Hello dear ones,
And welcome to tonight's story.
The healer of the harder steps.
As always,
My love's taking a few moments now.
Just to arrive here,
Fully in this space.
You have nowhere to go and nothing to do.
This is your time to rest.
By the sea.
In a town that smelled of salt,
Fish and old roads.
That left a man called Old Cormack.
Who could mend broken things.
Not furniture.
Not bones.
Not the handles of pots and pans,
Though plenty of people had tried to bring him those over the years,
And he had always sent them on their way with a patient smile.
What Cormac could mend was the sort of broken that has no splinter.
No crack you can see.
He could mend the kind of broken that lives inside a person.
And makes them walk a little more slowly than they used to.
He had discovered this when he was a young man.
Broached over a fisherman who had taken a bad fall and lay very still on the harbour steps.
The doctor was away.
There was no one else.
Cormac had pressed his hands,
Big,
Rough,
Weathered hands,
To the man's chest.
And felt something move inside them.
Are warm.
A covenant.
Like a tide going out and coming back in.
The fisherman had opened his eyes and said,
That's odd.
I don't hurt anymore.
Cormac had stared at his hands for a long time after that.
It was not a man who made much fuss.
He did not tell anyone.
Not in those first years.
He simply found that people came to sit near him.
An old woman with a bad bag.
A child with an aching ear.
A young mother worn ragged by sleepless nights.
And he would put a hand gently on their shoulder.
Or clasp their hand in both of his.
And talk with them quietly about nothing in particular.
The weather,
The fishing.
The way the light fell on the water in the morning.
And when they stood up to leave.
They left lighter than they had arrived.
Word travelled the way it does in harbour towns,
Slowly at first,
Then all at once.
On an evening in late winter.
When the sea was grey and cross,
And the seabirds huddled on the pier.
A woman came to his door.
She was not from the town,
Her clothes were road-dusty,
And her boots were worn at the heels.
She carried a little girl on her back,
Wrapped in a blanket.
The girl's face was as pale as sea foam.
And her eyes were closed.
I was told you could help,
" the woman said.
Her voice was flat with exhaustion.
The kind of voice that has used up all its hope.
And is simply reciting words.
The doctors don't know what it is.
She's been sleeping too long.
Three weeks.
She wakes sometimes and takes a little water and then she goes back under.
They say her body is fine.
They say there's nothing wrong with her,
But she.
.
.
She stopped and swallowed.
She isn't there.
Homak stepped back from the door.
Come in,
He said.
He lit the fire and made tea.
The woman didn't drink it.
And he sat across from her with the girl lying on the settee between them.
He looked at the child for a long time without touching her.
This was part of his gift to the looking.
He could see if he held very still and breathed very slowly.
A kind of light around people.
A one.
In the girl that light was dim.
Not gone,
But dim.
Like an ember that has had too much ash heaped upon it.
Has something frightened her?
He asked,
Before this started.
The mother's face changed.
Something broke open in it.
She pressed her hands over her mouth.
Then she said,
Very quietly,
We lost our home.
There was a flood.
She was standing in it when it happened.
The water coming in under the doors.
She was only four.
I don't think she's found her way back from it.
Cormac nodded once.
He had seen this before,
In a different shape.
The body sometimes outpaces the heart.
Body walks on and the heart stays back at the door with the water coming in.
He moved his chair beside the settee and took the girl's small hand in his.
It did not press or pull.
He simply held it,
The way you might hold a small bird.
And then he began to talk.
He talked about the same.
About how it went away and came back every single time without fail.
How even the stormiest night he had ever known,
And he had known many,
Living all his life on this coast.
Had ended in a mourning cry.
He talked about the light that came up over the water just before dawn.
How it was always a surprise,
Even when you expected it.
He talked about the sound of it.
A deep,
Rhythmic breathing of the Thai.
In and out.
In and out.
It's hand,
It's warm,
It's beautiful.
He could feel the current moving through him the way it always did.
Steady and patient.
Like a river that knows where it is going.
Let it flow into her hands.
Down her arm.
Into the dim ember of her.
Not pushing,
Just offering.
A small rekindling.
The girl's eyelids flutter.
The mother made a sound that was not quite a word.
The girl opened her eyes.
Dark brown eyes,
Like harbor water.
And looked up at the ceiling of Cormac's cottage.
Then she turned her head and looked at him.
And said in a small,
Clear voice,
I heard the sea.
It's just outside,
" said Cormac.
Would you like to see it?
She sat up.
The colour was coming back to her cheeks like the tide.
She looked at her mother and then,
Very slowly,
She smiled.
And let that land.
She wept the way people weep when they have been holding it in for too long.
Cormac made more tea and sat with them both,
And he didn't say anything more.
Because nothing more needed to be said.
He walked them to the harbour in the morning.
The girl between them holding both their hands.
And when the sea came into view,
The child ran toward it with her arms open.
The woman touched Cormac's sleeve without looking at him,
And he nodded.
Because he understood.
He walked home slowly.
His big hands in his pockets.
The calm salt air on his face.
And that night.
As he always did.
Be sat by the fire.
And listen to the sound of the sea.
Breathing in and out.
The oldest and most faithful sound in the world.
The one that had been here before all of us.
And would go on long after.
In & Out Just like that.
Now let the sea carry you.
Feel how steady it is.
And sleep now.
