The HeartStone - Part four, the ending
Jan. 5th, 2006 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joegodaI'm thinking of getting this one published, Tim.
His dream was one of bleak emptiness and despair. He was falling, falling, down and far, accelerating as he fell. There was nothing to hold to, no safety to grab, no rope, no net. He felt the wind on his face, harsh, tearing, and the air was sickly sweet as he descended.
He watched his past in flickers, still frames appearing and shooting off into the dark, receding like sparks off a dying fire. He saw all that he had loved come into view, and he watched, had to watch, had no choice as he had no eyelids to close. He watched them die.
Again.
The dream faded and was replaced with emptiness and dark. Not your ordinary dark, it was void of dark, it was void. Dark had been pulled in and sucked away with all light, all sound, all life, all color. He was still falling.
Down, and down, despair settled around his bones like a damp and cold blanket. No fear, he had nothing to fear. Fear, had it ever been, had flown away, drained away by the whirlpool of despair.
There was a flash off to his side. Not much, but a small flicker, a tiny flicker, a minute flicker of sudden color. A pinprick, a dot, an atomic particle. But it was something he could hang his hat on.
His motion shifted, and he drifted toward the flick in the nothing. Round it became, but still small, still undefined. Closer he drifted, slow, slow, but it began to resolve into a ball. Blue, and white, brown and green it was.
He could feel, through some sense he could not identify, that the ever hungry void was seeking this place out.
Closer and closer till it became a spinning globe, a planet with oceans and continents. Down and down till he could make out mountain ranges, rivers, forests. Falling and falling till he could see a tiny village, small and individual, with a twin mountain range on one side, and a forked river on the other.
This village, he could see, was a dimmer color than the mountains and the lands past the river. It appeared faded, as if exposed to too much light. The very air shimmered with little spots of fading color and light. Pop, pop, pop, like balloons that have been pinned for the big dance the tiny spots went out. At the dance, they swirled and they twirled and they tangoed with a manic motion, and they were being drawn... drawn somewhere.
His motion slowed, slowed, slowed till he stopped mid air above the little village. He was a mote in the air. Swirling and floating in the air. He felt faded, he felt drained, and he too joined in the dance, being drawn, drawn, will less.
He flowed with the other motes, heading toward a destination that revealed itself on the far side of the village. A small knoll, with a small withered tree, was the gathering place for the faded spots of color and light. They created a tornado of faded, fading hope and life, being drawn down to a spot at the base of the tree.
He fell in a constant spin till he too, was pulled to the base of the tree. There was, he saw, just before total and complete sweet oblivion, a hole in the fabric of the knoll. Not the knoll, itself, but something just beyond the reality of the knoll, just before it as well. It was a leak, and all of life, all of hope, all of love and magic in this little valley was being sucked away through the leak.
"It's a Hole!", he cried out, startling Rebecca from where she dozed. "It's a Hole! Rebecca, it's a Hole, with a capital H and we have got to stop it up, somehow."
Rebecca groggily replied "A hole?" She was overjoyed to see Gwion recovered a bit from his ordeal, but he seemed to be speaking nonsense. "A hole?" she repeated.
"Not just a hole, my dear, darling, Rebecca. A Hole. Capital H o l e. A Hole of such magnitude that it is draining this place of it's hope, it's dreams, it's very life. I do not know how long it has been there, and I do not know how it got there, but I saw it, big as life, big as you, big as love. It's there, for sure and true!"
He struggled upright, and it was evident that no matter how far he had come in recovery, he still had a way to go. Rebecca rose from her kneeling position, groaning as her knees let her know that age moves on and carries flexibility with it. She sat on the bed next to Gwion and held one of his hands in hers. It was cold and she gently rubbed it between hers.
"Gwion, my love, I don't understand. A Hole? A Hole where?" She shook her head, not understanding, but seeing the light in her loves eyes. It was not the light of madness, and she recognized it as such, having seen the light of madness in the severely ill. This light the light of extreme clarity, of having seen something that might not be seen with ordinary eyes.
Excitedly, Gwion told her of his dream, of the misery and despair, though he did leave out parts of it that reminded him of things he could do nothing about. He told her about the falling and the planet, and the village and the motes in the air, and the whirlpool at the base of the tree. He described it all in excited words, painting the picture until she nodded her understanding of it.
"I see." she said.
"Good." he replied.
"But Gwion, how do you patch a hole, or rather a Hole, that you can't see with normal eyes?"
"Did you bring my bag?" And she pulled it up from the side of the bed. It no longer had the feel of being a crawly live thing, and though it didn't have the same sheen and glow that it had, it was also not quite as headed for threadbarreness as it had been earlier. She marveled briefly at the change, suspected it was related to Gwion's partial recovery, and suspected it would not be the first wonder she would wonder at.
He buried his head into the bag rummaged deep into it, muttering. "Where is it, where did it go?" He pulled his head out and looked at Rebecca briefly. "There's something I had a long time ago, almost when I started ... when I started on the path I'm on now. I'll be back, I may have to go down to the cellar." And having said that, he crawled into the bag and completely disappeared. She could have sworn she heard receding footsteps, and receding mutterings, things being tossed about, clattering, clanging, bouncing and every so often an exclaiming "Hello! I had wondered where you had go to!".
Not as patiently as she would have liked, Rebecca waited. She was glad that Gwion had recovered as well as he had, and she was equally as glad that he believed he had an answer, but she did wish that he would get a move on! Sitting on the bed as she was, her foot began to tap, tap, tap.
Shortly, but not quite short enough to suit Rebecca, the sounds of feet on a staircase came from inside the red bag on the bed. She looked right, looked left, and feeling a bit guilty about it, she peeked into the bag. She wasn't sure if she should, she was fairly sure that it would upset Gwion, but peek she did. She saw only more bag. No Gwion, no staircase, no nothing at all, just the red insides of a bag with red outsides.
She heard a door close and she quickly dropped the lip of the bag into it's place. Folding her hands in her lap, and entwining her fingers, she sat there, like a petulant child, swinging her legs.
Gwion poked his head out, said "Oh! Hello, love. I hope I wasn't to very, very long." to which she replied sweetly, "Oh no, not at all. There's just this great hole sucking in the very life of my village, you see, and I could have waited centuries for you to return, I was so entertained here by nothing at all."
"I sense a bit of tension here", he said. "I'm sorry, Rebecca, but you see, I left these far back in my memories, and sometimes when searching our memories, it does take a bit of time."
"Memories? How can you search your memories... Never mind. I know that your answer to the question would be some cryptic answer, such as 'This bag holds my memories, which is why if anyone else looks into it, they will see nothing because they are after all, MY memories'".
