The Cathedral of Lost Faces

Nothing can hide the hump he carries. His broad stature and twisted face. His shadow needs no distortion to appear grotesque. He is an ape with a
weight upon his back, pressed down by human pain.

His clothes are dirty rags. No matter. Even dressed by the prince of tailors and trimmed and brushed by a barber king, he can be no more than what he is.

He rarely leaves the grounds of the cathedral. For that matter, he seldom leaves the South Quadrant where his cell lies except to climb the long tower stairs to the belfry.

The priests offer him food and shelter. He takes what is given and asks for no more. He knows hours to himself in the sacred silence of these aged halls. If he does venture into the city, he does so by night, choosing the streets most dimly lit. When he moves in the crowds and is bared to the flickering lamps of the evening, those passing by stare.

Their eyes make him uglier than he is. He tells himself this is a thought he must embrace.

When the sun is crisp and the air is bright, he rides the ropes he pulls, letting the swinging mass of the great bells defy the pull of age and lift him high into the bracing wind. Gulping sky on the upswing and exhaling on the way down he flies in exultation

His chimes sound far and wide through the city. They echo on the ornate walls and buttresses of the edifice beneath him. They resonate in the clouds. Even the eyes of the stone gargoyles that mime his image widen as their chiseled molecules are stretched by sound.

All the world below becomes a cathedral of lost faces.