Gate: A Crown of Roses
I entered the vision gate and found myself running through a forest on all fours as a doe. I trailed a large white stag who flickered in and out of the foliage. He was fast but so was I. We moved beneath the leaves of that ancient place like a breeze.
At first, I thought I was trying to catch the white stag in some sort of race between a male and a female spirit, and I pushed myself to an even greater effort but somehow, no matter how hard I tried, he was always a step ahead. I started to pant and I felt sweat dripping down my sides as I fought to even stay near him. Though I was in a spirit world and should have been able to move as fast as I desired, I was being controlled somehow, my breath and strength taken from me.
“I wonder if it is the same for the white stag?” I whispered as I forced myself to take one faltering step after another. “How can he still be so fast when we are being held captive in these imperfect forms?”
Pacing the stag continued to take all of my strength and attention until I heard the hounds behind us and a new realization washed over me in a cold wave of sheer terror. I had not entered this realm to participate in a race. The stag and I were prey in a much more dangerous game.
The hunters and their tracking hounds were so distant that initially I tried to dismiss the sound as a mere wheeze in my exertion, a trick of my imagination. But as they closed in on us, and their clamor became unmistakable, I began running for my life whereas before I had been only running to provide companionship to the one who moved on the path before me. The white stag kept his pace, relentlessly plunging through the undergrowth.
“They are coming for us,” I cried out as my strength began to fail in earnest. “They will kill us and feed our hearts to their dogs. Our skins will clothe their children and your horns will give them immortality.”
“Then we best keep running,” the stag said. “You knew this game was for keeps.”
“I knew no such thing,” I said. “I’m from another world. This isn’t a game I’m familiar with.”
“Silly Hind, why do you think we ran from that world to this?” the stag said. “The Great Hunt is as unbound in the myriad worlds as we.”
“They are?” I said. “How could a god of love allow such a thing?”
“Their god is not love,” the stag said. “No, Hind, he is not Love. Two guesses on who he really is.”
“I cannot play guessing games and run for my life at the same time, Stag,” I said. “Please just tell me.”
“He is Fear, dear heart,” said the stag. “Fear comes for both of us. Steel your spirit for the inevitable defeat we are facing. He is deathless, breathless and eternal. He will never cease pursuing us in all the worlds.”
“What if we change our forms?” I said, panic shortening my breath even further. “He would not kill us if we looked like him or one of his servants.”
“Do as you wish,” said the stag. “This is how I am choosing to both run and end this race. If your will is not to die at my side then by all means, Servant of Love, try Fear’s game your way. I will see you on the other side of the veil.”
“I wish for us both to live, Stag,” I said. “Please change forms with me and we will plead with Fear’s Servants for our lives.” But the stag remained silent to my entreaties and I knew his mind was made up and there was no one in heaven or earth who could change it.
Finally when the hounds of the Great Hunt were nipping at my heels, I couldn’t go on and I collapsed in a heap upon the forest floor, changing back into my human form and preparing myself to beg for the life of one who had come with me from another world. The creatures passed through me as if I was no more corporeal than a figure in the mist and continued in pursuit of the white stag.
As I was considering what to do next and trying to catch my breath, riders appeared, crashing through the foliage and riding over me like a wave as they followed their hounds. The Horned King led the chase which was a shock to my heart because I thought I had been running behind him through the ancient woods. Like their dogs, the riders blew past and through me until the last rider reached down as he passed. Snagging my arm, he threw me up onto the mount behind him.
“Fancy a joyride?” the rider asked as the wind of our passage cooled the sweat from my cheek.
I was relieved to find I was sharing a horse with the elven king Oberon and not some shadowy Servant of Fear. “Thank the stars above it’s you,” I said. “We need to leave this hunt and encourage the others to do so as well.”
“We can’t do that, Heidi,” Oberon said. “The Forest King will not be denied his prize.”
