Gate: Fortune’s Wheel
I stepped through the vision gate and found myself at the center of a tornado. It spun me in circles and I flew up high into the air, completely within the power of one who could control the mighty winds of creation. Then I blinked and I found myself sitting at a breakfast table in a modest home somewhere in the country of my birth. There was a half-eaten bowl of cereal in front of me and a spoon was in my hand, halfway to my mouth, as if I was in the very midst of eating.
A spirit in the shape of a woman stood at a sink to my left, washing dishes in a basin of soapy water. She wore a dress that was faded with wear and worry crossed her forehead with lines as she gazed out the window above the kitchen sink. Outside of the house, an ominous storm was brewing and the wind began to pick up and blow against the walls.
“Mother?” I heard myself say in a child-like voice. “I’m scared. Will Father be home soon?”
“I hope so, but don’t be afraid, Heidi. We have a safe place to weather out this storm. Come with me,” said the Mother, quickly drying her hands on a dish towel that hung from the sink. “A tornado is coming, I can feel it in my bones. We have to get to the storm cellar.” The Mother took my hand to help me rise from the table and began to lead me through the house. Together, we went down a set of stairs into a basement with unfinished walls. Within this root cellar, a door on the far wall led deeper into the earth. She opened the hidden door and gestured for me to go through.
I moved to the doorway of this underground space and saw, spread out before me, not another underground room as I expected but the night sky filled with stars. “Go on in, sweetheart,” encouraged the Mother, anxiously looking towards the outer steps, from which we could hear the sounds of the tornadic storm approaching. “They’re expecting you.”
“But Mother,” I said. “There is eternity within that room. Is it safe?”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Heidi,” the goddess said and gave me a push through the doorway into the night sky. I found myself falling and spinning in circles through the nothingness. Then, everything was dark in my sight for a terrifying moment of time.
Suddenly, I saw two calloused and scarred hands working and shaping a ball of dough. The hands pulled dough from the pile, shaped it into a smaller ball, and then rolled this smaller ball in sugar. This happened again and again and I found the movements to be quite hypnotic. “You’re welcome to help anytime,” a voice said and I looked up into the smiling face of a very large spirit in the shape of a man with a chef’s hat on his head.
“Excuse me?” I said. “Help with what?”
“The master of this castle feasts tonight, wandering spirit,” said the cook. “I need every pair of hands I can get so it’s a blessing you’ve found your way to my kitchen. Shape this dough and roll it in sugar. Then, I’ll fry it. It will be an excellent sweet plate between courses.”
“I would be honored to bake beside you, Chef,” I said. “I’ve created treats such as these before. Please call me, Heidi.” Then I began the process of rolling the dough and dipping it in the sugar. The chef ran off to help someone else in another corner of the kitchen while I continued working with the dough and gazing about at my new surroundings.
Everywhere I looked I discovered servants in a flurry of motion. They were chopping vegetables, baking bread, and draping platters with grape vines and profusions of leaves. A young boy stood near a fireplace, turning a huge pig on a spit. The smell of the roasting pork wafted out of the fireplace and filled the room, causing my mouth to water. I worked quickly on my appointed task and soon had a large pile of sugar-coated dough for the Chef’s table.
In a far corner of the room, conspicuous in his stillness, I beheld a spirit in the shape of an elderly man in a black cloak that partly concealed his features with a long gray beard that hung down his chest. The mysterious figure’s head nodded as if with exhaustion and I realized he was napping in the midst of the kitchen chaos.
“Who’s that?” I asked the Chef when he ran past me again on his way to another part of the kitchen. “Here’s your sugared dough also.”
“He’s our resident beggar,” said the Chef in a harried tone. “Our lord allows him to beg for scraps from his bounteous table. I wish he’d take some food and be on his way.”
“I have time. Let me find something for him to eat, Chef, while you continue preparing the lord’s feast,” I said and moved towards the cloaked figure. As I passed dishes on my way, I pulled bits of food from this plate and that, and soon I had two large handfuls of fruit, meat, and sweets. I wrapped it all in a clean cloth and came close to the dark cloaked spirit. “Here, friend,” I said and pressed it into his hands. “I hope this fills your belly and brings you peace.”
