The Blind Shall See

By Paul Arthur Bell

THE BLIND SHALL SEE

This adventure/fantasy is an intellectuals delight concerning a Queen of fairies and her civilization seeking aid from the village of Morbidity that has captured the picture perfect ideal of how to live with one another. The vampire Honoree, and his brood that dwells in caves is tired of feeding on animals, yet must renew every full moon with the town of Morbidity a pact that they will not feed on any villager and drink the dark water of the blood of the sacrifice of a bull to seal the agreement. War looms on the outskirts of the village, that has known only peace, for their God Noram has betrayed them and the spirit of the trees they have relied on has becomes his lover.

Intellectual arguments surface between the fairy queen and the elder sanctified one as to the best way to live a moral life that is not ripe with suffering. Power and ego surface as the dragon weeps tears for his army that they not go into battle against a race of perfect men, and the dragons god Amness pleads that the two armies surrender to one another before going into battle and surprisingly, they do. What is revealed at the surrender is that in just about every little thing they hated one another for, they possessed as well.
The sanctified one reveals to the fairy queen, that only through surrender can a vision be realized, can reality be accurately witnessed, but to do this thing was often quite costly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479706938

Paul Arthur Bell

Andy first discovered his artistic and writing talents in high school. He was attracted to poetry like he was attracted to his first girlfriend. He attended Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana to pursue art and a new experience. Currently, he has found his passion in writing poetry, abstract art in acrylics and he hopes to compete in his first triathlon soon. Andy’s poetry is inspirational and it motivates him and others to achieve and discover their talents. Writing sustains his passion for life and he hopes to inspire a new generation of young writers. Andy draws inspiration from his art which reflects the intersection between music and his perceptions of what it takes to unite the world. The mosaic mixture of colors in his art subscribes to the notion that a fabric of colors can be weaved to create a unified world.

Book preview

The Blind

Shall See

PAUL ARTHUR BELL

Copyright © 2012 by Paul Arthur Bell.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2012915745

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4797-0692-1

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4797-0693-8

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 permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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 any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

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Contents

PROLOGUE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Elena was special. She never let out a scream, but endured the hell of a breech birth. She was having twins. Time was not on her side. Elena dwelled in a village called Morbidity; so named long ago before the coming of dawn when only night ruled. Now the town was beckoning a call true to its name. The world was giving birth to a newness no one alive could understand. Nevertheless, the dead understood. They had waited a long eternity for the change to occur. They wanted to overtake life and dominate the world they had lost.

A virulent storm was brooding about the world. The vampires roamed the night in search of dark water, having grown tired of animal blood, yet still feared the light of day. The screams of wolves in the mountains echoed the fears of the night fairies; they now had no home to call their own. Nejerti, the spirit of the trees hid in a darkened cave, for this night above all other nights, scowled.

Stuart, Elena’s husband was not by her side. He wandered the desperate night, sword in hand, as if to believe it could save her babies. He was not far from the truth.

Faint whispers pierced Lena’s womb. They came from a deathly dark turned to blackened stone. The air choked itself into billowing clouds aflame with fire. The humans of Morbidity, who thrived on darkened water, that protected them from the brood of vampires, dug holes in the dirt, and covered themselves with it. They breathed air through vines cut from foliage that grew about their mud and stone homes.

Elena looked above her bloated belly, and saw only feet, hoping to catch a glimpse of her babies. Precious oxygen denied the twins forced her to breathe harder as she pushed her diaphragm with all her strength to get them out of what was once their creation’s shelter.

The door barred any from entry by a leg of wood latched upon steel. A translucent field of energy surrounded the hallowed place of birth. Hands from this living light worked, to form hands, reaching out to Elena and grab onto the first bit of flesh that appeared from between her legs. Ever so gently, the first baby appeared.

Oh, hurry, Elena, whispered in the midst of a deluge of pain.

The light’s hands worked swiftly to save the firstborn baby.

I see his head, I see his head! Elena cried aloud for the first time since she went into labor twenty-four hours ago.

The light rose and wrote upon the wooden ceiling a name.

Erasmus.

Elena saw and smiled.

A thousand miles away, Zodiac, a black panther rested in the deepest jungle, heard this name blister itself upon his magical brain.

‘Eyes as dark as the sky, eyes full of stars,’ Zodiac reflected.

So it has begun. He said aloud.

He decided to write the name of the firstborn baby upon the twinkling stars. Erasmus name was transfixed in the sky. The stars were at Zodiac’s disposal, a gift he received from his creators. He possessed limited power from the heavens to change the course of events if circumstances allowed.

