Back from the dead

“Begone!” she shouted, “Begone!” and she used all her power to release herself from the ropes they had tied her up with. Her body had been all relaxed, now it was tensed up, she was calling upon all of her power, upon all of her old power to come back to her. Once she had let it go and ever since she had been tied up there on the table. Chewed at by those daring to come close enough. Cut, by those preferring to use a knife. They wanted her power and they thought it lied in her flesh.

“Begone!” she shouted and light started emanating from her being. Those still with their teeth into her flesh backed off as their gums were suddenly burnt. Those with knives about to cut her yet again got flashes of light into their hands and dropped their knives in pain.

“She is waking up!” they shouted, “How can that be? Didn’t you say she was all gone?” They looked at one another with blame. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Who had done it wrongly? Why was this happening and to them, why to them?”

“Begone,” she said as she sat up again. The ropes had dropped all around her, as if they no longer allowed themselves to bind her. As if they had only done it before because she had let them do that. She looked around at them all, one after another and they felt shame, they felt guilt. They never thought she would wake up again. They thought they had the right to do what they had done to her. There was no such right. She had let them do it, she had surrendered her self and her power for them to learn, for them to become wiser, for them to wake up.

She slid down from the stone table, testing her legs again. She had not stood on them for millennia, but they were as sturdy as ever. She leaned to the side and picked up her staff. Her staff, that she had put there long ago when she voluntarily had laid down on that stone table. How time has flied, she thought. Was it really that long ago? But it had not felt like it had flied. She had felt every cut, every bruise, every bite. She had felt all of it, all their envy, all their hate, all their fear and she had been the victim of it all and everyone who had ever suffered in her name had been that victim and she had felt their pain too.

“Now I know fully what it means to be human,” she said, “now I will never allow this again.”

She looked at them and their fake courage fell to the ground as if they were small children whose mother just had found them doing something naughty. Shame they felt. Why had they chosen that path? They had just wanted to be as strong as she was, to be like her. Why had they harmed her? What had started it? They started to look at each other as if searching for one to blame for it all, but there wasn’t one, but many. Themselves, they were only themselves to blame. It was their own responsibility they saw, in that she saw them again. Again and fully. She looked at them from one to the other and they all fell down onto their knees realising what they had done to her, for their greed and need for more, to everyone ever being a representative of her power. They couldn’t ask for forgiveness. They had done too much. In shame they crumbled on the ground. It was painful, it was dark, it was so much shame.

She stood up and walked to each and every one of them, touching them on their head, on their shoulder and their heart and even though their hearts had grown small and wrinkled and dark that touch ignited a sparkle and they felt that all was forgiven. All the terrible things they had done she forgave. They looked at her, not understanding why. Why would she forgive them? What they had done was unforgivable and yet she had forgiven them, all of it, like it never really happened.

She didn’t speak, she just walked from one to the other, giving them what she held in the heart of her hand. Hope. Hope that they again would be loved, that they already were and hope surrounded shame and hugged it on the inside of them. “I love you,” it whispered to shame and shame looked at hope not understanding how anything could love it, since it was so ugly. “You are not ugly,” hope would say, “you are just the absence of me. Look here,” and hope held up a mirror and standing with her arms around shame, shame would see that it too was beautiful and could sparkle the light of hope. "Come with me now,” hope would say. “I will not abandon you again.”

She nodded now, the one who had stepped down from the stone table, where she had been tied up for so long.

“I will not abandon you again, ever.”

~ ~ ~
First published March 27, 2015.

© Yvonne Rosenlund