“My thanks, Heidi,” said the cloaked spirit. “I did not expect to find you here with the help.” The beggar threw back his hood and I found myself face to face with the god Odin. He first appeared to my sight as the young smiling man I encountered hanging upside down from a tree long ago, but then his shape flickered and Odin appeared to be bent with old age and missing an eye. As I gazed at the god, he changed back and forth again until finally settling upon one of his ancient forms.
“I am seeking the nature of this place, Great One,” I said. “What are you doing here? Surely, not begging for food. What need has a god for physical sustenance?”
“Yet you and I shared a meal, once upon a time,” said Odin who winked and motioned for me to come closer. “Ask the cook who the master of this house is,” he whispered in my ear.
“Chef,” I called across the busy kitchen. “Who do we prepare the feast for this day?”
The cook rubbed his arm across his sweaty forehead, leaving a trail of flour behind. “The lord of wine and celebration, Heidi,” he said. “The dancer, the dreamer, the drinker, Lord Dionysus and his various other titles of lofty import and meaning.”
I turned back to Odin. “What do you want from Dionysus?” I asked. “You already drink with the best of them, don’t you?”
Odin waved his hand and he and I were covered in shadows. “This god hoards a particular treasure that I desire very much. Right this way, Heidi,” Odin said. “If you walk in my shadow, they won’t even know you’re gone. I’ll show you what I mean.”
Quickly and silently, Odin and I left the kitchen with its furiously working staff and he led me down a series of winding stone hallways, a confusing maze of rooms and dead ends that I would have been easily lost in if I had been on my own. At one point, we were walking down a hallway that had windows to the outside and I peered out of one, curious about the world beyond the castle walls.
The sacred seat of Dionysus sat in the midst of a sea of vineyards. A golden sun in a perfectly blue sky shone down upon fields and hills of green and purple grapes, spreading out from the castle in a massive outpouring of growth and abundance. My breath caught in my throat at the sight. “Lord Dionysus is wealthy indeed,” I said, my eyes filled with the verdant hills of the god’s home. “Look at all those grapes.”
“Come on, Heidi, don’t dawdle,” said Odin, impatiently grabbing my hand and pulling me from the window. “My cloak will not trick his servants forever or the god for even a moment. He’s notoriously temperamental so we better hurry.”
Odin and I began to run and we passed through one last doorway into a long hallway with tall urns filled with the vintage of Dionysus lining both sides. From the wall, set high near the ceiling, there were large faces of carved stone with open mouths. From each mouth, a stream of wine poured out into the waiting jars. There were hundreds of these fountains and more wine than could be drunk in many lifetimes.
At the far end of the hall, a plain cup with neither handles nor decoration, made of the same stone as the faces and the urns, sat upon a pedestal. Odin moved quickly towards this cup, his eyes on nothing else in the astonishing hall of the god’s bounty.
The light streaming into the hallway from the outside dimmed for a moment as the god approached the pedestal and I heard within the walls, a rushing sound like a fast moving wind or stream of water. “You should not touch that cup,” I cried out, a premonition of danger filling my heart. “The god approaches, can’t you hear him coming our way?”
Odin stood still for a moment, both hands outstretched towards the treasure. “The drunken fool isn’t here yet,” Odin said. “What’s the harm in a stolen sip of wine?”
“That does not belong to you, Great One,” I said. “Won’t Dionysus be angry if you take and drink from it? I feel like I’m forgetting something very important about this place. When something like that happens to me, I’ve discovered it’s best to pause a moment before acting.”
“I’m ‘taking’ nothing,” Odin said. “One drink from the cup that is never empty and perhaps I will know the secret of Dionysus’ eternal life and good fortune. He is a god who dies each night and rises again each morning, ready to face the world anew. It is a great mystery and I desire to know his methods to replicate them in my own existence.”
With those words, Odin picked up the drinking goblet from its pedestal and the cup’s form changed from simple stone to solid gold and vines sprouted from its sides as if it was a vineyard as well as a cup. Within moments, the whole hall was filled with trailing vines of both grape and ivy and Odin took one long swallow of the sacred liquid contained within it. As the wine went down his throat, his form flared with energy so bright that I had to shield my eyes so that I was not blinded by the power of the god of wine.
