I wrote this post on 20 July in my notebook, but I never got around to posting it because of reasons. Still, it's a good post, and I'm going to share it unchanged from then.
I read a lot. Everyone who knows me
should know this. I generally don’t go anywhere without a book (except work, of
course). Ironically enough, I couldn’t read until the end of second grade, just
after I turned eight. That summer, though, I quickly graduated from Dr. Seuss
and the Berenstain Bears to Harry Potter and Redwall.
I’ve waxed poetic on Redwall before.
I wrote an obituary of sorts last February on the one-year anniversary of Mr.
Jacques’s death. I’ve mentioned that this series is the reason I write, that I’ve
learned so much about writing just from reading these books. I could extol the
virtues of these stories until I’m blue in the face and your ears fall off (no,
really, I can).
The thing is, I can tell you all
this, but never get my true feelings across. So instead of telling you why
these books are brilliant, I will show you my reaction to them.
A couple weeks ago, I went to the
bookstore. This was probably a bad idea, because no one could come with me, and
I had to restrain myself from buying
ALL THE BOOKS. (It didn’t work too well; I walked out with three in my hands
and two more on order.)
Wandering the Science Fiction &
Fantasy section, as I am prone to do, I found the Redwall books. This was the
second section of them I had come across, because they are generally put in the
“Young Readers” section (I mean, they are
for ten-to-twelve-year-olds). At the end of the group of Brian Jacques’s books,
there was a paperback copy of The Sable
Quean, the last Redwall book published before the author’s death.
Now, it isn’t the very last one; The Rogue Crew was published post-mortem. Still, when I picked it
up, I almost started crying. It felt like holding the end of my childhood in my
hands. I fought back tears, told myself that I’d cry when I got The Rogue Crew, decided which other
books to buy, purchased them, and left.
Fast forward to today. I was
essentially on-call at work, just chilling in the building, waiting for people
to need me. I had brought along The
Bellmaker to continue my read-through of my whole shelf—for those of you
who don’t know/couldn’t guess, The Bellmaker
is part of the Redwall series. It was as I was finishing the book, reading
through the epilogue, that I was it, and remembered.
At the end of practically every
single Redwall book is some take on this message: Redwall’s gates will always
be open to those who mean no harm, however young or old they are.
I used to smile at that line,
knowing that it meant that however much I grew up, I’d always have the safety
of Redwall Abbey and Mossflower Wood to return to when life got hard. Today, I
broke down and cried, because of the word “always”.
The message doesn’t say “until you
grow out of childish fantasies.” It doesn’t say “until you don’t need it
anymore.” It doesn’t say “until the author dies.” It says “always.”
True, once I buy The Rogue Crew, I will never again feel
the glee that a brand new Redwall book brings me. Once I finish reading it, I
will know all the tales that will be told of this land. Once I turn its final
page, I will have absorbed every single word the man wrote. But I will still
have the books. I can still reread them whenever I want.
So now, whatever else changes,
whoever leaves me, however old I grow, no matter what happens, I will always have the safety of these places,
the companionship of these characters, the knowledge that something in this
world is okay to keep me going.
Always.
