Gate: Nimue’s Grotto
I stepped through the vision gate and stood on a barren plain. Steel escalators exploded from the ground and wound their way into the air in a suddenly chaotic scene of noise and motion. A set of stairs came into being under my feet and propelled me upwards into the sky.
At the top of each of the myriad of escalators, there stood a giant with an open mouth. My conveyance took me to the mouth of one of the giants and pushed me through into darkness. I fell for a long time.
When I landed, I stood wreathed in mists. Then, the space in front of me began to spin and twirl, the mist forming itself into the shape of a young girl with long, flowing hair. I recognized my old friend, Echo.
“What are you doing here?” I asked and Echo pantomimed shushing me. She began to tiptoe away in an exaggerated show of quietness, motioning for me to follow. “What are we afraid of?” I whispered, but Echo simply shook her head and continued through the mist.
In the surrounding fog, I felt the motion of something very large. Whatever it was moved quickly and completely silently. Echo perceived it too and grabbed my hand, giving up all pretense of stealth. She pulled me forward at a flat run, fleeing from the monster in the mist.
“Echo,” I pulled back. “There is nothing to be afraid of. Let’s face this threat together.” But, she would not be turned from her flight.
Finally, the mist cleared somewhat revealing huge rocks in a jumbled pattern. Echo dragged me behind one of these rocks and crouched, again putting her finger to lips. I humored her for a time and we sat behind the stone together.
Then, I heard voices and the next moment a group of huge, red-skinned cyclops with pointed horns in the middle of their foreheads came out of the mist. “They came this way,” one said.
“She won’t remain hidden for long,” said another. “Where could she possibly go?”
“Come out, Heidi,” said the first speaker. “Madness is here for you. You can’t hide from us.” The speaking cyclops shrank and became a female nurse with a large syringe. His brother monsters retained their original forms, laughing with glee. “Time to go into the darkness, sweetheart. If you come out now, we won’t hurt you too much, I promise.”
I had heard enough and stood from behind the rock. Echo frantically clutched at my hand, but I brushed her away. “I am here,” I said. “Why do you hunt me and my friend?”
All eyes turned towards me as the nurse approached with her needle. “I knew you wouldn’t fight,” she said. “Now let us take you to the hospital where we will make you well.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “What did you say your name was again?”
“We are Madness,” said the nurse, her eyes combining from two back into one, the pupil turning into a hypnotic, swirling mass in the center of her forehead. “It is not a weakness to admit you are ill. And you are very sick, Heidi…very confused and unwell.”
“But I’ve never been better in my life,” I said and as I spoke, my Light Congress emerged from the stones spread amongst the plain. “And I’m not going with you, Madness. So, you may pack up your bags and be on your way back to whatever hell you came from.”
My badger with his hackles up and his teeth bared in a snarl took his place beside me. Michael appeared as well, his angelic wings spread in preparation for flight and his sword raised. Merlin began an incantation, fire spreading in his palms and electricity crackling through his fingers. Dream gave a roar and changed from a tiny green lizard into a fire-spitting dragon.
“Come, Madness,” screamed a gnarled oak tree, his branches creaking in a wind only he could feel. “You have never known the fury we are prepared to unleash upon you!” Dionysus howled with a madness of his own, ivy exploding from his hands and covering the ground around him. Odin sat upon Sleipnir, his snow-colored steed, with his ravens circling above our heads and his wolves at his side.
The cyclops and their demonic nurse saw my legion, turned and ran in a panic back into the mists. But, as they fled, there was a rumble and an earthquake. From the darkness, a mountainous head with a single eye like her minions and snakes for hair rose from the plain. This new monstrosity gave a challenging roar and my Light Congress arrayed themselves about me once more.
“I will face this new challenge,” I said to my friends, raising a fist at the darkness on the plain in defiance. “Though I am afraid as this is a shadow long held in my mind. Is there anyone here who is willing to come with me? I ask for your help in this hour and this place. Together I know we can face anything from heaven or hell or wherever it is that we find ourselves now.”
