The January Novel

By Erica S. Elliott

Sometimes one can almost feel the breath of our eternal souls tethered to our frail humanity... What if one future day, we are all Home, telling tales of our exotic travels and specialized knowledge gained with our fellow pilgrims? What if we come to realize that THIS life was only the expedition? The January Novel is this story telling things in an upside down, inside out sort of way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erica S. Elliott
• Release date: Jan 31, 2019

Erica S. Elliott

Erica Elliott is an artist at heart. She finds great joy in making art with her hands, whether that be with a pen, brush, fingers or a keyboard. She believes that ALL have the divine spark of creation shining inside, therefore she actively supports other Emerging Artists in their endeavors. The author was brought up in a quite unorthodox yet loving household: friendly with Healers and finding purpose through communal connection. This upbringing allowed the author to see people, circumstances and things in unusual ways. Her early memories were first falling in love with words, then drawing and then numbers, all symbols pointing us along the mystical journey of life.

Book preview

Published by ARNICA PRESS

www.ArnicaPress.com

Copyright © 2019 Erica S. Elliott

Cover Art by Erica S. Elliott

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN: 978-1-7336446-1-7

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. An Appointment

2. The Analysis

3. The Guardian

4. Ronda, Spain

5. The Road to the Sea

6. Run for the Hills

7. The Hypnotherapist

8. Janus: Messages to Myself

9. Tuscany, Italy

10. One Year Later

11. Night Terrors

12. A Sidebar

13. The Great Spirit Library

14. The Jungle

15. My Return

16. The Warrior Class

17. Charl as Sani

18. Neck Therapy

19. The Download

20. The Golden Years

21. Coming Home

22. The Other Side

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Keith

Catty corner, we sat for dinner,

the china chinked, the glasses winked,

and before the Sun peaked and tumbled over the edge,

looking for its China, I found you.

Time stood still and held its breath, waiting for us.

We are writing the story of our lives

for the great library in the sky.

Erica

An Appointment

But I talk to you every night while you are sleeping!

But I’m sleeping, so how am I supposed to know that you are talking to me? I retorted.

With a small smile, the faun leaned back against the tree that seemed to wrap her trunk around him, like a comfortable armchair.

Oh, you know, as the faun airily waved his hand about gesturing to a euphemistic audience.

Your being knows. Where do you think you got the idea to come to the park today? the faun asked.

Sputtering, I responded, Why the idea just came to me while I was slee… and I stopped mid-word as I realized what I was saying.

Exactly, said the faun, You were listening to us.

Us? I whispered in a small voice as my world view was changing in a magical way in this surreal experience. A faun, a half-man half-goat was speaking to me as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Yes, this, as the faun gestured down to his own body, "This is just a cloak; a symbol for you to feel more comfortable talking to me.

With a smile of amusement, I answered, Comfortable is not quite how I would describe this.

With a small snort, the faun cocked his head and looked deep into my eyes. As his hypnotic gaze held mine, I saw leaves swirling on a forest floor, wind taking the form of a woman’s body, a golden eagle soaring into the clouds above a distant mountain peak…then with a jolt I was sitting on the park bench in my local neighborhood again, oddly having a coffee klatch with a faun.

I had always believed in the unseen, but in a more abstract way. I never expected to see it with my physical eye. But sometimes I knew it was there all around me, because I could feel it. But seeing it and interacting with the unseen was quite a shock to the physical system! Now I exactly understood how Lucy must have felt in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when she ran into Mr. Tumnus. That story was one of my favorite children’s tales growing up. I so wanted to be Lucy. I yearned to fall sideways into an alternative universe myself and have grand adventures. But alas, it never happened. As I aged I became busy and as the Apostle Paul wrote, I put away those childish wishes, and they grew hazy and gray, until now. Suddenly, in middle age, a faun apparently spoke to me in a dream and called me to the park near my home. Quite rarely had I taken time to go to the park and sit and listen to the birds. But recently I was ill, and sitting in the park is now my big outing for the day.

The faun roused me from my reverie by saying, I say us, because I AM, WE ARE, what you see in me is a symbol of Spirit that empowers this beautiful world where we have the pleasure to live. We are the spirit of the Earth speaking to you.

I carefully looked at the form of the faun in front of me. He had horns growing out of a man’s head, a pointy chin and complimentary beard, a man’s torso and a faun’s legs with shaggy hair and cloven hooves. There was a vibrant power emanating from him, with the smell of livings things, moss, trees, and flowers filling the space around us. A feeling of awe wrapped around me and became my companion that day. A feeling that murmured in meditation in my ear like a perpetual babbling brook, You are protected, you are provided for, you are powerful, you are healthy and everything is in its divine working order.

I pondered the faun’s words, and ironically it seemed easier to believe in the faun’s physical form over the concept that his form was only a symbol. So my spirit agreed with his words, yes it was easier for me to talk with a faun than an aggregation of Earth spirits that powered our planet. That concept was definitely more difficult.

We sat in companionable silence for some time. I must have dozed off, because I startled awake, and found the Sun setting as a backdrop behind the large banyan trees around me. I was alone, and I realized I didn’t even know the faun’s name. Had the faun actually been physically present?

I peered down into my lap at the small notebook that I carried and studied the lines of poetry that I had been playing with before the faun’s surprising arrival.

Inject your laughter into my cold veins

Make me desire to live again…

I catch in the glass your gaze, belying your need.

I reach out to touch you, but like the shifting sands,

Or impelling waters brushing the beds of seaweed,

I futilely grasp for your ephemeral hand.

These lines had changed in meaning now, they seemed so depressing and lonely. Life was not hopeless, and my poetry needed to reflect more of the joy in life. A broken line drifted through my thoughts and I scribbled it down before it meandered away.

…Where we lie, twilight slides into liquid pools.

The courtyard fountain gurgles free, and candles burn reverently.

Oddly, something had shifted inside of me, a healing had begun and it felt like things were right with the world. The new poetic thoughts reflected the love and intensity of my marriage, beautiful pictures that I could never before capture in poetic words.

As I walked home, the plants seemed to vibrate with joy and the colorful hues garnered deeper dimensions. From behind me I felt movement in the air, but before I could react in fear, I felt the brush of a crow’s wings across the crown of my head as it completed its path to the nearest tree branch. The literal brush with nature startled me into stillness for a moment. The crow cocked its head and looked down its beak into my eyes, and with that glance came a sort of peace. I didn’t have a clue what it meant, but it felt like the bird had imparted some important knowledge to me that resonated in my being.

I am healthy, I whispered and for the first time in many years I believed those three words.

The Analysis

I sat in the waiting room for my appointment with my doctor. Recently, I had found out how severe my food allergies