Myth, Symbolism and Stories

Why mythology?

Myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence. Whether the meaning of existence is only put into life by our own individual fortitude, as Sartre holds, or whether there is a meaning we need to discover, as Kierkegaard states, the result is the same: myths are our way of finding this meaning and significance. Myths are like the beams in a house: not exposed to outside view, they are the structure holding the house together so people can live in it.

~ Rollo May, The Cry for Myth

Myths contain the greater story that never was but is always happening. Their waters run far deeper than the compelling tales told around ancient campfires to explain the seasons, the weather, and the formidable conflicts found within human societies and the human soul. Myth serves as a manner of explanation, but it is also a mode of discovery, for myth is the coded DNA of the human psyche. It is the stuff of the evolving self that awakens consciousness and culture according to the needs of time and place. It is the promise of our becoming.

~ David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner, The Mythic Path

The significance of stories

Stories played an important part in how I first understood the world, and my place in it. The earliest I heard were those told me by my mother and grandmother – family legends woven in a time before I was born, when odd alliances and bonds of allegiance were made and broken, for intricate, mysterious reasons. As a small child I listened with awe, learning how the world worked through these stories. Later I went through a different process, reviewing old family myths and seeing how they had sometimes laid down false trails of belief to follow. I saw how I created my own stories, and had established a whole mythology about my own life.

I came to realise how much the stories we hear in childhood have influence over our identities – whether they are related about our family, or told from books. We identify with certain characters, and to some degree live out their stories, largely unaware of how much the old childhood myths may have bearing on our lives.

Once we recognise a general pattern or storyline, the challenge is to participate in the rewriting of our own story. We may not create the rivers that carry us along but we can certainly navigate the little boats of our lives. If we discern a plot to our lives we are more likely to take ourselves and our lives seriously. Healthy stories challenge us to be active characters, not passive victims or observers. Both the present and the future are determined by choices, and choice is the essence of character. If we see ourselves as active characters in our own stories, we can exercise our human freedom to choose a present and future for ourselves that gives our life meaning.

I bring my appreciation of myth, and awareness of our natural love of story, to my work with clients. I encourage people to examinine the personal and collective myths and symbols which shape their lives. Our understanding of our self is deepened when we begin to see our story as part of a continuum - a mythology that pre-existed us and eternally creates a pattern which lives through us, in archetypes that are deeply familiar to our unconscious, although we may only recognise them in glimpses with our conscious mind.

We are constantly presented with symbols, but often discard them as irrelevant fantasies that are unimportant distractions from the "realities" of life. Symbols come to us in many forms, but whether they appear through dreams, fantasies, meditation, or guided visualisation, they are self-created, coming from our unconscious. The images that emerge from within us can carry us into the deeper reaches of our soul, and connect us to essence. When we begin to look at the world as if there were teachers all around us, everything becomes open to interpretation as symbolic.

The symbolism of the ouroborus

On entering this site you saw the ouroborus, the archetypal serpent or dragon whose end is its beginning. This symbol has particular resonance for me, and represents the cyclic nature of time and the Universe: disintegration and reintegration, creation out of destruction, life out of death, primordial unity, power eternally consuming and renewing itself, spatial infinity, darkness before creation, and the potential before actualisation.

Jung described the Ouroborus as the "dragon that devours, fertilizes, begets, slays, and brings itself to life again. Being hermaphroditic, it is compounded of opposites and is at the same time their uniting symbol." Alchemically, the ouroboros represents the natural latent power seen in the unformed materia in the hermetic vessel, and is symbolic of the cyclical nature of alchemical work.

It shows up in numerous ancient mythologies, including Greek, Hindu and Egyptian, where it has been portrayed with one half dark - symbolising Night, Earth, and the destructive force of nature, yin - and the other half light, representing Day, Heaven, and the generative, creative force, yang. In many myths it is the circular course of the waters surrounding the earth, and encircles the world, both supporting and maintaining it, injecting death into life and life into death. Apparently immobile, it is perpetual motion, forever recoiling upon itself.

