THE VOYAGE OF THE ALBATROSS – STORY SUMMARY

A smallish boy squats at the edge of a fathomless sea to ponder a shell abandoned by its maker. The boy asks himself “why the world was forever upending the porridge – shaking eggs out of nests, turning dinosaurs into fossils and horses into zebras…summers into autumns into winters, and anything warm into something very cold.”

The boy traces the spiral of the shell – and is spun aloft, launched on an odyssey in search of the Fearful Gyre, the mysterious beast seemingly responsible for all the chaos of the world, and within the boy. Setting off, the boy pictures for himself a flying sailboat “just big enough to hold his imagination without tipping over.” He names the boat The Albatross.

Along the way the boy must face down the blustery Bully Wind, resist the siren call of the Chilly Deep, break free of the aimless Fleeting Clouds, and so on to the Very Stars. Each character reveals another facet of the boy’s own restless psyche, even as he suspects each one of being the Fearful Gyre. The encounters range from silly to sad to surreal, as the boy's boat becomes ever more tattered and worn. Struggling to find understanding and connection, he spirals ever higher.

Sailing the outermost reaches of the galaxy, the boy tumbles out of his ship. A smallish voice tells him to “let go the line” tethering him to the boat. He lets go and is swept up in the current of the universe “turning as one thing.” The Gyre is revealed to him and he witnesses “the birth and death of worlds…the everything cascading down the boundless river of time.”

One last time the smallish voice speaks to him: “Child, let go your self.” The boy lets go of himself – 

“...and his self is turned inside out, and the beating of his Heart sounds the striking of the Anvil where Worlds are forged, and his Bones become food for the Birthing of Stars…

…and his Breath flows free to billow the sails of Great Ships, to race over Mountain Tops and haul rain to Field and Forest, to make the leaves dance and carry the Sparrow back to her nest…

“…and his Breath is the Will and the Whoosh of all that flies and glides and breathes and burns – and ruffles the hair on the head of a smallish child who stands alone on the shore of a fathomless sea.”

And that, Dear Reader, is the Very End.