Had Chad Baker been wise enough to have consulted his horoscope that morning, he would have read that that day would have offered frustration and sadness for Aries. (As he was born on March 30, he was actually a Pisces, but let's leave that where it lay.) Had he done so, his experience on that country road late that afternoon wouldn't have been as shocking. Instead, he was in equal measure surprised and miffed to have found himself one-eighth of a car-length behind a sloth-slow three-car caravan filled with mesmerized mailbox admirers.
Chad didn't know -and might not have cared- that the ten-mile-per hour odyssey down that bucolic thoroughfare was something of a spiritual journey for the elderly occupants of those three vintage vehicles. They had all recently escaped the urban congestion for their annual excursion into the verdant wilds far beyond it. The charming sights and muted sounds of the rustic world evoked vague but warm memories of their childhoods: the innocent time before their restless youthful energies and building frustrations impelled them to seek excitement and greater opportunities in the nearest bustling metropolis. Now that they were all seasoned urban dwellers a few pages shy of life’s epilog, the country exercised a charm on them that it somewhat lacked in the early days. They wanted to savor every scent, breathe in every unpolluted molecule and, naturally, behold every rural mailbox, each of which catapulted them back to the sleepy bliss of their ancient youth.
They didn't know -and actually some might have cared- that the seething motorist to their rear was conveying a three-quarter ton's worth of family members in his claustrophobic mini-van. To his right, his beguilingly comely and infuriatingly serene wife Gisela who, noting her husband's whitening knuckles in contradistinction to his reddening face, patted his knee and made soothing noises designed to calm the savage breast. As these sounds and taps made him feel very much like a temperamental three-year-old, they instead shot frequent bolts of agitation energy into that breast. Directly behind his wife, their 12 year old uber-genius Heidi, who was scribbling furiously in the wire bound pink glitter notebook she assumed would be large enough to accommodate the “Encyclopedia of Every Known Fact and All My Inspired Theories” on which she was earnestly working. At the moment, as they continued to plod along with tortoise-like zeal, she added two new statements:
-Civil twilight begins at sunset
-Everyone over the age of 40 should have their driver’s licenses yanked
Behind Chad –and sharing the middle seat with Heidi- was the 14-month old Hans, napping soundly, much to the relief of all. The unlovely tones of a scrawling infant would have acted like a taffy pull on the protracted minutes that ticked by. In the back, the fraternal twin teenagers Siegmund and Sieglinde completed the ensemble. While the former was New Orleans Jazz and solar irradiance, the latter was a requiem mass and foreboding cumulonimbus. The glacial pace bothered neither of them, albeit for different reasons. Siegmund was wholly immersed in the furious techno beats issuing from his state-of-the-art headphones and so was oblivious to external reality. Sieglinde rested her gloom-darkened face against the window and accepted the parade-like pace as just another unjust punishment meted out by the malevolent agencies governing the Universe. (The peripheral sight of her horrid brother head-banging to sounds she couldn’t hear was another.)
Suddenly, Chad had had sufficient.
“Ok, I’m done!”
Despite Gisela’s protestations and his uncertainty as to whether or not any on-coming cars were approaching, Chad jerked the car around with unnecessary violence and roared past the three automobiles with nary a glance at the shocked octogenarians. As soon as he pulled ahead of them and started coasting casually along at 30 mph above the posted limit, Chad believed his frustration had come to an end. He truly should have read that horoscope. A little less than five minutes later, Gisela patted his hand. “Oh, honey, look, there’s somebody hitchhiking. We should pick him up. It’s getting dark.”
“Are you kidding? We don’t know him. Could be an axe murderer.”
“Impossible, Dad,” Heidi said, looking up from her notebook, “owing to him not appearing to be in possession of an ax. I can only see a Starbucks cup in his left hand and a sack over his shoulder.”
“He could still murder us all.” Chad seethed.
“Yeah, that would be too bad…” Sieglinde murmured.
“Highly improbable,” Heidi said. “Though one should always exercise caution, of course, most hitchhikers do not pose a threat to motorists.”
“He looks harmless,” Gisela insisted.
Chad cast a rapid glance at him as they drove closer. “You can’t tell by looks.”
Heidi spoke up. “On the contrary, father, one can discern a great deal from appearance. I see that he has wavy brown hair, a cleft chin, is physically fit, works as a musician and has recently visited Belgium.”
Chad looked back sharply. “You just made all that up!”
“You can’t see his hair, Dad?”
“The other part!”
“Well, pick him up, test my theory.”
“Absolutely not.”
The only reason Chad slowed down at that moment was because he was approaching a stoplight at a four way intersection. Inconveniently, the hitchhiker was standing next to the car when they stopped. Although he was smirking slightly, he made no eye contact with the people in the car and, apart from taking sips from his cup, didn’t move. Much to Chad’s delight, the red light wasn’t changing.
“What’s taking so long?!” he said, glaring out at the roads in the middle of nowhere. “There aren’t any other cars here!”
“Honey, it is going to be dark soon. We can’t in good conscience leave him.”
“I can.”
“Hey, what’s going on, Pop?” Siegmund asked, removing his headphones. “Why have we stopped?”
