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[Eclyse Christian]

---

Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god
Wandering, wandering in hopeless night.
Out here in the perimeter there are no stars...
~Jim Morrison

“Gods save ye, Miss.” The hooded figure in tattered robes reached out to touch the arm of a noblewoman who had dropped a gold coin in the beggar’s cup. “Thank ye ever-so-much.”

The noblewoman flinched and pulled instinctively away from the beggar’s grasp. She impatiently dusted off her linen sleeve where the beggar had touched it, giving the hooded figure a sidelong glare. “I gave you a coin. That did not give you permission to touch me.”

The ragged girl stepped back quickly, rubbing a smudge from her cheek with the sleeve of her robe, and uttered a quiet “Sorry, Miss.”

With a cautious look around, she pulled the hood lower to cover her face, tucked the cup half-filled with coins beneath the oversized sleeve of her threadbare robe, and retreated down a ladder into the dark and secret world where dwelled her kind.

[Eclyse Christian]

---

“…Thus we obligingly kiss
The leprous cheek of Humanity,
and call her Fair.
We batter the angels’ eyes,
that they might not see
as we steal gold leaf
from their wings
to lay up earthly palaces,
leaving them broken,
flightless,
alone,
and forgotten.”
~Jill Lenarduzzi

Darkness clung to her damply, and her face shone in the darkness with sweat and the humidity that engulfed everything here, living or not. Fleeting lights, like fireflies of her youth, flitted through as torch and lantern passed overhead.

Here in this place, there was neither hope nor light. Here was despair and need. Here was hunger and craving – for food, for drugs, for alcohol – things to make one forget his pain. And she knew, too, this primitive need. She walked slowly, sure-footedly, through the muck and refuse - wearing it in her tattered robes, carrying it on her bare feet. She set down a shoddy basket near a disheveled heap in a dark corner, kneeling to pilfer it for a small amber bottle with a white handwritten label. She held it out silently toward the pile of rags and waited.

Slowly, steadily, a gnarled and arthritic hand lifted from the heap to take the bottle from the robed one’s hands. “Bless ye, Child. God has not forgotten me.”

The hooded girl’s smile fluttered and haunted the darkness. “Nay forgotten, Miss. Never forgotten.” She laid half a loaf of bread, wrapped carefully in paper, in the old woman’s lap, then rose, took up her basket, and steadily made her way through the darkness toward the next huddled mass.

[Eclyse Christian]

---

“And it feels, now
Just like heaven's coming down.
Your soul shakes free,
As its conscience hits the ground.

These signs, this fate
Takes a path you didn't choose
Stay strong, keep faith
There's a change that's coming through…”
~Jeff Martin

Voices carried far in the bowels of Britain. Apparently, farther than anyone might think. But then, sewers were not made with acoustics in mind. Here, people spoke in hushed tones, their conversations ferried to her in words and phrases on the fetid and oppressive air that clung to her so tightly.

Such a solemn child…

The shrouded figure reached into her basket, kneeling to hand out a nondescript brown parcel to a woman with grateful eyes who sat huddled in a dark corner. A soft angelic voice arose from a quiet lump by the woman’s side, and a child leaned into a shaft of torchlight cast from the grate above. “What’s yer name, Miss?”

…they say she may ‘ave been a knight.

“What would you like for my name to be?” The hooded girl pulled a second-hand doll from her basket and held it out to the child, who smiled broadly.

But something happened…

“D’ye like the name Beatrice?” The golden-haired child hugged the doll tightly. “Cause I do. An’ I wanna name her after you.”

She serves a faith that abandoned her….

“Beatrice it is, then.” The girl smiled in the shadows of her hood.

…simply tragic.

The child gazed soulfully up into the shrouded beggar’s face and whispered faintly. “I love you Beatrice.”

...why does she stay here?

Without fanfare, a tear broke free and slipped down Eclyse’s cheek, overwhelmed by all the reasons why.

[Eclyse Christian]

---

"It's almost like the hard times circle 'round.
A couple drops, and they all start coming down.
Yes, I might feel defeated,
and I might hang my head.
I might be barely breathing - but I'm not dead.

