Of Weeping Trees and Janitors, part II

As I came a little more to myself, I began to notice that his tea preparatuons were rather unusual, for he seemed to coax his small fire to change temperature with an occasional careless wave of his hand. I recognized the gesture as belonging to the type I had much employed in hiding from my mother the books I frequently sneaked off the library shelves and into my bedroom for nighttme reading.

He saw that I had caught him, and grinned. When I grinned back, curious but unafraid, he snapped his fingers; and the teapot floated away from the fire and over to his small table, where it poured hot steaming tea into two cups as if that were the most normal thing in the world.
I looked up at the janitor. He was watching me with a quizzical expression on his face-- but still that twinkle in the corner of his eye.  I smiled. "How do you DO that?"
He grinned then, plucked the teapot out of midair, and placed it back on its shelf. "Magic," he said.
"Obviously," I returned. "But what kind? Is it teachable?"
He chuckled in mild surprise. "You aren't scared?"
"No. Should I be?"
He laughed out loud at this. "I hope not. But why aren't you?"

I eyed his face closely, and decided I could speak my mind. "You would never hurt anyone. I can see it in your eyes."
He smiled at this and bowed. "Thank you, miss. That is a high compliment." He straightened up and carefully scrutinized a row of bottles on a high shelf. "... Ah. Yes," he said softly, "this one will do. Bleeding souls can be a tricky business." He pulled a bittle of a lovely blue-green hue from the shelf. He paused, looked me carefully in the eyes, gave the bottle an experimental sort of shake, and nodded. I waited for him to speak, but he did not. He uncorked the bottle, and a pleasant aroma filled the room. With it came the sensation of drifting over the sea on a mild breeze. He carefully poured exactly three drops into my teacup, corked the bottle, and replaced it on the shelf with great care.
"What is it?" I asked finally.
He smiled a bit mysteriously. "It will help a little," he said. "Your soul is raw and sore just now. That will take the sting away." He held his hand out, palm down, over my steaming cup. "It's cool enough to drink now," he said. And he picked up his own cup and took a sip.

I sniffed my tea curiously. It had smelled pleasant before he added his bit of magic potion, but it smelled heavenly now. I sipped it carefully. It was not as hot as the steam had made it look; in fact, it was just right. The tightness in my chest began to release, and without thinking about it I sat up straighter in my chair. A few trears of relief at the sudden pleasantness leaked unbidden from my eyes. "I'm sorry," I said, putting down my cup and dabbing at my eyes again. "It's just ... so nice."

"Never apologize for your tears," he said softly. "You cannot heal properly without them."
"Really?" I glanced up at him. He was looking deep into his still-steaming cup, as if he saw worlds untold at the bottom.
He nodded.
We finished our tea in silence.
As I took my last sip, he looked up once more and smiled. "Well, miss ..." He paused, waiting.
"Oh," I said. "I'm (name)."
He smiled. "It was a pleasure to meet you, miss (name). Don't worry; you're going to be fine. But why don't you stop back in for another cup of tea in a few days?"
I nodded. "Thank you very much, Mr. ..."
He grinned. "(name)." He bowed, and I bowed back, feeling much more at peace with the world than perhaps I ever had.

That queer, peaceful feeling lasted long enough for me to find my way home and into bed. That was the first night I ever fell asleep without having to read for several hours first.

{Note: yes, it's rough and redundant in places. Yes, it's unfinished. It's a first draft. And please pardon any typos. This was typed by thumb on a smartphone.}

Of Weeping Trees and Janitors, part I

Here is the only usable bit of "real" writing I got out of NaNoWriMo 2013. Rough draft, unedited:

"No, stop!" I said, trying to wrench my eyes away. "It's too painful!"
"This is what you wanted," he said. "You wanted to know the truth. Have you changed your mind?"
I squirmed, tears beginning to swim in my eyes. "No," I said slowly. "I want to know the truth." The first tears began to fall.
"Good," he said. "Look deeper."

The darkness swam before my blurred vision, and the tears fell faster. I shook with sobs. "Where were you all those nights I prayed to an empty sky? Why were you silent?" The darkness deepened, and eevry breath I took was like a knife in my lungs.

"Child," he said, and his voice was very tender. "I was never in the sky. I was in your heart the whole time."

Through the swirling darkness, a tiny point of light, far away, began to appear.

I gulped deep breaths of air. "Then why couldn't I feel you?" I covered my face in my hands and sobbed again.
"Look closer," he said. "Look deeper."

Another faint point of light joined the first. I scrubbed at my eyes with my fists and looked, still shaking and sniffling. "But why didn't you ANSWER me?" I wailed. "Why did you let it hurt so much?" My eyes overflowed again.

He sighed a deep sigh, as if he were in pain. "Sometimes pain is necessary."

"But WHY? It shouldn't be!"
"No," he said. "It shouldn't." And his voice sounded very old and tired.

The tiny points of light were getting brighter, though the thick darkness around them had not lessened.

"Look deeper," he said again, and his voice was very gentle. "Look carefully."

Every glance was like the new twist of an old knife in my battered soul. But I looked again. My eyes were filled with tears, falling unheeded down my face, and yet the tears no longer seemed to obscure my vision, but to sharpen it. "Never be ashamed of your tears," he whispered, very low, in my ear. "Through your tears you will begin to see the truth."

More tiny lights, distant but clear, had joined the first two. Some vanished if I looked straight at them; but others held steady, and seemed to grow brighter the longer I studied them. "Do you see?" he asked.

