The Scholar

Towards the end of our morning’s march, we encounter a river, slow and swollen with rain. We march into the waist-deep water, a thick rain battering us from above.

Suddenly, we see something in the current ahead. Pale, naked bodies drift in the river’s flow. We close our eyes, shuddering at the sight — but when we look again, we realise that we have been fooled. These are not bodies but the sunken logs of birch trees, released by the torrent of rainfall.

An impassive voice calls out to us. “Do not succumb to the tricks of the mind.” It is a scholarly woman; she sits on one of the passing logs, observing us. From where she appeared we do not know, nor can we say how the very rain which soaks our hair seems to pass through the scroll upon which she now writes. “Feelings are meaningless,” she says. “Only Reason has the power to hold back the dark. Do you agree?”