A Hero's Journey
Act II - Celebration of Light
Town of Diablo, in the foothills beneath Mount Diablo.
By the time the father and son returned to Diablo, the town was alive with celebration.
Lanterns illuminated the streets, ribbons of green, blue, and gold hung between the buildings, and music carried through the evening air.
A child had been born.
The boy reached excitedly into his pouch.
“Father! The acorn!”
The father smiled. It seemed the old oak had been right once again.
They followed the music toward the village square, where neighbors gathered around tables filled with food and drink. Children danced among the lanterns, and musicians played beneath an ancient oak.
The evening light reflected through the translucent swords carried by the village guards. Fashioned from a glasslike material, their blades gathered sunlight and glowed softly along their edges. Though beautiful, such weapons required great skill to create and were never quite as strong as they appeared.
Tonight, however, the swords were merely ceremonial.
Near the center of the celebration stood the family of the newborn child.
The boy approached them carefully, holding the acorn in both hands.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I think this belongs to your baby.”
The child's mother looked down at the small brown acorn.
“Where did you find it?”
“It fell from the Oak of Remembrance. Father and I were sitting beneath it.”
She looked toward the father, who nodded.
“It fell at the moment your daughter was born.”
The woman's eyes filled with tears. She accepted the acorn as carefully as if it were something made of the finest glass.
“Then she shall carry it all her life,” she said.
The boy smiled proudly.
“And one day she'll have her own tree.”
“Yes,” the mother replied softly. “One day, many years from now.”
The father watched with quiet satisfaction. The traditions of Diablo reminded its people that every life remained connected to those that had come before.
Soon the boy hurried off to join the other children.
Tomorrow they would begin their journey toward the Silent Healing Valley, but for tonight, the father was content to enjoy the celebration.
Then something caught his eye.
A narrow glimmer of light moved across the far wall of a building.
He turned toward the setting sun.
The angle was wrong.
Another reflection crossed a polished drinking cup, followed by a flash along a nearby window.
Three brief flashes.
A pause.
Then one more.
The father recognized the pattern.
Someone was signaling to him.
He looked toward the edge of town, where a solitary figure waited beyond the lantern light.
The Oracle.
The father started toward him, but by the time he reached the hillside, the boy had disappeared from the celebration.
He found them together beneath a great oak overlooking the town.
“I beat you here!” his son announced proudly.
“So I see. How did you know where to go?”
“I saw the flashing lights.”
“Those were meant for me.”
“I know,” the boy said with a grin. “But I was faster.”
The Oracle smiled.
His robes were plain and weathered, and his long travels had left their mark upon his face. Yet there was nothing tired about his eyes.
“I was beginning to wonder whether you'd forgotten everything your father taught you.”
“Only the things worth forgetting.”
“Then I fear you may have forgotten very little.”
The two men laughed.
The Oracle had been a friend of the family for many years. He had known the grandfather well, sharing his fascination with unusual forms of light and the forgotten knowledge of earlier generations.
His studies had since carried him into subjects few understood. Some townspeople considered him a visionary. Others thought him a fool.
The father had never shared their judgment.
“What brings you here?” he asked.
“Something I have been watching for many years.”
From beneath his cloak, the Oracle withdrew a crystal sphere mounted within delicate metal rings. Behind its dark, glasslike surface lay an intricate sensor capable of detecting light invisible to the human eye.
The boy stepped closer.
“What's that?”
“Something I need to show your father.”
The Oracle adjusted one of the rings.
An image appeared within the sphere.
The father rested a hand on his son's shoulder.
“Why don't you head back to the celebration? I'll join you shortly.”
“But I want to see.”
“I know. But this may take a while.”
The boy reluctantly agreed and hurried back toward the music.
The father turned his attention back to the sphere. Within its dark surface, he recognized the village square. The people were celebrating exactly as they had moments before.
Then the Oracle turned another ring.
The familiar colors vanished.
Buildings became arrangements of glowing shapes. Warm surfaces shone brightly while cooler objects faded into shadow. Another adjustment revealed delicate patterns drifting through the air.
“What am I seeing?” the father asked.
“The same world you've always known, but not as your eyes are accustomed to seeing it.”
Strange forms emerged among the buildings, resembling flowing currents and intricate structures occupying seemingly empty space.
“Are they real?”
“The energy is real. The shapes are how my instrument interprets it. Light carries far more information than our eyes can perceive.”
“Then what I'm seeing may not exist exactly as it appears.”
“Precisely.”
The Oracle smiled.
“An image is not always the same thing as the truth.”
“My father used to say something very much like that.”
“I know. We discussed it often.”
The Oracle turned the instrument toward the eastern mountains.
The image changed.
Distant valleys and immense granite peaks appeared, crossed by strange bands of light. Some shone with brilliant colors, while others seemed to drain the brightness from everything around them.
As the Oracle adjusted the instrument, seven distinct disturbances emerged, connected by faint threads of distorted light.
“What are they?”
“That is what troubles me. Each has grown stronger, affecting the land around it.”
For an instant, one disturbance swelled into an enormous shape. Another flickered like sunlight passing through a dense forest.
