THE STAR CHILD CHRONICLES

THE LAND OF THE THREE SUNS

THE STAR CHILD CHRONICLES

DWINA MURPHY-GIBB

THE THREE SUNS

THE STAR CHILD

Illustrated and written for children wondering from where they have come and where they have to go, and for the discovery of the quest within all of them. Our son, always drew three suns in his pictures and it inspired me to write a story of the journey from the place of Three Suns. These are the first chronicles, meant for little ears and big adventurers:

THE THREE SUNS

It was very bright in the place of three suns, and that was not surprising.  However, despite the brightness of it all, and with not a single shadow in sight, there were still places to hide.

The three Elders were exasperated.  They had summoned the last child, their only Star Child, and the child had not come.  They had searched high and low, through all the corridors of their existence, becoming more and more anxious and agitated, passions that were disagreeable to all of them, trying so hard to maintain the calmness of lifelong training to be calm in the face of all adversity.  However, one child missing, especially the last child, was enough to challenge anyone even in the most salubrious environment.

Their abode was one of many levels of existence, the highest of which had a wonderful hue of red light, a place of perfection and protection, where one remained in the brightest and most minuscule of forms, as a tiny point of brilliant intelligence.   Only those with the purest and most perfect thoughts could enter there, and it was said that this was the place of the deepest peace and the highest bliss, and rumour had it that the sacred and most precious Divine One with the highest view and the longest sight lived there permanently.  The fringes of this abode gave one a playground of shapes and millions of ethereal angelic forms where silence was within everything, and no words were needed yet thoughts were exchanged readily in a sea of little movement.

Below this, there was more permanence, and atoms were strung together closely knit where three suns ruled, making everything bright.  There were vast plains and corridors and different shifting images as one’s thoughts wandered and moulded the sculptures of once-remembered and long-forgotten visions of existence.  Here lived the three Elders.

“Where is the child?” asked the Elder called Ma, who normally liked to know everything without question.  Ma had a topknot that wobbled alarmingly when she was confronted with questions.  She was usually serene and beautiful with nothing fazing her but questions.  She could barely abide them, only in that she did not see a need for them.  They were not useful and an interruption in the natural flow of knowledge, so her tolerance was tested from time to time even here and did not allow her to keep a constant stage of serenity.  Cog, the second Elder, suggested to her that it was because she did not have enough children around her to ask the number of questions to give her tolerance.

“Yes, indeed, where is this child?” asked Cog, whose hands were rolling and spinning inside long sleeves that reached to the ground and beyond.

The third Elder known as Magog decided to stop looking and stand perfectly still, and even though his beard rippled like a river all the way from his lips and nose to the tips of his toes and beyond, he was as calm as a frozen lake.

“Sometimes, if we stand still long enough, things will just come to us.  I do not know what all the fretting is about!”

“I am here!” said the Star Child, and they all looked down, Magog giving a supercilious smile at his own abject wisdom of standing still and everything would appear eventually, but he would never say aloud: “See?  I am right.”  It would be beneath him to gloat in front of the other Elders, even if he might think he deserved to gloat.

Ma held back her admonishments; her relief obvious that the child had at last been found.

“There you are!” 

“I suppose next you will be telling us you were here all along?” said Cog, sure that this might indeed be the case.

The Star Child looked up at the most venerable ones, heart beating fast like the wings of a hummingbird, like the beat of a quick-marching drum, and whispered: “You are so high up that you never look down.”

Cog turned a dark eye to the child, but it did not make the Star Child shiver, nor did it even make him blink.

Ma shook her head.  “Cog, the Child is not making a judgement, merely spouting a truth.  That is why we are sending this child on a secret quest.”

The Star Child remembered every word that he had ever heard but could not recall this one.

“What is a quest?”

Ma’s topknot wobbled in the most remarkable way, until composure at last stilled her enough so that she might answer the question, any dreaded question.  She particularly did not wish to equate the word ‘quest’ with ‘question’.

“A quest is a secret adventure, a journey to find something, a search.”

The Star Child enjoyed a good adventure, but knew the place of three suns inside out, and so could not fathom where this adventure could take place, nor furthermore how to enjoy an adventure in the world of all adults and no children.

“Where am I going?  What am I looking for when I get there?”

“Aah,” said Ma, “That is the secret.”

“The secret,” they repeated together.

The Star Child was puzzled.  “How can I find a secret if I do not know what it is?”

The Elders looked at one another and gathered into a huddle to whisper.  The whispers sounded like rustling leaves and rushing water, and the Star Child was lost in their murmurings.  He stared at them, watching their foreheads brighten, and even though he could not discern what they were saying, he was privy to their secret, and his heart began to beat faster.  They were going to send him away, very far away.

