Gate: A Mouse’s Shadow
I entered the vision gate and found myself standing in front of the large stone well that Badger, Dream and I had used to retrieve the voice of the goddess. The All Mother stood around the well, divided into her three aspects. The youngest of her aspects, the Maiden, was drawing a bucket up from the bottom of the well. At first, it seemed to my sight that the well stood in an empty space, but the Maiden’s smooth and almost hypnotic movements as she brought water up from the deep caught the corner of my eye. Once I saw the All Mother, I could not look away.
“Divine Ones,” I greeted them, inclining my head in respect. “I’m very pleased to see you again.”
The Mother aspect acknowledged my presence with a smile while the Maiden continued to raise water from the well. The Crone stared into the distance while a strange light danced in the depths of her eyes. Her mouth was forming words, but issuing no sound.
With a final pull, the Maiden brought the bucket to the lip of the well, then dumped its contents on the ground. Instead of water, white rocks of varying sizes spread in a heap at the base of the well.
“Heidi, would you know your future?” the Mother asked, gesturing at the white rocks.
“There’s someone I need to retrieve from the shadow realm, Mother,” I answered, but gamely reached into the pile and selected a rock that fit into the palm of my hand. “May I return to you after my task is done?”
The Mother smiled again. “As you will it,” she said, making a sweeping motion with her palm and her fingers spread. “For returning our voice to us, Heidi, we would do a favor for you in return.” The other chalky rocks, the ones I hadn’t chosen, dissolved into a white powder that shifted and danced, forming a symbol on the ground in front of the well.
The symbol changed even as I looked at it. At first, I thought it was a triangle that spun, each point changing into a squiggly line that extended out from its edges like a simplistic sun. Then, the single triangle broke into three, those triangles swirled about themselves and inverted, creating something like a minimalist flower with only three, pointed petals.
I pulled my gaze from the ever-evolving symbol and placed my rock on the side of the well nearest to where the goddesses stood silently. “I will be back shortly,” I promised, and returned to the vision gate. “The tiger god has been missing from the Inner Worlds for so long that he might have disappeared from amongst us forever.”
“Don’t despair, Heidi,” Merlin said, appearing next to the vision gate. “He is a god who has undergone massive transformations in the past. This is just another step for him on the road to eternity.”
“Plus we’ve been training for this quest for months,” Champion said, stepping from Merlin’s shadow. “My mother Mouse is a powerful enchantress. She and Khan’s dancers are a force of nature all on their own and will not allow us to fall into the shadow of the Devourer. Do you remember the incantation to change yourself into the tiger god’s favored one so you can use their method of traveling the Inner Worlds?”
“As if I could forget it,” I said, recollecting hours spent in study in Merlin’s abode. “I still don’t understand why Mouse refuses to come with us. Together she and I faced Fear himself in a dark cave beneath the earth long ago. She is far more brave than she believes herself to be.”
“Some might say the same thing about you, Heidi,” Merlin said, squeezing my shoulder. “Don’t ask the spirits of the Inner Worlds to explain motivations that they may not yet comprehend themselves. We all have patterns that we are living out through our long existences and the meaning of it all may only become clear in the fullness of time, if ever.”
“As always, Merlin, you make the incomprehensible mysteries of reality seem so very simple,” I said. “I will do this thing for, even though he may not consider the same of me, I call Khan an old friend and treasured member of The Light Congress. Let’s go find your father, Champion.” Stepping close to me, the Khan’s son stepped into my spirit, lending me his seemingly endless pool of strength to draw upon as needed.
I paused for a moment to adjust to the influx of energy, closed my eyes and recited the dancers’ incantation:
“Besom, besom, shining bright.
Made of ash and willow withe.
Take us safely through the night.
Besom, besom, shining bright.”
I took a final deep breath in and out as fine gray fur covered my form, completing my transformation into the one called Mouse, then I stepped through the dancer’s secret vision gate into another reality.
Thick mists swirled in a large open space and I could hardly see beyond the next step forward. Within the mists, I glimpsed spirits shaped like women in dark robes who moved brooms back and forth in unison in a dance they all knew as well as they knew each other. Their voices echoed my words back to me. “Besom, besom, shining bright…” but the chanting dancers didn’t stop at the fourth line as I had.