“But the Stag they chase is my friend and he said this hunt was being led by Fear himself,” I said. “We cannot allow Fear to determine our future path. He is a ruling power who has declared undying enmity towards Servants of Love like me.”
“Why on earth would you side with a stag over the Forest King?” Oberon said. “All those who dwell beneath the forest eaves live under his dominion, even I, even you.”
“None have dominion over me,” I answered. “None but the one who put the stars in motion.”
“Good luck with that, Heidi,” Oberon said. “The Forest King expresses the same opinion so I’m curious, if it came down to it, who would actually triumph in our realm.”
“I have no desire to rule anyone,” I said. “The Stag is one of my ancestral companions and I would not see harm come to him. It is a matter as simple as that.”
“I find that few things are simple in the Inner Worlds or Outer,” Oberon said. “Let us follow this Hunt to its conclusion and see how matters proceed from there.”
“As you wish it, Oberon,” I said. “But I voice my disapproval of this whole thing. If I was the stag, I wonder if you would still be willing to witness his untimely end.” After that, we kept our chatter to a minimum in order to focus on avoiding the branches threatening to unseat us, mainly me, from the elf king’s horse.
After some time, the tremendous strength of the white stag must have waned for we came upon a clearing in the trees where the dogs had him surrounded on all sides. He snorted and pawed angrily at the hounds who were barking like mad after the excitement of the chase.
“Great One, have mercy!” I called as Oberon’s horse entered the clearing. “Please spare this Stag, I know and love him!”
Ignoring me so completely, it was as if I had never even spoken as the Horned King swung down easily off his horse. Two steps more and he was moving through the hounds to the stag’s side. Pulling a long knife from the belt at his waist, he moved his left hand in a slash and the animal’s throat was cut.
“Why are you doing this to him?” I said as my tears fell as surely as the blood that came from the stag’s wound. “Why couldn’t we all have lived in the forest realm in peace?”
“Don’t cry, Heidi,” Oberon said as I wept. “I must witness my mother’s tears but I never wanted to behold yours too. Embody the stag’s strength and do not let his enemies see your grief.”
“He was one of the strongest spirits I knew,” I said, doing my best to calm the storm of emotion surging through me. “In honor of him, I will make my spirit as impervious to Fear as the stones upon the ground. I shall be eternal and unbreakable like the foundation of the earth. Though they chase me, none will catch me for my secret heart shall be buried this day. Though they injure me with their words or deeds, none shall touch my undying memory of my love and friend, the White Stag.”
“There you are, Servant of Love,” Oberon whispered. “Welcome back to my world.”
The proud beast staggered and then fell, the dogs’ braying growing even louder. Then, the Forest King knelt and dipped his fingers in the spilled blood. Motioning to first one dog then another, he anointed their foreheads with the kill, calming them with a murmur as he did so.
“I don’t want to see this,” I said, pressing my face into Oberon’s back. “Love asks too much of me to witness the further predations of Fear upon the remains of the Stag.”
“But this is the exciting part,” the elf king said. “Watch to honor the memory of your slain love if you can’t see his mighty sacrifice in any other way.”
I reluctantly opened my eyes and the blood trickling from the stag’s body began to change. The red turned into a profusion of greenery and ivy started pouring out of the wound. It grew out from the white stag in every direction, climbing the trees and blanketing the ground with green foliage in a matter of moments.
Then, something moved under the ground where the stag’s blood had spilled the most. It pushed up until it formed the shape of a humanoid head and shoulders then it sank down again like a slight bump under the leaves.
This spirit of the forest and earth itself paused as if observing the Horned King and his hunting party, then shot away as quickly as a fairy sprite, traveling deeper into the woods and through any obstacle as if the forest realm itself was a shadow and not reality.
“We’ll lose him,” I said, urging Oberon to follow, a hunter’s instinct rising unexpectedly within me. “Maybe something of my friend yet lives in what came from his blood.”
“The stag is no longer a ‘he’, but a ‘they’. Have no fear, Heidi, for we know where they’re going,” the elf said. “To the bower in the woods, the seat of their power.”