"Exactly!", he exclaimed, pleased with her deduction. Only... "Rebecca, did you go looking into the bag?"
"Um." she said. "Maybe just a peek... but you were gone an awfully long time, and there was a lot of noise from the bag and the sound of steps, so yes... I won't tell you a lie, Gwion, and I never will. I did look into your bag, and I saw nothing but the inside of the bag."
Gwion gave his love an intense look. "Rebecca." he paused, thinking what to say. "No is not the time, but there will come a time when I allow you to see all of my memories. Not now, though. After we fix this Hole. Would that be all right?" He took her hand in his and looked into her brown eyes, reminding her that she had caught his heart from the very beginning. "You will know all about me there is to know. I promise this, because we shall be together for a very long time."
"All right, my dear Gwion. I will wait, and I too, feel that we shall be together for a very, very long time. Now, what was it that you brought from the cellar of your memories?"
"Ah!", he said, and produced a small, thin, black case, about the size of a flat loaf of bread. He opened the case, and produced a pair of lenses, encased in dark wire, bridged in the middle, with hinges on their outside edges. The lenses were tinted a reddish color.
"These are my rose colored glasses. They were first worn by me to pull me out of a dark depression. They were given to me by the one who taught me my craft. And that is a story in itself, but no time, no time. They will allow me to see the stream of light and hope and love that is being sucked away and into the Hole on the Knoll."
He struggled with pulling himself erect, and then he struggled with putting on his boots, now a faded green, as faded as a lawn in the autumn knowing that winter is nibbling at it's edges. Belying his words, his physical strength was not ever half back, not by half. Rebecca was alarmed and said as much, and Gwion tried to sooth her worries with assurances that once they had blocked the Hole, stopped the drain, then his strength would return as quickly as it had left. He emphasized that they should hurry, for as quickly as his strength had left him, he was as afraid that his courage would too, and then it would be far and away too late.
She supported him leaving as she had when arriving, arm around his waist. This time she did stop, give her parents a very large hug, kissed her father's cheek, and explained that she and Gwion were going out to save the world, please don't worry, and don't wait up. As her parents were parents, they looked at each other after she had gone, shrugged and went on with their game of whist
Stumbling and halting when Gwion had to catch his breath, the pair moved through the misty streets of the village. As they moved, Gwion explained what he was having to do.
"When we get to the knoll, I will don my glasses." He tapped the black case against his temple. "These should allow me to locate the exact place where the Hole is. Then, still wearing them, I should be able to find a stone large enough to plug the hole. And that is where the danger lies."
"And why is that? Surely there is a stone in the village large enough to block any hole you find, unless that hole is so large it would take a house to fill it."
"No, Rebecca, even that would not be large enough." Seeing her confusion, he went on. "Look, the Hole is not something of this earth. It was created or dug or made or fashioned somewhere else and placed here. Why it was placed here to drain all the magic from this place, we don't know. By whom, I can only barely fathom, and I won't even guess because to speak a name is to give that thing power, and I'd rather not do that yet. In short, this is not a hole that we can dam with common village stones. It is not a common hole... this is a Hole in the spirit of the earth, in the soul of this place. It can only be stoppered by a stone of the same caliber, a stone of the heart."
"Stone of the heart. And that would be?" she asked.
"A stone of the heart is something so sad, so terrible, that it sits in the heart, exactly as a stone. It gets in the way of you giving that heart to anyone, fully without reservation. It gets in the way of you even giving it to yourself, in the form of forgiveness or love. I have such a stone. I know where it dwells. So, it lies with me to grasp that stone and use it to close off the Hole."
When the implications of what he had just revealed sank into her mind, Rebecca regarded her love with new eyes, and those eyes were shining with glimmers of tears. How difficult it must have been to have put on such a merry face when in truth, his whole world was shattered? How brave a soul must he be?
"Oh, not so brave", he said with a smiling frown, knowing what she was thinking. "It was cowardice that left the stone there, for I never faced that pain, never let the tears wash it out of my heart. Now, perhaps I see the reason. Perhaps in the depth of my own story, this has been written exactly as it should."
"Then what would be the danger of using that stone, that pain, for something good and proper? How could that be anything but a lifting of your soul, a brightening of your heart?"
"Because it is a part of me. It is what has created me, made me the merry jester, the incredible storyteller, whose stories can paint a world so real. It is the pain inside of me that allows me to be able to do that, because, you see, everything that the characters go through, for good and ill, I have already been there. It is the Empathy of the Storyteller that brings it all to life. If I remove that, then there is a very good chance the stories will be removed with it. That I could not bear, and yet, I must. For to leave it as it is will allow the Hole to grow till it drains us all. When that happens, all the stones in all the hearts will become so large that this very land will sink into the earth to become not a valley, but a lake of tears."
"OH! Well, then." said Rebecca, with new understanding. "But still and all, you would have your memories, and from those you could re-create the stories, yes?"
With a sad smile, Gwion looked over to Rebecca's hopeful face. "Yes. They may not have the same color, the same depth, the same... life. But they would still be there. That is for sure and true, my love."
"And you would always have me!" she said with a smile, hoping to bring a bit of light back into his eyes. She didn't, and she could see that, but he smiled back and answered, "And you will always have me, my love."
They finished the journey in silence, leaning on each other. No more words, no more bravado. Just the job to do. The knoll was still as it was, and the skinny little tree, leafless, greeted them without a word.
He nodded to Rebecca, and said "Best let me do this alone, love. This is greater magic than I have ever attempted before." She nodded back to him, but oddly, her hand would not leave his. Her hand believed, and made a very strong case to her heart, that if it let go of his hand, she may very well lose him altogether.
"You must let go, love. It won't be long, I promise."
What exactly he was promising, she could not be sure of, but she let go. She couldn't say a word to him, could not tell him to be careful, could not tell him she loved him. Her voice was to close to cracking, her eyes to close to overfilling, her heart to close to breaking. She very simply had a feeling that she was about to lose something rare and valuable, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Gwion stepped away from her, and placed the rose colored lenses before his eyes. Suddenly the world changed. The muted greens and blues and yellows became a miasma of greys and shades of grey and red tinted greys. He could see the motes, the same spots of light he had seen in the dream, had even become, whirling and sucking through the air to be drawn down, down, down.
"I can see them Rebecca. They flow into a spot directly at the base of the three." On his knees, he pointed to a spot where three roots emerged from the ground. Though Rebecca could not see a thing, it was evident to her eyes that Gwion did. His face followed a line from far above her head, down to where the roots entered the ground. "These are not the roots of the tree. These are the Taps where the Hole has been draining the entire village. Poor tree. Unsuspecting dupe for whomever is behind this." He reached down and pulled with what strength he had, and the fake roots pulled out quite easily.
