Nightlight

A soft knock on my door interrupted the beginning of a fitful drift into sleep. They always showed up at night. It was odd that it people used the cover of the night, like they were hiding some secret, but I preferred it that way.

Even though tonight would be no different than any of the others of the previous month, in that sleep would play an unamusing game of hide and seek with my unconsciousness, surely the wakefulness of sunlight, breaking in through the windows, would be a much better setting than what I could offer now.

Kicking free of the blanket that had suddenly grown too warm for my liking, I saw the angry sun burnt color inking up my legs; highlighting a maze of recessed symbols, like freshly developing reversed welts. Leaving behind a trail of redness and pain, those tattoo shapes held in them a long forgotten magic with a long forgotten meaning. Confined to my extremities and torso, the spread stopped just before creeping up onto my face. Whoever was knocking on my door would appreciate the pain it caused me. I tried my best to ignore it until I wanted to use it. 

It wasn’t meant to be ignored though, and as I pushed my thoughts away from the stinging pain, it multiplied in intensity. The responsibility of such a gift forces its bearer to wear a mark of constant awareness when it’s in use, like that of my painful, reddened hieroglyphs, to keep the gifter from using it for any wrongdoing. That responsibility was mine alone, as I had never encountered another with these same abilities. 

Freshly brewing coffee hung in the air as I propped the door open for my unknown guest. I invited the crying girl in, out of the nighttime darkness, but she stopped just short of entering the house.

“What’s your name?” The friendliness in my voice did nothing to relax her stance as she stayed tensed up, cowering into herself, never moving further than the door-frame.

Too many long moments passed and I thought she would stay outside all night. Pushing off the thick wood, she looked around; her gaze passing over the columns of unread books, stacked on every available flat surface in the small living area. The sunflower yellow couch was the only piece of furniture that didn’t have some portion of it taken up by books, and was consequently the only place to sit.

I saw the questions rummage around her mind for a few seconds, like she was contemplating forgoing the reason she had come here in the first place to ask about the odd collection. Like that would ever be more interesting than what drove her to seek out the help of a complete stranger.

I tried again, this time making compassion and softness the prominent feelings in my voice, I had dealt with the reluctance within her a million times before, within a million others like her. “What’s your name?”

“Gabriella.” The uncertainty and shyness of her one word answer almost made feel bad for her. Almost, but not really. I mean, I’m sure she deserved what she was going to get, but I could be of no help if she didn’t ask me for it.

“Well Gabriella, you seem nervous and unsure of yourself. If you are, you shouldn’t be here yet. You can choose to come back at some other time, if you feel you have to, or if you want to get started right now, we can do that as well.”

As I talked, her sallow face, hardened by sadness, was swept into the understanding that I had some idea of what she had come to me.

“What does that mean? Have other people come to you? Can you help me? What, exactly do you do? What are all these books?” Her non-stop questions whirl winded her pretty voice into breathlessness and excitement.

“How about we start with how you ended up here, for right now, and along the way all your questions will get answered I’m sure.”

Offering the comfort of the couch, I lit three red candles, resting on a makeshift table made from two stacked columns of books, pushed together, back to back. While I poured us the late night coffee, she began talking slowly, once again uncertain.

“Well,” the word was drawn out, like she didn’t know what to say next. “I guess the first thing is that I just go by Ella. Other than that, I’m not really sure where to start. I mean, I don’t really know what led me here.”

“Just start at the beginning.”

“I guess…I felt…Awhile ago me and…,” She took a deep breath to stop her stuttering response, and began again. “Eight months ago, my boyfriend left me.”

Her quivering lips brought sadness with the words she spoke, but I was prepared. Everyone had a similar story in the beginning. I handed her a box of tissues.

“I was so devastated I could barely function. We were together for 4 years and he said he found someone else. Can you believe it? All that time together and he just moved on like we meant nothing to each other.” The sentences were starting to turn into a hysterical wail while she jumped up and began pacing.

I had no choice but to grip her in a knowing, comforting hug. I needed her to keep talking, to get to the point where she asked me for what she wanted.

A stream of crying and sniffling muted out the rest of her words, but she mumbled through, as we sat back down. A long tale of love and despair.

