by Gin Eborn
The Earth shook, a slight tremble underneath us. “When it comes to the Regys, I admit what I feel is sheer hatred.” My fingers fumbled the bird skull pendant on my medicine pouch. “My mother, the late Mistress of this council, gave me this protection pendant when I was a child. She told me I had to hide who I was and never take this off. When the Regys took control, she told all of us to hide from them, because I believe she wanted us to live long and happy lives. But this isn’t happy, is it? She had no idea how bad it would get. Not until she herself got the snake bite and died from the virus.
“For all of my life, I have honored her requests. I am Caly and we honor our lineage. We honor the women who were willing to die by birthing us into this physical two-legged form.
“But let me be clear. Those fucking Regys took my Pops tonight, and I have no idea if he will ever be returned. The Regys—they take and they take and they take. They make the rules and make it impossible for us to change them. When people like us are trying to play safe—they are playing fierce. Now is not the time to wait and be pussies. Now is the time to be warriors!”
Rebekah stood. “You would disobey? You would break with our laws?”
“If I have to, yes.”
Another round of commotion and a flash of light from Rebekah. I could imagine her anger. Challenged. I challenged her. “But not before I invoke one last right. We call the Seven Goddesses. Now. Tonight.”
“We have no right to call them.” Rebekah’s head spun at me. “We give them our offerings and gratitude, but they choose to come and be with us if they wish. We do not invoke them.”
“Who said, Rebekah? I’ve never been shown the Sacred Records.” I looked at the shadows of the faces of my sisters. “Have any of you?” It was silent. “We sit here under the protection of the arms of this sacred tree and we hold boundaries and we hold ourselves back. Why? What if we had acted with our gifting to stop the Regys when they had no power? What if we had done something before it grew into this fucking bullshit?”
Rebekah flashed a blinding light as she shifted her birth shield in front of her body. The energy of her lineage of mind talkers wrapped their hands around my neck and shoved me down to the ground.
“We follow the Powers.” She looked out around the circle. “Yes, Willow, and all of you who think like her. Yes, you must also journey to find your own guidance. And it does matter. The communion of all of our strengths and wisdom. But I have the birthright of Calypso Mistresses. I rule. And no one—not even you, Magpie Turnley—can change that.” She let go of me.
“My mother taught me how to invoke the Seven Goddesses,” I slammed back at her.
The circle was in a commotion. All but Chama who was laughing.
“You speak slander!” Rebekah fired at me.
“I sat with the Seven Goddesses once. And I believe it is time to sit with them again.”
“You are a liar! To invoke them is death.” Her voice pierced my ears.
Rebekah paused and hovered her energy all around me. I heard voices saying I needed to be put out of the circle. Someone threw a stone at me. Rebekah stood still and then slowly raised her hand.
“Let me speak clearly and truthfully. There is only one lineage who can sit with the Seven Goddesses. And those Calypsos are extinct.”
“You would’ve thought so.” Chama burst in. “And then along comes Maggie. I mean, you have to excuse me for the interruption, you two. It is all hot and everything around here, but fooking damn, Rebekah, sometimes our intel is not quite what we would have hoped. Because somehow, somewhere along the way, someone shit-blasted us and told us a dirty fooking lie.”
Rebekah shifted into her totem and snarled her fangs at Chama.
“Whoa. I mean no disrespect. But etched right there on Maggie’s belly is a tattoo…and under that tattoo…is the truth. Ain’t that how it is, my dearest girlfriend?”
“It is true,” I said.
Rebekah shifted back. “And what is that so-called truth?” She taunted Chama.
“Well, little miss over there does indeed have the birthmark. But it is the birthmark of a Caly on super-growth hormones. She has the mark of the Dreamer.”
Dreamer?
Rebekah spun toward me and lifted my shirt. “Impossible,” she sneered.
