Too wired to sleep, too tired to function, I concede victory to the late night hour and tell the indifferent walls that I’m going to bed now. After a few minutes of being utterly bored and restless, I concede victory to my worries and get up to walk around.
Oh look, Harlequin is holding session in an outdoor venue this time.
Wait.
Masked folks rush past me to join the other club kids moving and grooving in the open field off to my left. Water providers meander around the clusters of people, giving bottles of water as requested, and selling bottles of everything else, liquid, pill, powder, or other. The hill I’m standing on is dotted with random trees, tables, and groups of people who are far too proper and constrained to indulge in the open invitation echoing from the hard trampled field. Horatio nudges me gently.
“Well, Miss? Are we going to participate or not?”
“Hang on. I missed the transition and want to get my bearings.”
“As you please, Miss.”
I don’t feel like I’m dreaming. I don’t feel like I’m awake. Hypnagogia at its finest. I was surprised to see Horatio here and wondered if Pescado was also going to make an appearance.
“Where’s your good twin?”
Horatio smirked at the insult. “He’s in the mass of bodies over there. Said he wanted to touch the River again.”
I looked towards where Horatio was pointing. The participants were arranged in layers of circles. Harlequin and a few equally mottled players were at the near stationary center. The bright masked orchestrator dipped and twisted as they danced in place. Around them, four (or five, they kept changing number) others danced in a wild and jerky widdershins motion. Sometimes they grasped hands, sometimes not. Sometimes they twirled, sometimes they just ran. Watching the spinning, weaving colors made me dizzy.
Each concentric circle of dancers was wider than the one within, more populated than the one within, danced less elaborately than the one within, and moved slower than the one within. At the seventh circle, dancers were more walking than anything else, and people came in and out of the circle almost absentmindedly. All the circles moved widdershins (to the right of the observer), except for the fourth circle of dancers who moved sunwise (to the left).
Somehow the circles of dancers were kept segregated by barely touched areas of open space. It took effort for an outer dancer to pass into an inner circle, but inner dancers were easily moved by an unseen force to an outer circle if they could not keep up. A few were offended by rejection, and many were surprised at their acceptance.
I watched for Pescado, but the ribbon of movement and the clash of colors in just the slowest, outermost circle hurt my sight and I was forced to look away or become dizzy. I felt for his presence with my mind, and was reassured that he was nearby and not at risk of being lost to the flow of dancers. I then tried to sense for water. Only what was present in the bottles reflected my attention.
“It’s daylight, and very few trees. This isn’t Dionysian. Dammit, they’re changing up the rules on me a-fucking-gain. The setting reminds me of a dream that was one part Rite Of Spring, but I think that was set inside.” Horatio accompanies me to an unoccupied bench at the foot of a wintering tree.
“Perhaps you just need a rest, Miss.” He took up a guardian’s pose, standing to my right and insulating me from the barely perceived call from Harlequin to join their dance and their troupe.
I was about to agree with him when I looked off to my left, uphill, and noted the groups of folks seated at the “nonparticipants tables”. I answered him with a string of muttered expletives.
He followed my gaze. “I don’t understand. Government agents and aliens from outer space. What does it mean?”
“It’s a code from my daydreams before I learned to take them as dreams in their own right. G-men represent official establishments like organized religions and esoteric orders. The aliens though…” My right arm and eye ached. “I don’t want to admit that right now. They’re here, and I know what they are, and that’s enough.”
“Water, Miss?” The hawker stops in front of me, perfectly breaking my line of sight to the groups of still seated individuals. He holds out an unlabeled and unsealed bottle of water and smiles. “Fresh from the River and unpolluted.”
That makes two references to the River. I didn’t take the offered bottle. “Drawn at what depth?”
The hawker’s eyes glint and I wonder if this is Harlequin unmasked. “Deep enough to be clear, high enough to be sweet.” I also wonder if everyone else except me, Horatio, and Pescado are also Harlequin. “It’s safe for all here, or it would not be offered.”
I accept the bottle but I do not open it. I’m still unnerved by the presence of the aliens to be comfortable. The hawker accepts this, nods, and continues on out of my line of sight.
The G-men are muttering to each other about being here. About the lack of controls. About the lack of decorum. About the inability to determine who is in charge so they could take that person to task for the multitude of violations against a contract that was never signed. Same as it ever was.