There are two primary types of Ouroborus: one that holds the tip of its tail between its jaws, and one that swallows it(self). The former is static and circular, sharing the symbolic meaning of the circle, dividing the universe into inside and outside. It is a magic barrier of protection, representing eternal life and perfection. The Ouroborus that swallows its tail is dynamic, a spiral force, sharing the symbolic meaning of the spiral, which is cyclical, moving, changing, evolving. Imagining the consequences of a serpent swallowing its tail, we see that in a magical sense it will reduce itself to a single point and vanish from the universe utterly. So the Ouroborus swallowing its tail represents the gateway between our universe and the absolute - or more poetically, the Eye of God.

For me, the Ouroborus is a perfect symbol of the therapeutic process, of our wondrous discovery that after all “to make an end is to make a beginning…” and that “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time…” When someone comes to me for therapy, I am always mindful of the fact that already implicit in our initial meeting is the point at which we will be parting, when our work together is done, and they embark on the next stage of their journey through life.

My intention is always to be alongside them in the process that has already begun for them, which our work can support and encourage. It is a form of spiritual alchemy, in which they bring their ‘dark material’ to the hermetic vessel that is the space which holds and allows this process, and together we watch the healing transformation that over time takes place. Clients eventually leave, richer for the experience, often having found a self they thought was lost or unknown to them. The place they “know for the first time” is something like stepping through the mirror and being able to see the projected image from the inside, finally realising the true self. The ending of therapy usually heralds a beautiful beginning, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, which I feel privileged to honour and witness.

Stories

For many years, from the age of seventeen and throughout my twenties and thirties, my short stories were published in magazines in England and America. I also wrote a number of novels, although only one was published – and not one I personally considered of much merit, since it had been commissioned as a ‘love story’. In the late 1980’s, mine became a familiar voice on Radio Oxford’s David Freeman Show, where I read my short stories on air each week, for about two years. Many of the stories I wrote and published were both serious and humorous – often at the same time.

At forty I abandoned my persona as a writer and embarked on my second career as a psychotherapist. I found that many of the perceptions and philosophical insights I’d accumulated and expressed through writing during my earlier years were validated in my training. However, my writing lost the slightly cruel and ironic edge that some of my darker stories had, and I developed too much empathy and compassion to be that same witty observer of the human condition. My observations were now confined to the consulting room, at the service of the client, and were never clever or unkind, or seeking to amuse.

Looking back, I would say now that in my earlier attempts to explain my unhappiness to myself through my writing, I was largely in denial of some more obscure and painful realities – as many of us are until life forces us one way or another to face up to them. However revealing those stories might seem now of my own neuroses and human frailties, and however poignantly autobiographical in their focus, I still love them for their integrity, and the writer in me still speaks with honesty and eloquence, when invited. 'Telling the truth' has been a vital component in my own life, and I've witnessed as a therapist how much we all seek to find an ear to listen to our own most secret truth - and the voice from somewhere often hidden in our profoundest depths with which to tell it.

During the years since then my perspective has shifted about a number of things, and the few stories I have written during that time have not been for publication, but for my own interest, or as a gift for someone else. One story – ‘Tiptoes the Elf’ – I have recently adapted from a ‘fairy story’ aimed at adults to one that is more readable for young children, although originally it was written in 1990 for the very limited and specialised audience of my children and parents.

Another story, ‘Elfi and Ivo’, was written in 1998 as a slightly tongue-in-cheek allegory - a form I love since it allows the fertile use of metaphor and symbolism - to help a friend better understand her own situation. My life in these recent years has mostly been rich with other people’s stories – which have moved me, and inspired me, and which I have respected too much to turn, even obliquely or unconsciously, into fiction. My own story has become less interesting to me, in the sense that I am living through it, reaching an understanding of it on the hoof rather than via the uncertain and rickety process of self-examination by the back door provided by its fictionalisation.

