They rang out across the water, a symphony of sound in chiming echoes down the brick-lined canal. The bells of Bruges, incongruously peeling out disco music to peal against medieval facades, held me captive. Even the cafe goers across the canal left their sedate mugs and tables to dance with abandon.
Invisible behind those ancient brick buildings, the great Bruges Market bustled with life. I closed my eyes, memories of its timeless sights and aromas flooding my mind in rhythm with the bells. I could almost see colorfully robed guildmembers shouting over the chimes, haggling with the shoppers of yesteryear over the price of bread or the value of a bolt of fine fabric.
For a moment, in Isolda’s shop, I had entered that world. She had looked over her flowers, braids peeking from beneath a knit cap and voluminous dirt-streaked apron swallowing her slender frame, bells chiming a muted soundtrack through medieval walls. She had smiled when I introduced myself as Tristan.
“What is this place?” Dax blinked in the shaft of light streaming through the scrollwork of the single window high overhead. His head hurt; for some reason he couldn’t remember how he got here. Wherever here was.
In the narrow fringes of light he could see walls covered with ornately designed panels, gold-leaf scrollwork glinting against the surrounding darkness. Beneath the window he could just make out a door, it’s frame marked by the same gold leaf designs as the rest of the wall. The door itself was a blank hole in the dim light, jarring in its luxurious surroundings. The floor was plain tile, an incongruous grate in the middle of it leading to unknown paths beneath.
Dax rubbed his forehead, then froze. Was that movement just beyond the light? He peered closer, barely distinguishing a black shape in the shapeless darkness. “Who’s there?”
“Choose your path,” a raspy voice said. “Above brings great blessing but great temptation. Below is fraught with danger but brings enlightenment. Choose your path.”
“Path to where?” Exasperation crept into Dax’s voice. “What exactly is it you want from me? I don’t even know how I got here!”
“You have accepted the quest,” the voice continued. “Only one can save the empire. Only one path will bring victory. You must choose now.”
“Forget it!” Dax clenched his fists and stomped over to the door. “This is either a really bad joke or you’re insane. I’m leaving; I’ll ask someone to direct me to nearest embassy. ” He yanked at the door and almost fell backward as it opened easily.
“Your choice is made.” The voice grew distant as his surroundings faded into nothing. “Let the quest begin.”
She could still see the town below as if through a pea soup fog, street lights shining incongruous against the blue sky. It was near midnight when she had walked out of the glare of those lights into the darkness of the hills. She hadn’t expected the night to be so dense, nor for it to explode into sunlight within a single step.
Nothing made sense. The asphalt-paved county road she had chosen for her escape was now nothing but deep ruts in a sea of green. No trace remained of the farms and homes that had skirted the town; only bare, rolling hills marked the horizon instead.
She had shaken her head wildly and hefted her suitcase. It was a hallucination. Or a dream. Or… she had marched onward, ignoring the evidence of her senses. In a minute she would be alright. In a minute everything would be normal. When sweat had trickled down the back of her neck she had turned back to see the town bathed in white shadow, and knew.
She had been so desperate to get away, to disappear. Walking was a long shot, but it was the only chance she had to escape his omniscient fingers that probed every corner of the world. Her suitcase dropped from nerveless hands and she collapsed to her knees beside it in the red ruts. She would wait here. If he didn’t walk up that wagon trail by nightfall, she could breathe. A different time? A parallel universe? It didn’t matter. He would never find her again.
Get ready to step into a brand new story, full of magic and lore! Chosen will be available for purchase through multiple platforms on August 9th, 2021, and we are marking the occasion with a fun virtual Facebook party! The kids and I would love for you to join us for fun games, discussion, and sneak peeks into the world of Fae.
Click the link below to join the fun as we get ready for the event. If you want to check the book out ahead of time to see if it’s your cup of tea (or coffee), look below the event link to find all my previous teaser posts.
The sun crept over the hills, its deep shadows still heavy on the path to the tomb. The women bringing oils to preserve the body of their teacher halted transfixed by the sight of the seal rolled to the side and bright rays breeching the darkness within the cave. The broken body taken in grief from the cross and gently laid to rest behind that seal only two night before was gone, and as they turned in confusion the One who made use of that body stood before them, very much alive.
The ground around the temple still stank with the blood of the many Passover lambs blessed and slaughtered there only days before. The Levites still worked frantically to mend the great curtain dividing the seat of God’s mercy from the nation who awaited it. Two disciples struggled to quiet breath ragged from their headlong rush to see the empty tomb for themselves, only beginning to understand that they had stood beneath the shower of blood on the true seat of mercy as God offered Himself as the final Passover lamb.