They continued on with the full ritual poem and at the end, they lifted their brooms above their heads and smashed them to the ground. Once done, they then began to repeat the poem, this time not in unison, creating a chorus of chants and sweeping motions just out of my line-of-sight. As the varying recitations grew in volume, something reached out of the mist and grabbed my wrist. I was pulled away from the other dancers into a different place.
I found myself standing upon solid rock within a circular clearing in the mist. Badger and Dream were seated upon the stone ground in the center of this circle, their eyes staring sightlessly into the mist, seeking someone. I went to seat myself with my companions but the moment I did so, a broom appeared in my hands.
“Now is not the time to rest, Mouse,” a quiet voice whispered from my spirit. “We have to dance my father back home.” It was as if a shadow fell from my heart, everything came back to me in a rush and I remembered the quest Champion and I were currently attempting.
“I will come back to you,” I whispered to Badger and Dream as I felt myself being drawn away from their presence. “I swear it.” My dearest friends seemed not even to hear me as I rejoined the other dancers.
The disembodied voices of the sweeping spirits began to drift out of the mists around me as I swept in a clockwise motion around my loved ones. “Besom, besom, shining bright…” Around I went, moving my arms in rhythm with the chanting until I had swept an entire circle around the clearing. Then, I began going around again in the opposite direction.
The motions lulled me into a deeper trance and my arms began to feel heavy as I finished the circle counter-clockwise. Hardly aware of what I was doing, I lifted the broom directly over my head and brought it crashing down.
The moment my broom hit the ground, the mist cleared in a line in front of me. In the far distance, I could see another circular clearing with solid rock beneath it. I felt but couldn’t see that this was where Khan was being held by the servants of the Devourer. The broom in my hands twisted and changed under Champion’s silent influence, becoming a rope that shot out of my hands and led unerringly through the mist.
Then, the rock shuddered beneath my feet and stretched, reaching across the chasm between the two spaces, connecting them with a thin span of rock with the rope hanging helpfully at shoulder-height over it. I looked back at Badger and Dream but they were safe if not happy within the protective circle I had created for them.
“All is well,” I said to myself and Champion as no one else seemed to be able to hear me. “All is as it should be. Time to take some calming breaths. Breathing in, I love you. Breathing out, I love you.” Reciting my mantra and reminding myself to keep breathing, I looked over the edge of the rock and couldn’t see how far down it went, the depths were shrouded in mist. Gathering my courage, I took the rope and ventured out onto the rock that spanned the void.
One step at a time, I moved across the flimsy bridge. It grew thinner as I progressed and I found myself clinging more tightly to the rope. As I reached the midpoint of my journey, there was a mighty gust of wind and the remaining mist was blown away. Far below the span upon which I stood, a dark expanse of water stretched between the two islands of rock.
Something enormous heaved itself out of the water and began to race upwards towards me as if climbing an invisible ladder from the depths of the sea to the sky where Champion and I walked. “Don’t look down, Mouse,” Champion whispered from my heart. “Keep dancing!” Drawing my attention from the approaching threat and the building fear in my spirit, I continued onward as quickly as I could despite the dangerously thin bridge of rock.
Then I heard an inhuman groan and expression of suffering like a million trees bending in gale force winds at once and I couldn’t help but glance downwards again. The approaching monster from the sea displayed an enormous mouth filled with complete human fingers instead of teeth or fangs which was attached to a long body like an eel that had six finger-like legs. The mouth was open as the creature raced towards me, and I could see a single red eye among the wiggling and grasping fingers.
“Creator of All protect us,” I whispered in horror as the creature deftly made its way up the invisible ladder to hover beneath me as I rushed along rope and rock bridge.
“Go Mouse, go!” Champion said as my forward progress ceased. “We can’t let a shadow from the void stop us now.”
My heart nearly leapt out of my chest as the thing’s fingers reached over the rock directly before and behind my feet and I realized I couldn’t move without touching it. “Champion, I can’t go forward or back,” I said in despair and closed my eyes. “What do we do now?”
“When I don’t know what to do or which way to turn,” Champion whispered, sending quiet strength to my quaking limbs. “My mother taught me to ask Love to help. Remember? Please tell me you remember.”
