Amanda's Final Post

tale as old as tYme

My name is Lily. I am in my junior year at Brigham Young University, and I love to write poetry. For me, poetry is a way to express myself in ways that only those who take the time to study it would understand. I am Lily, the word crafter, weaving tapestries of nature to show the world. Unfortunately, many people around me do not see the beauty of my work and instead praise me for my intelligence in school or my beauty, attempting to convince me to put the poetry behind me. All of that changed when I met Edmund.

Edmund was a new member of my ward; he had just moved in the previous week. He was mysterious and shadowy: hardly anyone saw him outside his apartment, and when they did, he always had on a coat with a long collar that hid his face. When he spoke, his voice was as the roar of the forest’s king, but usually he was silent as a serpent. He hobbled along with a limp, which made him even more curious. No one was certain if he was a student or if he had just moved into the complex to work somewhere in Provo. Although hardly anyone had talked to him, everyone could cross the ts and dot the is of all his stories. Rumors were flying around like misguided fireworks, and everyone seemed to believe the stories, no matter how crazy they were. Despite their curiosity about his origin, people usually tried to avoid him. He was just different, and they would rather guess at the truth than find that their tall tales were false.

False tales aside, Edmund’s mysterious personality made him seem like some sort of a fairy-tale creature to me. In many of the poems that I was writing, I used a dragon to symbolize him. To me, he was like the keeper of the treasure—I felt that he had a secret of great value that he was protecting. I always wondered what it was that he was protecting. One day, I decided to follow him to find out.

Out of the blue, I decided to go home to eat lunch rather than studying in the library like I normally do. I was a couple doors away from my apartment when I saw Edmund leaving his apartment, carrying a large black case. I watched him stagger down the stairs and head towards the mountains. Without thinking twice, I flew down the stairs and started following him. I almost couldn’t find him again. Like a chameleon he seemed to have adopted the colors of the outdoors. Fortunately, I saw a small piece of fabric whisk around a nearby tree. I had to scuttle to keep up with him, but I finally caught up as he was approaching a small, broken down shack. I crouched down in the bushes as he scanned the area for intruders and slipped into the shadows beyond the front door.

The door closed, and the silence was thick. I strained my ears to catch the sound of movement in the shack. Moments later, the most beautiful melodies danced away from the house. The air reverberated with the sound of rich, deep tones. Under the spell of the music, and wanting to see what human being could make such sounds, I found myself moving towards the house.

The house was old—I didn’t know why it was there or who had lived in it before, but I knew that I had to find out who was playing the music. As I stepped through the door frame, the floor creaked and the music immediately stopped. I rounded the corner and saw the cello lying on the floor, the rosin still sparkling in the sunlight that slanted through the windows. I knew that the music had come from this cello, but where was the master? I received my answer as I heard a roar, as if from a dragon, and felt someone tackle me from behind. I screamed as I felt myself hit the floor, a giant beast pinning me down. Edmond’s eyes, the only part of his face that I could see, opened in surprise as he saw who had followed him to his sanctuary.

“You! You! What are you doing here?” His coarse voice reinforced my fear. “How did you find this place?” I hoped that the fear wouldn’t show on my face.

“I . . . I . . . um . . . wanted to see where you were going . . . and I heard . . . beautiful music . . . and I wanted to see who was playing it.”

“Did you bring anyone else with you?”

“No.”

“Good, let’s keep it that way. I don’t want anyone to know what I do out here.”

“But why don’t you want anyone to know? You play beautifully.” He sneered at that, and turned back to his cello.

“I must ask you to leave now, and you must not tell anyone what you saw today.”

“But can’t I stay and listen to your music?”

He took a long look at me. “What will you give me in return?”

I thought for a while, and then came up with my answer: “I am a poet. I will write a poem about you that will immortalize you and your music.” Just like the bard of old, I would use my words to praise my patron—a patron that would pay me with notes and rhythms.

“Okay, I guess you can stay on one condition: that you never tell anyone what you have seen today, and only show the poem to me, not to anyone else. Understand?”

“Yes, yes.”

So I stayed and listened to his music. His music was the voice of the heavens. He played, swaying in the shadows as I wrote my poem. His fingers danced up and down the board; the strings trembled under the force of the bow. I knew that he was echoing notes that his closed eyes once saw, but he didn’t miss a beat. When the song was finished, he stood up and requested that we left separately so no one would see us together. I agreed, and offered to leave first.

