April — The Feast of Returning to Life
From the moment the Twins arrived, poor Aifa hadn’t experienced a moment’s rest. They were five years old now, constantly moving around and getting into everything, and last, but not least, they never stopped talking. They seemed to have reached that glorious age when everything aroused their curiosity and the Caretakers couldn’t stay abreast their endless lists of whys.
One question they seemed to be obsessed with was that of mortality in general, and their own mortality in particular. They couldn’t understand that they would show up again the next spring, no matter what, they were afraid of what might happen to them during the winter, and they kept pushing Aifa for answers. Aifa, who was a little more than a child herself, didn’t know what to tell them.
It was the week before the feast of Returning to Life, a week usually marked by reflection and restraint, during which the people commemorated those rare occasions over the centuries when the Twins didn’t make it through the entire year. The Twins’ anxiety was heightened by the fact that all through the week, as if they weren’t even there, the people of Cré reenacted the mourning of their past deaths.
was torn. It was one thing to understand the concept that the Twins were both mortal and divine at the same time, and the fact that regardless of what happened to them, they would always return the next spring, and it was a completely different thing to have to explain this concept to their living, breathing persons who were standing right next to her, worried sick about their own mortality. The massive responsibility of having to raise the children of the divine awed and overwhelmed her at the same time. She decided a moment like this called for wiser counsel, so she went to discuss the matter with her grandmother.
“They reached that age, huh?” grandmother replied, not at all surprised.
“Could you explain this to me again, doyenne? How do I reassure them that they will never die?” Aifa asked, a little anxious herself.
“You can’t, my dear. Not at this age, anyway. If I were you I would reassure them that the Caretakers will always be there to keep them from harm. They don’t need a philosophical construct of life and the divine at this age, they need loving parents. I don’t think they even understand their own nature, it’s too early still.”
“Do you think they will?” Aifa asked, hopefully.
“Oh, I don’t think, child. I know. They always do, it is their destiny,” grandmother said. “What you need to do to comfort them is easy, what you need to do to understand the concept yourself, not so much. You think you know the story, but you don’t understand its deeper meaning.”
“Tell me, doyenne.”
“The deeper meaning is that we are not simply remembering events from the Twins’ long existence, we are reliving them, every year, as if they happened again.”
“Why would we want to remember something so painful about them, especially while they are living among us in the best of health and spirits?”
“So we don’t forget, I guess, how important it is to keep them from harm. It is, after all, our most important responsibility.”
“So, this is more of a reminder for us than it is for them,” Aifa said, doubtful.
“Yes and no. Do you remember the story?” Aifa thought she did, but her grandmother told it again, to bring the point across.
“It was very early in the morning, on the eave of the spring equinox, a few months after their disappearance. Everybody had thought they were immortal up to that point, and it didn’t occur to them to keep the Twins from harm. The thought of their passing, up to that point, was inconceivable in principle, and people’s very foundation of faith was shaken. Everything they had believed, everything they had experienced, the certainty they had built their life upon had gone with them. For a few very dark months, there was nothing: no faith in divinity, no reason for goodness, even light itself seemed to have dimmed. The people of Cré were left with nothing, their naked, shaken souls exposed to the unrelenting fury of the sky and the sea. The dirt yielded weeds, and it defied them, cracked and bare, even in the wake of the storms. The very few left believing were shamed and ridiculed, and had to hide their faces from the crowd. ‘This was a sham, a ruse,’ the people said, ‘and all of us were taken for fools, believing a story good enough for young children and proclaiming it as truth.’ You don’t know what it’s like, and I hope you never learn, to have everything that makes you who you are taken away from you, your most cherished beliefs, your very reason for being. Not many people had the strength to withstand the aftermath of such destruction inflicted upon their souls.”
“What happened to them, doyenne?” Aifa asked, feeling the pain of her unnamed ancestors reach her through the centuries.
“They despaired, dear. The one thing that the Twins kept reminding them not to do. They despaired.”
Aifa looked at her with large curious eyes, eagerly awaiting for the happy ending of this anguish inducing story.
“As I said, it was very early in the morning, a week or so after the spring equinox, the following year. The last best hope that the Twins would somehow reappear once spring rolled in was crushed to dust, and even the most ardent believers decided to abandon their unreasonable expectations and stop waiting for them ever to return. One of the Twins’ best friends, who wasn’t much older than you are now, couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that she was never going to see them again, and her soul was so filled with grief that she sneaked out of her home in the middle of the night, braving a terrible snow storm, the kind of which never happened since and will never happen again, if you take your responsibility seriously.” Grandmother didn’t want to waste a perfectly good opportunity to impress on Aifa how important it was to give her full attention to her duties. “She ran all the way to the Hearth, convinced that they were there. The Great Hall of the Hearth was dark and abandoned, the garden had been left fallow, the water in the pool was muddy and stale. The girl didn’t want to believe that the feeling which nudged her out of her warm bed in the middle of the night wasn’t real, so she started calling out their names, over and over, through the menacing snow storm, resolved to not leave that spot until they were returned to her.”
