The Third Road

There's a story, a story, a story told in the north, south, west & east on a far away island that once upon a time and once upon this place there was a Queen, a Great Queen, a Queen who was One with the Land. Tis true. It was so. This Queen had the insight of a falcon, the courage of a tigress and fierceness of phoenix. She was clever, intuitive, sentient, graceful, fierce and 10,000 other honorable and human qualities.(name 3 more!) She led her Queendom for scores and scores of years and then one autumn day when the kind light was luminous, when the leaves spilled like gold coins from the boughs of beech and birch and hazel her brave and truthful heart ceased and her very last exhale slipped effortlessly through her old wise lips. For seven days and seven nights songs, prayers, poems and toasts were sung over her body. Then for forty-nine days the people mourned, the trees wept, the bird ceased their songs and the waves of the bruise blue sea ebbed back revealing the very bottom of that mysterious world. When all had grieved cleanly, when their salt tears had replenished the sea, and ribbons of joy spun amongst them like the sun they looked at one another and said, "Now who shall offer us guidance and leadership? Our Great Queen had no heir." The oldest of the old recalled a time when this had happened and an ancient challenge was remembered and resurrected. A golden chariot was brought forth. Two wild stallions were hitched to it, one black and one white. Whoever wanted to test their nerves, risk their lives and try their luck to be the next so