Gate: Six of Cups
I stepped through the vision gate into a desert where the sun shone brightly down upon shining golden sand and scrubby desert vegetation. Beneath my feet, a path of cobblestones made of marble rose through the sand, marking a way forward through the endless dunes. I followed this path, moving from one stone to another while shading my eyes from the brilliance of the sun which was so bright it was almost oppressive.
“I seem to end up in desert regions quite a lot,” I said to myself as I continued forward. “I wonder if that has any meaning, beyond the obvious, for me.”
After a long hike through the monotonous landscape, a tall monolith that was made of the same stone as the path appeared, unearthing itself from the shifting sand. The monument rose high into the air and sparkled with embedded minerals. At its base, a dark doorway appeared, leading into further shadows.
“That looks rather ominous,” I said. “It would probably be a good idea to take a guide with me into the depths. Is there anyone around who will brave this doorway with me?”
An enormous serpent rose from the sand to my left and arched his huge body over me. Then, he drove his head into the sand on the far side of the path, creating a tunneled walkway with his bulk and shading me from the sun. The desert leviathan’s scales were emerald green and shone with an inner light that emanated from him and made the lifeless sands around the path come alive with an impossible springtime hue.
“Hello, sand snake,” I said. “My name is Heidi. Thank you for answering my summons. What is this place?”
The leviathan’s head rose from the sand to gaze at me steadily from outside of the marked path. “Welcome, wanderer,” the serpent rasped. “You see before you, the Plinth of Resurrection, the birthplace of the god Osiris-s-s-s-s.”
I sighed. “Not that guy again,” I said. “He was so unfriendly and loud. Why can’t he find another world to torment and leave this one in peace?”
The serpent’s reptilian eyes stared unblinkingly into mine. “It is not incumbent upon a god to be welcoming to those who stumble into his seat of power,” he said. “Nor should such things be expected.”
“It’s one thing to be aloof,” I said. “It’s quite another to threaten someone’s bloodline with eternal domination and suffering.”
The serpent’s coils moved more tightly around me, narrowing the tunnel forward. “Not all who walk the paths of the inner worlds have good intentions,” the leviathan said. “Until a seeker declares themselves, it is wise to exercise some level of caution, don’t you agree?”
“I suppose this is wise,” I said. ‘If not welcoming or bridge building. What will I find within Osiris’ plinth?”
“Expect change, evolution, and growth within the sacred space of the resurrected god,” the serpent replied. “Those who enter this place are never the same ones who exit. As life challenges change a person’s spirit, so too does this place alter the perceptions of those who may have been wandering in the shadows of ignorance and fear.”
“I hope this alteration is for the better. I will enter the monument for I do not fear change,” I said. “Though I dislike being alone. Will you travel this path with me?”
“Yes-s-s,” the desert guardian said. “But you must not deny the godhood of the spirit within. If you do, it will go ill between you. Again.”
“I will be as respectful and polite as he is with me,” I said. “I promise.”
“Very well then,” said the serpent, shrinking in size, changing scales, and becoming a normal-sized and patterned cobra who slithered easily on the stones next to me. Together, we approached the glimmering monolith. A chill breeze, in stark contrast to the desert heat, emerged from the plinth as I ran my fingers over the frame of the open doorway that was richly carved with Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Beyond the entrance chamber, the cobra and I discovered a hall which was also carved and decorated with writing that I could not decipher. The ceiling of the space was painted a blue so deep that it was the indigo of the night sky and bright lights shone from the monument’s surface as if primal energy was emerging from the painted symbols. The very space was alive with the presence of a living god.
The cobra and I traversed this hall, the hieroglyphs along the walls lighting up in our passage. After some time, we arrived at a large, echoing chamber, at the center of which a beam of light descended from high above and illuminated a precisely carved stone table in the middle of the room. A dark stone statue with the head of a bird and the body of a man lay on this table.
As my feet touched the floor of the chamber, my cobra guide disappeared in a bright flash and the statue upon the altar began to move. With a loud grating sound, the stone statue sat up and turned into a spirit of flesh and blood. The resurrected god wore a white linen tunic with brightly colored embellishments along the neckline and sleeves. He held symbols of power tightly in both hands which he uncrossed from his chest as he rose to his feet.
“Hail and welcome back to the land of the living, Great One,” I said. “I apologize for disturbing your eternal rest. My name is Heidi and I’ve come to this place seeking your true nature and wisdom.”
“I am Osiris, who was dead and now alive,” the god said. “I remember you well, seeker named Heidi, though it has been ages since I saw your face.”
“It hasn’t been that long, for me at least,” I said. “Merely a handful of weeks of lived time.”
“Weeks?” Osiris said, placing his staves upon the altar. “No, Heidi, it has been lifetimes.”