As a few of the monster’s fingers closed around my ankle and I felt myself being pulled from the rock bridge, I sent a desperate plea from my heart to the space around me. “Please Love, hear me,” I said. “Have mercy upon us in the name of the one who set the universe and all it contains in motion. I beg you, save us so we may free Khan from those who have hidden him from our sight and presence. This is not just Mouse asking, it is Heidi too.”
As I clung to the rope, the monster’s groans and grasping fingers continued harassing me for a moment more, then I heard the spirit dancers in the mist beginning their chant again. “Besom, besom, shining bright…” and from the rock platforms on either side of the bridge, tiny figures with cloaks and brooms raced across the bridge towards me.
They were so small, the dancing saviors who responded to my plea, and stood less than six inches high, but wielded their brooms against the grasping monster’s fingers with such ferocity that the bridge was clear in a few heartbeats. As the army of Love fought against the shadow, I heard the voice of the All Mother speak in my mind: “Go, Heidi, go as fast as you can. The tiny dancers can only hold him for so long.”
I silently thanked her for her guidance and threw myself onwards as the battle between the dancing guardians and the monster continued. Some of the small sweeping spirits continued to clear the space in front of me while the others cast themselves on the monster. Brooms rose and fell, fingers broke and the creature groaned as I ran on between the floating islands of rock.
At last, I reached the far end where the tiger god Khan sat silent and still upon a circular clearing. I leapt from the rock bridge into his presence as the monster and battling dancers began to sink towards the water. The creature wailed, the water boiled, the mist returned to the skies, and then there was silence.
Champion stepped from my heart and threw himself to his knees before the great tiger. “Father, at long last I have come to return you to your seat of power,” he said. “The Light Congress and I are here to take you home.”
Khan gazed serenely into the skies about the island, acknowledging nothing as if Champion and I were no more corporeal than mist. “Great One, do you hear us?” I said, waving my hands before the tiger’s eyes. “You sit in the Lair of the Devourer. Come with us and we’ll return you to the realms of light.” Like his son, I received no response.
“It’s no good, Mouse,” Champion said. “The Devourer’s servants have clouded his spirit so that he is experiencing a living death. We must dance him back to life as we practiced.”
“As we practiced,” I said in agreement. “At least we made it safely here, I was more concerned about that part of the journey than anything else for I’m out of practice in building bridges across the void.” I smiled at Champion as his form began to change into the shape of his father. I stood between two tigers upon an island in the sky as my heartbeat slowed and another broom appeared in my hands. The chant of the dancers drifted out of the mist to my ears once more. “Besom, besom, shining bright…”
Like I had for Badger and Dream, I began to trace a protective circle for the tiger god and Champion on the rock with my broom. The tiger’s son watched with an encouraging smile on his face as I methodically worked my way around them both. I was only a few strokes away from completing the first protective circle, when something began to tickle in my chest, filling my lungs with an energy that was not my own. I coughed and the tickle changed into a searing pain like flames filling my heart.
The All Mother spoke in my mind again: “The only demons to guard against are the ones you bring with you, Mouse, or is it Heidi, after all.” The pain reached a crescendo as something made of shadow burst out of my chest and ran through the small space left in the protective circle. It trailed a chain that continued to pull out of my body as I completed the initial circle with two more strokes of my broom.
I turned to ask Champion for help in completing the dance when the shadow that had come from my heart reached the end of the line and I was pulled off my feet, dragged out of the dancer’s circle, and off of the tigers’ island. Whatever had me was incredibly fast and I couldn’t find anything to anchor myself, so I covered my face with my hands as we raced forward through the mists. “Help me, Champion, please,” I cried, but there was no answer as my own demon pulled me onward and far away from those I loved and wanted to save.
As abruptly as the creature had ripped out of me, it stopped. I skidded to a halt on top of another stone circle, this one much smaller than the other two. I groaned and rubbed at the bruises on my body while I tried to stand, but only succeeded in getting to my knees. “Where have you brought me, unexpected shadow,” I murmured and lowered my hands to examine the stone with my fingertips.
When I touched the ground, the stone lit up with the symbol I had seen from the chalky well rocks of the All Mother. The symbol shifted and changed before my sight, moving from the sun to the flower blossom and back again, and slowly spinning in a circle. As the symbol evolved, I was reminded of the moving face of a clock and could almost hear a ticking sound coming from it. As I leaned forward to look more closely at the symbol from the well, brilliant green light dripped from my chest where the shadow had come out of me.