To Gwion's eyes, it was as if he had unleashed the light of the sun. With the pulling of the fake roots, he had undammed the hole and now the motes were flowing into it even faster! "Oh, that was stupid." he said. Rebecca alarmed, cried out "What? What was stupid?"
"Um. Never mind, dear. I just may have to work a bit harder than I expected. Faster too. Now, I will be very quiet here for a few moments while I go searching for the stone. Do not be alarmed, all right? I will be back as quickly as I can!" and saying no more he dropped to the ground and sat, quiet as midnight.
Rebecca, a bit alarmed regardless of what Gwion had said, looked at him and shook her head. "Silly man, love you though I may, I certainly hope our lives are not filled with me constantly waiting on you, because so far, that's exactly what it seems to be."
Gwion did not hear her. He was quite busy. Not having his bag nearby, he had to go down, deep into his own self, dropping through memories that had long lain buried, and that he had hoped would always remain buried.
Sadness mingled with anger, tainted with joy and painted with pain, down through years and years and lifetimes and more years of memories, looking for just the one that he knew was there. It didn't take long, for he had placed the memories there, and he knew exactly where to look.
Death there was here. Fear too. Pain of loss. Loss of life, loss of love. The largest stone in the human heart is not for those that have left us, but for those that have left us not of their own free will. Memories of laying his head on an empty chest, hearing the labored wheeze of breath, feeling the tired heartbeat in a living chest slow, slow, slow until it beat no more, and the living was not. Memories of solitary kiss against lips that could not feel, on forehead that did not think. Memories of warmth, fading, fading, fading... gone.
Tears came from his eyes and heartbreaking sobs broke from his throat as Rebecca watched him. She did not know what he had found, but she most ferverently wished it was what he was searching for, because just watching him and the pain he was going through was tearing her apart, knowing there was nothing she could do to help him.
Gwion grasped the pain of the memory. He pulled it close to his chest and cradled it as gently as one would a newborn. Up, and up he swam through the other memories, all paled now from the experience of this one he held. Up and up he went till he reached the cage of his own mind. He opened tear clouded eyes, calmed the sobs in his chest and saw Rebecca standing there, her hand, a fist clenched and bitten to hold back her own cry.
Gwion looked down at his hands, and examined the stone he had wrought. It was red, but not from the tint of the lenses. It was the blood red of pain, of sorrow, of madness. It would be enough, he hoped. It would have to be.
On his knees, he crawled. He carried the stone to the Hole. How empty he felt. Weak as a kitten, worn as an old sock. Limp as a noodle, too long boiled. He made it to the Hole and swayed over it, feeling the pull of the misery, feeling the lure of despair. How easy it would be to just give in, give out, give up. His pain reached out and tugged at his memory, promising bliss if he just let go. He started to fall into the Hole, and his pain slipped out of his grasp and went down before him. His sight failed. His world faded to the black of oblivion.
Rebecca watched him crawl to the little tree, carrying nothing, nothing at all. She watched as a river of tears and heard a volley of sobs claw out of his chest. She saw him teeter, she saw him topple, she saw him fall.
"Gwion! Gwion, Gwion!" she fair screamed his name as she stood and ran to his side. He lay as one sleeping, tear stained face still soaked from his ordeal. His chest did not rise and fall. "Gwion!" she cried again, laying her head on his chest, listening, listening. Not a sound echoed inside his ribcage.
"No! Gwion! No!" She snatched the rose lenses from his eyes and looked deep into them, seeking for some spark, some sign. Deep, deep within, she saw them. Tiny, not hardly noticeable at all, almost gone... golden motes swam, but grew dimmer, dimmer, dimmer.
"Oh, Gwion", she sobbed. "You always leave me waiting." Dimmer, dimmer... "Now you get back here, right now!", she screamed at his unmoving face. "Come back, come back, come back". If this had been a fairytale, he would have come back. He would have taken a great gulping breath, opened his eyes and kissed her. She would have cried great tears of release and they would have lived happily ever after. Dimmer...
She had an inspiration, a bit of a grasp of a glimpse of a shred of hope. She took the lenses and placed them on her face. The world spun, the universe shook, and she saw the world through rose colored glasses for the first time in her life, and what she saw terrified her.
She saw the motes swimming out of Gwion, tornadoing down into the Hole. She could see it now, large and gaping and hungry seeming, pulling at her, wanting her to join with it, to merge and just let the world go. Gwion was dying, possibly dead. Of what worth was her life without him? Where would the color be? Where would the joy be?
She teetered on the brink of the Hole, watching mote after mote fly into it, sparks into a vacuum. If Gwion had been successful, shouldn't this have all stopped? She looked down into the Hole and saw what had happened and was wrong.
She could see the stone that Gwion dropped. It was large, and it would have been large enough, but it had stuck on an outcropping. She could not reach it, for every time she tried, her hand, very real in her outside would, would not go through the solid ground. The Hole, she remembered was not in her world.
She stood up in a panic, and looked around. Nothing. There was nothing here that would help her. "Think, Rebecca, Think!", she yelled to herself.
Memories, Gwion had said. Stones made of memories. Well, if there were stones made of memories, why not sticks? Why not a stick large enough to move a stuck stone made of memories? Sticks and stones. She almost giggled, but was afraid she would not be able to stop.
How to do it? How had Gwion done it? It looked like he had just... gone inside himself, as if he was just remembering. Well, that certainly looked easy enough. Holding tight to Gwion's cold and lifeless hand, she dropped to the ground, quieted her breathing and took a mental step back and high dived into herself.
Funny thing about memories. People tend to run on just the surface memories, such as 'What do I have to do today?' and 'Did I turn the kettle off?'. Occasionally they think about things in their past, but generally it doesn't run very deep. Most people rarely want to get that close to themselves, and leave it alone.
Rebecca didn't have that choice. She was spurred on by desperation. "Where is it, where is it?, she questioned herself, searching through countless memories of breakfasts, long days without end, nothing out of the ordinary at all, just bleak and dreary existence. The only break she would fathom were recent memories, since Gwion entered her life. Lovely though they may be, they were of no help, as they were cotton candy stuff of romance and love, but nothing substantial enough to move an imaginary stone stuck on an imaginary ledge in an imaginary Hole that was sucking the life out of the one she loved.
Further and further she waded through the muck of ordinary nothing special days. Here and there were sparkles of things rather special. Birthdays, her parents anniversary, the first time she had been kissed by a boy behind the pub, but nothing that would serve. Her heart was starting to sink that what she needed might not be here.
Off in the distance in her virtual world, she saw something that gave her hope. Something that restored her resolve, pulled her through the mud till she could grasp with un-natural strength the memory that she had come looking for. She had hoped... no, she had known it was here, even if she had not remembered it was here.