“Be that as it may,” I said. “You seem very different from the last time we met. Perhaps the time spent in this place has changed you as the serpent upon the path told me it changes all who enter its influence.”
“I change each time I arise anew,” the god said, turning his attention upon me. “It is a rebirth of the spirit as well as the body. It can actually be quite refreshing to abandon old grudges and hurts in favor of a renewal of spirit and purpose.”
“I imagine it is,” I said. “Lord Osiris, I am sorry for the rude words I spoke the last time I stood in your presence. I learn and remember truths as I go along and I suspect there was a troublesome pattern established between us long ago that I wish to put to rest here today.”
“I desire for you to remember your true nature as well, Heidi,” Osiris said. “Think no more upon times past and let us focus on a better future for all the worlds.”
“May the Creator of All hear you and make your desire real. Great One, how do you remember the important parts of your previous existence while forgetting the problematic issues that deserve forgetting?” I said. “I would like to understand how a spiritual and physical rebirth such as you describe could be performed without losing one’s identity over eons of existence.”
“I have come to believe that gods are not defined by our ancestral enemies or what happens to us throughout existence,” Osiris said. “But, instead, we are defined by those we love and assist in their evolutions and repeated life patterns. It is through both the embodied and disembodied lives that this learning takes place. Through this new understanding of reality, I have set my feet upon a path that I never expected and its requirements of rebirth have changed me for the better.”
“You have spiritually rehabilitated yourself,” I said. “I hope to walk this path you speak of as well because, I believe, all in existence eventually reach a place where they understand that the past is passed and, to build a better future, we need to forgive ourselves as well as each other. I still have trouble kneeling in penitence and atonement, but if that is what you require for further healing, perhaps I can give it a try.”
Osiris waved his hand at me in negation. “No need to kneel at this point in time, Heidi,” he said. “All is forgiven between us. Be welcome to my inner sanctum and seat of power. Ask your questions and we will arrive at a new understanding together.”
“What is this place?” I said. “It is quite different from your other throne room.”
“This is the womb of my mother and we met before at the seat of my father,” the god said. “The attendants of my temple bring me here when I cease to breathe and leave only when I am alive again. This process can take very little time when a life spent was peaceful and full of love and laughter. It can take much longer for the reverse. I suspect it has something to do with unraveling the lies created by the great shadow upon existence but I have yet to prove this hypothesis.”
“I confess, I know very little about the Egyptian gods,” I said. “Though I am quite willing to learn more. If you could teach me one thing from your many lives, Lord Osiris, what would it be?”
The god began to pace the resurrection chamber in a complex pattern. “Know, Heidi, that death of the body is not the end, as birth of the body is not the beginning.” Osiris moved in circles about the room and traced concentric shapes in the air with his arms as he did so. “Physical existence in its entirety is a constant cycle, a becoming, an evolution. This reality could be depicted as circles within circles, a never ending glyph contained within and without time. See and know the truth of my words.”
Osiris moved back to his altar and raised his arms above his head, sending the power he had accumulated in his motions throughout the room up into the skies. The massive stones of the sacred chamber’s ceiling lifted away and the desert sun shone directly down on both of us like a spotlight.
The stone floor beneath the god’s feet began to shift and change, moving more like water than stone. Everywhere the god had paced within his temple formed a line and a new symbol began to emerge from the floor. To my sight, it looked something like a complex archery target with Osiris standing at its very center while I stood somewhere on the outer edges of one of the most distant circles from the god’s presence.
Osiris then held out his hand to me in a welcoming gesture. “Come, Heidi,” the god said. “Walk the maze and join me at the journey’s end. Truths will enter your mind as you do so. It will be both a learning and revelatory experience for you.”
I gazed at the maze, my position within it, and the distance to the center. “I appreciate the invitation, Lord Osiris,” I said. “But I see no way forward. Your maze is of concentric rings with no way to pass from one circle to another.”
“Isn’t there?” the god said and moved his hands over the space around him. As he did so, the rings began to wriggle, this time moving like serpents more than ripples upon water and they rearranged themselves into a traditional meditative maze such as one would find in the cathedrals and contemplative spaces of old.
“That’s much better,” I said. “I think I can navigate this path.” I took a few steps through the maze but as I did so, the light began to fade from my sight and all became as dark as the inside of a tomb. My next step led me right into a wall. “Ow…,” I said, rubbing my forehead.
“Why did you do that?” Osiris said. “There was a clearly marked turn before the dead end.”
“I can’t see the way you see, Great One,” I said, tentatively backtracking and taking the turn I still couldn’t perceive. “In fact, I can’t see anything in here at all.”
“But can you move how I move?” the god said. “Remember my dance to create the maze and it will go easier with you.”
“Can a stately walk be called a dance?” I said as I jostled my elbow on another wall.
