Tales from The Children of The Sea, Volume 1, The Last Wooden House
Page 30
***
Down the hall, in a rather small cheerless, gray, sleeping room an old man stood leaning against a mantle-piece looking at his own reflection in a wide oval mirror.
"It's time to go, love," said the old female friendly. "We have many, many other places to be."
Harry raised his eyes. Reflected within the mirror's silvery surface were nineteen human faces, both male and female, young and old. They were nodding and smiling, ready to depart. Their two-hour tour of the last wooden house in San Francisco was over. Harry continued to stare into the shiny reflective surface of the see--into the eyes of a dreamer.
"Are we ready, Harry?" said their guide with the merest hint of a smile.
Harry turned from the mirror and looked at them all smiling. "Oh, what flowers of delight!" he said.
And then, they were gone, like hot grains of sand on a Fall wind looking for the Moon; zooming through the Great Surround, cutting through the liquid like a knife of Light. The whole group was moving through the water at great speed and the sea was playing the tiny ridges of nerve that lay just below the surface of his skin as if he were a record and the ocean one vast phonograph. As he felt his long smooth body break the surface and launch itself skyward in a high graceful arc, he observed the sea spread out before him in all directions. Ecstasy would hardly express the feeling that filled him and then, as the momentum which had carried him skyward ceased, and he began his descent, Harry turned his head ever so slightly, and there, directly below him was the white dolphin, a reflection, upon the smooth clear surface of the sea.
At that very instant Harry let out a great human gasp! And then that image of the white dolphin froze as if it were the last frame of a movie and the color slowly leached out of the picture until it was merely a sepia tone still photograph
As the camera pulls back we can see that the frame is the curtain in a movie theater. The camera pulls back even further as the lights come up and we see that the camera is in the audience. The couple in front of the camera stand and turn to leave and we see that it is Harry and Asher in modern dress.
As they progress up the aisle, through the crowd, we see that all of the characters from the story are now members of the movie audience. But they are unaware of the parts they have played, unaware of the lives they have lived, unaware of Harry and unaware of Asher; unaware of each other. Merely anonymous members of a crowd leaving a movie theater.
As the title credits roll over the sepia toned still image of a dolphin leaping high above the water, Harry and Asher move through the crowd across the lobby and finally out into the street. The movie theater is in an attractive small American town. It is a summer’s evening. As we see them exit the theater they casually glance at one another. There is clarity in their eyes and a secret sharing in their half smiles. As they cross the deserted street they approach a white van. On top of the van are two clear ocean kayaks.
***
The Catcher of Words finished his story, looked at those of us gathered around the fire and smiled mysteriously. We smiled at one another and nodded. We had enjoyed his story of the white dolphin who dreamed itself a human being. The Teller of Tales moved his Eagle feather once more over the coals and then asked us to look away, as he was about to leave. We did as he suggested and when we looked up again he was nowhere to be seen, and there were no footprints in the sand, but the large fin of a full grown Orca was observed silently gliding away in the distance. Nothing further was said. This night would become a treasured memory. This had been the night that the Catcher of Words, the Teller of Tales, the Shape Shifter had come to our fire and spoke of things yet to come. Of probable realities; of things that never were but might have been, and yet still could be.
The End
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About the author:
Jann Burner is one of the original "Greybeards", a third generation San Franciscan, born in the Haight/Ashbury, raised in Silicon Valley, graduated from San Francisco State University. His last Bay Area address was the Sausalito Yacht Harbor. He finally escaped the urban hive and presently resides deep in the forests of S.W. Missouri in a log cabin by a small patch of water. He is currently a writer/photographer/hypnotherapist, partner with Dr. S.J. Sutton at Center Point Management. Center Point Management tends to patrol the very edges of the Psychosynthesis, hypnotherapy paradigm. What Jann Burner is about can be gleaned from the websites www.centerpointmanagement.com, www.spirit-tracker.com, or by simply Googling Jann Burner.