The aliens are watching me unblinkingly. Their travel robes are marked in certain ways that do not change no matter how many times I glance away and glance back. The patterns on their clothes are all black, dark browns, and deep reds. It feels wrong for some reason. I realize I’m expecting something else, someone else. But that someone else cannot appear unless I yield myself to her. As the conditions are not right for her to appear, I sigh and look away with both relief and discomfort.
The physical exhaustion of the day filters through the hypnagogia. I realize I can hear the music the dancers downhill are dancing to. Horatio maintains his guardian pose beside me, and I feel safe despite the characters present. The bench under me is soft from wear and the wintering tree accepts my weight against it.
I close my eyes.
I hear a man vocalizing in a warbling tone. Too loose to be a chant, too free to be a song, the melody rises and falls the way a murmuration moves in the sky. I open my eyes and find myself in white.
There is just enough ground present for me to stand on because I need something to stand on to feel here, and even then, it looks like I’m standing on white. There is no light source. Everything is light, and that light is white. But I am not blinded. There is just nothing to see.
I blink.
The song is now coming from a man who has appeared beside me to my left. I glance to the right for Horatio, but he is not present in any capacity. I realize my awareness has been removed to a different level of dreaming and he cannot follow as he is still guarding my body sitting at the wintering tree.
I look to my left, and see a thin aged Native American man warbling the song that brought me here. He wears a jacket made of denim and leather with water stained leather fringes testifying to the weathering of both coat and man. He is singing to something like thin, delicate, and ripped parchment in his hands. The sorrow on his face matches the fading of the material. I look for identifying marks that I could look up once awake to help me identify his tribe or geographic location.
He stops singing and I am suddenly embarrassed.
“You will never be [NDN]. Trying to find what ground my body has sprouted from would be foolish.”
“My apologies, Sir. I have been in the habit of gleaning as many clues as I can, even if those clues must be discarded later.”
I feel him smiling softly at me and I realize I have not seen his face. I gesture my question with a tilt of my head.
“You will never see the stars if you never look up.”
I nodded at the chastisement and looked up to the slightly taller man’s face. A wave of sorrow muted my curiosity and all I was able to see through the glare of white was a face thinned by age and travails. Wrinkles folded his cheeks, and in each pinch was a wave of history. Long graying hair was thinly braided into two long lengths that fell on either side of his face. The ends were far out of my sight below me. A personal adornment of turquoise and bone was visible under the open neck of the jacket. He wore a black-as-pitch woolen bowler, upon which a hat band made of strung silver medallions with turquoise insets had been tied with a leather thong. The hat kept pulling my attention away from his star-filled eyes the moment I spied it.
His smile was warmer now, with a soft edge of mirth.
When he stopped smiling, I shuddered in chill.
“Is this what you are looking for?” He drew my attention back to the deteriorating object in his hands. I realized what I had thought was paper or thin skin, was once an inner flexible layer of bark from some light wood tree. There were markings on the visible surface. As he stood still and silent, the markings continued to fade and the bark continued to flake and deteriorate. As it was, there was not enough for me to commit to memory, much less research without already denied context later. But there was enough for me to answer his question.
“Yes.”
“I just told you, you are not [NDN]. Even if you took hold of this the moment of its making, its meaning would be denied you.”
I nodded in agreement and sorrow.
“Then why do you keep looking for [information] in places you cannot reach and languages you cannot read?” He opened his hands and the bark fell away as dust. I felt compelled to watch the falling of the material. When the components hit the ground, they colored what was underfoot, and light brown dirt appeared underneath our feet. The white faded, and I found myself in a place that reminded me of the hills of the Mojave Desert. (But I also knew, this had nothing to do with the Mojave Desert.)
“I need to learn a Thing.” Even though I spoke in code, I knew that he knew of what I was speaking.
“You do.” He closed his eyes and nodded.
“I don’t know where to start. There’s so much to learn.”
“There is.” He nodded again. He peeked an eye open at me. “You’re not going to complain about no one helping you into the pool?”
Ouch! “No, Sir. It’s my responsibility to get there myself.” I chewed my tongue for a while and watched the realistic dirt shift under my stalling foot. “Right. I’ll bite. How do I get into the pool? Where do I start to learn? I know once I begin, once that wheel starts to turn, I’ll move towards my destination. But first, I have to start, and I don’t know how!” I looked up at him and found myself almost crying in frustration.