“I think any movement or activity can be called a dance,” Osiris said. “What happened to your imagination?”
I sighed as I came to another dead end, stubbing my toe on its unforgiving wall. “You’re absolutely correct, Great One,” I said. “I will pretend to be you, move as you move, and maybe the maze won’t attack me as I go.” I raised my arms as I remembered the dance Osiris had moved through and did my best to circle my limbs and pace the steps as he had. Though my eyes remained dark, I ran into no further obstacles until I took a step that I intuitively knew was wrong but instead of hitting stone, the surface of the maze bent beneath my body as if it was made of reeds instead of rock. “Oops, wrong way,” I said, correcting my progress. “At least that misstep didn’t hurt like the others.”
“Tell me what you see, Heidi. What secrets does the maze reveal to your mind’s eye?” Osiris said and, as I continued through the god’s dance, shapes began to shift in the darkness filling my sight.
“I see my hands moving through a river’s water,” I said, never ceasing my progress through the maze though the vision behind my eyes was so powerful that I began to feel as if I was existing in two places at once. “I’m drawing something from the water.”
“What do you reclaim from the river?” the god said. “Speak it and remember.”
In the shifting darkness and competing experiences of the maze and river, I held up my hands and saw they ran with blood as much as water. “It is the physical remains of someone I loved,” I said, the knowledge washing over me in a wave. “His enemies ripped him to pieces and scattered his form throughout the worlds. I can’t bear this sorrow. Why is it not me instead?” I stopped moving through the maze as grief began to well up in my heart. “I can’t walk this path or move in your dance, Great One. It is too painful.”
“Don’t cry, Heidi,” Osiris said, his voice very close now. “Keep moving through my maze and do not allow yourself to be lost in times past.”
I allowed the powerful and debilitating emotions to flow through me like water down the mighty river in an echo of what I was seeing in vision and began moving through the steps of the god’s dance once more. As I did so, the vision behind my eyes shifted and I no longer pulled dismembered body parts from the river, but shining sparks of energy that shone like stars. “I perform a service for the Mother of us all,” I whispered to myself as much as the god in the maze. “I saw her gathering spent forms in her seat of power and that is how I shall imagine this trial of sorrow. See, Lord Osiris, how I gather the stars from the river of life?”
“I see and know you,” the god said. “Only a few steps more. Come to me, Heidi.”
Finally, I took a last brave step, the shadows fled from my sight and I realized I stood in the central circle of the god’s sacred space, within arm’s length of his exalted presence. In one hand, I held a spark of energy that I had envisioned myself pulling from the river in my sightless dance through the maze. In my other hand, I held a single river reed, its roots and stem still dripping with water from the river I had pulled it from.
“Well done, Servant of the Mother,” Osiris said and reverentially took the spark from my hand and placed it in his own mouth, swallowing it and incorporating its power into his being. The reed I placed beside his staves of resurrection, leaving it upon the stone altar in the god’s sacred space as he began to shine with an inner light from the nighttime hours while standing in the bright light of the midday sun.
“This reed I entrust to your care, Lord Osiris,” I said. “May you remember my time spent in your maze the next cycle of your existence and not lose the memory of the river that washes away all that we once were.”
“My memory is unaltered, unlike yours, but I accept your offering in the spirit it was given. Let us leave this place, Heidi,” the god said. “It is time for the experience of further existence for your betterment and my own. One doesn’t come back from the dead to remain in their tomb.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” I said, moving to the god’s side. “Where shall we go?”
“I must let my family know that I live again,” he said. “I do not know how long I slept in this cycle and they may be concerned for me.”
“You have a family?” I said.
“Famously so, Heidi. All who are born have a family, even gods,” Osiris said, amused. He made a complex gesture with his hand and we rose into the sunlit air and continued up into the sky until Osiris and I entered the sun itself, causing a surge of energy when our spirits merged within it.
I blinked in the impossible brightness of the sun and found myself in a room with a large square-shaped table and numerous spirits. The air rang with the everyday sounds of conversation and dining. All manner of beings with heads like animals and the bodies of people sat along the table in the midst of a great banquet.
A dozen different voices greeted our appearance. “There he is again,” one said. “The prodigal son returns,” declared another. “Welcome back!” was echoed by numerous gods and goddesses. Osiris smiled and waved at the assembly in greeting, then he took my hand.
“We need to say hello to my wife,” he said. “I suspect you two may get along very well.” Osiris led me past the feasting host towards a raised dais at the far end of the room.
“Who is she?” I asked as I stole a fig from the gods’ table and popped it in my mouth.
“She is the Lady of Light and Lilies,” the god said. “Behold, my sister and queen of the nighttime hours, the shining Isis.” On the dais, there were two thrones, one of which held a numinous being who shone with a bright, inner light, exactly like the spark I had pulled from the river. Osiris ran to his goddess and embraced her while she greeted him in return with a gentle kiss.
