Wraith

I come and go unseen, unsuspected, and none may know me. I am not of the sunlit world, yet cannot begin my final Journey to the next. I wander, neither living nor dead. I am alone and dishonored.

I have no Clan and no name, no place beneath the sun, for I failed of my most sacred vow. I broke faith with my life’s companion upon the earth, and for my inadequacy, I have paid a price that is more than my spirit can bear.

Never more will I walk with a beloved human companion upon the good green earth. Nor will I see the Sacred Isle of Avalon, the beginning and ending of my kind. Never again can I journey to that land of endless spring. Now I am only a shadow between the worlds, alone with my grief.

If I had a name at all, it would be “Wraith.” I am a memory, nothing more.

Before my fall, I was of the Folk, and of the Clan of Cat. I owned a proper name, bestowed on me in love by my young human companion. I walked in honor, upon the earth and under the sun, and held my head high in the sight of the Spirit Above. Nine paths of life were decreed for my kind, and I lived them all joyfully. In all that I did, I upheld the honor of my Clan and my kind.

But that was many, many summers ago. Now I am nothing, for when tragedy came to my friend and me, upon the final day of my ninth life-Walk, I was found wanting. I did not avert the danger, could not stop what happened, though I tried with all of my being.

The memory sears me even now, like the fire that destroyed our home and took my friend away from me. All that I loved, all that I lived for perished that day, though I ran to her through the flames and the air that had turned to choking and poisonous smoke. My friend lay there like a stone, and would not wake no matter how I called, no matter how I cried.

She lay in her room like one already dead, as the flames leapt roaring upon us, and I could not wake her. I had sworn to stand between her and whatever harm might come, but I failed. I was found unworthy of her trust.

Then all our world fell down upon us burning, and there was a single moment of terrible impact and intense pain. After that there was nothing, only an empty void that had not even the virtue of darkness. I had failed. My final thought was of unbearable shame.

After an age of merciful nonexistence, I returned after a fashion, to myself. I wished I had not, for there remained only my pain, grief, and shame. Now I had lost even the comfort of oblivion, and wandered in a cold grey mist that had no end. Just another form of silent nothingness. For another long age I drifted.

Some unaccountable time later, I realized that the silence was no longer complete, for I heard a faint voice. Somewhere in the void, a young woman was sobbing. Someone was suffering in an agony that seemed as deep as my own. Was I to be denied even my solitude?

The voice grew louder, terrible soul-wrenching sobs that I was able neither to bear nor to ignore. I began to search through the mist. It seemed that no matter how I wished for the peace of nonexistence, some remnant remained of what I had been.

My kind were not created to ignore the pain of others. In the morning of all things, soon after the Spirit Above breathed out the universe, Cat was made, and set upon the earth beside the first humans.

On that first day, we were given powers that belong to no others. One of these is the ability to comfort our human companions, along with a deep-rooted need to do so.

That need is the essence of what we are, and what we were meant from the very beginning to be. I could no more deny that deep kernel of self than I could ignore the grief of the young woman who was still crying, concealed somewhere in the grey semidarkness.

The mist suddenly parted before me, and I reemerged into the sunlit world. I could see the crying woman, just a short distance away. She had seen perhaps twenty-five summers, and if not for the agony that twisted her features, might have been beautiful.

She knelt upon a manicured lawn, in a broad green field where stone markers stood brooding in long rows. Before her was a smaller stone, and at its foot, flowers were piled to hide the raw, fresh earth beneath. Only her sobbing and the wind over the stones broke the silence.

I needed for her to see me, and so I became for a little while an image of what I had been before. I appeared as a small tabby cat of grey and white. I came to her as I would have to one of my own human companions. I purred and rubbed my cheek against her knee.

So deep was her misery, that it took several minutes for her to notice I was there. I remained patient and purred as loudly as I could; I literally had all the time in the world, if that was what it took to reach her.

When her eyes met mine, I used the second of the powers that were given my kind, the ability to see and know the hearts of others. I reached out and touched her inmost being, and I knew then what had brought the young woman to this place. I saw it within her, and I and knew its like from my own terrible experience.

