My main character was born in Ireland sometime during the second half of the 14th century. His name was Crastor. (Game of Thrones fans will have to separate the name from the repugnant character from whom my subconscious borrowed it.) Crastor was an ordinary peasant who grew up in an ordinary village. He was the second of five children. He was small for his age, with bright green eyes and chestnut hair.
His father was a brusque, unfriendly man capable of substantial cruelty. He always seemed to be disappointed with Crastor, but Crastor did not take it personally. The only thing that seemed to bring his father any joy was taking what he wanted, though the man seemed not to enjoy having what he wanted. There was never any great love between them.
Crastor’s mother was sweet and gentle, though a bit odd. She was not a good listener, and was prone to wander off while you were talking to her. Sometimes she would disappear in the forest for several days. She frequently engaged in animated conversations with people only she could see, and she made predictions that rarely came true. She was widely regarded as the village crackpot, but she did not seem to mind being shunned. Crastor loved her because she was always kind to him. Sometimes she let him into her little world in conspiratorial whispers, showing him how to leave out a dish of milk for the fairies, or telling him the most fantastic bed time stories which she insisted were true. He only wished she would listen to his stories, or take an interest in his world, but she never did.
Crastor’s relatively happy childhood was abruptly snatched away by a plague. The plague tore through his village, killing friends and neighbors left and right over a few short weeks. Many villagers left. His father did not want to leave, and it seemed that news from nearby villages was just as bad. Soon there was no news at all. The local priest, to whom they might have looked for protection and remedies, had been among the first to die. Crastor’s mother had her own protections—flowers she placed in the corners of the house, beads she made the children wear, trinkets she put under their pillows. These were to no avail. Crastor watched in horror as his family was struck with fever, repulsive boils, decaying skin, and finally death. The hardest deaths to watch were those of his mother and baby sister. As they lay dying, he sang to them the songs his mother had sung to him when he was sick. He told his mother not to give up hope, but she was glassy-eyed and distant. When they died, Crastor held close to the two bodies for days, until the stink of their corpses became unbearable.
When he emerged, the village was entirely abandoned. He looked on the familiar houses, the familiar main road, but all was cold and silent as a tomb. For the next few days he hoped to see another living soul, but he did not. The usual flow of visitors and merchants had ceased, so he raided the empty homes for grains and other dry stores. In some of them he found the corpses of strangers and acquaintances, which he stared at with a child’s unrestrained fascination. He lingered in the village for a long time, haunting it like a ghost.
He knew he could not stay in the village forever, and it had become clear that no one was coming to save him. Frightened but resolute, he made ready to leave. He had little worth bringing, only the remaining food and a beaded necklace from his mother. Though still only a child, he felt he must be a man now. With the ruins of his childhood receding behind him, he marched into the unknown, propelled by terror and necessity.
~
This next part really happened. But Crastor did not remember it until many years later. He remembered only very gradually, piecing together the fragments as they threatened to slip from his fingers. Even after he remembered, it was many more years before he finally learned the how and why of it.
Crastor had not gone far down the road from his village before he encountered a stranger. The stranger was clearly not a human. It was a sort of person-sized cloud, a purple mist that hung in the air. Crastor felt a little bit afraid, but then he remembered he was a man now and that emboldened him.
Crastor approached the thing. Its ethereal mass hung suspended in the air, churning in place. The purple cloud was regarding him with curiosity. Crastor did not know how he knew this, but he could sense it in a very subtle way, the way one can sometimes sense a pair of eyes staring at one from behind.
Then came another sensation. The thing was asking him a question, soundlessly. Crastor could not tell what the question was. He stepped closer to it, as if leaning in to hear. The thing drew closer too, until it was wafting up his arms and across his chest. Before he realized what was happening, Crastor was breathing it in. Suddenly he understood more clearly. The thing was not lost, but nevertheless it needed a guide. And it knew that Crastor needed a family.
The thing detached from him and began drifting away from the road. Crastor followed it. He couldn’t just walk away, the thing was too intriguing. He wondered if it was a genie, like in his mother’s stories. He traipsed after it across meadows and eventually into a forest. He was getting tired, but the thing waited for him. It wanted him to follow, he knew.
The stranger led him to a spaceship. It was a large metal cylinder propped up on legs, so that when Crastor stood under it he felt like he was standing under the belly of some giant beast. As he stood below gazing up at it, a door opened and a ramp was extended down to him. He stood at the bottom of the ramp looking up toward the door, but it revealed only darkness. Suddenly he began to feel very afraid. But he couldn’t turn away now, not when he’d come this far. The mist creature approached, and then enveloped him again. Crastor felt himself drawn in, though whether by the creature or by his own curiosity he could not have said.
From the outside, the spaceship looked to be the size of several houses, but inside it seemed much, much larger. There was an enormous central room, with many rooms and corridors coming off of it. Glancing up, Crastor saw that there were upper levels with balconies and more corridors. A pink light suffused everything, the kind of soft light that happens just after sunset, when there are no shadows.
Crastor quickly lost track of the stranger who had found him. The purple substance was all around like a fog, breaking off here and reforming there. It was swirling all throughout the spaceship. As the mist entered his nose and open mouth, Crastor came to understand that the purple people (for so he had decided to name them) were many people and one person. They could move separately or move as one. They could think separately or think as one.
Interacting with this entity upended everything Crastor had ever known or believed. At first he was terrified. He seriously considered that perhaps he had died and gone to heaven, but he did not think heaven came in a spaceship. His old life seemed worlds away from this new reality where absolutely anything was possible.
The more he breathed in the purple mist, the more he felt connected to them. To it. He lost all sense of time. He knew that time was passing but he did not know whether it had been hours or months. At some moments, he even lost his sense of his own body, and felt that he was part of the purple mist. It entered his brain and explored all his memories. Somehow in spite of his fear he sensed that they were friendly and that he was perfectly safe with them. Their presence was tender. He came to trust them completely, more than he had ever trusted anything. He had not realized that he’d carried so many fears around for his whole life until suddenly, now, they all melted away.
The purple people took care of his needs. He slept, he ate. They insisted that he wash himself regularly while on the spaceship. They would have provided clothes if he’d asked, but it didn’t seem necessary, so he usually remained nude. The purple people conjured up anything he needed or wanted. The truth was, though, that he wanted very little when he was with them, because he felt he already had everything he could possibly want.
They told Crastor very little about themselves, but he understood that they were old and wise. He quickly learned to communicate with them. Sometimes it was as simple as “just knowing”, and sometimes they communicated through the mental sharing of symbols, memories, colors or images. They gave him a name that has no pronunciation, but is the image of a crackling fire on a dark, starless night.
Once they had gotten to know Crastor, the purple people wanted to get to know his world. Of course he could not show them much of his old life, but anyway they’d already seen it in his memories. So he showed them around the countryside, the villages and even the big city. They hitched a ride in his body and mind, watching through his eyes. Like excited tourists, the purple people enjoyed learning about the local people and culture. Their excitement was contagious. Crastor’s grief for all his losses softened, and it was replaced with an enthusiasm for life and optimism for the future.
Crastor does not know how long he stayed with the purple people. But finally, the day came when they had to move on. They did not say goodbye, or at least Crastor does not remember any goodbye. They simply left. Later, as Crastor recovered these memories over the years, they were always genuinely happy memories. In them, he glimpsed a serenity he could never really know again, like a sound he could hear only through distant echoes.