Sound traveler

"Anatomists long ago named the windings of the inner ear, whose channels provide both hearing and balance, the labyrinth. The name suggests that if the labyrinth is the passage through which sound enters the mind, then we ourselves bodily enter labyrinths as though we were sounds on the way to being heard by some great unknown presence. To walk this path is to be heard, and to be heard is a great desire of a majority of us, but to be heard by whom, by what? To be a sound traveling toward the mind -- is that another way to imagine this path, this journey, the unwinding of this thread?" - a passage from "Wandering the labyrinth ..."  a post by Terri Windling

A step back ...

There was a point when a prosthesis, an artificial ear lobe or reconstruction using natural cartilage of the external ear would have been the solution. It was not uncommon. Microtia was the name of the condition the doctor gave Calypso and Maydene. In Larkin's case the smaller left outer ear was the only part of her ear that did not come with her. While Maydene took Larkin downstairs and into the tiny courtyard of the very large city hospital building, Calypso sat with the surgeon.  Her kind and gentle voice balanced her skillful examination of young Larkin, aged four at the time. The options and procedures were laid out. "She's actually a very lucky girl," concluded the young surgeon.

The experience was both unsettling and surreal. There sat a witch blessed ten-fold with the quality of a Magnificent Capacity as Sound Traveler being told how her grandchild, her only grandchild was a lucky girl. Of course, she was a lucky girl. As all Grandmothers knew it was luck that made birth even possible. Between them Calypso and May had assessed and consulted with oracle, intuition and the bowls of still and swirling water. They knew the reasons and they knew the pulses that beat in Larkin's physical and astral bodies. This visit to the surgeon was not their first choice. "We must give her a third opinion." That's how May put it. But never once did the physician ever stop for two minutes to ask who Calypso was, who this girl was, and how she could help. If every doctor did that, it would change medicine.

Instead Calypso listened and thanked the surgeon for her time, and took the brochures and paperwork with her. The evaluation lasted exactly forty minutes and cost four hundred dollars. A children's fund would help pay. Before leaving the building Calypso went to the women's bathroom. She opened the stall to one of the toilets, lifted the seat and wrenched the contents of her stomach into the bowl. Her head spun. She braced herself. From her purse she pulled a small blue bottle. A squirt of the pale yellow liquid filled her palm. Usnea, Old man's beard, clear the way for me. Under her breath the words helped to refocus her. Calypso rubbed the tincture into her hands. She pushed the handle to the toilet, then added another drop of Old Man's Beard to her other palm, rubbed the liquid into her hands, and quickly ran a finger under her nose.

Inhaling, then exhaling the Sound Traveler left the building.