Between October 1999 and July 2000 I facilitated a weekly creative therapy group for women, called 'My Story My Self'. This was broad in its scope, and covered many aspects of writing and story-making, its primary aim being self-development. It was a moving, enriching experience for everyone involved, and although there hasn't been an opportunity to create a similar group since, I have had various requests about when the next one might be. If you are interested in becoming part of such a group in the future, me.

I have often been asked to share some of my previously published stories, and the easiest way of doing this until now has been on tapes of the numerous recordings made by Radio Oxford. I have decided to show some of my stories on this site, hoping to inspire those of you who wonder if their own unique take on life is worth expressing in writing. It is. Take the risk, and plunge into the waters of creativity with joyful anticipation of what you will discover there. Sharing my work in this way is a new venture for me, and so I have chosen to begin with a story that has not been published. As with my poems, I trust you will respect that the copyright for this story rests with me.

Elfi and Ivo

Once upon a time and long ago, in the far off days when magic was everywhere and no-one said cynically: “Ah, that’s just pretence or self-delusion”, there lived a young woman called Elfi. She was renowned for her beauty, intellect and faithfulness in love, and was as simple as she was clever, choosing to spend her days close to nature, listening to the voices of the trees and the animals that lived among them, gazing into the eyes of the moon reflected in the water of the river where she had made her home.

Although she was happy, she was always aware of a distant hollow ache of loneliness somewhere deep inside her, like an itch in a place that can never be reached to scratch. She was far now from the country of her parents, where once she had lived with her sister Bu when they were children, playing in innocent ignorance of the world beyond their garden. Her life was full, and it wasn’t her family that she missed, but someone she was yet to meet. Sometimes, sitting by the water’s edge, she would dream a little, and imagine who that person might be. She knew she would recognise him when he came, and that he would be as familiar to her as her reflection in the shimmering river.

One day, when she was least expecting him - as is the way of things - a stranger arrived in the part of the forest where she lived. He was tall and dark, wearing the traditional clothes that marked him as a traveller, carrying only a small rucksack on his back, and a soft leather pouch at his waist. He seemed to arrive from nowhere, between the trees, and stood for a while watching Elfi as she sat weaving, humming an old remembered tune to herself as she found the patterns under her fingers. He smiled at her, and as she felt his smile upon her she looked up and returned it, and a sudden warmth and brightness seized the day.

“Where have you come from?” she asked him, intrigued by the air of mystery he wore about him, as colourful and concealing as a cloak.

His smile was the kind that melted away all notions of opposition in even the hardest of hearts - and Elfi’s heart was soft as rose petals, unscarred by tragedy or disappointment. It opened to his smile like a flower’s face to the sun. She barely heard the answers he gave, and nor did she care, to tell the truth. He was here in her life, and that was all that mattered. What was it to her to know the land he came from, or his adventures along the way?

“I come from a distant country,” he told her, “Where the nights are long and dark, and the winters colder than you can imagine. Those that leave to seek their fortune are brave and few, and fewer still return to tell their tale. I’ve travelled far and wide on a strange and mystical quest - I was told in a dream that I would meet a beautiful woman weaving a blanket of rainbow threads beside a river, and through her I might find my deepest treasure.”

Elfi held out to him the fine and colourful cloth from her loom, for him to feel its softness, and he took her hand and pulled her up to stand beside him. He looked long and deep into her eyes and she felt the question that was her life find its answer in him, in his belief in her. She was the place where he would find his treasure, and they both knew it in that moment.

Many happy days and nights passed, as Elfi and Ivo (for that was his name) discovered the delights of falling into love. There was much laughter, and playing, chasing each other through the forest and along the river bank, splashing the water when they swam, feeling the certainty of nature all about them, resonating with their passionate celebration of life and connection. Late spring turned to summer, and the season reflected the joy in their hearts: everywhere flourished and burgeoned, the trees heavy with blossom then fruit, birds and forest creatures singing and dancing their way through the days of light and plenty. The sun was warm, and the rain when it fell was gentle. Ivo painted the outside of Elfi’s boat in bright rainbow colours, and put his knapsack away in one of her cupboards - right at the very back of the shelf, behind piles of her belongings. It was understood that he would not be needing it for a long time yet.

