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 Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 3:28 pm
Time and time again, Christmas has done wonders to lonely and/or neglected kids. It has made so many happy. And the spirit of Christmas, if one can believe in such things, always did its best to make others feel better. It had a mind of its own, one could say. But the problem with the world was that in some aspects it was growing up. But in others, the child-like ignorance of things all too important and necessary simply because they could not appreciate these things they always had. And the spirit of Christmas dwindled, weakened if you will.
And the spirit of Christmas, though it might be blasphemous or seem contrary to say, came not from the Christmas it has come to be named after but indeed from the Roman Holiday that Christmas tried to hide: the winter solstice, on which the God of Agriculture was celebrated. Returning to those roots, it birthed under a tree in central park a delicate cabbage and brought it to bloom. The spirit poured into it all the good will it could sacrifice and used the nearby carolers' music as a blessing and then abandoned it. For its purpose was about to be invoked.
Young Peter Harper was young indeed. He was only five years old and had little knowledge of cities or industries. His best friend was his father's border collie, Shep and his playground was the family dairy farm a good two hours from New York City. This was Peter's first time in New York City and although the Rockefeller Center Tree was splendid in size and glory, it couldn't hold his attention for long. Every hobo of central park and old lady scattering food for birds and even the police officers that patrolled it earned his fascination.
Who knows what it was that took young Peter Harper over past a particular bench to a particular tree. Whatever it was, it had done its job. Stuffed reindeer held to his chest with one arm, its one bell on a collar around its neck jingling faintly, Peter approached the green item he saw beneath the tree. He had never known anything so green to live at this time of year. Carefully he reached out to touch it with his free hand, crouched before it. His hand brushed over the leaves and he felt a chill along his spine as a part of his mind payed with the idea that it was speaking to him.
"Holy Smokes! Margaret, come here!" His father rushed over beside him first in concern and then in wonder. Placing a hand beside his son, he crouched beside him, one knee pressed down into the snow. He also reached out to touch it. The plant's leaves were warm to the touch as if the summer's sun still beat down upon it. Now Thomas Harper was a reasonable man and fancied himself a logician. However, nothing he could think of could explain this. "Margaret, a cabbage! In winter! It's fresh too..."
Peter was utterly fascinated and it was clear that his father was too. And Peter did what no other child would do when it came to a cabbage. He looked up at his father, his eyes wide and sparkling with delight and hope. "Father. Father, can I keep it?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2007 12:05 pm
Peter bolted awake, sitting up at a shocking rate, stuffed reindeer secured against his body with an arm. He climbed out of the top of his bunk bed adorned with cowboy bed sheets. The bottom of the bunk bed had been removed and the space converted into a little desk and book shelf full of docter seuss books among others. The Docter Seuss ones were the most notible since they were the only ones he had bothered to learn to read. On the opposing wall was a mural of a cowboy on a bronco, his lasso twirling in the air. His parents had had that put in when he was only a baby and had cost them a good amount of their savings. For running a family-run dairy farm of about thirty cows wasn’t the most profitable business to run. He had two older brothers and an elder sister all above the age of ten who helped on the farm. His eldest brother, Roger, was almost eighteen and going to go to college soon. Hopefully his education would help them improve the farm.
But of course, that was his family and this was his room. And he was so used to it that he gave it little thought. Only the window caught his attention. He moved to it, pressing his hands against it to look out, accidentally letting Klaus, his stuffed reindeer, to fall to the ground for only the second time in his life. His parents both stood in their Sunday’s best with jackets pulled over top and their boots on against the torrent of the wind facing his mother’s tomato garden. It was snowed over but the tiny stone fence that outlined it was faintly visible even then. He knew it had to do something about his cabbage. Not patient enough to observe longer, he scooped up Klaus and ran down the stairs, nearly ripping off his coat from the peg on the wall thanks to his short stature and threw it on.
Throwing the door open, Peter jumped out into the snow, his head bowed against the wind. With an eager bark or two, Shep in all his brown and white glory leaped out beside him as if thinking that this was another of the five-year-old’s games. Nearly stumbling through the snow, dog with tongue out of the side of his open mouth following at his heels, Peter ran into his father’s leg, encircling it while still grasping the arm of Klaus, using the leg as an anchor. Catching his breath, he pulled away and stared up at them who were looking down at him in surprise.