Elena’s green vivacious eyes wandered around the ceiling. She began to feel faint. Her blond soaked hair stained with perspiration wrapped strands about her soft beautiful shoulders. Her sensuous lips were sore from teeth marks due to her ordeal at giving birth to Erasmus. Now a second baby had to be born, so she pushed again.

The darkened wind shattered the door and penetrated the translucent light forcing it to whine in fear for the second child to be born. The wind grabbed onto the second baby’s feet seeking to make the child its own.

The child’s name is Lodi. He is mine. The darkened daughter of wind said.

The cat, Zodiac, though a long ways off, heard the wind’s chaos in his mind along with the child’s name. Nevertheless, he was helpless to make the stars remember the child. The large cat cried aloud as tears burned his beautifully sculpted face and dropped off his whiskers.

He immediately sprung from the ground and headed for the town of Morbidity. Something was amiss. Vampires followed the wind’s spasms to locate the darkened water and drink of it to inherit life in light.

He is my son! Elena screamed. The wind caught the newborn child in the air and sought to take it from her home. The translucent light’s hands grabbed onto the baby and a war ensued. However much the birth process had weakened Elena, she suddenly found new strength to grab onto her firstborn son, Erasmus and protect him.

Stuart, her husband, sank into a deep deathlike trance. He had forgotten he had two sons, now born to his wife. Death had cast a spell on him. He wandered from river to forest until he came upon a town full of beautiful maidens. They all fell in love with him, and sought to make him their own, a curse not unlike death itself. The town he found, but in truth had found him; known as Aphrodite’s Haven.

The wind greedily took Lodi from Elena’s house as the light’s hands followed, but once outside Elena’s home were no match against the new power born into the old world. Space and time belonged to Elena’s child, Lodi. She watched as her second born son disappeared from her sight. She held Erasmus, her firstborn in her arms, cradling and soothing him, using him to dampen the wound in her heart at having lost her second born child, Lodi to the corrupted wind.

Surrender or die, death is surrender.

Love seen through the eyes of a vampire

I

Stuart courted Elena for two years before they married. He was not a handsome man, but possessed a faithful heart, something everyone in Morbidity admired about him. Elena would gaze into his gray misty eyes and bent nose and weep in her heart at his innocence. His burnished hair fell to his powerful shoulders. He was a woodsman and this made him an elder of the village. He believed his strength came from the earth and when he cut the branches from trees for firewood and for building new homes for the increasing population, he would often smell of the earth. Elena saw in Stuart a comfort she believed she could not find anywhere else. Stuart had a way with the wild beasts of the forest. He would often camp out there and they would come to him unafraid. It was through the gentleness of Stuart that the lion and the elk lay down together with him at night and the eagle would bring acorns to the squirrel for food.

Once a week, like everyone in the village, Elena drank from the well containing dark water to protect her during the night from the vampires that roamed the countryside. Long ago, the humans of Morbidity had made a pact with these undead creatures that drank the blood of a bull sacrificed each night of the full moon. Some of the blood mixed in with one of the wells, called dark water sealed the pact, though the inhabitants of the village drank their main supply of water from the river, stored in wooden barrels behind their homes.

The village had a human population of around three hundred. The people worshipped their imagination of things they did not understand. Their religion bound them together into a common agreement to name their god, NorAm.

NorAm controlled the elements of earth, wind, fire, and water. However, the people held firm that they could control their own destiny through prayer to a higher power than NorAm. They just did not have a name for this deity and rightly, since the dawn of life no one knew how they came to be. Nevertheless, Stuart possessed an independent streak about the faith adopted by the village of Morbidity. He believed in the sweat of his brow and the strength of his back. However, Nejerti, the spirit of the trees blessed Stuart, because he only pruned the branches and never cut a tree down from the forest, unless he saw areas that due to crowding threatened the life of the forest.

Elena saw Stuart as her beloved because he brought peace to her aching heart. She was twenty years of age, a bit old for marriage, and she yearned to give Stuart children.

She possessed a petite frame, and delicate features, that gave off the appearance of appealing vulnerability, she knew Stuart wanted to protect. Indeed, Stuart and Elena’s relationship was something beyond human love. Their love was a blueprint for the goodness of the old world. Many lives lost in brutal hate, found peaceful love through the appealing example of Stuart and Elena and this would kindle many relationships bringing about oneness even the god NorAm envied.

