A Year of Stories: July Story

(Disclaimer: I'll try to make this short . . .

I feel I must have a disclaimer to tell everyone what my idea for this blog is. It's getting to the point where there are a lot of posts and I fear the idea of the blog is getting lost. I am a young writer and I'm still trying to learn this art. Like any art, I love to hear constructive criticism about my work, which is why I am posting my earliest drafts of my writing. Some of these drafts I have only looked over once or twice at best, and they may not be the very best I can do, but nevertheless, I want to show them off.

I'm looking for constructive criticism while I'm working. I am also trying to show everyone my progress as I grow as an artist. Being an artist of any kind takes a lot of work and time to make your craft perfect. And I want to show everyone that a man with a learning disability and dyslexia can be a writer. I may not be the greatest writer in the world and I'm alright with that, but I can be a writer who inspires people to create. Even if I only inspire one person to become an artist, I want to inspire them because my friends and family have done that for me. They have never given up on me and I want to show them the gifts that God has given me.

So with that said, I hope you enjoy my work. I would love to hear your ideas on what you would do to make the writing better. Also, if a draft gets removed it's because I'm working on it or I feel like it doesn't need to be on my blog anymore. Thank you for your time, I know reading can take a while. So I thank you again.

With a handshake,

Chase L. Currie

Airy Knoll Tales

Edit_2

By: Chase L. Currie

Edit by: Caroline Kerrigan

Part 1

A welcome moment in time as my body sits in misery, my nose is sore and my mind is warm. I lay in what some would call a bed, looking out over the people sleeping beside me. The people turn over in their beds as the barn breathes and aches, keeping me awake. I lay there looking at the rays of light falling from the full moon outside, illuminating the holes in the walls, and the bitter wind, the one that brought me the sickness, is still. I lay there not thinking about my sickness, but thinking about the day.

I'm here at Airy Knoll in the barn, where my real life is nowhere to be found. I feel free for the moment. I can do anything. I can be anyone, even if that someone is just me. I put my arms under my head, smiling up at the moon. What more could I ask for?

Then, like a tiny spider dropping from the bed above me, a question slowly drifts into my mind. “What does art, your art, this art really mean? Does it mean anything at all?”

I can’t sleep with this question’s fangs burrowed into my mind. Under the mountain of blankets, I realize this is no question an artist should be asking themselves. My mind jumps back from this thought, trying to run away but can’t. The question seems to always find me hiding under my bed.

So I gave in with a sigh. I knew this night would be full of sleepless dreams. It is a horrible situation to be in when you are sick is like walking through a desert without water.

I can’t tell you if the hours fell off the clocks at a steady pace. I can tell you, however, the moon became brighter and then dimmed a little as the night went on. So I did as my father always told me as a child. “Just close your eyes and sleep will find you in time, but you have to keep your eyes closed.” Good advice, if your mind isn’t fighting to keep you awake.

So I whisper to the night, “Oh Lord of Dreams, please, if you could, bless me with a little sleep.”

The night answered me with a tap of wind against the wooden wall of the barn. When I made no move in response to the wind, another hard tap hit the barn. Again, I didn't do anything and the wind called out, pulling me from my bed. It wasn't until I heard a light song playing on the night air. I shake my head telling myself over and over, “It's just the sickness.”

But the wind blows harder, and the song becomes louder.

The melody starts to tickle my ears, and my heart starts to race as my feet hit the cold stone floor. The song pulls at me and I follow. My mind, in the haze of the moments of long thought, scream for me to stay in bed. Bed, where it is warm, where it is safe. But my mind is weak against the will of my heart.

I follow the song into the vast nothingness of the night, heading for what I could only believe was the apple tree at the top of the hill.

Part 2

Sometimes I shock myself on how wise I can be, or it could have been the magic in the night. I do not recall putting my hat on, or the bright orange coat around my body as I flee into the darkness. I follow the song on the cold wind until it fades, and I was left standing there in the woods. I knew, right then and there, I was lost. The night swallowed me alive, leaving my bright orange coat as the only light in the night.

I move around like a drunk blind man, not sure how to get back to the barn or the apple tree. I laugh to myself while taking a break on the chair of the forest, a nice dead log. How fitting is this? I ask myself. I was lost in my bed, looking for an answer to a question that might not have one. And now, now I'm lost in the night in some woods I do not know. I guess the joke is on me.

The ground moves as thunder seems to rise from it with footsteps coming towards me. I jump to my feet, readying myself for the attack. Would I be fighting a bear, a giant, or something worse?

