Some mornings, bliss doesn’t arrive through breathwork or a good cup of tea.
It arrives through remembering.
Through honoring the path we’ve walked.
Through loss… and how we let it light us.
This is a story from my novel Pillar Walker, but it’s also a prayer.
A reminder.
A map.
Do you believe in luck? I do.
I was born under Pelir, the Dog Star, which rose overhead bright and clear in the season of my birth for the first time in a century. It was a good omen, they said. I was a fortunate babe, and luck would follow me all the days of my life.
It seemed that others also believed in the power of Pelir’s favor, for that same year the holy empire of Dyana invaded K’Trall, the kingdom to the north, beginning the next Crusade.
K’Trall is ruled by the Red Witch, a powerful sorceress, and she unleashed a powerful spell in response to our empire’s attack. The Red Witch’s plague, it came to be called, and nine out of ten who contracted it passed through the veil. When I was seven years old, the plague took my mother.
Father was devastated. And angry. When I was eight, he left me with his mother and went off to fight in the Crusades.
At first, he paid a scribe to send letters back every few weeks, which Grandmother read aloud to me in her warm, silken voice. Then, we stopped hearing. It’s hard to get news from the front lines, but after six months of waiting Grandmother went to her old friend Ka Pho, the sun priest who ministered for our village. He sent out requests through the Church’s channels, but when they came back all he could tell us was that Father’s name was not in the official records of the dead.
I never saw my father again.
Grandmother raised me with patience and kindness. She read aloud to me from the Te Jing every night. There was something comforting about it, some invisible salve that emanated from the poems and the tales and the wisdom of the poets and dragons who wrote it.
By the time I was ten, I understood that we all lose the ones closest to us. Death is as inevitable as the sunrise.
The Te Jing says: “Give thanks and praise as the sun rises, give thanks and praise as it sets. In the day, the sun brings life. And by night, there is the moon.”
I was sixteen when Grandmother passed beyond the veil, and it was like the sun had set completely. In that inner darkness, I had only one guiding light. Because of her devotion to my upbringing, Grandmother had never carried her pillar to the Great Temple at Vas Koran. It was her one regret, that she had never walked the pilgrim’s path to fulfill her sacred duty to the empire.
I fulfilled it for her.
When I arrived at Vas Koran, I saw the holy city in all its splendor and I knew that I would be compelled to return, again and again. This was the land where legends of my childhood were made. It was where the poet-warrior Tinkwa Jiwa and the dragon Ethustra had come to write the Te Jing in solitude. It was the heart of the empire.
At Vas Koran, the sun rose again. I knew my purpose. I became a pillar walker.
It is great good fortune to find your true path in this life. Not many do. But I was born under Pelir, the Dog Star, and they say that luck will follow me all the days of my life.
Luck doesn’t look like we expect.
May you find your pillar.
May the sun rise for you again.
And if you’ve already found your path — may you walk it with honor, joy, and ease.
With reverence,
Jack
P.S. Pillar Walker is one of five novels I’ve written that explore myth, adventure, and magic. You can find them all at my online store — and if one calls to you, I’d be honored to hear how it resonates in your life.