“Here I am,” the little voice whispered, followed at once by a laugh which rippled like watery bells into the surrounding light-scape. A mist of shimmering pastels cloaked the warm stillness, whispering blue, pink and yellow tendrils of feathery brilliance throughout a conscious void.

“Down here,” the voice said again. At once I felt a small, warm hand take hold of mine and looking down, my eyes lighted on her face. Small and round like a child’s it was, with a brilliant smile and bright, sparkling brown eyes. Again she pealed with laughter and this stillness rippled in its wake.

“Who are you?” I breathed, confusion and wonder deepening the golden highlights of the gathering mist. She smiled even brighter – O, wondrous smile! - and tugging my hand, danced back a few fairy-light steps.

“I'll show you,” she said, her eyes glowing under their curling golden lashes with the laughter of a thousand birthdays and the glory of a thousand dawns, “Follow me.” and she was gone, running from me into the swirling mist.

“Wait!” I called, reaching out a hand and struggling to lift my leaden legs. At her departure the surrounding brilliance dimmed, grayed and stilled into a cold, grey nothingness. Suddenly the warm air became thin and tore at my throat with talons of icy steel.

“Come back!” I gasped, falling to my knees in the mist. Space seemed to crush its gray fist around me, stilling my blood and turning my bones to stone.

“Find me,” I heard her voice call into my stillness, lifting the dead air to ring with its life-giving note, “Come find me!” she laughed and I watched, eyes wide in wonder, as the rays of her voice beamed into the grayness, slaying cold nothingness with warm and living light. It coursed vigor into my leaden limbs and thawed the deadness in my bones. Under the power of its intense ray I staggered to my feet. But as soon as it had come the golden light vanished and slowly the grayness began seeping back once more.

“No,” I murmured, eyes fixed on the direction she had gone, “I'm coming. Wait for me.” and I set out at a stumbling run.

Not miles, but eons of mist rolled by and the further I went the more alive I grew. Once, as I ran, ahead of me there loomed a tall, dark mountain. I tried to go around it but as soon as my feet turned to the side an icy bolt struck my heart and, instinctively, I jerked back. Perhaps this was the way I would find her – the way she would remind me how to remember: by following the warmth which ran like a river about, before and behind me. Setting my eyes above and ahead I stepped forward and began the long ascent.

Mist rolled all about me, cloaking the mountain-side and hiding my every step from view. I knew not if, at any moment, I might plunge over the side of some precipice – or lose myself in the hungry jaws of a mountain cave. Still I climbed and the air about me grew brighter with each step. I was not afraid, nor did any notes of apprehension ring in my mind. I must climb up! And so I did, without thought for what lay behind me and nothing but a vague, far-off hope for what lay ahead.

At last, I crested the rise and standing on a mist-cloaked plateau, gazed about me into the golden distance. A few steps forward and I stood in the center of the mountain-top. There was nothing. Nothing but a sheer golden curtain of oscillating mist. Yet the landscape about me, though it was empty, did not feel so. Indeed, I felt pressed about by the magnitude of something enormous and invisible. As if a hand had reached down from highest Heaven to envelope me in its grasp. I felt safe, warm and secure. A faint sigh of contentment issued from my parted lips and, at the same moment, I heard a voice behind me gently speak.

“I knew you would come.” It said.

I turned and beheld the child from before. But she was not a child anymore. Sweet simplicity of youth had blossomed into the glorious and indescribable majesty of age. She was not aged in form. Yet in her dark, liquid eyes, I perceived the light of deep understanding.

“How?” I asked, confused at her first words. She only cocked her head a little to one side, as if to ask whether or not I were making a joke. I replied nothing, and so confirmed my sincerity with silence.

“I knew,” she said, after a short pause, “Because you always come.”

This explanation, though given in a tone which said ‘it makes perfect sense, dear’ only served to perplex me further.

“So,” I said, my tone dubious, and my words uttered with slow uncertainty, “We have met before?”

And I do not know if it was at my question or at my expression of profound confusion, but she laughed, and in her laugh, the golden stillness seemed to grow deeper and brighter.

“Yes!” she said, as if in congratulation. Like a student before his teacher I embraced the implication with a sense of pride and relief.

“Yes,” she said again, taking my hand in hers once more and smiling up at me through those gloriously bright eyes. I felt myself drawn to her. “We have met - many times! - though you never remember,” a far-off, joyously sad look came into her eyes and she gazed beyond me. Or rather she gazed behind me, into a past I could not remember. At last she came back and smiling, whispered, “Would you like me to show you?”

I opened my mouth to say ‘Yes’ but no sound came out. A shadow of doubt fell across the bright sun of her presence and in that shadow, I hesitated. But why was I hesitating? I did not know and struggled to understand where the object was that had cast this shadow of doubt. As if in answer to my unvoiced question a voice murmured deep within my mind “None who go to her come back, nor do they regain the paths of life.”

“What is it?” she said, stepping closer, so close that I could smell the indescribably golden scent of her hair. It clouded my thoughts so that the voice did not come clearly to my mind as it spoke again, saying: “Why are you . . . my soul . . . in turmoil? Hope in . . . I again praise . . . my salv . . . my G-“

“You do not trust me,” her voice intercepted the thought. Blinking once I cleared the clouds from my mind and looked into her down-cast face with surprise.

“No,” I whispered, this time taking her hands in mine, “Do not be sad, I do trust you!” for the expression of hurt and sorrow in her once beaming eyes had smitten me to the heart. At my words a faint smile lit her face again. She glanced up at me shyly under her dark brows.

“Then may I show you?” she asked, hopefully.

“Show me what?” I asked.

“How we met. How you know me.” She said, smiling brighter and brighter every second.

This time, I did not hesitate.

“Yes,” I breathed, and the last thing I remember noticing was how deep was the blackness in her eyes. It sucked me in, turning the warm air cold and stealing my breath as I was crushed through the gates of the present and into the past.

[here the manuscript ends]