He looked at me squarely, then looked down to the same patch of dirt I had been studying. “Don’t ask me. Ask the Land.”
I did not follow his gaze. I was too busy trying to smother the burst of anger pricked by his answer. “What land? I’m landless. Houseless. Tribeless. Outcast. Outlaw! What land? My own city of residence is indifferent to me. What fucking land?”
He did not look back up, but his black-as-infinite hat bobbed as he smirked. “Not the land. Not the political entities that are too busy trying to devour each other to care for the atoms that make them. The Land. The earth under your feet. The earth in your bones. They are the same. The Land that sprung you is the Land that will receive you.”
“But you just said I’ll never be Indian! Which I don’t dispute, but how can you tell me to talk to the very thing that won’t have anything to do with me!”
He peeked at my face with unrestrained humor. “Are you always this dense? I’ll say it again, in words even you can understand. The Land. The Body. The same Ash that fertilized the ground you came from will be the same Ash that seals your return to the grave. That which is divided seeks to be whole. Here then, is union. The same Land upon which you stand is the same Body that embraces you. The Ash waits in your bones for fire to release it. Or did you think you are something more than Dirt because you think.”
I knew the meaning of his words, but I could not understand the way they were strung together. I knew he bit at me to help me waken, but still I slumbered.
“I’m… landless.”
“You stand upon Land. You are never without the Land.”
“I’m disconnected.” The meanings were starting to become clear.
“You are not. You are unaware, but you are not disconnected. You would not be here if you were. You would not be if you were. You are not Landless. You are without a nachon, but you are not without the Land.”
I understood. The anger fled from me, leaving me misty-eyed in embarrassment.
“The Thing I seek may require me to commit to a nachon or equivalent in time.”
“Then you will have to confront that requirement at that time.”
“Okay. I get it. I still don’t know what the hell I’m going to do once I get in the pool, but I know how I’m gonna get there.”
He smiled and I knew all was going to be well.
He tucked his chin into his chest and began the murmuring song again. When the ground under me stopped being and I fell away, I was neither surprised nor concerned.
I opened my eyes.
A cold hand was holding my right wrist securely. Fingers pressing into the thin skin over the artery. Someone was checking for a pulse.
I meant to turn bodily towards that person. I could barely turn my head. My mouth was dry, and I noted I had a dedicated audience standing a respectable distance from the wintering tree I was sitting at.
“You stopped breathing.” A woman’s voice. Very familiar, but not mine.
“It… happens.” From a location above where I heard the woman’s voice, I heard Horatio snort angrily in response.
“I’m… not… physically… here. Why…?” Why was I incapacitated?
“You were separated from yourself. Close enough.”
“… K. So… how long?” The more I tried to speak, the more I felt ‘normal’, or at least, what passed for normal here. I noted the G-men were more grumpy than usual, and the aliens were paying very, very close attention.
“Seven minutes.” There’s that number again.
I acknowledged her answer with a noncommittal grunt.
I recovered enough that I could turn without fainting and faced her. I knew her. A new-to-me spirit that was from my personal ancestral chain. Authority vetted an authority, and that authority confirmed her relation to me. An advisor by nature, I was surprised to see her take on a form in this dream. (Her nom-de-plume in my public writings shall be “Philippus”. A name that she is very pleased with, because reasons.)
One of the aliens stood, and as they did, the colors of their garments changed from the dark browns and deep reds to bright blues and pure white. I tried to pull my arm from Philippus in a shock of sudden fear. I knew there was nothing to fear from the aliens (and what they represented), but that color combination is a herald of a potential possession, and thank you very fucking much but I’d rather not.
“I’m not letting go.” I wondered if Philippus’ challenge was directed towards me or the standing alien. I watched the alien hold out a hand to the wintering tree towering above me. In response, the closest branch to the alien quickly grew a twig over my head, and on the end of that twig, grew a leaf bud. That leaf bud unfurled as I watched and became a large single-blade leaf that was larger than my hand. Just as quickly as the leaf grew, it fell away from the now withering twig and floated to the waiting alien on a sliver of a breeze.
The alien then reached down, grabbed a handful of dirt from under its feet, and placed its prize in the now cupping leaf. It approached me, and I struggled not to flee. Philippus’ grip helped keep me in place. The alien stooped, grabbed a handful of dirt from under my feet, and mixed that dirt with the first handful in the leaf.
