Gate: A Nightmare
BOOK THREE
I stepped through the vision gate and was standing at the edge of a shadowed pond. Stepping stones in the midst of the water led towards an island that held a distant castle and I began to cross over this bridge.
Suddenly, the surface of the water boiled and a huge frog leapt out of the pond and landed on a stone of the path. He looked exactly like a bullfrog except he had large white rabbit ears on either side of his head.
“Who are you?” I asked. “And please move aside so I may continue on my way.”
“They call me, Bullfinch,” he croaked. “I am to guide you to The Night King’s castle.”
“Is the castle ahead of us on the island?” I asked. “For that is where I wish to go.”
The bullfrog did not reply but hopped gamely ahead of me across the stepping stones.
We came to a place where the lake path merged with a building. A hallway surrounded the stepping stones but, instead of a floor, the waters of the pond continued onwards into the building and on either side of this strange aquatic hallway, there were many doors.
As I passed the first one, the door threw itself open and a wave of tiredness overcame me, so much so that I fell out of my vision trance for a moment into true sleep. I realized someone was fighting me for control of the path walking journey and managed to wrench my consciousness back to the stone path and its guardian Bullfinch.
But, when I passed the next door of the lake house, exhaustion attacked again, coming unseen out of a door lining the long hallway, and I felt the clarity of my vision beginning to dissolve into unconscious and blissful sleep.
As I fell into slumber, my head softly cushioned by one of the stones of the path, I heard The Night King’s laughter drifting down the hallway. My eyes shut upon the sight of Bullfinch standing sentinel on the next stepping stone.
Then, against my wishes, I fell asleep upon the pond and this is was the nightmare given to me by the Night King:
I stepped through the vision gate into a shallow pool of blood that sat in the center of a room whose walls beat like the inside of a human heart. I watched the walls move in and out, its pace increasing slightly after a few moments. Then, there was a howl from my left and the room began to elongate, its walls stretching to form a beating hallway rather than a static space.
A pack of grey wolves ran down the hallway, howling as they came, splashing sprays of the blood in the wake of their passage like a ship cutting the waves atop the ocean. As they swept past, my shape changed into a white wolf and I ran with them. Each of my paws raised blood from the floor as I raced beside them, my pristine coat quickly becoming the color of a fresh cherry. Somehow this made the blood seem desirable rather than grotesque.
We tumbled down the hallway, nipping at each other’s heels and howling, and the dreamscape changed once more into an ocean filled with windswept waves. The wolves and I were now foam atop the waves, and, rolling and frothing, the wave we were riding smashed us into the shore, directly into the body of a woman standing in the surf who looked just like me in my human form.
I blinked and became the woman upon the beach. Raising one hand, I shaded my eyes against the sun that was shining so brightly upon me that it made the light off of the encroaching waves shine like diamonds. It was warm under that sun and heat waves appeared in the distant part of the vision, distorting the beach so it moved like a fevered dream.
It was through these dancing heat waves that I saw a man approaching, walking towards me down the beach and through the shifting surf. His form wavered and shifted, but somehow I knew, through the distortion, that he was my Animus. I lifted the hand that had been shading my eyes and waved to him excitedly. For only having stood in my woman’s body for a few moments, I still felt an enormous sense of relief at seeing his distant form. It was as if I’d been waiting my entire life just to see him again.
At first, when he didn’t respond to my greeting, I thought perhaps I appeared somewhat ridiculous, waving my hands in a frenzy like an unhinged, crazy person on the beach. But then he spotted me and my distant lover reacted as I had, waving and practically jumping in excitement and joy. We started to run towards each other through the sand and surf. We were nearly touching when a fishing line with a wickedly sharp hook leapt out of the water and lodged itself in my throat.
My eyes opened wide in surprise and shock as a watery gurgle escaped my mouth. I only had a moment to see that my love noticed I had been hooked when the line was retracted and I was unceremoniously yanked off my feet into the waves. The line pulled me through the water and to the side of a wooden ship with a single spirit aboard it.
As he reached over the side to pull me in, I saw the fisherman was The Night King and he smiled. “I caught a woman made of water,” he said. I tried to speak around the hook in my throat but I couldn’t do anything except produce a sound like a gurgling brook. “Don’t worry about a thing,” he said and pointed towards the front of the ship. “All you have to do is look into the water and find bright, shiny things for my kingdom.” The god of the night time hours hurried me forward upon the boat with a gentle push on my lower back. I was shaking my head in negation and trying to dislodge the hook, but he ignored my distress. “Go on,” he said. “It’s not your first time sailing the seas of consciousness. Don’t pretend like it is, silly fish.”