“You trespass here, beggar god,” came a voice from behind me. When I could see through the bright light filling the hall again, I beheld a spirit in the shape of a handsome young man with alabaster skin. He was draped in the same vines and leaves that came from the cup of Dionysus and his hair was a mess of golden and tawny curls. “You think I don’t know when someone drinks of my vintage? How very foolish of you.”
“Forgive our trespass, Great One,” I said, looking at the floor in embarrassment. “I have never seen this storied hall, only worked in your kitchen and I was curious as to your true nature beyond the enjoyment of good food and drink in the company of friends and family.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, whoever you are. Odin, put down my cup, you old goat,” Dionysus said. Compelled by the god of wine’s power in his own sphere of influence, Odin dropped the sacred cup and seemed to shrink into himself. Where the wandering god once stood, now there was a black and white spotted goat with pretty, curling horns. Dionysus began to laugh in merriment.
“Serves you right, Odin Wine Stealer,” said the god and with smoothly flowing steps like wine being poured into a goblet, he covered the length of the hall and picked up his cup from where it had fallen. “I think you look better this way.”
“Dionysus,” I said. “Please Lord, change my friend back into his true form. He meant no harm to you, he only wished to know and understand your deeper mysteries.”
The god drank deeply from his golden goblet and seemed to truly see me for the first time. “I’ll consider it after an appropriate period of penance for his trespass,” he said. “Who might you be and why should you care about the fate of a thief?”
“I care because I have known Odin for a very long time and value his wisdom. My name is Heidi and I have come to this world and many others seeking their true nature,” I said. “For whatever reason, I entered your sacred realm through the kitchen, not that I’m complaining, I was enjoying helping the Chef prepare food for your table. It can be fun to be part of a team even if just for a little while.”
“You, Heidi of the kitchen, may prepare food for my table whenever you wish, I care not as long as the Chef is content and the food appears in a timely fashion. Long association or not, Odin shall remain as he is for the time being,” declared the god with a shrug. “It was the risk he took coming here and stealing my wine. My secrets were not meant for the likes of such as he, a god with neither a home and few companions to share my blessings with. On to happier things, come with me if you wish to see something marvelous which very few outsiders have ever seen.”
I patted the goat Odin on the head as I followed Dionysus out of the hall. “Don’t worry, Great One, we will fix this minor misunderstanding,” I whispered to him. “I’ll continue to plead with the god for mercy on your behalf.” Then, I followed the vine-clothed spirit down the hallway and through a doorway to the outside.
As we moved through his vineyards, the plants and tangling vines reached for Dionysus, growing thicker and more lush as we passed and they basked in the presence of the god. I heard whispers and singing coming from farther away and, through glimpses in the vines, I saw fauns and beautiful tree nymphs dancing and drinking in the vineyards of Dionysus, an eternal bacchanalia.
The god continued on his way, drinking from his cup now and again as we walked in order to quench his never-ending thirst. Then we came to a stairway made of the material of his cup and the steps lead up into the sky to end somewhere high above and within the clouds. Without hesitation, Dionysus climbed these steps, gesturing once for me to follow, and we took the steps into the skies. After much time, the god and I arrived at a vine-covered throne on a small platform made of gold. One could look out from this platform and see far below the endless vines and jaw-dropping abundance of the kingdom of Dionysus. Everywhere I looked I beheld fruit, sun, and the beauty of nature on effortless display.
Behind the throne of Dionysus, a wheel made of gold and shaped like an upright roulette table set in a wooden frame sat on a cloud. The god moved in his strangely quick but never striving gait to this wheel. “Spin it, kitchen maid,” the god said. “We shall tell your fortune and give you a gift of foresight because of your help in the preparation of my feast this day.” The golden wheel had a wooden handle on the side connected to it by a spring and I pulled the handle. The wheel started to spin while the sunlight shone upon its golden face, creating the illusion of a rotating miniature sun in the sky.
“What good does it do to learn my fortune?” I asked the god as he took another long swallow of wine. “I am moved through my life by the ruling powers upon their whims and have no idea where they are going to choose to send me next. There is no stopping destiny or the will of the Creator of All.”