“Welcome back, brother,” the goddess said. “I have missed you more than life.” Then, she turned to me, moonlight emanating from her face. “Who is this who comes into our home and hidden spaces?”
“My name is Heidi, Great One,” I said and bowed my head in respect. “I have come to learn the true nature of this place and yourself. If you could teach me one lesson about existence from your timeless perspective, what would it be?”
“Every time my brother dies, I mourn. Every time he returns to me, I celebrate,” the goddess said. “I would teach you that both emotions have their time and proper place. It is the contrast between the two that makes them so powerful.” She clapped her hands and the room quieted. “My kith and kin, Osiris has returned to us. Now is the time for celebration! Bring in the dancers and begin the music of the resurrected god once more!”
Doors opened in the walls of the room and a crowd of female dancers wrapped in silks the color of the sun entered. A song whose notes I vaguely remembered rose into the air and the dancers writhed around me in concentric circles in the pattern Osiris had traced out in his resurrection chamber. They spun and circled the gods present with their arms raised in celebration and triumph. I found myself rising in the air above the ecstatic and wild scene, and fell out of the sun to walk the desert sands once more and stand before the Plinth of Resurrection.
The sand beneath me began to boil and move revealing a veritable lake of serpents within its hidden depths. The cobra who accompanied me into Osiris’ sacred space appeared and wrapped himself securely around my arms. “Thank you for walking with me into the plinth. It went so much better than the last audience because I followed your advice to the letter,” I said. “Who are these spirits beneath the ground?”
Before my guide could reply, an answer came from the living mass of desert spirits. “We are the serpents of transformation and change,” said the snakes in rasping and hissing whispers. “We represent spiritual evolution. Walk among us, one from the sun, and we will accompany you upon the surface of the earth once more.”
“It only looks like I’m from the sun because I walked with Osiris and moved through his dance,” I said. “I am from earth like all of you.” But the only reply from the snakes was further hissing and complex motions within the writhing coils of the countless spirits slithering beneath the ground.
Then from deep within the heaving sands, an enormous hooded cobra, the size of a small house, raised his head. He opened his fanged mouth wide and put his head down on the sand beside Osiris’ temple, turning into a stone cavern with carved steps that led down into his throat. The other slithering serpents burrowed under the sand and were soon gone, leaving only the cavern which with its mere presence seemed to call out to me to enter its waiting darkness and shadows.
“That seems like the obvious place for us to explore next,” I said to the serpent who unwound himself from my arms and landed on the sand beside me. “I didn’t catch your name last time, sand snake. Thank you for meeting me here again.”
“I am Mehen,” he hissed. “Though others have called me, Lickspittle.”
“Lickspittle, is it really you?” I said. “What happened to your legs? The last time we met you had four legs and now you have none.”
“What are bodies and limbs in the realms of the spirit?” said Lickspittle. “Infinitely malleable, that’s what.”
“I suppose that’s true, though I prefer to appear as myself because that is what I’m accustomed to. Come on, Lickspittle,” I said. “My curiosity demands that I know what is within. Let’s go see, shall we?” As we climbed into the cavern’s mouth and went down into the dark, a single shaft of sunlight descended from above and illuminated a lamp and sickle on a rock column at the bottom of the tunnel. I approached the column cautiously as the shadows writhed in repeated patterns around the artifacts within the secret depths of the desert cave.
“Release the being in the lamp,” Lickspittle said encouragingly. “I haven’t seen him for some ages and one has to wonder if his mind has survived his long sleep.” The ornately decorated oil lamp burned with a bright blue flame that cast very little light in that shadowed place. I picked the artifact up and gently brushed its sides with my fingertips. Nothing happened and the snake and I gazed at the lamp in some disappointment.
“Maybe he died after all,” Lickspittle said. “Even powerful spirits of the air such as he have to enter death’s gate from time to time.”
“It is true that the living must pass that final threshold,” I said. “But this is an elemental being whom I believe follows different rules of existence and requirements as well. What if he took a different form and needs to be shown the way to resume the form he once held?”
“Curious idea,” Lickspittle said. “What do you have in mind?”
I put down the lamp with its flickering blue flame and reached for the sickle that still sat with no emanating light or perceptible energy whatsoever atop the pillar. “Tell me, Snake,” I said. “What is the purpose of a sickle?”
Lickspittle slid down my body to wrap himself around the stone pillar, bringing his face even with the lamp and ancient artifact. “It is a tool of civilization,” he said. “A gift from the gods to assist in the harvest to support and feed the multitudes.”