He kept his pouch with him at all times, however, and it was evident to Elfi that it had some special meaning for him. Since he also kept his air of mystery, she was reluctant to ask him what the pouch contained. Respectful of his privacy she was nevertheless intrigued by the secrecy he maintained about it and hoped that eventually he would reveal and explain its contents. At night he would place it with reverence under his pillow, as he lay down beside her and breathed his sweet breath into her lips with the kiss that seemed to give her life. Had she lived before she knew him? It was hard now to remember a time that she had.

Their nights were long with tenderness and passion, and their days rich with all the wealth discovered in building a simple yet meaningful shared life. They talked of their childhoods, of their similarities and differences. She tried to picture his ice-bound origins, and found it impossible. She had come from a land of long summers and hopeful winters, marked with festivals of renewal, gratitude and harvest. He spoke of nights that lasted for long months at a time, skies that thundered with angry Gods, rituals of loss and mourning, and brief elusive summers that broke their promise. It was during one of these conversations that eventually he opened his pouch, and showed her what until then he had kept hidden from her.

“Look,” he said. “These artefacts are what I bring with me from my family. I guard them with my life, for they are very precious, and I have been told that without them I will lose my soul.”

Elfi was wide-eyed, and felt a chill at his words. To be without one’s soul was a terrible prospect, for how would one then see and hear the real world, condemned to the realm of surface illusions? She watched as carefully he laid out the two objects in front of her. Wrapped in a coarse cloth of dark blood red, was a heavy, rusty key that had been passed down through the line of men, from father to son, for many generations.

“I don’t know what lock it might be, that it fits,” said Ivo, “But legend tells us that we must each carry it for our father, or else both he and we will have to sacrifice our soul to the Erl-king people who guard our land. Although they guard us, they also rule us. They are a proud and magic race, older than our own by more years than we can count, and have a hold on us we fear to break, and do not understand. They have powers greater than ours, yet need us to be this bridge for them in the world of ordinary men.” He looked troubled by his own words, and Elfi took his hand, making a vow in her heart that she would save him from whatever darkest fate he feared.

Putting down the key, he unwrapped the other cloth of deepest purple silk, and produced from its folds a dark polished stone that gleamed with a strange internal light, which his mother had given him when he set out on his journeying. She had told him that on the night of his birth one of the Erl-king folk had appeared at her bedside and put it in his baby fist, saying it was their gift that bound him to a pledge to one day return to them. “She told me that they claimed me as one of their chosen ones, that I had qualities that made me special to them, that they would protect me with their magic and give me charms that would ease my passage through the world of men, that would make it possible for me to have marvellous adventures.”

“But…” prompted Elfi - for there is always a ‘but’ in such stories involving the Elvish people and the pacts they delight in making.

“Yes, you are right to be suspicious,” sighed Ivo. “They told my mother I would see them again when my first child was born, that in exchange for my fortune I must give the baby up to them. If I refused, they would take back the stone, but leave me here, stranded with neither my own magic nor theirs to protect me.”

“What is this stone?” asked Elfi with awe, seeing how the tiny lights inside it seemed to glitter with an eerie energy as he spoke.

“Why, it is that very part of my soul that knows the old magic,” he said. “Which is why I must keep it with me always. They captured it in the way that elves can do, during that passage of transition from womb to birth, when the soul is so amorphous and yielding. They have dark ways and reasons we cannot fathom, but only accept as their rule.” A few tears trickled down his cheek - the first time that Elfi had ever seen him less than happy and joyful in her company. She wiped them away with her finger and then kissed him gently.

