A lost memory that came back to me while doing some research for a book that I'm writing.
It was a sunny winter day when I first met him. I felt the warm rays of the sun streaming through the window, and like the dust particles in the air, he too became illuminated by the sun beams.
I must have been about four or five years old at that time. It was very cold outside with a lot of snow on the ground that I could see on the other side of the window pane. And I had to stay indoors to play. I was an only child at that point so maybe it was out of boredom or loneliness that I conjured him up.
He was a little boy and he hid behind the curtains of the big bay window in the front room of the very first house that I had grown up in. I called him blue boy, because although he was a normal looking kid of the 1970’s in every other way, his skin colour was very white with a tinge of blue, and his mischievous eyes were a bright blue colour.
I remember being so happy to have a friend to play with behind the big dark curtains at the house on Cottonwood Drive. We would meet there, behind the voluminous drapery and when out of sight of any of the grownups, we would fly!
Even as a child I understood that stepping behind the curtain was a means of magical transport. It was there where I first began my little experiments in bilocation that continue to this day. With my stuffed teddy bear clutched tightly in my hands, the blue boy and I travelled beyond the stars to strange forgotten spaces.
Sometimes after these long shamanic dream-like travels my Mom would find me asleep, tucked away behind the curtains of that big front window.
Decades later when I became acquainted with the 12th century account of the green children of Woolpit I wondered if there was any connection to that story and my own experience with the little pale blue boy.
The green children, a brother and sister were found by farmers working their fields at harvest time near some ditches that had been excavated to trap wolves at St Mary’s of the Wolf Pits also known as Woolpit in England.
Intriguingly European witches in later centuries who I feel a strong connection to were known to shape-shift into wolves when they conducted their night battles.
Were the green children little witches who got caught by the wolf traps?
Their skin was green, their clothes were made from unknown cloth, and initially their speech was unintelligible to the people who found them. Eventually when they learned to communicate in English they claimed to have come from a faraway land and that they were magically transported to Woolpit after wandering into a cave.
Were they travelers from behind the curtain like we were? Made up of imagination, and bits of dust, and starlight? Maybe... but unlike the green children who emerged from a dark underground cavern, my imaginary travelling companion rode in on a sun beam.
I never knew the name of this star child, nor do I fully recall the strange places that we visited or the weird language that we spoke only between ourselves. I do remember how happy I was to have a magical friend.
He stopped appearing to me sometime after my sister Diana was born.
Please have a look at my newly updated online cupboard Out of My Mind's Eye
Susan
xo
