The Palace of Red and Violet Clouds (First Person)

I had stumbled across a poem written by a great grand father of unknown greats. It was about his young 6 month old grand daughter who died of spinal meningitis. This poem inspired the following piece.

In the Palace of Violet and Red Clouds

I drift within the shadows of ambiguity. Desires wash the tattered blackness once consuming my soul. I expected staleness, but the final breath was anything but that. My soul has since surrendered all faculties that once beckoned life’s mobius unexpectancies. His hand is blacker than the void to which I’ve succumbed, and without hesitation my palm is set on His. I expect coldness, but Death has been anything but unwelcoming. Cruel warmth envelopes me; I find my feet, and my feet find the ground; delicate ripples extend from my toes. The blackness consuming, but not evil, has taken me: body, mind, and soul.

His realm tastes sweeter than the realm of life, and there is a place for all souls whom He deems worthy. Those unfit for His palace are left behind, rotting six feet under, lies carved sharply into headstones. But what aptitude had me deemed worthy to receive such fine treatment?

Death needs not my voice to understand that doubt consumes my conscience. His hands come to my cheeks, and His lips touch my forehead. Do not fret, Child. He is assuring, but I remain unchanged.

His hand again has mine, and he takes me through his palace of stars and into a place where the room is of violet and red clouds and the heavens shine above absent of imperfection. There is but one thing within this room: a golden basin filled to the brim of liquid silver. We stand before the basin, and I am lost within the reflection of my colorless soul. Dying, it is an indescribable feeling. I remember neither the life I lived nor the feeling of death. My previously lived life does not come in the form of a memory. It is an intuition, like I know that in order for me to have come to this place I must have first lived a life. But I have regrets that I, too, can feel " a pang so aching it prevents me from completely accepting my fate. Desires of then choke my present state, and Death is well aware. He understands my plight, as He understands all plights. I am not the first and I am not the last to come with regret. But Death, he tells me that I should not hold regret for a life barely lived. And toward this I have the greatest confusion, for I remember a life so long lived that I may very well have witnessed the resurrection and the rapture within a single lifetime. I expected death without complexities, without conflictions, that in giving myself to the void I would have resolution.

The ripples of the silver remind me of my imperfections. It reminds me that I was once human " the primary necessity of ascension. Death tells me that I have suffered " that life cannot be lived without it. The ripples echo that of a heart " lub dub, lub dub " and I can recall the first beat within the womb, just as I’m able to recall the last. It echoes still as a faint memory within my astral chest.

What are your regrets, Child? asks Death of me.

My regrets plunder deep within my mind, and I, too, wonder this agonizing itch that bothers me so. I am with regret. I am with trouble. I wonder why life has felt so long lived when Death speaks of it as merely a blink. I can sense my lived past but not remember it, and neither can I remember time before life. My first heart beat, it was powerful; but the final was weak. I ache with sickness.

            Death directs my gaze into the silver, and the pool deepens, extracting faint memories. I am drawn into the mirror. Death is at my side, and we come to a room lit by candlelight in a dark, storm covered evening. Rain pelts the window panes of the second story. Death and I stand bedside with mother-to-be and midwife. Rushing into the room is a young girl and behind her the father. All the things that would happen in this moment do happen but with some struggle, and a child is born. The baby is without words, silent in the dimness of the room. Eventually the child cries, but upon further inspection from the local physician, it is deemed that the child is ill. “She will live maybe a month or two,” says the doctor to the father in privacy.

            The father exhales and is without words. He thanks the physician for his time, pays the man for his services, and escorts him to the door for his leave.

            I understand the scene and know this moment. I remember my first breath; it was the most painful of them all. I remember opening my eyes and looking up at my hazy mother. I remember hearing her voice, but it faded over time.

            The doctor became a regular amongst this family as the weeks continued to pass. And to his surprise the child has survived until her fourth month and they have celebrated this feat. But the mother, once fond of the child, became distant for she knew the child was born ill and for her this meant that every day should have been considered a blessing, which is how friends and family saw it, but she thought it a curse. She fears the coming moments, apprehensive of the ticking clock. The hands of time turn and strike the hour that the child has lost hearing. The condition of the infant worsens.

            I now realize that though life seemed to have stretched across the eons it was but six months my soul had known this vessel. Six months for a child is an eternity, while as an adult it is but a blink.

            Time passes. The mother sits at the crib looking upon the corpse of the child, though she does not yet know the child has crossed the coil. She sees the child plastered pale, dressed in white gown and bonnet. Death assures that life for the mother will go on, and that my death was but a passing moment. I take his hand as I watch, waiting for the moment when they realize the child has passed, waiting for their grievances. But grievance they have not and neither have they remorse. Death, to them, is pictured black and stern without pity, and grim. But upon my witnessing, I question who this child is to them, and whether or not Death " whose hand I still grasp " knows pity.

            They lay the child to rest in a cheep casket, poorly crafted even for those who come from the middle class. The child is lowered into the grave and buried; the mother, the father, young girl, and doctor are the only attendants. The child’s death will become the talk of the town, first entry in the obituary, and written by the father, conveying false grievances. The town will have false pity and give false condolences; and, as death had assured me, life will continue without the child. The family lingers a little while more and leaves. It will be the last time that any one of them stand at this grave, lies etched in stone:

 

MARGARET DAWN DE BAAS

BELOVED AND CHERISHED
GOD BLESS HER SOUL
Birth 21 Apr. 1901

Death 3 Nov. 1901

 

Yes, that was my name … But I am without name now; I am without human form. I wonder why I have not been damned to lie eternally six feet under. I wonder what purpose I am to this universe " the Palace of Death.