As crowds flooded the city for the great festival of harvest, the friends of Jesus went home to Galilee. There the Living Sacrifice met them on the shore where they worked and waited for something they did not fully understand, and brought them back to the site of His Altar. There, in the garden where His first drops of blood spilled, He allowed them to see Him ascend like the smoke of the offering to His rightful place as the Receiver of the Offering.
As the sun rose on another festival morning, worshippers ascending the temple mount were drawn away from their dead sacrifices by the expression of God’s presence over a humble house within the city, where the friends of Jesus received the gift of His life. For the first time since Mt Sinai, God showed himself to His people in a new Holiest Place, the hearts of those who loved Him. For the first time since Mt Sinai, the temple stood empty as the Living Sacrifice blessed the beginning of a new harvest.
The tomb remains empty. The temple has long since been destroyed. The harvest continues. The undying Lamb still shows Himself every day to those willing to see the power of His presence and walk in the light of an eternal festival morning.
He flexed his fingers and shifted nervously. He stroked the keys, drawing a deep, ragged breath as he moved his hands into position. The first notes were soft, tentative, sending dim blue tendrils into the darkness of the sound chamber.
His pulse quickened, notes grew stronger. The tendrils thickened and swirled, the darkness within their coils taking shape. He closed his eyes, desperate to focus on the music, but that coalescing shape tugged at his consciousness.
A face emerged, sound pulsing across delicate features. His chest rose and fell with increasing intensity, and first one note then another fell flat. A discordant clang echoed around the room as the song ended. A set of wave blue eyes opened, lighting the chamber with their residual glow. Symphony awoke.
How long had it been? One hundred years? Two? Locked deep within the castle vaults, skin burned black and then white by the silver of his sarcophagus, thirst that would not be assuaged by his own blood turning his mind to enraged madness. How long since his screams of pain had turned to bitter silence, how long since the silence had been broken by his own maniacal cackling?
He remembered companions. Barely. What companions had they been. Women whose blood slaked his thirst and woke already fading emotions. Sycophants who pleased him for what he could offer – wealth, the illusion of power, eternity. Dust all of them. Worth less than that in life. No matter, he no longer cared for companionship.
He remembered children. Children of blood who hunted with him in the night, children who had filled the earth with their fascination and their hunger. Children who had fallen to the mobs who would not bow to their new gods. No matter. There would be more.
This one who had freed him would be the first. She stood before him, unbending, unyielding, unworshiping, unafraid. She would turn, oh yes, and she would be a queen such as had never been. They would rule a world of their own remaking. The crumbling throne before him waited for the liege lord, and all others would soon bow before it or die.
It was three in the afternoon. The hilltop and city walls were lit with torches that smoked and sputtered. The sun had disappeared at noon and not even a single star could be seen in the unnaturally dark sky. Crowds of people shoved against a perimeter of Roman shields, shouts and raucous laughter filling the eery darkness. Behind the crowd near the city, desperate weeping could just barely be heard by a careful listener, but went unheeded by anyone. A stern-faced centurion stood within the perimeter at the base of three rough posts on which hung three men. Their bodies dripped sweat and blood from uncountable wounds, and their labored breathing and cries of pain could be heard even above the crowd.
Though one of the crucified men railed furiously at the crowd and echoed their taunts, and another hung limp and unresponsive, the crowds attention seemed to be focused on the man hanging on the center pole. His body was so badly mauled as to be barely recognizable, and sticky blood oozed from the thorny crown shoved deep into his skull. A moment before he had uttered a single cry of abandonment, his voice filled with pain. It was that cry that had riled the crowd and prompted the weeping.
As the mob began to quiet once more, the man shouted in a voice not weakened by hours of torture, a voice that echoed from the city walls and left a hush hovering over the hilltop. His head fell forward in the silence, his agonized breathing as still as the mob.
Immediately the mountain shook, throwing many in the throng to the ground. Despite the quaking of the earth, a wild shout went up from the mountain, a hideous celebration of death. The weeping women had fallen on their faces and lay wailing in despair, held by a few men who gazed at the dead man with stricken eyes. Only the centurion and his soldiers, fighting to maintain their footing at the top of the rocky hill overlooking the valley, saw what happened beyond the frenzied crowd.
The earthquake had shaken open the many sealed tombs in the hillside, leaving gaping holes out of which walked living figures trailing strips of burial linen. The figures left the tombs and made their way up the mountain into the city, leavimg the centurion gaping in terrified fascination. His eyes travelled to the drooping figure hanging above him, and his trembling knees gave out. He fell against the pole, shaking hands gripping its trunk, forehead resting against lifeless feet. He glanced over his shoulder at the people, who no longer tried to break the shield line now that their hated enemy was dead. No one seemed to have noticed anything that had just happened. Jewish leaders, their meticulously groomed beards stiff over their embroidered robes, haggled with an officer over their approaching holy day almost as loudly as they had mocked the dead man a few moments before.