Where the green light touched the symbol, it came to life, pushing out of rock and becoming a real three-petaled flower, crafted from the rock of the new island. Wondering at the transformation, I touched my fingertip to blossom and was transported, still kneeling in awe, to the symbol that waited beside the well with the All Mother.
The Mother smiled at both my reappearance and surprise at her presence. “Now for your fortune, as promised,” she said and the stone I had chosen levitated off the side of the well into the Maiden’s lovely hands. The Maiden raised the stone above her head and brought it crashing down on the well wall.
She handed it to the Mother, who also brought the rock up and then down upon the well wall, causing small cracks to appear in its surface. The Mother carefully gave the stone to the Crone who gave the rock a final, almost gentle, tap on the well wall and it fell to pieces in her hands.
A green light, like the one that had come from my chest, burst from within the pieces, and two small humanoid dancers made of the white material of the stone floated out of the Crone’s twisted hands. The figures danced with each other, embraced, and then fell into the well in a final burst of green light.
The Maiden helped me to my feet and placed my hands on the side of the well.
“All Mother,” I said. “Please tell me what I have seen, for I do not understand it. Khan and Champion wait for my return to carry them from the shadow realm to their palace in the far east.”
The Mother looked at me gravely. “Tell us, Heidi, what makes you afraid?” she said.
“I fear the monster rising from the chasm is the Devourer,” I said. “It haunts my steps and hobbles my dreams.”
The Mother waited, perhaps seeing if I was done. When I didn’t say anything more, she said, “Those who are brave enough to face a fortune telling of the three, earn a single wish from our well.” She took a step back, intertwining her arms with the Crone on her right and the Maiden on her left. “Choose carefully, Heidi.”
I sighed at the lack of answers from the powers that be and gazed down into the well’s depths. At the bottom, though I couldn’t see it clearly, I caught a glimpse of brilliant, green light. I opened my mouth and these words fell out, as if drawn out by the light shining fiercely in the dark shadows of the All Mother’s well: “Besom, besom, shining bright, brilliant stone of heart’s own light. Give to me what I desire, a love and faith through trial’s fire.”
The All Mother raised her arms in unison and her three aspects combined into one. In her hands, she held a broom which she brought crashing down on my head and for a time I knew nothing else.
When I could perceive my surroundings again, I couldn’t remember who I was or even where I was when I heard a child crying. He sounded lost and afraid, so I called for help. Badger appeared immediately and together we hurried in the direction of the cry. To my surprise, we found the source of the child’s cry was Khan in his adult human form, keening with his arms wrapped about himself in a large room filled with cobwebs. Blood dripped from various cuts and bruises that appeared all over his shadow-swathed body.
“What has happened, Great One?” I said, taking him in my arms and enfolding him in my own inner light. “Don’t be afraid, Badger and I will get you out of here. Please Badger, clear some of these shadow webs.” Badger started running in circles, clearing the spiderwebs from the room, bringing a feeling of space to the otherwise claustrophobic dungeon.
“The spiders took my loved ones from me,” Khan said, beginning to weep again, his cry now that of a grown man rather than a child. “All of my dancers and companions are gone. I wish I was dead rather than living this half-life alone.”
“This shall not stand, Great Khan,” I said. “Badger and I will go further into this world and see if there is anything that can be done. Please don’t be sad.” I kissed his cheek. “You are not alone or unloved. I may not be able to remember much from the time before, but I can at least remember that.”
“Dream,” I called, summoning my dragon. He popped into existence behind us. “Spread your wings over this place,” I said. “Cloak this god in your shadows and keep him safe while Badger and I find a way out of this shadow realm.”
“As you wish, Heidi. None living or dead, corporeal or incorporeal shall either see, hear or touch him,” he replied. With a sound like the rushing wind, Dream unfurled his mighty wings and spread them around Khan, cloaking him and the weeping god in his power. His illusion was so complete that unless I had witnessed it for myself, I would have believed Badger and I were standing in an empty room alone.