Her name was Stephanie, and I saw what made her pour out her heart on the ground in such awful pain. It was the child of her own body, who lay beneath the flowers and the raw, tumbled earth: her first and only babe.

Only lately come into the world that turns beneath the sun, her little son now lay cold and still beneath the small grey stone, and his mother had taken the guilt for his passing upon herself.

The young mother felt that she had failed of the only purpose for which she had been put upon the earth. If it had been possible, she would have given her own life for that of the child in the tiny grave, gladly taken his place there.

If I could have used the language of humans, I would have begged her, “Please, don’t torment yourself so! To part the Veil and journey onward is a part of every life, as even the brightest dawn must come at last to dusk.

“The time for you to join him there has not yet come. Not yet. You must turn your face back toward the sun. You must turn again to life. It is your path to live both for yourself, and for your child who has journeyed untimely.”

But of course, Stephanie could not hear me, so I persevered until she finally took me up in her arms and buried her wet face in my fur. I took as much of her pain into myself as I could bear, after the way of my kind. It was who I was, and what I had been made to do.

As I had intended, she took comfort from my presence, my warmth and purring, and so gained a measure of peace. It was only a small bit of support, but if she had the will, she might build upon it. I sent upward my fervent wish that the Spirit Above provide her with everything I could not.

If only I could have given more! If it had been possible, I would have accompanied the bereft and desolate young mother back to her home and become a part of her life. But that could not be.

Nine lives has the Spirit Above given to my Clan and my kind, nine paths to walk beneath the sun. There can be no less, and neither can there be any more. The part of me that had belonged in the sunlit world was used up. It was gone forever.

For a few moments of time, I had forgotten what I was. For a little while I had been a real cat, with a real purpose to justify my existence. I had forgotten my failure.

I was Wraith. I was nothing. There was no more I could do, and the grey nothingness of the mist closed about me again, though it did not seem quite as thick or cold as before. I wished the young woman every happiness in the world. The Spirit Above never intended tragedy to come to such a person. I would always remember her, but I knew I would not see her again.

More ages passed for me, during which I saw no one, heard nothing, and fervently wished that I could have felt nothing. That wish was not fulfilled, and nor could I shrug off the remnant of awareness, which was all that was left of the me that had been. It was a terrible dream from which I could not wake. I could neither die nor return to life. I could not escape from my guilt.

After a long while, when time itself seemed to slow and congeal, I gradually became aware of another presence in the mist. I heard a voice, just as it had been with the young mother. This time I felt the pain of a child, far away. I reached out, a reflex born of many lifetimes spent in the company of children. I found the small one and touched him there, in the void.

I touched fear. Fear that clawed at the small consciousness and refused to let him go. Pain that made his life a torment. The cries of that lonely child shattered me, and once again I could not ignore them, could not simply drift away once more into the silence.

I willed all that was left of my being toward that consciousness. I felt myself begin to move. The mist blew away again, as it had in the cemetery of the grieving mother. Once more I entered the world that turns beneath the sun. Once again I witnessed a scene that was never intended to be.

I saw a stark white room, a narrow bed, and a small boy of perhaps six summers, someone whose face was almost as pale as the pillow on which he rested. He was as bald as an old, tired man, and seemed almost bloodless.

Wires and tubes ran from his body to whirring machines by his bed. Dark bruises blotched his thin arms where needles had been stuck into his flesh. The scent of harsh chemicals was everywhere. A woman dressed in white bent over the little boy, attempting to calm him.

Oh, no. I had seen the like of this before, and my heart froze within me. It was the wasting sickness that consumes from within. There could be but one end to what I saw, and I shrunk from it. This child would not see another summer. I had to get away from here. I could not bear to feel another child die. No!

I don’t know what stopped me from fleeing back into the mist. It wasn’t honor, for I had none. Not anymore. I was Wraith; I was nothing, and had no honor left to defend. Yet I could not, would not run away. I had not been created with the ability to do such a thing. There is a time for fear, but there is also a time to pass beyond it, to put away self, and act for another.

Instead of fleeing, I did as I had done in the cemetery. I became an image of what I once had been, in my lost days upon the earth. I appeared as a small, grey and white cat on the floor, standing by the foot of the bed. As soon as the white-clad nurse turned toward the door, I hopped up beside him. I called softly to get his attention. I rubbed against him and purred as loudly as I could, as I had done with the young mother.