“I didn’t realize you had such a dour disposition,” Dionysus said. “Perhaps you’ll see the fun in fortune telling if you take a drink from my cup.” I took a single swallow of the god’s wine from the cup in his hand when the spinning wheel suddenly stopped. A chime sounded and a door opened on the side of the wheel’s frame, revealing a golden slide. A chicken’s egg came down the slide from the side of the fortune telling wheel. Dionysus caught the egg with a flourish then cracked it on his knee and pulled a tightly wound scroll from the yolk within the egg.
The god cleared his throat with some ceremony as his wine went to my head, affecting my sight and making the clouds change color from ivory to rose. “Your fortune says: The Seeker comes to set things right. She will dine with the gods tonight. So make merry, as you do. Love has finally come for you.” Dionysus blinked and dropped the egg over the side of the platform so that it plummeted towards the vineyards below. “A bunch of rubbish, if you ask me,” the god said, rubbing his egg-coated hands on the vines of his tunic. “When has Love ever come for me.”
One sip from the cup of Dionysus and I was unable to control either my sight or my tongue. I stumbled to my knees before the god as we stood together in the sky. “I seek to be a servant of Love as well as the one who put the stars in motion,” I said. “On behalf of Venus and to make the fortune true, I would be honored to have dinner with you, Dionysus. May I feast at your table?”
“Of course, you would be honored,” the god replied with a sudden, wild grin. “There is no one in heaven or earth who wouldn’t! You may feast from my table this once, servant of Love and mysterious unseen powers. Despite rumors to the contrary, I do not begrudge occasional other worldly travelers to my table and sacred seat. I shall see you tonight.” There was a brilliant flash of light and I found myself all alone among the clouds with the golden wheel.
“I can’t take the stairs downwards in this state,” I fretted to myself. “I’d fall as surely as the egg shell and my blood would water the vineyards of the god.” However, my inebriation began to quickly pass from me in the absence of Dionysus and his innate power. After only a few minutes, my head had cleared enough that I could brave the stairs back to the ground.
When I reached the vineyards once more, the enchanted day had turned to night and pan-pipes played in the distance, calling celebrants to the feast of the Lord of Wine. As I moved through the vines along with the other guests, my clothing changed into swirling, white robes. It was impossible to keep the endless bounty of Dionysus from touching the silks and soon, where my clothing had once been white, it was now mottled with pink and purple juice from the grapes of the god’s vineyard which burst and released their abundance as I passed.
As I struggled forward through the profusion of tangled vines, a faun emerged from a thicket and began helping me through the vineyard towards the distant feast. He had a wooden flute hanging from a silver chain around his neck and horns came from his thick, curling hair to wind about his ears which were shaped like a deer or goat.
“Thank you for your assistance,” I said as we traveled together, becoming sticky and anointed in the grape vines of Dionysus. “I’m Heidi and journeyed from another world to be here tonight. What is your name?”
“I am called Pan,” the faun said. “I am a favored son of Dionysus and a veteran of his feasts and many revels. I have come to warn you, Seeker Heidi.”
“Warn me about what?” I asked, brushing aside yet another bunch of bursting grapes.
“There is a darkness and unpredictable shadow around my father,” Pan said. “He is powerful and untamed, a god of celebration, yes, but also sacred madness. You would do well to remember that so that you do not lose your mind in his presence as some of his celebrants do.”
“Thank you for your warning,” I said. “I’m afraid it may be too late for me because I’m already touched by visions I don’t understand from powers that I do not yet know. Aren’t you, Pan, also a god? What is your sphere of influence?”
The faun brought his pipes to his lips where he played a few quick lilting notes and the vines about us danced in response. “I am the songs that wrap my father’s feasts in delight and mystery,” the god said. “I am the music of dance and forgetfulness, yes, but also remembering. I am the Pan and I will play a tune just for you tonight, Heidi.” He whistled once like a bird in the sky, bowed in a sweeping motion and flourishing his flute, the god disappeared from my sight.