“So after six months of not eating or sleeping, I started praying” Ella let the words flow quietly, looking down at the wood planked floor, still carpeted in shadows. A softening smile played with the corners of her mouth as she continued.

“I mean I’m not one to believe in such things, but I didn’t know what else to do. I just wanted some peace from all that pain and I was willing to take it in any form it came to me. I was willing to try anything to escape that.”

The puzzling look that she gave me told me it was almost time. I smiled as encouragingly as I could to let her know that it was alright, that I wouldn’t make fun of her or tell her to leave. She seemed to understand that I couldn’t prompt her further into telling me anything, that she had to come forward with what she wanted on her own.

“I had been praying and praying and soon I was just waking up every morning feeling like I was being drawn to something. Like I had to follow this thing pulling me in. At first I tried to pretend it wasn’t there, like it was all in my head, but I started losing time. Making it home without remembering how I got there or sitting on a bench just staring into nothing, when I would come to, and realize that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be, and I had no idea how I had got to these places. I thought I was going crazy, like maybe the breakup had actually shattered my reality. I think it began to make sense about two weeks after it started though, when I walked a path through the park and ended up about five blocks over from here. I felt the pull so strong then that I knew, I knew I had to just let it take me in whatever direction it went.”

The quiet that enveloped us then crinkled into a loud static. There was a tangible regret rolling from her silence. I knew she wasn’t done, but it wasn’t up to me if she kept talking. She had to trust that what she felt was real, that she was chosen and brought here for a reason, but she also had to come to that realization by herself. If she didn’t believe, it wouldn’t work.

Ella was lost in her own thoughts, trying to figure out what to say next. I knew this was hard for people and they didn’t want to find out that they had really been experiencing some kind of mental episode, or worse, that nothing was actually waiting for them. I didn’t want to rush her but I also didn’t want this to take all night. I reached behind us, into an ornate cabinet sitting in front of a small window, blocking out any moonlight trying to sneak it’s way in.

With hardly any light, except what came from the candles, the glistening of the see through jewels decorating the metal box was that much more exceptional.

Immediately, Ella was transfixed.

“What’s that?” She asked, a hushed tone exaggerating traces of suspense, her wide brown eyes waited expectantly, like she had nothing else in the world to do except figure out it’s contents.

“Well, I can’t tell you just yet, but I hoped once you saw it, you would know what you had to do?” Now I was looking at her expectantly.

“Uhhh, yeah.” Her eyes darted all over the room, finding somewhere to look that wasn’t me. “So I had decided to follow that feeling, that instinct. I didn’t really know what to do because, like I said, it only happened when I was out of it. The best I could come up with was to just walk in the general area of those few blocks away, where I had felt the pull the strongest.”

Scooting as close as she could to me, she reached her hands out and laid them on the beautifully decorated metal that I had.

“It was this, wasn’t it?” She kept her gaze locked on mine as she gestured to the box, and I knew if I didn’t answer her in some way, she would leave. It wasn’t my job to make people come here, but when they left, it went against who I was as a person, down to my very bones.

But she continued on before I could answer. “As soon as you brought it from the cabinet, I felt it. That same pull that has been dragging me for weeks. Stronger than I’ve ever felt it before. Only it’s not a pull right? It’s some kind of calling. It’s calling me to it, to you.”

The truth in hearing herself speak the words dawned over her features, and I could see the question, the one I had been waiting for, forming behind her eyes.

“I just want to get to where we are now, so you understand why I’m here, but I think you already know. Either way I want to finish.”

Her words became weighed and long pauses broke up her sentences as she completed the telling. Going slowly as to feel her way through to the end, not wanting to falter, and in the back of her mind, piecing together the mystery of what I could do for her.

“ Two weeks ago I was wandering around, but I never felt a stronger or weaker pulling. It was the same constant intensity. Within the week, I had stumbled upon this house, your house, and I felt like I should break into this place, I needed to get in. I didn’t know why, but I knew whatever this pull was, it was here and I had to have it. I thought about how, at the beginning, I would randomly find myself places, bringing me closer and closer to you, and I didn’t remember them. I was scared that it would happen again. So I locked myself in my closet for almost that entire week. But I ended up giving up because every night, I would find myself standing out front of your door, just about to walk in, or try to. I don’t know. After I made the decision last night, I showed up and you were here. You were here with coffee and a listening ear, letting me talk to you as if you knew what I wanted, like you had been waiting for me too.”