When she was very, very small, no more than 3 or 4, her father called her to his side to show her one of the last remaining magics in their world. As she stood, tiny hand grasped in his giant one, he pointed in the direction of the twin mountains, and there, perched like a bridge between them, was a rainbow. She asked her father then, if she could catch the rainbow. He laughed and reached out to try to grasp it for her, but failed. "Darlin' babygirl, if I could, I would bring that rainbow for you to carry in your pocket." That was the memory that Rebecca found.
She reached out for that memory, and using power from whence she knew not where, she pulled the rainbow from between the mountains. It did not want to come, it did not want to go, but grudgingly, it tore free, sprinkling memory mountain fragments in it's path.
Rebecca held onto that bow with both hand, with dear life, and leapt straight up, up and back into her own head. Looking down into her hands, she could see the bow, large, solid and very, very strong, all shiny and all colors radiating outward.
Hurry, hurry, she thought to herself, before the Hole sucked away the joy and color of this, too. A quick glance at Gwion showed no change, but a slow movement of motes crawled from his heart to the Hole.
With the strength of a pile driver, she drove the rainbow into the Hole, and lodged it against the spot where the stone was lodged against the Hole wall. When she felt it was secure, she pushed against it with all her might. It didn't budge.
She shifted her feet to get her shoulder under it, and lifted the rainbow, straining hard. Nothing happened, but she thought she could see the stone rock, just a little bit.
She stepped around to the far side of the Hole, not letting go of the rainbow. She then, with a better angle of leverage, shoved the rainbow as hard as she could, throwing herself off balance and at the point of falling in.
The stone shifted. The stone ground angrily from having been woken, rocked, tilted and started to slide off the ledge and into the Hole. Encouraged, Rebecca doubled her efforts, grunting as a young lady most assuredly should not, straining as a young woman would never admit to. The rainbow moved, the stone slipped off the ledge, and Rebecca, giving one elated hurrah of triumph, toppled into the Hole, following the stone closely. The Hole was stopped.
On that day, on a grassy knoll, near a village that lay in a valley that was nestled between twin mountains and snuggled at the fork of a river, there were two bodies that lay head to head, with their hands touching. A man, dressed in flashy green, and a lovely woman with brown hair. For a very long time nothing happened at all. There was no breeze. No birds sang. Not a thing at all.
Then, with a startled and gaspy intake of breath, the man in green, Gwion, opened his eyes. He didn't move for a while. In fact, he was surprised he was even able to open his eyes and gasp in a startled breath. He lay there quite a while, just feeling, just being, just being alive, gathering his thoughts and realizing where he was. He felt that he had just climbed from a deep hole of a long sadness. He felt... clean. And there was a curious emptiness, as if something had been misplaced, but he couldn't imagine what that could have been.
Slowly, as slowly as elephants crossing the alps, memory returned. Slowly, he remembered who he was. Slowly, he remembered what had happened.
"Rebecca?" Painfully, he lifted himself onto one elbow and realized that one of his hands were clutching something. He looked down the length of his arm and saw that he was holding another hand, and that hand was not his own.
"Rebecca?", he called out, hauling himself to his knees and crawling to where his love lay, unmoving. He saw the rosy lenses on her eyes and he said in anguish, "Oh, Rebecca! What did you do? What have you done?" He took the rose colored glasses gently, gently, oh so gently from her face and placed them over his own eyes.
No Hole. He had done it... or ... had she? Regardless it had been done, but the realization of success was dimmed and muted and saddened by his loss. He removed the glasses from his eyes and examined the still form of his love.
She still breathed, thank the gods, and he sighed a happy sigh of relief. She was not dead. He listened to her mind, and heard nothing, no dreams, no murmurs of the silent droning of ordinary thoughts of the silent furious buzz of the creative. He did hear her heart beat, though. Not only did he hear it, but he heard it ... twice. Doubled. Two times over.
"What the hell?", he thought.
He looked around to see if what he thought he thought was what he thought was correct. The knoll gave it's agreement by not saying anything at all. The ground near Rebecca's feet was disturbed, as if she had been standing and her feet had sunk in deep. Supporting something? Pushing something? Regardless, she had shown a lot of strength and her feet had dug in with determination.
Gwion knew exactly what had happened and he laughed with delight. "Oh, you clever, clever girl!", he said, rubbing his hands together. The light in his eyes and the glee on his face was even stronger when he first arrived in the pub and he fairly glowed when he stood up.
He walked over to the little tree, still rather skinny and sad looking and quietly spoke to it for a bit. Then, with a slap of his hands, and a hoop of laughter, he placed his hands on either side of the trunk, and pushed with all his heart, all of his mind, all of his imagination and wishes. He pushed so hard that sweat broke out on his brow. What was he pushing? The tree didn't tip, didn't bend, didn't twiggle a twig. He was pushing through the tree, looking, looking into the ground beneath his feet. He whispered hushed urgent words, speaking feelings and hopes and dreams in a voice quiet with concentration.
When he had found what he was looking for, he reversed his stance, took a deep breath and puuuuuled with all his might. This time, the little tree trembled with the exertion. Tiny beads of sap began a flow up out of the twig ends and it appeared that the tree itself was crying out. Buds appeared like popcorn over every branch. One bud in particular, was very, very large and continued to grow long after the other buds had flowered. It eventually grew so large the branch it was on could not support it any more and the bud dropped off, falling down. Gwion deftly let go of the tree in time to catch the falling superbud.
He carried the oversized package to where Rebecca, still and pale, lie. There, gently, he unwrapped the bud, one leaf at a time until what lay there was what he wanted to find, what he knew he would find.
A bright mote of light, clean and bright and shining and surrounded by the green of life and love and nature.
He lifted the light up and out of it's green nest, carried it over to the waiting form of his love. With the care of a surgeon, he placed it on her chest, sat back and waited. He watched as the mote sank into Rebecca's body. A few moments more, and her eyelids fluttered. A few ticks of that world clock and they opened. Rebecca took a deep breath into her lungs, and coughed, as a swimmer will when they have accidentally breathed water before learning how to do it for real.
A few minutes passed with Gwion sitting on his heels grinning and with Rebecca filling out her body once again. She sat up and looked around, saw Gwion sitting there smiling at her.
"Darling", she said, smiling back at him. "I love you more than life itself, and you know it to be true. But there is one question I do, indeed, have to ask of you."
"Anything, my love. Anything at all."
"Will you always leave me waiting for you to show up?"
Gwion just smiled, and Rebecca just smiled and the village recovered it's magic and grew to be the Village of Shopkeepers once again, and eventually Rebecca got the answer to her question.
And the answer was Yes.