The nurse heard me and looked over her shoulder, just in time to see the little boy take me in his arms to hug me. “Did the therapy animals come this morning?” she asked someone in the hallway outside. “I must have forgotten. Well, it’s a good thing. Jimmie needs the company badly, today.”

I stayed with Jimmy until it was time for families to be admitted to his room and those of the other patients nearby. I gathered all the power my kind to be of comfort to others, pouring all the love and support I could find into him. I took all I could of his pain into myself, hoping to grant him some small peace. It was not enough, but it was all I had to give.

Then, when voices in the hallway told me his mother and father had come, I departed once more into the mist. It was not nearly as clammy and cold as it had been before. It was thinner, shredded apart in places. Through the rents in its grey curtain, I could glimpse bits of the world through which I drifted.

That raised my spirits a bit, but I could not stop thinking of the dying child I had just left, in his cold white room. He needed so much more than I was able to provide. It was all so futile. I was still powerless to fully reenter the world I had left behind, and yet unable to part the Veil and journey to the next.

My world darkened once more. I was still only Wraith, alone with the guilt of my utter failure, and the tragedy I had allowed to happen on the final day of my final life. I was still nothing.

Time passed, if it could be called time in the place where I drifted. Through the gaps in the mist, I could see the true, sunlit earth in patches now. I could see the people whose world it was, going about their daily lives. Some of them were in pain. Some of them had tragedy in their lives too. It wasn’t right. They couldn’t be ignored. I chose one and went to her.

It happened again, and then again. In vignettes that came with increasing frequency, I did for others as I had done for the young mother in the cemetery, and for the child in the cold white hospital room. I helped where and in such measure as I could. Even if I could not completely erase their pain, to try was still, at least in some small part, who and what I was.

There was a schoolgirl whose whole world seemed to be hopeless. Her inner being was lost in darkness, full of pain, and so empty that she contemplated taking her own life. I had seen that mood before, in humans of her age. I knew how deadly dangerous it could be. Something must quickly be done to break it if she was to survive at all.

I came to the girl in her dreams for three nights, comforting her as best I could. In those dreams we walked together in sundrenched meadows full of flowers, and there was no darkness anywhere.

As I had done for the others, I took as much of her pain into myself as I could bear. On the morning after the third night, she asked her father if she might have a cat or kitten of her own. When the relieved father saw her smiling, he answered that they would go and find one for her this very day, this very moment.

I departed back into the mist. It still clung to me, but with less power than before. It was becoming easier to find the human beings to which I needed to go.

Warming in the sunlight that came to me now, I began to actively search for more of them. I found endless small knots of pain that my meager powers could loosen, if not completely untie.

I could see the earth that turns beneath the sun very clearly now, but it was full of misery. There were shadows everywhere, darkness where it had no business existing. This was not what the Spirit Above had intended when he made the world beneath the sun.

There was a boy whose puppy had been run over by a car. His parents blamed him for allowing it to happen and said that if he would not care for his pets, then he couldn’t have another.

There was a woman whose husband had come home from one of humanity’s endless wars with only metal rods where his legs had been.

There was a dedicated leader, who found himself powerless to avert the violence and chaos that were destroying the nation that had elected him.

There was a little girl, whose mother said thoughtless, hateful things to her, all unknowing of the pain they brought.

They were numberless, a legion of hurting souls in a world the Spirit Above had created to know no suffering at all. But I was Wraith The Comforter, able to come and go unseen. I could come to any of them I saw, and I saw them all, for the mist was gone.

I went from one to the other as a bee goes from bloom to bloom on a summer day. There was literally no end to them, but if it took forever, that was fine. I had forever. Time meant nothing to me.

I found that the more of myself I gave to others, the more there was to give, and the agony of my own grief began to dim. It never did disappear completely, for that would have required that I forget my beloved human friend, with whom I’d shared my ninth and final life. That I would never do.

I was still Wraith, but now my existence had purpose again. What I was now remained a mystery to me, but I wasn’t exactly nothing, not anymore. Neither was I flesh, but something in between. As I left my latest human with what peace I could, I felt something closer to hope than I’d had for a very long time.

