FORBIDDEN BOOK
by Carol Lewis
Sacred Child: Living Lessons
“So, tell me.”
“Child, what do you want to know?”
“Why?”
“Boy, I don’t understand your question.”
“Well, something is missing. I feel it.” He puts his hands over his heart. Me and my friends…some of us talk about the hole. Why do I feel like this?”
“I see.”
“What do you see?”
“I see you.”
“My friends told me not to come down here because you’re crazy.”
A silence sits still between them. The air seems to wait. Shadows hover.
“Do you think I’m crazy?”
“I’m still deciding. I think you hide for a reason. I don’t think you’re scared. You seem sad. Very, very sad. You are what sad looks like.”
The elder releases a deep sigh as he rubs his knobby, scaly knees.
“Do they hurt? Your fingers. Your knees look like tree parts I’ve seen in comic book scenes.”
“No son. There is no ache I can’t bear.”
“I know you know about the hole. The empty we feel, sometimes I can see it, awake and sleeping.
“Sit down. Tell me, child. What do you see?”
He looks around, wipes his hands on his latex shirt. “No, I can stand.”
“I don’t bite boy. You can’t catch anything from me. Just sit.”
“No, I’d rather not.”
“Did you come down here on a dare? You lose a fight?”
“No. You are in my dreams.”
“Tell me.”
“I look in your eyes and see many colors, points of light, openness, moving shadows, strings I can see through. Everything is shaky. In my dream your eyes become everything around me. I feel tiny tingles on my skin, but I’m not afraid. Then, I just see your eyes again and I look to see me in them. I’m not there.”
“What happens next?”
“I ask you to tell me what you see when you look in my eyes. That’s when everything changes. Everything is black and I am screaming.”
Piercing the dark, the dull matte black abyss of the boy’s eyes is clear. The elder holds the boy’s gaze despite his gut telling him to soothe himself and look away. “Well…we are different. You are a nubourne”
“What are you?”
“I am the Forbidden Book. In me is information coded in my blood and waters. Infinite memories before…before the world changed.”
“They told me you would lie. The world has always been like this. Liar!”
“Is that true? Then what do you make of your dreams? What makes you find me?”
The boy drops his head, shifts his weight from side to side and rubs his latex shirt. With a sudden jerk, he straightens and begins to chant the daily mantra. “No thinking! Change is disease! Must be stopped. Rooted out. Have no doubt. That’s all I know. All I hear. All I feel.”
“Not true. You said so yourself. You feel a hole.” The boy’s posture softens again. A slight iridescence traces the veins in the palms of his hands. The boy knows the elder is watching and he puts his hands palms down. He seeks out the hands of the elder, but they are lost to him in the darkness. The elder waits for the boy to speak.
“So…”
“For every hole, there is absence of something. A part is missing. If a part is gone, the whole is changed.”
The boy sits down on the tin covered ground. “Am I sick? Will they come for me?”
“Hold your head up child. You are not sick. Somehow you bypassed a bit of programming. Your currency is strong. Those of you who feel the hole, are more…human. Your creative spark is still there.”
“What do you mean?”
“What colors are in the world? What do you see”
“Every color is in the metaverse. You can even make up new colors.”
“True, but you are not always plugged in. What colors do you see in the real world?
The boy closes his eyes. The elder watches the boy’s chest rise and fall with each deepening breath. “Tell me boy, what colors do you see?”
“Nothing. Shades of misty grey.
“Good boy! But you see colors in your dreams, yes?” They boy nods. Are you plugged in when you sleep?”
“Yes.”
“You did say you dream of me when you’re awake. Is that what you said?”
The boy rubs the nape of his neck, then looks at his hand. Staring at the subtle glow radiating from beneath his skin, he whispers, “Yes.”
“Take it easy boy. You are well. You are just learning about your true self.”
The boy stands. “I think I’d better go now. I need to go. Are you the only Forbidden Book down here beneath the gutter shallows? You are the strange one.”
The elder shakes his head “Ok, child. Tomorrow.”
Carol Lewis:
As a student I felt the diminishing of my soul. As a parent, I know the disgust of watching my son suffer. As a teacher, I tried to change the system from within and found myself covered in slime and muck in the belly of the beast. I did my best there as my hair turned gray and my muscles atrophied. I stayed as I saw the hurt of the children, growing much deeper than my own. Then the lockdowns and zoom became an IV drip in my veins to wake the fudge up. Sacred Child: Living Lessons is my service to the children and families. I provide an innovative foundation of unschooling, homeschooling and powerful narratives and verse for affirmation, confirmation and fertile growth of soulful presence and purpose.
”I look forward to working and shining with you.”
