Star of Silvaria: Chapter I
Tidal
Love commanded me to write.
Write what?
I let out my breath and rolled my pencil across the deck. The tossing of the waves rolled it back into my hand.
Writing wasn’t what I’d thought I was meant to do. Words never came easily, not out loud.
Sometimes I wondered who I was -
“An alien?”
I blinked out of my thoughts. My elder brother, Joachim, was peering mischievously through the door from the upper deck. We were afloat on the Mediterranean, off the French coast from Saint-Raphaël, and the breeze had tousled his hair into a thousand spikes.
“Reading minds again, or did I miss the rest of the question?”
“I honestly have no idea either way,” he replied, swinging down into the seat across from me. “I did say, get ready for diving. You only get your gift if you do, so come along, Thérèse, my little fourteen-year-old.”
“What do you mean, only if I go diving? You know I can’t swim when I’m thinking,” I complained, tossing pencil and notebook aside. They landed on the sofa with a thump, and the pencil buried itself in the cushions.
“Exactly why you need to dive. There’s nothing more you can do about your application, sweet.” His voice softened. “There’s no use in overthinking.”
I sighed. I always worked and reworked had already been done, trying to predict the outcome, and every moment making an endless list of what was to be done in the next hour, or the next five minutes. I was always exhausted before I’d even begun.
The tour of France had been, in part, a gift for my birthday; partially to accomplish something I’d been anxious to do – and about doing.
We’d seen the Lady of Boulogne-Sur-Mer, to whom I’d prayed for my purpose, which seemed so lost in a tangled web of I-can’t-dos. Then it was to St. Michael’s island throne, hauntingly poised as though to sight something coming across the sea – something which maybe only the heart could hear.
I remembered wandering the echoing halls and gardens. It never held a princess, or a King, for it was a monastery; but with the golden light slanting across its soaring walls, it might have been Michael’s kingdom. I thought of what Michael, and what earthly men who held such a place must hold as their duty. Did man ever consider the duty, or only of the power and prestige?
Sometimes, surely, they thought of the people who were given to them as children, to care for and protect; the borders, to defend; the laws made to safeguard from sin and peril. Michael certainly did. He had never failed to be near me when I’d asked, and I was only one of very many, and probably the most thoughtless of them.
Did they ever think of them as children, I had wondered, or was that only me, and only Michael? I never minded the common thought dresses or the balls, which were amusing but probably also tiresome; but I would have loved to protect my people, if I’d thought myself capable. Truth be told, I wasn’t, and I knew it.
But to have such a strong purpose as that was what I really wanted - beautiful designs such as I loved to make could only go so far for the world’s healing, and that might not be very much, even though it was certainly worth the effort.
I found myself absentmindedly sketching a great star, and a crown of roses. She always knew how to care for souls, and Michael was placed at her service. That’s what I wanted to know, what I wanted to do, deep down. All I ever did was get caught up in the superficial, and dream of something good. Maybe that’s why nothing was working out - there had to be something truly good, that would help souls. Maybe I could find something now.
We had gone to Paris afterwards, for I intended to try for an internship as a designer; there was a recent conservative fashion house that showed great, and traditional, promise.
That, and I was waiting on an application for a film that had challenged young designers for a chance to guide its costume choices.
But I was only one of many, and all the other doors I’d tried had closed. Or, had a screen before them that turned out to be live-wire.
If it fell through – I’d have no purpose, or no known one. Even that command was only a passing thought, a coincidence that seemed to speak.
There was nothing to write.
I sighed yet again, finding my brow furrowed and Joachim tapping it gently.
“Earth to Thérèse, come on. A dive will distract you. Diving is better than sighing, and we’re almost to the island, anyway.”
“I’ll watch you,” I replied. “For a little while, at least. I . . . have a missing thought.”
“I’m not sure you need to find it,” was his return, but he let me be, and I soon slowly made my way up top.
Sure enough, the little islet, Le-Lion-de-Mer, was coming up before our rented craft.
Here, the rocks were as burning red as a bright sunset, and beneath the waves around them lay rich corals. Usually there might have been many diverse boats and divers from them; today there were only the birds calling on the wind.
Our father dropped the anchor, and he and Joachim went over the side. Joachim paused, and turned back before dropping down.
“Catch,” he said, relenting, and threw me a little box, prettily wrapped in silver stars.
