Chapter 3: Some Hard Things

For the first time since Daniel could remember he woke up before the strong sun of late morning. He was up with the first tepid rays of the day, when the air still held onto the night’s chill and the grass was damp underfoot.

Downstairs Daniel looked around the kitchen for pancake mix, but he could only find flour and he did not know how to turn that into pancakes. He settled on eggs. He made a big pan of scrambled eggs for himself and some for Becca. He ate his out of the pan but put hers on a plate with a little note that said “Gone to Garden!” The plate of eggs by itself looked lonely, so he went outside and picked some daisies and put them in a vase by the plate.

Daniel stepped outside. The wind stirred, sent a chill running up his spine. He walked out to the empty field. He looked around him and notice that now he could at least walk in a straight line towards the field’s center. There were still larger pieces of metal, shopping carts, broken down rocking chairs, forgotten televisions. But the smaller stuff like the glass bottles and plastic had been picked up.

“Squirrel?” he called to the air. “Um, was it Squishy? or Skippy?”

Silence.

“Here Skippy!” He sounded like he called a dog.

He whistled.

That did not come out any better.

“I have walnuts!” he called. “Walnuts!”

From a tree at the edge of the field Daniel saw a small brown blob drop. Slowly it coalesced into a squirrel, bounding through the field.

The squirrel stood in front of him. Daniel was no expert in squirrel behavior, but this squirrel looked dubious. It sniffed at the wind, as if to make sure Daniel really had the walnuts.

Daniel pulled out a wallet from his sweatshirt and kneeled on the ground.

“Hey there buddy,” Daniel held the walnut in his fingers.

The squirrel flicked its tail, and stood there looking at him.

“I…I’m sorry for what I said yesterday. I guess I was tired,” Daniel thought, and a squirrel is not a really manly spirit animal, but he decided to keep that part to himself.

He did not know what else to add after that.

“Let’s try introductions again. I’m Daniel.”

The squirrel gave him some strong side eye but gingerly reached out his paw for the walnut.

“Scamper. And I’m only taking this walnut as it’s polite to, and seeing as it’s close to winter and all,” and with that began munching on the walnut.

Daniel blinked. To his knowledge, they were in early spring.

He just replied “Of course,” and stood up.

Usually Amadeus was around to tell him what exactly to do. Since he was not there yet, Daniel just hoped that he wanted him to collect more bottles. As he looked around he noticed the bottles were few and far between. The field was still in extremely rough shape though, with scrap metal and broken furniture heaped everywhere. But it was easier to see the big obstacles with the smaller bottles out of the way.

It was comforting to see that he had made some progress, but the field still looked god awful. A wave of terror came over him that he would be spending months picking up trash only for the place to look just as bad as every other abandoned field in this town. Forgotten and useless.

He would either be paralyzed with that thought or he could try to put it out of his mind. Bend and pick up. Repeat. Repeat again.

When Amadeus came Daniel did not know what to say, so he just kept picking up bottles. Evidently Amadeus did not know what to say either, because he did not speak either.

Together they picked up bottles throughout the day. Scamper watched them from the shadows as he splooted in a tree with what looked like some members of his family. Occasionally he would hop over to Daniel for a walnut.

When Amadeus saw this newfound interaction between Daniel and Scamper, he raised his eyebrows but still did not speak.

The next day was hotter, and the third day hotter still. At noon on the third day Daniel looked around him and saw not a single bottle or other piece of plastic to pick up. He could not believe his eyes so he walked the plot of land, and then again. Nothing.

With a rush of relief he collapsed under a tree. He gulped down some water and dumped some on his head. Scamper came over. Daniel instinctively gave him some to drink. He looked out at the field, still piled with junk, and wondered if any of the stuff could be retrofitted to be a water fountain.

He laid down, soothed by the warm wind that wicked the sweat from his face. He fell in and out of sleep.