Chama moved in close to her. “Now you all know my lineage holds the power and history of symbols. If there is a symbol, I can and will see it. Even if its covered by a tattoo. I can not, and I will not, lie about that. It is the one thing I can’t lie about. She has the Dreamer symbol. As true as true as true.” Many in the circle jumped to their feet.
Finally, I knew the truth. The thing my mother had refused to tell me. I knew my birthmark was different. She told me it would get me killed if anyone knew, but Chama’s revelation was life-changing.
“How could I not have been told this?” Rebekah spoke softly, like she was communing with the Powers.
“It was my mother, Mistress. I’m telling you, she locked down my truth with the magic of this pendant.”
“Magic that strong does not exist here.” Rebekah touched the skull and closed her eyes, muttering a prayer. I only caught something about guidance.
Chama wrapped a very welcomed arm around me. “Your hair, Maggie, is just a brown-nested hot mess. Couldn’t you have cleaned up just a little? I mean Caly Council and all that?” She kissed my cheek. “Salty,” she teased with a wink.
“Come here to me, child.” Rebekah interrupted. “I will know you.” She took her place again at the tree as I sat in front of her. She pulled out a small wooden bowl, blackened on the inside. And from her medicine pouch a vial with water she then poured into the bowl. Into the water she placed a dried kernel of corn, a pinch of dirt, some dried cedar, and then a small stone. “Ho great Powers of our world and beyond, we do with gratitude come to you this night. And we ask, for the highest good of us all, for the truth of this woman. What do we most need to know about Magpie Turnley?”
She passed the bowl to the Caly on her left who continued and repeated the prayer. I drifted more deeply into a veil of burning cedar and the sound of the drumming far off in the distance that echoed stronger with each beat. Hundreds of drummers appeared through the veil, beating in unison and calling my spirit to join them. We converged across echoes of timelines and into a shared present moment. We fell into one rhythm. And it was my heart that held the drum beat. The blackened bowl was returned to Rebekah. She held it over the fire for a few moments, whispering a chant I could not make out and then returned to her place in the circle. She smiled at me. I think it was the first time she actually looked at me with some kind of warmth in her eyes. But it was the moment of truth, and I am sure some part of her wanted to hold her adversary in clear view.
She shifted her body side to side, looking up at me as if asking me a question, and then she looked back down into her medicine bowl. The Calys chanted; their voices hung in the air around me. My head swirled with ruminating thoughts about fighting against some unseen force. And then I took one big breath, and as I let it out, I expanded into a place that was not of this plane of existence. I looked at Rebekah as her gaze met mine.
She leaned forward and took a piece of my hair and laid it in the fire. The fire roared and snapped, shifting from orange to blue. The chanting surged as I relaxed even more deeply, swaying in the flow of energy.
“I will not call the Seven Goddesses,” Rebekah declared. “It is forbidden to us. The Eristotus, our Celestial wisdom holders, ask us to call on the Four Powers. It is their guidance I seek in this matter.”
The chanting held me in ceremony, altered and unable to speak as she continued.
“We call on the Guides. We call the Four Powers. We call on the Guide of the East Power, Elder of the Fire Beings. We call on the Guide of the South Power, Elder of the Nature Spirits. We call on the Guide of the West Power, Elder of the Water Beings. We call on the Guide of the North Power, Elder of the Air Spirits.” Over and over my sisters called out into t
he night. “Come. Come.”
It began as wisps of color in the distance. Like fireflies on summer nights off in the tree line. And then it moved closer. Dancing lights in shifting tones of greens and blues and whites. Our sacred circle was engulfed in the dancing mists until they condensed into a finger that poked into the fire, creating a mushroom of blinding light up into the night and then back down. The fire heaved in and out like lungs. Tendrils of flames gathered into a hand that grabbed my face and pulled me toward an opened hoop of fire—a ring floating between me and the fire pit. It was an invitation to walk in through a living shield. The craving ravaged me again. The pulse of the coyote in my ears as Rebekah waved her hand and whispered to me: “Child, go.” And then to the mists themselves, she commanded, “We, the West Calypsos, release Magpie Turnley to you in the highest option of all beings.”