Magog straightened up and the Star Child looked hard at the fading glow on the Elder’s head.

“We are sending you to the blue pearl in the sea of space, the place of the one-sun.  It is called Earth, a local term we believe to mean “Heart” if one scrambles the letters.  We have come to the knowledge that there is a powerful thing on this blue planet we would like to explore, and you are our only hope.”

“We would like to ‘have’,” corrected Cog, “make no mistake about it.”

“It is called Love,” said Ma.

Magog whispered: “No-one has seen this thing.  We don’t know what size or what shape it is, what kind or what colour it is, how great or how small it is, how wide or how tall it is.  Our first conclusion is that it is invisible.  Our second conclusion is that it could be dangerous, and our third that we must have it here for ourselves.”

“This is the secret you must find,” added Cog, her sleeves spinning fast enough to make one dizzy.

Ma bent down until her face was almost level with the child’s, and her eyes seemed to ignite with a fierce will that passed fleetingly to the child.

“We want you to find this thing and bring back three tokens of it, one for each of us.”

The Star Child placed his hands on his waist, almost indignantly.

“Elders, how will I find a thing of no size, no colour and no shape?  And having found it, how will I extract and bring back three tokens of this thing?”  The Star Child was worried.  “Besides, if I am going to this Heart planet with only one sun, how will I see?”

Ma thought and thought, then said: “We will give you light to look in dark places. Coming from a place of three suns will have its disadvantage.   Now, you will need to be measured for the light because we cannot give you more or less.”

“More or less than what?” asked the Star Child.

Ma tossed her head and the topknot wobbled all over her head but did not fall off.

“More or less than YOU!  Questions, questions, questions!”  And they all turned and flounced away, Magog almost tripping over his beard that rippled like a river to the tips of his toes and beyond.  They disappeared into a pod of brightness, having done their duty and delivered the message.  Answering any more questions was far too tedious a task for all three of them and interrupted their usual bouts of long silences.

The Star Child waited…  and waited…  and waited…

LUCY

 Lucy, the Tailor of Light, came and stood before the Star Child.  There was something wonderful about Lucy, who had measuring sticks, silken tapes, and all manner of contraptions around her neck and attached to her clothing.  Her clothing shimmered with every colour of the rainbow in spectrum glory.  Every movement was exaggerated to shiver through atoms of space as if she dares not leave a portion unfilled with her presence.  She was riveting to behold and magnetic in all her gestures.  One could not tear eyes away from her and hardly dared to blink lest a dance of her energy and light be forgotten.

Lucy placed her hands on her hips and leaned back staring at one side first and then the other.  She held her thumb out and squinted her eyes to get a quick measurement of the Child into her mind’s eye.

“Hmmm,” she said, and walked around the Star Child slowly.  “Hmmm,” she said again.

“I think we can do it.  You are rather small,” she said finally.

 The Star Child stared at Lucy.  “Well, I am quite new.”

 “Yes,” agreed Lucy, much unsaid in her expression.

 At last, she sighed: “My problem is that if you are very small and going far away. We may not have enough Light to send you there and back again.”

For the first time ever, the Star Child felt a strange sensation flutter across his belly, and he took an indrawn breath on top of another one.  His little mind almost imploded with the shockwave. He frowned:

“Not get me back?  Then I shan’t go!”

“Oh, but you must go.  Worry not, child, I will get my helpers.  We will think of something.  There is a solution to everything.”

Something about the calmness of her voice and something about the radiance of her face immediately had impact on her words and the Star Child had no cares left within him.

Lucy called for her helpers and three helpers came in.  One carried a spindle, one a loom and one carried shears. 

Lucy introduced them.

SPINNER, WEAVER and CUTTER, The Three Fates.

“This is Spinner, the one who spins the Light.”  She indicated the young girl who carried the spindle.  Spinner wore swaddling clothing of spun silk and fine golden threads.  She looked very ethereal with a youthful complexion and pale delicate skin, almost blue.  Her hair was long, fair, and fine.  It was difficult to discern where her clothing ended, and her body began.  When she walked, her feet barely touched the ground as if she were elevated above it slightly, yet faint wisps of cobwebs seem to keep her rooted to the spot and prevent her from floating away.

Lucy pointed to the lady with the loom.

“This is Weaver, the one who weaves the Light.”

Weaver was a woman of rounded proportions with a mind of kindness and bright sparkling eyes with focused intelligence.  Her thoughts danced in patterns, and she wove songs as she worked her loom.  Her hair was long, wrapped, and plaited, some coiled on her head, the rest down her back, very neatly and all in place.  She was everyone’s mother and everyone’s friend.

Lucy’s voice dropped to a mere whisper.

“And this is Cutter, the one who cuts the Light.”

