by Gin Eborn
The tent was small. And he was a generous lover.
I really liked that.
18
Illusions Shatter
River’s scent was all over me as I hopped in-between to the amphitheater making a loud, abrupt landing onto my throne. It was one of those late-night Dragon Flies moments, when my head jerked up from the crate, lines all over my face from passing out and wondering if anyone noticed. I was so juiced, I landed, whipped my head around startled by my own flashing orb, and realized that even the air tasted like River. I wanted to chew it. It was an energy hangover so good it was bad.
Lola gasped, “How did you—” She stopped herself, flashing her eyes at me.
“One day, I’ll show you. It’s really damn cool.” And it was. Lola touched my hand; the symbols still glowing violet like the Lodge light. My new skin tingled under her touch.
The music had stopped, thank the gods, and the offering flame was out. Coffee cups everywhere, but no one else seemed drugged. Except for Clarimonde, who was perched sideways behind me and still sleeping. From the smell of her, it was wine enriched blood that knocked her out. The others were in different states of mingling and sleeping and no one paid any attention to me.
Zach was nestled on a tree limb awake enough to give me the usual nod, but there was no sign of Thomas. Again. He was going to miss the Claiming. The big nutso ceremony that meant absolutely nothing since I was going to make the world anything I wanted a day later anyway. Grounded in the pairing with River, but dreaming with the Earth. An interesting threesome, I thought.
“Everyone, I need your attention, please.” Lola was still intoxicating, every shift of her wings threw more of whatever the hell that was in my direction. “If you will all take your seats. It is time.”
No one moved as the first sound of broken glass reached me. And then another. I stood up and looked behind me. Zach jumped down, body stiff, looking at me. Thomas was in a full run toward us down from the forest with an orb in his hand. It was sputtering and shooting out tendrils of light in every direction.
“I didn’t do it!” He yelled out. I heard his heart pounding like a frightened animal. His face, flustered, before he tripped and hit the ground, like someone ripped both feet out from under him. The orb, still in one piece in his hand, was sending out thick smoke. Whatever energy that orb held, it was dying.
“Hold on!” I yelled out. I smelled the gasses. The quake slammed us hard and fast. The crowd dropped down as a full-on Earth roll blazed through. The orbs clinked together as the breaking sounds turned to crashing, coming closer. But amidst the chaos, one soft tone commanded me; a hum from a glow, so slight I think only my new eyes could see it. One orb in the row of orbs sitting at the throne on a nest of flowers. All that time, I thought there would be so many to choose from. So many who honored me and wanted this pairing from a pure heart. But there was just one.
Zach and I caught each other’s glances.
Another smash. Clarimonde grabbed my shoulder.
“Look.” She pointed her beak behind me.
Down by the edge of the forest, a rolling river of fire was coming at us. Zach, Lola, and I shapeshifted arriving just as the lava passed the sacred forest entrance.
“River? River, hear me.”
“I’m all right. Going to check with Mountain Bear.”
“It’s the orbs. They’re all shattering.”
“Be careful.”
The orbs placed so meticulously along the outline of the immediate landscape glowed hot and then burst, spraying shards of glass in every direction. I watched the Earth die underneath as their lights went out. I darted in-between; the lava and fires only a pale version of themselves there as I rolled rocks in front to block the flow. The stone beings so proud to help. Their voices grew strong as they helped me navigate the blockade. I had a hard time believing any of them would have shot an arrow at me.
And then I heard the screams. It was her, deep inside the core of the Earth erupting out and demanding we leave. I doubled over as she pierced my gut with her agony. My ears ready to burst from her pressure. The snapshot came as a burning ember, searing my brain. I was her and she was me. Armies of monsters coming at me in every direction, sheathed in armor and blades of steel, their faces unknown. A coyote barked, its eyes glowing red from a corner of the darkness.
“No. Let me go!” I yelled out. I left the in-between slamming onto the ground, puking out black tar as if the dead had infested me.