Without warning, a wave of sound blasted over me. It was like the worst thunderstorm that had ever been, unbroken, with no pauses, no relief between its jagged bolts. Inconceivably, it grew even worse, each new explosion knocking me from my feet. I cried out in fear and tried to flee, but I couldn’t seem to move.

The sky was darkened, the sun hiding itself behind clouds that held no rain, only bitter, stinking smoke. Vivid flashes of fire illuminated a nightmare earth, rent apart by smoking craters and long, zig-zagging scars. Tangled wire that had cruel metal claws writhed and twisted across a blackened land where no green thing grew. I was nearly mad with fear, but there was no refuge anywhere.

I saw in the flashes that the scars were trenches full of human beings, thousands of young boys, and all their faces were twisted with fear! The storm rolled over them, engulfing them, and some of them wept, while others screamed, as the shattering blasts found their hiding places.

Shards of metal shrieked like evil wasps among them and tore their flesh, and their blood soaked the earth until it could hold no more. Its iron stink rose up and mixed with that of the smoke, as the storm went on and on.

I caught another scent in the flame-shot darkness, and that was the smell of death: sickly sweet and overpowering. It mingled with that of the blood and smoke, and drifted among the humans in their trenches, lingering in the craters as the demon-storm thundered on. I screamed with the dying humans, and clawed at the earth, begging it to hide me. This was no place for a cat, or a boy, or any other living thing!

Then the terrible explosions dwindled away, and finally ceased altogether. For the space of a few moments, the only sound was that of crying humans, those whose bodies had been mangled and ruined beyond any healing.

The quiet lasted for scarcely a breath. It was only a cruel trick, after all. Then all the countless thousands of boys leaped from their trenches and ran across the smoldering ground. Other thousands from other trenches rose to meet them, all of them maddened by the storm, all of them shrieking their hate and fear.

They crashed together in the center of the nightmare land and threw themselves upon one another like rabid creatures. They fought to the death with weapons that spat fire, and then with knives, and finally even their hands and feet. Other weapons that made a sound like tearing canvas slew among them like a reaper’s scythe.

When humanity could bear no more, all the humans who yet lived and could move upon their legs ran back toward their own trenches. Many of their number were left behind on the killing ground. Most lay mangled and dead, but some begged for help that would never come. Some of the anguished cries weakened and ceased within a short time, but others screamed on into the growing dusk.

Night came at last, and mercifully hid the living and the dead alike. Its darkness also fell on those who would shortly meet death, alone and far from anyone who might have comforted them. Their cries went on and on, until their living comrades in the trenches, out of death’s reach for the moment, begged them to stop.

Their voices tortured me. The only surcease I had ever found from the agony of my own grief and failure had come from the answering of such voices, from the giving of myself to others who suffered their own torments. That was who I was. That was all I was.

What good is a cat with no companion, no one to whom he can give his love? No good at all, for he owns no other purpose, upon the earth and under the sun. It is his reason for existing at all. Some of the living creatures the Spirit Above set upon his good green earth are simply made that way.

I was Wraith, and I always would be, now. But I was not nothing. Never again would I be nothing at all. I was not powerless.

I did as I had learned to do. I became, for a little while, an image of what I had been in the sunlit world. I appeared as a small, grey and white tabby cat amid the horror of the battlefield.

There were hundreds of voices, but only one Wraith. How could I choose among them? It was one more unfairness against the greatest unfairness of all: death. I ran among the craters and through the drifting smoke. I skirted the fitful flames where there was anything left to burn, and I began with the first injured human being I encountered.

His name was Tommy Sutton, and his home was a village of small brick houses, in a green land called Grahamshire. In one of them, nineteen summers ago, Tommy had come into the world.

He would never see his twentieth, I quickly saw. What had happened to his young body was beyond all healing. This terrible night would be the last Tommy Sutton ever knew. Even as I approached, the world of the living was already losing its hold on him, but there was still enough left for me to reach out and touch.

