SPINNING WHEEL TALES

Chapter Four, Oleander/Dogbane

Ah, windows, the "doorway" to other worlds.  Doorways, open portals, inter-dimensional exits and entries, blessed openings, fortuitous closings.   Outside the ornate balcony window the oleander, "dogbane" the locals called it, bloomed profusely.  Sitting up slowly in bed, the morning sun breaching the eastern wall of her confines, Ceyla reached for the ivory, sea island linen sheet carefully folded from her childhood. The beautifully woven sheet slid carefully at her insistence into waiting hands.  She set it aside for washing to remove the accumulated dust of seasons of neglect, since her last appearance.  Ceyla would wash it down by the courtyard well, next to the flowing spring.

 Ceyla took the petite key from around her neck, tucked it inside her nightgown, and listened as the lock turned the tumblers inside the small chest.  Open, she reached inside and drew out the journal. The leather journal, its' pages floated in gold leaf to protect the edges had lain in the chest on the simple wooden table for how long, she was for the moment, unclear.  The otherwise ornate marble and gold leaf trimmed room with its' detailed carvings were quite the contrast.   The table was simple, yet it was one of her prized possessions. While she was in Corsica, she would hand polish it with olive oil made from the ancient olive tree living in the courtyard below.   The roots of the tree ran deep, for at least a thousand years, planted by an ancestress, one whose strong sense of time and self had led Ceyla on her journey, taught her the "Map-of-the-Day" and lived in her genetically.

When her Grandmother, the Signadori of Ren~a (RenYA)  presented the chest to her as a child, she thought it an odd gift, especially considering the seriousness with which it was given.  The table had been hand wrought from the twisted limbs which thrust themselves against the walls beneath the balcony where she had grown from a mere slip of a girl into a beautiful young woman.  

When Ceyla was away, the table was covered with fine ivory linen and nothing was left upon it with the exception of her gold-leafed journal sitting in the well-crafted unadorned chest her maternal Grandfather had made.  Whether he had made the table, she only surmised.  Grandmother never told her whose hands had laid out the wood panels, had notched the sides so they fit soundly as if hewn from one piece of wood. She simply understood it to be her Grandfather Amazar. But it was her hands and hers alone which Grandmother had designated "fit" to oil the table, from the small crevices in each corner footing, through the side insets, the beautifully engraved paneling on the rear, which strangely no one ever saw but she and the Signadori. 

When she was away, the table was carefully covered and no one was to touch.  The journal opened and she read the verses as they appeared in the well-scripted delicate indigo ink scored so long ago.

Oleander, your white laden limbs waft in the lilting breezes

wave after wave of wind buffeting against your branches

resilient to the storms of winter waiting as you must

until the sap of life courses through your uplifting leaves.

Each breeze, oh oleander, you accept as an offering

to glean whatever comes your way, to take and give your beauty

without asking, never questioning, never resisting, only laughing

uplifted branches white and pure herald the morning sun.

A young maiden planted you here who now has never seen

the delicacy of your overabundance, your pure white blossoms

flowering May to June, your whites, your reds beckoning a midsummer's night

when all the world fades from innocence and summer heat descends.