One evening, just before the sun disappeared in the west, and with the gentle caress of a cool wind on her face, the youngest daughter returned to her hill. She had been far too busy during the visit of the three suitors to watch her dove, and she found that she missed her daily daydreams on the hill.
When she got to the hill she lay in the cool grass as always, and looked up at the sky as always. Everything was still the same. Everything, that was, except her. Something was definitely different within her, as the feeling of longing and dissatisfaction had intensified since her sisters’ parting.
Confused, she began to ask God for guidance. She prayed for enlightenment, something she had never done before. She loved to speak with God, telling Him of her delight for His world, but she had never thought to ask Him to change anything in it for her. The world was as it should be, the way He made it. Why should it ever be any different? But now there was a difference, one inside her, and it longed for an answer to an unspoken question.
“Lord, what is it that has entered my heart? What does my soul long for, and why has it such a hold on me?” She asked, kneeling on the crest of the hill.
The dove reappeared suddenly, floating on the invisible wind, drawing delicate circles in the air with its wings. It seemed to her that her heart suddenly began to beat in time with its wings, fast and hurried, like there was a dove trapped in her chest, in a cage formed by her ribs and breastbone, and it yearned for its freedom. Suddenly, she knew what it was her heart wanted. Her wondering was replaced with clarity as swiftly as a still and clear day could be replaced with a storm by a sudden rushing wind. She now had the words to express her feelings.
“Lord, I wish for someone to love, just long enough for me to bear a child.” She spoke with conviction and power, her words borne away by the wind, perhaps to be carried off to the sky and the audience they were intended for. “I wish for a child who might one day be as free as the dove. I love my life here, but I would see my child have one away from these hills. Your will be done in all things, Father in Heaven, but please make this unworthy shepherd girl’s wish Your will. A child, Lord, a baby girl.”
Her heart lifted, and she began to rise to go home. The sun set, a smouldering fire on the edge of the horizon. The wind touched her face and hair, a gentle stroke, and then it was gone. With the wind’s passing she suddenly heard the shrill war cry of a hawk as it plummeted from the sky like a feathered spear thrown frown Heaven’s lofty heights to strike the dove from the air. Its exquisitely sharp talons pierced the soft dove in a flurry of white feathers, the victory scream of the keen-eyed predator and the heart-wrenching death cry of its gentle prey echoing together over the hills.
The sensitive and caring girl ran home in tears at the loss of one of her greatest friends, and was plagued all night by frenzied dreams of a great hawk swallowing her, with its cries echoing over and over, bouncing off of the hilltops until an earthquake began and shook the ground until each hill collapsed in a mighty upheaval of earth and stone. Her sisters awoke to her screams and it was many hours before they could calm her enough that sleep could return. The next day she did not go to the hill, and neither did she pray to God.
One day not long after, the girl took her father water and then visited the sheep in the field, calling each by names that she and her sisters had bestowed. The sheep were old friends, and each knew her well. Still upset by the loss of the dove, she took comfort in their number until she noticed one was missing.
“Father, where is Old Mother? She is missing.”
“Not missing, girl. Simply gone.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” The girl asked, suddenly fearful.
“We fed her to your sisters’ husbands during their stay. We often eat mutton, child, that’s nothing new. It is the way of things, all things take from others to survive, and then the cost is balanced when they die.”
She listened with attention with a new comprehension of facts that had been before her all her life. So simple, yet until now she had not seen it. She pondered her father’s lesson, and life continued on.
It was still several weeks before her return to the hill. It was late in the year, and cold compared to the wondrous summer the country had enjoyed. She knelt in the same spot as always in the grass beneath the tree and looked to Heaven with arms outstretched. Teardrops fell from her brown eyes, running down her face like tiny streams glistening in the autumn sun, the warm rays of light it projected in its setting turning them into tiny reflecting rivulets of gold that ran down her cheeks.
“Lord, forgive me. I have ignored you of late, and did not mean to. The hawk is your creature as much as the dove was, and did not kill it for spite, but for its own survival. So you made it, so it should be. I am sorry for not having understood. That’s all.”
She looked away from Heaven to wipe away her golden tears, and felt the wind caress her face again. The cry of the hawk echoed from the hilltops, and she was amazed to see it suddenly land before her, on a branch of the small tree on the crest of the hill. She froze stiff, for she was behind it and out of its sight for now. She watched it, silent and still, as it ate some meal trapped in its claws. She saw each feather, and the cool gaze in its sharp, bright eyes as it turned to leave and saw her. A gasp escaped from her as the bird’s startling gaze met her eyes. As their eyes met, she realized that the hawk was as beautiful as her dove in its own way, and then it left, as suddenly as it had come, free to soar the wild skies again.
It was seven years later that I appeared to her.
No Man an Island 
12 comments
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November 28, 2007 at 1:56 am
Suzanne Francis
“She listened with attention with a dawning of new comprehension of facts that had been before her all her life.”
I think you can find a way to say this more clearly.
Also there are a quite a few sentences in the final paragraph that start with “she.”
Maybe a little wordy in places.
This story is certainly heading off in some intriguing directions. Do you write this every day and then post it, or are you merely serializing something you wrote earlier. There seems to be a distinct change of style between these passages and the earlier ones.