Inside lay a gleaming silver locket, marked by a smoothened diamond star. I knew it well – it had been my mother’s gift to me several years before. We’d called the locket the Star of Bethlehem, and inside we’d placed an image of the first noel. I’d believed it lost the last time we went out on the ocean, to dive at the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand.
“Oh,” I breathed, replacing it around my neck and hugging him. “Thank you! That’s why you took so long on the archaeological dive last spring! You went diving for it afterwards?”
“Mm,” he smiled. “Replaced the pictures, too. They were sadly waterlogged. Now, let that convince you to come swimming! But maybe minus the locket?”
I laughed and promised I would be careful. He dropped into the water.
“Come soon, Thérèse,” my father coaxed. “You’ve been giving yourself a bad time, and it’s your birthday. Besides, now is the best time, before the other divers come.”
That tone always helped. I smiled and agreed that I’d come down in a little while. I stood at the rail while they submerged, and let my eyes study the beautifully broken rocks around us.
My thoughts were so jumbled that the missing one was unlikely to make itself anything more than scarce.
Alien? Yes, it felt that way.
Useless – no one ever thought so. I only ever told myself that. It didn’t seem to matter. I had a purpose, but I was unfulfilled, frozen, locked at the bottom of a lake.
At the same time, I knew God had something ready for me sometime, somewhere, and I had the hope that it would make all things new in my life, a strength and goodness I’d longed for. I just might have to wait a few thousand nights, and let that waiting pain be purpose. Even in this waiting I felt a lurking sense of calling and anticipation, like a dream not quite real.
Joachim was right, it was time for distraction. I loved the coral beds with their bright inhabitants, and the water was soft and cool. But first, I’d put the locket in a safer place.
I grasped the handle of the door to below-decks. Something stopped me and drew my eyes to the horizon.
A soft roar was swelling there, madly out of place, but equally assertive that it ought to be. There was nothing there, no boat or other craft, nor airplane overhead.
I squinted at the possibly unusual streak of glinting white which barely crossed the horizon-line. That bar proved to be gaining height at ever second, until the lowest clouds began to be compromised.
It was a wave, its height too vast to be safe. I ran to the side of the boat and leaning over, smacked the water repeatedly with my hand – the only way to get the men’s attention. But what if they didn’t look up?
What if, and that water wall was speeding onwards!
But Joachim saw and surfaced.
“Wha-”
“Tsunami!”
“What!” He snapped off his mask and poked his head around the prow to see what I meant.
“But there was no warning!”
By now my father had noticed Joachim’s absence, and he, too, saw the danger.
“On board, quickly!” he ordered Joachim, and they scrambled over the side.
There was one minor problem.
Not only was there no way around the wave, it was moving too swiftly for us to reach land. We were trapped.
“We have to get onto the island,” my father said shortly, and wheeling the craft about, sent it roaring over the roughing waves to the little dock.
Le-Lion-De-Mer was not very high. There were no buildings. There was only the little pedestal of stone with its white statue of Mary, and the tsunami which silhouetted her. I dropped one hand pleadingly on the stones as we looked wildly about.
“The rocks, it’s our only chance! They might shield us!” Joachim called, pointing to an outcropping. He tugged my arm. “Come on!”
A familiar chill froze my arm to the rock at Mary’s feet. All Joachim’s pulling couldn’t free me.
“I can’t, I’m stuck!”
I threw a desperate glance into the still, white face above me. The serene smile of the Star of the Sea might have been comforting, but I certainly couldn’t tell, and I still couldn’t move.
“Then so are we,” my father replied, and they no sooner braced themselves over me than the screaming water smashed over our heads.
Everything ran white like a torrent of pounding headaches, with the scarcely visible swish of blue that marked the reflection of the sky, and the light that barely made it through -
The water ran gushing, so hard yet somehow soft, like a million pounds of bubbles.
I felt my hand break loose, and then I felt Daddy and Joachim be torn away.
I tried to call their names, forgetting the tsunami, but my mouth was filled by what felt like somehow liquid air.
The ground vanished beneath my feet, and my vision went too, leaving only the ghost of the Lady’s face, reminding me tenderly that she wouldn’t leave -
All I knew was the soft tumbling, tumbling, that seemed to slow, and slow, and slow amid a fading roar.
Then the white went black.
Read the next chapter.
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