“We will fight their magic,” she said. “Together, we will challenge their tyranny. They have no jurisdiction over this land, nor over the country of my birth. They are from a dark, cold realm, and their magic is ruthless. I have magic, too, Ivo, and mine is stronger.”

These were brave words, for all that it was true that Elfi was blessed with the magic of a pure and loving heart. Yet she could not rest with this threat of repossession hanging over them both. Only the night before she had dreamed of a baby lying in a little willow basket, chuckling at her as it kicked its toes and waved its tiny fists. Too precious to speak out loud, this image was powerfully strong in the air between them. She wanted their baby to be made real, not to be stolen away from them at its birth by vengeful elves.

“I will save you,” she promised - a pledge made for herself as much as Ivo, for without him her life would now be empty, and they must have a child to complete their blissful union.

But Ivo’s words cast a shadow over their happiness. He put the key and the stone back in his pouch, but he could not put away the truth they represented. Whereas before he had worn the pouch lightly, it seemed now to hang heavily at his waist, and Elfi found herself glancing at it often with distaste and resentment for the elves and their power over his life and now hers. In her mind she argued against their right to claim a human child, and since she had never had dealings with them herself, it was hard to believe that such things could really happen. Sharing his secret with her had let the ghosts of his past out of the bag, and now, as the autumn brought lengthening nights to the forest, they were haunted by them.

There was one secret still that Ivo had not told, nor could he bring himself to, since it was one that felt too shameful to own to one as innocent and trusting as Elfi. It was a secret he hid in a place inside himself he kept locked and barred, for fear of allowing the monster inside to escape and wreak its mischief. It was not a dream alone that had sent him out into the world to seek his destiny, but a visitation from the Erl-king himself, on the night of his sixteenth birthday. Appearing in all his Erlish splendour, in robes of emerald green and gold shot through with diamond fire that shone like sunlight on the glaciers, the Great Erl-king had bowed before Ivo, and called him: “Lord!”

Trembling, Ivo had dared to lift his head to look his visitor straight in the eyes. Until then he had thought himself an ordinary boy, living in an extraordinary world, aware of magic around him but not within. But the conversation that followed left him in no doubt that he was special, marked out for a charmed and exceptional life. Ivo had not told Elfi the exact truth, in his story of receiving the stone from his mother. It was true that she had given it to him, and told him the things that she did, but Ivo’s awareness of being chosen had come before then, on this night that the Erl-king came to visit.

This formidable Erl-king had revealed to Ivo not only that he had special powers of magic, but instructions in how to use them: he could charm the birds from the trees, and the honey from the bees; he had invisible weapons that could disarm his enemies even before they recognised the conflict. He would, so the Erl-king told him, be a great artist and a great magician, and would have everything he wished for. It was nothing to the elves to bestow these gifts upon him, since theirs was a realm that recognised the malleability of all substance, and in that knowledge derived their power to shift shapes accordingly. When Ivo asked what made him special to them, the Erl-king merely shrugged and said there were old connections that went back to the time before time, that it was impossible for Ivo to understand Elvish logic, and best for him not to question it. Ivo was astute enough to know that there must be something in all of this for the elves, but he also knew he was not in a position to refuse, in any case. He must accept the burden of his good fortune, and pay the price when it came with fortitude. The Erl-king gave him one last piece of wisdom, before he left Ivo that night, and this was the secret that Ivo carried with dread that he might ever use it.

“Be careful not to lose your soul,” the Erl-king had warned, in his icy voice. “For it is linked to the Elvish world and mustn’t be left to wander unprotected. If, for whatever reason, you do not guard it well, we will punish you in ways too dark and terrible for you to possibly imagine. The only hope for you then will be to steal the soul of another - and one who loves you with a pure heart, for that alone will satisfy us as exchange for your freedom from torment.”

