STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Five                                                                                                      Part Nine



                        The room in the tower was just as he had left it.  He gazed at all its strange artefacts, the willow pattern punch bowl filled with earth, the dolls, the shells, the wooden ark with its wooden Noah and his wooden wife and all their two by two wooden animals and the picture on the wall of a rowing boat on the ocean on a starlit night.  Clare's past was a story in a tower, each relic on its own was bewildering, but together they made a story that Joe was beginning to understand.  Most of all he understood the china bride, because like her, his own life was broken and hollow.  And just as the china doll had been kept alive by the apricot stone planted in the punch bowl, so had Clare and the tower that contained her story become Joe's own seed of faith where he believed he might find his own truth.  But there was still so much to understand.  He wanted to know why Clare had feared the animals of the Ark.  He wanted to know more of the love that had come with George and his gift of beautiful shells from the ocean.  He wanted to understand why George had thrown her precious pearls to the sea when she had held them so dear and they had comforted her so much.  Joe had left his granny's pearly beads downstairs on a table beside the sleeping Clare so that she would wake to them and be pleased. The thought of  her pleasure at his gift excited him and made him feel warm.  He wanted to see her smiling eyes. He was impatient to feel her warmth towards him.  He wondered how long she would sleep.             
                     Sunlight streamed through the window, over the desk and onto the floor.  The school desk was still a mystery to Joe, he decided to leave it that way for the time being and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the jig-saw puzzle.  He began to try and fill the frame he had left.  His fingers worked feverishly with the pieces, turning, rejecting and fitting.  He was eager to make a picture he would understand.  He wanted to find the clues and make a pattern of his life so far, so that he could start again from a place where he knew who he was and what his life had meant, just as Clare had made a journey that had had no meaning until its end where a new journey with George had begun. He wanted to make sense of his bewilderment just as Clare had made sense of hers.
                    Hours passed.  Joe had completed a starry night sky and its reflection in calm, dark water.  The centre was yet to be resolved, many pieces were still waiting to be placed and interlocked.  He was certain the jig-saw would grant him his wish and show him a rowing boat of his own where he would find hope and happiness as Clare had done.  But daylight had turned to dusk and Joe could strain his eyes no more.  So he left the tower and went downstairs with a hopeful soul and a smile.