Destiny Takes Me by the Hand (standard:romance, 1616 words)
Author: Cyrano	Added: Sep 23 2008	Views/Reads: 3363/2173	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A man meets a boy on the shoreline, and together they start on a journey.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


Such a boy, I recall, such a boy I would have liked as a son. Then, as
if in a dream, we are running hand in hand, headlong to where?  When we 
finally stop my heart is beating up the inside of my chest. I gasp my 
question. 

'Why is there so little time?' 

He doesn't answer, just runs off hell for leather along the shore. When
I catch him we tumble into the sand, boy and man, playing. I pin him 
down. He gasps and as he does so I leap back and shake my head. The boy 
is me! I feel as though a friend has punched me in the face, or my wet 
hands plunged into an electrical socket. 

'What do they call you, boy?'   I ask, still out of breath and wild. 

'Kelly, sir, Kelly Shaw.' 

‘Okay, Kelly Shaw, let's do a bit of walking, I'm an old man, my legs
won't carry me with you so fast.' 

I cannot tell him he is me all those years ago, or that I am him all
these years later. Am I being shown my life, or is the boy playing with 
his destiny? We walk the shore, and that's all there is, the simplest 
thing of us upon that shore, the building of castles and the climbing 
of sand dunes, but mostly it is walking; our arms about each other as 
if we'll never be cut free by knife or lightning. Does he want to know 
his destiny, the kind of man he will make? Does he know, and has he 
known since that first moment that we were in fact not strangers to 
each other? Maybe he knows very well who I am, his spirit grown older, 
and if he does, how well he is dealing with it. A boy meeting his 
destiny and playing with it as though it were his best friend. Has he 
brought me to him knowing I'm dying? God, I bathe in his laughter as he 
bathes in mine. 

‘Is there some grand scheme of things, young Kelly? Have you got a
plan?' Instinctively he seems to know where I'm taking him. 

‘Sure, mister, I'm going to sail right over that edge, do you see that?'
He extends his arm outward, pointing very definitely. ‘That's where I'm 
going.' 

‘What's over that edge, Kelly, what will you find when you fall beneath
the horizon?' 

He stops still for a moment. ‘I guess I'll find out what's on the other
side of the world, right?' 

‘And you have to know that, right? You just have to know. Is that it,
Kelly? And what do you think might be on the other side of the world, 
do you know...or can you imagine?' 

‘I have to imagine... I have to imagine because no-one has ever come
back....that's it you see...that's why I have to go...because no-one 
has ever come back.' 

‘And you think you will?' 

‘No, I guess not, but at least I'll know. There's a lot of sailing to do
just to get to that edge, isn't there, mister?' 

‘Yes, Kelly, a lot of sailing, a lot of storms, but there will be calmer
times as well, days that come down golden, nights of purple velvet when 
your heart cannot take all the beauty in, and stars hang just above 
your head, there are those places to pass on the way to the edge, 
Kelly. You know that, don't you?' 

‘How do you know that, mister, you talk as if you know?' He says,
looking at me intently. 

‘Well, boy, sometimes we get brave enough to sail near the edge without
going over. As you say, no-one who went over ever came back....but one 
did come back, Kelly, He came back to show us that there is no fear 
there, it's all here. Fear, heartache, sadness, and joy, unimaginable 
joy is here, too, but once you've found the courage to venture over 
that edge everything comes right.' 

‘Is that what this guy told you... everything is right once you've
sailed over the edge?' 

‘He didn't just tell me, Kelly. He told all human kind that.' 

I cannot say what whirling feeling possesses me now, standing here on
the shoreline. Just that when the boy walks toward the waves I 
instinctively follow. The music of the wind quiets, and the serenity of 
it all is leaving me. I'm seeing something of the way it all should be. 
 I've been touched and nurtured by the whole of human race, glimpsed 
what lies beyond, and am less fearful, caught up in the whirling, 
celestial tide of humanity, and my life captured in the hand of a small 
boy.  We wade peacefully toward the horizon. 


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