Zach wrapped his arms around me and helped me up. “What the hell is that shit?” He tore off a piece of his sleeve and wiped my mouth. The tar writhed on the ground, alive. It squirmed and then died, seeping back into the ground.
“It’s all the toxins,” I said more to myself. The shame and disgust turned my guts to acid. “Fucking shit.” Lola and Zach stared at me. They didn’t understand. Not yet.
“Hurry, we need to get back to the theater,” I insisted. The boundary of boulders held the flames well.
“Thank you,” I whispered to the stone beings as I passed. Without them, any chance of surviving Earth’s wrath would’ve been negligible.
The Alphazians were screaming and running in panic. Flashes overran my vision of the days my world shifted from paradise to hell. The Earth rammed her cords into my main neurological systems and transmitted images to me. The symbols on my body glowed. Zach and Lola pulled back from me. I understood why. The current of Earth in my body was so strong my flesh burned. I smelled it. Her disgust was overwhelming and her rage unyielding.
She wanted me to see it all. She wanted someone—anyone—to feel the pain of her existence. The love on which she was made by the gods so long ago, her arms open wide to beings in all forms and measures of diversity, smashed—as grace and compassion and communion turned into unsheathed greed. Her hopelessness. The betrayal. After all of her generosity, beings who lived in her orb of light abused her. Took advantage of her and then placed her in the land of the unseen. Unnoticed. Her disillusionment. The brutal attacks on her being no one bothered to take responsibility for—utterly, repeatedly raped.
I took in the breadth of her destruction, and knew the Arae were the least of her plans. It was only the beginning to make it all stop—to once and for all find relief from her pain. It was beyond what Chama told me. The Earth didn’t want to stop just me. The Earth was never going to allow a new illumination. A new dawn. There would be no more dreams. And no mutation.
The sky blackened as the winds smacked my face. The rain came down like needles. I sent my energy up and out like an umbrella to protect all who stood by me. Others ran for the Village buildings as I filled my hoop again with the strength of my full power. It was barely enough to hold back the brutality of the winds that slammed us again.
Thomas clung to the throne, his face overrun with tears. It was the Earth’s eyes that peered at him with pity and anger. I fought back with compassion, begging for forgiveness—for him, for all of us. I poured out a snapshot of a new world. A new paradise, but she refused to accept it; the winds slammed me to the ground. Lightning bolts shot down in rapid succession and blew bodies into particles that splatted my face.
“Why?” I asked her. “We can fix this.”
Another round of pictures came. The echoes of the Celestial Kingdoms. So like my meeting with the Four Powers, she showed me a meeting of the Celestial Seven seated at a round table built around the living energy of the four elements. The fire flowed to earth and the earth flowed to water and the water flowed into gentle breezes. Such hajone. Such sacredness.
The Eris opened the Sacred Records and read from them offerings of deep wisdom. And the Earthen Spirits, filled with so much light like a rose quartz in the sun, asked for help from those present, and in return, offered the abundance of the Earth’s re-birth out to all the Star beings. And next to the Earthen Spirits were the Wix, clad in armor with wings of metal blades, proud, it seemed, in their power. Rigid, but listening, they talked over each other and through each ot
her. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. And then some kind of agreement was reached that the new Dreamer seed would be provided. Aya. It was Aya. And I saw her in the Tower looking down at me. The fire blazed in her eyes. A door rattled open.
That bitch is free.
The Earthen Spirits left the meeting and transcended into the clouds, as the Wix and Eris remained locked in negotiations. Others there I could not make out.
The Earthen Spirits went up and the Wix and Eris never noticed. Tricky!
I glanced back to check on Thomas, his eyes pinched closed, and I swear he was saying some kind of prayer. A bolt of light slammed into the back of my head. My energetic projection was severed in one blow as the energetic umbrella I held fell onto the ground like hail. There was no way to protect myself or anyone else from the Earth’s attack. My body symbols silenced, yet still present.
“Maggie.” Lola motioned toward the burning forest.