“Thank you, Dream,” I whispered as a shadow passed through my heart. “I’m forgetting someone or something. Why can’t I ever remember what I’m doing? How did I get here? These are simple things.” As I fretted, a door appeared in the bricks of the chamber revealing a turreted staircase that descended down into further darkness.
“Come on, Heidi,” Badger said. “Snake will not let anything happen to the tiger god.”
“Lizard,” came Dream’s disembodied voice from the shadows, causing me to laugh and cease my rumination on the wide gaps in my memory.
Laying my hand on top of Badger’s familiar head for courage, we took the stairs down until we came to a long chamber wreathed in shadows and more thick, dusty cobwebs.
Muttering and curses came from one of its darkest corners. “I don’t like the feel of this place,” Badger said and, after sniffing the air, “or the smell.”
“We have never shied away from either shadows or miasma,” I said. “And I would venture into hell itself for the tiger god upstairs. He is an old friend and deserves to be as free from the Devourer’s servants as the rest of us.”
“Perhaps we have found hell, Heidi. Look there,” Badger gestured and the muttering darkness resolved itself into a nightmarish shadow. From the waist up, she appeared as a woman wreathed in flickering red light and shadow, but from the waist down, she was a spider with far too many legs, more centipede than arachnid. The jointed sections of her legs clicked against the uneven stone floor as she wandered back and forth through the chamber, worrying something between her hands as she went.
After a few final manipulations, the spider woman held up a large effigy of a man made crudely out of white stone. His appendages were unformed stumps and mere indentations indicated where his facial features would be. Despite its unfinished appearance, I knew this effigy represented Khan.
Grabbing some of the sticky cobwebs from the walls, the spider wrapped the stone figure in shadows and filth, and flung the end of the mess up where it stuck to the ceiling. As the effigy hung suspended at the height of her eyes, she began ripping the legs off of her body, one after another, and driving their pointed ends through the mass of cobwebs and stone.
Maimed and bleeding from the hundred small wounds she had inflicted upon herself, the spider woman’s face carried a triumphant sneer as she admired her handiwork. The hanging effigy resembled an obscene pincushion, skewered as it was with insect legs and gore. Using her arms since her legs were gone, she positioned herself beneath the sacrifice and lowered her head while raising her hands high, as if expecting the statue to fall into them at any moment.
She waited, and so did Badger and I in watchful silence, but nothing happened. The muttering and curses started up again. “Why does he not fall apart?” she said. The shadows in the far corner moved again, and another older spider woman came out of the darkness. She was also half-spider but her legs had been removed long ago and her movements were slower, ponderous and obviously painful to her.
“Someone is helping him,” the spider’s mother said. “Perhaps his parents?”
“The tiger god’s parents are forces of nature,” said the original spider. “They care not whether he lives or dies, like all of the truly great powers of the world, they live only for themselves.”
My attention was drawn away from the spiders’ deliberations by a giggle from the other side of the room. Two spirits shaped like children, one with mouse ears and the other with the striped ears of a tiger, sat in cages built into the wall. They chatted and played games with each other, seemingly oblivious to the drama going on between the spider women. I gasped in unhappy surprise and ran to them.
“Children, are you well?” I asked, but my hands passed through the bars of the cages as if they were nothing more than starlight. “How did you come to be in this nightmare?”
“They can’t hear us,” Badger said, nudging one of the children with his nose. “Maybe Dream’s protection covers us as well as he and Khan.”
“It’s probably for the best,” I said. “If the spiders knew we were here, they would throw us into cages too. But I wonder, is there anything here I could touch?” The spiders were discussing the best way to destroy a god’s spirit as I crept towards the effigy that still hung from the ceiling. Gripping a leg on either side of the monstrosity, I pulled and the entire thing came apart as simply as a piece of fresh cotton candy.
The stone figurine inside was filled with holes, but retained its man-like form. Running now, I carried the effigy to the children’s cages and tossed it inside to them. They startled when the figure hit the floor but in a moment they held it between them, each child holding one of the effigy’s arms with both of their small hands.
“It’s your father,” the Mouse said and the tiger cub echoed her.
“Father, Father,” the cub said. “Mouse and I were looking for you.” Then the children pulled the statue from either side, there was a flash, and the effigy turned into Khan, still battered but no longer actively bleeding with Dream’s wings sheltering them all from the spider womens’ sight.
