Quests! (or does this count as my third page?)

Thread Three: Mary Stewart

Yesterday, I was researching a book that had been haunting me for quite a while.
And I saw a quote, which paraphrased, goes something like this:

Each man has his own holy grail.

I tend to agree.

I joked to my friend that his golden-haired cat resembled: "Johnny Quest."
I got a laugh out of him. He had been grouchy all day long.

I feel a strange kinship with Mary Stewart, although I have never met her. Her characters all seem to be involved in some quest or journey to a new land and pursue adventures.

When I was a child, we had hard-bound covers of Reader's Digest books sent to us. It must have been a contract for some publishing house. One of the stories was an abridged version of Mary Stewart's book. The book called to me. It beckoned me each time I picked it up.

I resisted, wrestled and did mortal battle with it. I told it mentally. I am too young to read you and your subject matter. I don't understand your content.

I don't want to read about Nick and his trysts. Nick scared me. What Bryony was going through scared me. I didn't want to delve into all of this.

And why did the secret friend want to invade her life, her thoughts? I couldn't understand how she met him without meeting him. The terrain was new and foreign.
I was possibly eight or nine at the time. My brain didn't understand the book's English, or so I thought.

I never wanted to find out. The secret friend might even be an enemy.

So I did relegate the book to my past. I kept it but never read it. From time to time, I would eye this anthology.

Later, upon reading TIME WAS SOFT THERE and THIS ROUGH MAGIC (also by Mary Stewart), I knew that I should read it sometime.

Now that I am looking for it, it is missing. I have moved and carted it and carted it here and there and everywhere. It is now crying, because I can't find it. I can't explain it. How can a book cry for me? Like it's a child? Like it wants to be read?

I should be the one in charge of when I should read it. I shouldn't feel guilty about it.

It was the first time I felt that someone was haunting me. And Bryony was voicing everything I felt. Bryony knew this feeling. She questioned this, and yet couldn't sort it out right away. I know this feeling so intensely. It feels apart from voyeurism, which I believe is exploitative.

There is a reason the book calls to me. This time, I am old enough to listen and to read.

I think I should order a copy or go to the library and get a copy.
Although the old book is a vestige of the past, it does connect things I was going through, and am going through now. Perhaps, I need it to sort out my present?

I want to, deeply. I want to know that when a book calls, I can safely answer.