Badger bumped into my legs, affectionately. “We will all go with you,” he said. “Of course we will, Heidi. For friendship and magic and love.” The Light Congress turned into a lighted mist, flowed into my body giving me the strength to soldier on, and I walked towards Madness, alone but not alone, not alone at all.
The snakes wreathing the monster struck from the slopes of the creature’s neck, but they could not touch me, passing through my body as if I wasn’t there. The giant eye of Madness spun in circles, emitting a hypnotic light that beckoned me onwards.
“Come,” a voice sighed from the mists of the plain. “We have long waited for you, Heidi.” I pulled my eyes away from Madness and saw, set into the side of the creature’s head, an entrance into the darkness.
“Not that way,” the sighing voice became a screech and then a scream. I ignored it and pushed my way into the cave, the darting serpents becoming harmless moss and hanging branches that I moved aside with ease.
Inside the cave, I heard a child crying. I moved as quickly as I was able through the darkness and came to a large cavern, deep beneath the earth. My Inner Child sat at a wooden table, contentedly drawing with paper and crayons. She wasn’t crying, but I still heard her voice echoing through the spaces- distraught, terrified, and sobbing. I sat across the table from her.
“Are you alright?” I asked, watching the crayons move across the page, sketching the beginning of the form of something I couldn’t identify.
“Don’t look behind me,” she said, continuing her art while her voice wept.
“I’m not afraid…” I started to say but the Inner Child grabbed my hands to silence me.
“If you look behind me,” she said. “We will end up like them.” The Child pointed to a pile of bones laying against one of the walls. They had been gnawed and picked clean of any flesh.
“This is what is in the shadows behind us,” she said and continued filling in the blank page with one huge eye with hair shaped like snakes, many grasping hands covered in pointed claws, and a surrounding miasma of hopelessness and despair.
Some of the light oozed out of my body and took the form of Badger and Dream. “Get her out of here,” I said. Badger gathered my Inner Child into his arms and ran from the cave. “Dream, help me see into the dark,” I said. “I can’t see anything in this murk but the Child said something dangerous dwells here.”
Dream peered into the inky shadows of the cave. “I see nothing,” he said. “Maybe if you use her picture as a guide, we will perceive it. The Child can see that which is hidden to your adult eyes.” I took the crayon-covered page and held it up in front of my face. When I lowered it, a living, breathing version of the creature stood with us in the cave.
At first, the being seemed to be a normal woman, but, when she moved, she had too many appendages, too few eyes, and hair which moved under its own accord. She seated herself in the Inner Child’s chair and started to rip up the table into chunks and then consume it, as if she was pulling apart a loaf of bread.
“When I finish with this table,” she said, crunching the wood into bits with her fanged jaws. “I will start on you.”
“Who are you to threaten me?” I replied, my Dream giving a warning hiss of his own. “You sit at my Inner Child’s art table. What manner of woman are you?”
“Madness answers to no one,” she said, calmly continuing to destroy the table of my childhood dreams. “Madness does not explain, especially to the likes of you. Madness only consumes and destroys.”
“Why have you come to this place?” I asked. “This is my inner sanctum and my Child has never injured anyone in thought or deed.”
“I was invited in,” said the creature called Madness. “When you stare too long into non-reality, you issue an invitation to things waiting in the dark of the void.” The last remaining splinters of the table went into her mouth.
“There you are, Heidi,” she said with an insane grin as drool dripped from her pointed teeth. “I could not see you because the Inner Child hid you deeply in her boundless imagination, but I can see you now.”
The creature from the void of creation reached for me and Dream threw himself between us. Madness’ claws tore him and he cried out in pain and fear.
“Love,” I said in a panic. “I call you now for we need your help. Please send this shadow back to wherever she came from, and spare my friends and I from her destruction.”
Venus appeared and faced the monster, wielding her son Eros’ golden bow as well as the spear of Mars. “Fear not, Heidi, for Love can pass unharmed even through Madness,” she said. “Being considered by some to be a form of Madness herself, blinding lovers to each other’s faults and changing the everyday world from dross to gold.”