In the god’s departure, I pushed aside one more vine and stumbled into a glade where a long table was set for a banquet. The cloth of the table was white, but the spirits who sat at the table grabbed bunches of grapes from the surrounding vineyard and stained the table cloth as I had stained my robes on my trek to Dionysus’ table. Soon, the once pristine cloth became a wine-colored masterpiece of crushed grapes and spilled wine. It fit the mood of those who had gathered to celebrate with the one who ruled this realm.
At the very end of the table, chewing on a pile of grape leaves, stood my friend Odin. He was still a goat and he looked at me, mournfully, through thickly lashed eyes. I patted his head to comfort him and sat next to the goat at the table of the god.
Triumphal music came from the vineyards about the glade and it grew to a crescendo of trumpets. There was a flash of bright light like a star descending from the sky and Dionysus appeared, sitting at the head of the table on a vine-draped chair, reserved for him. A cheer from the assembled host rose into the skies at the god’s appearance. “My children and my guests both mighty and not, let the feast begin!” Dionysus announced and the drinking, eating and general merriment began in earnest.
Time passed strangely at the table of the god of wine. Mindful of its effect upon me in the clouds, I sipped carefully at my cup but my caution was in vain for the vintage caused instant inebriation just as it had before. The edges of my sight became blurry and I couldn’t even see the face of the one seated next to me, though everyone at the table seemed to know who I was and welcomed me unquestioningly into their midst.
After a time, the god stood from his seat at the table and the host became eerily silent. “My children, we have a visitor from another world here tonight,” said Dionysus and he waved imperiously to me. “Come up here, Heidi, so you may be properly introduced to my people.” I stumbled my way towards the god, past drunken fauns and giggling maidens, feeding each other with their fingers and drinking with abandon.
“She says she comes to seek the nature of this place,” the god said. “She is a polite and harmless visitor, unlike some I could mention. She does not drink until invited.” Dionysus glared at Odin, who continued to placidly chew on grape leaves.
The god waved his hand and my mottled silks disappeared, leaving my form unclothed before the revelers of Dionysus. Drunk upon the god’s wine, I found I didn’t even care and I was rapidly reclothed with vines and leaves, gifted the raiment of Dionysus himself. As I reached the god’s side, he raised his hand as well as his cup in blessing. “Welcome to my kingdom and table,” he said softly, for my ears alone. “For being such a good sport during your induction to our host, you may drink again from my cup, brave Heidi, if you so desire. This is a place of celebration and forgetfulness, and I give this gift to you. Love can be a difficult power to serve and my cup removes the sting of her so-called blessings.”
“I have suffered in the service of Love, it’s true,” I said. “One night of forgetfulness couldn’t hurt me, could it?” I took the cup of golden vines and drank again. The voices of the spirits at the table, which had been so loud that they had filled my ears with their cacophony, became muted. A mist gathered at the edge of my sight and formed itself into enormous serpents. These shadow beasts slithered up behind the visitors at Dionysus’ table and prepared to strike them from behind. “Beware the shadows approach,” I cried out in warning, but the god took my hand in his.
“You see merely my serpents of intoxication,” the god said. “They ensure whoever dines from my table feels neither pain nor suffering of any kind.” The misty serpents bit deeply into the back of the neck of each of the revelers. They didn’t react to these bites for they were inflicted under the watchful eyes of Dionysus, and kept on singing and dancing as if their wounds didn’t exist. “They come for you too, Heidi,” the god said and gestured downwards. I looked down just in time to see a shadowy serpent nip my ankle, then it slid back into the vineyards from which it had emerged.
The bite from the shadow serpent acted strangely upon my experience in the presence of the god of wine. I was suddenly completely sober and a golden harp appeared in my hands. “Sing so the god remembers. Sing the song of the undines, Heidi,” the harp whispered. “Sing for Love. The goddess says you must sing.”
I looked up from the harp to find the god focused completely upon me. “Dionysus, your serpent cleared my mind and gave me a glimpse into a service I must render for you tonight,” I said. “I hear Love telling me I must make music for you and you alone for reasons that the goddess is not sharing with me. I am not known for my performance skills so please take no offense from what I am about to do next. I am not a musician of a caliber as your Pan.”
