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"So…happened to ot irl I don’t know if it hat I a else, but she didn’t survive"

When Alicia fell silent, Michael said, "Tell me about her"

"She was Rose That’s what I named her She had such beautiful red hair After I buried her, I stayed with her awhile Two years I thought it would help, s easier somehow But it never did"

He felt, suddenly, closer to Alicia than he had to anyone in his life Painful as this story was, telling hiiven him, the heart of who she was, the stone she carried and how love had happened in her life

"I hope it’s okay I told you"

"I’lad you did"

Another silence, then: "You’re not really worried about the anchor, are you?"

"Not really, no"

"That was nice, what you did for theht"

"Yes, it is"

"No,against him "It’s perfect"

81

So, at the last, a story

A child is born into this world She is lost, alone, in due course both befriended and betrayed She is the carrier of a special burden, a singular vocation that is only hers to bear She wanders in a wasteland, a ruin of grief and tor, blank future; she is like a convict with an unknown sentence, never visited in the cell of her interminable imprisonment Any other soul would be broken by this fate, and yet the child abides; she dares to hope that she is not alone That is her mission, the role for which she has been cast at heaven’s cruel audition She is hope’s last vessel on the earth

Then, a ht walled city on a hill Her prayers have been answered! Shining like a beacon, it has the aspect of a prophecy fulfilled The key turns in the lock; the door swings open Ensconced within its walls she discovers a wondrous race of men and women who have, like her, endured They become hers, after a fashion In the eyes of this wordless child, thethem perceive an answer to their most persistent questions; as they have relieved her loneliness, so has she relieved theirs

A journey corows; she leads her colorious victory By her hand, seeds of hope are scattered over the land, pro and strea is an illusion, the merest respite There can be no safety; her triumphs have but scratched the crust Below lies the dark core, that great iron ball beneath all things Its coht is fantastic; it is older than tie of the blackness that predates all existence, when a formless universe existed in a state of chaotic un-creation, lacking awareness even of itself

She falters She has doubts She becoreatest of all errors; she has grown attached to life She has dared, unwisely, to love In her es, that of one who questions fate Is she merely a lunatic’s puppet? Is she destiny’s slave or its author? Must she turn away frorown to love? And is this love a reflection of son, a taste of an ordered and divine creation? Is it truth or a departure from the truth? Romantic love, fraternal love, the love of a parent for a child and the love returned in kind--are they a all in a cos?

As for me: there was a time in my life when I put aside all doubt and supped at the flower of heaven What sweet juice was there! What bal, the soul’s holy ache! Thatdid not counterer, in the hours when all is laid bare, to reveal my purpose on the earth All s of life I had gone about this task blandly, never fathoazed upon the s divinity’s fingerprints Now the evidence had come to me not at the end of awoman and the touch of her hand across a café table My long, lonely hours--like yours, Amy--seemed not an exile or imprisonment but a test that I had passed I was loved! Me, Tiod--a great, fatherly god, who,my trials, had found ! And not just loved; I had been charged as heaven’s escort The blue Aegean, where ancient gods and heroes were said to dwell; the ashed house one cliht of stairs to reach; the hus; the workaday sounds of village life, and a terrace with a view of olive groves and the wild sea beyond; the soft white light of eternal hter still In my mind’s eye I saw it, saw it all In my arms she would pass from this life to the next, which surely existed after all, love having come to me--to both of us--at last