Dhavalos ~ Child of Dawn

< Labyrinth

“Wake up wake up wake up!”

The singsong words were accompanied by a vigorous jostling as small – surprisingly strong – hands gripping my shoulder and wrenching it like a butter churn. Half-awake, I looked around the blurry contours of the room as my mind tried to place my body. My eyes were met by racks of scrolls, bound tomes, reams and reams of parchment stacked on wooden shelves. I let out a breath as my surroundings slowly faded into recognition. It had been three weeks now of waking up in this exact way, but I still wasn’t quite used to it.  

It had quickly been determined that having our “guest” sleep in the normal arrangements in the monks’ communal bunk room would be disruptive, to put it mildly. Brother Emand, who was in charge of the scriptorium, had been able to rearrange shelves and scroll racks just enough to make space for two cots in a storage alcove. It didn’t escape my attention that this particular storage alcove was within line of sight of the Brother’s scripting tables where manuscripts were copied and preserved – at least some allowance had been made to Brother Kafsar’s unpleasant commentary about trusting young men with beautiful girls. However, they needn’t have worried.

The pale, sun-colored girl was like that orb to me. She was high above me and beyond me, a beacon of the All-Light, manifested Holy Fire, blessing me with her presence even from such a far distance. She was perfect and pure and wholly uncorrupted by vulgar things, and I would no more have touched her with lust than I would have attempted to grasp the sun itself in my hands.

She was also completely, utterly exhausting.

“’M up,” I mumbled, my face still pressed against the cloth padding of my cot. For her sleeping arrangements the Brethren had gathered the best we had to offer; soft blankets, simple furs, pads and pillows filled with actual cloth scraps rather than straw. Not so for me – I was left with the regular sleeping cot that all the other Brethren used. At first, I was the smallest bit miffed at seeing her sleeping arrangements, luxurious by monastery standards, piled next to my simple cot without so much as cotton blanket thrown to me. After all, wasn’t I her special attendant of sorts? But the feeling went away like the snows in spring when she started waking me up every day well before dawn. Having a more comfortable bed arrangement would only have made getting up harder, and she made it quite clear that this would now be our regular schedule.

Groaning, I pulled myself to the head of my cot and swung my feet over the top – there wasn’t enough room next to my cot to swing my feet over the side – grabbed my outer robe where it hung on the corner of a scroll rack, and prepared to begin another active day.

All the pictures and ancient illuminations I had seen depicted the yazata as serene creatures, beings of inscrutable quiet grace and a kind of tranquility. I learned by the end of the first day that these impressions, at least as far as this particular yazata was concerned, were grossly inaccurate. Every day she woke me well before dawn and hustled me through my basic morning routines of eating and prayer so we could go outside and watch the sun rising over the hills. As soon as the sun had lit the day, a new whirlwind of discovery began. Everything was new to her, everything fascinating, everything deserving full exploration and investigation and questioning. Her few words to me on that first night were merely a trickle, which grew into a surging swell over the next few days as she gained speech by leaps and bounds, and most of it was spent on questions. Brother Gasad the herbalist, who had at one point been married with three children before joined the Ankorites, said it was like the first five or six years of a child’s life condensed into a few weeks, with that same endless thirsty curiosity and sense of discovery happening all at once. All I knew was that she wanted to know everything about everything. I still wasn’t quite sure what I was to her – friend, guardian, inseparable companion, or something more spiritual and unknowable – but at the least, I was certain that I was her guide to all things.

All things. A water pump needed to be explained repeatedly in simple language while being examined in detail, demonstrated. The simple pulleys was used for the hayloft were dismantled, reassembled, and dismantled again. Although she didn’t seem to understand writing, the act of putting ink to paper was a marvel, one which ended in us covered in ink and my hands and forearms stained for days. And the bath in the stream that followed was turned into a staggering challenge when she first took it as license to remove her own clothing – which she expressly disliked – and then fought tooth and nail to watch and investigate as I tried to clean myself in the frigid melt water stream. A few days earlier I would have been mortified beyond words, but by the time it happened I was so worn from following, guiding, answering for days that I could barely even feel shame as I alternately cajoled and demanded that she turn her back while I scrubbed myself. In the end it only somewhat worked, as she darted up the hill into some brush and kept peeping at me; defeated, I simply ended up turned my back to her and accepting my meager partial success.

Nearly the only time we shared in any kind of peace were at the beginning of the day. Every morning, we would climb the small ridge above the monastery to watch the sun rise. In that precious bit of time, we would both just sit, quietly, and watch the light spread from beneath the horizon as the sun approached. In that silent time, alone before daybreak, she would lean against me and squeeze my hand or shoulder – and everything was worth it. My mental exhaustion, my fears for the future, the lingering shock and enormity of it all…they simply melted away. I felt only blessed.

