Yet More Background
Yet more background for those who may be interested.
This is an excerpt from Part II, Chapter Eight of the original Seraphim Applorant, not Declan’s retelling. Part II is told from Sylvie’s perspective, and this bit is the scene where Etienne explains Xavier’s feelings for her. Sylvie is eighteen at the time, nearly nineteen, and Kincaid Blair has just come to her family home for the first time. So, I suppose it goes right along with the last
stagesoflove drabble. In fact, what occurs in the drabble happens immediately after this scene.
Papa shut the door behind us for privacy, and I found myself facing The Healer again when he turned around. Oh, this really wasn’t going to be pleasant.
“Would you like a drink, Papa?” I’d been fixing his scotches since I was eight years old, and I knew that my offer now would recall him, if anything could, from the brink on which he stood. He smiled at me, again with that taste of sadness around the edges, and nodded.
“Sure, love.”
I was encouraged by his tone and went immediately to the sideboard. I poured the amber liquid into a glass first and then added a couple cubes of ice from the bucket my mum kept perpetually stocked in here. Finally, just a dash of soda water and I was ready to hand him the glass. He took it from me, sipped, and then sat in his favourite chair with a sigh. As he relaxed against the well-worn leather, I remembered other occasions when he’d sat there, times when I was a small child and I would sit with him for a story or just the closeness. He had always seemed to need that, the closeness. I didn’t know it then but had come to suspect as I grew up that the reason was the night-time healing. I lived with the threat of war, but The Healer lived with raw human need. For how long had my mum and I been his source of renewal? It didn’t matter really; what did matter was we performed that minor miracle for him whenever he needed it. He looked like he needed it now.
“What is it, Papa?” I repeated my earlier question, and he seemed to bring himself back to the present from whatever abyss he’d been staring into.
“What did you notice when you were embracing Xavier a few minutes ago?” he asked me quietly.
The gentle collision of spirit and power, that’s what I noticed.
I didn’t voice this thought, but I narrowed my eyes at him and looked closely for the hidden meaning behind his words. I found nothing in his eyes to suggest he trying to hold anything back and, so, I answered with a certain measure of the truth and not a little caution.
“A bump,” I said, “nothing more.”
“A bump?” He looked confused at my choice of words, and I fumbled in my explanation, in trying to make it clearer for him.
“A bump,” I repeated. “You know what I mean, Papa. When you came that day to rescue me from Don…” Oh, how I hated to bring that up! We’d never spoken of it in the time that had passed since that awful day, but I knew this was the only way to make him understand what I meant. I tried to pick up where my words had drifted away, but it was painful. He knew that and smiled at me encouragingly.
“Go on, sweetheart. It’s all right to talk about it, you know.”
“I know. It’s just its hard… well, no matter. When you came to the warehouse that day, could you feel me before you entered the building?”
His eyes had taken on a different look, remembrance and recognition, and he said, “Yes! I remember feeling your power as you blew the windows out of the place. It was like wave after wave of it, never stopping, and it hit me with force each time. Physically, I mean.”
“Exactly. Have you felt it before?”
“With you, certainly, although to a lesser degree than that day. Occasionally, there have been others I’ve felt similarly. Never anything to compare with you, but then there wouldn’t be. What does any of this have to do with Xavier though?”
“Well, I feel what you feel but from the other side. When you feel me, it’s like…” I struggled again and then thought of a useful example, “…like when you knock on a door. What you feel is your hand touching the door, but I am the door. Your hand feels the door, but the door feels your hand. Are you following me?”
He nodded again. “I think so. Clever analogy. Please continue.”
If I had a pound for every time he’d said please continue to me over the years…
“What I felt when I hugged Xavier was similar to that but not quite the same. It was more like someone resting against the door rather than knocking. Does that make sense?”
“I think so…” He was still for a moment, looking into his glass and thinking of my explanation. I could almost see him weighing information against some knowledge of his own. After a lengthy pause, he looked at me again.
“Papa, do you distrust Xavier for some reason? The joke I made about his having a certain witchiness was just that, a joke. I didn’t mean it, of course.” I sat down in Uncle Gavin’s chair, conscious suddenly of my fatigue and the growing idea this might turn out to be a long conference with my father.
