The Tour Guide

A woman roamed from one land to another, thereby inadvertently avoiding seven lethal plagues. Forty sailors dragged their ship by its anchor to the shores of a peaceful colonial island and could move it no farther. My thick-bearded tour guide was lost forty-two years ago and has yet to find his way—which is why I hired him. A beautiful garden brimming with flowers in half the colors of the rainbow, with butterflies in the other half fluttering above them, and songbirds warbling pleasantly in evergreen trees, with a babbling fish pond in its center, and by the time you return from your travels the pond will dry up and the trees will wither, the birds will flee, the colors will fade, and there shall come up briers and thorns. Shall you not go?