“When a tool is as sharp as this, it can also be a weapon,” I said, pricking my fingertip on the sickle’s honed point. “How many of your brethren have lost their heads to the harvesters of the fields?”
Lickspittle stuck his tongue out at me and put his head upon the top of the pillar. “None of the wise ones,” he said. “If they’re clever, they hunt the mice and other small vermin with impunity, fleeing from the two-legged monsters and their sharpened sticks when they arrive in their season.”
“What if the serpent is so glutted with mice that he doesn’t hear the approaching threat until it is too late?” I said. “What then?”
“He dies,” said Lickspittle. “And good riddance, I say.”
“I don’t think being fat and happy should be a death sentence,” I said, waving the sickle experimentally before my eyes.
“Not taking a care for your surroundings and beings within it routinely is,” Lickspittle said. “Why should serpent-kind be any different?”
“Why should snakes die because humanity needs their grain?” I said. “Why this competition for space and resources at all? If we could only develop a common language between people and beasts, maybe we could share the earth without killing each other for mice or grain or anything at all.”
Lickspittle further climbed the pillar, wrapping himself around the base of the lamp as well. “The lives lost between the awakened spirits in nature is a sacrifice demanded by the gods for civilized life itself,” the snake said. “Maybe if you cut my head off, it will awaken the elemental being once more. He can feed off my life’s blood as he makes his way back from the worlds of the dead.”
“I’m not killing you, one of my oldest friends in the other worlds, for some nebulous hope of an air spirit’s awakening,” I said. “That being said, I do wish to speak with whoever this is. I wonder if I cut off my hair, would the powers that be deem that an acceptable sacrifice instead? He could make my hair into a rope and climb from the depths back to our reality.”
“Two-leggeds can live with or without hair,” said the snake. “I think the sacrifice to build a bridge between worlds needs to be something more important.”
“Like what?” I said, considering my human form and what I might be able to live without. “Not my fingers, I need those to make music. Or my eyes, I would very much like to see maze walls before I run into them. I am rather attached to my ears too.”
“Hmmmm,” said Lickspittle, pausing for a moment in thought. “There’s always your tail. Maybe we should consider offering that to the gods.”
“My tail? I don’t have a tail,” I said.
“You do,” said Lickspittle. “Observe your shadow.” I looked down at my feet, seeking my shadow self, following the line of darkness emanating from my feet in the flickering blue light from the lamp and I noticed Shadow dancing among the other shadowy figures in the cave. From her back, a tail as substantial as a chain with a pointed end like a demon swung as she moved through her carefree existence among the others like her.
“Oh my God, what is she doing with that!” I said. “I don’t have a tail on my body. Why do I have one on my shadow?”
“Humanity once had tails like the other creatures upon the earth,” Lickspittle said. “It could be the remains of that.”
“Shadow and I already have a rocky relationship,” I said. “I don’t mind not having a tail, but what if it’s important to her in whatever shadow hierarchy she exists in? I don’t know anything about her existence really, any more than she knows of mine.”
“If you truly are a woman in your waking world,” the snake said. “I promise you won’t miss your shadow’s tail for a moment.”
“Is that so?” I said, considering the sharp sickle and my shadow self as she waved her tail around like a whip. “There are a lot of disturbing stories from mythology about the destructive power of sickles wielded like weapons. Don’t the elder gods tend to castrate each other or the previous generations in order to take up their mantles of power?”
“What’s your worry?” Lickspittle said. “It’s just a shadow, not Ouranos. What could she do to you even if she does value her tail?”
“True,” I said, biting my lip in thought. “What could possibly go wrong?” I took the sickle and waved it in the air behind me, where I imagined my shadow’s tail jutted from the base of her spine. “I’m sorry, Shadow,” I whispered as I did so. “Hopefully you won’t even notice it’s gone.” There was a sound like a blade moving through wheat and a line of darkness fell to the floor of the cave behind me. I looked at the wall, but Shadow still danced about as she did before, seemingly unaffected by the amputation.
“Allow me,” Lickspittle said, slithering down the pillar to take the shadow in his mouth like a thread of darkness. “I don’t think you’d even be able to pick this up, considering you two don’t move as one anymore.”
“It is a reoccurring problem that I hope to address some day,” I said. “In the meantime, how do we complete this offering?”
“Fire usually suffices,” the snake said and climbed the pillar again to offer my Shadow’s tail to the blue flame of the lamp. It caught surprisingly fast, almost like a candle’s wick.
As the tail burned, I found words falling from my lips. “A part of me given willingly to awaken a part of you forgotten unwillingly,” I said. “I surrender my animalistic nature to the one who put the stars in motion.” Lickspittle slid from the pillar onto my arms, wrapping himself around my neck.
“Sacrifice accepted,” someone whispered as smoke emerged from the lamp. Lickspittle and I were soon surrounded by an opaque mist formed of both blue light and residual shadow.