The god leaned back in his seat as he laughed and drank once more from his cup. “And what is it, Heidi, that you are about to sing?” Dionysus said. “I think my children and I have heard all of the songs of creation sung at our table at one point or another.”
“I will sing the Song of the Undines for only your ears,” I said, beginning to stroke the strings of the golden harp. “You, Lord Dionysus, will remember for one night, what it is you drink so desperately to forget.”
The god looked unconcerned. “Undines, is it? I have never heard this tune. Sing away, Heidi,” Dionysus ordered. “I fear no memory’s sting.”
I strummed the harp and began to sing so quietly, it was as if I wasn’t making a sound but I could tell the god heard my music all the same.
This is the song Love gave me for Dionysus:
Drink the night and drink these words,
And drink beneath the moon.
While the love of Dionysus,
Sleeps within her tomb.
Merry dance and crush the grapes,
That grow within the fields,
While the love of Dionysus,
Is in the bounteous yields.
Though the wine so swiftly gone,
Removes the trace of wound.
May the love of Dionysus,
Come out of the gloom.
Of his heart, so deeply sleeping,
Wreathed in Fortune’s grace,
May the Love of Dionysus,
Dare to show her face.
As I sang, mist came again from the vineyard into the glade and formed itself into a beautiful goddess. Her long, flowing hair was the vines that wreathed the god and came from the fields to dwell so close to his flesh, wreathing him in her abundance and grace. The ghost of a love long-forgotten swept from the wild parts of the vineyard, to stand behind him at his table, and she draped her pale misty arms around the neck of the god. At her touch, tears the color of red wine began to fall from Dionysus’ eyes.
In a surge of emotion and grief, an energy in the shape of a rushing wind blew from the god of wine and over the feast to the far end of the table where it touched the goat and changed the creature back into Odin. The celebrating guests who had not heard my song looked up in surprise as the eternally-laughing god began to weep in earnest and reach for the goddess behind him who was shaped of starlit mist from the vineyards.
Then, as quickly as his grief had appeared, it left and a quiet anger took its place within him, a change that I felt keenly as I stood so close to the god. Dionysus stood in a dangerous rage and stomped his foot but once. The goddess of mist dissipated and the watching host at the table disappeared. “You were wise to ask my pardon before singing that song,” said the god, the wine-colored tears still streaking his face. “I remember her now, the mother of Pan, most beautiful of women.”
“Bearing my son killed her,” he continued. “Holding her in my arms as she died killed me too though the next day I awoke as usual for I am he who dies and then lives again. Now, I drink to forget her absence so that I can be content if not happy without her in my world. What happiness or fortune has the goddess Love ever brought to me? If she were here, I would wring her neck.” The god glared at me. “Perhaps I shall wring yours instead, you musical servant of a cursed power. What have I done to earn your enmity? It was you who came to my door, not the reverse.”
“Lord Dionysus, forgive me, I beg you,” I said. “Servants of Love have blessings they can impart too, not just inflict remembered pain. You have your cup of wine of forgetfulness and I also have a cup with special properties. Would you drink from Love’s cup? I fetched it from a castle in the sky.” With those words, I pulled the grail out of the vines that circled my body.
“What good would it do me to drink from your cup?” he said bitterly. “You are not the mother of Pan and hers is the only vintage I desire other than my own.”
“It is the cup of Love herself, a cup of everlasting life and love. The everlasting life you have, Great One, but the love you do not. If you drink from this, your heart will be returned to you,” I said. “If you drink from this, your bitterness will be erased in the light of renewed love and the beauty you so long to experience again. Drink, Dionysus, drink deeply.” I offered my cup to the god. “Love compels me to offer this healing vintage to you.”
Dionysus slowly took the cup from my hand. “Do I have your promise, Servant of Love,” he said. “That the words you speak will come to pass? I have been greatly disappointed by love in the past and I will not be made a fool of in my own domain.”
“Love conquers all things, Dionysus, even death and this cup will heal your heart,” I said. “This I do swear in the name of Venus and the Creator of All both.”