I did so then and there, and I knew the human being he had been. All his life’s experiences were played out before me, enacted like some drama upon a stage. I experienced what it had been like to be the boy whose time upon the earth was ending, here in this ghastly place.

I began to take his pain and fear into myself as I crouched beside him. As the dying often do, he called for his mother. Her name was Elizabeth, and I saw her clearly in her blue cotton dress and apron, sweeping her kitchen in the quiet afternoon. I saw her too, as she held the infant Tommy in her arms upon his christening day, in the old village church.

I watched Tommy’s father with his pipe and cap, as he drove the village milk wagon from house to house, and I saw the gentle honesty within him. I saw Tommy’s younger sisters too, and I knew the love that had bound them all.

This family would look for him every day when all the madness was done. They would watch the returning soldiers who stepped down from the train, and search among their faces. They would wait, but I knew they would not see Tommy again. The life he had known with them was ending before me.

This night was all he would ever have, and I was the only living creature he could touch, as I purred and rubbed my fur against his face. “Why?” he asked between his shuddering, agonized groans. “Why?” he said again. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

I realized he was now very nearly a part of the realm where I had drifted for so many ages, and so I answered him as I would have one of my own kind. I knew he would hear and comprehend.

“It happens because they force you to hate,” I said. “From your earliest days you are taught to fear things and people who are different, but fear and hate are one and the same. One always turns into the other.”

His eyes fastened on me, on the cat illusion I always showed to human beings when I came to them. His vision seemed to clear a bit as he focused.

“Who are you?” He asked.

“I don’t really know,” I answered truthfully. “I had a name once, when I was a cat, but that was long ago. It’s gone now.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said through teeth clinched against his pain. I saw that he had bitten his lips through, so that blood dripped down his chin. “Just don’t go anywhere, alright? Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t,” I promised him. “I’ll stay right here with you until you make your Journey. This is where I’m supposed to be.”

“I can see it from here, you know.”

“I know you can, Tommy. I can too. I just can’t go there right now.”

“It looks nice, like a summer morning,” he said. “everything green, and bright. Not like this place.”

“It is nice, Tommy. It’s called Avalon. For those like me it’s an island, where we go to rest between our lives. For your people it’s more of a doorway into another place, where the Spirit Above waits for the good of your kind. There’s no more trouble there, and nothing to fear.”

“My legs hurt bad” he said, as another terrible spasm wracked him. I glanced downward. He had no legs below his knees. His trousers ended there in shreds of burned, bloody fabric.

“Don’t look at them. Look at me. Don’t think about it, if you can help it,” I told him, as I took into myself as much of that awful pain as I could bear. Then I took just a little more, thinking of the people who waited in vain for Tommy Sutton, back in the quiet village from whence he came.

“I’ll try,” he said softly. His voice was becoming weaker. He would make his Journey soon, I knew.

“Who did you love the most, Tommy? Back where you started, I mean. Tell me about them.”

“My Mum,” he said faintly. I could barely make out his words, now. “And Rebecca Ann… at my school… she was so…”

His final breath sighed out of him, and the fitful wind caught it up and carried it away. None of the horror of this place could ever trouble Tommy Sutton again. Not anymore, and not ever again.

“Take him,” I whispered to the Spirit Above. “Take him far away from here and care for him.”

There are those who say that because a cat can shed no tears, he doesn’t cry. Among all the untruths that are generally believed about my kind by the unknowing, that one is the worst. We weep secretly, within ourselves, where none may see, but we weep. Oh, how we cry.

I had thought all of the sorrow and grief were gone from me, used up in my age-long journey, but they were not. They were not. As I left that awful battlefield, as its dreadfulness faded from my sight, I knew the truth. I knew that they were only beginning. I cried for Tommy, and I cried for the young mother in the cemetery. I wept for them all.

He who would comfort his brother must take up his suffering. There is no other way. Where there is pain, he must take the entirety of that pain into himself. Where there has been loss, he must know that loss as his own. Where there is guilt, he must bear it himself.

Without the willingness to suffer in another’s place, there can be no real love, and love is the only power that can heal the hurting of this world. Half measures avail nothing, accomplish nothing, are nothing.

I turned in the darkness, and I prepared myself to return to the greater darkness of the battlefield I just left. I was not finished. My task was yet incomplete.