Cutter was an old woman, bent over, eyes downcast, carrying shears.  Around her waist were chains and hanging from one of them was a small golden sickle.  Her silver-grey and white hair was swept up in a bun and she wore a dark cape with a large loose hood perched upon the bun.

“And this is the Star Child.”

The Star Child became body conscious of himself and for an awkward moment, all eyes were on him, except perhaps Cutter’s and for this he was very grateful.

Lucy huddled with the three helpers, and the Star Child waited patiently, listening to their whispers like wind through grasses.

At last, they came forward.  Lucy began measuring the Star Child.  She wrote strange numbers with a stick in a sandbox.  Lucy measured the fingers and toes, the chin and the nose, the head and the feet and between where they meet.  She measured the arms and the legs and counted all the teeth, then tut-tutted and measured below and beneath.  She flicked through thoughts and counted the dreams and found they were perfect without any seams.

“Come in to the arches, “ she said, and led the Star Child to a row of different sized arches.  This was something the child had never seen before, and so he marvelled at the creations that appeared before them.

The first was too narrow and too much too small, the second too squat and not enough tall, the third was far, by far too much trouble and the fourth was just some magnificent rubble.  The fifth was cracked and all tumbling down and the sixth was too much like a worried frown, the seventh was dark as dark can be and the eighth was fuzzy like a bumblebee.  The ninth had a swinging back-and-forth ball, but the tenth had a keystone and was the best of all.

“At last!” said Lucy.  “You fit under an arch.  Now, stand still…  I said: ‘Stand still,’ and we’ll measure you in a bigger way.”

The Star Child stood perfectly still under the arch.  Lucy used all kinds of tools to measure the distance from the Child’s head to the keystone, then between the shoulders and the curve of the arch.  After that, she measured from the Child’s sides to the pillars of the arch.

Staring into her calculations written with the stick in the sandbox, she shook her head and called for Spinner.

“The Star Child is not enough tall. Too small by far.”  Lucy bit her lip.

Spinner looked at the calculations in the sandbox.

“I can spin enough Light, no more and no less, that will be enough to go but not to come back.”  Spinner shook her head woefully, all the silken ethereal threads upon her clothing suddenly looking matted with her dejection.

They called for Weaver who studied the calculations in the sandbox.

“I can weave enough Light, no more and no less, that will be enough to go but not to come back.”  Weaver shook her head and her plaits looked like thick binding ropes that were not at all pleasant because of her demeanour.

They called for Cutter.  Whether Cutter looked in the sandbox or not, nobody could tell.

“I can cut enough Light, no more and no less, that will be enough to go but not to come back.”  Cutter shook her head and an ill wind seemed to follow the movement that momentarily chilled the Star Child to the bone.

Lucy and her three Helpers huddled again, their whispers like rustling paper and wind in the leaves.

At last, when Lucy emerged from the huddle, she was nodding her head, and all three Helpers were nodding their heads too.  The air was decidedly less chilly, and a warm wind seemed to blow gently around them all.

Spinner said, “With my spindle, I will spin the Light, no more and no less, for the Star Child.”

Weaver said, “With my loom. I will weave the Light, no more and no less for the Star Child.”

Cutter said, “With my shears, I will cut the Light, no more and no less, for the Star Child.”

The Star Child wondered about this.  “But you said I will only have enough Light to get to the blue pearl planet.  There will not be enough Light to get back home if you spin just no more and no less.”

Lucy pondered for a moment.  “Hmmm,” she said.  She walked around the Star Child again.  “We must give you the Light anyway, no more and no less.  Then I will consult with the Elders.”

Lucy then commanded the three Helpers to start spinning, weaving, then cutting the Light.

“You are not permitted to see the Light being made, Child, so it is vital for you to sleep, “explained Lucy.

Lucy used her dividers to measure the Star Child’s head, and then with a trowel drew dark veils over the Star Child and the Child curled up and fell asleep.  Lucy carefully laid the Child beneath the arch.

The three Helpers silently worked all day under the three suns and worked quietly all night under the three moons while the Star Child slept.  The Light was spun around the Child, woven within the Child, and at last cut to the exact measurements, no more and no less.  It filled the arch completely.

At the next dawn of the three suns, the Star Child awoke under the arch to the blinding Light of the suns, but there was more than ordinary brightness of day.  A special radiance permeated everything accompanied by a certain happiness that could not be defined readily.  Lucy and the three Helpers had gone, all gone.

The Star Child looked… and looked…  and looked…          

(To be continued)

Note: This is a story as much for the child within the adult as it is for a child. All the children have been sent to Earth but none of them have returned. This child is the last hope to not only fulfill the quest for Love, but to find the others who have forgotten why they are here. The story progresses having a basis in the spiritual and esoteric mysteries and is very much a journey of the soul.

DWINA…