“Just on the edge of the wild, rises a mountain, and passed this mountain flows a river to the mouth of a sea. By this river rests a village, to the west of the village is an island. On this island there is a blissful sanctuary with endlessly charming and choir like bells,” spoke the lovely woman.
The boy saw she was genuinely dressed with her own eccentricities and wore a veil of light that was covering her face. He had never seen her around town before.
“Have you ever seen the sanctuary?” she asked. “Go find it. Go tell it on the mountain and let me know what you think of it.”
Captivated by the woman’s beauty, the boy climbed the mountain, and managed to find his way to the village by the river. He worked his way down to the banks of the river, but there was no island. So he sat down on a rock next to the river and stared out at the horizon, but he saw only what he always saw: blue sky, sunshine, jagged peaks, all opening up to an endless sea, but still, no island.
A bit disillusioned, he walked back to the nearby fishing village and asked if anyone there knew about an island with a sanctuary full of lovely ringing bells that was once situated at the mouth of this river?
“That island hasn’t been around for many, many moons, since the years that our ancestors first settled here,” said a wise old fisherman. “There was an earthquake, and the island was swallowed up by a mountain under the sea. Although we can no longer see the island, we can still hear the bells from that drowned sanctuary when the river starts churning with springtime winds, and the mountain below starts gasping for air.
The boy went back to his rock by the river and tried with everything he had to hear those bells. He spent the entire afternoon of a spring day there by that river, but all he heard was the gentle sigh of churning water, the sailing wind, mixed in with the buzzing bees and that of a bluebird’s cry.
When night fell, he was gone from home for so long that his friends came looking for him. They found him on that rock and took him home.
The following morning, he went back to the rock. He was stumped and rather upset that such a striking woman would mislead him. He thought that if she ever returned, he would gently fib, and tell her that while he didn’t find the sanctuary, he heard the bells bellow from the waves moaning beneath the sea.
Months and months had passed; the woman never returned and the boy forgot all about her. He had become so obsessed with hearing the bells, that he couldn’t focus on anything else, not even himself. He thought maybe there was some sort of long lost treasure buried deep within the submerged sanctuary. And if he was ever able to hear those bells, they would reveal the sanctuary’s whereabouts and salvage what treasure was yet to be swallowed up by the sanctuary underneath the sea.
He lost interest in his daily routine and even in his friends so dear. He became the laughing stock of the other children’s jokes. They would say: “He’s not like us. He prefers to sit by that river, gazing into nothing because he’s apprehensive of competing and being beaten in our games of bourgeois influence.”
They all went to the shore to see for themselves. There he was, legs crossed and all, staring into oblivion upon the horizon. They all laughed at his expense and left him to his own intricate devices.
Although he still wasn’t able to hear the sanctuary’s bells singing from below with the churning river, the boy began to learn about other things.
He learned how to unlearn himself.
He began to realize that he had become so used to the waves flowing with the river that it was no longer a distraction. Soon thereafter, he became habituated to the cries of the bluebird, the buzzing of the bees, and the wind blowing through a wilderness full of trees.
Many moons had passed since his last conversation with the lovely young woman. But the boy could now rest mindless from all the other noises and distractions, but he still, for the life of him, could not hear the bells ringing from the drowned sanctuary.
The fishermen in the village started to come by daily and talk to the boy, always insisting they heard the bells that morning, while offering their perceived advice on how to hone in on the hope of hearing them. The boy took their advice, but still he never heard them. So he heeded their advice, tried it his own way, and still nothing.
It was some time later, however, all the others began to taint their tune: “You’re dreaming your life away thinking about those damn bells hidden in the depths below the sea. Forget about them and go back home to where you belong. Perhaps it’s only us local wise men who can hear those choir like bells.”
More time had passed, when the boy began to think: “Perhaps those wise men were right. Maybe I would do better to grow up and become a wise fishermen and come down to this rock of mine and fish all the time because I have indeed come to love it here.”
As well he thought: “Perhaps it was just another fable, a myth, and the sanctuary was destroyed by the quaking earth many lifetimes ago and those bells haven’t truly rung since."
That afternoon, he decided it was time to throw in the towel and make his way back home.
He walked down to the rock by the river to say goodbye to the river and the sea one last time. He breathed in the scenery for a moment, the one that had surrounded him for so long. And because wanting to hear the bells so badly, no longer consumed him, his smile took to its happy shape beneath the shining sun. Again, he heard the harmony buzzing with the bees, and the cries of the bluebird blowing with the wind through a wilderness breeze.
Far off in the distance, he heard his friends childlike chatter, and he was glad to be heading his way back towards his own reality, where he would resume his childish antics with his friends.
The boy was as happy as happy could be, as only a child can know, as he was grateful for being alive. He, as sure as shit assured himself, that he had not wasted his time listening so patiently for those lovely bells. He had learned the contemplation of nature and he respected it with great camaraderie, maybe even more than he himself.
Then, as he laughed foolishly with the shining sun, listening to the harmony of the bees, the cries of the bluebird, and the childish voices that meandered with the wind. He heard something he had yet to hear blowing with the wind through the forest of trees.
Came a ring, and he thought, could it really be? Then came another, ringing throughout his ears, and again, another one, and once again, another. The bells rang like sprawls of a choir, so full of rhythmic beauty, until, and to his great joy, all the bells in the drowned sanctuary were singing, right there within him.
A year or so later, the boy returned to the village, now a wise man. He returned to the rock by the river. No longer was he consumed by finding the treasure in the sanctuary hidden beneath the sea.
Perhaps the treasure had been a byproduct of his imagination after all, and he hadn’t really heard those sanctuary bells ringing, so loud and clear that one lost adolescent afternoon of his youth.
He decided to sit and contemplate upon his rock as he had always done and sat quiet, listening with intent to the silence.
When behind him the echoing acoustics of a crackling twig startled him. He turned to look behind him with lackadaisical leisure, and much to his bewilderment, stood the majestic woman, a part of his soul, who had spoken to him sometime ago about the sanctuary and the bells.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I was waiting for you,” she replied.
This time the veil was lifted, and the man felt like a boy again amidst the glow of her timeless beauty, despite the passing time, she was becoming more beautiful, and much like her, the light she exuded before had not faded one bit with time.
She handed him a dusty old notebook, filled with blank pages.
“Write: A man full of love values seeing life through a child’s eyes since they are able to look at the world without resentment. When he wishes to believe that the person beside him can be deemed worthy of his trust, he looks at them as a child would.”
“What is a man full of love?”
“We both know that you know that already,” she replied with half a glowing smile. “He is someone capable of comprehending the miracles of love and its rebirth, of fighting—even his own demons—till death for something he truly believes in, and when, hearing the bells that rang from the sanctuary within you, you know it was your heart that set them ringing from the depths of your soul.”
He had never thought of himself as a man full of love.
The woman seemed to hear his thoughts.
“That’s your problem, you don’t believe in yourself. But everyone else you’ve touched believes in you. And though, no one thinks of themselves as being capable of giving everything they have to something much bigger than themselves, you do, and that’s what makes you so damn dangerously beautiful.”
“And one more thing” she said with a hint of empathy. “If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else ever will. But at the end of the day, people are dying—literally—for something real to take home with them.”
The blankness of aromatic redemption canvassed his senses, and as he fanned through the empty pages, the woman began to beam again.
“Give them something real to believe in Ryan,” she whispered with a smile.
The man turned to gaze upon the horizon once again before he could offer his thoughts to her.
“Let's get one thing straight, I’ve always believed in...” but as he turned to look back at her, again, she was gone, carried away with the wind.
“Now what?” He thought with a grin.
—Ryan Love
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