“No, Sylvie, I don’t distrust Xavier. If for no other reason than his unfailing professionalism and willingness to be forthcoming over the years, I trust him.”
“Then what is it?” I asked for the third time.
My dad set his glass down on the little round table between us and sighed. When he looked at me, there was again that same sadness in his eyes and around his mouth. “Sylvie, I’d like you to be cautious of Xavier in the future.”
Cautious?
“Cautious, Papa? I don’t understand. You just said you trusted him.”
“I do, darling, but I’m speaking of a different sort of caution.”
“I’m confused. Please just speak plainly. Let me hear what you really mean to say so we can move forward… and possibly get to sleep at some decent hour tonight.”
“Damn it, Sylvie, this is a serious matter, and I’ll thank you to treat it as such!”
In his frustration with me, he stood and began pacing, and I watched his movements with concern. My father never discussed The Healer’s business with me beyond the simple fact of it being his destiny. He didn’t want me to share in that burden, the same as he didn’t want my mum to. Now he was bringing it into the conversation as the focus, and he’d already indicated that the discussion had something to do with Xavier. I knew with absolute certainty I didn’t want to hear any more, but I was trapped within the confines of The Healer’s world now. There was no escape.
“I am responsible for people who are in pain of any kind… love gone poorly, self-hatred, devastation, whatever. This isn’t new knowledge. You’ve known about all of this for the whole of your life. On very rare occasions, I sense the pain in people who are physically present.”
“Like the day in the warehouse… Don’s other witches,” I offered, and he nodded.
“Just so, Sylvie. Just as with those witches. Every now and again, I get just a… vibration, I guess, from someone near to me. I’ll know, for instance, if your mum is especially worried about you or if Gavin has had a particularly disturbing vision. Almost never do I get more than that. For a long time, I’ve had a sense about Xavier.”
“A sense he was unhappy?”
“No, not precisely. In fact, it hasn’t been precise at all. Just a feeling that there was something troubling him somehow.”
“And now?” I felt the dark tunnel of his words looming, but I had no idea what would be on the other side once he’d spoken them.
“Tonight at dinner, there was something very powerful at the table. My supposition is it only became clear to me because all three of them were physically present.” He looked at me and knew my question before I asked it. Such is the way with parents, or at least with very good ones. He smiled a little. “Uncle Gavin, Xavier, and your Kincaid Blair. The three of them form some sort of triad of which I believe they are each unaware.”
“And? What is the nature of the thing, Papa?”
“Love. They each love you but in very different ways.”
His words did not surprise me. I felt very deeply about each of them as well. So, I couldn’t understand my father’s concern. “So?” I asked, and he shook his head at me in frustration.
“Sylvie, please at least attempt to intuit some of what I’m saying to you. It’s not that complicated.”
“Intuit? Papa, you’re not making any sense. So all three of them love me in different ways…” Suddenly, I thought I understood his meaning. “Are you saying that, because of whatever you felt at dinner, you are willing to trust Kincaid? You said he loved me…”
“No, Sylvie, this doesn’t have to do with Kincaid which, if you will recall, I told him in the kitchen. To answer your question, no, I do not yet trust that young man. I sense he loves you, but even love can be denied for duty.”
I threw up my hands and stared at him, now standing in front of my chair. “Then what, Papa? Truly, I have no idea what you have to say and wish you’d just be out with it rather than playing twenty questions with me.”
“Do you? Are you so adult then you can simply bear the truth without any candy coating?” My father was angry, and I finally understood one thing: he wanted this conversation no more than I. He was driven to have it because he sensed some terrible pain with one of our own. Somehow, I knew I was the source of that pain, and… I’d like you to be cautious of Xavier in the future.
“Xavier?” I asked him, and he nodded. “You said Xavier loved me, and I thought nothing of it because you included him with Uncle Gavin. But that isn’t what you meant, is it, Papa?” He shook his head. “Are you saying Xavier…” I couldn’t say the words. For a million different reasons, it was impossible, and yet not.
“What I’m trying to say and making such a muck up about is Xavier is in love with you. I believe your Uncle Gavin knows, and he, too, is pained over the fact.”
“And what has Kincaid to do with it?”