River Wolf walked toward us with a heavy gait, staring into me. I couldn’t smell him or feel him. His eyes welled up, crushing what was left of me.
“Mountain Bear?” I asked, not wanting the answer.
“Gone.” His entire body heaved forward as the loss took hold. He turned to leave, my hand grazed his shoulder, but I didn’t stop him—nor did he look back.
Zach screamed, pointing high above my head. The Lodge. The lightning and the fires burst through the mountain with shocking speed. The blackness engulfed the Light as the Earth reached her razors into my chest and sliced my heart into shreds. I dropped to the ground coughing blood. My Dreamer ancestors held hands around me trying to reinforce my hoop. Ossia draped herself over me. The love of her protection was palpable as blood tears ran down her face before she exploded like an orb into shards of glass. And they all vanished.
I turned in time to see the Lodge fire throwing sparks into the night and a single bolt of lightning like a fire-forged dagger reached down from above and pointed into the Lodge. And froze.
Everything went silent. Nothing around me moved. Lola, Thomas, and Zach like sculptures. The light in my orb still visible but motionless. Except Clarimonde. She fluttered up and down, pecking at drops of blood on the ground. She looked at me and shrugged. I should’ve been horrified, but I wasn’t. Truth was, I envied her and the peace she must’ve felt being un-dead. Never again having to worry about how it would all end.
“Clarimonde.” She flew to me in silence.
The fog came out of nowhere. It rolled through the Village, and around me in a large circle blocking the entire landscape. We were in the eye, and for a moment, I honestly thought I was dead. Maybe back in the Underworld. It was one of those experiences where death and surrender whisper, trying to make a deal. And the truth was the flesh on my bones and my heart held inescapable hurt. Numbness and pain were a swinging pendulum slowly slicing my neck open. If it was my last breath, then all the struggle was over. I liked that.
I took the biggest inhale of my life as Clarimonde spanked my face with her wing. I spit out feather.
“Sugar, you just better snap yourself out of that one. I’m dead and sucking blood out of dirt. Is that really what you want? You better think again. Now get your shit together.”
“Gods-damn it, Clarimonde. Ruin one moment’s peace. And how the fuck do you know what I’m thinking?”
She smacked my face again. Deliberate. “You don’t want to know. But you better pay attention.” She pointed her beak toward a swirl forming in the fog wall. I half expected to see Aya walking through. My magics were frozen like the Lodge; I was helpless.
I knew the voice in an instant.
“It was never supposed to be you.” Jasper emerged from a soft glow in the fog, the coyote by his side. “That was why I was so curious about you in the Lodge. You’d been well hidden. I didn’t know much about you until now. You are really quite amazing.”
“Aya was the one the Eris promised you,” I said as Jasper and I held a stare.
“Yes. But Jovia agreed to a pair.”
“Me and her. You wanted a back-up. Just to be sure.”
Jasper half grinned. “True. But you are nothing like Aya. You are pure feminine. Goddess energy was woven with Jovia’s. You are Calypso. You are goddess. One of a kind.”
“Aldon knew, of course.”
He nodded. “And I wouldn’t allow her to tell you. I thought Ossia and I had an understanding, but I also underestimated the power of the Dreamer lineage. She would die for you. I find that touching. Your sisterhood has real power.”
“So Aya was brought here and Mom kept me.”
“The minute we realized the depth of your magics, we knew we had to separate you. We placed Aya with Blue Eagle to train, and Jovia kept you. But as you know, we had to do something about all that juice at your disposal. You were our secret. The other Celestials could know nothing of you. Not unless you were needed.”
“Aldon had the bird skull. She left with the two-leggeds the night of the Great Separation, didn’t she? She had the skull with her and I am just taking a wild ass guess here, but I think it was to remind her of Blue Eagle.”
“She made a great sacrifice that day. True. Blue Eagle was never the same. And the skull was forged in Dream Lodge fire. Stronger than any metal on your side of the veil, and able to hold expansive energies, like yours. Aldon took it to Jovia and together they placed your magics inside the container and placed it with your medicine pouch. You were invisible, even to me. It had to be that way. And now here you are.”
