Labyrinth

 

Short Story Drama

Rating: G

 

             The library smelled of age and serenity, as if both had been bound into the paper and ink of its many books.  Annie breathed in the aroma.  Her shoulders, long hunched by indecision, relaxed of their own accord.  She had always felt a sense of the magical here.  When the door closed behind her, she was transported into another world, where outside pressures lost their importance.

             The click of her boot heels on the tiled floor echoed in the silence.  It was late enough that everyone had gone home, returned to the world she had escaped.  She welcomed the solitude.  For this moment, no one demanded an answer she wasn’t prepared to give.

             The mosaic drew her, as it always did.  She strolled to the center of the library and stopped with her boot tips at the first ring.  She gazed down at the blue and gold pattern spiraling across the floor like a galaxy of stars.  It reminded her of the brooch she wore.  She touched  the silver Celtic knot at her throat.  Beneath her fingers, the circles intertwined, twisting together, waiting to be unraveled.  Like her own puzzle.

             She heard the soft tread of footsteps behind her but didn’t turn.  She wanted no discussions, no trivial banter.  When the footsteps paused, she sighed with inward vexation.  She glanced sidelong and caught sight of an elderly gentleman beside her.

             “May I help you, young lady?”  The voice was hushed, as if he were reluctant to disturb the quiet.

             “No, thank you.”  She knew her answer was curt and didn’t care.

             He remained where he was.  She tried to ignore him, but his presence, even silent, was distracting.  He was probably a librarian, wondering why she hadn’t moved toward the book shelves.  His next words seemed to confirm it.

             “What are you looking for?”

             The question, after so many questions aimed at her that day, snapped her patience.  “A direction.  An answer.  I don’t know!”

             “Ah.”  He imbued one syllable with a world of understanding.

             “My life is like this stupid circle,” she muttered, gesturing toward the mosaic.  “It goes round and round and never gets anywhere.”

             She faced him.  He smiled, unaffected by her sharpness.  Gentle laugh lines tracked his face.  With a gnarled finger, he slid his spectacles up his hooked nose toward a pair of blue eyes that shared wisdom and amusement in the same look.

             “You don’t stand at a circle.  This is a labyrinth.”  He returned his liver-spotted hand to join the other, curled around a golden globe that topped a black walking stick.  “A road that leads everywhere.  Many who seek peace discover it within the labyrinth.”  He paused.  “Will you walk it?”

             “Me?”  The mosaic drew her gaze again.  “I don’t know how.”

             He shrugged a shoulder.  “There is no correct way.  Place one foot in front of the other and follow each circle as it leads you toward the center.  Clear your mind.  Expect nothing and everything.  When you and the center become one, wait in the stillness.”

             Intrigued, she asked, “What will I find in the center?”

             He walked off, but his voice drifted back, accompanied by the tap of his cane.  “Possibilities.”

             She couldn’t pull her eyes from the labyrinth.  Before his voice had faded, she stepped forward, placing herself between the first and second rings.  Her flesh tingled, as if she had slipped through an invisible veil.  Her breathing was loud in her ears, a roaring that drowned out any other sound.  She shivered, lined the heel of one boot to the toe of the other, and continued her journey into the labyrinth.

             Heel to toe.  Heel to toe.  The sound of her breathing dwindled, and instead she heard her boot heels.  Click.  Click.  Her heartbeat matched the cadence, resonating in her body like the tone of a bell after it had been struck.  Thrum.  Thrum.  The library dimmed and vanished.  White light bathed over her and spilled into her, burning away doubt and anxiety.  She walked on.  Heel to toe.  Click.  Thrum.

             Images ghosted past.  Voices whispered.  A collage of memory.  If she focused, she could distinguish one event from another.  Choices she had made spun out before her and led onward into the light.  The choices were neither good nor bad; they simply were.  She floated inside the light, at peace.

             Something pulled her to a stop.  Had she reached the center?  She waited.  Nothing happened.

             What next?  The same question she had been asking all day.

             The light swirled around her and then, as if a prism scattered it, splintered into multiple streams.  Images sharpened.  Here, she was living in Boston.  Here, she had moved to Georgia.  Here, she was an old lady, blind and alone.  Here, she saw her own early funeral, a life cut short by stress and worry.

             The images flashed faster.  A dizzying array of future choices.  She couldn’t hold them.  How would she decide?  How would she know?  Which one? she screamed.

             The light burst into fire.  She squinted, trying to catch the images.  One picture wavered and solidified before her eyes.  She could reach out and touch it.

This one.

             The brightness expanded until she was awash in it.  She closed her eyes.  Even then, light pierced her eyelids.  Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she didn’t know if she cried because of the blinding light or because of the serenity that now sustained her.

             She didn’t remember leaving the labyrinth.  Suddenly, she was out, and the return to the physical realm made her gasp.  The elderly gentleman steadied her with one hand.

             “What did you see?” he asked quietly.

             “I saw--”  Her voice rasped, and she swallowed to clear it.  The memory of the brightest picture clung to her inner vision.  “I saw a little girl.  She talked with her fingers.  She was blind and deaf, but she grew up to teach the world how to see and hear the beauty she couldn’t.”

             “Ah.  And where were you, Annie?”

             He knew her name.  She realized it and wasn’t surprised.

             “I was beside her.  As if I belonged there.  As if she couldn’t be who she was unless I was there.”  She paused.  The image blazed in her mind.  Her words had given it life.  She turned desperately to the gentleman.  “I don’t understand.  What did I see?”

             “You have seen the labyrinth’s truth.”  He smiled and patted her arm.  “It is your greatest choice, if you have the courage to make it.  Your highest future, if you have the courage to live it.”

             She looked back at the mosaic on the library floor.  It was no longer a twisted, shapeless pattern.  Instead, she saw a straight path, a road that led to a little girl, who reached out through time and space and murmured, Come quickly, Teacher.

             Annie’s heart exalted in the answer. I will.   ¤

 

 

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