“The feelings you so obviously have for that boy are… difficult for Xavier to witness. Thus, his pain tonight. Gavin’s knowledge only underscored the situation for me. I believe, if Kincaid had not been there, it wouldn’t have been nearly so apparent.”
My father was more than my father, a fact I often forgot when it was convenient for me. He was also The Healer. It was as The Healer he’d sensed Xavier’s pain, and because of it I felt a little more hopeful than I might have otherwise. “Papa, can you help him?” I ventured.
“As The Healer, no, I cannot.”
“But why? Isn’t that what you do?”
“I relieve people of their misery in order to mend their souls. You know this, Sylvie. Xavier may, in fact, be quite miserable right now, but his soul is very much intact. He has no need of me, but he does need your kindness. I want you to remain aware of Xavier and his feelings for you so you don’t unwittingly cause him greater pain than he already bears willingly. In many ways, I consider him to be a friend of ours, of mine, and I shouldn’t like to see him hurt further.”
“What should I do?” I really was out of my depth here. It seemed ludicrous Xavier should feel for me as I felt for Kincaid. The thought was nearly indecent. He was my father’s age or thereabouts. Never had I considered, even in moments of girlhood crushes, Xavier to be an object of romantic desire. Yet, here stood my father saying I was that very thing to Xavier. The knowledge was overwhelming, too much to think about coherently with The Healer staring at me with those expectant eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging and attempting to smile. “Just be aware. I don’t believe there’s more you can do.”
“And when you asked what I’d sensed when I embraced him, you were really talking about his feelings for me, weren’t you?”
“Yes.” He stood beside me then and placed his hand on my head. It was a gesture he’d used often when I was a little girl. When he spoke again, his tone was softer, more like that of the father and less of The Healer. “So, you see, darling, the man is quite truly defenseless. It would take very little to hurt him very deeply.”
I didn’t want to bring pain to Xavier. He was a part of my life, a part I had grown to appreciate and somehow cherish over the years. If it were within my power… but perhaps it was within my power to help him. I would think about that later. Just then, I looked at my father and saw how tired he was. I reached up and took his hand in mine and then kissed it. Another childhood gesture, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“Okay, Papa, I understand. I’ll be gentle and kind, and Xavier need never know you and I have discussed this.”
fin
This is an excerpt from Part II, Chapter Eight of the original Seraphim Applorant, not Declan’s retelling. Part II is told from Sylvie’s perspective, and this bit is the scene where Etienne explains Xavier’s feelings for her. Sylvie is eighteen at the time, nearly nineteen, and Kincaid Blair has just come to her family home for the first time. So, I suppose it goes right along with the last
stagesoflove drabble. In fact, what occurs in the drabble happens immediately after this scene.Papa shut the door behind us for privacy, and I found myself facing The Healer again when he turned around. Oh, this really wasn’t going to be pleasant.
“Would you like a drink, Papa?” I’d been fixing his scotches since I was eight years old, and I knew that my offer now would recall him, if anything could, from the brink on which he stood. He smiled at me, again with that taste of sadness around the edges, and nodded.
“Sure, love.”
I was encouraged by his tone and went immediately to the sideboard. I poured the amber liquid into a glass first and then added a couple cubes of ice from the bucket my mum kept perpetually stocked in here. Finally, just a dash of soda water and I was ready to hand him the glass. He took it from me, sipped, and then sat in his favourite chair with a sigh. As he relaxed against the well-worn leather, I remembered other occasions when he’d sat there, times when I was a small child and I would sit with him for a story or just the closeness. He had always seemed to need that, the closeness. I didn’t know it then but had come to suspect as I grew up that the reason was the night-time healing. I lived with the threat of war, but The Healer lived with raw human need. For how long had my mum and I been his source of renewal? It didn’t matter really; what did matter was we performed that minor miracle for him whenever he needed it. He looked like he needed it now.
“What is it, Papa?” I repeated my earlier question, and he seemed to bring himself back to the present from whatever abyss he’d been staring into.
“What did you notice when you were embracing Xavier a few minutes ago?” he asked me quietly.
The gentle collision of spirit and power, that’s what I noticed.
I didn’t voice this thought, but I narrowed my eyes at him and looked closely for the hidden meaning behind his words. I found nothing in his eyes to suggest he trying to hold anything back and, so, I answered with a certain measure of the truth and not a little caution.
