Gate: A Broken Heart
I entered the vision gate and found myself moving to tribalistic music in the center of a crowd of dancers just like me. The spirits of men and women were dressed in brightly colored feathers and sported orange bands around their arms and legs.
All of a sudden, Shadow appeared in the midst of this crowd, her natural shadows and darkness standing out like a sore thumb within the glowing multitude. She growled in her animalistic manner and made a space around herself by flinging her claws about her so the other beings of dancing orange light backed away and cleared her area.
My Shadow started to move up and down in a dance of her own devising, undulating her spine like a snake along the earth but standing upright as I did. Then, she crouched on the ground and dug her sharp claws into the earth like spades, digging long furrows into the dirt with her bare hands.
“What on earth are you up to now?” I asked Shadow, after pushing my way through the still-dancing crowd to reach her side.
“Wouldn’t you like to know, you useless dancer,” she replied, spitting her forked tongue out at me as she did so.
“I may not see the truth of our inner reality as clearly as you, Shadow,” I said, offended by her words. “But there’s no need to be rude about it.” Then, instead of engaging in further fruitless communication with my shadow self, I stood back and watched her at work.
Shadow now stood amidst the multiple lines she had made in the fertile soil of the realm in which we found ourselves. She snarled at me displaying her pointed teeth when she noticed I was observing her and jumped high into the air flying away over the curiously empty yet harrowed fields. The enormous crowd of orange lit dancers were gone but the ground they had danced upon was ready for planting. Through Shadow’s valiant efforts, the weeds and rocks had been removed from the area and all was tilled, ready for planting.
“Good work, Shadow!” I called after her but she kept flying, not even bothering to give me a backwards glance. I rose into the air above the fields and began to follow my errant Shadow further into the world.
Beyond the lush fields where any potential which was desired was ready to be planted, Shadow led me to a volcano that was starting to experience a relatively gentle eruption. The lava shot lazily up into the air and ran sluggishly down the mountain’s slopes, sparkling red and bright orange in the colorlessness of the place since the glowing dancers had departed long before my arrival.
Shadow flew up the sides of this mountain and threw herself into the upsurging lava. “Heidi,” she yelled. “Guess what’s at the bottom of the volcano, moron!” She gave me a vulgar gesture before sinking through the viscous surface of the molten rock.
I sighed at the never ending battle with the shadow. “I don’t know, I swear I don’t,” I said, trailing a few moments behind her. “But we’ll find out together I expect.” I leapt into the lava myself and felt it burning into my spirit and centering on my heart. Within the mountain, there was nothing to see in the lava except more lava. I knew through the connection we share that Shadow was only a little ways ahead of me but there was no way to catch her because I was not strong enough to move faster through the burning pit by myself.
After some timeless moments in the heated rock and some intense pain within my heart, a portal opened beneath my feet and the lava was drawn apart as simply as two curtains are pulled back from a window. I tumbled through this portal into a new space.
Arriving moments before me as usual, Shadow crouched on a floor of barren stone beneath a tree made of deer antler and she had her arm around the shoulders of our Inner Child. Lava surrounded this space, lighting the parts that weren’t shrouded in Shadow’s natural darkness. The Child seemed sad and despondent, and my Shadow was trying to comfort her, not a natural role for the shadow and she was failing utterly- something that I intuitively knew with my heart.
I crouched on the Child’s other side and patted the young girl’s back gently. “What’s wrong, Heidi?” I asked. “Has Shadow been scaring you again with her twisted version of reality?” Shadow opened her mouth to give a snarky reply but the Child beat her to it.
“My favorite tree won’t flower,” she said with a sniffle and waved her hand at the antler tree that loomed over us.
“I have never known a flower to grow from a piece of antler,” I said, continuing to rub my Inner Child’s back. “But your imagination is so much better than mine that maybe I’ve just forgotten that this is so. Maybe Shadow and I can help you in this endeavor if this is what you desire most. We only want you to be happy, Heidi. Please be as happy as you can while we work this out.”
The Child wiped her eyes and nodded her head to me as a signal that I could attempt the impossible. I stood from her side and took a good look at the favored tree then motioned to Shadow who gave a long suffering sigh and walked over to its trunk. She ran a shadowed finger down the ripples and grooves of the tree’s trunk and antlers sprouted out of her own head but nothing happened to the plant itself.
So, on a quest to make a flower from an antler tree on a Child’s wish, I joined my newly-shaped Shadow at the tree’s base. Ignoring her sneers and jeers, I wrapped my arms around the tree and pressed my cheek to its surface. Something made of energy passed from my heart to the antler tree and its branches exploded with small white flowers shaped like cherry blossoms. One of these blossoms fell from a branch high above and drifted gently downwards, coming to rest in my Inner Child’s outstretched hand.
