Xavier

The following is a very short story I drafted this past spring and read at last Friday's Agora Poetry, Song & Story Night.  (For those of you who don't know,  Agora nights are delightful & enriching cultural "get togethers" put on at regular intervals by the faculty and students of Belmont Abbey College.  Should you ever have the chance to attend one, I highly recommend you do.)

+JMJ

Xavier

By Caitlin M. Clancy

Copyright 2012

            A bright shimmer flashed across the rim of the sickle moon, tracing the pale crescent’s otherworldly edge with a fairy finger of light.  Below, the little watcher sighed, shifting his restless, tousled head among the fallen fir boughs.  It was quiet tonight.  Where are you going, son?  he heard his father ask again, the kind, rolling tones, drawn up as by a net from a fathomless sea, rising obediently from the recesses of his mind; a mind that, though young, was already deep and broad.  A mind like a vast, peaceful ocean at night – an ocean visible only to the watchful ear of a silent soul; an endless pool of breathing waves detectable only by its steady, thunderous tide washing in on unseen shores.  A mind, in fact, awake.   

            Xavier drew a steady breath of the cool, clear night air blowing in from off the lake.  It tasted of pine and fresh water and even, he imagined, of cloud.  He gazed up at the moon, his dark eyes bright with the sliver’s reflection, white as pearl yet sharp as the blade of a knife.  That, he decided, was why faeries danced of old.  That was why satyrs reveled in the dark of ancient woods and why nymphs crept out and played about the boughs of sacred groves, whispering their songs of joy and fear.  That was why he now lay with his own back upon fallen fir boughs, arms tucked behind his head, and thought with a boy’s mind the thoughts of men.  That, too, was why he spent hours silent, alone in the black woods, and listened for their voices – the voices of that marvelous company that walked the world before man dared to tread beyond his doorposts.  That was why he lay listening – listening, and longing, too, for another voice, a voice that would harmonize the clamorous murmurings of the ages, a voice that would teach them all to speak.  A voice he knew had come. 

            Where are you going, son?  Xavier recalled the room – small, old, and dim.  He remembered the touch of the doorjamb’s wet wood and the feel of the worn rug beneath his sandals.  He remembered, too, how, though his eager feet remained planted in the flickering light of the room, his hand had already plunged outside, where it rested, hidden, in the sable folds of night’s own cloak, long past the half-light cast by the fire.  Where are you going, son? his father asked, his shadow-veiled face calm and his imperceptible eyes deep, looking for all the world – and perhaps for something else, too – the fuller image of his child.  Where are you going? 

            To find it, Xavier replied, watching as a small, knowing smile touched his father’s features and played on his thoughtful visage; his face was now almost entirely hidden in the dusky light.  Go, then, he said, I am here for you.  Xavier took a step outside into the breezy night and the wind immediately reached out to ruffle his earthen-brown curls.  Xavier nodded, staring ahead into the massive, barely distinguishable ebony forms that were the trees.  Yes, he would go.  And perhaps he would understand.  And he would listen.  Speak, then, that I may know you, he thought, pleading silently with the voice he longed for, the voice he loved.  Your servant hears.