A young man with bright blonde hair jumps out of the woods, stumbling over himself to stop from crashing into me. He falls to his knees, trying to give his body a moment of rest. I could hear his lungs crying out for air as he said, “Man, that coat is way too bright!”

“Is that why you came after me?” I ask him.

“Yeah,” he said, “I thought you were the sun for a moment. I was hoping it was my chariot.”

“Oh,” I reply, thinking who uses a chariot anymore? “So, what are you running from?” I ask, just in case something else was going to come crashing through the night at me.

The boy told me he was the god Apollo, and he had stolen his uncle's favorite paint brush. He traveled to the underworld to steal the brush, and he's on the way back to the light, where his uncle can't followed. He said he didn't know why he had to steal the brush, but all he told me was, “There was a burning passion for it. A passion that would not die until I held the brush in my hands.”

He explained that he knew of the brush all his life, and the idea of the brush always stayed in his mind. He couldn't think about anything else. He saw his uncle paint beautiful paintings with it. He saw worlds and dreams he didn't know could exist fall into those painting with each stoke of the brush. “I had to have it,” he said. “I had to feel it, to hold just once in my life, but my uncle would never let me. I just needed to feel it once.

“You see,” he said, dropping the brush into my hands, “that is what true passion is.”

“You are not going to keep it?”

He laughed, and said, “I'm no artist. I just wanted to have it for a moment.”

True passion, I think as Apollo fades from my sight. I agree with him more or less because I understood what he meant. My passion, though it has changed, has never died. I would create because I had too. If I didn't, my passion would burn me alive. I may not understand what my passion means, but I understand the need for it. The wind blows again along with the song to pull me up the hill. A guiding light in the dark. I follow, holding tight to the brush in my hand.

Part 3

I don't think it matters if my eyes were open or not. The night so dark shielded my eyes and I couldn't tell where I was going. I wasn't using my eyes to see or walk down the path anyways. My ears followed the sound of the song and I followed my ears. I didn't mind the dark, the nothingness, even if it did send waves of terror up my spine. For I know there are things in the night. The monsters walking in the dark are following the same song I am. They are not monsters, but are lost like I am. I simply can't see them.

Then the song pulls me to a statue, which is made from a brilliant white marble. A man sits on a stool, his leg hanging off and his hands on his knees. I try to study his face to see some emotion in it, but his eyes and mouth are hard like the stone he's made from.

I sit down at his feet as the song slows. It never stops playing, its pull is simply weaker now. My body needs the rest, the sickness playing its part and tiring me out. I know the walk to the apple tree should not have been taking this long, but the night is thick and my body is not willing to push like my soul is.

I lean my head back, looking up at the man's face as he looks down at me. He smiles a little, and my lips followed suit.

“Hello sir,” I say.

“Hello,” he replies. Sure, if it was any other night I would be freaking out about a talking statue. However, on this night it seems like a normal thing to run across.

He asks me in a flat and emotionless tone of voice, “Are you traveling to the apple tree?”

“Aye, sir, I am,” I tell him.

“Watch out, my friend,” he grins. “I hear there is an apple up there you shouldn't eat, or you'll get kicked out of this place.”

“Good to know,” I say to him with a nod. “May I ask what you are doing out here in the woods?”

“Waiting,” he says. “Waiting for the right time to move, to rush out into the world, and find my heart.” That is when I notice it. I must not have seen it before, but there was a hole where his heart should have been.

“Where did it go?” I ask.

“It left to live its life, to follow its dreams,” he told me while looking out into the darkness. “And I'm waiting to follow. I don't know when to run after it. I don't know if I can move. Oh, how I wish to run, to be free, but I'm too afraid to do so. How does one know when to take an action or when to wait?”

The song picks back up, and I shoot to my feet. The pull drawing me up the hill. Like a gift from the angels above, words fall out of my mouth. Words that the statue was looking for, or I like to hope. “There is no right time to know,” I tell him. “You must just go and see what happens. You step into the nothing having faith in yourself and God above. You just have to try.”

I don't know if the statue left his stool. I didn't see him do so, but I did see his eyes light up with a new understanding. And maybe, just maybe, a new hope.

Part 4

Sometimes . . .

Sometimes my memories are more like dreams than memories. And I wonder if these dreams are more like fragment pieces of some subconscious reality I have made up for myself. What if, Airy Knoll just became a part of this shatter reality, these people I have come to love and care about are nothing more than a subconscious delusions. A fake dream I can't wake from, but how I scream to be set free. Freedom that might be as fabricated as the fragment dreams of my life.

What if? (How sad that “if” rarely becomes more than whats!) In this freedom I find the answer to the most important question. I unlock the chest that holds what I 'm looking for, what does art really mean?

