The sound of a music box was all he heard.
He knew he was just a character in a book. Knew he was
sitting on the doomed marble stairs of a long gone empire in ancient times, the
remains of its former glory crumbling under his feet.
But he also knew he was handsome and many readers had stopped
at his image to stare at his masculine beauty. The shiny chest in the billowing
toga, the strong legs with leather strings criss-crossing his ankles.
He was a hero too. A fighter of dragons, rescuer of damsels
and he occasionally entertained a lonely shepherd during cold winter nights.
Not all of his endeavors were mentioned in the story.
Today, though, he was desperate. Staring through the pages
at the man reading his book filled him with sorrow, for tears were streaming
down the man’s beautiful face.
He knew the man. Had spent his youth with him, either
sitting on a bookshelf or in the boy’s hands as he grew up.
The melancholy tunes of a nearby music box seemed to
increase the man’s sadness.
When the man turned away from the hero to wipe his eyes on
his sleeve, a thought occurred to him.
He never dared leave the steps that some artist hat created
for him. Crumbling stairs that started at the bottom of the page and led to
nowhere at the top. Old ivy grew along the edge of the stone. The hero stood
leaning against a stone arch that led to green fields and forests beyond. He
never did take that leap into the unknown, never left the comforting safety of
the book’s cream colored pages. He couldn’t imagine himself among the colorful
and huge things that the human world consisted of.
And yet he knew that comforting the crying man was more
important than contemplating his own insecurities.
The hero balled his hands into fists and took a leap off the
illustration and felt himself falling through countless letters and white,
billowing clouds.
At the end of his fall, he found himself standing outside
his book, looking down at the opened page with his ancient stairs on it. There wasn’t
a hero on the painting, though, for he was standing in the human world now, his
body of flesh and his toga of linen. He was behind the crying human who had not
yet noticed the change on the page he was reading.
Taking a sudden breath into his lungs like a diver emerging
from the sea, the hero startled the reader and saw the man jerk away from his
book, facing him first with fear and then with resignation on his face, as if
he was certain the reaper was coming for him.
The hero opened his arms and waited for the man to come to
him. Watching him with fearful eyes, the man finally flung himself into his
arms and let him caress his back, as sobs shook his body.
The man’s lips moved against his chest, warm puffs of air
telling him the story behind the man’s sadness.
The hero nodded and kissed the top of his head.
He knew
nothing of the world of humans, but he knew pain and tragedy.
Slowly folding away from the man, he took his hands and
spoke to him softly before turning to
the open book with him.
The music box stopped playing, as the book lay open on the
floor. The opened page still showed the ancient stairs overgrown with ivy, but
the stone arch on the platform beneath now sheltered the hero in a lover’s
embrace with the man he had saved. The man he would spend his story with -
until their happy end.
