Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
Sister Brigid has guided me to the monk’s cell of Brother Lugh, the young monk who found my bones in the tidewater in early spring. Maybe he recognizes me. Maybe he just always looks cautiously terrified.
“You’ve seen me before, Brother Lugh. Then I was in a far worse state. Sister Brigid tells me it was you who sent for help and I’m grateful.”
The young, freshly shorn monk just stares at me incredulously through wide eyes of terror that I have also seen before. Maybe he always sees with wonder. He stares as though I am a visage or a ghost and not a living person, even now, nearly healed, as I stand outside his doorway very much a living person, he says nothing. Is there a difference between wonder and fear?
I say, “Brother Timothy came for me with a sledge and a shroud intending to gather up the bones of a dead man. When he saw my nearness to life I became another of his healing projects.”
Brother Lugh looks troubled.
“What do you mean healing? He is a deaf mute. He buries the dead.”
“Brother Timothy is indeed silent, but not deaf to God. I guess he hears of hopes and needs beyond the listening of the others of us. For your alertness, and for his awareness in the possibility of my life continuing, I am ever grateful. I thank you now for your part in my rescue. Sister Brigid brought me here, because she knew I first needed to speak my gratitude to you.”
“I knew I saw you dead. I was not mistaken. When another of us brothers was dead, I saw death and I know death, and I saw you dead. Now I’ve had word of my own father’s death. I only wish to welcome one particular beloved ghost and he is not a stranger to me.”
So, my presence here is intruding on his grief. What can I say?
“Might we sit down on this step? I’m not yet at my full strength,”
“Just go on your way now. This is my time for prayers. I’ll ask penance for my sin of envy, because you live, and my father does not.”
“I am a sign, and not an easy answer to grief. We should sit down and consider together the meaning of a sign.”
He is reluctant. At long last I can sit down. We find a place on the wall of a cistern.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 