Free Tales of Freedom by Ben Okri Page B

light.
    4
    There had been a mysterious ceremony acknowledging the heroic nature of your journey. But the true gift of it was in your spirit, your inner liberation. There was a new eternal light in you.
    Fresh, young, and free, you wander the streets of the kingdom. You have the sense of being in a new world, a luminous world. You are living an enchanted life in the kingdom.
    You had set out early and had arrived sooner than you thought. You have a whole new life ahead of you. And so here you are, a youth with a spirit of shining gold, rich beyond measure in the lightness of your being. Everything is before you. Your main quest and journey is over, because you had begun early and arrived early. Now you have it all to live, in peerless freedom. What luck! No need to fret, but just to live, now, the life you want.
    Like a youth just arrived in a great city, with hope in his heart, looking to make his fortune and find his true love, in the happiest and most innocent days of his life, like such a youth you wander lightly through the streets of the mysterious kingdom. The pastel sky is touched with blue, and there is dawn sunlight.

Acknowledgements
    Material in this collection has been previously broadcast or first published as follows:
    ‘Belonging’ first broadcast by the BBC and published in
Ode
Magazine; ‘The Mysterious Anxiety of Them and Us’ first broadcast by the BBC and published in
Global Report
; ‘Music for a Ruined City’ published by
Ode
Magazine; ‘The Racial Colourist’ published in
VSO
Magazine; ‘The Black Russian’ published in
Diaspora City
(Arcadia Books, 2003); ‘Wild Bulls’ published in
The London Magazine
; ‘The Golden Inferno’ published in
Ode
Magazine; ‘The Secret Castle’ first broadcast by the BBC; and ‘The War Healer’ published in
The Spectator
.

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    Published in 2009 by Rider, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
This edition published by Rider in 2010
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    Copyright © 2009 Ben Okri
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    ISBN 978-1-8460-4159-4
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