As the children rejoiced over the tiger god’s return, Badger and I turned our attention to the creatures on the other side of the chamber. “They’ll throw Khan out into the void if they see him,” Badger said. “They do not want him to remember his power in the presence of his favorite dancer and son.”
“Then we must create a diversion,” I said. “Until Khan is strong enough to leave of his own accord. Mouse and the tiger’s son will heal him but I don’t know how long that will take.” Badger and I moved quickly across the room, back to the turreted stairway. “Maybe there’s something further down the stairs that we can use to distract them until then.”
We had only taken a few steps when I stumbled on the stair, kicking a small pebble that had tripped me. It clattered downwards, creating a surprisingly loud sound in the suddenly still air. “What was that?” I heard the spider mother say in the room behind us.
There was a sound like a sack of flour being dragged across the floor and the other spider woman appeared in the doorway we had just vacated, propelling herself forward with her arms. “The reason why I haven’t received my due, the death and stolen power of the tiger god,” she said, searching the staircase with her eyes. “I can’t see you, Interloper,” the spider woman said. “But when I catch you, you will beg for the death that you have denied me. I will feed you to the Devourer with my own hands.”
Badger and I shared a brief glance then began to run headlong down the stairs, clinging to the wall and each other to prevent injury to ourselves in our pell-mell flight. The monster was close behind us, threatening and cursing our existence at every step.
“And when I’m through with you, I will consume those you love,” she said. “You will know my pain more intimately than any small happiness you have ever experienced. I promise you this and more.”
My badger and I spilled out of the staircase, tangled in each other’s limbs. We had reached the bottom of the tower stair and a winding maze made of stone stood before us, twisting and spiraling bewilderingly about itself into the depths of the earth. At its entrance, a spool of shining silver thread sat sparkling in the darkness, inviting us to follow its brilliant light through shadows. I desperately grabbed the thread and began winding it about the spool as Badger and I ran from the pursuing creature.
Despite being shown the way through the maze, our twists and turns on the path slowed our progress considerably. The spider woman, however, smashed her way through walls and obstacles with the sheer force of her will, following our panicked breathing in her quest for power and earthly glory.
At the final turn, deep within the maze and with the silver thread nearly filling the spool, the monster snagged my heel. I tripped and cried out, falling to my hands and knees in the darkness.
Badger turned to confront the menace with a snarl, but I urged him onwards. “We’re nearly there, Badger,” I said. “Find the maze guardians. Maybe they will help us escape this living nightmare.”
“I won’t leave you to be tortured by the great shadow,” Badger said, but I pushed him towards the maze’s end as the creature pulled me into her arms in an obscene mirror of an experience I had once with the Divine Mother in her sacred temples.
“Go. If you love me, go now,” I begged and Badger shut his eyes. When he opened them again, they shone with the silver light of the thread we had been following.
“I won’t be but a moment. Defend yourself from what comes next, Heidi. If not for yourself, then think of those who love you,” he said and disappeared.
The spider woman who held me slavered and shook with the effort of having pursued us so far. “See what Khan has done to me,” the shadow of a mother said. “I was once young and beautiful, but bearing his seed has turned me into this, a warning for you whoever you are.”
She ran her hands over my face and form, not perceiving who I was only that I was a female. “He values women for the void between their legs, nothing else,” she said. “He boasts of his conquests even as he takes you as his own. The notches on Khan’s bedpost are as legion as his dancers.” She drew her face close to where mine would have been if she could have seen it. “If you imagine you are special to him you are mistaken. He will use you until he tires of you and then find another.” She opened her mouth and it was filled with fangs that dripped poison into my ears. “As all gods do.”
“You’re wrong, spider woman,” I said. “Khan holds sexuality as sacred and women as the living embodiment of the goddess on earth. He surrounds himself with those he loves to honor this belief.”
“Sex, sacred to the tiger god?” the spider woman laughed, spraying her poison in my face. “The wild nights of dancing among strangers and you tell me he thinks the act is sacred.” She tilted her head and smiled. “There is only one person on the planet fool enough to think Khan is anything other than a degenerate old power and pervert to boot. How have you been, Heidi, you stupid slut.”
