Excerpt: Duffy Barkley: SEEK WELL

“You gave me a medal with Ivor’s image on it. I still have it,” Duffy said.
“Go get it please,” Aunt Peg Requested.
Duffy went to get it from his suitcase and then returned.
He opened the case and smiled at the sight of the medallion, with it’s winged tiger, rampant, gazing proudly up at him.
Peg held out her hand and asked, “May I see it?”
He handed over the case, and she looked again – then again into his face, “So you are telling me that what you see engraved upon this is a winged tiger?”
Her question made him hesitate, “Of course. Don’t you?”
“I wonder, How can I show you,” she murmured to herself, laying the medallion on the table. “We used to do this with leaves and coins and the soles of our shoes.” She picked up a sheet of typing paper and a pencil. Covering the large medal with the paper, she scribbled heavily upon the paper with the side of the pencil’s graphite point. Quickly an image appeared and in the rubbing, even Duffy could clearly see a large water buffalo, knee deep in a current and tall reeds.
Peg handed him a blank sheet of paper, and his medal. He still saw the winged tiger clearly and as he rubbed the pencil over the engraving Peg gave an amazed whistle. Here there appeared a rubbing of an image quite unlike the one she had gotten, yet quite familiar and beloved to Duffy.

Duffy took the medallion with him as he went searching for Izzy. As he held out the medal to his little sister, he felt Peg hovering curiously behind his shoulder. “What do you see on here Iz?”
Se clasped the coin close and studied it, even though it wasn’t the first time that Duffy had allowed her to hold it.
“A tree,” she said confidently, “A big tree with ornaments decorating the branches and a broken tip. The Ornaments look like worlds. Are they worlds Duffy?”
“Of Course,” Peg breathed, “Ivor is the soul of the tree of life. I first met him at its base. He is the one who connects all the worlds”
“I first met him in a nest, high in the tree,” Duffy remembered with a shiver, that he had fallen from that nest. “But maybe you’re right, and then again, maybe it’s bigger than that.”
“Bigger?”

“Yeah, too big for my little brain. But I think that’s ok. I don’t have to understand him. I just love him.”
Izzy looked up from where she had been spinning the medal on the polished wooden floor at their feet. It hadn’t toppled but come to rest, still standing on edge. “look,” she ordered them, “It’s balanced.”