Yet the more he tried to study out the meaning of that proverb at this moment, the less connection he saw, except that it included mention of trees. So he tried the first proverb after all. “If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.”

Ah. This was speaking to him, after all. This was the voice of prophecy, recorded when he lived in Philadelphia, before he ever began his journey, on a night when the Book of Proverbs came alive for him and he saw as if in letters of flame the words that should have been included. That night he had stayed up until dawn's light killed the fires of the page. When Old Ben came thumping down the stairs to grouch his way in for breakfast, he stopped and sniffed the air. “Smoke,” he said. “You haven't been trying to burn down the house, have you, Bill?”

“No sir,” answered Taleswapper. “But I saw a vision of what God meant the Book of Proverbs to say, and wrote them down.”

“You are obsessed with visions,” said Old Ben. “The only true vision comes not from God but from the inmost recesses of the human mind. Write that down as a proverb, if you want. It's far too agnostic for me to use it in Poor Richard's Almanac.”

“Look,” said Taleswapper.

Old Ben looked, and saw the last flames as they died. “Well, now, if that's not the most remarkable trick to do with letters. And you told me you weren't a wizard.”

“I'm not. God gave this to me.”

“God or the devil? When you're surrounded by light, Bill, how do you know whether it's the glory of God or the flames of hell?”

“I don't know,” said Taleswapper, growing confused. Being young then, not yet thirty, he was easily confused in the presence of the great man.

“Or perhaps you, wanting truth so badly, gave it to yourself.” Old Ben tilted his head to examine the pages of Proverbs through the lower lenses of his bifocals. “The letters have been burned right in. Funny, isn't it, that I'm called a wizard, who am not, and you, who are, refuse to admit it.”

“I'm a prophet. Or– want to be.”

“If one of your prophecies comes true, Bill Blake, then I'll believe it, but not until.”

In the years since then, Taleswapper had searched for the fulfilment of even one prophecy. Yet whenever he thought he had found such a fulfilment, he could hear Old Ben's voice in the back of his mind, providing an alternate explanation, scoffing at him for thinking that any connection between prophecy and reality could be true.

“Never true,” Old Ben would say. “Useful_now, there's something. Your mind might make a connection that is useful. But true is another matter. True implies that you have found a connection that exists independent of your apprehension of it, that would exist whether you noticed it or not. And I must say that I have never seen such a connection in my life. There are times when I suspect that there are no such connections, that all links, bonds, ties, and similarities are creatures of thought and have no substance.”

“Then why doesn't the ground dissolve beneath our feet?” asked Taleswapper.

“Because we have managed to persuade it not to let our bodies by. Perhaps it was Sir Isaac Newton. He was such a persuasive fellow. Even if human beings doubt him, the ground does not, and so it endures.” Old Ben laughed. It was all a lark to him. He never could bring himself to believe even his own skepticism.

Now, sitting at the base of the tree, his eyes closed, Taleswapper connected again: The tale of Noah with Old Ben. Old Ben was Ham, who saw the naked truth, limp and shameful, and laughed at it, while all the loyal sons of church and university walked backward to cover it up again, so the silly truth would not be seen. Thus the world continued to think of the truth as firm and proud, never having seen it in a slack moment.

That is a true connection, thought Taleswapper. That is the meaning of the story. That is the fulfilment of the prophecy. The truth when we see it is ridiculous, and if we wish to worship it, we must never allow ourselves to see it.

In that moment of discovery, Taleswapper sprang to his feet. He must find someone at once, to tell of this great discovery while he still believed it. As his own proverb said “The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.” If he did not speak his tale, it grew dank and musty, it shrank inside him, while with the telling the tale stayed fresh and virtuous.

Which way? The forest road, not three rods off, led toward a large white church with an oak-high steeple– he had seen it, not a mile away, while up the tree. It was the largest building Taleswapper had seen since he last visited in Philadelphia. Such a large building for people to gather in implied that folks in this part of the land felt they had plenty of room for newcomers. A good sign for an itinerant teller of tales, since he lived by the trust of strangers, who might take him in and feed him when he brought nothing with him to pay with, except his book, his memory, two strong arms, and sturdy legs that had carried him ten thousand miles and were good for at least five thousand more.

The road was rutted with wagon tracks, which meant it was often used, and in the low places it was firmed up with rails, making a good strong corduroy so that wagons wouldn't mire in rain-soaked soil. So this was on its way to being a town, was it? The large church might not mean openness at all– it might speak more of ambition. That's the danger of judging anything, thought Taleswapper: There are a hundred possible causes for every effect, and a hundred possible effects from every cause. He thought of writing down that thought, but decided against it. It had no traces on it save the prints of his own soul– neither the marks of heaven nor of hell. By this he knew that it hadn't been given to him. He had forced the thought himself. So it couldn't be prophecy, and couldn't be true.

The road ended in a commons not far from a river. Taleswapper knew that from the smell of rushing water– he had a good nose. Around the commons were scattered several buildings, but the largest of all was a whitewashed clapboard two-story building with a small sign that said “Weaver's.”

Now when a house has a sign on it, Taleswapper knew, that generally means the owners want people to recognize the place though they've never been shown the way, which is the same as to say that the house is open to strangers. So Taleswapper went right up and knocked.

“Minute!” came a shout from inside. Taleswapper waited on the porch. Toward one end were several hanging baskets, with the long leaves of various herbs dangling. Taleswapper recognized many of them as being useful in various arts, such as healing, finding, sealing, and reminding. He also recognized that the baskets were arranged so that, seen from a spot near the base of the door, they would form a perfect hex. In fact, this was so pronounced an effect that Taleswapper squatted and finally lay prone on the porch to see it property. The colors daubed on the baskets at exactly the correct points proved that it was no accident. It was an exquisite hex of protection, oriented toward the doorway.

Taleswapper tried to think of why someone would put up such a powerful hex, and yet seek to conceal it. Why, Taleswapper was probably the only person around likely to feel the whiff of power from something as passive as a hex, and so be drawn to notice it. He was still lying there on the floor, puzzling about it, when the door opened and a man said, “Are you so tired, then, stranger?”

Taleswapper leapt to his feet. “Admiring your arrangement of herbs. Quite an aerial garden, sir.”

“My wife's,” said the man. “She fusses over them all the time. Has to have them just so.”

Was the man a liar? No, Taleswapper decided. He wasn't trying to hide the fact that the baskets made a hex and the trailing leaves intertwined to bind them together. He simply didn't know. Someone– his wife, probably, if it was her garden– had set up a protection on his house, and the husband didn't have a clue.