His dream was one of bleak emptiness and despair. He was falling, falling, down and far, accelerating as he fell. There was nothing to hold to, no safety to grab, no rope, no net. He felt the wind on his face, harsh, tearing, and the air was sickly sweet as he descended.
He watched his past in flickers, still frames appearing and shooting off into the dark, receding like sparks off a dying fire. He saw all that he had loved come into view, and he watched, had to watch, had no choice as he had no eyelids to close. He watched them die.
Again.
The dream faded and was replaced with emptiness and dark. Not your ordinary dark, it was void of dark, it was void. Dark had been pulled in and sucked away with all light, all sound, all life, all color. He was still falling.
Down, and down, despair settled around his bones like a damp and cold blanket. No fear, he had nothing to fear. Fear, had it ever been, had flown away, drained away by the whirlpool of despair.
There was a flash off to his side. Not much, but a small flicker, a tiny flicker, a minute flicker of sudden color. A pinprick, a dot, an atomic particle. But it was something he could hang his hat on.
His motion shifted, and he drifted toward the flick in the nothing. Round it became, but still small, still undefined. Closer he drifted, slow, slow, but it began to resolve into a ball. Blue, and white, brown and green it was.
He could feel, through some sense he could not identify, that the ever hungry void was seeking this place out.
Closer and closer till it became a spinning globe, a planet with oceans and continents. Down and down till he could make out mountain ranges, rivers, forests. Falling and falling till he could see a tiny village, small and individual, with a twin mountain range on one side, and a forked river on the other.
This village, he could see, was a dimmer color than the mountains and the lands past the river. It appeared faded, as if exposed to too much light. The very air shimmered with little spots of fading color and light. Pop, pop, pop, like balloons that have been pinned for the big dance the tiny spots went out. At the dance, they swirled and they twirled and they tangoed with a manic motion, and they were being drawn... drawn somewhere.
His motion slowed, slowed, slowed till he stopped mid air above the little village. He was a mote in the air. Swirling and floating in the air. He felt faded, he felt drained, and he too joined in the dance, being drawn, drawn, will less.
He flowed with the other motes, heading toward a destination that revealed itself on the far side of the village. A small knoll, with a small withered tree, was the gathering place for the faded spots of color and light. They created a tornado of faded, fading hope and life, being drawn down to a spot at the base of the tree.
He fell in a constant spin till he too, was pulled to the base of the tree. There was, he saw, just before total and complete sweet oblivion, a hole in the fabric of the knoll. Not the knoll, itself, but something just beyond the reality of the knoll, just before it as well. It was a leak, and all of life, all of hope, all of love and magic in this little valley was being sucked away through the leak.
"It's a Hole!", he cried out, startling Rebecca from where she dozed. "It's a Hole! Rebecca, it's a Hole, with a capital H and we have got to stop it up, somehow."
Rebecca groggily replied "A hole?" She was overjoyed to see Gwion recovered a bit from his ordeal, but he seemed to be speaking nonsense. "A hole?" she repeated.
"Not just a hole, my dear, darling, Rebecca. A Hole. Capital H o l e. A Hole of such magnitude that it is draining this place of it's hope, it's dreams, it's very life. I do not know how long it has been there, and I do not know how it got there, but I saw it, big as life, big as you, big as love. It's there, for sure and true!"
He struggled upright, and it was evident that no matter how far he had come in recovery, he still had a way to go. Rebecca rose from her kneeling position, groaning as her knees let her know that age moves on and carries flexibility with it. She sat on the bed next to Gwion and held one of his hands in hers. It was cold and she gently rubbed it between hers.
"Gwion, my love, I don't understand. A Hole? A Hole where?" She shook her head, not understanding, but seeing the light in her loves eyes. It was not the light of madness, and she recognized it as such, having seen the light of madness in the severely ill. This light the light of extreme clarity, of having seen something that might not be seen with ordinary eyes.
Excitedly, Gwion told her of his dream, of the misery and despair, though he did leave out parts of it that reminded him of things he could do nothing about. He told her about the falling and the planet, and the village and the motes in the air, and the whirlpool at the base of the tree. He described it all in excited words, painting the picture until she nodded her understanding of it.
"I see." she said.
"Good." he replied.
"But Gwion, how do you patch a hole, or rather a Hole, that you can't see with normal eyes?"
"Did you bring my bag?" And she pulled it up from the side of the bed. It no longer had the feel of being a crawly live thing, and though it didn't have the same sheen and glow that it had, it was also not quite as headed for threadbarreness as it had been earlier. She marveled briefly at the change, suspected it was related to Gwion's partial recovery, and suspected it would not be the first wonder she would wonder at.
He buried his head into the bag rummaged deep into it, muttering. "Where is it, where did it go?" He pulled his head out and looked at Rebecca briefly. "There's something I had a long time ago, almost when I started ... when I started on the path I'm on now. I'll be back, I may have to go down to the cellar." And having said that, he crawled into the bag and completely disappeared. She could have sworn she heard receding footsteps, and receding mutterings, things being tossed about, clattering, clanging, bouncing and every so often an exclaiming "Hello! I had wondered where you had go to!".
Not as patiently as she would have liked, Rebecca waited. She was glad that Gwion had recovered as well as he had, and she was equally as glad that he believed he had an answer, but she did wish that he would get a move on! Sitting on the bed as she was, her foot began to tap, tap, tap.
Shortly, but not quite short enough to suit Rebecca, the sounds of feet on a staircase came from inside the red bag on the bed. She looked right, looked left, and feeling a bit guilty about it, she peeked into the bag. She wasn't sure if she should, she was fairly sure that it would upset Gwion, but peek she did. She saw only more bag. No Gwion, no staircase, no nothing at all, just the red insides of a bag with red outsides.
She heard a door close and she quickly dropped the lip of the bag into it's place. Folding her hands in her lap, and entwining her fingers, she sat there, like a petulant child, swinging her legs.
Gwion poked his head out, said "Oh! Hello, love. I hope I wasn't to very, very long." to which she replied sweetly, "Oh no, not at all. There's just this great hole sucking in the very life of my village, you see, and I could have waited centuries for you to return, I was so entertained here by nothing at all."
"I sense a bit of tension here", he said. "I'm sorry, Rebecca, but you see, I left these far back in my memories, and sometimes when searching our memories, it does take a bit of time."
"Memories? How can you search your memories... Never mind. I know that your answer to the question would be some cryptic answer, such as 'This bag holds my memories, which is why if anyone else looks into it, they will see nothing because they are after all, MY memories'".
"Exactly!", he exclaimed, pleased with her deduction. Only... "Rebecca, did you go looking into the bag?"
