Chapter Books

Timmy hears things that no one else hears. Is he going crazy or is there something out there? If something is out there why doesn't anyone else hear it?

All work herein is Copyrighted and may not be distributed or published without the prior consent of the author. Copyright 2006, 2007. Kim Bentz. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Chapter Twenty-One

Timmy’s world narrowed and expanded at the same time. It narrowed to the music and the sounds, but the music and the sounds were expanding every day in a myriad of ways. Each day he was aware of new notes, and new singers, though he could not really place them.

There were melodies that seemed to speak of snow and of water, moving slowly beneath thick coats of ice. There was deep resonance that seemed to speak of stars and timeless flame, thrum that was a song of mountains, trills that spoke of the momentary lives of small animals, a joy that was trees, and the new growth of grass, bulbs preparing to flower, and so much more. It was overwhelming and incredibly wonderful. There was joy and sorrow, hope and despair, brokenness and healing, and long, long memories in the music. There were notes so deep he could not play them, and so high he did not know how to score them. It was more than he could know and yet he wondered if the music running through his head didn’t make more sense than anything else he had ever known.

They were very big thoughts for an eleven year old boy, and he quickly quit his wondering, and went back to writing down the music he heard, often changing octaves up or down to write the melodies in tones other people could hear and instruments could play.

After taking care of the chickens one morning he came in and wrote down the notes he heard in the chicken’s clucking and scratching. It was an amusing little tune that made his parents laugh.

School was becoming a bigger and bigger problem for him. The other kids were cruel, but he didn’t care about them anymore. That bothered him a bit, as he could remember enjoying playing with them, and he remembered when school was interesting and fun. He wished that he could go back, but he was surrounded and invaded by sound.

Timmy was aware in a way he had never known before. He was aware of the sun on his face, could feel it’s warmth in each and every pore. The wind whispered secrets in his ears in a language he could not understand but found delightful. Everywhere he went he heard the song of winter and of spring. It was a song of ages, and in the midst of this song he had a hard time listening to the melodies of today, for suddenly the daily conversations, daily chores and school all were just fragments of a huge song and nearly impossible to focus on in the midst of the grand symphony.

His mother could grasp his attention, but it was such work to concentrate on just the sound of her voice, for it wasn’t the effort of listening to her, but the effort of not listening to everything else.

When he was little his mother had been part of a state choir, just one of 300 voices. He remembered sitting about 10 rows from the front in the auditorium at the convention center near the capitol straining to hear his mother in the midst of all those voices. He could see her lips moving, but he never was sure whether he could pick out her voice from all the others. Everything felt like that. He could see people talking and things happening, but unless he concentrated with everything in him he could not pick out their voices. It was madness and it was joy.

1 Comments:

Blogger Beth said...

this is amazing

12:45 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home