This short narrative is taken from a chapter in my book. It is about one-third of the way into the story.
I have placed it here on the blog for one reason, “I need your feedback.”
While short and in draft form; I feel it gives a sense of what you will see if this writing ever makes it to print. Please take time to comment. Sharing your feelings will aid me in knowing whether or not this is a worthwhile venture. Thank you in advance!
4:32 p.m. That’s when I first noticed that Alice was missing.
We had been touring the grounds of the temple at Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia, for most of the day. The largest temple in the world, during its prime Angkor had been home to an estimated one million people. The fact that it still stands as one of the seven ancient wonders of the world is physical evidence of Cambodia’s regional power from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. Today, the jungle dominates Angkor Wat, not only its exterior grounds but also encroaches on to the structure itself. The tour had been one of the most incredible experiences we had ever had as a family, but right now it was the furthest thing from my mind. My little girl was not to be seen, and we were in a very foreign land with a sometimes dubious reputation.
“Karen!” I whispered nervously. “Where’s Alice?”
“She was over by that piece of statuary just a minute ago, Jim. She was with Lucy and Rick. I’m sure she’s close,” she assured. “Ah, see, here come Lucy and Rick now,” Karen continued as their 17-year-old son came around a corner, his vivacious 14-year-old sister in tow.
“Rick, where’s Alice? Mom said she was with you,” I blurted.
“Nope–must be with Johanna. We just stopped to look at the elephant painting again. Lucy just can’t get over how cute it looks!” he mocked as he smiled at his younger sister.
“Not with me!” Johanna piped up as she stepped out from behind her mother.
“Jim?” Karen said quickly as her mother’s instincts kicked in. Then turning to the children she demanded, “When was the last time any of you saw Alice?”
And that’s when I first felt the magic that was to enter our lives, for although I could hear our three older children stammer in self-defense, a calm unlike anything I had ever felt before enveloped me, not unlike the robes worn by the monks that still inhabited Angkor Wat–comfortable, warm, and just a little mysterious.
Without saying a word, I reached over and took my wife’s hand, motioning with a nod of my head to follow. Though I had no idea where I was going, I knew exactly where we were headed. We were going to find Alice.
We retraced our steps about 30 feet back down the hall whence we had come and turned right, even though we had come from the left. There, chatting with an older man as comfortably as Jesus must have been with the learned men when Joseph and Mary returned to find him at the steps of the Jerusalem Temple was little blonde 7-year-old Alice. Though we had never seen this man before, we both felt immediately that she was in no danger, so we stood back in silence and watched the scene before us.
The older man was not sitting in a lotus position but rather kneeled, which put him eye to eye with our daughter. He extracted something from a hidden pocket in his robes and pressed it into her hands, whispering comfortably as he did so. I could not resist and raised my camera to capture the moment. An unusual feeling of gratitude washed over me as I pressed the button– warm light from the late afternoon sun flooded my subjects through a lower window as my viewfinder revealed an image normally reserved for the front cover of National Geographic. With or without the picture, I will never forget that moment.
The flash alerted the old man that he had visitors. He looked over at Karen and me–and our children, who had caught up to us and had been equally captivated by the scene–and seemed to recognize immediately the situation. A concerned family had come looking for their precious missing one. He smiled warmly at us, and we knew that Alice had been in no danger. Then turning back to Alice, he clasped her little hands in his own, tapped at whatever he had given her, and whispered gently. At that, he rose and shuffled off down the hall.
“Alice, who was that?” Johanna blurted out, now that the magic of the moment had gone with the disappearance of the old man. “What did he give you?”
“And why didn’t you tell us where you were?” chastised the ever-protective Rick.
Alice just gave us that look that all 7-year-old girls seem to know instinctively, the one that says, I knew exactly where I was this whole time! Don’t get all huffy! There was nothing to worry about! Walking up to her mother, she opened up her hand and said, “He gave me this bracelet. Isn’t it pretty?” “Oh my,” Karen commented softly as she reached out to touch it, feeling a deep sense of love overcoming her. “That is beautiful, it is elegant and very remarkable.” The sophistication of the workmanship was rare to anything Karen had ever seen.
I heard a step behind us and turned to see that our tour guide had joined us. “Did you see this older man, Tree? Do you know him?”
“I am sorry, Mr. Callister. I have never seen him before, although he walks as if he is comfortable with these surroundings. If that is the case, it is strange, for I give tours here every day, and yet I have not seen him.”
“His robes–they did not seem to be the same as the robes of other monks we have seen today. Do they mean anything to you?”
“Again I am sorry, Mr. Callister. They were unlike anything worn by our local monks, and yet I must admit that there was something hauntingly familiar about them, as if I should know them by sight and know of their considerable meaning. Very strange, I must say.
“One more thing that you should know, Mr. Callister. I overheard just a bit of what he was whispering to your little one. He was speaking a blessing, the words of which are very ancient and very sacred. Few outside this temple know this blessing. I only came across it last fall as I studied ancient literature at the university. While browsing the archives looking for descriptions of how the temple was built, I found an old but very well preserved text that spoke of an unusual spirit that attended this most famous of all temples, a spirit that connected this world with the world of those who had passed on before. The bracelet that he gave your daughter contains very old symbols that remind one of this blessing and its meaning.”
Though the intellectual gist of what our guide had said went right over Alice’s little blonde head, she understood enough to know that this was a very unusual gift. But then, that was something that she already grasped as soon as the old man had wrapped his worn fingers around her young ones and pressed the bracelet tight against the palm of her right hand. As she looked up into her mother’s deep blue eyes, she smiled, then radiated the afternoon light in her smile. Somehow they both knew, as did I, that she would never be the same after this day.