She giggled when the blossom landed and closed her fingers over the delicate flower. Then, when the Child opened her hand once more, a glowing seed sat in her palm in the place of the blossom. She tossed it carelessly behind her and another tree grew where the seed hit the stone floor. Opposite of the newly flowering antler tree, a tree made of solid rock sprouted from the Child’s cherry blossom seed. Its craggy edges were as barren as the antler tree had been moments before.
The Child didn’t say a word to either Shadow or I, just pointed at the stone tree in mute appeal. Shadow gave another annoyed sigh and moved to the stone, touching it gently with her fingertips as before. This time, there were no obvious changes to my Shadow’s form but I hugged the stone tree anyway, pressing my cheek to its chill planes of rock.
Once again, the tree sprouted blossoms, these new sprouts appearing as the color of the lava around our growing space- red and orange and sparkling with their own inner light. A shining flower dropped from the stone tree into the Child’s hand. She clasped her fingers closed as before and, when she opened her small hand, she revealed a seed made of living flame. Again she tossed the seed and a tree of strangely solid-looking fire grew from its resting place.
Trees of antler, stone and flame now stood at three equidistant points around my Shadow, Inner Child, and I, leaving a final spot for a further tree to complete the circle. But this time, when I went to embrace the fire tree, the Child stopped me by grabbing my hand when I walked by her. “Not you,” she said and pointed at Shadow. “Her.”
Shadow bared her fangs at the Child in a snarl but complied with her wishes all the same as our Inner Child holds unquestioned sway over the Inner Worlds even over the realms as yet undiscovered. The moment Shadow wrapped her arms around the fire tree in a mirror of my own actions, I felt flames beginning in the middle of my chest, spreading until I was outlined in living fire from the tree. At first it hurt, terribly so, but then as the flames banked down, I found myself glowing with a bright red light and the lingering pain dulled to a general ache.
The fire tree burst into blossoms made of water, one of which fell as expected into the Child’s hand. She transformed this potential into a watery seed and planted it at the final open spot in the circle. Once again, the Child directed my Shadow to embrace the tree made of water. When Shadow reluctantly did so, I felt a flow of energy spring from the place where the fire had burned my spirit. A soothing wave washed over me, combining with the fire that had been yet burning into something else- something red and growing and bright.
I cried out as the energy increased and then exploded outwards, touching each of the trees with the potential from my heart in a tidal wave of brilliant red light. As my light spread beyond the four trees, it cleared the encroaching lava like a broom sweeping dirt away and carried, as well as planted, copies of my Shadow and my own trees of antler, stone, fire and water.
With a sound like thunder, the lava completely disappeared from that place and the Inner Child, Shadow and I stood in a primordial forest made of unearthly trees, sprouted from both my and my Shadow’s secret heart.
“Wow,” I said in response to the changes around us but the Child shushed me and waved her hand over the barren ground at her feet. A hole appeared within the living rock and she gestured for my Shadow and I to pass through it. “But what will you do here without us, Heidi,” I asked.
The Child raised her hand and a blossom fell from one of the original four trees into her palm. She rolled the flower between her hands like a child rolls dough and when she opened them, a living bird burst into being, taking flight over the trees of that timeless forest. It burst into song, shattering the quietness of the Inner Child’s realm. “This place needs more of my birds,” she said and repeated the procedure again and again as Shadow and I watched.
After some time, I pulled my attention from the birds and looked at Shadow who glared back at me as usual. Then she shrugged as if to say, “Who cares?” in her mysterious shadow speech and leapt head first down the Child’s tunnel into the ground. Following my Shadow’s lead as I had in the lava flow, I eased myself to the edge and then fell into further darkness.
As we fell together from the Child’s forest, Shadow’s form began to shift and change, taking on an aspect made of pure fire. She trailed in front of me like a comet, burning brightly through the void of space. As the flames came off of her, they cooled into obsidian points which started to injure me as we fell towards the unknown.
“Ow,” I protested as one of the obsidian stones hit the tender spot in my heart but Shadow took no mind of my discomfort and burned just as brightly as before. In a burst of energy coming from a source outside of my own, I threw myself in front of my Shadow so she could continue to shine, fly and give off stone as she wished, without injuring me further as she did so.
After a few more heartbeats of plummeting through nothingness, I hit the ground in a new world and found myself on a cliff overlooking a vast and rocky plain. Men spirits shaped of shadows raced across this plain from right to left, fleeing something enormous that I could hear emerging from the distant horizon behind them. These fleeing figures reached a cliff on the far left side of my vision and threw themselves headlong from the plain into, what I at first believed to be, an ocean consisting of dark water.