I stumbled to the bow of the ship and peered over the side, trying to stop the blood from dripping down the front of my throat in a continuous tickle. I felt no pain from this gaping wound except a disturbing sense of numbness and disconnection. It occurred to me that I might bleed to death if I couldn’t get the hook out, but no matter how I pulled at the hook, the barb sunk more deeply into the tender flesh of my neck.
After struggling with it for some time, I realized that if I moved the hook again, it would take my throat out. I tugged on the line for help, but The Night King had affixed the end of the fishing line to the ship’s steering wheel which he was busily moving about in contented circles. He never put enough pressure on the line and hook to pull it out of me, but he kept it tense, uncomfortably taunt. The god noticed me looking back and motioned with his fingers that I was to face front. “Don’t mind me,” he called encouragingly. “Just do what you were born to do.”
With no help coming from that quarter, I turned and gazed out over the water. As I unfocused and let myself go into a light trance, the ocean became completely clear and I could see through deep water as if it was transparent glass. Time began to speed up and I saw myself pointing the way from one undersea treasure to another. Again and again, I found shipwrecks, sunken chests, all manner of things. I would raise my hand and The Night King steered the boat the way I indicated.
We did this for so long that I began to turn into the wood of the boat itself but I never noticed. Years passed and I didn’t move from the bow, pointing at one treasure then another, until I looked down to see that my legs had changed into wood and fused into the deck. I didn’t panic, but the numbness that had been in my hooked throat moved to all parts of my body, until, after not much more time had passed, I was a mere figurehead attached to the front of the ship and no longer a woman of flesh and blood at all.
I could not move my arms or any other part of my body, but if I leaned towards the destination I desired, I moved the ship and everyone on it. The crew of two had gained another passenger, and the Inner Child now stood beside The Night King at the steering wheel. The end of the line which had caught me was attached to the center of the Child’s forehead rather than the wheel as it had been previously.
Life continued on this way for some unmarked period of time, then a storm began to blow in. I sailed the ship close to the shore for the first time in ages in order to keep my passengers safe, and my wooden eyes beheld a figure lying on the beach. Even from a distance, I could see the being was curled up in a ball and shaking, and my heart was filled with compassion at his plight. I immediately steered the ship to the shore where he lay and beached it.
When the wood of the ship touched the shore, the hit knocked me off the bow and I tumbled to the sand of the beach, my body changing back to human flesh rather than the numbing wood to which I had become accustomed. I marveled in its various sensations and the simple pleasure of movement as I rolled myself to my feet and ran to the figure’s side. The man in need was my Animus.
He was shaking so hard, his teeth were clacking together and he shuddered as if stuck in a nightmare. I wrapped my arms as far around him as I could and held him until the shaking stopped. Once it did, he was back on his feet in an instant, drawing me up with him. I opened my mouth to say hello but only a watery gurgle came out. It was then I realized that the hook was still in my neck.
My eyes went wide with fear, anticipating the pull that would rip me back to the boat of the Night King, but it didn’t come. I began to tremble and shake, and now Animus put his arms around me, rubbing his hands up and down my back in a comforting gesture. I pointed to my throat to draw his attention to the hook and line, and he nodded in sympathy. “I wonder how far back it goes,” he said. I shook my head frantically, and mimed taking the hook out, all the while waiting for the final pull that would return me to The Night King’s ship and change me back into a figurehead made of wood.
When the moment of comprehension dawned in his eyes and Animus moved to untangle my flesh from the fishing line, a wave with shimmering foam made of howling wolves dashed out of the surf and smashed into the back of my head. For a time, I didn’t know anything else.
When I once again opened my eyes, I was at the bottom of the ocean. The dazzling sun still shone down upon me, but less light reached me through the sea’s fathomless depths. Instead, I was wreathed in dancing shadows, laying on my back on the ocean floor. One shadow floated directly above me for a moment and as it passed I realized it was my own Shadow with her fiery eyes. I grabbed her heel before she left me completely and her momentum was enough to carry me to another place.
Shadow and I traveled deep beneath the waves to an enormous tunnel set within the bedrock of the ocean floor. She pulled me into the tunnel and gave me a slow wink before disappearing. As I gazed around at where my Shadow had brought me, the darkness of the space cleared for a moment so that I could see an entire palace contained within. It was constructed like a giant maze and within its labyrinthian walls, there lived a dragon, an ancient water spirit whose delicate scales were so deep blue that they were nearly black.