“Who is ‘they’?” I asked.
“The ancient ones of the hidden spaces of the woodland realm. They have also been called the Green Ones,” he replied, turning his horse to follow the apparition at a leisurely pace. The rest of the hunters remained behind, dividing the remains of the white stag among themselves.
“Why did the Forest King choose to hunt the stag, Oberon?” I asked. “He was such a beautiful spirit and harmed none as far as I am aware. I realize I pop in and out of this world in an unorganized fashion and miss much of what occurs therein, but what suffering has a stag ever inflicted upon the great Horned King? Isn’t he their father in a manner of speaking?”
“The Forest King said the Great Hunt rode this night because you, Heidi, wanted to stand in the presence of the Green Ones,” Oberon shrugged. “There’s a proper way to do these things, you know, especially with the elder gods.”
“I wanted to see the Green Ones?” I said. “I didn’t even know there were Green Ones beyond the Forest King’s companion and consort. I don’t remember ever desiring such a thing, let alone speaking this wish aloud.”
“Those were the words of the Forest King that could not be unspoken before the Hunt began,” Oberon said. “Maybe this is one of those shadowy events in your past that you have yet to remember? I don’t know what else to say about it, Heidi, except to admit that unfortunately we have not yet discovered potential shortcuts on the road to eternity.”
“Maybe someday we will,” I said. “I would have never desired the death of one of my oldest friends even to continue down the path of learning the mysteries of creation for the good of all. Never. If my Shadow is responsible for this, she and I are going to have a war like we have never had before and this hunt was the opening salvo.” Then I held my peace for a time, enjoying the silence and Oberon’s company as we traveled deeper into the woods where the trees grew ever closer together. The green ivy covered all even here and muffled our horse’s hooves as he stepped sure-footedly forward, following a path he already knew through the growing darkness.
“What have you been up to?” I asked, my curiosity overcoming my grief over the stag. “I feel like we haven’t had a chance to speak face to face in ages.”
“Oh the usual things, like star gazing,” Oberon replied. “Two new stars recently appeared in the night sky and Merlin sought my counsel on what the portent meant.”
“Two new stars? Well, that is an interesting development,” I said. “What’d you tell the wizard?”
Oberon glanced over his shoulder at me and grinned. “After some careful observations, I told the Wizard of the Woods the two stars moved towards each other and away again in a discernible pattern. My opinion is they are dancing.” He moved his attention back to the path ahead. “I named the pair, ‘The Binaurals’.”
“I think the stars dance together all the time,” I said. “But the ones I know of were born so long ago that their genesis has become legend and occurred well before my time or at least the lives that I can remember. I haven’t heard of the birth of a new star, let alone two together, ever. What does it mean?”
“The nice thing about the appearance of new stars is we don’t have to guess,” the elf king responded. “A change that far-reaching reveals itself through the natural passage of time.” He gently pulled his horse to a halt. “This is as far as Puck and I can go for this was a Hunt that was run for your benefit alone as stated by the Forest King. I shall not cross his will in this.”
Oberon helped me down from my seat and I patted his chestnut horse’s lustrous mane. “Thank you for the ride,” I whispered into the stallion’s ear. He knickered in response and blew a sweet breath into my face that pushed my hair back from my forehead.
The ivy growing in this new place was thicker than any we had passed through and I couldn’t see more than a foot or two through it.
“I’ll not go alone but we can still honor the will of the Horned King in this matter for I will call the one in all creation who is as much a part of me as I am of him,” I said. “Badger, I require you. Please attend unto me.” My Badger appeared the moment the words left my lips, trundling towards me through the ivy in his solid, steadfast manner. “Thank you for bringing me to this critical juncture, Oberon,” I said, waving a farewell to the elf king. “I wish it had never come to this and the White Stag and I were still running carefree through the hills and trees.”
