The gold castle gleamed in the distance. The sun gave its offering of sunlight and in return the castle declared its splendor to all that would so much as glance at it. I sat on some rubble in the decrepit district and viewed the castle framed between two nearby apartment buildings that were in the process of slowly self-destructing.
I have been here before. And as before, I find I am more comfortable in the squalor of the rubble around me than in the treasury that is the interior of that castle. This district is not abandoned. There are people living here that can’t leave, people living here that won’t leave, and people that visit to prey upon the former and each other. It’s the closest to the waking world I can experience in a dream.
I just don’t understand why I’m here now.
“Here. You don’t have any water with you and you should stay hydrated.” The male youth has a pretty face and this distracts me from the tells ringing his head and feathering his feet. He holds out a sealed water bottle. “No games between us. Not today, anyway. It’s been a while, after all, and you should get your bearings first.”
I took the water bottle. The wording on the label squirmed to escape my investigation. “Thank you.” I opened the bottle. The water smelled so clean and pure that it smelled as sweet as honey. “Oh. This isn’t from the district, is it?”
“No. His Lordship wanted you to know that you are not forgotten and that any time you want to pick up where you left off, he is available.”
I was about to take a sip when I parsed what the youth said. With the bottle’s rim to my lips, I turned only my eyes and looked at him. He smiled as I recognized him. I turned my eyes to the castle in the distance and recognized that place as well. I looked around me and recognized the setting. “Oh boy.”
I closed my eyes and drank as much of the bottle as I could until my lungs and my fears forced me to breathe.
I lowered the bottle and capped it out of habit. For all that I had drank, the bottle was as full as the moment I had opened it. “Long time, Hermes.”
“Indeed. Well, as humans count time, anyway.”
“Have you come to assist me with my education?” I scooted aside the concrete block I was sitting on to make room for him.
He sat on the exposed space and smiled at me with mirth. “Have you come to further your education?”
I turned away from him and looked up at the puffs of clouds migrating across the sky. I thought about what I have done in the waking world, both in the recent days and the recent years. I thought of the ring and its implications. I thought of things I have spoken of publicly and things I am barely able to admit to myself in my thoughts. “Yes. I have. I thought I knew what form that would look like, but if I’m back here, I guess my education will be more expansive than I thought.”
He nudged my hand holding bottle. As I complied with his silent request he spoke in an academic tone. “You are aware that a mystery of mathematics was revealed only when the seeker was immersed in water. You are aware that the study of forces that sends a rocket into space is the same as the study of wine swirling in a glass. A bird descends from a tree and inspiration ascends into your consciousness. Your education has always been expansive. You are the one limiting how to perceive the lessons presented to you and how to apply what little you have retained.”
I ignored that the water bottle should have been exhausted twice over by now and kept drinking as he spoke. I drank as if by taking in the water, I could take in his words as if they were the medicine I needed to live. I lowered the bottle only when it was clear that he had finished speaking.
As I again capped the full bottle, I stared at the ground in front of me in sudden shame. The cold water twisted in my stomach as if dislodging my guilt and my doubt. I lifted my head and saw the gleaming castle between the two shadowed and crumbling buildings.
He looked ahead at the castle and quietly interrogated me. “Why haven’t you left this district?”
“Because this district is where I belong. You remember the last time you took me in that castle. I don’t belong there. I’m not one of the gears that keeps that machine running. I’m ugly and misshapen and assembled from monstrous pieces and without citizenship. I’m Unclean and Outcast. I’m the story told to children to keep them in line with the social mores of their guardians. I stay here because this is the only place that will allow me to be me. The other districts only want those pieces that are profitable to them and fuck off with the rest. And that place?”
I gestured to the castle with the water bottle. The bottle seemed to glow from the light reflected from the castle as if it were filled with the condensation of sunlight.
“My name is [Rebellion], Hermes.” I raised my right hand and the crossed ring gleamed brightly. “It is a sealed name now, Hermes. I don’t belong in places that demand obedience for the right to exist.”
The youthful god watched me fidget but never lost his enigmatic and mirthful smile. “Do you remember the day you challenged me to a fistfight? For fun? You knew that ultimately you would end up on your back but you were living for the dare and not the triumph. Do you remember that day?”
I tried to remain sulking but I couldn’t help but laugh. Hermes had cleaned my clock in a professional yet delicate manner. The moment I had opened my mouth, I knew I was as good as wrecked. But I challenged him anyway.
