Hearth: Episode 1

                                                    PART ONE

 

                                                CHAPTER ONE

     The day after Thanksgiving was cold and grey, the air still and heavy with the weight of an approaching storm.  Down below in the streets of New York City droves of holiday shoppers moved up and down the sidewalks in the mad rush of Black Friday.  Fifth Avenue, in particular, was a swirling mass of frenzied pedestrians.  Swarms of bundled up New Yorkers passed from one store to the other, carrying all manner of different-colored shopping bags, packages, and boxes, their breath coming out in frosty tendrils and their heads bent forward against the cold.  Over by St. Patrick’s Cathedral, some of the shoppers would separate from the moving mass and climb the steps of the church, either to go inside and get warm, or to rest outside above the confusion.  Outside wasn’t as good an idea, since there were also a number of small-time crooks and pickpockets hanging out on the steps, looking for easy marks.  Panhandlers and a few homeless loitered here, too, competing for handouts and small change.  Some wore signs.  Others had a story to tell.  Still others held out a Styrofoam cup and shook it back and forth with a few coins dropped in, hoping some passersby would be stimulated into dropping in a few more coins.  There was one man, however, who sat on the northeast corner of the cathedral steps, who carried no sign or cup, and had no story to tell.  Instead he sat on the top stoop with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.  From the way his shoulders shook, it was obvious he was crying.  Few people seemed to take any notice, but at the moment he appeared to be receiving far more donations than any of the other panhandlers.  Scattered change and dollar bills littered the steps all around his feet, and others were now eyeing the money with great interest.

The man’s name was Brian.  Or something like that.  He wasn’t really sure.  To tell the truth, he had no idea who he was, and hadn’t known for the last six months, just that his name began with a ‘Br’ sound and that last May he had awakened in the middle of a Spring night to find himself propped half in, half out of a trash can in a narrow alley behind the Boathouse Restaurant in Central Park.  He had had no memory of anything before that moment and no idea how he had gotten there.

That was six months ago.  He had been wandering the city in a daze ever since, trying to find out who he was and where he was while struggling just to survive.  He felt like a stranger stranded in a foreign land, seeing no familiar landmarks, meeting no familiar faces, and with no identification of any kind on his person.  Everything around him felt huge and alien.  It was as if he had been newly placed on the earth alone, abandoned, and forsaken.

The only exceptions to his almost complete memory loss were the occasional inexplicable rushes of feeling and longing which would come over him at certain times without warning.  Brian wasn’t sure where they originated from, but they seemed to be triggered by certain sights, smells, and sounds.  Churches, especially, evoked something powerful inside him.  He was drawn to the stone carvings of robed figures, the rich glow of stained glass, the pungent smell of incense.  They pulled at something inside him which he couldn’t define.  It was as if they spoke to his soul in a coded language which bypassed his conscious mind and went straight to his heart.  Then there was the Boathouse Restaurant where he had first awakened in this "new" world - the whole place, the whole park, in fact, seemed to vibrate with hidden meaning.  These things and others hinted to him of a past identity, but so far he had learned nothing substantial.  There was only one thing of which he was fairly certain:  up until six months ago, he had never set foot in New York City.