"Um." she said. "Maybe just a peek... but you were gone an awfully long time, and there was a lot of noise from the bag and the sound of steps, so yes... I won't tell you a lie, Gwion, and I never will. I did look into your bag, and I saw nothing but the inside of the bag."
Gwion gave his love an intense look. "Rebecca." he paused, thinking what to say. "No is not the time, but there will come a time when I allow you to see all of my memories. Not now, though. After we fix this Hole. Would that be all right?" He took her hand in his and looked into her brown eyes, reminding her that she had caught his heart from the very beginning. "You will know all about me there is to know. I promise this, because we shall be together for a very long time."
"All right, my dear Gwion. I will wait, and I too, feel that we shall be together for a very, very long time. Now, what was it that you brought from the cellar of your memories?"
"Ah!", he said, and produced a small, thin, black case, about the size of a flat loaf of bread. He opened the case, and produced a pair of lenses, encased in dark wire, bridged in the middle, with hinges on their outside edges. The lenses were tinted a reddish color.
"These are my rose colored glasses. They were first worn by me to pull me out of a dark depression. They were given to me by the one who taught me my craft. And that is a story in itself, but no time, no time. They will allow me to see the stream of light and hope and love that is being sucked away and into the Hole on the Knoll."
He struggled with pulling himself erect, and then he struggled with putting on his boots, now a faded green, as faded as a lawn in the autumn knowing that winter is nibbling at it's edges. Belying his words, his physical strength was not ever half back, not by half. Rebecca was alarmed and said as much, and Gwion tried to sooth her worries with assurances that once they had blocked the Hole, stopped the drain, then his strength would return as quickly as it had left. He emphasized that they should hurry, for as quickly as his strength had left him, he was as afraid that his courage would too, and then it would be far and away too late.
She supported him leaving as she had when arriving, arm around his waist. This time she did stop, give her parents a very large hug, kissed her father's cheek, and explained that she and Gwion were going out to save the world, please don't worry, and don't wait up. As her parents were parents, they looked at each other after she had gone, shrugged and went on with their game of whist
Stumbling and halting when Gwion had to catch his breath, the pair moved through the misty streets of the village. As they moved, Gwion explained what he was having to do.
"When we get to the knoll, I will don my glasses." He tapped the black case against his temple. "These should allow me to locate the exact place where the Hole is. Then, still wearing them, I should be able to find a stone large enough to plug the hole. And that is where the danger lies."
"And why is that? Surely there is a stone in the village large enough to block any hole you find, unless that hole is so large it would take a house to fill it."
"No, Rebecca, even that would not be large enough." Seeing her confusion, he went on. "Look, the Hole is not something of this earth. It was created or dug or made or fashioned somewhere else and placed here. Why it was placed here to drain all the magic from this place, we don't know. By whom, I can only barely fathom, and I won't even guess because to speak a name is to give that thing power, and I'd rather not do that yet. In short, this is not a hole that we can dam with common village stones. It is not a common hole... this is a Hole in the spirit of the earth, in the soul of this place. It can only be stoppered by a stone of the same caliber, a stone of the heart."
"Stone of the heart. And that would be?" she asked.
"A stone of the heart is something so sad, so terrible, that it sits in the heart, exactly as a stone. It gets in the way of you giving that heart to anyone, fully without reservation. It gets in the way of you even giving it to yourself, in the form of forgiveness or love. I have such a stone. I know where it dwells. So, it lies with me to grasp that stone and use it to close off the Hole."
When the implications of what he had just revealed sank into her mind, Rebecca regarded her love with new eyes, and those eyes were shining with glimmers of tears. How difficult it must have been to have put on such a merry face when in truth, his whole world was shattered? How brave a soul must he be?
"Oh, not so brave", he said with a smiling frown, knowing what she was thinking. "It was cowardice that left the stone there, for I never faced that pain, never let the tears wash it out of my heart. Now, perhaps I see the reason. Perhaps in the depth of my own story, this has been written exactly as it should."
"Then what would be the danger of using that stone, that pain, for something good and proper? How could that be anything but a lifting of your soul, a brightening of your heart?"
"Because it is a part of me. It is what has created me, made me the merry jester, the incredible storyteller, whose stories can paint a world so real. It is the pain inside of me that allows me to be able to do that, because, you see, everything that the characters go through, for good and ill, I have already been there. It is the Empathy of the Storyteller that brings it all to life. If I remove that, then there is a very good chance the stories will be removed with it. That I could not bear, and yet, I must. For to leave it as it is will allow the Hole to grow till it drains us all. When that happens, all the stones in all the hearts will become so large that this very land will sink into the earth to become not a valley, but a lake of tears."
"OH! Well, then." said Rebecca, with new understanding. "But still and all, you would have your memories, and from those you could re-create the stories, yes?"
With a sad smile, Gwion looked over to Rebecca's hopeful face. "Yes. They may not have the same color, the same depth, the same... life. But they would still be there. That is for sure and true, my love."
"And you would always have me!" she said with a smile, hoping to bring a bit of light back into his eyes. She didn't, and she could see that, but he smiled back and answered, "And you will always have me, my love."
They finished the journey in silence, leaning on each other. No more words, no more bravado. Just the job to do. The knoll was still as it was, and the skinny little tree, leafless, greeted them without a word.
He nodded to Rebecca, and said "Best let me do this alone, love. This is greater magic than I have ever attempted before." She nodded back to him, but oddly, her hand would not leave his. Her hand believed, and made a very strong case to her heart, that if it let go of his hand, she may very well lose him altogether.
"You must let go, love. It won't be long, I promise."
What exactly he was promising, she could not be sure of, but she let go. She couldn't say a word to him, could not tell him to be careful, could not tell him she loved him. Her voice was to close to cracking, her eyes to close to overfilling, her heart to close to breaking. She very simply had a feeling that she was about to lose something rare and valuable, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Gwion stepped away from her, and placed the rose colored lenses before his eyes. Suddenly the world changed. The muted greens and blues and yellows became a miasma of greys and shades of grey and red tinted greys. He could see the motes, the same spots of light he had seen in the dream, had even become, whirling and sucking through the air to be drawn down, down, down.
"I can see them Rebecca. They flow into a spot directly at the base of the three." On his knees, he pointed to a spot where three roots emerged from the ground. Though Rebecca could not see a thing, it was evident to her eyes that Gwion did. His face followed a line from far above her head, down to where the roots entered the ground. "These are not the roots of the tree. These are the Taps where the Hole has been draining the entire village. Poor tree. Unsuspecting dupe for whomever is behind this." He reached down and pulled with what strength he had, and the fake roots pulled out quite easily.
