Rock Writers’ Guild

“Raederle said very little, either to Danan or Bri; she was grateful that the mountain-king refrained from questioning her.  He only said gently, with a perception that startled her, “Isig is my home; the home of my mind, and still, after so many years, it is capable of surprising me.  Whatever you are gripping to yourself in secret, remember this: Isig holds great beauty and great sorrow, and I could not desire anything less for it, than that it yields always, unsparingly, the truth of itself.”"     - Patricia McKillip “Riddle of Stars”

   This is probably my favorite all-time book, by one of my very favorite authors.  Although many of her books involve fairy, magic, and non-Christian mythology, I can’t help loving them for her beautiful descriptions, precise language, and moving characters.  Her people are very real to me.  Some of them I love.  All of them are bound in beauty or fear or evil or pain, according to their natures.  I like her earliest books best- they’re cleaner.  There is, in many of them, an innocence and beauty I find irresistable.
    This passage is one of my favorites in this book, and one I have long thought on.  It’s something I attempt to do in my writing.  I contain great beauty and great sorrow, and I want to yield them unsparingly, truthfully, and beautifully.  I hope that I succeed, and I am only ashamed that so often the truth of what is within me is still petty, irritating, prideful, arrogant, and selfish.  I want to give healing, not hurt, and when I realize I have slipped up again, I am ashamed.  But then I think of this passage again, and I try again, coming out of sorrow, shame, and lack, to write once again the truth that I have.

     “As he spoke he tore a strip from beneath his coat, and , turning sharply about, walked before them to the brink of the cliff, winding the strip firmly about the hand rest of the lance.
     “On the very edge he stood erect and waited.
     “The sun rose out of the plain, and flashed with blinding force upon the Bedouin boy clad in his sheepskin coat and desert turban, precisely as it had found him in the porch of Aaron’s tomb upon the summit of Mount Hor.
     “His hand no longer held a shepherd’s staff, but firmly grasped a Grecian lance that gleamed and flashed as fiercely as the sun.”
                              -Harry W. French “The Lance of Kanana”

    This, the story of the “coward of the Beni Sads” who would not become a fighter and slaughter men for no good reason but insisted he could not “lift a lance to take a life, unless it be for Allah and Arabia,” has long been one of my favorites.  It’s a story of a boy who must prove his courage without going to war.  It’s a story about holding a moral principle so high that you will accept the consequences unto death not to break trust with truth.  And it’s a story of how God rewards committed faith even while allowing its sacrifice.
     It’s also brilliantly written, which is always a plus.  Listen to this, “There is but one name more bitter than ‘coward’ to the Arab.  That name is ‘traitor,’ and after being called a coward almost all his life, the very last words which Kanana heard from the lips of his countrymen came in frantic yells, calling him a traitor.”  Now, who could resist reading the rest of the story?
    The storytelling is hypnotic.  The scenes are so vivid, romantically painted in heroic brushstrokes. There is nothing lurid or mean or small or disgusting.  Even the villians have a dignity of purpose.  They’re evil, but they’re not degraded.  Why does so much of modern literature degrade mankind?  I’m a sucker for any story about a hero, a man with confidence, with strength, with conscience.  They are few and far between.  Now we have “dark heroes,” men who can’t decided to be rescuers or abusers, heroes who are drunks, or dangerous, or wandering on the wrong side of the law.  Our kids want to “be bad” and “look tough.”  But they have no knowledge of what true strength is- to bear, without compromise, the consequences of right and necessary action.  Or, as Reepicheep so nobly put it, to swim East until we can no longer paddle, then to die with our noses pointed towards the rising sun.