“A bump,” I said, “nothing more.”
“A bump?” He looked confused at my choice of words, and I fumbled in my explanation, in trying to make it clearer for him.
“A bump,” I repeated. “You know what I mean, Papa. When you came that day to rescue me from Don…” Oh, how I hated to bring that up! We’d never spoken of it in the time that had passed since that awful day, but I knew this was the only way to make him understand what I meant. I tried to pick up where my words had drifted away, but it was painful. He knew that and smiled at me encouragingly.
“Go on, sweetheart. It’s all right to talk about it, you know.”
“I know. It’s just its hard… well, no matter. When you came to the warehouse that day, could you feel me before you entered the building?”
His eyes had taken on a different look, remembrance and recognition, and he said, “Yes! I remember feeling your power as you blew the windows out of the place. It was like wave after wave of it, never stopping, and it hit me with force each time. Physically, I mean.”
“Exactly. Have you felt it before?”
“With you, certainly, although to a lesser degree than that day. Occasionally, there have been others I’ve felt similarly. Never anything to compare with you, but then there wouldn’t be. What does any of this have to do with Xavier though?”
“Well, I feel what you feel but from the other side. When you feel me, it’s like…” I struggled again and then thought of a useful example, “…like when you knock on a door. What you feel is your hand touching the door, but I am the door. Your hand feels the door, but the door feels your hand. Are you following me?”
He nodded again. “I think so. Clever analogy. Please continue.”
If I had a pound for every time he’d said please continue to me over the years…
“What I felt when I hugged Xavier was similar to that but not quite the same. It was more like someone resting against the door rather than knocking. Does that make sense?”
“I think so…” He was still for a moment, looking into his glass and thinking of my explanation. I could almost see him weighing information against some knowledge of his own. After a lengthy pause, he looked at me again.
“Papa, do you distrust Xavier for some reason? The joke I made about his having a certain witchiness was just that, a joke. I didn’t mean it, of course.” I sat down in Uncle Gavin’s chair, conscious suddenly of my fatigue and the growing idea this might turn out to be a long conference with my father.
“No, Sylvie, I don’t distrust Xavier. If for no other reason than his unfailing professionalism and willingness to be forthcoming over the years, I trust him.”
“Then what is it?” I asked for the third time.
My dad set his glass down on the little round table between us and sighed. When he looked at me, there was again that same sadness in his eyes and around his mouth. “Sylvie, I’d like you to be cautious of Xavier in the future.”
Cautious?
“Cautious, Papa? I don’t understand. You just said you trusted him.”
“I do, darling, but I’m speaking of a different sort of caution.”
“I’m confused. Please just speak plainly. Let me hear what you really mean to say so we can move forward… and possibly get to sleep at some decent hour tonight.”
“Damn it, Sylvie, this is a serious matter, and I’ll thank you to treat it as such!”
In his frustration with me, he stood and began pacing, and I watched his movements with concern. My father never discussed The Healer’s business with me beyond the simple fact of it being his destiny. He didn’t want me to share in that burden, the same as he didn’t want my mum to. Now he was bringing it into the conversation as the focus, and he’d already indicated that the discussion had something to do with Xavier. I knew with absolute certainty I didn’t want to hear any more, but I was trapped within the confines of The Healer’s world now. There was no escape.
“I am responsible for people who are in pain of any kind… love gone poorly, self-hatred, devastation, whatever. This isn’t new knowledge. You’ve known about all of this for the whole of your life. On very rare occasions, I sense the pain in people who are physically present.”
“Like the day in the warehouse… Don’s other witches,” I offered, and he nodded.
“Just so, Sylvie. Just as with those witches. Every now and again, I get just a… vibration, I guess, from someone near to me. I’ll know, for instance, if your mum is especially worried about you or if Gavin has had a particularly disturbing vision. Almost never do I get more than that. For a long time, I’ve had a sense about Xavier.”
“A sense he was unhappy?”
“No, not precisely. In fact, it hasn’t been precise at all. Just a feeling that there was something troubling him somehow.”
“And now?” I felt the dark tunnel of his words looming, but I had no idea what would be on the other side once he’d spoken them.
