The shadow on the water spoke to both of us, Aodhan and me. We were singing over the sea. Aodhan and I feel the sea in our sleep then meet here. Our place. A little while passes for our eyes to quiet and for the dark to get used to us.
“Hello, darkness,” we say. The dark is always welcoming. It shares us with the night. It build tiny fires inside us to draw us in deeper. We feel the flame build in us. It is deep down in our center, which is also the night’s center, the stars’ center, the trees’ center. That little flame holds all of us. Together, we hold all of it. Becoming and Belonging.
We are aware of there being others. We hear them struggle. Once, I wandered so far into the woods I think they heard me, too. And that is silly because the Earth-God would not betray us like that. It knows we are its secret. It knows we thrive in silence and protects us with barriers we can’t see. Still, we can sometimes hear them wailing and can do nothing. We can only wait, we are told.
This is why I talk to you like this in my mind. In case you still hear.
When Aodhan joined me on our little cliff, I gave him raspberries. They don’t live in the other place yet. This place is the promise. This place is the home they will return to. When they’re ready, and they aren’t ready yet, we are told. It is very sad to us, the song children. We can hear deeply into silence. When we expect a song and hear those screams and sobs, we feel it all through our bodies then into the bodies of anyone close to us. It’s a feeling of death like when a rabbit chooses to go to the dark fold and is gone. I like to sit and wait for it to return.
I have a little song for this waiting. I know the rabbit hears me with its great long ears. The hands of my mind stroke them, and I know the rabbit feels this. Still, though, we feel the rabbit’s passage and the passage of every being that moves through. That is the only way to make sure we stay belonging to them and they to us. We have to walk through the fold in ourselves. No one likes that feeling. It feels like the heart is being fed giant, sharp chunks of ice. We are friends with this feeling because it allows us to see our friends after they go. Only some of us can see the lost ones. But we can all feel them, always there, always so close and distant at once. And it isn’t strange that only some of us can. Each of us has our place, our role. Listeners are just one of us.
“She’s there again!” Aodhan shout-whispered.
“I see her!” I said back even though I had not. I was busy here telling you. There she is, though. The wind has drawn her forth from within the water. Wind and water are her gift. She is vast upon the surface. We hear music because she is there. Everything else is quiet because of her. She has wrapped the world in wool like it’s her baby. All is hush, hush, quiet. We hear the music of her presence. We sit, and we smile. We awaken in ourselves even wider. The light is streaming now. There is no more darkness.
The ones on the other side, out far at the edges, they have darkness and light. The dark doesn’t get used to them. It did before they left. Earth-God took their sight and drove a great barrier between night and day. How terrifying it must have been to open your eyes in the dark and have the dark just be dark and breathing all around you.
“Did they get to keep the stars?” I asked Cathasach. “If they could keep the stars then the stars would help them. They could find a path among the trees, and the trees will help them by parting at the tops to let the light shine down.”
“Child,” he said, “They’ve been made not to notice any of the stars or trees as anything more than what their senses tell them.”
“How else do they see them?” I wanted to grab Cathasach’s beautiful hand and tuck it around me. I wanted to lean upon him like how I lean against the trees when I am wandering.
“They will not hear them spinning lights in the sky. They will not pass by a tree and glean knowledge.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither will they,” he said.
So the screams and sobs break through, and we, the listeners, feel their terror and sorrow over how things are for them, and still they do not look to the stars for song or trees for knowledge. They do not search for us.
“They will name everything and let nothing name them.” That is what Cathasach says. “That is how they must remain.” I want to say how horrible that sounds. I know he has said all I need. There are lines we don’t cross in our minds. Sometimes I can keep the line very strong.
I don’t know why he said that last part. I didn’t ask because Cathasach had said it so plainly—must remain. That is a line carved into the earth.
The shadow on the water is lifting now. She is rising to stand before us. I have my lips pressed together and I am trying to open my eyes even wider. I want to see her. Aodhan has made his gulping sound and grips my hand.
She has long brown hair. Water droplets fly from her skin like soft shooting stars returning to the sky. Her skin is the color of earth that absorbs the dark. Her shadow dissolves as she rises and stands higher above us than many of the highest trees stacked one on another. So tall! So high up! To her, the sea is only as deep as the little baths we make for birds out of the great leaves. She heard my thought and now holds her hand before her. Little streams of sea escape her fingers. She puts her lips together and whistles! We whistle too!
The trees wake up with birds flying out of them, a bird for every star. They dip down into her hand and drink and ruffle their feathers. When a droplet lands on us and soaks our skin nearly into the cliff, it does not sting my eyes. I taste that it has no salt. Aodhan and I smile up at her, and she smiles to us. All the birds fly out from her then all at once into her. She is filled with wings and tiny seed-eyes of flight. She soars up high high high then is gone, she turned into night, the birds turned into stars. Aodhan and I tuck our knees up to our chests and giggle because that was something we did not expect ever to happen.
I know what you are thinking. I can feel it all through me. It’s okay to think it. I know enough about the barrier. You want to know the meaning. You thirst for it. You think past the line in the mind. You wonder what it means because for you everything must mean something. It isn’t like this for us, though. It doesn’t have to be like this for you. You can allow things just to happen without seizing upon them, forcing them to confess. Life is meaning enough. Life is the meaning. All life in meaning if you can listen to it.
I wonder sometimes if the night had not been separated from the day if you and the others would not suffer so. Could a simple change do so much? Maybe it made you afraid. Maybe it presented a sense of endings. The shortening of light, the lengthening of light. So precious if you know it will fade for you. How could you feel assured it returns? It is easier for us. For that, I am sorry. If I could show you, if I could light the little flame in you that the night sets in us with its darkness, you would not feel so afraid. You’d see then. Maybe you could even see me and Aodhan. Maybe you can.
“Aine,” Aodhan’s eyes are sleepy.
“It’s okay, Aodhan,” I tell him, “I’ll stay with you as you sleep.” Aodhan unfolds and stretches his legs along the ledge of our cliff. He lays his head on my lap and is asleep. I will stay here, watching over the sea. Little penguins leap off a large rock then swim back to the rock and climb and leap again and again. They must have watched the shadow of the sea rise up and become pure flight, and now they want to be pure flight, too. Again and again. Climb and flop. Climb and flop. Flopsy as bunnies. I can stay awake and watch them forever.
I have to laugh softly. Aodhan sleeps and dreams.