The goddess handed me her weapons, and then turned and walked into the arms of the waiting creature with her hands empty before her. “Love conquers all,” she said, embracing the void. Madness shrieked and her single eye spun sickly in her head, giving off a bright green, strobing light.
There was a flash and the cavern of my Inner Child lit up with a ghastly red glow then Love stepped back from embracing the darkness and held a newborn baby in her arms. His umbilical cord was still attached to his belly and led deeper into the cave. The creature called Madness had disappeared.
“Heidi,” Venus said. “You need to see this.”
The umbilical cord led to a pool of water and, in the deepest part of this pool, a bright red light flashed in the near-total darkness. “What is it?” I asked. “What is the light emerging from?” The baby slipped from Venus’ arms and drifted gently towards the light in the pool where he was absorbed.
Venus laid a cautioning hand on my arm. “Send Dream,” she advised. My dragon threw himself into the red-lit pool and swam down into the darkness where eel-like creatures with foot-long fangs tried to tear pieces off of him. He shrugged them off as if they were no more than gnats and continued downwards towards the red brilliance.
The cavern pool was deeper than it at first appeared and Dream was fathoms deep when he tore off a piece of the shining substance and made his way back to the surface.
He handed it to me when he emerged, dripping from the pool. It seemed to be a long, wooden stake, the length of my body, with human hair hanging from one end. The light came from within this wood and it pulsed in my hands. “There’s a bunch of those down there,” said Dream, panting from his exertions. “I will go fetch them if you wish.”
“Thank you, Dream. No need to expend your energy any further on my behalf,” I said and waved my hands over the pool. As one, the human-sized splinters loosened from the depths and floated past the monsters to the surface.
When they hit the air, the piece I held pulled itself from my grip and the wood began arranging itself like a huge puzzle into a door that hung from nothing. Black hair emerged from cracks in the door and streamed towards me. I gripped the stone handle that appeared on this strange portal and opened it.
Released from the door, the black hair blurred my vision and filled this new space. I pushed past waves of it and saw a beautiful, naked woman who was the source of both the doorway and hair.
“Who are you?” I said, cautiously.
“Nimue,” she said and moved towards me. “My captors call me, Nimue.” Silver chains bound her to the cave but her black hair swirled and concealed the bindings from my vision. “Nimue is not just my name,” she said, coming to the limit of her chains and halting. “It is what people call my race.”
“I have heard the story of Nimue,” I said, the Light Congress stepping from my body one by one so that we filled a large part of Nimue’s cave. “She tricked Merlin and held him captive for centuries so Arthur could fulfill his destiny.”
“A story written by Merlin,” said Nimue, pulling at her chains. “And not entirely true. I am a nature spirit who lived in a cave until a man found me and loved me. But our children were beings of two worlds and could not bear the magic that came with being a child of my blood.” As Nimue spoke, her hair moved in front of my eyes and I saw a different reality within the strands.
Nimue’s face appeared at the mouth of a cave and a man dressed in an animal’s skin was crawling within just to be near her. “My children were blessed,” said a disembodied voice. “But people saw them as cursed.”
The scene within the spirit’s hair changed and now I beheld a young woman sitting in front of a bonfire.
“Tell us what you see,” said the tribe around the girl.
She spoke as if in a trance: “I see a serpent made of fire. He consumes us all.” After the pronouncement, someone hit the oracle’s head with a stone and her family threw her into the bonfire to be burnt along with her prophecy.
The voice of Nimue spoke again: “Those blessed with my gift, learned to keep it to themselves.”
I saw a young man with some companions riding on horses through a snowy wood. On either side of the path, the man saw elves waving to him shyly from between the trees. He glanced at his friends but saw that they did not see the forest spirits, so he hitched his cloak more tightly around his neck and rode on in silence.
“They see a different reality,” said Nimue. “That did not always work out so well for them.”
Within Nimue’s hair, I saw a woman being burnt at the stake for being a witch. I saw another woman being stoned to death by an angry crowd for practicing medicine as a woman. I saw a sailor watching mermaids swimming alongside a ship but choosing not to mention the spirits to the rest of his crew.