But as my Shadow alighted to the ground beside me, shedding her unearthly flames for her usual shadows, I realized the dark and forbidding ocean of my vision was not water at all but a seething mass of shadow-formed spirits who had already thrown themselves over the cliff. These beings didn’t perish after their fall from the world they had once known but writhed and contorted in a massive and growing sea of living creatures who had once been men walking upon the surface of the plain. I shuddered at the realization.
Shadow snorted at the sight of the panicking shadows and I moved to take her hand to comfort myself with her familiar presence but she slapped me away. “Look here, Shadow,” I said, both frightened at the state of the world and growing frustrated at her unseemly behavior. “You’re going to have to stop fighting me all the time. There’s some major things going on in the Inner Worlds and I could use your help. In fact, we would have never made it here if we hadn’t traveled together so why don’t you just play nice.”
“Don’t you dare lecture me, you blind fool,” Shadow retorted. “See how my legions are sacrificing themselves to keep you safe.”
“I completely forgot you had your own Congress, Shadow. And, keeping me safe from what?” I asked as a thunderous roar from the approaching nightmare shook the plain. A dragon with a horned head the size of a mountain came over the horizon to our right. Its clawed feet emerged next, and the monster dipped its mammoth snout here and there, crushing and consuming shadow spirits as it came. I gasped in horror at the sight.
“Heartbreak,” Shadow said and grabbed my hand at last as I trembled at the sheer size of the creature that was still coming our way. “It’s Heartbreak, Heidi. He’s coming for us. Lickspittle held him back as long as he could but the monster is here now and storming our gates. What are we going to do?”
“We’ve faced Heartbreak before,” I said, my breath coming fast and sharp in my growing panic. “It didn’t look anything like that the last time I faced its shadows. Are you sure that’s what this is?”
“Am I sure?” Shadow said dismissively. As she spoke, I felt antlers growing from my head and my skin started to take on a green cast. “I’m as sure about Heartbreak’s predations as anyone you’ll ever meet, Heidi.”
“Where’s Goodness, the primal draconic self of the High Priestess of the Inner Worlds?” I said, when I was able to gather my breath enough to speak. “She’s the only being I know of who could challenge a monster as world ending as this. Your poor shadow army is fighting a losing battle.”
“Goodness will not walk here,” Shadow said, rolling her eyes at my ignorance. “And my legions are far braver than your puny Light Congress has ever been. Where’s that other dragon who helped us before? What was his name again?”
“Oh, Dream?” I said and, as I spoke his name, my gossamer dragon made of living rainbow light but who appeared in that forsaken place as the night sky with its shining stars burst into being above our heads. “He’s never far away. Which reminds me,” I said. “Last night, in the waking world, I dreamed of a dragon, my Dream, and he danced and flew with another dragon, one I had never seen before.”
“How convenient for us both,” Shadow said. “I wish you had had this real life dream sooner for my and my Congress’ sake as well as your own. And what shall we call this new dragon spirit?”
I paused for a moment in thought. Then, the name of the new spirit popped into my mind. “Hope,” I said. “Her name is Hope.” And, in the sky next to Dream, another dragon appeared with scales the color of freshly fallen snow. She was of a size to Dream though the flames she breathed were blue instead of Dream’s red fire. Together, when both dragons released their flames, they magically mingled to create something new- a greenish conflagration, a cleansing inferno, the same color as the green that had covered my skin as I stood above the warring plain.
Hope roared with a sound like trumpets blaring, summoning Shadow’s armies to combat once more, and with Dream, they threw themselves towards the massive black dragon called Heartbreak. As they did so, I felt energy moving from me into my Shadow through our clasped hands. The green was draining from my skin and I felt my antlered horns shrinking, appearing on Shadow’s own head again as they had in the realm of the four trees. Where the green receded, a burning red, the color of the lava we had passed through to the Inner Child’s realm, took its place on my skin.
In addition to the change in skin color, I felt the calmness I had managed to cultivate in my situation being replaced by a now familiar sense of helpless panic. “Shadow,” I said, still clutching her hand. “Stop stealing my identity and help me. I’ve come to the realization that I can’t do this without you.”
“You’re doing all this, you stupid flame-skinned idiot,” she said. “Look Heidi! Shut up and just look.”
The seething mass of Shadow’s men that continued to move across the plain and throw themselves off the cliff into the ocean were sprouting antlers and changing into green energy, the color of spring grass. The ocean of shadows that had already thrown itself off the cliff suddenly caught on fire, bursting into red and orange flame, the colors that I wore on my new spirit body.