"Dimly." I sniffled. "If you were always with me, why did it hurt so much? Why were you silent when I lay awake at night, crying for you?" My tears were pouring still, but I had stopped shaking. With every tear, it seemed the lights grew brighter, though the darkness had not changed in its intensity. It was there still--deep and black, and thick enough to touch. I could taste it on my tongue, like dust. And yet the lights grew slowly, steadily brighter. And others were slowly joining them, appearing through the blackness like ships on the distant horizon.

"I had to let you bear it," he said; and there was a deep sadness hidden in the calmness of his voice. "Otherwise you could never see the truth you sought. Without the pain, you could not become the person you have always been meant to be."

I looked harder, and light upon light appeared out of the blackness, shining brilliantly as the last of my tears gave way to a hysterical little laugh. "But it HURT," I said petulantly.

"Yes," he said. "It had to." He handed me a large handkerchief.
I blew my nose in most unladylike fashion. "Will all the pain ever be worth it?"
"Oh, yes," he said. "You won't see it for a while yet. But it will be, most definitely."

I gazed around at the thousands of lights shining brightly through the blackness. "Where did all these lights come from?"

"They were always there," he said. "But you had to be willing to come through your own great pain to find them."
"But how did I do that?"
"Through tears," he said simply. "Every tear you cry pushes the blackness aside just a little bit more."
"But tears hurt," I said. "How do you know this? Have you ever cried?"
"Ever day," he said quietly. "I feel every pain that you feel, along with everyone else's."
"But how can you bear it?"
There was a smile in his voice: "I see the beauty," he said simply.
"You see all the lights, too?"
He chuckled. "You see only a fraction of them, my love. I, and only I, see every single one."
"And you say it's worth it. Is it truly?"
"Very much so."
"But why?"
"That is something that you will not understand for a long time yet, I'm afraid. Can you manage to believe that it is before you know it?"
"I think so."
"Good child." He patted my arm. "I must send you back now. Don't forget your handkerchief."
"But--"

But I was too late. Everything rushed past me in an instant, and I was standing back in the atrium, beside the black pool and the little silver tree, clutching a very wet and crumpled pocket handkerchief. The water in the black basin rippleds lightly, but I was dry except for the tears still on my face, running down to my chin. I scrubbed at them uselessly with the wet handkerchief, then used my sleeve instead.

Gradually, I became aware of someone standing to the right of me. I glanced up. It was the janitor. But he looked different somehow. I looked again. There was something oddly blurred, or else double, about his edges. He smiled widely at my curious gaze. "All right, miss?" He asked.
"... Yes, I ... I think so," I managed, still trying to figure out what was different about him. He seemed ... brighter somehow.
He nodded at me, still grinning. "Your soul might be a bit sore for a few days, I expect. But it'll mend. It's a good hurt." He cocked his head to one side and searched my face, inquiringly, like a puppy. "Care for a cup of tea?"

I was about to refusec, but I caught myself just in time. "... Yes, thank you."
His grin broadened, and he turned away, beckoning me to follow.

And that was the first of my many teas with the janitor.
{Note: That's totally a throwaway sentence.} Skipping over the parts I haven't figured out yet (What a concept!):  Random bits of conversation with the janitor.

He was a tall, slender man, slightly built, with a slight forward stoop to his shoulders. His skin was pale and unremarkable, and beginning to be lined with age. He had an unruly shock of gray, almost-white hair on top of his long, slender face (think Jed Brophy for height and build), and clear, mild blue eyes. His face bore no trace of a beard, and there was a sort of knowing look in the lines of his face and the twinkle in his eye. I'll make his description more poetic later, of course. He was dressed in gray pants of an indeterminate, yet unremarkable sort of fabric, and a blue shirt--just a smidge on the gray side of blue, and mild, like his eyes. He was easy to forget, unless you happened to talk to him more than to say a passing hello. If you actually conversed with him, you found he was looking into your soul--and that he was not at all surprised about anything he saw there.

The mild twinkle never left his eye, and nothing seemed to perturb him in the slightest. He talked about the deep things of life and of souls in a pleasant, conversational tone that left you feeling that perhaps life was really not so bad after all. He needs a name, of coursed. And I don't haveone for him yet. But he was the first immortal I ever met.

When I first met the janitor, there by the weeping tree, I had no idea he was an immortal. I thought he was just the old man who kept the Gathering Hall clean and in good order. And he was, but in ways that I had never even dreamed of. Sure, he kept the floors clean and the wood polished and the lightstones shining brightly. But he did much more important work than this, as well. For he was the secret custodian of the souls in need who passed through this Hall, souls overlooked by the teachers within, or whom those teachers had failed to properly help. To anyone really in need and ready to be helped, the janitor came; and it is my belief that this one man did more to help troubled souls find safe passage through this life than all the teachers who ever graced that Order's Gathering Hall put together.  So he was not at all surprised to find me, another storm-weary soul, newly shipwrecked in his atrium. He took me in, cheerfully and yet carefully, as a kindhearted soul will rescue a bird with a broken wing; and it is thanks largely to him that I ever found my way in this world at all.

That first afternoon, he led me to his small custodial closet, a small nook just off the right side of the atrium, which I had never noticed before. There he uncovered a chair that looked as if it had been much sat in, and bade me sit down, while he pulled up a hard stool for himself, and bustled around getting us both some tea.  As he was making the tea, he passed me a clean handkerchief, which I immediately and gratefully put to good use.