“Peter, get dress,” his mother said gently, running a hand through his hair. “ ‘kay?”
“But what about my cabbage?” he asked.
His father chuckled. “Don’t worry. It’s in the kitchen on the counter.”
Hearing those words he turned to the border collie nosing his arm pit. “Come on, Shep. Let’s go!” And like the eager little boy he was, he rushed into the kitchen to look over his cabbage as if it was his own creation. He had to step up on tippy-toes to reach the pot but he worked his fingers until he had edged the plastic pot to the edge and then pulled it into an embrace with Shep retrieving the abandoned Klaus dutifully in his mouth. Supporting the pot with both arms, he peered around it as best as he could, walking sideways when he had to, and edged it over to the fireplace. He had to make sure his cabbage stayed warm. He set it down just before the stone hearth before the fire place. Crossing his legs, he touched the leaves gently and talked to it amiably. Shep sat down next to him, dropping first Klaus into Peter’s lap and then resting his head on Peter’s leg.
Peter looked up to pat Shep on the head before becoming reabsorbed in this enchanting gift. There was no other way to describe the gift, the way he touched it and the way it seemed to talk to him, sing to him even. It could only be enchanting – enchanted. Peter knew it wasn’t any old cabbage plant. He knew it by just looking at the cabbage plant. There was even something about the way the fire licked the air around it with the cabbage plant only a few feet away as though even it desired to reach out an arm and caress it with its touch. It was indescribable past enchanting. And Peter took no care or notice for the presents under the tree. Nor did he ever remember the need to go to church until his mother came in to find him still in his footie pajamas. Oh what a mystery.
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Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 7:26 am
It was New Year’s Eve and he had finally convinced his parents to move the cabbage to his room so that he could keep an eye on it. His mother’s only concern was that once it was ripe, they could eat it. His father’s? That his son had an unhealthy obsession with it. It was the day before the next year, a time for cleansing humans tending to tell themselves as though they’d actually make the next year any different from the currently. But regardless it was a time of cleaning for those beings that recording time in such a manner.
He slid out of bed, down the ladder of his bunk, and leapt off the bottom rung. Peter bounced over to the window and patted his cabbage. “Good Morning~!” he sang. The leaves had been falling off of the cabbage more readily now but he paid no attention to them. Picking up the water vase, he sprinkled water over top of the cabbage. He placed the vase down and began to get dressed, totally ignorant that the plant was starting to move…
Tucked deep inside that magical – but really a hi-tech computer – cabbage was an infant. She looked similar to human babies, as similar as one could, only she came fully outfitted in clothing. And her name was Anabelle. She had existed in this cabbage since the time Saturnus had thought to place her within one. Planting it where the proper soul would find it was another thing. Anabelle was all that was left of his daughter Veritas. She was so simple and basic that she only existed as a feeble-minded conscience, stripped of her identification and specific powers. He had planted her within the micro-chip of the cabbage so that in essence, all it did was give her a body, a mind. And then he had the micro-chip reeducate her on what she needed to know.
Anabelle slid out of the cocoon that had been the cabbage and looked about the room as though expecting that it could explain what the whole world around her looked like. And finally her eyes settled on the half-naked boy. As though feeling her eyes on him, he looked up, froze for just a moment and then scrambled to hide that of him which was exposed. Luckily, he had the presence of mind not to shriek. Realizing that she was floating, Anabelle lowered herself to the ground and bowed.
“What are you d-doing here?” the boy stuttered.
She giggled and pointed behind her. “I came from the cabbage.”
His eyes lit up as though he finally understood. But then she realized it was more of delight and that of play. He seemed not to realize that she was not his to possess like a toy, but only to be his guide and companion. She shook her head. “I see I have much to teach you.”
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2008 11:06 am
Of course like all little boys who hadn’t even started school, he was confused but awed by the magic he saw before him. For to have a cabbage one minute but then to see a girl before him was stunning. He scrunched his brow in confusion and contemplation. “But you’re just a baby! You shouldn’t be able to talk!”
Anabelle laughed. “But I’m not a human baby. I was genetically engineered by a lab and by my father himself.”
“Huh?”
She sighed and shook her head. “Ok. So, my father is a what you would call ‘god’. He’s immortal and has ‘super-human’ powers. Using that term lightly of course. I… used to be one.”
“You mean like God? And how do you become …ungod?”