“Wishes cannot bring back your lost love but they may yet affect the path ahead. Take care with the beings you find in there, Heidi,” Oberon cautioned. “They’re older than I am, which is saying something, and powerful. None know the genesis of the Green Ones.”
“She has me to walk beside her and face this peril,” Badger said, pushing his black and white head against my side. “Maybe that’s all she needs to know.”
“Even so, brave Badger,” he said. “Even so.” The elf clicked his tongue and within a few moments he and his horse disappeared in the foliage and shadows beneath the trees.
Badger gazed up at me as I considered Oberon’s words. “You’re not afraid of a few cobwebby forest spirits,” he said, teasing. “Not after everything we’ve faced together.”
“No, I’m not afraid, Badger,” I said as I rubbed my fingers over his head and around his tufted ears. “Cautious, yes. Grieving, yes. Afraid, never again. I have changed this night and I hope it is for the best.”
“Oberon is rarely wrong when he issues warnings so I’ll go first,” Badger said. “If there is a dire consequence to what we are about to walk into, maybe it will fall upon me and spare you.” Shape-shifting into his human form, he shoved his way into the ivy thicket, parting the ropes of greenery so I could follow. After a time, the undergrowth was too profuse to shift so we turned sideways and continued inching our way forward towards the sacred space. The ground began to slope downwards and for a few heartbeats I lost sight of Badger.
“Badger, are you still with me?” I called out. When I received no response, I quickened my pace, fear touching my heart but no longer stealing my breath away as it had in the past.
I pushed and wriggled my way forward a few more steps and fell onto my hands and knees into an open space. The ivy roped between the trees on all sides, creating a perfect circle into the center of which beams of sunlight streamed through the leaves above, all the way down to the forest floor.
Two thrones made of living wood sat in the center of this circle and on them were two spirits made entirely of ivy. Where they should have had eyes, there were merely lights, shining brightly even in the direct sunlight. I turned to my left and saw Badger where he had fallen through the ivy just as I had. But in this sacred space, he had been transformed back into his animal form and was frozen in time as a statue of black stone, his lips curled back from his teeth in a protective snarl which I knew was directed at the powers that be for me.
I didn’t say anything as I rose to my feet, brushing the dust off of my palms. The figures remained as motionless as Badger and I felt for a moment as if the dust motes drifting through the sunlight and I were the only beings alive in the place.
But then, the male shape raised his left hand and the female her right so their palms were facing each other between the space where their thrones sat. A vortex of swirling ivy leaves formed between their two hands, then, with a gesture, they sent the tornado of plants at me. It was on me before I could draw in a breath and it wrapped my entire body in ivy until I appeared as they did.
I heard voices coming from the vines. “This is a sacred place,” they said. “Sacred ground, sacred and forbidden. You tread where you are not welcome, Child of Man, Servant of Fear.”
“How dare you mislabel me,” I said, pushing the leaves from my mouth where they threatened to go down my throat. “I am no Servant of Fear and never have been. I serve Love and the unknowable will of the Creator of All.” The twisting ivy ceased wrapping more tightly and froze like everything else in the glade. “However, I am a Child of Man and one who comes from another world, summoned to other places by the ruling powers as required. Therefore, you, Great Ones, called me to this time and place, and I want to know why. I lost someone who was dear to me tonight and I am doing my best not to unleash my anger stemming from this loss on you both, whoever you are.”
“No, thee summoned we,” the voices murmured. “To kill the White Stag is sacrilege. Thy blood is forfeit.”
“I didn’t know what the Forest King was doing and would not have allowed it if I had known,” I said. “When I entered this world, the Great Hunt was chasing me as well as the White Stag and we fled before them in terror for I don’t know how long. The Horned King remains a mystery to me in many ways and I am so angry that he performed this act in my name. No one should act in my name without my knowledge and consent, and my Shadow does not speak my will or secret desires though she pretends to with my voice. Why can’t anyone tell me and Shadow apart?”