“Heh. Yea. I promise you that I will never forget that you are the patron god of boxing, ever fucking again.”
“Would you have challenged me if you remembered then?”
I stopped laughing and held the water bottle with both hands. “Honestly? At that time, probably not. It would have been like asking you to prove yourself. You have been nice to me. Gentle, even. But you’re a god, and hubris has fucked over many of my better peers.”
He leaned in slightly. “At that time. What about now?”
“If that day was today and I had the itch for physical interaction? Would I challenge the god of boxing to a round of polite fisticuffs? No.”
He nudged my shoulder with his. “But your name is [Rebellion], live up to it!”
I nudged back. “I see your bait and I’m flicking away the hook. My motives that day were not honest, but I wasn’t willing to see that for myself at that time. Kicking my ass was the proper response to that impulse, and your methodical process was a lesson in itself.”
He sat up straight on the block beside me. “Why are you here, [Rebellion]?”
I looked at the castle and finally acknowledged that I wished that was my abode. That I had more than the castoffs of others and the indulgent whims of people who don’t deserve the power that they have. That I had true autonomy and could be freely myself. That I could wear my name openly. That I had answers. That I could help myself and be a help to those I care about. But for all my wishes, I had no answer to his question and this too was a truth that had to be acknowledged.
“I don’t know, Hermes. But this is all I know and there is comfort in that knowledge.”
“Even if it’s a lie?”
“Especially if it’s a lie.”
He nodded and slid off the concrete block. For all the rubble that surrounded us, he was as clean as the moment he arrived. He ran his hand through his hair and the action distracted me from his transformation.
Hermes, Messenger of the Gods, stood before me in such a posture that the golden castle was visible over his right shoulder. His body appeared on the cusp of adulthood and glowed from within. His chlamys was woven from light and politely obscured him in a polite fashion. He cocked his petasus to one side and smiled a very dangerous grin. The wings on his sandals rubbed lightly against each other and I heard the air dancing around them. He extended his hand towards me.
“You have been summoned.”
I remained seated on the block in my regular street clothes. I eyed him from sandals to petasus to that irresistible daring grin of his. I felt like crying.
“Dude. You’re the last one I would think to bring Elpis to me. Knock the shit off, eh.”
He put his hand on his hip. “You doubt me? You, who spoke of hubris?”
I tried to smile. Tears graced my face instead. “Summoned by whom, Hermes?”
“You forgot, didn’t you.” He spoke those words in the same tone and meter as the day he reminded of his prowess. I realized I was missing something in plain sight and this would be his last kind reminder.
I looked past him to the castle and remembered my last encounter there. What has changed since then? What have I done since then? What have I done recently that would call me back to that place?
Oh. I had forgotten, but now I remembered.
“But [that action] had nothing to do with tarot! I haven’t tried to walk the pathways on the Tree of Life for years!”
He smiled warmly and I felt oddly relieved. “As if the ineffable could be restrained and defined by something so material as paper and ink.” His rebuke felt good to hear. It was giving me permission to release a fear.
He faced me squarely and challenged me by posture. “You sent a request, and that request has been heard. You have been summoned. Do you answer the summons?”
“I’m not dressed for it.”
“And you know that’s irrelevant here.”
“I’m afraid.”
“I know. I can’t help you with that.”
“I’m afraid, but I’m going to answer the summons, anyway. Because you’re right, I did send a request. I just didn’t know what the answer would look like. Start with where you are, with what you know, and be prepared for both to change. Right?”
Hermes extended his hand. I slid off the block to take it. The moment our fingers touched, there was a flash of light from the point of contact. When my eyes readjusted, I was in the throne room of the castle again.
The throne was empty.
“This way.” Hermes led me to a side chamber. Books and scrolls were present on shelves that reached to the ceiling where a Chaldean representation of the spheres of heaven was painted.
He continued on to a small desk in the middle of the room while I turned around in wonder. When my rotation brought me back to facing him again, I stopped. There was a book on the desk and a single chair pulled out and towards me in invitation.
“Shall we continue your education? If this castle is to be yours, there is information you need to learn and assumptions that need to be corrected.”
I walked to the offered chair and laid a hand on its back. “Is the first lesson not to confuse the map for the territory?”
“Not the first, but it is a constant. If you allow it, I will remind you as often as necessary.”
I sat in the chair and pulled myself to the table. “Well then, I guess I better continue my education if I’m going to keep up this time.”
I opened the book and the dream ended.