I couldn't tell you the exact time it started. I think all
sense of past and present have sort of mingled and merged in my mind. I want to
say that it began with a movie. A story told by projection onto a large while
canvas screen with an orchestra of about thirty beneath it, adding sound to the
mute. I was sitting in the back row – my personal favorite place to sit when
viewing such a spectacle – completely alone and quite at ease with myself. The
day had been full of running around, shopping for items that would either be
appreciated with joy or discarded with dread in a months time. I’d gone to all
the big department stores around the city, making sure I walked the halls and
rooms of each one before deciding on what to buy and where to buy it. Most of
the stores were competing with each other now. If one had a certain price the
other across the street, or a few streets over, would have it for dozens of
dollars cheaper. It was their ploy to get the world to go out and buy more.
They wanted their own Christmas specials to go on and on and laden their own
pockets with as much money as they could. The bonuses they would receive from
the increased sales would go over well with the poor sales people they only
hired for the season. Most of them didn’t work outside of the holidays.
Sometimes the huge paychecks that came from just the two or three months lasted
them well through to the next big sale that was bound to happen when the
lover’s holiday (loosly termed because I still have work and children still
have to suffer through the lectures of their teachers) made it’s way into the
new year. Everything had a season and a place, and somehow the retail and
merchants always found a way to exploit them for all they were worth to get
their sales and merchandise up and out of the store.
But, I digress.
This story is not about the retail market and how it hungers
to make its numbers. Nor is it about those poor sales people who work long
hours and yet still manage to have time to smile and say thank you. No, I will
leave those fanciful tales to the bards of old: Shakespeare (the bare himself),
Dumas and, more to the letter Dickens.
My story is more about what happened when a projection
failed to perform its task of taking away a theater full of hundreds of people
to a different land for a few hours. My story is about the world beneath and
often directly in front of our noses that we often and very realistically
neglect to see.
My story is about Eyowls.
Now, I know what you’re probably (or at the very least most
likely) thinking of me by now.
‘What sort of man goes about talking about things called
Eyowls?’
‘Really, he should leave off the pretend for the little
ones.’
‘A man of his age and position can not afford to believe in
something so fanciful and unrealistic.’
I have to admit, my favorite comment was given by my last
employer. To get to his comment I must first explain something of the man. He
is of old money, a term given to anyone born into a family that has always had
wealth and fortune. He never did anything odd or unordinary. In University he
was a respectable man who never took to drink, drug or the smoke. He stayed very
clean and neat, just like his father, and his father’s father, and so on all
the way back to the twentieth or fiftieth father. Their family was made up of
normal, ordinary men who did things with their money to ensure they stayed part
of the ‘old families’. They married members of other Old Families and never bothered with who they
hired or what happened when one of them was laid off. My old employer was
nearing thirty in years, had a wash of sand blown hair and a neat mustache to
match. He had inherited his mother’s blue eyes, which is quite natural for a
man in his position. The men often inherited the eyes of their mothers and the
statures of their fathers. It was the same for him. He knew he was rich, looked
rich, felt rich and was by the very definition rich.
The day after the extraordinary event with the projection
and my first encounter with the Eyowls I went into work, believing the whole episode
to be nothing by a hazed dream. Unlike those around me in my profession I
gladly took the odd drink now and again. It often helped to get my fingers
fluid enough to perform the work of the day. Journalists seldom made any real
money and I was waiting for an editor to make me more than just a broke
journalist. My boss, a Mr. Ranchet, often told me that I would never go
anywhere in the world as a mere writer. He would often tell me, ‘Journalists
can go almost anywhere they like or choose to go. They don’t need to find an
excuse – there’s always a story happening where they go. They can just pick up
and be gone in less than an hour. But writers? What else can they do except sit
in the pubs and take up space and good ale? I’m not a drinking man myself, but
I can tell you that most chairs in the pubs these days are wasted with writers
who’ve spent all they had and are looking for a free handout.’
What does he know?
He may be a lord and have a fancy house and a title, but I
am much more than a writer now. I am the keeper of some secret world that
children will often dream about. They go to the most fantastic places a person
can imagine and have the most wonderful adventures! The sad thing is, when they
wake they find the grim reality of their lives before them. If they are lucky
they have enough money through which to keep on being fanciful. If they have
some luck their parents will let them continue with the dream until they head
off to school. If luck is even present then it is often quelched by the reality
of the jobs they have to perform to keep their own families above the receding
water line. The final group has no luck, no hope, nothing at all to keep them
from their fantasy. They have nothing to begin with, and then they have their
wonderful adventure. After that happens they will always have that hope, that
sense of something greater than them, of the world. They are the ones that the
rest of the world look upon as fools, the insane and often the homeless.
We live in a sad time when the dreams of the few are often
squished aside for the power hungry of the many. The world races by in front of
them, leaving them to often regret what they’ve dreamed. They become lost in a
world of cynics and strangers. Their eyes are the dull round orbs with a bright
center. They are the ones who long to share a story, but because of the cruelty
of mankind withhold their precious tales until they die and the dust and wind
obtain them forever.
Once again I find myself thinking back to that day at the
theater. I was enjoying a day deserved away from the offices, trying to lose
myself in a fanciful tale only a true liar could appreciate (for are not all
actors and actresses liars? They are some of the best and would put even the
hardiest of spies to shame with the stories and identities they could use!).
When the picture frizzled out I groaned with the masses, and looked around like
the masses. I saw the orchestra members falter in their music. The conductor
paused and turned to look up at the booth above my head. It was still dark in
the theater so there was really nothing that we could see. I finally got up,
excused myself through the line of other patrons, apologizing to the women and
men I was upsetting. I slipped out into the hall, turning away from the garish
light of the gas lamps. They were unusually bright that afternoon and it stung
my eyes something fierce. I found the stairwell up to the projection booth
after a failed attempt at finding one of the workers of the theater. No one
seemed to be on duty to attend to the patrons in the main hall. When I reached
the top of the stairs I was flustered and ready to give my mind to the man who
had neglected the film strip. I had a full argument and disapproving speech
prepared for those who were in charge.
I placed my hand upon the knob and pushed it open.
What I found inside the room was enough to startle me speechless.
There were no men in the room, only three Eyowls.