The vines cleared from my eyes so I could see the figures seated on their thrones. “Ignorance of sacrilege removes the blood debt but does not grant audience,” the Green Ones murmured through the ivy. It seemed as if the male and female figures looked at each other and then back at me, but it could simply have been the rustling of a slight breeze through their leaves. “There is a sacrifice that may be made to grant audience, but thy must do this thing alone. Thy guardian will remain as stone until or if thee return to we.”
“I will not lose Badger to the machinations of my Shadow and Fear as I did the White Stag,” I said. “Name your sacrifice and I will make it in the name of Love. Further audience with you, Great Ones, is not important to me nor desired at this time.”
“Fetch a red flower from the cliff’s edge,” a single voice said after a timeless moment in that place. “Then we will consent to speak with thee.”
“You will have your flower, Great Ones,” I said. “We shall see about the words. If anything happens to Badger in my absence, I will be very angry and I really don’t like to embody that ruling power. Please don’t hurt him. What happens to Badger, happens to me.”
Rather than respond in words, the vines began to whirl around me again and I was lifted into the air by their power. For a few dizzying moments, I flew through the trees in a tornado of plant growth but then it settled me back onto my feet. I now stood at the edge of the woods and ten feet beyond the ground dropped away, revealing a magnificent vista of mountains that smoked and valleys filled with fire.
But where the ground fell away, a small patch of red flowers with glowing black centers grew. It was the only flower in sight and there couldn’t have been more than a dozen of them. I stood for a moment in confusion.
“How do I get over there without the vines to take me?” I asked myself. Somehow in my mad flight through the forest I had forgotten I was a woman, not a plant bound by invisible chains to the wood and its power.
As I gazed at the flowers and then at the distant mountains, I saw something shining brightly in the sky. A gossamer dragon frolicked through the air, soaring in circles and chasing his tail like a cat at play. A name popped into my head, “Dream.”
“That’s my lizard,” I remembered. I looked down at my feet. “And I can walk. I’m not a tree or vine of ivy, I’m a woman. What a silly thing to forget.” I took a stumbling step and then another from beneath the trees of the forest into the open space before the cliff. I went as quickly as I could, grasping at memories as I did so.
“I need one of these flowers so the Green Ones will free my Badger from his stone prison,” I said to myself, putting one foot carefully in front of another. “I wish there were more of the flowers, how are there so few left. What if I’ve taken too long already and Badger has crumbled to dust before I return.” Fear touching my heart, I fell to my knees when I reached the cliff’s edge, lifting one trembling finger to trace a blood-red petal. “My name is Heidi,” I said to the flowers. “Please forgive me for ending your timeless existence. The Servants of Love require you.” I plucked a single blossom from the patch and the ground began to tremble.
Something roared from beyond the cliff as I pulled myself to my feet again, tripping backwards towards the welcoming safety of the trees where the ivy tornado was still whirling. I threw myself into its embrace as something made entirely of flower blossoms pulled itself over the cliff’s edge and flung itself at me. Where the approximation of its face should have been, a large hole filled with thorns gaped, mimicking a ghastly open mouth.
“Please return me to the Green Ones as fast as you can,” I said to the whirling ivy. “The guardian of that patch of flowers will never forgive me for plucking one. They approach even now to take it back from me.”
I gasped as the flowers’ guardian roared again and the ivy whisked me away through the woods. This time I held onto my mind as I was spun through the air towards the Green Ones but I could hear the creature in close pursuit, voicing their anger at my trespass all the while.
I was returned to the sacred glade in a crash of whirling ivy, this time directly on my knees before the motionless green figures. “I offer this flower as tribute to you both for the death of the White Stag,” I said and held up the miraculously undamaged blossom to the god and goddess of that ancient hidden space. “Please release my Badger as you promised.”