Even the vampires who dwelled in the caves of the mountains above the forest because of Stuart and Elena’s relationship, discovered love was thicker than blood. It was a peaceful time in the old world. It was a time when good balanced out evil.

The inhabitants of Morbidity had awakened to a new day. They dressed in colorful woolen tunics of green and gold strapped with belts made of the same fabric. In addition, they wore brown sandals for their feet. The farmers left with their ploughs and horses to till the ground and plant the wheat for the coming harvest. They felt the warmth of the orange sun filter through the creamy clouds that floated in the sky. The women went to the back of their stone houses and plucked ripe tomatoes, greens, and other vegetables to prepare the food for the mid-afternoon break. The children scampered off to the schoolhouse to learn how to read and write the spoken language. They also studied maps of the stars that influenced the legends of heroes that built the old world into the haven of peace it now was.

The sanctified one wore a white silken robe laced with golden strands. He was a beautiful man, clean-shaven, and wore his silver hair down to his shoulders. His oblong nose crowned his slender face, and his lips tucked pensively in an expression of always giving wisdom, to the peoples of Morbidity. His tasks involved performing various ceremonies such as marriage, the rite of passage for each child growing into adulthood, and read prayers over those who had passed on to become a fixed star in the sky. This morning he walked to the buried dead at the sacred ground to pray. Once there, he would often meditate and through this spot pending trouble that might happen in the village.

The people believed in magic, but the harsh realities of having to survive pushed this faith into the deepest recesses of their mind. They relied on the high council of elders, men, and women the people respected for their wisdom.

Once a week, the people would gather at the sacred grounds and share things that had happened to them. The sanctified one, and the high council, would listen, to ensure that the village was safe from any unclean spirit, which might enter into the inhabitants and disrupt the harmony of Morbidity.

It was on this beautiful morning that Elena had finished preparing a meal for Stuart. She was an only child to the parents who had passed on. He was an only child to his parents who had met a similar fate. Indeed, sometimes at night, Stuart and Elena would gaze into the heavens and wonder, which stars their family, had become. They believed they would not find out until they died as well.

When Stuart arrived from the woods, with his cart of wood meant for the fireplaces of many of the homes, Elena ran to meet him. She stopped dead in her tracks. At first, she ignored the ill feeling she had received from Stuart. He was perspiring heavily and his shoulders slumped as if carrying a heaviness he could not endure. She had never seen him troubled in quite this way before.

Elena, oh Elena, I had trouble sleeping in the woods last night. You are the keeper of dreams. Can you tell me the meaning of this dream? Stuart rasped.

Elena did not know what to say, however she remembered the Stuart of yesterday. She wanted to bring him back to the happiness of desire for her.

The couple gazed longingly in each other’s eyes. Usually she saw an indescribable comfort. So far, nothing stood between them and their love for each other. Stuart took Elena’s hands in his and spoke to her about his troubled dream.

"I heard the roar of a lion I saw anger in his eyes. He approached. The wind stirred. With an extended hand in friendship, he bit it off. The moon disappeared. The beloved forest everyone loves turned deathly black. The birds of the air chirped violently in one last gasp and dropped to the ground, dead. With the forest behind, suddenly the river appeared. There was a naked girl lying upon the bank cradling a sword with a golden hilt. The blade had drawn blood from her thighs. She stood up and offered me the blade. I took the hilt of the sword in my good hand. As I did, a white dove holding a green twig in its mouth fell from the sky. Suddenly on an open field, there appeared twenty thousand knights on black steeds leveling lances straight ahead. Their armor was made of polished steel imprinted with a black rose on the front. I could not see their faces. Their capes colored brilliant red.

On the opposing field of battle, were an uncountable number of beautiful golden haired women charging on their white steeds towards the knights. They wore golden robes embossed with a red rose. They had no armor, but wielded swords with expert skill. Above them, the sky was blood red. A stone castle with a drawbridge of light nestled in the sky. A voiced boomed from the castle the words repeatedly.

You shall not cry, you shall not speak, you shall always cut too deep. The blood shall flow, you shall feel woe, and in your heart your ways shall part.

Stuart finished speaking to Elena and a long silence ensued. A tear appeared from the corner of her eye. She wiped it as it rolled down her cheek. Stuart walked to his cart and began to empty it by tossing wood to the ground. He pulled a sword with a golden hilt from it. Elena was stunned.

How, how did you… where did you get this?

"She was by the path on my way home. She was clothed in dreamy white robes.

She gave it to me."

Who?

I don’t know. She vanished.

He pulled out from his wooden cart the