My mouth fell open in surprise as the shadow’s abuse continued. “Tired of being passed from one god to another? As if I didn’t know what you were really doing in the Inner Worlds, serving the needs of the ruling powers like the whore you are.”
“I would never…” I started to say before the spider woman cut me off.
“The gods laugh at you, Heidi,” she said. “You were never more to them than a wooden figurehead for their ship or another sad example of a mortal who fell in with those who are far more powerful than them, to live out the remainder of your life as a ridiculous mascot or a puppet tied to unbreakable chains. Dance for them and despair for you are no different than me. You live a powerless shadow life and may as well accept it.”
I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, my mantra building in my heart and maintaining a sense of calm in my spirit even as I was held in the spider woman’s arms and endured her poisoned speech. “You lie and through your lies I now understand more of your true nature, Shadow of Mouse,” I said. “Did you know badgers have an additional eyelid that they pull over their eyes when they’re tunneling so that they can see clearly through the muck while also protecting their sight from harm?” As I spoke, a caul emerged from the top of my head and ran down my body to my feet, covering me in an opaque, sound-proof barrier.
Though the spider woman’s mouth continued to move and I knew she was speaking words of hate and fear, I heard nothing more. Throughout every moment with a former dancer’s shadow, I prayed with every beat of my heart for Badger’s swift return. It couldn’t have been more than a few heartbeats later, but it felt like a lifetime when my friend’s striped head appeared around the maze’s far bend. He led a vengeful herd of buffalo behind him, the guardians from the center of the maze.
As the chopping hooves fell upon us, the spider woman’s mouth opened in a scream. I released the caul-like barrier from around my spirit as Badger wrestled me from her arms, throwing his body over my own to protect me from the deadly stampede.
When the herd was past and the dust had cleared, Badger and I gazed down upon the corpse of a shadow that had once been Khan’s favorite dancer. We gathered stones from the maze together and piled them atop the body. When we had finished our labors and stood a moment in silence, Badger noticed my hands were shaking.
“What did the great shadow say to you while I fetched the guardians?” he asked, bumping up against my hip.
“Lies born of the shadow world that existed inside her head,” I replied. “I’m very sorry she ended her days in anger and fear but we could not allow her to hold the tiger god in her personal nightmare.”
“Do you think any of what she said is true?” Badger said, concern etching his features.
“No,” I said. “But I can’t even imagine the pain and abuse that brought her to such conclusions. If she hadn’t injured Khan so grievously, I might pity her yet.”
With his claw, Badger inscribed the words, “She once loved”, on a long stone from the maze wall that stood on its end like a plinth, guarding the funeral mound where we laid the remains of the spider woman. A single black rose appeared on the monument growing from the stone of the maze, I blinked, and found myself somewhere else.
I was once again standing on the island of stone with Khan and Champion, gazing across the chasm towards the far island. Both tigers were awake and aware, renewing their promises of familial love to each other as Khan marveled at Champion’s powerful tiger form. With the return of Khan to his former glory, I knew the time had come for me to return to Badger and Dream, but I couldn’t see a way across from one island to the other. There was no longer a grasping monster, but the bridge of rock had disappeared and there was no guiding rope for me to hold.
“Welcome back from the realm of shadows, Great One,” I said when the tigers’ conversation reached a lull. “What do I do now? I must go back to where I belong.”
The tiger god brought his lips to my ear. “Everything you crossed the void with, you have still, my reborn Mouse,” he whispered. “Faith and love, it is there and always has been. Can you see it?”
“No,” I said. “I can’t see it. There’s nothing for me to cross back with anymore. The Devourer’s servants took all faith from me when Mouse’s shadow died within the maze. How could the Creator have allowed such a thing to happen?”
“I swear to you, Love is there and always has been,” Khan said. For a moment, the tiger god allowed me to see my initial crossing through his eyes, and it was as if I had walked on only air with my hands held empty before me. The tiny dancers who had delivered me from the monster appeared as small white mice, moving around me in discernable patterns as I moved through the sky. “For delivering me from the shadow of a lost dancer, I want you to feel as if my Champion is your own now too. He shall be my representative in The Light Congress and your strong arm in all creation.”
“Your generosity is appreciated, Great One. But what if the monster from the sea comes back as I return home,” I fretted and Champion gave me a gentle nudge towards the edge.
