Thank you, Susan Cooper

Today's post is a quote from Susan Cooper's last book in The Dark Is Rising Sequence, Silver On The Tree. I was reading the book while I was stumbling through my this-is-not-my-beautiful-life phase. Bran and Will have gone to the Lost Land to retrieve the crystal sword in order to defeat the Dark.

"Gwion sighed. "So the Dark did a simple thing," he said,"They showed the maker of the sword his own uncertainty and fear. Fear of having done the wrong thing - fear that having done this one great thing, he would never again be able to accomplish anything of great worth - fear of age, of insufficiency, of unmet promise. All such endless fears, that are the doom of people given the gift of making, and lie always somewhere in their minds. And gradually, he was put into dispair. Fear grew in him, and he escaped from it into lethargy - and so hope died, and a terrible paralyzing melancholy took its place. He is held by it now, he is held captive by his own mind. He and the sword Eirias that he made with him. Despair holds him prisoner, despair, the most terrible creation of all. For in great men, the mind can produce giant spectres of great power."

And now I am awake.