Free The Three Feathers - The Magnificent Journey of Joshua Aylong by Stefan Bolz Page B

lived down here since then. It is a solitary life but one that can bring great joys to those who fully embrace it. Sometimes what I believe to be my own memory turns out not to belong to me, but to him. But it is clouded and inaccessible most of the time. Once in a while I get a glimpse into what I know are not my own thoughts, but the eagle’s.
    “It looks like you have questions of your own,” Joshua thought to the wolf.
    “I do indeed,” the wolf answered.
    There was a pause when Joshua looked at the wolf. He saw something in his eyes that at first he thought not to speak to him about again.
    “Grey.”
    “Yes.”
    “You think about your companion often, don’t you?” Joshua realized that he probably should have left it alone but now it was too late to take it back. “You don’t have to say anything, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to burden you with my questions.”
    Grey looked at him. “I think of her all the time, Joshua. I think of her when I first awake and when I go to sleep at night. I see her in the water and in the clouds in the sky. I see her everywhere. And yet, she seems so far away and unreachable and sometimes I think not to live if I were to continue to live without her.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Do not be, for you are a good friend and friends like you are harder to find than you think. It soothes my pain and helps so it does not devour me from the inside and feed on itself.”
    They looked at each other for a moment longer. Then Grey let out a long yawn and slumped to his side. Joshua looked up into the sky. He realized that there were neither clouds nor fog. Strange, as from above you could not see down here at all. And while he wondered why this was, he suddenly became very tired and he fell into a dreamless sleep from which he woke with the sun in his face, warming his feathers.
    * * *
    When he opened his eyes, disoriented at first, Joshua saw a shimmering in the distance as if the light and air played a trick on his eyes.
    “Grey,” he thought as he couldn’t see the wolf anywhere.
    He looked around. All was quiet. The image of a clear brook came into his mind with the wolf jumping in looking for fish until he finally caught one. That’s when Grey came around a small hill toward him. When he arrived he shook himself, spraying water everywhere. Joshua smiled in his thoughts.
    “How far away do you think this is?” Joshua looked in the direction of the shimmering air.
    “About two days, maybe three. Hard to tell from here. If we climb further up somewhere, we might get a better idea,” the wolf answered.
    “Maybe we should go there,” Joshua thought.
    “What makes you think that?” Grey answered.
    “I don’t know,” Joshua replied. “Probably because I don’t know where else to go.”
    “Sometimes what’s right in front of you is where you should go,” the wolf thought.
    “And sometimes it’s just the opposite,” Joshua answered.
    “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
    They didn’t know for how long they had walked but as they crossed fields of green and gold glistening in the sun and small creeks that lead into a marsh land and beyond, the sheer cliffs behind them fell further and further away. When the sun had reached the zenith, they climbed a small hill to find an area to rest in. Joshua’s inner clock was completely out of sorts. They must have been travelling for a few days at least, even though the sun had never set and was just today reaching its midpoint. As they looked down from the hill into the vast valley below, they saw the shimmering in the distance as if hundreds and hundreds of mirrors reflected the light and landscape around them, projecting it infinitely into one another.
    By their estimation they were still a day’s journey away but as they walked down the hill and continued toward it they began to see two figures, about a half mile ahead of them, coming in their direction. realized that they were walking toward themselves. Joshua could make