“Red light, jerk,” Sigelinde snapped.
“A red light I am about to run,” Chad said just before seeing a police cruiser appearing behind him.
“Dad, I would, at this juncture, advise….”
“I know, Heidi!”
During the two minutes that then trudged by, Gisela placed her hand on Chad’s shoulder and gazed into his eyes. “It’s the compassionate thing to do.”
“Oh, don’t pout…I can’t resi….Why isn’t this light ch….oh, roll down the window.”
Gisela leaned out the open window. “Would you like a ride?”
The stranger smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Oh, cool,” Sigmund said, “we’re picking him up. Hey, he can ride back here with us.”
Sieglinde finally lifted her head up and looked at her twin with withering scorn. “No, he cannot!”
“You’re such a grump, Sieg.”
“My name is Linda.”
“Kids!” Gisela scolded. “Heidi, please push over next to the baby. He’ll fit in the middle seat.”
A minute later, the light finally turned green and the merry ensemble was on its way.
“Thanks for this,” the hitchhiker said. His accent, though peculiar, was curiously pleasing to the other occupants.
“Whatever,” Sieglinde said.
Well, pleasing to most of the occupants.
“Where ya’ headed?”
“About 10 miles away.”
Chad looked quizzically at the man through the rearview mirror. “Where, exactly?”
The man shrugged and sipped his coffee again. “I’ll know it when I see it.”
Chad snapped an annoyed glance at Gisela, who responded with a tight smile.
Heidi looked over at the new occupant. “May I ask: what do you do for a living?”
“Sweetheart, that’s not very polite,” Gisela said, her smile tightening.
“No, it’s fine,” the stranger said. “I wander about most of the time and play instruments.”
“Ha, did you hear that, Dad?”
Chad’s knuckles didn’t darken much during that trip.
Sigmund leaned forward. “Hey, that’s cool. Like what?”
“Like this,” the man replied, withdrawing a wooden pan flute from his sack.
Sigmund’s facial radiance intensified. “Wicked!”
Heidi chewed the end of her pencil thoughtfully. “Did you ever wander in Belgium?”
“Yeah, I did a stint in Brussels about a month ago, actually,” he answered, looking astonished. “How did you know that?”
“Your tan,” Heidi said matter-of-factly.
“Of course…”, he said, puzzled. “You seem like a very sharp young lady, Ms...?”
“Heidi Muller-Baker, at your service.” She then went on to introduce the entire family before asking, “And you are?”
“Mr. Llewellyn. Pleased to meet you all.”
“Llewellyn?” Heidi asked, quite interested. “Welsh, I presume?”
“Very good. My Dad’s dad was and my mother is.”
Siegmund’s luminosity continued to increase. “Elvish?!”
“Idiot…” Sieglinde mumbled.
Mr. Llewellyn looked back at Siegmund. “My mother’s people are Fairie folk, actually.”
“Fairies don’t exist, Mr. Llewellyn.”
“You can say that, Heidi, because you never attended one of our family’s summer gatherings. Sit there with us on a long table assembled at the nether edge of Clocaenog Forest and peer through the crevices between the trees at evening twilight and you’ll never make such an absurd statement again.”
“Which one?”
“Which one what?”
“Which twilight? There are three of them; Civil, nautical, and astronomical. The first,” she continued pedantically, “occurs when the Sun is between zero and six degrees of the horizon: the time most people associate with twilight. Then nautical, when the Sun is 6 to 12 degrees…”
“Could somebody smack her off button?” Sieglinde groaned irritably.
“..of the horizon,” Heidi continued, casting a fierce look at the back of her sister’s head. “That’s the time the bright stars and the horizon are visible, hence the ‘nautical,’ term it was when navigators used celestial bodies for dead reckoning. And, astronomical, which is when the Sun is between 12 and 18 degrees…”
“Yes, thank you, Heidi,” Chad said, his tense voice being pleasing to nobody. “let’s put the encyclopedia away.” He had just been mouthing the word ‘nutcase’ to his wife and was suddenly desirous of peaceful silence.
At this moment, the baby started crying, which improved Chad's mood immeasurably.
“Oh, great, the baby’s awake,” Heidi said, in case anyone was left in doubt of her deductive powers.
“No worries,” Mr. Llewellyn said, “Let me play a bit, if you don’t mind.”
Siegmund: Excellent!
Heidi: Certainly. I am intrigued.
Gisela: That would be lovely.
Chad and Sieglinde: (no comment)
Mr. Llewellyn placed his mouth to the pipe and in a moment was blowing along it, but producing no sounds at all. Despite this lack of music, the baby’s crying stopped.
“I can’t hear anything,” Heidi said.
“Oh,” Llewellyn said nonplussed. “it’s working then. The music it produces issues only out of a Welsh yew tree, the brother or sister of the tree whose wood was used to make this flute. Honestly, though, I don’t know which tree. That changes every time I play.”
Heidi gulped and pushed herself next to the window to be as far away from Mr. Llewellyn as possible. At that very moment, Chad’s brother Mark, 1189 miles away, inexplicably stood up and started sputtering curses and ranting about insane hitchhikers, golden-hearted wives, and children who loved learning, much to the annoyance of the others in the movie theatre.