One of the vines of the male Green One reached out and caressed the flower in my upraised hand. As the two plants touched, they blended together and roses burst from the reaching vine. The vine returned to the god’s form and wrapped itself around his head as a crown of roses. At that moment, the pursuing thorn guardian from the cliff’s edge smashed through the protective wall of ivy ropes into the sacred glade.
There was a flash of light and the eternal beings on the thrones were now standing with their arms raised, more like two trees than figures wrapped in vines. “Thou standst in our sacred temple of ancient power, Guardian of the Forest Edge,” the Green Ones said, their voices growing in strength in proportion to their anger. “Thou art not welcome therein.”
“My flower, my flower,” screamed the guardian. “That interloper plucked one of my children. I saw her and heard her, even her true name if you require further proof of her infamy. Give my flower back to me and I will return to the Forest Edge and leave your bower in peace. What need have the Green Ones of my daughter when you have all the flowers beneath the forest eaves? Give her back to me.”
“We have dominion over all green and growing things in all the worlds, not only the Forest Realm, Guardian,” said the Green Ones. “Thy daughter as thou art ours to do with as we wish. From seed to vine to flower, thy children and blood art ours for thou art one with we. Long hast thou dwelt amongst the valleys of molten rock, dancing with the spirits of fire who call that cursed realm their home. Remember, Guardian, who thou once were to we. Remember, Daughter of Nature, who we once were to thee.”
The Green Ones began to glow with a power like the sun coming down to the surface of the earth. I closed my eyes as I was blown back into my Badger who, released from his frozen state as a spirit of stone, began to growl. The guardian of thorns gave a final roar of anguish and pain that turned into a woman’s scream, and the flowers and thorns began to sink back into itself, changing from the form of a monster into something else entirely.
The mass of thorns from the Forest Edge continued to shrink until a spirit in the form of an unconscious woman with bright red hair so long it went past her ankles was revealed, laying on the ground of the sacred space. The ivy from the Green Ones flowed from them to caress the woman and cover her unclothed form with their foliage. Where her sleeping body disappeared beneath their vines, bright red flowers like the one I had plucked sprouted from their surface.
“Thee returned Briar Rose to we,” the Green Ones said. “One long lost from this place. Thou hast our favor, Servant of Love. Thee may speak to we. Thee may speak to thy guardian. Thee may remember all that has come before.” There was another flash of light and the ancient beings were once again seated in stillness upon their thrones rather than embodying the upright spirits of powerful trees.
I wrapped my arms around Badger’s neck, comforting him as he continued to growl. “It’s alright. The Green Ones changed you from flesh into stone the moment you entered their sacred space but I went as quickly as I could to fetch the offering required to bring you back,” I said. “They didn’t hurt you in my absence, did they?”
“They gave me a vision, Heidi,” Badger said. “The second I broke through the vines I began to dream that I was given the torch of a civilization that ruled among the worlds of men in the far future. My warriors had tools of Hephaestus such as I have never seen and conquered all of the other kings and queens of the earth as I desired. My chosen companions entertained all the world through some magic where it was as if they stood before those within my civilization in their own castles and performed their pantomimes just for my warriors and I. I had the wisest advisors and physicians who could be found, trained at the altars of Apollo. My messages were carried through the air by Hermes and those who could walk between worlds, leading to communications from above to those below with effortlessness and ease. My artists and musicians were sons and daughters of the Muses, Orpheus, and all the gods and goddesses who value and love beauty and harmony between all who walk in creation.”
“That sounds like quite a civilization, Badger,” I said. “I would carry the torch of a kingdom like that. Were you happy in this dream?”
“I thought I would be happy,” Badger said. “At first, I was. There was nothing that I desired that I couldn’t have. No one in existence I couldn’t speak to and know their true nature of as well as my own. But as time went on, my civilization began acting in my name saying that I wanted things I didn’t want and fulfilling desires that I hadn’t dreamed of or spoken. I realized my Shadow ruled the surface of the earth as much as I did and I couldn’t control him or what he demanded of my warriors, companions and people without my knowledge.”
