Procession

“You missed the circus parade.” The old man who swept the sidewalk outside my apartment building greeted me each day with what I had missed. He held out a blue jewel. “It fell off one of the elephant harnesses.”

I took it. “The circus hasn’t come to town in years,” I said. I remembered the tumbling clowns and the prancing horses with the feather plumes. In the heat shimmering off the street, I could almost see them.

I handed the jewel back to him and hurried to catch my train. Later that night when I came home, I stopped at the edge of the small garden tucked next to my building. I’d never noticed the vine that grew there. It was blooming, its white flowers glowing and fragrant. I closed my eyes and saw a cool green path winding up into the mists that cloaked a mountain.

“Good day?” a voice called from the back of the garden. The old man rose from a bench in the back of the garden and hobbled toward me. He had a small black leather book, like a journal, in his hand. I wanted to know what was in it, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

I shrugged. “It was just a day.” I leaned in and took another whiff of the flowers.

“You can smell them?” he asked.

“Of course. I would think everyone on the street could smell them.”

He smiled. “You’d be surprised. May the scent give you pleasant dreams.”

I dreamed that night of the misty mountains and a woman with a flower in her hair, waiting for me beside a waterfall, drops of water sparkling on her skin.

The next day the old man had a black feather stuck in his hatband. “You missed the king’s funeral procession.”

“The last king died fifty years ago,” I said.

The gold hoop earring he wore caught the light. I glanced at it and saw an image in it of a night sky and a lantern breaking the dark. I thought I heard the sound of someone whispering. I realized I was staring and shook my head to clear it.

“I have to get to work,” I told him. He frowned, disappointment deepening the creases in his face.

I walked away thinking of a work proposal that needed to be done right away. A scrap of fabric in the street caught my eye. I bent down and picked up a handkerchief embroidered with tiny leaves. It was damp and I knew it had been used to dry someone’s tears, someone who had cried at a funeral. I thought I threw the handkerchief back on the ground but later that day I found it in my briefcase. It was tucked inside a small black journal. Sure that somehow it was the old man’s journal, I opened it, but it was blank.

I should have finished the proposal but instead I began to draw on the blank pages. The first drawings were just a few small trees, a building on a hill, and I worried I’d lost the skills I used to have. But soon drawings flowed onto the page, like those I’d made when I was young. Back when I had visions of a life as a mapmaker of fantastical worlds, before everyone ridiculed such an idea.

At the end of the day my boss was angry I hadn’t finished the proposal.

“I’ll take it home and do it tonight,” I said, stuffing it in my briefcase. The proposal made the briefcase heavy, though it was only a few pieces of paper. I took the journal out, not wanting it to touch the papers. The handkerchief fluttered to the floor so I tucked it into my pocket.

When I got off the train and walked out of the station, I realized I’d left the briefcase behind. I should have turned back but I didn’t. “I’ll track it down tomorrow,” I said, though no one was listening.

The old man was waiting by the vine. He held out his own small book. When I took it, it fell open to drawings that covered the page. At first I couldn’t make out what they were was so I moved closer to a street light.

The light shone down revealing a tiny drawing of a fantastical city in lush valley, a dragon swooping in the air above it. Each page showed more of a world I’d never seen, though I wanted to visit it.

“Why do you draw these sorts of pictures?” I asked.

“If you draw your dreams, they might come true. What did you draw?”

I didn’t ask how he knew I’d found a journal in my briefcase. I showed him my pages and he nodded. “Yes,” he said to himself. He handed the journal back. “What is your name?”

I told him and he nodded again, tipping his hat before disappeared down the street into the darkness.

The next day I called in sick and then turned off my phone. When I went out to get a coffee, the old man wasn’t there. A worry flashed through me that he had taken ill. Why hadn’t I asked his name?

I drew all that day, stopping only to look out the window in hopes of seeing him. But he didn’t appear that day or the next or the next. I knew I had to go back to work, though I didn’t know how to explain the missing proposal. That night the notebook disappeared. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I told myself it didn’t matter. Such a foolish waste of time.

The next morning though, I found it in the trash can. I almost left it there but right before I went out the door, I grabbed it and put it in my jacket pocket.

As I came out of the building, relief swept through me when I saw the old man standing in front of the garden. He held his broom, but he was wearing an ancient cape embroidered with gold dragons, a sword strapped to his side. He brought his fist to his chest when he saw me. “I thought you’d never come.”

He touched the sword hilt and I saw it was a silver snarling lion. “It’s my time at last,” he said. “May you not have to wait as long as me.” He motioned to the bench. A tattered envelope lay on it. “After I leave, open that. Remember, you’ll know it’s your turn when you find someone else who can smell the flowers.” He handed me the broom.

As he walked off, I watched him straighten and his step became a young man’s stride. I heard music in the distance. A lute perhaps. As he turned the corner, the sound of thundering of horses filled the air and then faded away.

I opened the envelope. It held a deed to the apartment building with my name on it and the number of a bank account in my name. The amount stole my breath. I looked down the street but the old man had disappeared. I knew he wouldn’t be back.

I tucked the papers in my pocket next to the journal and began to sweep as the sound of a waterfall filled my head.