You must understand, if I find this answer I find who I am, what I am. As an artist, if I understand art then I understand myself.

But if the answer is a part of a haze of some dream vision, then can I really believe the answer I find?

Like this song on the night air that has been pulling me up to the apple tree . . .

This damn march, which I have been walking for three days now. I was sure it didn't take this long to get to the top of the hill, but, hey, I could be wrong. This song, like a seductive mistress pulling at my will and heart, with my intellect and rationale telling me to run. I don't run - - - I can't run - - -

I wander in the dark, picking up the pieces of my shattered past. This feeling of lost is eating me alive. I fear I'll never escape it.

Then the shadows of the night move, folding in on itself and rushing to a single point ahead of me. The darkness doesn’t fade, no, it is still there, but the night had move. She is standing there with her long pale legs wrapped in dark brown Roman sandals. Her black hair, full of stars, falls against her silky smooth skin, covering her nude body. She smiles at me with ever so pale lips. Her eyes warm me with a loving joy my heart can’t take.

I weep like a child and run to Nyx, the Goddess of the Night, and throw my arms around her like the child I am. At that moment, I was no longer the giant everyone knows, but I was a smaller version of myself, a smaller giant. A child, one might say.

She lays her cool hands on my head, kissing me and calming my tears. She takes me by the hands, and I hold on tight. Nyx saved me once from an honorable burning fate. She saves me from the light, and I have always found comfort in the dark because I know she is there.

She leads me down the path, hand in hand, telling me she loves me and has missed me. I smile from one ear to the next. I don’t care she been gone from my life for years. All I care about is the fact she is here now with me.

We stop a few moments later as the trunks of the trees around us turn into great stone pillar, making the night her temple. Nyx sits down with me while I am tightly held in her loving embrace. She says to me not to fear being lost. “Being lost, my child,” she whispers in my ear, “is not always bad as one might think. It leads you down paths you didn't know you could go. It gives you stories to tell, and makes you all the more wise. And when you are lost, you know you are lost from something. You know you must get back to it. Embrace the hours of being lost, for you have so much to learn from it.”

She left me there with her words echoing in my ears. I, once again, a full giant sitting on the ground looking up at the night sky. I am lost, but what an adventure it is . . .

Part 5

This morning I woke up under several blankets, hot and well rested. This was a good change for once. I sat there enjoying everything about my heated morning as they days grew closer to summer. I ponder over my dreams from the night, and wonder if our dreams are just our souls traveling.

Every night ours souls leave our bodies to live a life we can't see. Our souls go through doors we don't know are there. Then our souls return to us when we wake to tell us about what they have found in a world we know nothing about.

I lie there in the silence of the morning listening to my soul tell me a lovely tale. The tales it starts to tell me went something like this:

I reach the top of the hill where the apple tree sits, at the same time the moon did. I felt the cool hands of Nyx on my shoulder and wonder what happened to the statue I met hours or days ago. As I move slowly over the peak of the hill, where the song has been pulling me all this time, I find myself standing on the edge of a pool. A pool of perfectly clear water sat around the tree. The apple tree, the anchor of Airy Knoll, was placed in exact center of the pool.

A bright red apple hung from one of the branches and I tell myself not to eat it. The statue had warned me about the apple. So I pull my eyes away from it as my ears made me look into the water.

There, singing, were three lovely ladies, now looking up at me. They call for me, wanting me to join them at the bottom of the pool. My mind screams no, while my heart is already under their spell.

I am doomed, these sirens waiting to pull me to my watery grave.

As I reach for them, a hand fell on me, pulling me back. I look up to see a black bird standing there. He is as big as a man, his body long and a red top hat sits on top of his head. He says, pointing to a canvas and some paints, “Make a piece that is the greatest painting in all of time and you'll be free from this spell.”

I sit in front of the canvas. Then I hear the Heavens open up and start singing 'Under Pressure,' by Queen and David David Bowie . . .

The greatest painting of all time. Not a tall order at all, and after that I'll go to Hell and take it over. The greatest painting of all time . . .

I hand him the canvas back, and he squawked, “Explain yourself!”

The canvas is still white, not a drop of paint has touched it. It was nothing, and that was the point. “You see,” I told him, “the greatest painting is not the one I put on canvas but the one I am chasing. If I was to paint it, I would lose it. I can paint it, but it would no longer be the greatest. I look at the canvas, and I see the master piece you are looking for, but I can’t and will not paint it. You must understand, to an artist, it's the work they haven't done that is the greatest of all time.”

My soul – well, me – made it back to my bed alive. And I – or well, it – had a big smile on its face.