'Cause tomorrow's another day,
and I'm thirsty anyway,
so bring on the rain."
~Helen Darling & Billy Montana

Another day had come, passed, and was slipping away into the west. The new beggar's face was quickly becoming commonplace in the town square of Britain. Or what was visible of her face, anyway, beneath the shadows of her ragged hood. She had become just another shade, haunting the corners of the city with necessary regularity. The rattle of coins as they plunked into her cup meant another basket of food, medicine, and clothing for those who could not ask for them, but needed them nonetheless. And so she had donned the vestiges of humility and sorrow, and undertaken the task.

She tucked a faded pink cloth down tightly over the basket to conceal the contents and hastily made her way to the entrance of the underworld where she had made her home. The shadows here had other ideas.

She felt his blade at her throat before she ever saw him. He was strong and swift, and without warning, Eclyse found herself completely at his mercy.

"Goin' someplace?" He hissed words in her ear quietly to avoid garnering attention.

Eclyse swallowed, finally finding her voice. "I've got to get down under, if ye please. They depend 'pon me--"

Her words were cut short by the knife's edge biting into her flesh. She winced, and silenced.

"Yer goin' nowhere Lass. Leastways not with that basket." The man's free hand went out to snatch the basket, but Eclyse curled it in against her tightly.

"Listen to me." She spoke with more authority than she had. "There's them that need medicine down there. If not fer this, they won't get it. You don't understand, S--" again he cut her words short.

"Oh I understan' just fine, Miss. I just don' care." He ripped the basket from her grasp and threw her roughly to the ground. Her scalp split open as her head crashed against the cobblestones, and she lay there dazed in the dark silence for what seemed like hours, until a light rain began to fall. Rivulets of crimson trickled away from her across the grey cobblestones, creating a bloody halo upon the street.

The "if only's" played themselves tauntingly through her head. If only I had kept a weapon and a little armour, or even a little gold...If only I had been more watchful...if only I had a place to go tonight. She could not return to the underworld empty-handed. There were so many there who needed what had been taken from her. The rain grew steadily harder, and she turned her face up into it as the grime from the city darkened the rivulets which now ran pink from her dark hair. Her hood had fallen away, and she no longer cared. She opened her mouth to catch the drops upon her tongue, thirstier than she'd ever been in her life.

[Eclyse Christian]

---

“Oh Lord, to see a light, but fail in strength to follow--
Sometimes it's hard to let it go.

Oh Lord, to fail in heart, and each day grow more hollow--
Sometimes I just don't want to know.

But the road that led me here, it's begun to disappear.
Sometimes I wonder where I am….

It's a seven-story mountain. It's a long, long life we live.
Got to find a light and fill my heart again.”
~Todd Schaeffer (Railroad Earth)

Awake.

Had she been asleep? Instinct told her she had not, yet she opened her eyes with the recognition of waking, all the same. She had been in a peaceful place. Not sleep. Not dark. Only supernovas of light and starbursts of colour. No pain. Just beauty.

Here, there was pain. And with that realization came another. “Here” was someplace completely different. Pain exploded in her head and she lifted a hand to her forehead, then ran her fingers tentatively through her hair. One. Two. Three. Four. Five….Six stitches. Seven. No, eight.

Her hair was clean and immaculately brushed, but smelled of a serious medicine. Around her, she heard water. Trickles, drips, and torrents, in various intervals. Rain. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness that was “here” and found herself again in the place that she now called home. The smell wasn’t so bad here, and the oppressive heat seemed quelled at last by the rains.

Slowly, cognizant thought returned to her. She sat in a corner, slouched and leaning against a cool stone wall. But between her cheek and the rough stone, a folded blanket. In her lap, a well-worn silver dagger in a metal scabbard. She took it all in, dazed and bewildered by every new detail.

“Good morning.” His voice was soft, but not weak.

Eclyse squinted, trying to focus. A young man who looked scarcely twenty sat cross-legged in the opposite corner. His pale blonde hair hung in long, orderly dreadlocks that spilled down over his shoulders, and his skin was smooth and sun-browned. A book lay open in his lap, and he was eating an apple.

Eclyse watched him curiously, still gingerly probing the swollen welt beneath the stitches in her scalp. He smiled genuinely, and it put her more at ease.