As stepped out of the haven and arrived on campus again, I was startled to find Ian throwing a football back and forth with his buddies. He was not the person that I wanted to see, ever. You see, Ian had been trying to get me to date him for the past couple months. A lot of people told me that he wanted me as a prize, for he saw me as the most intelligent and most beautiful girl in the ward. He loved to follow me around and ask me lots of questions, lavishing praise on me for my supposed brilliance every time I answered him. I thought the praise was fun at first, but after a few months, it got a little annoying. When I stopped answering his questions, he started subtly flexing his muscles around me, hoping that his sheer massiveness would win me over. Unfortunately, it did not, for I wasn’t impressed with his bloated head. He had started on the football team since his freshman year, and used every chance he had to impress the ladies, with me at the top of his list. He always had a little herd of freshman girls flocking around him, but he always seemed to look right past them.

Needless to say, I tried to duck back into the bushes before he could see me, but he caught sight of me, as if he had been waiting for me to appear. He immediately told his friend to go long and threw it as hard as he could, but I kept walking straight to my apartment. I didn’t want him to ask where I had been or what I had been doing. I especially didn’t want him to ask what I was doing this weekend, because I hadn’t made any plans with my roommates yet. I usually didn’t have to make plans this early, because he didn’t usually ask me out until Thursday night, at the earliest.

“Lily!” He shouted across the gaggle of girls that were watching him play. “What are you doing on Friday? I have some tickets to the Divine Comedy performance and I was wondering if you wanted to come with me.”

“I . . . um . . . sure, I don’t have anything going on.” I wasn’t very good at lying to people. “I’ll see you on Friday.” My fate set, I sprinted back to my apartment, avoiding the jealous stare of the other girls.

I slammed my apartment door behind me and leaned against it, gasping for breath. I didn’t know whether my breathlessness was because of my sprint, or because of the shock of what I had just done. Did I really just accept a date with Ian?

As the days passed, I took to coming home and wandering out in the mountains, searching for the music. I always found it, and entered to sit on the floor and listen to the dancing melodies. I liked the little hideaway—the place was an abandoned house, and flowers were growing around the windows. I felt like I was out in nature, listening to the voices of the trees and the flowers as they swayed in the wind. It was a perfect place to sit and write my poetry. Oftentimes, I glanced at Edmund, sitting in the shadows, and wondered why he had to come out here to practice his beautiful music. Many times, I thought of bringing my roommates out to enjoy the music, but then I remembered the promise that I had made to him and went back to my poetry, although my curiosity was still piqued. I wanted to know more about the shadow dragon. I didn’t know very much about him, but I still felt drawn to him. I wanted him to come out of the shadows and let me see his true colors.

That first week flew by, and Friday came before I even had time to think about it. As I came home, I stared longingly at the mountains that had become so much of a sanctuary for me after a hard day at school. Gritting my teeth, I walked inside to prepare for my date. Divine Comedy couldn’t be too bad, right? There would be a ton of people there, and Ian wouldn’t try to pull anything while he was there. I sauntered to my room to get ready for the longest night of my life.

Ian showed up for the date about fifteen minutes late, a little overdressed in a shirt and tie, but still wearing his cocky, crooked grin. At least he had shed the extra baggage that giggled and hung on his arms all day. We walked to his car and started making our way to the Joseph Smith building. During the whole ride, I listened to him babble about football and how neither the schools inside the state nor the schools outside the state could beat him. At least he had stopped asking me random questions and praising my brilliance.

The first part of the show actually went pretty well, despite the fact that he continually tried to hold my hand. I don’t know what it was, but he just wouldn’t take a hint. Finally, as the show was nearing an end, I started to relax a little. The show had actually been pretty funny, and besides the attempted hand holding the date hadn’t been half bad. Now all I had to worry about was listening to Ian babble on. He mostly just talked about football, a sport that I neither cared for nor knew about. I would only have to grunt and nod my head and he seemed to be satisfied.

The satisfaction, I should have known, was short lived. Near the end of the show, he turned to me, winked, and said that he had a surprise for me. My heart turned to ice. I had no idea what to expect, but I knew it wasn’t good by the way he was smirking and waving to his football buddies, who were conveniently seated a few rows back. The Divine Comedy actors seemed to know what was going on, as they stopped their skit and said to the audience, “Everyone, please give it up for our very own star quarterback, Ian.” I could hear girls screaming and shouting, waving their hands in hope that he would notice them. However, he just grabbed the mike and turned straight to stare at me.

“Lily,” he started. “I have written a poem for you, since I know that you love poetry. It goes like this:

Roses are totally red

Violets, blue as the sea

I know we haven’t dated for long,

But will you marry me?”

I looked at him incredulously. Was this really happening to me or was I in a bad dream? I started to sway a little bit and I felt all of the blood in my body rush to my face. The bright spotlight started to hurt my eyes, and I felt faint.

“What?” I gasped.

