Mik-el and Xandros
A reader asks about the relationship between Mik-el and Xandros, "the son of his heart", and what it means for Xandros.

And so, for djarum99 a story!




For many years after Mik-el's death, he was strictly an ancestral spirit, a family or local entity that helped hunters or those who were protecting others. He had very little energy, mana or whatever term you prefer. He didn't venture far from the small group of hunter/gatherers he had protected in life. He couldn't. His life force was tied to the energy of their belief. If he passed beyond that energy, he would no longer be able to stay disincarnate. And yet he stayed -- out of love. That's one of the most important things here. When someone chooses out of love, or for the good of others, good things are set in motion.

Finally, after several hundred years had passed, one of these descendants was a young man who someday would be Xandros. And he wondered where the river went. Not content with wondering, he talked a couple of friends into joining him, and together they headed downriver in a flimsy reed boat to find where the river ended. Mik-el went with them, to watch over them. As Mik-el tells Gull, they had many adventures and poled past empty shores where someday there would be palaces and cities, fifty or sixty miles as the river runs, until at last they reached the sea.

They'd never imagined anything like it. Their world was the river, and that green land bordered by deserts was everything they had ever thought of. And here was the sea.

They were frightened. They were astonished. And his friends really, really wanted to go home. But the young man who wasn't yet Xandros was curious. Their boat could go on the river. Could one go on the sea? Not the same boat, of course. The breakers would tear it apart before they even got going -- he could see that. But. What if you could sail the sea, and find out where the sea went? Lying on his back that night, looking up at the stars in the absolutely clear, unspoiled sky, he wondered if the darkness around them were another ocean, and if you had the right kind of ship if you could sail that too.

And Mik-el was filled with wonder and with love. Because the world held so many things, and so many people he could love. He wanted to see them sail that sea. He wanted to go with them to islands in the sky. His curiosity awoke too. And so, when he had seen the young men home, poling upriver with a wild story of adventure, he took off on his own, exploring as far as energy would allow.

Mik-el met many strange and wonderful things on that journey -- gods given form in the shape of dogs or lions, winged spirits imagined by people who lived in the desert and worshipped the winds, and beneath it all the sleeping strangeness of the Titans who were not like human beings at all. There too he met the Lady of the Dead, and heard how she had been born far south of his home in the first days of the world, when all the people there were lived in a few square miles of plain along the Great Rift. He traveled as far as he could, becoming thin and pale. And then he returned home.

But the years of gods are not like the years of men. Twenty some years had passed, and the young man he had known had grown old and died.

So he resolved to find him again, him and all the others he had loved. Over the years he kept a lookout for them wherever he went, and when he found them he aided them and helped them along as much as he could.

When he found Xandros in Byblos, he had already found him again half a dozen times, and there are stories of those times to be told. One of those times he met Neas, as Neas and Xandros had been together in several lives already. He'd added Neas to the list of people he was looking for before the last time, when Neas was the Achaian warrior Patroclus.

And of course this is not the last time he will find Xandros, one of the sons of his heart. There are a good many more stories to come before Xandros gets his ship to sail the seas of the stars! But you can bet when he does Mik-el will be right there with him to visit each wandering island in the sky.