It picked up the forgotten water bottle beside me, blew off the top as if blowing out a candle flame, and mixed the water from the River with the dirt to make a deep hued, thin bodied mud much in texture like paint. It raised its hand over my face, and I lost the ability to move. Philippus remained gripping my wrist with comforting strength. Horatio could only stand behind her and grind his teeth in frustration.
It held the muddied leaf in its left hand and pointed to my face with its right. My eyes closed on command but I could still see the scene. It then dipped its index finger in the mud and drew a line across my face, from my left hairline to my right, just above my eyebrows. It then dipped its finger again, and placed three dots in a horizontal line under my right eye. Another dip into the mud, and three dots were placed under my left eye.
I was filled with a terrible anxiety, because only six dots had been placed, and not seven. There was a secret in plain sight here, but I could not understand it.
The alien waited until I had worked through the fit of anxiety and was internally calm again. Still, I could not move my body or open my eyes, but still I was able to see what was happening around me.
The alien reached under its robes and removed a pendant from around its neck. The stone was almost as long as my hand, and as thin as my thumb. It tapered at both ends to a rounded point. It glowed in the same bright blue and white colors as its robes. Without ceremony or comment, it placed that pendant around my neck, and tucked the stone under my shirt so that it rested against my skin.
But the possession I was fearing did not happen.
The alien walked halfway back to its still seated brethren and stopped. There, it poured out the mud still in the leaf, and allowed the wind to take the leaf away. Only then did it continue to its fellows, turn to face me, seat itself, and cover its face.
When it covered its face, I was able to open my eyes.
When I opened them, the scene had changed. Gone were the government men, and with them, the authority and/or condemnation from established religious and esoteric orders. But also gone were the aliens, and what they directly represented as well. Pescado was now seated to my left, holding my left hand gently. Philippus was still seated to my right and still holding my right wrist, though not to check for a pulse that never existed, but for a reason that won’t be written here. Horatio glared at the figure crouched in front of me while standing beside Philippus.
Harlequin had quit the formal dance in the field downhill and was half kneeling in a formal position before me and the wintering tree I was seated at. Their brightly mottled wide brim hat was tilted down as they kept their face lowered for some reason that I doubted had anything to do with respect. Gloved and cloaked with conflicting colors battling to hurt my eyes with aggressive hues, they waited patiently for me to recognize what they were holding.
That damn bastard was holding a djembe.
The mud dried on my face as I waited for Harlequin to get bored of waiting for me. The silence held us all gently in place, allowing me time to reflect on what has happened not only in this dream, but in the months of physical time leading up to this dream.
How many years have I been running away? How many lies have I clung to as an excuse not to confront myself and the errors I have personally made? How many labels… insults… have I used as a shield to keep from growing up… from becoming myself… because I demanded recognition from the very people who would deny I exist before I could recognize myself?
I am Apostate, and the god I fled from refuses to abandon me. I am Outsider, and the power I am barred from found a way to embrace me. I jump from shelf to shelf, avoiding the ground. Claiming to be incapacitated because people have treated me as a trophy to be kept immobile.
I have no one to carry me into the pool.
Once upon a time, I was asked what I wanted out of this life, and I answered, “Union”. Everyone tells me I’ll never be whole, I’ll never have worth other than being someone else’s tool. I want to be.
The day had ended long ago. The sunshine participants had left before the sun and slipped fully into its bed. The wintering tree glowed as if moonlight had been caught in its bark, and it was the only source of light to be had.
Horatio remained standing next to Philippus who remained holding my right wrist. Pescado was leaning on my left arm even as he held my left hand with that same gentle firmness as before. Harlequin remained in position, kneeling before me with the djembe, and behind them, to their left, four members of their troupe (in elemental colors) stood silently and patiently with their heads bowed in respect. Behind Harlequin’s right, stood a shadow I could not see in a form I could not recognize, but felt comforted by its presence even though it was there by absence.
“Philippus…” She squeezed my wrist in answer. I had meant to ask her how to leave the dream as I did not know what Harlequin wanted from me and I was so tired that I did not think I could bear another ordeal.
“You will never see the stars if you never look up.”
I leaned my head back and looked into what I expected to be an empty sky.
So many stars… I’ve never seen so many stars in person… and if I don’t do something, I never will…
“What is your Will?” I don’t know who asked such in severe and soft tones. I don’t know if the question came from within me or without. I only know I was unable to lie at that moment, unable to smother the suddenly aching emptiness that tried to leech the warmth from my bones.