“Tonight at dinner, there was something very powerful at the table. My supposition is it only became clear to me because all three of them were physically present.” He looked at me and knew my question before I asked it. Such is the way with parents, or at least with very good ones. He smiled a little. “Uncle Gavin, Xavier, and your Kincaid Blair. The three of them form some sort of triad of which I believe they are each unaware.”
“And? What is the nature of the thing, Papa?”
“Love. They each love you but in very different ways.”
His words did not surprise me. I felt very deeply about each of them as well. So, I couldn’t understand my father’s concern. “So?” I asked, and he shook his head at me in frustration.
“Sylvie, please at least attempt to intuit some of what I’m saying to you. It’s not that complicated.”
“Intuit? Papa, you’re not making any sense. So all three of them love me in different ways…” Suddenly, I thought I understood his meaning. “Are you saying that, because of whatever you felt at dinner, you are willing to trust Kincaid? You said he loved me…”
“No, Sylvie, this doesn’t have to do with Kincaid which, if you will recall, I told him in the kitchen. To answer your question, no, I do not yet trust that young man. I sense he loves you, but even love can be denied for duty.”
I threw up my hands and stared at him, now standing in front of my chair. “Then what, Papa? Truly, I have no idea what you have to say and wish you’d just be out with it rather than playing twenty questions with me.”
“Do you? Are you so adult then you can simply bear the truth without any candy coating?” My father was angry, and I finally understood one thing: he wanted this conversation no more than I. He was driven to have it because he sensed some terrible pain with one of our own. Somehow, I knew I was the source of that pain, and… I’d like you to be cautious of Xavier in the future.
“Xavier?” I asked him, and he nodded. “You said Xavier loved me, and I thought nothing of it because you included him with Uncle Gavin. But that isn’t what you meant, is it, Papa?” He shook his head. “Are you saying Xavier…” I couldn’t say the words. For a million different reasons, it was impossible, and yet not.
“What I’m trying to say and making such a muck up about is Xavier is in love with you. I believe your Uncle Gavin knows, and he, too, is pained over the fact.”
“And what has Kincaid to do with it?”
“The feelings you so obviously have for that boy are… difficult for Xavier to witness. Thus, his pain tonight. Gavin’s knowledge only underscored the situation for me. I believe, if Kincaid had not been there, it wouldn’t have been nearly so apparent.”
My father was more than my father, a fact I often forgot when it was convenient for me. He was also The Healer. It was as The Healer he’d sensed Xavier’s pain, and because of it I felt a little more hopeful than I might have otherwise. “Papa, can you help him?” I ventured.
“As The Healer, no, I cannot.”
“But why? Isn’t that what you do?”
“I relieve people of their misery in order to mend their souls. You know this, Sylvie. Xavier may, in fact, be quite miserable right now, but his soul is very much intact. He has no need of me, but he does need your kindness. I want you to remain aware of Xavier and his feelings for you so you don’t unwittingly cause him greater pain than he already bears willingly. In many ways, I consider him to be a friend of ours, of mine, and I shouldn’t like to see him hurt further.”
“What should I do?” I really was out of my depth here. It seemed ludicrous Xavier should feel for me as I felt for Kincaid. The thought was nearly indecent. He was my father’s age or thereabouts. Never had I considered, even in moments of girlhood crushes, Xavier to be an object of romantic desire. Yet, here stood my father saying I was that very thing to Xavier. The knowledge was overwhelming, too much to think about coherently with The Healer staring at me with those expectant eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging and attempting to smile. “Just be aware. I don’t believe there’s more you can do.”
“And when you asked what I’d sensed when I embraced him, you were really talking about his feelings for me, weren’t you?”
“Yes.” He stood beside me then and placed his hand on my head. It was a gesture he’d used often when I was a little girl. When he spoke again, his tone was softer, more like that of the father and less of The Healer. “So, you see, darling, the man is quite truly defenseless. It would take very little to hurt him very deeply.”
I didn’t want to bring pain to Xavier. He was a part of my life, a part I had grown to appreciate and somehow cherish over the years. If it were within my power… but perhaps it was within my power to help him. I would think about that later. Just then, I looked at my father and saw how tired he was. I reached up and took his hand in mine and then kissed it. Another childhood gesture, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“Okay, Papa, I understand. I’ll be gentle and kind, and Xavier need never know you and I have discussed this.”
fin
