The Sapphire Song

By Todd Erick Pedersen

The time and the place are universal. Metaxaeus, a youthful yet visionary sculptor, will embark on an odyssey in which he will at last meet face to face with Akasha, a talented storyteller from a distant township. Set in a simple landscape of mountains and rivers, The Sapphire Song is a meditation on the possibilities of love, when seen in the light of the spirit. Underscoring a fidelity to the sacred dimension of life, that so often reveals itself to us in the inmost presence of our dreams, and written with the poignancy of a parable, this timeless story is an evocation of the spiritual power, and the lasting truth, inherent in our quest for an enduring love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452597461

Todd Erick Pedersen

Todd Erick Pedersen is a poet-essayist and novelist whose writing strives to evoke the cross-section between our dreams and the spirit, with a natural sense of wonder and the turning seasons of the Earth. Thus, his poems, his essays, and his stories are an invitation to any reader to explore this timeless terrain for oneself. His home is in the beautiful Bitterroot Valley, in Stevensville, Montana.

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Copyright © 2014 Todd Erick Pedersen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-9745-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-9746-1 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 10/28/2014

CONTENTS

Prelude: The Radiant Dawn

Book I Metaxaeus and Akasha

Book II The Soul of the World

Book III A New Direction

Book IV The Great River

Book V Maya

Book VI The Passionate Earth

Book VII Dream of the Wind

Book VIII The Rains

Book IX Legendary Stone

Book X On Towards the Sea?

Book XI Light and the Body

Book XII Meeting

Book XIII Another Journey

Book XIV Quest

Book XV The Wheel of the Stars

Book XVI Not a Word to Say

Book XVII Riddled Hearts

Book XVIII Spirit of the Earth

Book XIX The Word

Book XX Approaching the End

Book XXI Unraveling the Threads

Book XXII Akasha is Summoned

Book XXIII Metaxaeus is Called

Book XXIV The Remaking

Epilogue: The Sapphire Song

PRELUDE

The Radiant Dawn

T ell me a story . S aid the shining arc of the One, to the last radiant dawn….

Sing me a song. Said then the freedom of the stars, to the cool blue of the Earth….

And, Ask me a riddle. Said finally the white light of the moon, to the ceaselessness of the sea….

Weave in the dream of the world, withal the meaning of love, and the Ever-Quest, for the still small voice in the wind, which is the whispering Spirit of God….

BOOK I

Metaxaeus and Akasha

M etaxaeus at last began to look up. To glance up from his long orison, his lengthy space of meditation while sitting down beside the old well. He looked upwards for the first time that morning and as it were directly into the sun’s uplifting light, its first tilting rays. As though tranquilly meeting its gaze. He then looked away into the changing skies further off in the distance: the mighty sheets of rain just a little ways away. But for now there were only those first rays of morning sunshine, just spilling over the lips of the distant mountains, like a kind of fine wine, to flood the land. There the spreading, emergent rays of daylight tilting over the whole countryside like some bright illumination to be bestowed upon the waiting world. For Metaxaeus, this morning already felt different, different to him from other mornings in which he kept the same routine as today; for this particular morning he felt within himself a strong premonition, causing him to tremble for a moment, that the things which he had grown used to would soon be changing for him, and changing in every way. He was a youth who would swear that he had already learned much, much about the land, the village, the country, and the people whom he had walked amongst ever since the early days of his childhood. But also, and more importantly to him in his heart, he had learned much about a certain natural state of quietude within; indeed, had even heard once from a wise person a specific name given to this particular state of quietude, though he could not now think of what it had been.

So today, as every day, Metaxaeus had spent his morning there, pre-dawn, sitting down beside the well, and proceeding quietly and conscientiously with a sort of peaceful descent into himself, and thus learning from the fountain there. There drinking in his own illumination. Because for Metaxaeus, meditation had, even in the days of his early youth, already become a cultivated way of life.

So what kinds of things had he learned, then, aside from this state of quietude, and at such a young age, from this inward fountain of life?

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Above all he had learned a kind of wakened dreaming, crisp in its always arising, undaunted ceaseless flow. Though also he had learned that beneath the flow lies a perfectly still center, not unlike that of a rose or a lotus: a sleeplessly unfolding and yet still-centered flow, like a river and its source, or an almighty rush that is ever irrupting from the timeless moment. And he had learned that this wakened dreaming had to it a kind of tendency towards the world, a tendency that, he thought, seemed to be to merge with the world around him, to merge in coincidence and a kind of serendipity.

From sitting daily down beside the well, Metaxaeus had learned all this. In the early hours before dawn and sitting silently and conscientiously alone with himself, he had learned at an early age whatever there was that he now realized about life.

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Beginning to grow uncomfortable at the sight of the gathering clouds, the thunderheads forming along the horizon, Metaxaeus at last stood up from his morning orison and began to walk in the direction of his home in the village. Occupying his thoughts as he went was the question of how to fulfill his plan to leave from his village without disappointing his father and mother, as well as the problem of how he was going to find the work that he would need in order to gain a living.

He knew himself to be one who lived in his dreaming; a young man who spent the watch of his afternoons and his evenings, and oft even his midnights, attuned to the dreams continually roiling their way into and through his thoughts, and teeming within his psyche. The one thing he knew that he could do, though, if given the chance, the one doubtless ability that he had in his possession, was to work wonders with stone. For he could see an image, or often even a train of images, in his mind’s eye, and could then take that image and realize its shape faultlessly into a piece of stone.

He knew neither how to read nor write. Nevertheless he thought that if he could find a way to use his handiwork to show to the world, or at least to those nearest and dearest to his heart, the inmost workings of his soul, that then perhaps he might even become famous for his art, the curiously bespoken truth into stone.

Again, this is what he knew how to do: he knew how to take from that fountain within and to soak up its knowledge and then how to communicate this truth through the medium of sculpting stone. But where would he go? Without having had an opportunity to prove himself, how could he convince the master stoneworkers abroad to let him demonstrate his talents to them?

He had with him a hope.

In his pocket he carried a miniature of what had long been his favorite image to sculpt, and which had long been the image that most pressed itself to the fore of his imagination, the elegant combination of two strange yet powerful symbols, each taken separately but then fashioned into one, into a kind of synthesis that for some odd reason had most endured