I could not hold back the whisper slipping up my throat. “Communion.”
The djembe started to play.
I closed my eyes, lowered my head, and surrendered to its rhythm.
I felt a void, an emptying of space, opening not too far before me. I opened my eyes, and saw an oval that reflected no light. Harlequin had moved to sit before their troupe, allowing me to see the oval without distraction. I barely registered their change of position.
As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw there was a reflection in the oval after all. A figure sat on something like the bench I was sitting on. They were flanked by figures of absolute darkness that I could not see details of. No moonlight framed them. Instead, their clothes emitted the light I was seeing.
They were wearing the blue and white robes of the alien from earlier.
They lifted their head, and I was able to see them clearly.
My fear had returned to me, wearing my face. Between my double’s eyes, placed neatly on the pinch of their nose, was a single, crimson dot.
I remembered what the silver and turquoise crowned man said about being of the Land, and I understood.
I stood to greet this reflection, this other part of me, and found I was able to stand unhindered. After a few steps forward (that my double reflected perfectly), I remembered that I was being held. I looked back.
Philippus was monitoring my pulse again as Pescado held my hand and muttered words in repetition just out of my hearing and understanding. Horatio was reaching over to close my locked eyes as my head strained against the bark of the wintering tree.
I faced forward and looked down at my hands. I saw I was holding [two things] that were not in my body’s hands back at the tree. In my right hand was [a turquoise thing], and in my left hand was [a black thing]. I did not understand why I was carrying them both at this moment. I accepted these were markers of previous events that had deeply shaped me, and that if I was going to have the communion I desired, I had to bring all of me, including my past. My double held no items, and kept their hands open in a gesture of acceptance.
I looked forward. My reflection was perfectly distant from the boundary. As I approached, I moved slightly to my right as if to keep from colliding with my double. My double stepped to their right as well. When we reached the boundary, it rippled as I stepped into the void and my double stepped out of it.
We circled each other, stepping in and out of the void, coming closer to each other with each movement, until we stopped nose to nose while straddling the threshold.
My double reached forward and gripped [the two things] with me. The turquoise thing was held jointly in their left hand, and the black thing was held jointly in their right hand. We moved our heads to each other’s right, closed our eyes, and kissed.
We are walking the bottom of the River. Seven dots of mud, impervious to the water, are clinging to our face under our eyes. A dot of blood, incapable of dissolution, remains between our eyes. Under our robes, the [blue and white pendant] glowed softly.
[The two things] have become two marks on the backs of our hands. We have always had them. We have only recently recovered them.
The River flows. Upstream and downstream is relative to our perspective. Some parts of the River flow in one direction, some parts flow in the other. Some parts swirl in untiring eddies, some parts surge onto the land.
[The Lady] watches over the River. The waters carry her voice to us. This has happened before, she tells us. This will happen again, she tells us. This is happening now, she tells us.
We came through the River, she tells us. Not all Rivers are water, she tells us. Not all darkness is death, she tells us. The River is like the Land, she tells us. There are many things she tells us.
We will be back, she tells us.
I open my eyes with shrieks and pitched cries. There was… something… I remember. There was… someone… I remember. There was… union… I remember.
And the parting is pain.
It is nearly midnight at the wintering tree. The djembe is silent and Harlequin is absent along with their troupe. Philippus is merely holding my right wrist softly again. I can feel the pendant moving with my softening breaths. Pescado is holding my left hand close to his chest.
“You smell like the River.” I could not guess as Pescado’s emotions that drove him to state that.
It took me a few deep breaths before I could respond. “Any time you want to return…”
“No.” He rubbed my hand against his face. “I made a commitment. I’ll go, when you go.”
I tried to remember what I saw during the possession. What I experienced. What I thought. But the person I had become under those circumstances was so alien to the person I am now, that I could not begin to comprehend the random snatches of information I brought back with me.
I leaned my head back and saw not a single star through the leafless canopy of the wintering tree.
“I’m tired.”
“Then rest, Miss.” Horatio’s voice was unusually gentle. I’ll have to tease him about that. “No one will assault you here.”
I wanted to quip about Harlequin, but the exhaustion of the day’s physical ordeals and the night’s spiritual ones caught up with me. The light slowly faded from the bark of the wintering tree as I slipped against my will into a deeper sleep.