An old woman, staggering in the arms of a man whose face was drawn and set, approached the crosses through a gap in the gradually dispersing crowd. The centurion rose quickly and stepped away, waving to silence the indignant officers attempting to stop such unlawful proceedings. The woman took his own place at the victim’s feet, stroking them with her fingers and laying her wet cheek in the blood stains. Her companion stared at the lifeless face above, swallowing repeatedly.
The centurion moved hastily away to the edge of the embankment, removing his helmet and running fingers over his closely cropped hair. His eyes went to the sign above the victim’s head and his mind played the man’s last words over and over. He had chosen to die, the centurion realized with shock. He watched more of the dead leaving the tombs, understanding that somehow this man who had behaved so strangely on the cross had been responsible. With sudden conviction, he strode back to the cross and rested his hand on the waiting man’s shoulder. “This man raised the dead but chose to die,” he said simply as the man nodded mute agreement. “He could only have been the son of God.”
As anyone who follows my blog knows, I have been silent for several weeks. This was not by choice, but by circumstance. I want to try to explain why because I hope to encourage others to embrace who they are in whatever situation they may find themselves.
Life is not one size fits all. Every person is an individual with unique characteristics and needs. When individuals are combined into families, the combination of however many individuals are involved becomes a new and unique personality. That sounds complicated enough, but as individuals within the family grow and change, the family personality grows and changes. Puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly one day fit differently the next.
Our family has an extra unique personality. For starters, there are eight of us. Consider the standard occupancy limits on things like vehicles or hotel rooms if you want to grasp how unique that is. In addition, we homeschool all six of our children and have from the beginning; our days are full of living books, hours outside, family projects, and conversation. To add another difference from “normal,” my husband is a preacher, so is present and involved in most daily life instead of only nights and weekends. And on top of all of it, as a family we manage extreme personalities, emotional disorders, and behavioral disorders.
We’ve been growing this family personality for twelve years (longer counting the time my husband and I dated), but it has been four years since the last addition. Until this year. This year God blessed us with our sixth child, a precious boy who needed a family. It was unplanned and unexpected, so the adjustment period has been consuming. We went from officially homeschooling three last year to officially five plus a preschooler thus year. We went from knowing every person in the house intimately to learning how a whole new individual fit into our family personality. Adjusting to the new family personality that individual helped create.
In short, our life has never been “normal,” and the last few months made us even less so. For many, this fact makes us unappealing, even crazy. For others, it makes us a novelty. The truth is that not being normal makes us awesomely normal. There is no such thing as normal; it’s an imaginary construct that we as individuals and families constantly stress ourselves out trying to achieve or at least pretend we have. In our stress and our pretense, we miss out on the beauty and variety of “not normal.” We miss out on everything different individuals have to offer each other.
Because we are not normal, I had to take a break from this aspect of myself as an individual. I had to focus on adding new elements to our family personality. I had to find our new normal. It won’t be the last time our life brings change. It won’t be the last time I have to step back and learn something new. It won’t be the last time I get to experience the beauty of “not normal.”
Su Lin stood on the steps of the brick building, hands twisting the tail of her shirt into a tight knot. Today was the day. In a moment she would step through that door into the Naturalization Office. Mr. Munro would be waiting for her in his stuffy little office, a jar of pens and a bundle of handheld flags on one edge of his desk.
He would peer over the top of his reading glasses as she came through his office door, his hair sticking up in front where he had run his hand through it absently during his previous appointment. He would beckon her to a seat, tap a few keys on his laptop, and jerk a brand new test booklet from the top drawer of the filing cabinet near his shoulder. There were never pleasantries with Mr. Munro; no preliminaries, just business.
First, he would slap a sheet of written questions on the desk in front of her. He would look bored while she read them aloud, bored because after all the forms she had filled out for him he knew she could read anything he put in front of her. He would tap a few more keys and flip the page over, then shove one of the pens from the jar in her direction. She would carefully write every word he dictated to her in his squirrely voice, sure she was misspelling every other word but knowing it probably wouldn’t matter.
It was the next part of the test that knotted her shirt. Six questions that she prayed she would answer correctly, six questions that would determine where she spent the rest of her life. It was Mr. Munro’s favorite part, the only thing he seemed to get excited about.
Su Lin untwisted her shirt and took a deep breath. In half an hour, she told herself, she would walk back out that door with a brand new flag and a brand new nationality. And tomorrow, she would light a special Independence Day sparkler in celebration.
The Word Worker 