            The mother rocks in her chair, knitting a blanket, yarn putrid yellow. The father has returned home that evening, hanging wet coat and hat on the hooks near the front door. He comes to his wife and asks how she is handling the death of the child. And she answers him, conveying the greatest relief that the child has finally passed, relieved that the torment has ended, because they had not the morality to physically end the torment themselves. But if I could, I would say to the wretches that the child had not suffered and had never suffered. Pain, as she has called it, was an aspect of the child’s birth. The reality of pain was excused by the not knowing " that the child was born and died knowing only pain to not be able to perceive it as such. To me, to the nimble body of the child from wince I’ve come, this was the norm. It was not pain but life.

            I have seen enough. Death returns me to His realm. My reflection greets me from within the silver pool; regret lingers still. Death’s inquiry, I hear this again, and I wonder what regrets have I to keep, to bring to the palace. For what doubt have I brought to this sanctum of which I have not worth? I am a soul tainted with regret " regret which comes from a life hardly lived. I should not have this burden. It is not mine to have. Yet I question His inquiry: What regret have I?

            Death, He glides, circling me, waiting for my answer. I have not lived, say I to him. I had not life.

            Is that your answer, Child? says He.

            I stare into the rippling silver pool. I stare into a reflection that is without solid form. Yes, I tell him with the greatest assurance.

Death takes my hand, and I am lead through His palace once more, down long windy corridors twisting and turning and passing tall doors of fine stained glass set in the walls of violet and red clouds. He leads me from his palace into a courtyard deep within a nebula. We step into a garden where black arms of curling branches wrought charred bark, and hanging from these bare, leafless trees, are plump fruits of golden color; the trees encircle a pool. There was nothing in this pool, just pure blackness; so black, in fact, that even the degree of darkness is without tangibility.

            The soul comes to Death, bowing. What have I for you, Your Majesty? asks the soul.

            Death gives the soul my hand and says only this: Return this child to the realm of living. And he leaves us in this room; we linger above the pool of emptiness.

The soul, he warns me of this choice, urging that I stay within the palace. Says he that I will have my own room in which I may construct a world of my own with limits that I may entrust; I, the creator " a gift for one who has known either little or no sin. The soul glorifies Death’s palace and tells me that I should think myself a fool for choosing life over death. But I must argue against his words, for I had neither chosen life nor death. And in this instance I say to him that I want now the choice to live! But, there is a clause, according to this soul: that if I am to dive into the black sea another soul will be reclaimed.

There is balance between the realms of the living and the dead, and this balance must be sustained. I question all souls born on Earth " that the moment my pitiable useless body breathed its first breath, death had taken a soul; the Balance cannot be broken, lest the Cosmos collapse. All laws of this are monitored with the utmost care, governed by Death, and commanded by the Universe. But the Laws of Balance, as the soul continues to explain, have me teetering uncomfortably near the edge of the black pool. Six months to an infant was but a blink in mortal eyes, yet I felt that I had lived from the dawn until the dusk of time. I cannot help but dwell upon this thought. Death but looms ominously over Earth, and for my return He must replace my soul with another. I question my aptitude. I question if Death had wanted to see the child at play, and that the sickness of the child was just a cruel dysfunction of the many factors that disrupt life. I question His pity, fathomed and still yet unfathomed.

All souls have and will cross having regret. But infants who die prematurely before their cognitive awareness reflects the self of their consciousness, and before able to distinguish right and wrong, are brought here to this pool where they must decide whether they wish to stay or leave; or so this is what the soul has told me. I am to not think Death of one with pity, for Death only does as commanded, and the Laws of the Balance grant this choice. My ineffectual aptitude had been my body’s pathetic ability to sustain life feebly six months. I am with regret, for I have not had the chance to know right from wrong, and that my death could have been the doing of another like me " that that child had chosen life and given death unto me. Yet, I desire to live.

The stem of a plump fruit breaks and falls into the blackness. Death, the soul tells me, has taken an old man from the world of the living, and that that fruit will be conceived and a child be born. Once upon a time, I was a fruit hanging from this tree, either too ripe or not ripe enough when my stem was plucked and made the plunge. The stars above gleam as I wonder. I hear their whispers as each flicker flashes and another second of time on Earth passes, like I am being guided by the wisest of all souls, like I would be a fool for not choosing to live the life unlived. And now, I am no longer the fruit; I am the bared seed, life guaranteed.

There is lift beneath my astral form, and I let go of the soul’s hand, falling, returning to the void. The palace fades. I glide. Regret lifts from my spirit, as I am at perpetual peace. My astral form finds limbs, absorbing warmth and color, giving meaning to the regret that had tainted me gray. The blackness as I descend is consuming; my mind is fading. The time that has passed is but a minute fraction, yet momentarily perpetual.

In that moment there was let light; and in this moment I am given life.

Author's Note

I am currently working on a second version of this in third person.