“Aya was supposed to light the Lodge. She was the one meant to heal the rip and bring us back into original form.”
“Yes, but that is where it all gets tricky.” The coyote stretched and laid down.“The Wixmunet broke our laws and interfered here. They corrupted Blue Eagle, and took Aya to their planet, where she was promised to the Wix’s Beyjo, High Prince and next in line to ascend. No one thought Aya would agree, but she did. She made the blood-tie with him.”
“So River Wolf found me that day in the ocean.”
“He knew where you were all along. Mountain Bear had him track you from the day Aya was brought to this side.”
“But how?”
Jasper laughed. “River Wolf has talents.”
Yes, I know.
“He told me he knew you.”
“Knew me? Of course, Fisher and the tattoo. He knew about the tattoo. He must’ve been in the caves when I went. The Regys allowed the throwaway people to shack up in some caves. The ones they deemed worthless, but non-threatening. I loved to go there and see all the artists at work. I went there to get my tattoo.”
“He has always watched over you.”
“So you have a problem.” I needed to change the conversation before I got lost in the warmth sliding up my body. “If Aya has joined the Wix, then she wants to rule with Beyjo over Wixmunet and Earth.”
“They have declared war. That light arrow aimed at the Lodge is Wix, not ours. The only power we had was to freeze everything.”
“But I thought the Earth wanted me dead?”
Jasper laughed. “Oh, she does. She pretty much wants you all to pay, as she showed you. But then I had an idea she was willing to hear. What if we could actually win the war? What if we had our own champion who could fight them and if our champion won, then—”
“We dream the world awake again. She and I. But you had to tell her about my goddess blood.”
“Another betrayal, I’m afraid. She’s disillusioned, but I believe we can heal this, too, with time.”
“So she has accepted the proposal?”
“Sort of. We agree to awaken the Feminine through you and go back to original form if you are willing to be the Earth’s Creation Dreamer.” Jasper was glowing. “You hold the mutation, Magpie, and we offer you a gift in return for it.”
Clarimonde let out a huge squawk flying back to me as the coyote let out a low growl.
“Hope you aren’t too disappointed.” River glided out of the fog. I didn’t wa
nt to be happy he was there. But that was a losing battle. The relief smacked every cell inside me.
“This is for you.” He opened his hand and there was my bird skull pendant.
“But I put it in the fire.”
“Yes, to release your magics. But this metal can never be destroyed. You must have it with you now.”
I wrapped it back around my medicine pouch. There was a vibration between the ring and the skull and my crystal. Something ran through me, gentle but its power unmistakable. River winked at me, as Clarimonde pecked his cheek. I had to laugh. I needed to laugh. Acid burned my mouth.
Jasper spoke up. “We honor you. We will hold you as sacred for all of your days; as long as the Earth has breath, you will be protected. As long as you are champion, of course. Just beat Aya and be Earth’s hero, and we will protect you the rest of your days.”
“You mean kill Aya?”
“Or prevent her from ever doing harm here again. Prove your loyalty and we will give you anything you want.”
“I want full protection and a good life for myself and all whom I love. She will allow this to be in the dream.”
“Agreed.”
“So I win, we dream, and create an energetic alliance between the Earth, the Calypsos, and the Seven Goddesses.”
“Yes.”
I thought about it for .793 seconds. “I’m in.”
River Wolf wrapped around me. His body tightening.
“So,” I said, pulling away, “where is Aya? I know she’s out of the fucking Tower.”
“She got out when Mountain Bear—” River stopped short.
“Of course. Where do I find her?”
Jasper quietly looked at me. “Inside.”
“Inside what?”
“The Earth’s consciousness.”
It took a few beats before I could breathe that one through me. “What’s she doing there?”
“Building a bigger army. Turning the Earth’s thoughts against herself. Thoughts become reality.”
“So you’re telling me we’re going to battle each other inside the Earth’s fucking mind?”