November 28, 2007 at 2:02 am
nomananisland
I have written the whole book and am posting it one section at a time. I am trying to have a different style between Ethan’s Journals, Gwen’s Journal, Raphael’s third-person narration of events, and also his first-person reflections on his own life. I hope that it works.
The problem is that some chapters were written almost a decade ago, and some were written last week — I hope that I am staying true to each character’s “voice” and that they are distinct, but I’m also hoping that the older stuff isn’t dragging down the newer material (as I would hope I have improved).
November 28, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Suzanne Francis
I am going to go out on a limb and guess that the stuff with Ethan, Hope, Zoe and the rest is the older material. It is certainly different.
November 28, 2007 at 8:31 pm
nomananisland
Actually, the Opening was written in 2000, and predates most of what you’ve read so far. A lot of the Middle and the Companions was written that same year, but I think the Opening was actually the original first chapter. Raphael’s first-person narrative is written to be distinctly different from the other parts of the text, and I hope that Gwen’s narration is distinct, and that Ethan’s style is his own as well.
The thing I need to ask is “Does ‘certainly different’ mean worse?”
November 29, 2007 at 1:44 am
Suzanne Francis
Some of the third person stuff it is not as well written (in my opinion, and you know what they say about opinions…) as the first person narrative. But I have pointed out some of this in my earlier comments. Maybe you just have a flair for writing first person? Some people do.
November 29, 2007 at 1:53 am
nomananisland
That’s honestly really funny to me. I always get the sense (not just me, but other writers too) that first person is an easier way to get people to like a character, but that it’s a style of writing that permits more telling than showing, because you’re inside the character’s thoughts and can hear them telling themselves things, that aren’t always indicated by the outside actions and world.
Good authors can even give you an unreliable narrator, who tells you things about other characters, but who’s own description shows that the character they’re telling you about in fact has other motivations and actions than what the narrator assumes. It becomes ironic, because readers are more knowledgeable than the narrator about the same story.
So, I always kind of thought that third person was harder but better to write, because it needs to show more than tell, it doesn’t have the “easy out” of a first-person narrator.
But it is possible that my first-person narratives are better — I’ve never really examined it. There are three in this book — Raphael, Gwen, and Ethan. I find those sections easier to write, honestly, because I just have to try to think like that character and see what they would see, rather than give the whole picture. I can kind of “hear” their voices in my head, and just write it down.
If that’s the case, that they’re better, then the next few weeks of postings will be a treat for readers.
November 29, 2007 at 5:19 am
Bertram
Interestingly, even though your first person writing might be better, and you explain too much rather than show when you do third person, I prefer the third person narratives. Along with italics, I have a prejudice against mixing first and third person narrators in a book. It makes the illusion of the story’s reality less real.
November 29, 2007 at 6:00 am
nomananisland
See, I thought it was more realistic to show the narrator. Why on earth would there ever be third person narration of anything, ever? There’s no reason for a story, unless someone is telling it. Narrating things you saw that weren’t about you would necessarily involve third-person narrative, but someone is still talking. The difference here is that the narrator sometimes tells you about themself as well as the others, shifting from first to third as needed.
Like if you were telling someone about something you witnessed:
“He crashed his car right into her, without stopping, his brakes screeching and his tires sliding on the ice. Her little Volvo got rolled straight into the ditch, and his front end was crumpled in. I stopped my car and dialled 911…”
November 29, 2007 at 7:01 am
Suzanne Francis
I have read some things that successfully mixed first and third, but I do think it places the author firmly in the fringe category. Nothing wrong with that though. It is a different kind of storytelling, requiring a little more effort on the part of the reader to suspend disbelief. But when done well, it can be every successful.
A lot of people (myself included) prefer the omniscient third person view, which is probably the most transparent for storytelling. This is the view I most often take for writing.
If you have read any Gene Wolfe, particularly the “Soldier of…” series, you know that a third person narrative can be used to mess with the reader’s minds quite a bit. He does this very successfully. I wouldn’t even attempt it.
November 29, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Bertram
I too prefer the third person both as a writer and as a reader. It makes POV shifts easier to accept without losing the illusion of reality. The problem with making readers constantly switch gears is that you stand a good chance of losing them, and readers are unforgiving. Once you have lost them, you can’t get them back.
December 24, 2007 at 7:13 am
sonjanitschke
Again I won’t comment on third/first person shifts as I am horrible at it (read The Mutants if you want to see why).
So the only thing I’ll say here is more of a personal pet peeve with me than anything else:
“The sensitive and caring girl ” — you already showed us that. You don’t need to tell us so, as well. When I read something like that, I feel that the author is plucking at my sleeve saying, “Hey, you must feel this way towards a character” and it really aggravates me.
However, these are written excellently for the most part.
December 24, 2007 at 1:34 pm
nomananisland
I have to admit the “author plucking at your sleeve” image is the best explanation of “telling” I have ever come across. It also made me laugh.
I think that, while writing this, I wanted it to be clear how much Raphael cares about Hannah. But if it’s already clear, there’s no point in beating readers over the head with it. Thanks.