I stepped to the hoop and walked through. Unburned.
The Four Powers sat at a round table etched in gold. Ornate. They were white robed—androgynous. Both animal and two-legged beings in some kind of energetic dance between physical forms. A deep silence hovered over me, demanding that even my pounding heart obey their law of noiselessness. Until they began. Their voices were music, simple tones shifting into language. Pure psychic connection with motionless mouths. Individually indistinguishable, the flow of a collective that resounded in me as the nature of original intended form.
I mean, this was us. The beginning design of our sentient existence before we fucked it all up. I stood in the presence of what could have been. I was small. Just a blip—a hiccup of energy standing in some sacred hall of infinity. Their voices echoed inside of me because their existence demanded it.
“So the Western Calypsos have summoned us.”
“And we have agreed to meet you.”
“Magpie Turnley. Here at last.”
“Earth. So desperate.”
“So broken.”
“But she can be healed.”
“Yes, it is possible.”
“I don’t think it is possible. She is not going to do it.”
“But she can do it.”
“I uphold her right to choose. She can not be forced to do it.”
“So do you? Do you choose?”
There was a long pause.
“Child?”
“Oh sorry,” I said. “I am not really sure I know what choice you are asking me about?”
“You choose to claim your power?”
“If you claim it this day, the journey begins this day.”
“Ah, the pleasure of reunification. I have waited so long to watch this unfold.”
“Reunification?” I asked.
“When two shall meet again.”
“And for the Earth. Broken into two realities the day the two-leggeds chose to leave the Fire Council.”
“It was the day that two-leggeds created the Great Separation.”
“And then called themselves human.”
“The arrogance.”
“It was the beginning of the end.”
“A shame really. Not sure how they hid it from us.”
“Powerful magics.”
“No. Trickster magics.”
“It was so good in the beginning.”
“Yes, but we could not have foreseen what happened. A good game, really. The two-leggeds did play a good game.”
“It could not have been the two-leggeds.”
“Yes, someone else was involved in this deceit.”
“But it may all be over.”
“Wait, slow down.” I interjected. “What do you mean we broke into two realities? I don’t understand.”
“Slow down for her.”
“We forget they are not evolved.”
I held my indignation. Though it was easy for me to envision arrows flying at them. And then they spoke in slow motion.
“Two-leggeds shifted the veil. Created a reality apart from the other sentient beings.”
“Away from the four-leggeds. The winged ones. The slithering ones. The stone ones. The crawling ones. The elemental ones.”
“Creating the Separation?” I asked.
“Now she gets it.”
“Fire Council was sacred.”
“The sacred fire was given to the Alphazians from the Eristotus.”
“All the Celestial Kingdoms loved that one. Clever.”
“At Fire Council, all were connected as one.”
“When the two-leggeds left, the connection between all sentient beings was lost.”
“So, what do you choose?
“Yes, will you claim your birthright?”
“My birthright as a Calypso?” I asked.
“No more questions!” The force of their voices in unison pushed me to my knees.
“Stop it. She doesn’t know.”
“They don’t see the Celestial Kingdoms. They just pray to the Celestials. But they don’t see.”
“Your birthright.” They looked back at me.
“You hold the lineage of the Creation Dreamers.”
“It could change everything for your world.”
“Yes, you could shift the entire trajectory of this world.”
“With one choice.”
“In just seconds, everything can change.”
“To choose your power…”
“To light the fire…”
“Is to change the existence of this world.”
“But we can’t make you. You have free will. That is the rule on your world.”
“On both sides of the veil.”
“She needs to see the Record Keeper.” They snapped their fingers like applause.
“But who is the Record Keeper? Where—” I was cut off again.
“Grab it or don’t.”
“It changes nothing for us.”
“We gave up on this world long ago.”
“Gave up on us?” My stomach winced.
