Chapter 5
A Dagger of Hope
Everyday, the sun has set later than the day before it. Animals are making early preparations for the winter approaching even though the frigid winds are still many months away. For now, the air is warm like an invisible blanket is wrapped around everything until it is replaced by the sheet of snow. An occasional cool breeze passes by from time to time then it flies away on the wind's breath.
Everyday, I scale a bulky tree that is stationed close to the perimeter of the abbey. I reach for the tallest branch that can support my weight and watch the abbey fall into their daily routine. Some villagers tend to vegetable gardens or animals in pens. Some sit at the base of their huts and care for children running around and laughing. Mothers hug and kiss their children on the forehead and fathers pat their backs, showing that they are proud of them. There are the brothers, the men that follow Brendan everywhere he goes, trying to help. Then, there is Brendan, recognizable from a special red cloak he wears only in the abbey to show that he is the abbot. Everyday, I see him go about his daily duties whether it be taking complaints from villagers who buzz around him like flies or entering the scriptorium, probably to talk briefly with the illuminators. By mid-afternoon, he usually disappears behind the walls of the tower, escaping the toils and troubles of the everyday-life of an abbot in charge of a vastly-growing abbey.
Everyday, he forgets about me. The last time I saw him was two months ago when he was mad at me for scaring away the family. Before that, he only came into the forest for a willow tree reference and some more berries for ink. If that is what our friendship is becoming, where he only comes into the forest, not for friendship, but if he needs something or is mad for something I did, then what is the point of remaining friends? Why do I come here everyday? It is because I keep coming here to pray that he will remember the friendship we once had and return to the forest. But, whenever he comes, he has an alternative purpose in mind. I have become unimportant, at the bottom of his priorities even though I was here before the abbey took over his life.
Everyday, I gradually lose hope that he will ever come back. Then, he does come after a long wait and my faith is replenished, only to deplete and hurt me even more once he is gone. However, here I stand, everyday, wondering if he really has grown too old to care about me anymore.
Today, I follow the same routine. I watch, I pray, I fall into the pit of hopelessness a bit deeper, then I leave. I half-heartedly climb down the tree trunk before jumping down a few feet from the grass. Hitting the ground hard and stumbling a little, I feel empty and limp. My limbs seem to lose part of their feeling as if they've gone partially numb. Despite that, I force them to move and I stare down at my feet. I can always think better when I'm moving. Is this what it feels like to be lonely? Does it feel like there is a rope around my chest, becoming tighter and tighter the more I think about everything I once had? Does it feel like I am trapped in a dark ditch and I know that no one will be there to rescue me? Does it feel like I am constantly being drained, stabbed, and tormented from the inside? I have lived on my own for centuries before Brendan wandered into my life. I have been alone for hundreds of years and I have never felt the pain I'm feeling now. So, why do I feel like I am slowly disintegrating every few months that he is absent? I have lived through so many ages, but why can't I survive for a few months without falling apart inside until Brendan comes to put me back together? I rack my brains to find the root of the big question. What is different between then and now? Then, it hits me.
Hope. Hope is the difference. When my people, my family, and my mother died all at the same gruesome moment, I knew there was nothing I could do that could bring them back to life. I knew they were gone forever. With Brendan, he may be gone for a few months, but he comes back. Which only makes the months harder to live through. The more hope that I gain and build up from Brendan's visits, the more I'm destroyed from the inside. He replenishes the life inside of me, yet he is murdering me at the same time.
I look up from my wandering feet, getting vertigo as I do so. Everyday, I wander and everyday, I wind up at the same place, face-to-face with his tomb and the tomb of my people. My chest tightens even more than it already is. Everyday, this place terrifies me more and more and to no end, yet it has become part of my daily rituals. What was it like to be surrounded by loved ones? What was it like to know that there is a person who was a safeguard over me? What was it like to always be able to cry in someone's arms and she would stroke my hair, whispering in my ear that everything was going to be okay? These events were so long ago. I still remember what happened, but time has taken it's toll to my memory that held how incredible it felt to have a family.