“Did ye…” Eclyse paused, her question lost in the sound of her voice echoing inside her head, and she winced.

“Careful, Miss. Took quite a knock to the head.” His gaze flitted deftly to the hand on her head. His mannerisms were instinctive – feral – he was one of the dwellers of this underworld. “No, I didn’t. I just took you to a healer. I know one who’s willing to work with…our kind."

Our kind.

“How did you find me?” Eclyse lowered her hand finally, allowing it to rest in her lap on the dagger.

“You kidding? Someone like you gets knocked down, and this place turns upside down. Maybe you don’t know how much you mean to folk down here.”

She lifted the dagger and removed it from the scabbard, still confused.

“That’s mine. Well, was. It’s yours now.” He looked her over appraisingly. “Think you know how to handle yourself with it.”

Eclyse was dumbfounded. The gift was overwhelming, especially coming from one who had so little. Her eyes welled with tears.

The young man noticed, and quickly turned back to the book in his lap. “We take care of our own, you know.”

“I’m not…” Eclyse began, but trailed off, unsure how to finish.

“Yes you are. Maybe by choice, but you are.” He looked back up at her with a lopsided grin. “Everybody knows you don’t belong here, but when the gods send us an angel, we don’t ask why.”

Suddenly the all the meager begged coins, medicine, food, and secondhand toys in the world were not enough. Eclyse resheathed the dagger and tossed it to the stranger.

“If I leave this place, I can provide more. But I’d need help your help to distribute it.” Eclyse gauged his reaction cautiously.

“Name the task, and it’s done.” He smiled, buckling the scabbard onto his belt. “But why trust a total stranger with something like that?”

Eclyse smiled. “When the gods send me an angel, I don’t ask why.”

[Eclyse Christian]

---

“There were days,
and there were days,
and there were days between.
Summer flies and August dies,
the world grows dark and mean.
Comes the shimmer of the moon
on black infested trees.
The singing man is at his song,
the holy on their knees,
the reckless are out wrecking,
the timid plead their pleas.
No one knows much more of this
than anyone can see...

Comes a time when the blind man
takes your hand, says: don't you see?
Got to make it somehow
on the dreams you still believe.”
~Robert Hunter (for the Grateful Dead)

The damp, musty scent of the sewers still lingered in her robes and hair. But after two days’ walking, she had finally reached her destination. Eclyse pressed her palm against the cool stone of the ankh as evening sang her last refrain. Here it began, and here it would end. She knelt before the ankh and watched as the last fingers of sunlight clawed in futility at the landscape, beyond the black granite that stood stately before her. Night shook out her cloak of stars, and the moons ascended – first Trammel, then Felucca – racing as siblings toward the heavens. And each of these, she asked for guidance.

Soft laughter drifted on night’s breeze from a camp toward the east. A wisp of smoke twisted languidly toward the heavens, and the firelight was warm and inviting compared to the chill of the hard ground here beneath her bones. At length, she tore her wistful gaze from the camp and focused again upon the ankh.

Hours passed – Eclyse sat still and straight. Head bowed, eyes closed, she opened her senses to the words of the universe, that she might know where to go from here. Her breath was a constant by which she measured time. Heartbeat by heartbeat, she found herself immersed in the black of night. But when she opened her eyes again, the world was awash in the azure light of the moons. Not dark and uncertain at all, as she had imagined.

A song from the camp wove its way through the night like some clandestine dream, tousled her hair with the wind – encircled and enraptured her.

Goin’ home, Goin’ home,
By the riverside I will rest my bones.
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul…**

Finally, the message was clear. It was futile to resist the torrents of time and tide, and there were still those who needed her. But more than needing her, she needed them. Tonight, she lit a hopeful candle and set it before her to illuminate the ankh – and with it, her path. But tomorrow was a new kind of hope, rising with the sun. The time had come to return to Ashencrosse. Eclyse arose with the candle and again placed her open palm against the cold granite of the ankh in a spirit of gratitude and communion. She pressed a grateful kiss upon the face of the ankh, lifted aloft her candle, and began the long road home.

______________________

** Also the words of Robert Hunter