The Reasons I Cry

By Rebecca Morgan

Morning’s pale light radiates through the cracks in the storehouse where I sleep, and I lean into the comforting warmth. The air is silent and still. Heavy with expectation. My stomach pinches in hunger and I tuck my legs to my chin, whimpering. Wait for the pain to pass.

Pain. One.

Sorrow. Two.

I wonder why there are so many reasons we humans cry. It’s one of life’s mysteries, and I long to ask the scholars about it and much more.

But I’m just the hired boy. There to climb tall ladders and fetch scrolls for the scholars at the Great Library, wonder of the world. So absorbed in their books, they don’t see me trying to listen to their debates, desperate for answers to fill the crater in my heart. Though not even their treatment overshadows the joy I have by getting to touch the books.

Joy. Three.

I really may have to ask….

A cry cuts through the dawn. Keen. Piercing. Sounds of chaos vibrate through the thin, rotting walls. I sit upright on the mound of moldy sails and wait with bated breath. Trepidation fills my soul.

Another cry joins the first. Then another, till a chorus of makes my ears ring.

They are filled with fear. Layer upon layer of fear.

Fear. Four.

I leap to my feet, running out the door, already knowing what I’d see. Who I’d see. A name whispered in the night or not said at all.

Julius Caesar.

Cleopatra’s lover who pursued her brother Ptolemy. Chased him till our own fleet cut him off in the harbor yesterday. Igniting a blaze of fear and a waiting city. A stalemate of silent ships that now burn bright with real fire. It hungrily devours them as the smell of smoke assaults my nostrils and cries of battle reach my ears.

Battle. Five.

More ships seem to have arrived in the night as they loom large in the water, oh so close. Dozens. Maybe hundreds—the word seems to express what I’m seeing. It’s a word the scholars throw around as they sit stroking their beards. If only I could count them for myself.

People around me flee the docks, looking for safety. Maybe I should tell them that no matter where they run, danger will always find them. It seems like something the scholars would say.

A troop of heavily armored men race past me, knocking me to the ground.

“Watch it, kid,” one of them snarls as the rest maneuver around me.

Maybe they should crush me.

A hand of iron grips my arm, hauling me to my feet, throwing me against a building. My “thanks” is swallowed by the tumult as he continues on.

Horror fills me as the fire spreads to the docks. Docks that the library is so close to.

Paper. Fire.

The books.

I inhale sharply. Smoke burns my throat.

I must get to the library. The scholars will need me.

The doors to the library, normally kept open for sea breezes, lean on broken sockets. My excitement starts to dim, overshadowed by trepidation as I step through the door.

The floor is littered with scrolls. Scholars run around like the innkeeper’s chickens after she cuts off their heads. My heart plummets.

These men are afraid.

And if they don’t know what to do, who will?

A scholar crashes into me in his haste to get out the door, scrolls falling out of his hands.

He cries out angrily. Six. Leaves me on in the floor in a broken heap.

I sob.

Loving anyone or anything only ends in pain. Seven.

The fire has reached the library now.  Smoke curls around the windows, and the scholars descend into a panicked frenzy as they abandon the books, shoving to escape the building.

No. No, no, no. I pick up discarded scrolls, thrown to the ground as if they were trash. The more I cram into my arms, the more fall from my grasp.

Tears sting my eyes. The men I have worshiped and adored for so long don’t stop to help me.

Abandonment. It’s happened before. Eight.

Loneliness. Every night when I sleep alone in the cold. Nine.

Alexander the Great’s own writings of the places he conquered. Their peoples. Land. Flora and fauna.

Aristotle’s own words.

Scrolls Plato’s hand touched.

Books from the ships that were greedily stolen and added to the library.

All for naught.

All is lost.

Things I couldn’t begin to know but long to understand. To fill the emptiness in my heart.

Despair. Ten.

Dropping to the ground, I hug my legs to my chest, coughing from the smoke, throat raw.

Moisture warms my neck and I jump, eyes snapping open. The red fox stares back at me, eyes doleful. The animal keeper must have set the animals free.

A bookcase of scrolls collapses. The fox barks, nipping me with her teeth.

Courage fills me like that story about Heracles. I can be as mighty as he. I snatch the scroll nearest me, flame licking at its edges. The fox follows as I run from the library and all that it represents. Run till I reach the top of the hill.

I look back as the roof caves in, a groaning of agony as the columns fail.

And the books are buried beneath ash and flame.

Untold stories. Untold peoples. Untold tales of valor and love. So many ways to mourn. So many ways to vent what plagues our human hearts.

But the library that could tell me why is gone. How such a simple act as crying can release pent up pain and yet be tears of joy.

The fox nuzzles my leg as charred edges of the scroll crumble and drift away in the wind.

I cry again.

For no reason at all.

But I don’t know what comes after ten.

No one ever told me.

I suppose the answer is lost.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rebecca Morgan has been writing stories since before she could read—or at least, she thought she was! All these years later, she is definitely writing, having written four novels and countless stories and poems. Rebecca aims to write stories that heal and bring healing through the written word. Besides writing, Rebecca loves cooking, reading, journaling, blue oceans, and salsa. She lives in the South with her family.

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