A Sky of One Thousands Stars

See the Sky, Look Up

Climb the eagle-headed mountain; your comrades wait, laughing and feasting around a head of flame. It whispers of the past, the present and the future.

Behind you and your fellows hugs a crescent shape of night darkened silver birch. They glow like eyes in black and from among their forms now steps a figure who waves in greeting.

The storyteller has arrived with a half-moon grin upon their lips and fingers quickened to ribbon-like gestures.

Listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V5iTDai9e4

In the Beginning

The fire sparks.

Each spark shoots to the sky and settles among the black as stars. We settle onto logs, blankets about shoulders, elbows on knees. We lean in, eyes canted toward the storyteller who stands—the only one, at the hearth of our circle.

We wait. The fire sparks. Can you hear it? Shh.

The storyteller begins. The story weaves through the night. It sits with an owl, hooting in a tree behind us. It scurries down the trunk and hides in a burrow of badgers. A bud pokes out of leafy detritus and a row of ants breaks into two, marching around it. The story moves faster, it rushes into the sky, bursting out of the tree tops in a flurry of dandelion wishes and the call of the Wild Hunt upon their canoes. We lean closer. The hero is faced with a question.

Go or stay.

The hero goes and we follow. We walk with the hero along a river which rushes from the tree tops and out to sea. We join a ship of pirates and peer into the sunrise with a looking glass.

The fire sparks. We are the air, the earth, the water. The fire burns brighter.

A star shoots across the sky.

The story continues.

The Conflict Rises

We gasp. Our voices ricochet down a mountain, chasing each other through the river surging below. That mountain is where the hero must go. That mountain where villain, some venom terror of bedtime nightmares, awaits.

After a beat; filled with the spine-tingled chorus of a wolf pack, the storyteller continues.

Now, the hero leaps, hands poised high above their head in a triangle praising the sky. They dive into the deep with the slip splash of a seal meant to move through the cold waters below.

But this is our hero; so we know — even as we wish it not — they cannot swim like a seal, they will get tossed; turned and tugged by tides and waves. We curve into each other in comfort.

The hero faces a treacherous waste of cold, wet and darkness as they fight to keep their head. Their arms and legs kick against the will of the moon which directs the water in and out. They tumbled against cliff, push against tide and eventually are washed upon a white-sand shore. Spent and torn, the hero spread-eagles upon the earth and counts the stars. Reassured of life and the solidity of centuries of sand, the hero stands and approaches the final test.

To grasp the peak of a mountain and catch a falling star.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0ETe5IkP0k

At the Pinnacle of the Sky

We hold our breath. In one, sky-wide inhale that catches at the crest of our throats and tongues.  The hero puts one foot upon the mountain then another and another until they stand upon an edge. Soon they stand so high we know only a single thread of wind could pull them over to the other side. So we hold our breath.

We cross our arms and huddle closer still; blankets are pulled tight and pockets of cold air are pushed out in favour of every scrap of hope-filled warmth.

The hero stands, now on the pinnacle of the mountain; above the tumble of the grass, tree, lake and a flock of sparrows too. They have won. They have won!

But wait…yet still they must face the serpent and catch a falling star. Still.

Then, behind the flock of sparrows comes the call of an eagle. It swoops in, claws out. Then, behind our hero comes the sing of a blade out of a sheath. Then, the villain stands abreast.

The villain’s claws are out and its eyes blink with heat of the sun.

The hero stands at ready. The hero stares into the eyes of a dragon. We cringe. We gasp. We shudder. Some close their ears, too terrified to listen on. We lean closer, we hold hands, we rub shoulders; we hope for the hero’s safety.

As the villain and hero circle before the first thrust and plunge, from the clouds comes yet another eagle. It shatters out of the sky and plunges toward the first. This movement marks the first blow.

So in mirror these duels begin; one between eagles, falling to the earth and the other between the hero and dragon, leaping off clouds like stairs toward the ever distant sky. Each is caught between claws; calling, scratching, stabbing and slashing.

We shudder, we huddle, the fire at the center of our circle feels too hot, too bright and too near.

Then, with the shriek of a thousand voices, the first eagle and the hero triumph Their foes fall away in the screams of sky and earth. Night falls and the hero turns toward the dance of constellations; each their own story of stories past.

Then, out of the black, from the galaxy-spun hands of Ariadne, a star falls. The hero opens a palm, reaches and grasps it.

The caught star pulses with a thousand lights and whispers one word to its tamer; “hello.”

Now, the quest is at an end.

Here now, on the pinnacle of a mountain, with a fallen star held safe and close, the story sighs. In the quiet comes a gust of wind and the remaining eagle flutters to a rock. The eagle rests. The hero sits upon rock and breathes.

Returning Home

We cheer and laugh, proclaim: we knew it would end this way! Even if, in our deepest hearts, we worried and feared otherwise.

The storyteller gives us a knowing grin; pleased at the reception of tonight’s tale. When we have at last settled once more, the crowned threads come together in a final weave.

Down the mountain, the hero goes and the eagle follows above. The hero walks the river and treads the woods, before returning to the ship of pirates once more. Giving thanks to their aid and the twice offered passage, the hero watches the ship sail into a purple horizon before turning home, here now, at the end.

Down through hedge and heather; rock and stone; wood and branch; the hero goes, humming a walking tune of old paths and ways.

The hero smiles at the familiar sights and feels stranger to yet more. Home is a place and home is a heart. So the hero takes the hand of love and family to breast and last; the hero closes the door.

Author’s Note:

That 100,000 word novel of mine has been more than just a novel for some time now. It grew out of a world I built some years ago and grows more still, especially after all the travel I did in my two years abroad.

Settled on the island now, more stable than I have been in years, it has had the time to ferment and has grown into so much more. I’ve got four novels at the moment, all interconnected by the thread of characters and the weave of their landscapes. In the single novel becoming so much more, I’ve found myself with many odds and ends taking up notebooks and files which, as any words do, once written, beg and cry to be shared.

I have always shied from second person, despite reading a beautiful retelling of Rapunzel, called Zel, when I was about thirteen, and then, more recently, The Night Circus.  So, as a way to challenge my style I took my favourite themes and wrapped them up into why I love sitting by the fire and why I wish we still told our stories out-loud. There is power in the spoken language, it is music but more potent; it is the weave of a reality rather than the metaphor of poetry. This is also my own version of that Campbell novel (The Hero with One Thousand Faces), so fraught with patriarchal, westernized narrow views and yet, still tangled to the beats of the myths I so love.

ARR~Moony