Ivo, in his innocence, knew nothing of love other than the bleak version of it offered him by his cold mother and fearful father. This talk of souls was quite beyond him. And so it was that he allowed himself to be taught by the Erl-king the enchantment for stealing another’s soul - and once known, as is the way of things, it could not be then unknown. It was a heavy enchantment that weighed on him, and he tried to forget it and tell himself he would never use it - and indeed, until meeting Elfi he had succeeded in enjoying his enchanted life without fearing the outcome of where love might lead him.

It was a frosty morning in the twilight of the year when the tragedy struck. Elfi woke to find Ivo crouched on the floor of the boat with his face in his hands, despair leaking through his fingers and filling the cabin with gloom. Immediately, she was out of the bed and beside him, her arm protectively about his shoulders, begging him to tell her what ailed him, yet aware of something so very wrong that she could not bear to hear the answer.

Eventually the words crawled out of him, as if from under a damp and heavy stone: “It’s gone! It was taken in the night! What will I do?” She saw, then, that his pouch was missing, and in truth she was partly glad of it, for she by then had come to hate the very sight of the thing. If she had known of the Erl-king’s warning, she might have been more wary of the consequences, but all she could think was that perhaps without the stone, there would be no bargain after all, and they might make a child and keep it from the elves.

“Who took it from me?” Ivo wailed. “How else could it have disappeared, unless a thief crept in while we were sleeping?” His grief gave way to anger, as he rose and dressed himself, ready to seek out the robber who had come out of the forest or across the water and taken his treasure.

“Let it go,” Elfi advised. “Whoever it is, they’ll be long gone by now. You’ll never catch them. Perhaps those things from your family are best forgotten, anyway… keys and stones and warnings from elves. It’s fanciful stuff, and nothing to do with us, Ivo. It belongs to the land of your people, not to us. We are here, we are safe. I will protect you. Let’s have a child together. Let’s defy them. Without the pouch, there is nothing to remind you of all that ancient history. Let it be like a dream, and fade away. Let’s live in the now!”

But there was no reassurance for Ivo in her words. He knew - as she could not - the true power of the Erl-king's tribe, their capacity for revenge and long-remembering. She was right to suppose he would never find the thief who had taken his pouch, for all that he searched laboriously throughout the days that followed. His heart was oppressed with the knowledge that love for Elfi had made him less than vigilant. He had been careless in his rapture, had allowed himself to be separated from his pouch, rather than binding it to him or watching over it, as he had in the years before he met her. Now his negligence would have inevitable repercussions. He could only anticipate the retribution to follow, and despair at the future which waited to swallow him into its dark jaw.

Their days became cursed with his unhappiness. The lustre went from his eyes and his skin, as he realised his powers to charm had already left him. Even his air of mystery lay in tatters about him, no secret left to tell but the one that must never be owned. He felt the pull of the Elves in their far kingdom, heard the whisper of their malevolent laughter in the rustling leaves that lay all about the bare trees in the forest. Ice fogged up the windows of the boat, and they shivered in one another’s embrace. Elfi could not save him from the cold. Soon, she too fell into a kind of trance of anguish, not knowing what was wrong with her, only that hope had faded, just as light had all but gone out of the glowering, wintry sky. Aimlessly, the pair of them spoke of their sadness, although Elfi did her best to comfort him as he sank more deeply into his grief for what was lost beyond recall. She mustered up all the reserves of energy within her to urge him to fight against his beliefs about the powers of the elves.

“It’s just a belief, that’s all!” she maintained. “They can’t really take away your soul. That’s just legend and superstition, only a fantasy. Life is about living together and making babies. You can be happy if you want to, Ivo! Look at me! I’m here! Our love is stronger than any of that Erl-king stuff. Just believe in that!”

But Ivo looked at her with glazed and empty eyes, and turned his face away from her, lost in his fear, knowing what he knew.

