Sometimes the king called him to the castle and handed him documents that needed to get from here to there, and unseen by prying eyes. “You are a handy one,” the king often said, as he sent him on his secret way. Sometimes people would detain him and try to take the documents, but they could never be found: if anything, just blank pages.
Mostly though, the monk went to work like the others, then came home and read, or wrote, or slept.
One evening the monk sat down and began to write a letter that he knew its recipient would never read, but no matter. It was therapy:
“I started with three you know. I don’t believe in putting my faith in any one thing, aside from God, and is he not a trinity? So I believed in all three, yet hoping for one.
The second one, I’ve lost. The Marauder rode in with the wind at his back, and blew through her mind, whispering words of wonder and confusion, and her heart hardened to me, and then she was gone.
The third, I remain unsure of because of her ways and I know not that she can actually love me alone. I might not be enough for her, or offer the right balance of thunder and lightening. She does not know this, but I know, because I have listened to her well and see the signs. She is not wise enough, I don’t think, to see the love she needs, because she is dazzled by the strings and ribbons that the world is wrapped in. She wants the idea of me, and dreams vanishing dreams. I fear that once she has me, she will lose me like a wedding band down a well, realizing the value of what she has lost only after I am off the finger.
But you, the first of my godhead. I never had you, and now you have found what you are looking for. I’ve known monks and kings and lords who have walked and wandered forever, never finding one true thing, OR, sometimes they do find that one true thing, but by then they are blind or hardened, and know not what they have found. You wanted love, and have found it.
You took a long path, led by that treacherous one, he who liked to go to the far lands, and slay the dragons breathing fire, and make rest in houses of ill reputation. He led you down a long way, only to abandon you, and briefly I thought to say to you, “Here, hand me thy heart and I will hold it safe for you.” Then a true lord came to you, and you knew that He was what you had hoped for, and my heart lept for joy at your discovery, but tripped with every leap, bruising itself upon landing.
You read my words sometimes and you know how I am, and my delusions:
One day a king will summon me, and pay me immense amounts for my poetry, and I shall be famous, and you shall say, “Oh I knew him when he was but a scrivener.” You will remember the flawed texts I placed in your hands, and reread them and say, “Oh, this is what he meant” and remember how our eyes met, and what was really in my heart.
Yes I dream, while we work. I take a break and watch you near the fountain, standing there with your friend, wishing I had the power to read minds or lips. Wishing I could see the love that is in your heart, and whether the love you have now, is the love you want, and if that love will surround you forever and bring you joy.
When I don’t see you, I see you, my eyes averted to look at the far wall, or to laugh with a friend, or fiddle with the strings on my mandolin. But all the while, I see you as you approach and as you pass, and the heart, my heart, warms up when you are near. With every occasional greeting of “Aye”, I speak a thousand words to you.
So stupid really. Silliness. But that is me. The dreamer. The wishiest of wishermen. You know me by now, and I bid you laugh, because I will get over myself and always be content to know that you live and breath and have found contentment in your heart. I knew you deserved someone who loved you, and that is the best thing in the world.
Still though, I shall dream a crazy dream, and one day when you are alone, you will remember even this, and shout my name in the wilderness and I will descend from the heavens into your heart.
Love,
Oliver de Cerne
He looked at his words upon the page, then waved his hands over what he had just written, and like that, the words were gone. Wasn’t that how it was with him? One minute he could not do without, and the next minute it was all distant memory, or never to have existed at all?
Sometimes he wondered if he could love anyone.
He got up, took a mutton chop off the flame, a piece of bread, and a book, and sat down to read. He looked at his hands, his palms. A million words were etched into the skin of each hand, never to be removed, never to be read, never to be understood. But he could understand the jumble as sure as each sentence was burned into his mind.
