He’d been staring at the pages for hours as the rain had continued its drumming on the thin roof, and now words swam,
blinking, it suddenly became clear that this was no trick of tiredness or the candle’s guttering, it was real,
graceful strokes began arcing and bending, spreading out from open pages to embrace the air around him.
A summoning, a quiver of the ink as it floated as if upon breath alone or a breeze
he had thought this but a book, but this was a wonder of its title he had not guessed at.
How long had it been slumbering before he, a chance reader, had incanted aloud a single page upon a mere whim,
as the Maharal before him had cleaved mud and rent life upon its form now he too felt power lacing its fingertips between his
waiting just under nails, as whole oceans of potential, it could, in a rush, leap and rend the material of the world around him at a command issued in the form of a sacred name.
Yet to how control it, how to harness this well that even now felt close to brimming over, close to breaching the gossamer that kept the worlds apart .
He was too young to control this bolt, that, as if rushing from the heavens to split a mighty oak, had rent the defences of his mind, and stepped into his body.
Mind and soul felt underwater, bowed by the weight that had come to settle upon him, as a huge bird upon the branches of his slim shoulders
older than anything he had felt in the world before, he hardly dared to breathe, lest such a movement would cause the unfurling of its wings and an ascent skywards from which he might never return.
This was why the riches of middle years and its attendant wisdom were recommended he now realised with a sigh of scorn at the impetuousness of his youth,
And yet, he could not open his mouth to bring a clarion of a call into existence and bring others rushing in, so that with the intricate weavings of gemmatria’s letters and numbers he could be freed.
Unexpectedly, as if electricity charged blood and muscles with fire he stood, his back ramrod straight, but legs trembling slightly with a harsh tension that he felt in his thighs and calves.
For a moment all he heard was the rain, and then it came again, a drum beat opening his eyes wide with a force that sent his body rocking forwards and backward, his back a small craft in the squall,
almost thrust to his knees before being jerked to stand tall, tendons thrumming and muscles coruscating with a life like the taste of blood in the mouth,
his trembling dance was a desperate davening, with the dveykus of a Tzadik Nistar, as irises misted and stars sang across eyes that bulged wildly as they swung their glance around the empty room unchecked.
Was it the book or the shekinah herself, this marionettist with a vigour so vicious it threatened his sanity, as his seizures of supplication renewed themselves, clamouring into his spine and head with a clangour.
And then with a bang on the door it was done, the memory threatening to fade already, from dust to dust, and he was in the chair, the book of wonder not even on the table, if it had ever been, the moment past and the voice calling him from the hall back from the sublime to the sublunary, forever changed, and yet unchanging.