The sunlight lured him from the shaded, village streets and drew him into day. And everywhere he went, the World Hater had already been. The sick men lay among the roadside thorns. The old ones groaned from habit. The young ones whimpered out of hopelessness.

The Singer stopped. Beside the road he saw a brown-eyed child. Her mouth was drawn in hard, firm lines that could not bend to either smile or frown. Her sickness ate her spirit, devouring all the sparkle in her eyes.

Her legs misshapen as they were, lay useless underneath the coarsest sort of cloth. The Singer knelt beside her in the dust and touched her limpid hand and cried. He drew the cloth away that hid her legs. He reached his calloused hand and touched the small, misshapen foot.

“I too was born with scarred feet. See mine!” he said, drawing back the hem of his own robe.

She seemed about to speak, when the music of a silver pipe broke in the air around them. He had heard the pipe before.

Above them towered the World Hater.

“I knew you’d come,” he said. “You will, of course, make straight her twisted limbs?”

“I will, World Hater … but can you have no mercy? She’s but a child. Can her wholeness menace you in any way? Would it so embarrass you to see her skipping in the sun? Why hate such little, suffering life?”

“Why chide me, Singer? She’s Earthmaker’s awful error. Tell your Father-Spirit he should take more time when he creates.”

“No, it is love which brings a thousand children into life in health. It is hate that cripples each exception to eternal joy. But why must you forever toy with nature to make yourself such ugly pastimes of delight?”

“I hate all the Father-Spirit loves. If he would only hate the world with me, I’d find no joy in it again. You sing. The only music that I know is the cacophony of agony that grows from roadside wretches such as these.”

The child between them lay bewildered by their conversation. The Singer spoke again:

“I’ll bring my song against your hate

Against the bonds of human sins.

And human tears will all subside

When the Ancient Star-Song wins.”

The Hater raged and screamed above his crippled joy:

“Sing health! If you must.

Sing everybody’s but your own. I soon will have your song, likewise your life.

Your great Star-Song is doomed to fall.

You’ll groan my kind of music

when I meet you at the wall.”

The Singer scooped the frightened child into his arms. He sang and set her in the sunny fields and thrilled to watch her run. The world was hers in a way she’d never known. The butterfly-filled meadows danced her eyes alive and drew her scurrying away.

And others came!

Untouchables with bandages heard the healing song and came to health:

The crippled and the blind.

Sick of soul

Sick of heart

Sick of hate

Sick of mind.