Many leaden days and nights followed throughout that long, cold winter. Elfi was as tender with him as if he were the baby she had longed to be their own. He curled up in her bed, taking the only comfort in its warmth that his unhappiness would allow. She found, buried deep within her, a nugget of hope, strong enough to help her endure this pain of loss. The Ivo who had entered her life in a blaze of glory was gone from her, and left in his place was this changeling child-man who required so much and gave so little - except in the way that a child gives, offering its need with thankful helplessness. She was glad of his dependence on her, in some perverse way, since at least it meant he was still with her - or as much of him as remained. She still had some faith that the real Ivo would come back, that wherever his soul-self was travelling it would return to her arms, that her love would call him and give him the strength to fight off the domination of the elves.

When spring began to soften the edges of the winter, the first green shoots nosing their way out of the frozen earth, Elfi fell ill. The months of nursing the changeling Ivo had taken their toll, and she was utterly exhausted. She held out her arms to him for comfort: at least they could each be reassured that they still had one another: where there was life there was always hope.

But Ivo moved out of her embrace, and, strangely, she noticed, seemed suddenly stronger. He got up from the bed, and looked down at her, with an odd, twisted smile. Was that pity she saw in his eyes? It felt crueller than that, somehow.

“I feel so cold, Ivo,” she said. “Please hold me. I feel afraid.”

But he shook his head, and began to dress in his travelling clothes. She watched him from the bed, too weak to move, an awful sadness rolling in on her like mist across the sea. “I have to go,” he said, as he retrieved his knapsack from the back of the cupboard, and filled it with his few belongings. “You’re no good for me, Elfi. It’s your fault that the pouch was taken. Perhaps it was you who robbed me? Yes, I think it must have been.” He ignored the frantic shaking of her head as she struggled to voice her denial. “It doesn’t matter, now, anyway,” he said. “What’s gone is gone, and life goes on. I should never have stayed with you so long.”

“Please,” begged Elfi, “Don’t leave me now. How will I manage without you?”

Ivo looked surprised, not seeing or not caring to see how ill she was. “But of course you will manage - just as you did before I came along. You have always told me how strong you are. I would never have loved you unless you were.”

“But don’t you love me still?” pleaded Elfi, the tears wet on her cheeks, not knowing him as he stood so stern and ungiving before her. She felt his shrug as if it were a slap, and his words like a knife that flayed her:

“We loved for a while, and that is enough for anyone. But I can’t stay here where I suffered such a loss and a betrayal. There’s nothing left. We both know that. It’s time for moving on.”

“But what of your deepest treasure, that you were told of in your dream?” asked Elfi. “Isn’t it here that you found it, and still with me?”

His smile was contemptuous now, there was no mistaking it.

“That’s typical of your arrogance, that you see yourself as the treasure. Think about it, Elfi. Don’t be so self-absorbed and narrow in your perceptions.”

Cruel, cruel words. Definitely not those of the boy-child who had laid his head against her breast, and wept throughout the winter.

Weakened, helpless with the pain of his rejection, she could do no more but watch him wrap himself once again in his cloak of mystery, miraculously restored to him. He turned just once, as he climbed up to leave the boat. He looked so strong in the pale sunlight, his beauty restored to him, his smile so charming and sweet as he waved a careless farewell.

“Ivo!” she wailed. “Ivo!” she grieved. But he was gone, gone away, the future she had imagined torn into pieces and floating off along the river. Something was lost, something much more than Ivo. Elfi knew it. She heard it calling to her, as it went further from her with every step he took. But because she didn’t know what treasure it was of her own that he had stolen, she could only call it “Ivo!” and long for it…

Oh, what a sad and sorry end, you might say. But endings are always also beginnings. For every torn up future there is another one waiting to be imagined, and Elfi is writing the next story even as we speak. Ivo had been her lover, and her changeling child-man, then he had been the one who robbed her, but more importantly, and all along, he had been her messenger.

It was time for Elfi to begin her own journey, the one that would take her to claim her treasure as her own - for it is only by losing anything that we realise how precious it is. But we first have to recognise the true nature of what is lost.

© Lesley Hayes 1998

top  |  back