Chapter 1
Upon The Shores Of A New Beginning.
Episode 1 – Memories of Home
I am now a man. I feel the part and I have no other viable opinion to tell me otherwise. I have long ventured to achieve such a goal, and the manner by which this very achievement was accomplished could be correctly considered extraordinary in its own right. The occurrence could be construed as of the gradual nature but I feel, to my heart of hearts, the changeover was as radical as the foundation by which it was created.
You may ask; how am I now? No different; the body larger and more conformed; the brain more to the intellectual and deeper within thought than before. But I ask you, how does a boy become a man? Truly; how does he? Does he awaken one morning and discover his 'child skin' shed and the larger shadow of himself now born into his body. I can't say. Nor can I speak to the profound verse on life that has brought me here; either willing or unwillingly, to this very place called Rochester.
If you were to ask those most endeared to me about the man I have become, most may very well tell you about a most uninspired, and perhaps incorrect perception of me. I can become more locked away than many would presume, even unto my own family. They measure my privacy well, keep honor to it, and only politely engage me when I have the steady attention to converse with them. Now mind you, I am not as so enclosed as you, yourself, might insinuate here. There are just fields of imagination upon which I would more readily play upon than continually open myself up to any and every soul that would attempt to encounter me.
I am solitary, introverted, enclosed; a harbor to my own soul; like a man drifting through the seas of a deserted island; my island; Sebastian's island.
So this is where it takes me: the loft of my past; of grandmother; of U-no-le; of Annabelle; of home. I can regularly dispose of the current world and recreate the vintage world of my days back in North Carolina. The lands where hills turn into mountains; valleys turn into shores of greenery and space, and I can still see my heart residing there.
My name is Landon Hampshire. If the first volume of this story should escape your reading, then this is the very person who shall guide you through. I shall not belabor the 'retelling' of the previous tale, but hope that some passage of ancient storytelling had given you at least the vital details to it. Ask the natives to that land. They will tell you; who I was as a child. Now, I shall tell you the man I have become.
I can be found on the shores of Rochester; riding up and down the embankments, atop Boone; his brilliant white and speckled mane fanning me as we went. The seas to these lake-fronts and miniature oceans were as restless as I; their waters spoke as much with the very lapping of their waves and ripples along the north and south shorelines.
I have come to detest these winters here; the long and arduous manner with which they freeze me into an embalmed state, and for nearly seven months out of the year. The grassless grounds, charred brown and unliving, hardly reappear until well into the new-year. The springs are short and tranquil; the summers hold out briefly with a tinge of heat, yet not long enough to unthaw me from the previous winter's most bitter icing. It is all too soon when the leaves turn brown, cascade down, and start the winter snows all over again.
So the window for my trips abroad is always a short one. I take great advantage on the balmy days of spring, and so now I take you there, upon a certain day in the late spring of 1893. There was a particular shade tree Boone and I found to be our favorite. The shores about were vast and they allowed for a long, panoramic view that, sitting upon the height of it, you could sense yourself almost aboard the edge of a cliff.
This was our place; a little slice of home; a place where we could look out and almost see the shadow of North Carolina in the backdrop. I would close my eyes and feel the whisper of a faint wind tickle to my ear, call me back, and allow me to see the place I could only adore in my memory now. I thanked the wind when it went by, and asked it, with my expression, if it would return again soon.
I thought of Shelly's enormous oak tree sitting at the edge of her property; those long limbs stretching out over the lake waters; the pillared sky reflecting back in the lake bed's plain. This tree; how it would entreat her, give her sanctity and refuge all her own; cuddle her and warm the edges of her heart when she read all the famous master writers and their stories. And to her diary; that antiquity to the heart, the place where, even unto this day, she can go and revisit the very world she had come from.
I would look up above me when the tree shivered by the wind, and feel the sense of her longing too. Boone often lay beside me; and at other times he would allow me to lie over his neck while I read. I found myself lost in these stories; these grand adventures to the mind, and seeing the images which played through my thoughts like a long, continual motion of events; of places; of times; of lands where only the mind could wander to.
I could breathe every word in and feel my place was there; looking, eyeing the lands where these writers first ventured to. On occasion, the wind would kick up and throw my book in disarray; flipping a dozen pages or more instantly, as if the wind was attempting to rush me through the story. Boone would rustle about, bob his head, grunt and sigh, reposition himself, and settle back down virtually into the same spot as before.
My travels were multiple. Sometimes I would roam about Genesee River not far from our home in Glen Haven. At other times Boone and I would roam the shores of Irondequoit Bay, near to Sea Breeze, and back along the long shores of Lake Ontario and Oklahoma Beach. I felt as to be a ghost not yet born; trying to find the hauntings and travels that my wandering and looming spirit would go upon when I was gone.
I had become an immeasurable man. Lost, undefined to anyone but myself. There is a place in the mind where you can be captured, and left there with nothing but your thoughts. This was to be a place where I would find myself often.
I still carried the miniature Annabelle had given me seven years before. During my times alone I would retrieve it from underneath my vest and shirt. The interlockings were like the cover to a deep and mysterious treasure. And when I would unfasten it, her face, most frozen in time and youth, would come staring back at me. Those locks of golden hew; of starlight blue eyes and unflinching beauty drew me so quickly back to the times we shared together. This only increased my longing; to find a manner and method by which I could return.
The promises of the past were never realized. I was to return in the following spring; and to the patterns of my own grandmother's life, I too, followed into her footsteps. I never returned. It was not by lack of desire or the purist intent, but of will and greater hope than what reality would afford me.
Father had often spoken of the days when we would take time to visit once more; continually, at dinner times, and when we held moments together and reflect while sitting within the fire room.
My sisters and I found ourselves taking to attend to the fireplace while we watched over him; his eyes melting back within himself as though he were more readied to converse with himself than with us. The shadows of those long flames crisscrossed his face and expression, though they never revealed the most inner thoughts he could never share with us.
"We need to go see your grandmother," he would blurt out in the silent air, "Yes, we do…"
"When?" I would always return to ask.
"Soon," he said; more with an apology than with excuse.
And now, sitting, looking back to the miniature of the one I held hopes, joys, and tears for, I could hear her last words echo back from the recordings of my memory; a wisp of air; a shadow of sound drawing near to awaken my heart once more.
"I will miss you Landon," the echo started with a soft voice, "These mountains will be empty without you here…"
I felt locked in my own transgressions. It is true. I had failed Annabelle. I wondered if I knew truly what love was. All the times from that very moment till now; those long years of nothing; simply nothing; I had lost the measure of what I thought a true man was and should be.
Her beauty was as frozen in time as I felt my heart had become. Nothing had changed, but only to my own inability to act upon what I knew I should do. My religion was never to live my life with regret. Or at least, be consumed by it. Now, sitting upon my favorite shores, and underneath the tree that made me feel closest to home, I could sense the sharpest edge of Regret piercing directly through me.
I often wondered what Annabelle was doing at any one time. I would close my eyes and say a prayer. Not to Heaven, but one that would travel the bounds of earth in hopes it would find her so that we could finally converse once more. The thoughts of my grandmother's diary were playing back to me again and again. The verses; so parched with pen and passage of time, held as much of a voice with me now as it did then. The teachings were not of simply words, yet of life experiences and the ire of what true mistakes can bring.