The god of wine brought the cup to his lips and he swallowed the precious water within it once, then twice. A bright light flashed in the glade and the ghost of vineyard mist solidified into a woman of flesh and blood who stood opposite from me at the god’s right hand. Dionysus gave a cry of recognition and such fierce joy that it caused tears to form in my own eyes and he gathered his long-lost love into his arms. As he embraced her and put his lips upon hers, they disappeared from my reality and I was left at the empty table alone.
I stood for a moment in mournful silence beneath the moon in the vineyards of Dionysus and Pan stepped forward from the encroaching shadows into the glade. “Don’t be sad, Heidi. You are not alone and you brought Dionysus back his heart,” he said. “I doubt he will be allowed to keep her as the wheel of his fortune has determined otherwise.”
“Perhaps not or perhaps so,” I said. “I do not know the fortunes of the gods nor the secret will of the Creator of All. But, at least this night, because of Love’s cup he will have some happiness again. It is not good to dwell in bitterness, anger and regret, these things eat away at the heart of those who suffer them as surely as any marauding shadow.”
“You used a song to bring some measure of healing to my father,” Pan said with a smile. “I wish I had thought of it. Teach me this song and I will dance for you in thanks.”
“The Song of the Undines seems to be different every time I sing it,” I said. “But this is the song I was given for the god of wine.” Pan was a quick study and it wasn’t long before he had memorized Love’s song for Dionysus next to the table of his father.
Then, as promised, the faun kicked up his heels and began to move in circles about the vineyard and banquet table, demonstrating for me his secret version of the dance of Now. Hypnotically and gracefully, Pan danced upon his cloven hooves beneath the moonlight in the pattern given to him by Creation itself. I watched and learned his steps, filled with wonder at the beauty and ease of it. When the god had finished a cycle about the glade, he bowed to me then reached up to touch the ends of the horns on his head.
When he brought his hands away, Pan was holding the tips of his horns in his palm. He blew a single breath upon them, changing them into something else. The god knelt as he presented them to me, placing them in my hands and then disappeared from my sight. I looked closely at the horn’s tips and they had numbers and words written on their sides like customized gaming dice.
“The Dice of Impossibility are the real reason I came to this place,” said Odin at my shoulder and I was startled by his voice and snapped out of the trance caused by Pan’s dance. “As if I needed another cup of wine, honestly. Dionysus makes so much of his gift that you would think it was the only blessing of value in his domain.” The god held his hand out. “May I see them, Heidi? Just once so that I know they are real and not mere myth.”
“You may have them, Great One,” I said. “If you will swear to keep them safe and far from the shadows. I have no idea what these dice are capable of and no desire to risk them falling into a shadow’s hands as I travel the worlds.” Then I handed the god the dice and Odin smiled as he gazed upon a treasure he had long sought.
“I know exactly what they are capable of. When you roll with Pan’s dice, impossible things can and do happen,” he said. “Things that can hardly be dreamed of because none in heaven or earth know that such wonders are possible. I never imagined I would survive not only stealing a drink from the cup of Dionysus, but also be allowed a roll of the Dice of Pan. You must know, you are incredibly lucky, Heidi. I value your friendship and hope you feel the same.”
“Am I lucky?” I replied. “Some days, it does not feel like luck. It feels more like a trick of some kind played upon me by the shadow. At any rate, I do feel lucky to have met you, Odin, and to call you my friend. What need do you really have for Impossibility Dice? You already have your runes which are powerful tools of change for one who knows how to use them like you do.”
“Do you imagine, Heidi, you are the only one who looks for knowledge, wisdom, and experiences in the worlds beyond what you already know?” the god said. Odin smiled once more and put Pan’s dice into the inner pocket of his dark robes. “If you did, you would be wrong. No shadow with malice in their heart shall ever touch these dice, Heidi. I give you my solemn vow.”
I blinked and suddenly was experiencing reality as if I were the dice Odin had just put into his pocket, recently pulled from the horns of a god. I blinked again and I was the spinning golden wheel of fortune shining like the sun in the sky, and before me stood the god Dionysus and a woman, who was also me. I blinked once more and I was the tornado from the beginning of the vision, bearing myself far away from the worlds I know and into worlds that I have yet to see.
With that new and surprising experience of participating in reality through someone else’s eyes, my vision ended.
The Light Congress 