“I am there with you,” the tiger god’s son said. “Every moment, if you feel for me, I am there, guiding you and protecting you from harm.”
I clung to Champion’s hand as I considered the crossing in the air once again. “If I had known last time it was going to be such a trial before I saw you again,” I said. “I don’t know if I would have had the courage to walk the path with you to find your father. The Devourer’s servants hurt me deeply with their lies and shadows even though you and I prepared as best we could for their darkness. I carried another shadow inside of me that I was unaware of.”
“Faith and love always bring us back to our true natures, no matter the whispers from the shadows,” Champion said and wiped a tear from my cheek. “Don’t be discouraged or blame yourself for the fate of Mouse’s shadow. The spirit of my mother has not disappeared from the Inner Worlds for she lives again in you and me and all who loved her.”
“Faith and love,” I repeated and forced myself to face the chasm. One step and one more, and I stood on the edge of the precipice. “Faith and love, faith and love,” I said over and again, like a mantra.
“And family, honor and glory,” Champion murmured and stepped into my heart, lending me his strength once again.
I shut my eyes and began to walk on the air away from Khan and towards Badger and Dream. I didn’t trust myself to open my eyes and maintain my courage above the void, so I continued forward blindly with trust in the unseen to guide my steps.
I made slow but steady progress until the wind gusted once more, and as I put my foot forward, there was nothing beneath it. I froze in place, my heart leaping into my throat.
The Crone spoke in my mind, “We think it is not the shadow of any in the Inner Realms that scares you.”
“All Mother have mercy on me,” I said. “I can’t walk this path, knowing the hidden dangers that I know now.”
“We think,” the goddess continued. “Your fear is concerning what comes after.”
“After what, All Mother?” I said, my legs trembling in fear.
“After the circles are drawn, after the figures dance, after the heart shines with its inner fire,” she said. “You must have faith.”
“I have faith in the present, Divine Ones,” I said. “And I have love.” I convinced myself to open my eyes and immediately regretted my decision. The islands of rock seemed so far away and I stood so high above the clouds. “I need faith in the future, All Mother. I need to trust that all will be well. I can’t see what comes next and I’m so afraid. I understand what happened to Mouse’s shadow and I know that could be me one day if I lose myself to the darkness.”
It felt as if something split asunder in my spirit and my chest began to drip green light once more while I fell to my knees in the sky. I felt Champion take hold of my tongue and he spoke through me. “Who weeps when the heart is alight?” the tiger god’s son said with my voice. “Who laughs when the heart is empty?” I felt the air around me begin to vibrate with the power that was leaking out of my heart center.
I pushed back at the tremendous pressure in my head and heart as the green light grew even brighter. “Who can fall from the path and destiny gifted to them by the gods and goddesses,” he said. I fought like a mad woman against the Champion in my soul but I couldn’t make him let go of the iron grip he had on my tongue. So I decided, at the end of my strength, to try something different and let him in completely to my most secret heart and know my greatest fear.
My surrender surprised Champion for a moment only, but then I felt him take hold of my limbs. He stood my body up in the skies above the ocean, the weakness gone from my knees. There was no more pain or fear of what the future might hold, only light and strength and love. The world flickered through a series of colors and began to turn a deep green. Antlers sprung from my forehead and my feet became the sure-footed hooves of a deer.
When next I spoke my voice was my own again and my body was returned to my control, changed as it was through Champion’s presence, but my own. In a burst of new energy, I answered all three of the questions he had posed to me. “No one, Champion,” I said. “There is no one in heaven or earth who falls outside of the influence of the Creator of All.” As my words left my lips, I felt their spreading power issuing a clarion call to all those in the Inner Worlds who still desired to face their personal shadows and walk in the light of self knowledge.
“Besom, besom, shining bright…” I heard the All Mother begin to chant in response to my summons and her tiny dancing guardians joined her, walking towards me through the air on the bridge I could no longer see, but I could feel it and that was enough. I ran towards the All Mother upon my sure hooves, secure in the knowledge that Badger and Dream were only a few steps further along the path, waiting for me along with the rest of the Light Congress.
My lost faith had returned to me, an expected gift from the rescue of the tiger god.
There my vision ended.
The Light Congress 