She bit her lips. It was hard to talk to believers and hadn’t realized she had been sent to be the companion for one. “Well… sorta only your god isn’t the only god. He would just have you think that way. To be… well, to not be a god, people have to stop believing in you. Because, you see, that’s where your – well, a god’s – source of power comes from: believe, faith, whatever you want to call it.
“But… that’s not the point. Well, actually, in a way it is. My father is trying to rebuild himself a world on the edge of this one. It’s not an alien one but one that you’ve always been able to touch. You go there sometimes when you dream. It’s always been there and they have a mild respect for my father. However, my father needs to hold that world together. You see, they respect no god so there is no power to hold it together. Slowly, it’s dissolving. It’s that feeling that something is wrong, that prickling of your spine. That’s the feel of the other world as it begins to crumble. You see, it’s particularly intertwined with this one and should one fail, so will the other.”
Peter frowned as all this information flooded his five-year-old brain. A normal child should have been confused, distracted, and soon to forget all information so said. But it was as though a part of him already knew all this. As though he had this information stored away in the back of his mind to be forgotten and yet, it was as though her words had been the key to the lock, or the spell to summon them forth. His mind brushed around them and reached out to touch them as though to become familiar with the thoughts and claim them as its own. “But why is this relevant to me?”
“I was kind of hoping you’d ask that question. You see, Peter, my father believes that it is you who can help him. That you are the one with the gift that we need. I am the key but he believes you are the one that must walk through that door. Do you know what door I speak of?” He had a couple ideas but he wanted to hear her say it so he shook his head. “The door of fate, the door of time. You’re a timeturner. You can break the laws that physics has laid down upon this earth. So we need you.” Her stomach made an ungodly sound and she groaned. “Ug gosh I’m hungry. Got any cookies?”
Peter grinned. “I’ll be right back!”
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Posted: Mon May 26, 2008 11:16 am
Peter was back to school, the holidays over. He had demanded his mother let him pack his backpack himself which startled her greatly. Making a comment about how mature children thought they were, she retired to the kitchen table with her coffee and watched him run upstairs with his backpack. Fact of the matter was he was concerning his parents greatly. Lately, he had taken to sneaking food back to his room and wouldn’t let them in until sometimes a minute after they ask, always moving to blockade the door when they tried to come in without asking. They wondered what a child of five could be hiding in his room.
Peter closed the door to his room and opened his backpack, taking out his lunch box. It was a tin one, Woody from Toy Story on its cover. There was just enough space for say an eraser in it. “Here you are,” he said. “Hurry so that I don’t end up late.” As it was, Anabelle had said she could shrink to any size so he said it’d probably be best if she came to school with him to make sure nothing happened to her. She saw it as an opportunity to observe him and agreed. In a blink of an eye, she was no bigger than his pinky and drifted into his lunchbox. He closed it quickly and tried to carefully put it back into his backpack. But then his mother called him and he ran down the stairs to walk the mile to the bus stop with her. Anabelle being that she was not really human suffered no injuries in this sprint other than the initial shock of him bursting out the room.
Anabelle was the soul of Veritas but at the same time, not all her memories were available to her. It came with being trapped in a body, her soul neatly tucked away. It had been enough of a struggle to allow her to have any memories at all. For while the soul was immortal, the memories of a hundred life times could kill the vessel, the body. So the body had its own little device to suppress the memories, to mold the soul to fit the body. The soul was like a rechargable battery in a way, powering the hub. And it kept even the smartest humans from becoming gods, although they did get pretty superhuman sometimes. So here, in his tin lunch box, a mini-freezer said her numb fingertips, she only knew enough that was necessary to do what she was supposed to. So one could even say she had been robbed of much of her godly free will. Well, she could still refuse but she did not know enough to know that she might of wanted to refuse.
School was, more or less, schoolish. It was kindergarten so not much happened. Kids played with kids, the teacher read stories, and they colored and played the educational way – by letters and numbers. But of course, Woody could see none of this, the tin top of the lunchbox popped off and shoved back into the corner of Peter’s cubby hole as Anabelle watched. It was important to know what type of person he was since she would have to help him. She would have to help him with his powers, unlocking them, using them, and all without fail. Most of the things they will do would be dangerous for a boy unarmed with knowledge and power. Because a boy – no matter where he was – was always still a boy in a man’s world. And she was just a golem, thus easily destroyed.
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