Three proud fins stood in a line across the god’s skull. All three fanned out to reveal membranes made of a shining neon blue that gleamed in the darkness as the god raced through the ocean maze, more like a high-powered train than anything made of flesh and blood. I made a startled sound, my watery gurgle, at the sight of the underwater behemoth. The dragon heard my bubbled breath and turned towards me at once, slamming through the maze whose turns he had memorized eons prior, and opened his jaws wide to swallow me whole.
I screamed but all that came out was a stream of bubbles and then I was unconscious for a moment. When I opened my eyes again, I immediately squinted in the once again bright light. The ocean with its god and shadows were gone and I realized I was standing on a stage.
Dozens of couples dressed in old fashioned finery were dining at tables in front of me. I was holding a microphone in my hands and I realized with a shudder of horror that I was their entertainment for the evening. I went to put the microphone down but the men and women frowned at my behavior, putting down their drinks as the piano music that had been playing quietly in the background faded. All eyes turned to me and my anxiety at their undivided attention nearly made my heart stop beating in my chest.
I was frozen in shock, at first, but then dismay as I tried to say something and realized the hook that had been with me the entire journey was still in my throat, stealing my voice from me. I shook my head and held up my hands in entreaty as murmurs of discontentment began to come at me from the group. “She’s a woman made of water,” I heard one person say. “Why won’t she speak? If they are allowed to walk the dry lands, they have something to say.”
“Who holds the end of her line?” another called it. “Pull it and she’ll sing again. They always do. These spirits are kept on tight leashes for just that reason, poor wretch.”
“They think they’re special, these water women,” said a distinguished looking matron in the front row. “Doesn’t she know how many others have stood before us and spoken the same words she’s stubbornly withholding now? How unoriginal and disappointing.”
“She’s another pale, weak reflection of a greater reality that’s still beneath the waves,” said a handsome man who also sat towards the front. “I knew it. I mean, look at the state of her, she can’t even speak a word and looks so frightened she might dissolve back into salt water at any moment. Next act!” With his words, the attitude in the room began to change and the neutral expressions turned to frowns. Boos broke out here and there and more calls for “next acts” rose from the audience.
In my panicked state as both the center of attention and discontentment, the walls of the room began to pulse and beat as if I was inside a giant heart again. But this time, I believed there were no wolves coming for me and I sank to my knees as the watching crowd devolved into a riot, throwing their crystal glasses at the stage. The shards flew into my face, obscuring my vision, and I covered my eyes, trying to protect them from the attack.
“Please, I beg you,” I tried to say. “Please let me go back to where the land meets the sea. Animus was there and I belong with him, not this far shore. Please let me go.” But I couldn’t get a word past the pernicious hook in my throat.
As I blinked desperately, trying to get the painful splinters of crystal out of my eyes, there came a rushing sound like a train passing and the deep dark blue scales of the water god filled my mind. “Open yourself to the god,” the scales whispered as they swished past my face, taking the hook and the crystals and all my pain with them. “Open to him and the Masters of Time and Space will let you live. Refuse and you will be returned to the ship to be a wooden figurehead of The Night King for all time. The choice is yours, woman of water.”
It was there the nightmare ended. I opened my eyes to discover The Night King standing above me, holding Bullfinch by the ears, and laughing at my inability to escape his fearsome manipulation of the dream world.
“You foolish mortal, you come into the inner realms, my place of power, and you think to challenge me?” the Night King said. “Think again. You are nothing but a trumped up water sprite or other lesser being. Return to your world and give up your foolish seeking. My domination of this space is unquestioned especially by those like you.”
“Where is my Animus and the god of the ocean maze you revealed to me in the dream?” I said, pushing myself up from the stepping stone path. “For I will join forces with both of them and together we will have the ability to stand against even you, King of Nightmares, or any who insist that my gifts were only given to me for their amusement and consumption.”
“Maybe this is your prince, both the Animus and ocean god. He bows to my authority also, the sad, rabbit-eared frog,” the Night King said and, in a flash of fangs, unhinged his jaw and swallowed Bullfinch whole. I screamed in horror as the Night King gave me a bloody smile, then he raised his arms and pushed me off of the stepping stone path into the dark waters of the shadowed pond.
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 