Wordless accusations saturated the space between us, and still she had not asked me anything. I stared pleading at her, she was so close.

“I guess that I don’t really know what I expected to happen once I got here. I was so sad for so long that when I began to pray and I thought I was receiving some sort of answer to those prayers, I thought you would have something for me. I know this sounds kind of crazy, but I thought you would save me, like you were an angel and you would take away my sadness.”

Awe washed over her voice as her words came to an end, and I knew it was time. As soon as she asked, my gift would be given and my duty would be fulfilled.

“Are you an angel? Are you my angel? Do you have something for me? No, I mean you do have something for me, something in that box, right? Can you take away my sadness?”

All these questions were good, but they weren’t the question. I sat staring at her, waiting. She stared back, dejectedly.

“I need you to help me. Please?”

Finally.

The creaking of the opening box drew her attention to it. My red stained skin was freely exposed in the light that came from within it.

The heaviness and heat of the two gray, arrow shaped rocks I presented to her faded away as she took one from me, my hands going unnoticed in the excitement.

“What are they?” as she asked, her attention turned to my skin. “Oh my God! What happened to you?”

It was a question I had heard so many times before. I decided to be quick in my explanation so Ella could be on her way.

“That pull you’ve been feeling is love. A love that is true and pure and searching for you. These rocks work as trackers, the trackers activate, pulling that person to them, to me, and eventually to their soulmate.”

I held my palm-sized rock up to be inspected by both of us.

“My skin has an ancient, magical ink embedded in it. I can use it whenever I want, on whoever I want, but only the people that are summoned to me and ask for my help can access the magic of the ink.”

“I never think about what I do when I go out,. There’s so many people out in the world and I want people at least to be able to pretend they know their worth, to think they have something real, when I make them feel a love that’s anything but. I can walk down a crowded street with my arms outstretched, or go around a football game and just….touch.”

I glanced over to make sure I wasn’t scaring her off and kept going.

“My ink works likes a venom and when I press it into someone, it seeps into their skin and draws them to the nearest compatible person. I like to think that the world is a lot less sadder place experiencing my love, no matter how fake it is. I mean, could you imagine never having felt anything for anyone until you felt this strongly, knowing now that it’s a fateful attraction to who you belong with?”

Ella didn’t answer my question, but instead asked a couple of her own.

“So you’re like a superhero? And why do you have so many books; what’re they for?”

“I guess you could call me that; a superhero… of sorts.”

The smile that crept across my face was involuntary, that was the first thing people always thought of when they heard what I had to say.

“And I keep journals. These book hold the stories of every person that’s ever come to me asking for my help. Before you ask, I’ll just tell you, I’m immortal. I can’t die. I just do what I can to make the world a more loving place, and then I write about it.”

The confusion eventually faded from her face as she composed herself to ask another question.

“What do I do now? How do I get to my soulmate?”

Ella had believed everything I told her and I hoped this last part wasn’t too much for her.

“I will use one of the trackers and my ink to penetrate your skin. Once it makes it’s way through you, the other tracker will light a way to your soulmate. Just follow the light. That’s all there is to it.”

“Will it hurt?”

“Not for you. Are you ready?”

Ella’s arm reached toward me while her face turned away. Pain stung the spot over my own heart as I used the arrow to slice a thin line through my skin. Quickly, I stabbed the rock into the top part of her arm, holding her to me as she tried to run away from the small wound.

The blinding white light that formed from the birth of a true love grew smaller and smaller until it was no bigger than a footpath for Ella to follow.

We were the only ones that could see the light and as I assured her of that, she wrapped me in her long arms and ran out the door without saying another word. Happiness and love the only emotions apparent in her eyes.

If only I could give this gift freely, even to people who didn’t seek me out. I could make the world a loving, caring place and I wouldn’t have to hide. Maybe then, I could make somebody love me. Maybe then, the world would love me.