She always knew when the sun was about to break the horizon. Just before it did, she would get to her feet and face the sun, arms outstretched as if to welcome it. And when the first rays of light struck her, she shone. The light within her, always flickering just below the surface of her skin, came to the fore and radiated out of her, glowing in answer to the sunlight. And as I sat there, bathed in her light on a lonely hillside far away from anywhere, I felt at peace.

On the third morning of this, I offered her a name: Eos, and ancient word meaning dawn. She seemed delighted, throwing her arms around me, and so the name stuck. At first I felt more than a little strange, naming a divine being as one might name an animal, but she seemed to take it more as an offering; something I had made and handed to her that she loved like a gift. And it suited her, with her body like sun and eyes like the sky, and the light she carried with her in all things. After a very short while, it simply felt right, as if the name had been there all along and I had only unearthed it.

At any rate, she took great pleasure using it to introduce herself from then on.

“Come Dhavi! Morning time!” Eos bounced around me like a new colt bounding around its beleaguered mother.

“I know, I know, it’s morning,” I said, not bothering to stifle a yawn so huge my jaw popped a bit. “Latrine, then food, then prayer. After that, we’ll go up the hill for the sunrise.”

She smiled hugely, her large eyes bright even in the dim light of the scriptorium. “Rising sun time is my favorite.”

I nodded, still a bit sleepy for talking. “Yes. It is a good time.” Then I staggered about my morning with Eos tripping merrily along behind me.

Some time later, I felt a bit more human after my basic morning utilities. Spending time with Eos, I was very aware that feeling human might be a bit too on-the nose. Although she seemed happy to try new foods for the taste, and even seemed to enjoy the cheese that we Brethren made in the shallow caves in the hill, it was apparent that she didn’t need to eat – or if she did, very rarely. And she drank only the barest sips of milk, mostly taking only drinks of water. We learned quickly that even if she did consume small bits of food and drink, she made neither water nor nightsoil – yet another thing where I had to struggle to keep her away while I attended to these myself; after several days I had finally convinced her to stay behind our small barn while I used the latrine. Finally, I wasn’t at all sure that she slept. While I had slept like a stone for the past three weeks, exhausted by trying to keep up with Eos during the day, it didn’t escape me that she was always awake when I drifted off and before me again in the morning, and although she seemed to enjoy the soft pile of blankets and pillows that made her bed I had no real evidence that she actually slept in it.

Without food or sleep and barely a moment’s rest during the day, it occurred to me – not for the first time – to wonder how her small body kept going. What sustained her? On what was she surviving? What fueled her physical form and enabled her to keep going? And most of all, with no sleep and nearly no food, where in the name of the All-Light was she getting this infinite store of energy?

As I finished my breakfast of bread and jam – the fires were not stoked this early, so all of my breakfasts had been simple, cold meals for the last few weeks – we both headed down the near-silent corridors to the Kadeshan. In light of the special circumstances, I had been excused from many of my daily prayers. However, I still felt the need to kneel before the Sacred Fire twice a day to at least give my Morning and Evening Rites. The Sacred Fire had been an anchor-point in my life for the entire decades I had lived here, and its constant flames served now as a steady, familiar presence throughout all this upheaval. I still couldn’t seem to keep my mind on the words on my prayers, but that was no longer my goal. Now, I simply let my mouth form the words while my mind had a few moments of peace and silence, gazing into the ever-shifting flames. It was a strangely comfortable.

I knelt, looking into the flame without really seeing, letting myself gaze through and past the flames, and began the chant for the Morning Rite. Next to me, I felt rather than saw Eos kneel at the edge of the raised stone circle where the Sacred Fire burned. Like the dawn, this was another rare time when she was quiet and still, and it allowed me to relax mentally and just enjoy being near her. With the fire before me and Eos next to me, I could touch hints of the kind of peace I thought that the Elder Brothers enjoyed, basking in their awareness of the All-Light surrounding them…

A small noise, a kind of soft rustling, intruded on my thoughts. It was very quiet, but in the silence of the Kadeshan it nearly demanded my attention. I looked up. To my surprise, I saw it was Eos, whispering quietly to herself. Not wanting to say anything lest I startle her, I discreetly turned my head to watch, bringing my own prayers to a bare murmur.