Grandmother looked at Aifa to make sure the girl was still paying attention, and then continued.
“A miracle happened then. The snow lifted, and the flakes became fewer and fewer, until there were only two of them left, two snowflakes which fell very gently on the muddy, frozen pond, and their touch melted the ice in an instant and turned the water clear as glass.”
“That’s why we’re waiting for the last two snowflakes in spring?”
“That’s right. So, as soon as the snowflakes melted in the water of the pond, she heard giggles and running around in the Great Hall, and somebody must have lit up the candles, because the room was filled with light. They were right there, Ama and Jal, looking not too much different from the way she remembered them. She ran to them, so grateful for the miracle of their return, but they didn’t recognize her. They couldn’t remember anything at all, as if they’d been reborn in that very moment. The girl didn’t care. She was so happy to see her friends, alive and well and full of vigor, that she decided she didn’t want to spend any time away from them, and moved to the Great Hall, as to never miss another moment of their presence.”
“She was the first Caretaker, wasn’t she?”
“Yes, dear. That is right. The very beginning of our order.”
“Did she stay there her whole life?”
“Well, yes and no. After a few years of watching them move in and out of her life every spring and fall she decided to have some life outside of the Hearth, so she married, and had children, but she never forsook the promise she made, to always be there and take care of the Twins. Her children inherited this duty, and their children too, when their time came.”
“Did the disasters end?” Aifa remembered to ask, to get the complete story.
“They disappeared without a trace, the second the Twins returned, as if the world had been restored.”
Aifa’s stomach was already churning up in knots, not knowing whether she should agonize over the death of the immortal ones and the despair that ensued, or rejoice in their miraculous return from the dead, to be among the people of Cré until the end of time.
“Now, I told you this story, which you know so well, because you listen to the words, but you don’t let their meaning sink into your soul, to that place where you can feel their joy and pain. When you hear it like this you are a living witness of those events through time. Are you following me?”
Aifa nodded, not too convinced, not knowing what to do with this story.
“So, you are saying that they showed up late that year?”
“I am saying they wouldn’t have shown up at all if that girl’s faith didn’t bring them back. She was absolutely determined to keep calling them until they heard her and returned. It was by her faith that her wish was granted her.” Grandmother glanced in Aifa’s direction and noticed that the latter looked a little frazzled, so she decided to lighten up the atmosphere a little bit. “Come to think of it, she was almost as stubborn as you.”
“What do you think I should tell the Twins, doyenne?” Aifa returned to reality from her historical trip, and to the task that required her immediate attention.
“Definitely not this story! They’ll never sleep again, plagued by anguish and fear!”
“What then?”
“I don’t know. Tell them they are not like us. Tell them that they will never die. Tell them to go to bed already! You’re their mother, if only symbolically. Create some structure and some repetition in their lives, so they can feel safe.”
“But they can die!” Aifa protested the contradiction.
“They can die, but they never will die,” grandmother smiled.
“This doesn’t make any sense!” Aifa protested.
“Welcome to the nature of revealed truth, child. Not everything in the spheres beyond our understanding makes logical sense. In fact, the most important concepts never do. We only get the story as a crutch for our limited understanding, but the story itself is not what the story is really about. We could fill the world several times over with the things we do not understand.”
When Aifa returned to the Hearth, the Great Hall had already been darkened and stripped bare for the somber commemoration. The second their Caretaker showed up Ama and Jal showered her with questions and requests, and held on to the hem of her robe like she was their last hope for survival.
Aifa reassured them, chided them for staying up so late and then persuaded them to finish their dinner, which lay half eaten by the side of their beds, with the promise that when they were done, they would get some dessert. She left the best news for last, after she secured their promise that they will go to sleep, so they can be well rested: that night they were allowed to wake up at midnight and participate in the ceremony.
The Twins were so delighted that something special was going to happen they didn’t question the fact they didn’t really have much choice in the matter, since the Great Hall was going to be so brightly lit at that point that there was no way for them to get any shut eye anyway. They closed their eyes, pretending they were already asleep, and opened them slightly, every now and then, to see if Aifa was still there. She was. She had decided not to go home that night, but instead curl up by the side of their beds, so they wouldn’t be alone if they happened to wake up in the dark.