To Gwion's eyes, it was as if he had unleashed the light of the sun. With the pulling of the fake roots, he had undammed the hole and now the motes were flowing into it even faster! "Oh, that was stupid." he said. Rebecca alarmed, cried out "What? What was stupid?"
"Um. Never mind, dear. I just may have to work a bit harder than I expected. Faster too. Now, I will be very quiet here for a few moments while I go searching for the stone. Do not be alarmed, all right? I will be back as quickly as I can!" and saying no more he dropped to the ground and sat, quiet as midnight.
Rebecca, a bit alarmed regardless of what Gwion had said, looked at him and shook her head. "Silly man, love you though I may, I certainly hope our lives are not filled with me constantly waiting on you, because so far, that's exactly what it seems to be."
Gwion did not hear her. He was quite busy. Not having his bag nearby, he had to go down, deep into his own self, dropping through memories that had long lain buried, and that he had hoped would always remain buried.
Sadness mingled with anger, tainted with joy and painted with pain, down through years and years and lifetimes and more years of memories, looking for just the one that he knew was there. It didn't take long, for he had placed the memories there, and he knew exactly where to look.
Death there was here. Fear too. Pain of loss. Loss of life, loss of love. The largest stone in the human heart is not for those that have left us, but for those that have left us not of their own free will. Memories of laying his head on an empty chest, hearing the labored wheeze of breath, feeling the tired heartbeat in a living chest slow, slow, slow until it beat no more, and the living was not. Memories of solitary kiss against lips that could not feel, on forehead that did not think. Memories of warmth, fading, fading, fading... gone.
Tears came from his eyes and heartbreaking sobs broke from his throat as Rebecca watched him. She did not know what he had found, but she most ferverently wished it was what he was searching for, because just watching him and the pain he was going through was tearing her apart, knowing there was nothing she could do to help him.
Gwion grasped the pain of the memory. He pulled it close to his chest and cradled it as gently as one would a newborn. Up, and up he swam through the other memories, all paled now from the experience of this one he held. Up and up he went till he reached the cage of his own mind. He opened tear clouded eyes, calmed the sobs in his chest and saw Rebecca standing there, her hand, a fist clenched and bitten to hold back her own cry.
Gwion looked down at his hands, and examined the stone he had wrought. It was red, but not from the tint of the lenses. It was the blood red of pain, of sorrow, of madness. It would be enough, he hoped. It would have to be.
On his knees, he crawled. He carried the stone to the Hole. How empty he felt. Weak as a kitten, worn as an old sock. Limp as a noodle, too long boiled. He made it to the Hole and swayed over it, feeling the pull of the misery, feeling the lure of despair. How easy it would be to just give in, give out, give up. His pain reached out and tugged at his memory, promising bliss if he just let go. He started to fall into the Hole, and his pain slipped out of his grasp and went down before him. His sight failed. His world faded to the black of oblivion.
Rebecca watched him crawl to the little tree, carrying nothing, nothing at all. She watched as a river of tears and heard a volley of sobs claw out of his chest. She saw him teeter, she saw him topple, she saw him fall.
"Gwion! Gwion, Gwion!" she fair screamed his name as she stood and ran to his side. He lay as one sleeping, tear stained face still soaked from his ordeal. His chest did not rise and fall. "Gwion!" she cried again, laying her head on his chest, listening, listening. Not a sound echoed inside his ribcage.
"No! Gwion! No!" She snatched the rose lenses from his eyes and looked deep into them, seeking for some spark, some sign. Deep, deep within, she saw them. Tiny, not hardly noticeable at all, almost gone... golden motes swam, but grew dimmer, dimmer, dimmer.
"Oh, Gwion", she sobbed. "You always leave me waiting." Dimmer, dimmer... "Now you get back here, right now!", she screamed at his unmoving face. "Come back, come back, come back". If this had been a fairytale, he would have come back. He would have taken a great gulping breath, opened his eyes and kissed her. She would have cried great tears of release and they would have lived happily ever after. Dimmer...
She had an inspiration, a bit of a grasp of a glimpse of a shred of hope. She took the lenses and placed them on her face. The world spun, the universe shook, and she saw the world through rose colored glasses for the first time in her life, and what she saw terrified her.
She saw the motes swimming out of Gwion, tornadoing down into the Hole. She could see it now, large and gaping and hungry seeming, pulling at her, wanting her to join with it, to merge and just let the world go. Gwion was dying, possibly dead. Of what worth was her life without him? Where would the color be? Where would the joy be?
She teetered on the brink of the Hole, watching mote after mote fly into it, sparks into a vacuum. If Gwion had been successful, shouldn't this have all stopped? She looked down into the Hole and saw what had happened and was wrong.
She could see the stone that Gwion dropped. It was large, and it would have been large enough, but it had stuck on an outcropping. She could not reach it, for every time she tried, her hand, very real in her outside would, would not go through the solid ground. The Hole, she remembered was not in her world.
She stood up in a panic, and looked around. Nothing. There was nothing here that would help her. "Think, Rebecca, Think!", she yelled to herself.
Memories, Gwion had said. Stones made of memories. Well, if there were stones made of memories, why not sticks? Why not a stick large enough to move a stuck stone made of memories? Sticks and stones. She almost giggled, but was afraid she would not be able to stop.
How to do it? How had Gwion done it? It looked like he had just... gone inside himself, as if he was just remembering. Well, that certainly looked easy enough. Holding tight to Gwion's cold and lifeless hand, she dropped to the ground, quieted her breathing and took a mental step back and high dived into herself.
Funny thing about memories. People tend to run on just the surface memories, such as 'What do I have to do today?' and 'Did I turn the kettle off?'. Occasionally they think about things in their past, but generally it doesn't run very deep. Most people rarely want to get that close to themselves, and leave it alone.
Rebecca didn't have that choice. She was spurred on by desperation. "Where is it, where is it?, she questioned herself, searching through countless memories of breakfasts, long days without end, nothing out of the ordinary at all, just bleak and dreary existence. The only break she would fathom were recent memories, since Gwion entered her life. Lovely though they may be, they were of no help, as they were cotton candy stuff of romance and love, but nothing substantial enough to move an imaginary stone stuck on an imaginary ledge in an imaginary Hole that was sucking the life out of the one she loved.
Further and further she waded through the muck of ordinary nothing special days. Here and there were sparkles of things rather special. Birthdays, her parents anniversary, the first time she had been kissed by a boy behind the pub, but nothing that would serve. Her heart was starting to sink that what she needed might not be here.
Off in the distance in her virtual world, she saw something that gave her hope. Something that restored her resolve, pulled her through the mud till she could grasp with un-natural strength the memory that she had come looking for. She had hoped... no, she had known it was here, even if she had not remembered it was here.