I threw my arms around Badger’s neck in an effort to comfort him. “You lived a nightmare, one of mine, Badger,” I said. “But it is over now. My Shadow and I are just like that and I can’t make her do anything that I want her to do. She hurts others because she is a Servant of Fear but my allies listen to her because she looks and sounds just like me, a Servant of Love. Shadows aren’t supposed to act like that, are they?”
“Mine never has and I have never been treated like that before by an elder god or any other,” Badger said. “Walking in another’s dream is something that should only be attempted with mighty protections in place so that neither party becomes lost in another’s appointed time and space. We need to leave, Heidi, now.”
“A favor given deserves a favor in return,” the voices of the Green Ones said as ivy wrapped Badger and I in its embrace once more. “We gift thee a power once lost to thine mind. All debts are now repaid in kind.”
“Now wait just a minute,” I said, pushing aside the encroaching ivy. “You gave Badger one of my nightmares and no harm was supposed to come to him as I brought your desired offering to you. Dreams can cast shadows as dark as the living and malevolent kind upon the spirit. Why did you inflict this suffering upon him?”
One of the flowers growing above the sleeping Briar Rose appeared before my eyes. “That was a nightmare of our daughter, Briar Rose, not thee,” whispered the Green Ones. “It is she not we who sent it to thy guardian as punishment for plucking the flower she saw as hers.”
“But Badger was turned to stone and dreaming before it was even asked of me to pluck the flower,” I said. “How could Briar Rose have known what was going to happen and sent a nightmare as punishment in advance? Despite your words, that dream was one that I’m living and I can’t imagine it belongs to someone else as it is the story of my eternal struggle with my own shadow and an echo of the Eternal War in the heavens. Furthermore, why do you call her Briar Rose, Great Ones, when the flower that emerged from her vines is known as a poppy in my waking world, not a rose.”
“Ask the one who put the stars in motion,” said the Green Ones. “Ask the one who made the first seed. Ask the one who walks in both dreams and life.” The ivy shot out from the god and goddess, surrounding us in its transportive energy, and Badger and I were whirled through the woods together and released in another open space.
“Are you ok?” I said, reaching for my friend when my vision cleared and the ivy returned to the ground from whence it had appeared. I found Badger standing in the center of this new location, fixated on something I had yet to see as I was entirely focused upon him.
“I’ll be just fine,” Badger said, never turning his gaze to me. “There is not a dream or nightmare in existence that I can’t survive, remember, and derive some knowledge or wisdom from. This was a promise made to me in the time before from the Creator of All. Don’t give it another second’s thought or worry, Heidi.”
“You remember speaking to the Creator of All before time began?” I said, falling to my knees beside him. “I’m so jealous. I wish I had a memory like that.”
“Maybe your memory will come back to you as you continue to live the life you are living and you will know the unknowable will of the Creator through it in time,” Badger said. “Stranger things have happened so why shouldn’t a blessing like that happen to you. Promises and dreams aside, take a look at what the Green Ones have given us, Heidi.”
I turned my gaze from Badger to discover a single beam of sunlight shining down upon a plant blooming on the forest floor. “What is it, Badger?” I asked. “I don’t recognize it. I’m no botanist though.”
He snuffled cautiously forward, examining the plant. “It smells like a mandrake,” he said finally. “I haven’t seen one of these in ages. It is a sign from the Green Ones for us.”
“Do you think this is a good sign or a warning of things to come? I don’t know what a mandrake means or why plucking a flower is such a sacrilege or why a poppy would be called a rose,” I said, coming closer to view the growing plant for myself. “The Green Ones speak a language so ancient I wonder if anyone still knows it and speaks it. Do you?”
Badger shrugged. “Somebody out there knows the symbolism of the Green Ones,” he said. “We’ll just have to keep looking until we find them and then we’ll ask.”
“Maybe the one who made the first seed?” I said.
“The very same,” Badger replied, changing into his human form and wrapping me in his arms.
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 