Then both dissolved.
“My instrument reveals patterns,” the Oracle explained, “but not their meaning.”
“Where do they come from?”
The Oracle moved his hand across the instrument.
Far beyond the valleys, high among the eastern mountains, a faint concentration of unnatural light appeared. It barely moved, yet the surrounding patterns bent toward it.
The father felt an unexpected chill.
“The Master of Light?”
“I believe so.”
“Then the stories are true?”
“Some of them. Perhaps not all. But something hidden for many years is beginning to stir.”
The father looked toward the village below, where the music continued.
He thought of the fair maiden lying ill beside Parker Lake, and of his son, who would soon accompany him into the mountains.
“What would you have me do?”
The Oracle studied him.
“At last, the time has come.”
“For what?”
The Oracle looked toward the distant hillside where the Oak of Remembrance stood.
“Three shall walk beneath the oak, though only two will cast a shadow. One shall remember, one shall journey, and one shall inherit the light.”
The father thought of the afternoon beneath the oak, his son beside him, and the tree that had grown from his own father's acorn.
“You've spoken those words before.”
“Yes.”
“To my father?”
“Many years ago.”
“What did he make of them?”
“He understood more than he told me, though perhaps less than he wished.”
“My father never mentioned a prophecy.”
“Perhaps he thought there were more important things for you to learn.”
“Such as?”
“How to see.”
The father smiled.
“He certainly spent enough time teaching me that.”
The Oracle returned the instrument to its covering.
“There is something else.”
He withdrew a long object wrapped in faded cloth and placed it upon the stone wall.
Inside lay the handle of an ancient sword.
There was no blade.
Only a dark, heavy hilt, intricately fashioned from an unfamiliar metal. Its surface bore markings reminiscent of the ancient northern stoneworkers, whose methods had long since been forgotten.
Seven small recesses had been worked into its design, each slightly different from the others.
“What is it?” the father asked.
“An inheritance.”
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
The Oracle rested a hand beside the weapon.
“It belonged to your father, and to his ancestors before him. Its history reaches back farther than either of us could trace.”
“Why have I never seen it?”
“Your father entrusted it to me. He believed it possessed a purpose we did not yet understand.”
The father lifted the hilt.
It was heavier than expected, yet balanced comfortably in his hand.
He examined the seven recesses.
“What belongs in these?”
“That is something I hoped you might discover.”
The father frowned.
“You're giving me a sword without a blade and asking me to discover how it works?”
“When you put it that way,” the Oracle replied, “it does sound rather unreasonable.”
The father laughed.
He turned the hilt slowly, examining its unusual arrangement.
Something about it reminded him of childhood afternoons spent beside his father, looking at the world through pieces of colored glass.
Each piece changed the landscape. Hidden details emerged while familiar colors disappeared.
His father had taught him that sometimes, to understand light, one must first change the way it is received.
“I remember something,” he said.
He described those afternoons to the Oracle.
“I thought he was simply entertaining me.”
“Perhaps he was. Or perhaps he was preparing you for something.”
The father looked down at the weapon.
“Why didn't he tell me more?”
“Your father loved you. He understood that knowledge can be a gift, but also a burden.”
The Oracle glanced toward the town.
“Sometimes the greatest kindness a father can offer is to let his child discover the world before revealing all its dangers.”
Below them, the boy was trying to imitate the musicians while the other children laughed.
The father understood.
He had already made choices about what to tell his son and what to keep from him, not because he doubted the boy's courage, but because he wanted him to enjoy his childhood.
He looked back at the ancient hilt.
“What do you believe it can do?”
“I believe it was created to focus something extraordinary. Your father suspected its true purpose was forgotten long ago.”
“Then perhaps we'll discover it.”
The father carefully wrapped the weapon.
“We leave at first light for the Silent Healing Valley.”
The Oracle nodded.
“Then your journey begins in the right direction.”
He stepped closer.
“Remember what I showed you tonight. Some things are hidden by darkness. Others are hidden by too much light.”
The father secured the ancient hilt at his side.
“And how will I know the difference?”
“Your father taught you patience. Now you must learn when to look.”
When the father returned to the square, the celebration was winding down.
The newborn child slept peacefully in her mother's arms, her acorn resting in a small wooden keepsake beside her.
The boy hurried toward his father.
“What did he say?”
“A great many things.”
“Were they true?”
“I think some of them might be.”
The boy noticed the cloth-wrapped object at his father's side.
“What's that?”
“Something that belonged to your grandfather.”
The boy's eyes widened.
“Can I see?”
The father unwrapped the hilt just enough for him to examine it.
“It doesn't have a blade.”
“No.”
“Then it isn't a very good sword.”
The father laughed.
“Not yet.”
“Are we going to find one?”
The father looked toward the distant mountains.
Somewhere far to the east, the fair maiden lay waiting for a cure. Across the kingdoms, seven strange disturbances were growing stronger.
“I think we're going to discover what kind of sword it was meant to be.”
The boy grinned.
“Then tomorrow can't come soon enough.”
The father took his hand, and together they began walking home.
Behind them, the lanterns of Diablo glowed beneath the ancient oaks.