When she was very, very small, no more than 3 or 4, her father called her to his side to show her one of the last remaining magics in their world. As she stood, tiny hand grasped in his giant one, he pointed in the direction of the twin mountains, and there, perched like a bridge between them, was a rainbow. She asked her father then, if she could catch the rainbow. He laughed and reached out to try to grasp it for her, but failed. "Darlin' babygirl, if I could, I would bring that rainbow for you to carry in your pocket." That was the memory that Rebecca found.
She reached out for that memory, and using power from whence she knew not where, she pulled the rainbow from between the mountains. It did not want to come, it did not want to go, but grudgingly, it tore free, sprinkling memory mountain fragments in it's path.
Rebecca held onto that bow with both hand, with dear life, and leapt straight up, up and back into her own head. Looking down into her hands, she could see the bow, large, solid and very, very strong, all shiny and all colors radiating outward.
Hurry, hurry, she thought to herself, before the Hole sucked away the joy and color of this, too. A quick glance at Gwion showed no change, but a slow movement of motes crawled from his heart to the Hole.
With the strength of a pile driver, she drove the rainbow into the Hole, and lodged it against the spot where the stone was lodged against the Hole wall. When she felt it was secure, she pushed against it with all her might. It didn't budge.
She shifted her feet to get her shoulder under it, and lifted the rainbow, straining hard. Nothing happened, but she thought she could see the stone rock, just a little bit.
She stepped around to the far side of the Hole, not letting go of the rainbow. She then, with a better angle of leverage, shoved the rainbow as hard as she could, throwing herself off balance and at the point of falling in.
The stone shifted. The stone ground angrily from having been woken, rocked, tilted and started to slide off the ledge and into the Hole. Encouraged, Rebecca doubled her efforts, grunting as a young lady most assuredly should not, straining as a young woman would never admit to. The rainbow moved, the stone slipped off the ledge, and Rebecca, giving one elated hurrah of triumph, toppled into the Hole, following the stone closely. The Hole was stopped.
On that day, on a grassy knoll, near a village that lay in a valley that was nestled between twin mountains and snuggled at the fork of a river, there were two bodies that lay head to head, with their hands touching. A man, dressed in flashy green, and a lovely woman with brown hair. For a very long time nothing happened at all. There was no breeze. No birds sang. Not a thing at all.
Then, with a startled and gaspy intake of breath, the man in green, Gwion, opened his eyes. He didn't move for a while. In fact, he was surprised he was even able to open his eyes and gasp in a startled breath. He lay there quite a while, just feeling, just being, just being alive, gathering his thoughts and realizing where he was. He felt that he had just climbed from a deep hole of a long sadness. He felt... clean. And there was a curious emptiness, as if something had been misplaced, but he couldn't imagine what that could have been.
Slowly, as slowly as elephants crossing the alps, memory returned. Slowly, he remembered who he was. Slowly, he remembered what had happened.
"Rebecca?" Painfully, he lifted himself onto one elbow and realized that one of his hands were clutching something. He looked down the length of his arm and saw that he was holding another hand, and that hand was not his own.
"Rebecca?", he called out, hauling himself to his knees and crawling to where his love lay, unmoving. He saw the rosy lenses on her eyes and he said in anguish, "Oh, Rebecca! What did you do? What have you done?" He took the rose colored glasses gently, gently, oh so gently from her face and placed them over his own eyes.
No Hole. He had done it... or ... had she? Regardless it had been done, but the realization of success was dimmed and muted and saddened by his loss. He removed the glasses from his eyes and examined the still form of his love.
She still breathed, thank the gods, and he sighed a happy sigh of relief. She was not dead. He listened to her mind, and heard nothing, no dreams, no murmurs of the silent droning of ordinary thoughts of the silent furious buzz of the creative. He did hear her heart beat, though. Not only did he hear it, but he heard it ... twice. Doubled. Two times over.
"What the hell?", he thought.
He looked around to see if what he thought he thought was what he thought was correct. The knoll gave it's agreement by not saying anything at all. The ground near Rebecca's feet was disturbed, as if she had been standing and her feet had sunk in deep. Supporting something? Pushing something? Regardless, she had shown a lot of strength and her feet had dug in with determination.
Gwion knew exactly what had happened and he laughed with delight. "Oh, you clever, clever girl!", he said, rubbing his hands together. The light in his eyes and the glee on his face was even stronger when he first arrived in the pub and he fairly glowed when he stood up.
He walked over to the little tree, still rather skinny and sad looking and quietly spoke to it for a bit. Then, with a slap of his hands, and a hoop of laughter, he placed his hands on either side of the trunk, and pushed with all his heart, all of his mind, all of his imagination and wishes. He pushed so hard that sweat broke out on his brow. What was he pushing? The tree didn't tip, didn't bend, didn't twiggle a twig. He was pushing through the tree, looking, looking into the ground beneath his feet. He whispered hushed urgent words, speaking feelings and hopes and dreams in a voice quiet with concentration.
When he had found what he was looking for, he reversed his stance, took a deep breath and puuuuuled with all his might. This time, the little tree trembled with the exertion. Tiny beads of sap began a flow up out of the twig ends and it appeared that the tree itself was crying out. Buds appeared like popcorn over every branch. One bud in particular, was very, very large and continued to grow long after the other buds had flowered. It eventually grew so large the branch it was on could not support it any more and the bud dropped off, falling down. Gwion deftly let go of the tree in time to catch the falling superbud.
He carried the oversized package to where Rebecca, still and pale, lie. There, gently, he unwrapped the bud, one leaf at a time until what lay there was what he wanted to find, what he knew he would find.
A bright mote of light, clean and bright and shining and surrounded by the green of life and love and nature.
He lifted the light up and out of it's green nest, carried it over to the waiting form of his love. With the care of a surgeon, he placed it on her chest, sat back and waited. He watched as the mote sank into Rebecca's body. A few moments more, and her eyelids fluttered. A few ticks of that world clock and they opened. Rebecca took a deep breath into her lungs, and coughed, as a swimmer will when they have accidentally breathed water before learning how to do it for real.
A few minutes passed with Gwion sitting on his heels grinning and with Rebecca filling out her body once again. She sat up and looked around, saw Gwion sitting there smiling at her.
"Darling", she said, smiling back at him. "I love you more than life itself, and you know it to be true. But there is one question I do, indeed, have to ask of you."
"Anything, my love. Anything at all."
"Will you always leave me waiting for you to show up?"
Gwion just smiled, and Rebecca just smiled and the village recovered it's magic and grew to be the Village of Shopkeepers once again, and eventually Rebecca got the answer to her question.
And the answer was Yes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-08 04:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-08 05:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-01-25 02:47 pm (UTC)Yes.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 04:42 am (UTC)