“I believe that we all carry the potential for magic inside of us,” I said, blinking the hair and vision from my eyes. “It is a matter of will not blood.”
Nimue’s face changed into a snarl, but then she carefully arranged it back into a welcoming smile. “You do not see yourself as blessed with my gifts — prophecy, vision, and true sight?”
“Only as much as any other person,” I replied.
“Heidi,” she said quietly. “Do you believe stories can be interpreted in different ways?”
“Yes, Nimue,” I said. “I believe it is possible for two people to read the same story and come away with completely different views of what happened within it.”
“You saw my story as a nature spirit falling in love by choice and passing her gifts to the children of this union with any consequences of this birth being no fault of their own,” Nimue said. “Is this correct?” I nodded in agreement.
“This is a unique interpretation,” the spirit continued. “Another way to see my story is for the man to find me in my cave and keep me there against my free will, father children upon me against my will, and then take them from me against my will.”
Nimue raised her hands above her head, blood streaming from her fists where she held something small and red in her palms.
“I could also be called the mother who cursed her children for their existence, consumed them in her despair, and cast them out into the world to make their own way because she despised them- a mad, revenge-seeking mother, the female energy perpetually in the dark.” Then, Nimue lowered her blood-covered hands and gazed seriously at me. “Some have named me The Shadow Queen from Abaddon’s cave. Yet others called me, Medea.”
“But, I prefer your interpretation,” she said. “And that is what makes you special.” Nimue held out her hands to me. “I return this to you now, Heidi, for you are worthy.”
“My thanks, Nimue, but what is it?” I asked.
“Your heart,” she said and it flew from her hands back into my chest. “If you had seen my story in a way that displeased me, I was going to eat it in front of you.” Nimue pulled at her silver chains impatiently. “I would give anything to be free.”
I looked at my brave Light Congress who stood in support for me and then at this unhappy being who stood all alone. “Then you are free,” I said and the chains fell from her hands and feet. She gave a cry of joy and then disappeared briefly to appear next to Merlin. Nimue wrapped her arms around him and vanished while my friends and fellow soldiers-in-arms gave a murmur of displeasure.
“Can’t trust that one,” Badger said. “Whenever she appears, she tries to take the Merlin away and bind him in the dark. Madness follows when Nimue is abroad because he’s the one who holds the maps. And without the maps, it is so simple to get lost in the darkness and shadows.”
I considered this dilemma very seriously. “She said she would give anything to be free,” I mused. I walked to where Nimue had been imprisoned and clanked her chains against the floor with the toe of my boot. “Then I demand the return of my Merlin as the cost of her freedom. If she does not agree to these terms, then may she remain bound.”
There was a tortured scream and Nimue reappeared in the cavern. She threw Merlin at me and he tumbled to the floor, hitting my shins. I helped him to his feet and he thanked me without words through a glance from his frightened, wide eyes.
“My gifts may help you,” she spat. “But I will go where I will and you will not stop me nor chain me again.” There was a flash of red light and Nimue disappeared from my sight into the surrounding mist.
The reality around us crumbled and the Light Congress and I found ourselves standing among the field of large rocks and hungry giants from the beginning of the vision. But the outer surface had fallen from the boulders and titans, and now they all revealed themselves to my sight as sparkling diamonds, each and every one.
My friends touched these precious stones and disappeared, but Badger swiftly reappeared in some excitement.
He nudged me towards one of the stones. “Freeing Nimue enabled teleportation between the worlds of the Tree of Life,” Badger said. “See for yourself how simple travel is now!” With his encouragement, I laid my palm on the closest diamond and found myself running through a field of wildflowers in front of the Eternal City of the Living God, a glimpse I had once of heaven. Then, I blinked and was standing next to the rock once more.
“She is very powerful,” he said. “I wouldn’t trust her if I were you. Her gifts can be used to help or harm, and she is a capricious mistress.”
“You are a wise creature and I am so lucky to have you with me,” I said, giving him a hug. “I’ll rely on you to keep me safe from Nimue’s predations.” There, my vision ended.
The Light Congress 