“Who summons me?” a deep voice came from the darkness and echoed all around us.
“My name is Heidi and this is Mehen,” I said. “We have come to know the nature of this place and yourself.”
“You may enter,” the voice said. “Your legless guardian must remain here.”
Before I could say farewell to Lickspittle, the fog enveloped me and I found myself shrinking in size and drawn into the lamp itself. Then, I blinked and was standing on a sandy shore looking out at a wide ocean. The mist that had been in the cavern swirled and gathered into a being with blue skin who floated in the air in front of me. He had long black hair gathered into a ponytail on the back of his head and his eyes shone with alternating shadows and a red gleam like lit coals.
“Hear my words, lamp bearer. In the spirit worlds, I stand between the earth and sea, an awakened intelligence and a bridge both. In physical form, I am fog, mist, a clouding of the mind. I am eternally both and neither,” the being said. “For releasing me, I will grant you a boon. Have you no requests of one who dwells between the earth and sea?”
“I ask for nothing beyond further knowledge and understanding of you, spirit of the air,” I said. “What is your name so that we may have a polite conversation? I am Heidi and I come from another world.”
“You could call me Blue Mist, Blue Fog, or Blue Flame,” the genie replied. “But none of those names truly encapsulate what I am. They are mere signposts to a far greater existence.”
“How interesting to find you here, Blue Mist,” I said. “I last encountered a being of your mysterious nature outside of the Temples of the Divine Mother in a realm far from this one. Are you any relation to those guardians?”
“I was hidden within the sands beside the Plinth of Resurrection as both a guardian and a reward for intrepid seekers who endure its trials,” the genie said. “Some might call the birthplace of Osiris a Temple of the Divine Mother as well. We spirits of the living air serve the ruling powers of this world and many others. I was once free to roam where I willed it, but that freedom is no longer mine.”
“Do you feel you are a prisoner in this place?” I said. “If you cannot leave as you will it, then you are within a prison of sorts and I would free you from this fate.”
Blue Mist’s body dissipated so that he was natural mist again rather than forming a swirling humanoid shape. “A prisoner? No. Though I was bound to the lamp and cavern by fetters unseen, I am no prisoner,” he said, his voice coming from all around me. “All requests that are brought to my doorstep have such space for personal interpretation built into them.” His voice swirled through the fog and I felt his presence come closer to whisper in my ear.
“Say, for example, someone asks me for a car, and I must serve, but he didn’t specify that it has an engine,” the genie murmured. “Someone asks me for the woman of his dreams, and I must serve, but he didn’t specify that the woman loves him in return.” The voice moved away from me towards the surf. “I have such power in the finer details of the seeker’s requests.”
Then, the fog curled and the voice circled closer once more. “I am no prisoner,” Blue Mist said. “The ones who bound me, bound themselves though they did not know it. I pity them and their false visions of possession of me and my unique abilities.” The mist thickened and completely surrounded me so that I could no longer see the ocean. “What is the secret desire of your heart, Heidi? Surely there is something you want that I can give. There always is.”
I laughed at the absurdity of the moment. “You tell me you corrupt every wish that you fulfill, Blue Mist,” I said. “Knowing that, why would I ask anything of you? I do not desire fetters, seen or unseen.”
“Because I can give you anything you want,” the genie said. “Most can’t resist that sort of temptation even with my free will thrown into the mix.”
I sighed. “I am not as most, spirit of air. Has anyone ever asked you the desire of your heart?” I said. “I would like to know that.” The mist became even thicker so that the beach disappeared and I could hardly see my hands even when I waved them in front of my face.
“No one has ever asked me the desire of my heart,” Blue Mist said. “I will grant your wish and gladly. Walk forward, Heidi, to see the personal fetters of my own devising.” I gingerly moved through the mist with my hands outstretched in the direction of the ocean. After a few moments, I felt cold metal at the end of my fingertips and discovered a bronze statue of an undine who lay on the edge of the sand and water. As I gazed at the undine’s stunning metal beauty, the fog cleared so I could see the ocean again.
“Who is she?” I said. “She’s lovely.”
“Behold the desire of my heart,” Blue Mist replied. “She is of land and sea as I am of fire and air. We are spirits and bridges. We are ever apart.” Beyond the statue, far out in the water, a spirit rose to the surface of the sea and made her way rapidly closer. When she neared the shore, I beheld the countenance of the beautiful undine who was memorialized in the genie’s statue.
The mist that contained her lover gathered about the undine, caressing her and whispering endearments. The water spirit beached herself near me with her tail curling in the foaming surf.
“Hello, land spirit,” she said and I nodded in return. “What is the state of the waterless worlds?”
“As dry and parched as ever. Well met, water spirit,” I said. “My name is Heidi. Who are you?”
