The Spear Cuts Through Water

by Simon Jimenez

Let this then explain his dream. Why upon the shutting of his eyes, he fell immediately through the heavenly bands, as a rock might through endless sheets of colorful parchment, a silent scream on his yawning mouth until suddenly he stopped, and he found himself standing at the edge of the Last Road of this existence. You know this road. You remember it from her stories. It is the road that marks the border between this world and the next. A road on a high cliff that overlooks the endless roil of the Sleeping Sea. The Red-Cloaked Fisherman once sat upon the edge of this road, with his stool and his rod stringed with the unbreakable strand of hair plucked from the head of his true love. The same road that the solemn warriors of the fifth heavenly band would walk, cutting down any coward soul who yet clung to the cliff’s edge, not ready to fall. It was the road for wanderers—for those who had never known a home, not even in themselves.