Stay With Me in the Dark

The Blindness

In the beginning, there were three of us: the child, Ted, and I. Ted, the oldest of us, was strong and wise. I was swift and light of foot, at least back then. And the child, the blessed child, was magical.

We were the child's, and the child was ours. As long as we were with her, we knew joy. My life began with the child. She called me out from the stillness. She smiled and named me Flop, because my ears dangled in front of my eyes back then. Back then, before they were torn.

There were others, the shades of darkness, who hated the child for her power. They wished to seize the child, to use the child as a weapon, so that they may enter the world unchecked by the light of day. The shades, the evil which comes at night.

Each time the light of day was laid to rest, the shades would emerge from the darkness to snatch the child away from us. They took on forms of terror and malice, hatred and fear. If they could not snatch her away, they came to torment her so that she had no peace. They whispered at her window, they watched her from the dark corners, they came to her through the cracks, the breeches, the bowels of our world.

But Ted and I would not stand by to allow any harm to come to her. Each night, we three stood against them. We fought the shades, put them down, and drove them from the child's bedroom into the shadows from where they came. And each night, the child's magic shut the gates again so that their wretched howls were silenced.

Thus, we lived. In the light of day, we knew the joy of being with the child. We witnessed her great wonders and magic. We indulged in the games and play which made life worth everything. We worked with the child, to unlock the great secrets which would destroy the darkness. And when night came, we fought against that darkness for our lives. To protect that loveliness. Even knowing the horror that came in the night, we were happy.

Ted and I were not the child's only protectors; Mother and Father were more powerful than we. Mother had hands that could heal the worst wound, and the shades feared her. Father, the sleeping warrior, had a voice of thunder that made them run and tremble. But alas, they often could not help us fight them.

It seemed that something was wrong with their eyes. Mother and Father could not always see the evil that was coming into the world. As much as I myself tried to warn them, they were deaf to my words. And when the child tried to tell them, it was to them as one of the games we play in the day. The child and I were perplexed and troubled by this.

Ted, however, had lived longer than either of us. He understood what was wrong. He explained to me that the evil ones had sent a great sickness into the world: It was a sickness of blindness. Blindness to evil, blindness to the magical workings of the child.

For all their great strength, the blindness had taken over the minds of Mother and Father. There was too much pain, too much worry, too much bitterness and loss of hope within them for their eyes to be opened again. That is why they had such trouble seeing the shades when they came. That is why, although they could see Ted and me, they could not hear our words or see that we were alive as they were.

But I could not believe everything that he said.

"The blindness is a plague, Flop. It has infected every part of our world. The time will come when the scales shall close even upon the eyes of the child herself. Her vision will fade. She will sleep in the darkness. We must be ready."

"What?" I replied in disbelief, "How could this ever be, Ted? You are making no sense. How could the child herself ever stop seeing the beauty, the evil, the magic? It is unthinkable. Why, she would...I'm not sure that she would still even be herself! It would be as if the light of day were dark, or..."

Ted looked upon me sternly at this, placing his paw firmly upon my chest. "You must never say that again, Flop. Never. She is our child. We are hers, and she is ours. Whether we succeed or fail, she always will be our child. She will be herself. She will always have magic, but her eyes will darken. That night will come. You and I must learn to fight them on our own, as she sleeps. And if we can, if it is possible, we must find a way to close the gates without her help."

His words made me sad more so than afraid. I knew that they were true, for I could see that it was already happening. But I was not yet ready to listen.

"I know that you are wiser than I," I admitted, the sadness of denial heavy in my voice. "I know you have lived for a long time. But how, big brother, could you possibly know this? Do you see the future? Do you work wonderful things, as the child does? What horrid thing could you have experienced, even in your long nights of fighting evil, that would tell you this? That the child, with all her loveliness and power and magic, the like of whom there is no one in all the world...the child, whose very being is the perceiving and doing of wondrous things...that she, even she, would lose her sight?"

Ted was silent then. I could see the pain on his face. My question hurt him more than I had known words could. Beings like Ted and I cannot weep as others can, but we still feel the dreadful sorrow of loss. We mourn without tears.

Ted had known a great loss. I could see it in him then, as he knelt to the floor with his head in his paws. It was a loss which somehow, in some way that I did not understand, made him to know of the disease and what we were to witness. Then, I felt that loss, too. I knelt down beside him, stretching my small arm across his greater shoulders.

"What are we going to do, Ted? How are we going to stop them alone?"

"I don't know, Flop. I don't know. But we must."