“A bad design; this free will thing in their hands.”
“We’re a perfect design, making all of the best decisions.” I quipped, wishing Chama was with me. She would know what to say.
“No one has changed anything, have they?”
“Wasted a lot of energy.”
“All conflict is a waste of energy.”
“Went blind.”
“Went numb.”
“Went to sleep.”
“Dead, actually.”
All four looked at each other and nodded. And then looked directly at me.
“Choose.”
The fire closed. I was back in the night. With the chanting. With my sisters. Wondering what the hell just happened.
4
The Eris Mass Conception
Rebekah kneeled in front of me “And so, it is said. And so it is.” She cradled her medicine bowl in her hands. “And now I know you.” Her eyes connected to mine.
“And now is the time of truth,” I agreed.
The chanting stopped. The faces around me held little, except Chama, who was, of course, smiling at me.
“Child,” Rebekah started, “your mother did not protect you. She bound you. She bound your power. That is how you have hidden all this time. She left you just enough gifting not to be questioned by us, but it was far from the full flow of your authentic nature. If I had seen that, I would have known who you were.” Rebekah looked up. “Very clever, Jovia.”
“It’s the prophecy? The gift of one new sunrise,” Chama said. “Of course, it is you. It had to be you, didn’t it? The prophecy of one more born of Eris blood.”
Eris blood? I belonged to Eristotus?
“What prophecy?” I had not heard this before.
“It’s okay, Maggie.” Rebekah moved in close to me. “You will have to trust me. Even though your mother chose not to.” She shifted her voice out to my sisters. “Listen to me, all of you. There is something you must know now. I have seen it and now we know the truth. Right, Maggie? Now you do know who you are. Magpie Turnley is indeed a Dreamer. A Creation Dream
er. Her mother, Jovia, hid her away, but now we know the truth.”
There was a disruption of voices of the Caly around me. Chama moved close to me—I think for solidarity.
Rebekah continued. “I know. I understand. This is a lot to take in. Deception from a prior Mistress. But we need to give Maggie time. Time to understand all of this herself and decide what she wants to do next. She does indeed hold the medicine of full manifestation.” I swear I saw a tear in the Mistress’s eye. “A Creation Dreamer, walking again in full power? Imagine it. I had not dared think we could have another chance. But here you are.” She smiled at me. “You don’t even know what I am talking about, do you?”
We sat down together by the ceremonial fire. Chama was my shadow. “Your mother—she was my friend, and she was strong, but I had no idea she possessed magic powerful enough to halt your medicine, or that she would even consider the abomination of such an action. To dismiss the edict of the Celestials? To not let her own daughter live in authenticity?” Rebekah touched my face, her eyes glazed, “I should have known. Oh, my child, I should have guessed it. The timing was just too perfect.” Her gaze drifted away. But not to worry about that now. That is another story for another time.” The Mistress hugged my frozen body.
Chama broke in, “Well, vixen, this just means one little thing. We need to get all that in there—all that bound up, tied up, unexpressed juicy authentic you—unbound. We need an unbinding ritual, and I for one want to see that happen. Would love to see that old magic at work unbinding glorious you. I have never been to an unbinding ceremony.” Her laughter made everything seem right again.
“Nor will you.” Rebekah shoved her energy at Chama. “Besides, we do not have the power. I do not know how your mother got that power. Very tricky. And she must have paid one hell of a price for it.”
“None of it is in our Sacred Records?” I asked.
“No, it is not.” Rebekah seemed sure.
“Then I guess I need to find this Record Keeper person.”
“Long ago, someone mentioned such a woman to me—some kind of visionary who lives up there.” Rebekah pointed up to the highest peaks above the Dragon Flies. “She may indeed be the Record Keeper the Four Powers mentioned. And if so, then up there is where your future lies. You will have to make that climb and see for yourself, I’m afraid. It is the only way I know. It may be the only way to right what was wronged in your life.”