Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
Things are different now. I’m not needy and helpless and Brother Timothy is not the caregiver. One healing changes us both, and just as the stretches of healing are painful for me, the new stretches of relationship for Brother Timothy challenge his power over me. Healing is miraculous, but also, it is a severance of care. He will have to rescue another broken bird, and I will have to find my own way here.
On this new day Sister Brigid delivers the more abundant flask of goat’s milk and now she goes on her way with her other deliveries as she does daily. I step out of the cell, and watch her cross the deep, green divide and up the stone stairway to a higher place. Now that she knows of me, here, she has filled her brother’s flask more fully, so sharing with me isn’t his personal sacrifice.
I’m hoping he sends me back this morning to return the empty flask so I can thank her with words; but the little monk goes off as he always did until yesterday and returns it himself. So today, after he comes back, when he settles into his routine of silent prayers, before he begins his daily task of chipping stones, I go back again, down the path to the Sister’s cell.
I see her pouring fresh water into the goat trough.
“Good morning, Sister Brigid.”
“Good morning, Laz. Did my brother send you back down? He was just here.”
“I know. I just wanted to thank you for adding extra milk today, now that my presence isn’t a secret anymore.”
“Not a secret now, from me anyway; I am pretty sure the others haven’t a thought he’d rescue a man among all his saved birds and critters. But if you wander up to the monastery, you may find that you, just showing up on the Skellig, will be very hard to explain.”
“I see that Brother Timothy finds joy in the healing power as he released a bird from his care. And he probably needs to release me as well, so I need to go on my way to find myself useful. I’m not needy anymore, but I’m not needed either. And I don’t know how to speak to Timothy so I could be a brother for him.”
She laughs.
“Even the brothers aren’t brothers for him.”
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 