“You may call me Blue Wave, Blue Sea, or Blue Current, though I am more than all of these things,” she said. “As the genie is related to thought, I am emotion. We are tied together but forever apart because of the nature of what we are at a primal level of existence.” She raised her hands to the mists, gathering it from the air and pressing it to her mouth in a gentle kiss. Her tail rose from the water as she did this and splashed down again, sending droplets of ocean water in my direction. “But this is our home and our sacred meeting place. Why are you here so far from civilization’s protective influence? Do you not realize the dangers you are exposing yourself to?”
“I am here to learn whatever lesson it is you have to teach me, Blue Wave. I do not fear unbridled Nature nor any of the powers therein,” I said. “Mehen guided me through the ritual required to awaken your great love Blue Mist. Your genie has revealed to me the dangers of attempting to contain eternal beings in one place and for a single purpose in perpetuity. Free will trumps fetters, every time.”
The undine grinned wickedly, revealing sharply pointed teeth. “I will share with you more of the same. Come with me beneath the waves,” she said. “To see a sight that will amaze and my own fetters which were forced upon me as much as the lamp was unto my love.”
Blue Wave dived swiftly into the waves and I followed her with an awkward splash. Though the murky water concealed where we were going, it was easy to stay on the watery path because the undine glowed with an inner light, impossible to lose in the dark.
We continued onward and downward until two enormous pearls appeared, lying side-by-side on the ocean floor. One pearl was made of gossamer light, the other was shadowed darkness, and they sat so close together they seemed attached. Blue Wave led me towards an entrance in the base of the white pearl.
I floated within the pearl and discovered precious treasures scattered on the floor and beautiful pictures adorning the walls. The water spirit accompanied me into the spherical chamber. “This is the treasure house of your conscious emotions,” the undine said, gesturing about us. “You will see all the things that you prize and delight in here, much good may they do you.”
I spent some time exploring the space. Many pictures of my daughter and family were on the walls and I smiled as I saw them, reliving the memories that they recorded. I felt incredibly peaceful as I ran my hands along the smooth surface of the white pearl and the shining gold, silver, and bronze coins that overflowed from chests in the room.
Blue Wave moved through the space as I did, though she carelessly shifted and sorted the precious items with her tail, causing them to fall into further disarray and scatter throughout the space as if they were trash rather than valuable. “Careful with that,” I said as she hit a framed photograph of my daughter and the glass shattered on the pearl floor. “She is one of my most precious memories, a wellspring of emotion for me, and I would not lose her to your tail.”
“This is my home, not yours,” Blue Wave said, taking up a bejeweled egg from a nearby shelf and throwing it to the floor where it broke into many pieces. “I will do as I will therein.”
“But the symbols are mine as are the spirits in the photos,” I said. “Where’s your compassion and heart?”
“Far from here, floating upon the beach,” the undine said, smashing another jewelry box. “Your treasures are not worth preserving, land spirit. I’m doing you a favor.”
“I say who I love and who I do not,” I said. The undine remained silent as she fixed me with her stony gaze and used her tail to knock a chest over, spilling its bronzed treasures and coins all over the floor.
“Not here, for I determine the worth of treasures beneath the waves,” she said. “Not now, for the powers that be deem my existence to be far more valuable than yours. There is not a single memento in this treasure house that I cannot find outside of this pearl and out in the seas if I was allowed to roam free as I was born to do. Your daughter is interchangeable with any other. Your life as well.”
“How can you say such hurtful things to me?” I said, raising my hands to protect my eyes as she smashed another glass object against the wall. “As I understand it, all come from the water originally. You and I are as sisters, not competitors in existence.”
“You are no sister of mine,” the undine said. “Nor friend either.” Rather than argue with a heartless undine, I turned my face from her to explore the space further.
On the far side of the lighted chamber, a darkened doorway stood silently within the pearl’s wall. I contemplated it for a moment before approaching the shadows. “What is in there, Blue Wave?” I said. “Or have you destroyed everything it contained as well?”
“I care not about the black pearl for that is the entrance to your subconscious emotions,” she said. “That space contains those things which you prize that you are unaware of. They are sure to be as worthless as these and as common for all who walk on land value temporary riches and death-fated families and loves. Tell me my words are untrue, land spirit, then prove it to me. I long to be proved wrong but none do so.”
I gazed at the dark door with some apprehension. “Is it safe to travel within?” I asked. “It seems like a place that is meant for my Shadow and not me though, after certain sacrifices today, we are far more alike than we were before.”
“It is your own emotional reality,” the undine said and giggled meanly. “I don’t know if those who travel in their own thoughts and emotions would call subconscious exploration ‘safe’ or not. You may enter, of course, if you choose to do so. I will neither prevent nor accompany you. There are so many shiny things to observe and discard here. Why brave the shadows for another disappointment?”