“Let me play something again,” Mr. Llewellyn offered.
Siegmund: Excellent!
Heidi, Gisela, Chad, Sieglinde: (no comment)
After a moment of playing in complete silence, the musician leaned back and smiled, as though under the influence of a particularly bliss-inducing intoxicant. He then spoke to Chad and Gisela. “Would you mind if I tossed my sack on this seat?”
“Of course,” Gisela said. “Nobody else is sitting there.”
“I think this is my favorite instrument of them all. Would anyone mind if I, um, played again?”
Siegmund: Excellent!
Gisela, Chad, Sieglinde: (no comment)
“This tune, I tell you, would make the Mad Hatter statue in Llandudno weep.” As for the statue, we can’t say, but Mr. Llewellyn was a bit teary eyed when he finished two minutes later. Siegmund, seated next to him, having heard nothing, just grinned delightedly. Chad and Gisela remained silent and stone-faced.
“Are we almost there?” Chad asked, unable to conceal the distress in his voice.
“We’re certainly close,” Mr. Llewellyn said. “It was so nice of the three of you to give me a lift. I hope I’m not inconveniencing you.”
“Not at all,” the ashen faced Gisela assured him in a whisper.
“This one kept the Gwyllion dancing at the Elidir Fawr revels,” he said, placing his mouth to the flute again.
“Being a single father must not be easy,” Mr. Llewellyn said, looking over at Chad. Chad looked up at the rearview mirror at his adopted son seated in the back of their old Buick. Siegmund was characteristically happy: looking smilingly old at the flock of sheep by the side of the road.
“It’s ok, actually. Siegmund is a delight.”
Mr. Llewellyn grinned back at the teenager. “I have one more tune I’d like to play on this, if you guys don’t mind.”
“Oh, not at all,” Chad asked kindly. “You ok with it, Sieg?”
The boy regarded Mr. Llewellyn resignedly. “I knew that pan flute was wicked.”
“Sorry, kid,” the musician said, placing the flute under his mouth.
“No, it’s fine,” Siegmund assured him. “The oblivion of non-existence sounds cool. Maybe I’ll meet King Arthur IV.”
A moment later, a teenage boy and girl seated next to a tree along the Eddw River at midnight listened to the most enchanted melody they had ever heard. The unexpected music, which seemed to emanate from the tree branches, emboldened the young man to take the girl’s hand, which she squeezed affectionately.
Chad slapped Llewellyn’s shoulder as they reached the stoplight. “Hey, look at her!”
“I see her,” Llewellyn said miserably.
“Have you seen anyone so beautiful?”
“Where I come from, they all look like that.”
“Yeah, right. She looks Germanic, too. Hell, I’ll bet she was raised in the Black Forest among the kobolds. I can almost feel the Sun-dappled waterfall spray.”
The young lady who so captivated Chad was hitchhiking one intersection away from their stop. Despite her torn jeans, wind-tossed hair and faded jacket, she still cut quite an impressive, Nordic figure.
“Let’s pick her up!”
“Absolutely not, Chad! Bad idea.”
“Come on, what do you mean? Why not?”
Llewellyn looked at him gravely and cast his arm around the appallingly cluttered car interior. “Because this will all vanish. Look at the bows from the medieval recreation society in the back seat; the Rune stones scattered over the pizza boxes; the piece of Stonehenge dangling from the rearview mirror.” He pointed at the windshield. “It all will go away: the goddesses playing behind clouds and the dryads dozing in the trees. Replaced by burdensome responsibilities, cars full of kids, and the sighing away of two thousand Sundays.”
Chad would have responded had it not been for the blaring horns behind him. “Whoops! The light has turned green!
“Oh, I forgot to…oh, well.”
Chad watched as three vehicles stuffed with disgruntled middle-aged couples roared past. Although he didn’t know how many people occupied the vehicles, he did manage to count nine fingers.
After he started moving forward, Chad looked at Llewellyn and said, “I’m now madly in love. We’re picking her up.”
“Of course you are,” Llewellyn replied faintly as he reached into his sack. He withdrew a pan flute and a phial of water that exhibited a slight violent tint in the late afternoon Sun. “There it is, then, Chad,” he said, opening the phial. “If I happen to wander around this region in later years, I’ll try to rescue you.”
“Yeah, you do that,” Chad said absently, his gaze fixed on the woman who showed herself to be even more beguilingly beautiful on close approach.
“No promises, though. I might just end up producing a closed time loop. Here, Chad, look at me for a moment.”
“What is that?” he looked over at Llewellyn while arriving at the next intersection.
“Water from the Loethe, the river of forgetfulness.”
He splashed some of the water onto Chad’s face. While Chad wiped the drops out of his eyes, Llewellyn put the pan flute to his mouth and sadly murmured, “After six months, I thought this friendship would last.” He then blew gently across the pipes.
“Need a ride?”
“Yeah,” the young lady said, “If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Chad said as she opened the passenger side door and sat down. “I could never resist such a cute pout."