I knew she wasn’t praying. Her words didn’t match up with anything I recited in the Rite – not to mention that, from what I could tell with our still somewhat limited vocabulary, she found the idea of prayer a bit odd. When we explained the concept, that we were speaking to the All-Light that she had come from, she didn’t seem to understand that for us, ourselves and the Light were separate things. This led to a conversation that wasn’t quite resolved to anyone’s satisfaction because of the difficulties talking about the abstract concepts involved, and generated many more hours’ worth of conversation among Touraj and the Elder Brethren. Regardless, I felt certain that she was not praying. Her words didn’t have the pattern of a memorized litany; rather, they halted, sped up, ebbed and flowed like a conversation. Half a conversation: I realized as I watched that there were pauses as if for a response, where she would tilt her head as though she listened to an unheard voice.

It was a movement I had seen before. Occasionally she would stop something we were doing or discussing to look off into the middle distance with her eyes nearly shut and tilt her head to the side. For all the world, it looked like someone who had a heard a distant sound and was trying to catch it on the wind. I hadn’t noticed it at first – I think it may not have been happening in the first week or so – but I had begun to catch it more often. For the past three days, I counted it at least once a day. Most recently and unnerving, yesterday it had happened while we were in the barn, and in the dimly lit stone interior, I thought I saw a glow coming from beneath her eyelids. It was faint and I couldn’t be sure at the time. Now I could. In the Kadeshan, dark but for the Sacred Fire, I could clearly see that her eyes, half-closed crescents, were glowing with a gold-white light. Even as much as I cared for her, it was unsettling. I had become so used to her presence, fussing over water pumps and fence posts and cart wheels, that at times I forgot who and what she was. That she was not human. But seeing her with unearthly light flowing out into pools beneath her eyes brought it back into unsettlingly sharp focus.

The conversation, if that’s what it was, continued for only a few minutes. Before, she had only ever listened – not spoken – so I did my best to make out the words, thinking that maybe I could understand what she was doing when she stopped to listen to what no one else could hear. It was difficult to make out the words, quiet as they were, but what I did hear only added to my confusion. It seemed as if she were introducing herself, speaking in her unique way to a new person. But of course there was no one there. Briefly, I wondered if this might be another child-like behavior; if she had created an imaginary friend for herself. I had certainly had one when I was small, and it didn’t seem out of character with some of her other youthful actions…

Before I could really figure out what was happening, she blinked, extinguishing the light glowing inside her eyes, and turned to me with her usual bright smile. “Dhavi is done talking to the fire? We will go see the sun?”

“I…yes,” I said, feeling a bit adrift. “We can go.”

“Happy!” she chirped – she had a tendency to announce her feelings – and leapt to her feet. Unsure of what else to do, I followed her out of the Kadeshan. As we left, I stole a last glance over my shoulder at the Sacred Fire. All-Light, grant me understanding, I prayed fervently in my heart. I could feel in my gut that things were getting more complicated, and I knew that Eos had almost certainly not come down among us to fritter around a monastery with me forever. Things were going to happen, and I felt sure it would be sooner rather than later, but I had no idea what they could be. All I could do was pray that I could keep out ahead of the coming storm – and that I would be able to help Eos when it broke.

Her lithe, skipping steps carried us quickly out of the monastery, and before I knew it we were out in the pre-dawn light headed for the hill. “Eos,” I began, trying to address the issue before the moment passed, “who were you talking to in the Kadeshan?” She frowned, and I quickly rephrased, “In the fire room?”

“Ah,” she smiled, showing bright teeth, “Eos has dream talk.”

I frowned. I knew she didn’t dream; it had taken us some time to explain the idea of dreams to her, and it was clearly something she didn’t do herself, even if she did sleep. “What do you mean, dream talk? You weren’t dreaming…”
 

She shook her head. “Not Eos dream. Other is dreaming. But she is lost in her dream, so I speak to her.”

“You spoke to someone in their dream?”

A nod. “She is like me, but not. She goes to the dreaming-place like you, but does not dream – so she gets lost.”

I struggled to make sense out of what she said. There just wasn’t enough to piece it together. “Have you talked to this woman before?”

“Not talked. But I watch her, before. I did not know her, so I look, and I watch, and I learn. I know her better now, so today we talk.” Eos frowned a bit, wrinkling her nose. “She does not know me – when I watch her, she does not she me back. When I speak to her, she is…” Eos stopped, searching her limited vocabulary and clearly not finding the word she wanted, making a small growl of frustration. “Like this.” She made a face, eyes wide, leaning away.

“Surprised…no. Scared?” I guessed. “She was afraid?”

Eos scrunched up her face. “Maybe yes? What is afraid?”