As another wave of panic passed over me, the sea of red and orange gathered itself into an oceanic wave which threw itself over the cliff and back to where Dream and Hope battled Heartbreak on the plain. The fleeing antlered green shadows continued to cast themselves into the void of the ocean where they fed the newly-lit flames and crashed back to the earth reborn with the red and orange sea waves to reinforce the shining warriors facing the great black dragon on the ground.
Sometimes, in their journey to fight Heartbreak, the red and orange warriors from the sea crashed into the emerging green spirits from the land and the shadow army’s cries of fear and misery from both sides were so loud that they reached Shadow and I on our distant cliff.
Meanwhile, Dream and Hope were harassing the unconquerable black dragon. In every place their flames and the warriors with the colors of sunlight touched, the black dragon’s skin changed, taking on the color of the beings who fled before the monster into the sea- a bright vivid green, the color of spring.
Again and again before my horrified eyes, the sea of living flames crashed into the land to face the dragon and mingle with the fleeing green mass of spirits who continued to throw themselves into the ocean. But then, it was as if the ocean was fighting back against the beings who wanted to join in their number by throwing whole swathes of spirits back to the ground where they changed from the evolving red and orange of the flaming seas to their original green. The former shadows who were rejected by the ocean, now green ones who were free of darkness, were pushing back against this unnatural sorting by the waves and bravely raced towards the cliff edge again, throwing themselves into the unknown once more to face the judgment of the flames.
“You don’t seem to be making things better, Heidi,” Shadow observed. “It’s like you’re not even trying to understand reality.” Now it was my turn to snort in disbelief.
“I’m not doing anything to those upon the plain,” I said. “Other than observing them.”
“No?” Shadow asked, turning her newly horned head towards me. I shook my head again in negation when she reached into her chest and pulled out a long, thin dagger. Along its edges, it bore the inscription: Love. “Then stop attacking me,” she said. “I have proof of your great calumny. See here, how you injure me and mine with your world view.”
“I didn’t attack you or your shadow legions,” I said. “In fact, I took that injury on myself long ago in the Gundestrup Cauldron when your Shadow King fought the Other. Don’t you remember?” As I spoke, I went to take the dagger from her shadowy claws. But the moment I lay a finger on it, the dagger disappeared and Shadow gave a short cry of pain. A moment after that, she was pulling the dagger from her heart again.
“Don’t touch it for Christ’s sake!” she cried when I went to take it once more. “I cannot keep bearing this burden for you or anyone in existence, even my beloved Cernunnos.”
Together, Shadow and I watched the misery of the living shadows fleeing on the plain and emerging from the ocean. The three dragons, one black with stars, one the white of snow and the last a green with quickly shrinking patches of the void, continued to tussle on the horizon while the warriors of red and orange flame harassed Heartbreak’s flanks. Between the sounds of the shadow army’s evolution, internal fights, and the dragons’ perpetual struggle, the world was a cacophony. I covered my ears to protect my sanity but couldn’t block it out no matter how hard I tried.
“Stop this madness!” I cried and an unearthly silence took the place of the ceaseless noise. Everything and every being in existence froze in the place. The red and orange shadows were suspended in another massive wave mid-way between its oceanic existence and the cliff where the green antlered shadows threw themselves into their midst. The dragons were frozen as well, all three spouting their flames. I took a calming breath in the stillness and then another.
“It is you and me, Shadow,” I said. “We’re somehow fighting against each other and it’s creating a hellscape.” I sat down next to her with a sigh of exhaustion. “What do we do now?”
Shadow coughed up blood and pulled Love’s dagger out of her chest once more. “I don’t make the problems, Heidi,” she said. “Only respond to them.” She offered me the dagger of her own free will and when my fingertips touched it, the red and orange energy of my spirit body was sucked out of me while the green energy was pulled from Shadow and into the weapon. The dagger flashed with a brilliant light then changed into a circle of energy, half white and half black with spots contained within either side of the opposing nature. This circle began to rotate about itself, a living symbol of the Tao.
I took the circle which was the size of my two fists put together and pushed it into my heart. When I did, energy poured from my heart center and reignited the frozen world around us. The red, orange, and green spirits of Shadow’s legions drained of color as did the three dragons. All became black and white, fell apart into separate particles of energy, and began to rotate in a massive circle of Tao, the outer world reflecting the new inner reality of my heart.
Shadow and I stood on the cliff’s edge in the center of this new reality, watching the interplay of light and shadow together for a time. Then, I hugged her tightly to me as she tried to push me away. “Did I ever tell you how much I appreciate having you in my life?” I said to my Shadow. “You make the confusing situations I encounter so clear sometimes and I wouldn’t have that clarity or even my sanity without you around.”
“Get away from me, you dumb bitch,” Shadow snarled in reply and my vision ended.
The Light Congress 