A Different Form of Sight
“Rose tore her eyes from her drawing to see two gasping little girls running hand in hand. They went past at a tremendous clip, leaving in their wake a whirr of whipped air, spiraling leaves, and a stream of sound like a long pure note, as if they were humming together.
One child was blind. Her eyes were gouged and scarred, her head nodding in a sightless headlong plunge, her face intent on nothing save the grip of her companion’s hand, the unsuspected thickness of air, and the taste of utter exhilaration. On the face of her seeing friend were other ecstasies—large, open, racehorse eyes, the panting thoroughbred power of giving the impossible thing. The seeing girl had bestowed upon her blind friend a different form of sight, the feeling of wind on skin, of small unused muscles pumping at catastrophic speed, the awesome pitch through treacherous air that always contained within it the threat of collision, and the promise of soaring.
There is my soul, thought Rose. O, O, ay, ay, that I might trust what you are doing with me in this rushing darkness!”
~Michael O’Brien (from the novel A Cry of Stone)
One child was blind. Her eyes were gouged and scarred, her head nodding in a sightless headlong plunge, her face intent on nothing save the grip of her companion’s hand, the unsuspected thickness of air, and the taste of utter exhilaration. On the face of her seeing friend were other ecstasies—large, open, racehorse eyes, the panting thoroughbred power of giving the impossible thing. The seeing girl had bestowed upon her blind friend a different form of sight, the feeling of wind on skin, of small unused muscles pumping at catastrophic speed, the awesome pitch through treacherous air that always contained within it the threat of collision, and the promise of soaring.
There is my soul, thought Rose. O, O, ay, ay, that I might trust what you are doing with me in this rushing darkness!”
~Michael O’Brien (from the novel A Cry of Stone)
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