None of them said anything. Ida chose some flint fragments and left them. She knew that in an unknown age, people had done the same thing as them, found a sleeping place in this rock pile and ate and slept here.
The snow roared and the temperature suddenly dropped, and the fire soon heated the stone. When Ada Ruby wrapped herself in a blanket and got into the dry leaves and piled more leaves on the quilt surface, they were as warm as lying in a bed at home. This is very good. Ada lay there and thought that there was no one around the abandoned path through the mountains and rivers. This stone shed was as warm and dry as an elf’s residence. Although others regarded it as a refuge, it was in line with her expectation that she would move in and live here.
The bonfire cast light and shadow on the sloping stone roof. Ida found that if you watch it long enough, it will create all kinds of objects and shapes in the world, birds, bears, snakes, foxes or wolves. Fire seems to be not interested in anything but animals.
These pictures remind Ada of a song sung by Stebrod, which remains in Ada’s mind persistently. She paid special attention to it because of the strange lyrics of Stebrod’s singing. Ada can recognize that it expresses deep humanity. This song describes the theme of imagination. He hopes that the ability can become various wild animals. In spring, lizards listen to his lover sing, and a winged bird returns to his lover and cries and moans until it dies. A mole digs up a mountain.
Ida is uneasy about this song. The wishes of these animals are both wonderful and terrible, especially the mole, a weak, secluded and blind thing, who should be driven by loneliness and resentment and the surrounding world collapse and subversion. It is especially wonderful and terrible that the singer of these lyrics hopes to abandon all compassion to ease the loss of love, betray the love method, express love in vain and inflict pain.
Listen, Ruby breathed. Ida knew she wasn’t asleep yet, so she said, Do you remember that mole song your father sang in the field?