“Will you marry me? I think you and I are perfect together, as this date goes to show.” He smiled again with his crooked, cocky grin. He reached into his pocket and began to pull out a ring box, handing it, opened, to me. I couldn’t take it.

“No!” I screamed into the mike. “No, I will not marry you. I don’t even know you.” With that, I rushed out of the building, trying to hide my face from the blank, staring faces.

Mortified, I reached home only to find that my roommates were still out for their date night. I didn’t know what to do. I knew that I had totally embarrassed Ian in front of all of his friends and hundreds of other people that knew him. Somehow, though, I didn’t feel too bad. What was he thinking proposing to me like that? It was our first date, and I had turned him down for nearly a month before that. I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to take a walk in the mountains.

In the mountains, I was surprised to hear the soft melodies of my friend, and I decided to stop by for some comfort. I slipped into the house as quietly as possible, because he wasn’t expecting me and I didn’t want to disturb his music. As I turned the corner to see where he was playing, the floor made a loud creaking noise that startled him. He looked up, and I froze. The face before me—Edmund’s face—it was . . . it was . . . really good looking. The setting sun lit up his chiseled face, his blue eyes gleaming in the twilight, the sun glinting off his dark, finely coifed hair. I sat there, stunned, as he rushed to cover his face again.

“Get out!” He shouted, in a rage, before I could say anything. “Get out of here!” He steered me to the door and pushed me off the porch. Stumbling, I fell to the ground, but I didn’t need to be told twice. I scrambled away from the house as fast as I could, failing to notice one of Ian’s friends hiding in the bushes. I ran home and hid my face in my pillow. I had faced two horrors in one night—completely different, but terrifying at the same time.

The story was all over the next day, the story about the beast who hid in the mountains and lured people in with his music, and then scared them with his mighty roar. Apparently, Ian had noticed that I was going in there quite often and asked his friend to follow me every time I went in there. Luckily, no one knew Edmund was the “terrible beast,” but rumors were flying around like wildfire. Sallie had a better story than John, John had a better story than Jimmy, and Jimmy had a better story than Shannon. Everyone knew the seen and the unseen; only I knew the truth. Most people suspected Edmund because of his mysterious nature and because he disappeared for a few days after the incident. His roommates said that he was shut in his room, refusing to talk to anyone.

Meanwhile, the old shack in the mountains was torn down. As each board was taken down, I felt a little piece of my heart torn away. The music had come to represent to me the chance that I had to be away from the world. My soul could speak from the little house because nature spoke to me through the music. I didn’t know if I was ever going to be able to go back to who I was before I followed Edmund. I moped around the house, hiding every time Ian tried to visit me, hiding when people wanted to talk to me about the “horror,” hiding because I knew that everyone wanted to hear my story.

After feeling sorry for myself for about a week and trying to ignore all of the false accusations flying around, I decided that I needed to go and talk to Edmund. I was the only one that knew the truth, and I had to get Edmund to tell me what was going on. I couldn’t believe that such a handsome guy would want to spend his time in the shadows, stowed away like wedding china. I made my way over to his house, determined to pull him out of his shell.

Unfortunately, he refused to come out of his room, not even to talk to me. His roommates had already begged him for a week to come out and they told me that I needed to do a lot more to get him to come out. Finally, I lost my temper and shouted that I would let everyone know his secret if he didn’t come out and talk to me. That really got to him, so he slowly came out, dressed in his long-collared coat, and informed his roommates that they were to leave or incur his wrath. They left without further ado.

After they had left, he turned to me, pulling down his collar, and whispering my name, “Lily, Lilly.”

Trembling, I looked up at him and asked, “Why did you hide yourself away? You’re every girl’s dream.”

“I didn’t want everyone to like me because I was handsome. You know Ian?” I grimaced. “I didn’t want girls hanging around me like they do him, never really getting to know me, but admiring me because of my outward appearance. I just wanted some girl to love me for being me.”

“So that was your true secret—you hid your outward beauty so someone could find your inward beauty.”

“Yes, and I think I have found that someone—a special someone who was willing to come back to me even though I was rude to her—someone who was willing to come back because she knew my secret, despite what everyone else tried to tell her.” He took a deep breath and took my hand. “Lily, you don’t know my whole secret. Lily . . . I love you. You spent time with me even though you didn’t know what I looked like, even though you had other guys trying to win your love. You fell in love with my music, which is an expression of who I am inside. I think that, during the time that you came to visit me in my shack, I found out what it was like to really love. I just had to overcome myself to find what I was missing.”

In the end, we both got what we were looking for. We both wanted someone who could appreciate our songs of praise without our facades distracting from the real meaning. He could continue to be Edmund, keeper of the secret, and I would continue to be Lily, word crafter.