Slowly he looked over and saw Amadeus was sleeping too. He slept with a smile that made him look younger. Daniel realized he had absolutely no idea how old he was. As he slept he looked to be in his fifties. Other times Daniel had seen him frown with a far away look and he appeared well past his eighties.

Scamper had laid himself out between the two of them like a pancake.

They lay in this half-sleep for some time until Amadeus broke the silence.

“You should be proud of yourself. It took a lot of work to clear all of these bottles.”

He frowned now, and looked near a hundred. “When you are as old as I am, you will face many kinds of hard. Over the years I have lost countless friends, family, loves. So many references that no one is left to understand, so many stories that there is no one to recount with. So many grudges that seem so small when you look from far enough away.”

“This, what you’re doing here, is a different kind of hard. It’s the kind of hard that gets better. I hope, one day this garden will be a meeting place for all of the people that you will build your life’s stories with. Now magic,”

Daniel’s ears perked up at this.

“Magic is a different kind of hard. You need to simultaneously be able to give yourself up entirely to something larger than yourself yet maintain complete confidence in who you are and your will to be able to bend magic to the will of your mind.”

“Our first lesson you can actually stay on your back. Now, close your eyes and breathe in and out…”

This sounded suspiciously like the meditation lesson he was taught in therapy when he kept whistling in class. The therapists said his actions was because he was sad that his father had left and he was lashing out for attention. They told him to breathe in and out to bring silence to his body so that he could focus in class. He had a hard time expressing that it was not because of his father. He just always seemed to have too much energy in him and it always seemed to pour out in the most inconvenient places.

“Breathe in, hold it for three, two, one, and breathe out….”

He was surprised by how hard that memory came over him. He could almost feel the couch cushions of the waiting room, hear the scratch of the therapist’s ballpoint pen, feel the tone of his father’s voice filled with confidence that there was absolutely nothing wrong, and if there was, Daniel needed to fix it about himself.

“Breathe out for one, two, three…”

Daniel pushed the memory away.

“Breathe in for one, two, three…”

What came up next was a mounting fear that he was sitting here with a crazy man and nothing would happen. Maybe he was going insane and all of this magic stuff was just a delusion. Nothing would happen.

“Notice the breeze, lifting off your sweat, and playing through the trees. Let your breathe flow into it as it connects you with the breathe of every living thing.

Feel the dirt under your hands with your fingers. Feel how the sun warms it. Dig your fingers into it. Think of the way it is built, slowly over the ages. You were built from the food your mother ate, born from the ground. When your time is done, you will return to the ground.

Hear the blood pumping in your veins. The water in your blood has come from the deepest seas and the widest oceans, come from the smallest rain drops and the tallest peaks.

Now see yourself, really lean back and look at yourself from above, stretched out on the ground. See the water as it moves from your blood to your lungs and out to the sky. Fly with that breath into the breeze.

Feel your sweat as it drips off your skin and into the ground. It trickles deep into the ground, spreading itself wide and becoming a part of it. You and the ground and the air are tied together. You and the squirrels in the trees and the worms in the ground and the birds in the air are all connected through wind, water, and earth. Keep your eyes closed, but in your head, picture all of these things with thin lines of energy connecting them.”

It was at this moment that Daniel felt the earth below him move, and he felt as if the earth had become vertical and he would slide off of it.

“There is a place in your heart that was bright and curious as a boy. For a long, long time this place has been forgotten and shoved aside. To do magic you need to be fully connected to yourself. So you are going to need to reach deeply into yourself. Imagine a cage between your ribs, and in this cage holds that part of yourself that you have forgotten. Now you can open it.”

Daniel tried to picture this cage in his chest. He reached out and yanked the cage door wide and held onto it, for now it felt as if the ground spun so much that he was nearly upside down.

As he yanked this door open he sat bolt upright and opened his eyes. The world around him seemed different. Around Amadeus was a glow, a deep green-blue like the calm of the ocean. He looked at the birds overhead and he saw this aura around them too. He saw in the distance a snake with this deep green aura, but with flashes of red in it. He felt it was hungry and close to a kill. A pair of butterflies passed across his face. They held in them this same aura, but with flashes of yellow. He could feel that they cared about each other.