“Wraith!” came whispering, echoing voices from out of the darkness all around me. “Wraith!” I knew the voices. I remembered them from long, long ago. They were the Shades who guard those whose spirits come to rest in sacred Avalon. “Wraith!” they called.

“I am here,” I answered. “I am Wraith.” And the darkness fled from me as if it had never been.

My eyes opened to bright sunlight, and I saw that I was lying amid lush grass, sweet, and green. A brook burbled and sang nearby, and the sun sparkled upon it. Silvery Sprites swam and played just beneath its surface. Solemn Elves walked with wrinkled old Gnomes upon its banks.

“Wraith!” trilled a high tinkling soprano, a voice that seemed bursting with all the joy in the world. “Come home now, Wraith,” she gently called, hovering above me.

“Bravest son of thy Clan and thy kind, awake! Receive the welcome that has always awaited thee in Avalon.”

Avalon! So, I had come home at long last. She who had spoken flitted near to my face, a living jewel of light on glowing butterfly’s wings. It was one of the Fey of the Sacred Isle! No sadness could abide her presence, and darkness fled from her laughter.

“Wraith!” came her lilting, joyful speech once more, “Wraith – for that proud name hast thou taken as thine own – nine paths of life were ordained for thee to walk, in the world that turns beneath the sun. Nine times hast thou lived and brought honor to Clan and to kind. All is complete, all is fulfilled.

“Now, brave one, part the Veil and claim the reward that was set aside for thee on Creation’s Day!” And she laughed as if the whole of the world had been set to rights in her sight, as if all the happiness there ever had been were hers to own and bestow!

“Reward?” I breathed. “Honor? Proud name? What manner of greeting is this? You are much mistaken, joyous Fey of Avalon’s Isle, for I have none of those. I failed of my sacred oath ages ago when my beloved companion died. I have wandered defiled in the Void since then.”

“No,” she answered gently, as one might explain mysteries to the very young. “It is not so, Wraith. Thou wast never defiled. Thou hast in truth wandered the Void, but in honor great, and bright, and high!

“Remember clearly, son of the Clan of Cat. Recall everything. Thou didst run through fire to thy companion, though thine own escape lay open before thee! Thine own life didst thou lay down for her, but the thing could not be done by mortal flesh.

“There is no guilt for thee. The Shades have said it! Thine acts have raised the heads of all the Clan of Cat in pride. Thy young human friend rests in the arms of the Spirit Above who made her. She smiles upon thee!

“Rest here awhile, brave Wraith, and then part the Veil in all honor. Complete thy Journey now. Wonders beyond thy power to dream await thee just beyond!”

I had come home. I could rest now. All the sorrow of my timeless drifting were past. My guilt was gone, as if it had never been. No more would I go from one nexus of pain to another, from one tragedy to the next, from one agonized soul to another.

I would be gathered to my ancestors beyond the Veil, and I would know peace. So said the bright Fey of Avalon. It was over, and I was free. But then…

“I cannot,” I said softly. “I must return to the place where I was found.”

“Verily? Thou wouldst choose that, brave one? To eschew all the just reward thou hast earned, and return whence thou wast taken?”

The Fey rose higher as she spoke, and others of her sisters had joined her, sparkling and hovering about me in the sunlight.

“I must,” I told them, though I could hardly believe I was saying it. “I must go back to the battlefield. There are hundreds left suffering there. Who will go to them if I do not? Who will give them what little peace they may find?

“I am Wraith the Comforter, and the task is mine. I belong to the shattered in spirit and torn of body. One day I will come here again, to claim my place beyond the Veil, but for now I will not abandon them. Send me back, for this is what I choose.”

“Go then,” sang the bright joyous Fey of Avalon. “Go, brave Wraith, Great-Heart of the Clan of Cat. Go with our blessing, and in the sight of the Spirit Above.”

The warm sunlight faded about me, as the darkness of the battlefield returned. The scent of Avalon’s flowers was replaced by drifting, acrid smoke. The cries of the wounded and dying filled the air. There were so many of them, so many!

But I was Wraith. I was here, and I had all the time I needed. I took a deep breath and chose one.

END