“I learn much from shadow and pattern observation. I choose to do so of my own free will and I value the insight into the mysteries, so alone I go,” I said. “Thank you for bringing me to the threshold, even though you label my emotions and their sources as meaningless. I do not do the same to you and maybe you will value that.” I floated through the doorway into the shadowed pearl.
At first, it was as black as night in the other pearl. Then, a light exploded from my spirit and illuminated the interior. I couldn’t see anything but the inner walls of the black pearl began to disintegrate around me, falling onto my body and ocean floor in splinters of shadow. I was soon coated in a second skin of shining, black particles and I sighed in frustration at my inability to see through the darkness to the secrets contained within. “What do I unconsciously treasure?” I asked the shadow.
I heard an answering whisper from the darkness. “Illumination,” said a voice. Then, the shadows in the room cleared and I saw at the very center of the space, a lamp made of the same material as the black pearl which shone with a tiny red flame.
“This subconscious treasure is impossible,” I murmured as I swam to the lamp and picked it up off the floor. “What fire can live beneath the sea?”
A hiss came from behind me and the undine hurtled through the doorway of the pearl and wrenched the lamp from my hands. “She is mine and her light is mine,” she said. “How dare you hide her from me in the shadows as if she is trash rather than priceless.” The undine moved her hands over the lamp and hissed in frustration again as it remained lifeless in her hands. “What have you done to her?” she said, accusation in her tones. “Why does she not emerge to speak with me as she did long ago?”
“I have never even been here before today,” I said. “Why do you say I have wronged you when you claim this space as your home and destroy everything I consciously value? Perhaps whoever this is just sleeps, as did their counterpart upon the land until Mehen and I woke him up.”
“We of the air, fire, sea, and land never sleep,” said the undine, who was furiously moving her hands over the lamp. “We may be hidden away for a time or our hands bound by fate, but the sleep of death is exceedingly rare for ones such as we, the primal embodied forces of nature. What did you do to call Blue Mist back into your reality? I will do the same and in a far superior way than a simple land spirit.”
“I sacrificed my Shadow’s tail,” I said, looking at the undine’s flowing fins. “If you do the same, maybe your underwater genie will emerge from the lamp as well.”
“I cannot part with my tail, shadow or otherwise, and remain an undine,” Blue Wave said. “I’ll become someone else entirely and the one in this lamp will never recognize me as myself. The sacrifice would cause their love to depart from me and negate the reason for its necessity.”
“But the genie of air and fire loves you just as you are,” I said. “Why should it be any different from one of water and fire?”
“You know nothing of those who swim beneath the seas of consciousness and navigate its powerful currents as they were born to it and you were not,” the undine said with a sniff. “Go back to the land where you belong. I will find another way to wake my lost loved one.”
“I’d like to point out that you wouldn’t have even known he or she was here if I hadn’t disregarded your advice and braved the shadows of the subconscious emotions,” I said. “Though I walk upon land which seems to be a lesser existence to you, I am a Servant of Love and value its presence in my life more than almost anything else. What ruling power do you serve, undine, that you neither value nor seek my help?”
“The Servants of Fear scale the highest mountains and move beneath the deepest seas,” the undine said. “Leave now, land spirit, or face my wrath. Do not force me to demonstrate to you the full power of the undines upon the foolish ones who gave up the seas to tend the fields and folds for the mighty of the upper worlds. You will soon know what real treasures may be found when one washes away the filth of above ground existence for that is what you are, a muck covered waste of air and space.”
I sighed. “You are welcome for the return of your treasure. My presence seems to incense you so I will trouble you no more, Blue Wave,” I said. “Good luck with severing your tail or whatever you choose to relinquish to release the spirit in the lamp. Those we love never truly leave us though communication is simpler sometimes than others.” With those words, the black pearl began to crumble to dust around me and the undine fled with the shadowed red lamp back into the lighted pearl.
I turned my eyes from her troublesome presence and found myself rising through the water towards the surface of the ocean, propelled by the destruction of the black pearl. Still covered in remnants of shadow and deep sea material, I climbed out of the surf on my hands and knees, appearing as more sea creature than woman, but my limbs began to grow stiff and as I reached the sand I couldn’t continue forward anymore. The shadow pearl’s remnants became like stone upon my skin, trapping me where I lay.
My spirit was pulled from the shadowy prison by a power from above, leaving behind a black pearl statue of myself crawling upon the sands. It captured the moment I emerged from the ocean and rested in the surf next to the bronze statue of the undine who was loved by a genie of air and fire and possibly one of water and fire as well. I continued to rise into the air above the two figures memorialized in the place where the land met the sea and thought mingled with emotion.
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 