The air was thicker now, as if a web hung over the sky. But this web was pulsing and ever changing. If he looked closer, Daniel could see that if he followed any individual string it connected to several other things.

But the visuals were nothing compared to what he felt. He felt his heart beat in time with that of the birds overhead. The blood in his veins sang with the rhythm of the water in an aquifer, which somehow he knew was deep below his feet. He felt as if his heart was laid bare, and he could not help but feel connected to every other living thing.

Daniel had always felt the word transcendent was silly. But here he was, feeling something so much bigger than himself that he was lost for words.

Then he blinked and it was gone. The sky was exactly the same as it had been earlier in the day.

“You felt it.” Amadeus did not have to phrase his words as a question.

Daniel nodded.

“Catch your breathe, and then I’ll teach you how to harness this energy.”

Daniel stood and walked around the plot of land as he caught his breathe. He rubbed his chest. His heart felt sore in a way it had never felt before.

He came to sit back down.

“I’m ready to go back in.”

Amadeus smiled. “Then let’s start again. You’ll close your eyes, and breathe in, hold for one, two, three……breathe out for one, two, three….”

This time it was easier for Daniel to put the thoughts that welled up out of his mind.

“Breathe in, hold for one, two, three…..breathe out for one, two, three…”

He could feel the worms that dug their tunnels below him, and could feel the leaves overhead as they drank in the sun.

“Breathe in, hold for one, two, three….breathe out for one, two, three…”

He could hear a car far away on the highway. The metal of the car’s body felt discordant with the flow of energy around it. He wondered how he had never felt that before.

“Now, feel the energy in the Earth. Imagine it as a warm light that suffuses through all things. Take it inside of you, moving it through your feet, up your calves, through your legs. Feel it welling up in the pit of your stomach. Take the energy seep through your lungs, and up to your heart.”

As the energy entered his heart Daniel felt again this wave of love for everything around him.

“But now keep this energy moving, through your shoulders, down through your arms past your elbows, to your hands. Feel the energy move to your fingers. Now, stretch out your hands with your fingers facing towards each other, as if they were cupping around a ball.”

Daniel lifted his hands up.

“Draw the energy in your fingers outwards, into the air. Imagine it is forming a ball of light.”

Daniel imagined the green ball of light in the space between his hands. He could almost feel it pulsing, warm and alive.

Daniel opened his eyes. Again the air was thick with the pulsating lines of energy. As he looked down at his hands Daniel saw the glowing orb. It was only around an inch wide, but it felt real and solid.

He pushed more energy out through his finger tips, and the orb grew larger.

He did it! He made it change!

His surprise broke his concentration. The orb dissipated into the air.

As the orb disappeared Daniel began to fall over on his side.

Amadeus caught him and helped him gently lay down.

He was more tired than he had ever been in his life.

“You did a really good job of moving the energy out of you. What you didn’t do was to keep the energy flowing from the earth into you, so your body started to use its own energy. For now it has only made you tired. You should start to feel better in a few minutes.

But when you do larger magic, the energy needs will be higher. You could hurt yourself if you keep drawing energy from your own body instead of the Earth. The next time we do this, you’ll need to keep track in your head both what you are doing, as well as where the energy is coming from to do it.”

Daniel felt the Earth below him seep its energy into his skin, as if he was no different than the leaves in the tree above his head. After a minute he sat up. He felt fine now.

“For today we’ll stop. You did really well Daniel. Get a good night of rest, your body has been through a lot today, even if it does not know it yet.”

Amadeus packed up and left. That night Daniel fell into a deep slumber. He dreamt he slept in a nest made of twigs and branches and soft moss. He could feel warm fur brush against his side and another’s heartbeat against his. He had never felt safer.