Metaphors

We’ve looked at how one metaphor can open up a multitude of possibilities. What can happen when it also opens up a stream of new metaphors, and they’re all tangled together like knot ends on the back of a tapestry? How willing are we to follow the various threads?

The Land of Darkness, by C.S. Lakin, immediately pulls you into a multi-layered richly textured world that you don’t want to leave. Myth and parable, scripture, imagery and mystery blend into a fresh fairy tale. It breathes mythic impact with inviting metaphors, maps, memory and mysteries.

Callen, a woodworking apprentice, sets on a quest to discover a bridge. He wants to see up close the beauty of its designs that he has found in sketches on parchment scrolls. He is practical and hard working and has no time or patience for riddles or abstract references. Yet his search plunges him into myth, into the extraordinary that could change his life if he is willing to see beyond the surface, in both thought and action.

“Speaking in stories and riddles. Talking about circles in circles. And just who was that landowner he’d mentioned, the one who had built the bridge? Callen gritted his teeth. Why wouldn’t that pest tell him how to find the bridge and who the builder was? ‘You’re not ready to hear those answers.’ What nonsense!”

Callen could attempt to dismiss what he perceived as a deranged or sun-stroked prophet, but he couldn’t dismiss the deepening yearning to find the bridge. Threads of connections, warnings, faith, beauty and art wove layers of metaphor into his heart. And drove him to find the answer regardless of the cost.

Journal Prompt:

What ‘bridge’ does your character need to cross, either as a decision or a life-altering truth? Choose a familiar item from her everyday experience to become a springboard metaphor. Then with each new insight add another metaphor.