I stopped to think, trying to get my words in order. “It’s…it’s when you don’t know about something or aren’t sure what might happen, but you think it might hurt you or be bad for you. That’s feeling afraid. Do you remember the hare and the hawk from the other day?” She nodded, biting her lip. A few days ago, we had seen a hawk stoop on a hare in the distance. The hare spotted it at the last second and ran, barely making it to the cover of some thorny scrub. Eos had watched intently and surprisingly said nothing for a while afterwards. “The hare was scared of the hawk. Afraid. Like that.”

She nodded very slowly. “Yes… like that. But Dhavi, I do not hurt her. Why she is scared? Why afraid?”

I sighed. “She was probably just surprised. We don’t have dream talks – when we dream, it’s only us, no one else. She was afraid because no one had ever talked to her in a dream, and she didn’t know if it was bad or not.” Listening to myself talk, it sounded more than a little crazy, and I still wasn’t sure if she actually was talking to people in their dreams, but she seemed to accept this as a good answer.

We reached the hill’s base and began to climb. For a moment she was silent. Then she stopped, a chill morning wind pushing her flax-gold hair around her face. “Why are monks afraid of Eos?”

I stopped too. “What?”

“Other men here, monks,” she repeated insistently. “Some times afraid, sometimes they make scared face when Eos doesn’t look. But Eos sees them, knows what face they make.” She gestured, pantomiming how fear must look to her. “Scared in face, in voice, in body. Why are they afraid? Why does Eos make them afraid?”

I swallowed, sensing that I suddenly found myself on thin ice. The wrong answer her could…well, I didn’t know what it could do, but I felt certain it wouldn’t be good. Picking my words like plucking berries from among thorns, I explained as carefully as I could. “They aren’t afraid of you – they don’t think you will hurt them. They’ve just never met someone like you before. It’s like the woman you were talking with in her dream. It just that having you here is different, and new, and sometimes people get scared of that. They just…they don’t know what’s going to happen. So they’re afraid.”

She turned away, looking out over the hills. “Dhavi is afraid sometimes too,” she said quietly.

“Eos –” I didn’t know what to say, but I knew she needed something, here, now. I took her hand and held it between both of mine, pressing it between them. “Everyone is afraid sometimes, especially when we are doing new things. It just the way humans are.” I squeezed her hand. “It doesn’t mean that I’m afraid of you, or that I think you’re scary, or bad. You’re wonderful, and amazing, and I am happy being with you.”

She looked back at me, eyes glittering with the threat of tears. “Then why you are afraid? I know it, I see it, and I know it comes from this.” She tapped her chest. “From Eos. Why does Eos make Dhavi afraid?”

I took her other hand, holding them tight. “Because…because I’m afraid that you might go away,” I said. I was surprised to find myself chocking on the words. “I’m scared that something might happen and you will leave and not come back. I’m scared that I won’t get to stay with you any more.”

She looked at me for a long moment, blinking away unshed tears and staring with eyes the color of sky. Then, without warning, she leaned in and threw her arms around me. Wrapping me in a tight hug, she squeezed with surprising strength in her slender limbs. Her hair fell across my face and I was awash in the smell of lilacs.

“Eos will not leave,” she said quietly, holding me close. “Dhavi stayed with Eos – Eos will stay with Dhavi.”

My throat tightened. I wanted to look her in the eye and tell her how much I cared for her and how wonderful and precious and special she was. But I couldn’t seem to form any words.

Before I could find the right thing to say, she grabbed my hand and began pulling me up the hill. She was bounding up the scrub and scree, dragging me along like so much grain in a bag. I stumbled behind her, trying to keep up as she made a beeline to the ridge. Behind us, the sky was lightening from grey to pale pink as the sunlight seeped into the sky. We reached the ridge moments before the rim of the sun broke into the sky. I plopped down to catch my breath; Eos didn’t even sit down, but remained standing and faced the sun. As I looked up at her, her face was suffused with something beyond what I could name, as our human expressions of fear had been alien to her. It was peace and joy and longing and recognition, but it was more than all of those. It was something…holy.

I watched her, her eyes bright and fixed on the eastern horizon. “Why do you love the dawn so much?” I asked her.

She glanced down and gave a smile that was just for me. “Because the dawn is like me – is like Eos,” she said, turning back to place where light bled into the brightening sky. “The dawn is light come to the earth, falling from sky to ground. Each dawn is new thing, like me.”

Then she spread her arms and welcomed the light as the sun burst over the horizon. And as she stood and embraced the new day, I felt how right she was. Eos was a new day, a new beginning, a new light falling across the land. I knew that there would be a hard road ahead.

But I was glad I had been chosen to share it with her.