It was an odd sight, yes, but it was odder when you considered that I had never expected one of the oddest moments on this journey to be me looking at all a collection of odd moments I had had on this journey. How...strange that I survived at all.
I needed answers, and I was going to get them from the Forest itself. I looked around. There was nothing special except the circle of myself. I could probably examine them to figure out the next step, but I had a better, more appropriate way. I walked away from the circle. I closed my eyes and stretched my arms to either side. I extended my mind outwards and felt a great, pulsing ball of energy. The energy dissipated and through my closed eyes, I could see my surroundings outlined in that energy, the energy of the Forest. The answers lay deeper inside it. So I began to hum, until I could feel the energy vibrating, until I was one with the energy, until I was holding the world afloat around me. The world was now bathed in the brightest kinds of light, the objects it held evoked in their purest forms, their essential shapes that contained the soul even through all the years of evolution of their material bodies. I plunged deeper until the shapes began to blur, until the thin boundaries of the separate souls were torn, until everything was one, until the light of my own soul escaped my physical body and danced with the light of the Forest. I felt the enormous power of this glorious entity and I pitted my power against it. It fought back immediately, a great, roaring wave crashing against the single human on the top of the cliff with their arms flung out in greeting. It pushed against me; I went tumbling to the bottom of the cliff. I stood up, dusted myself off and walked to the top again. Enraged, it hit me again. Again, I climbed up. It hit me harder. I climbed up once more. This occurred twenty-three times. On the twenty-fourth time, I gathered all my strength and jumped high into the wave, fist extended. It was my turn to crash into the weakened wave, and it crumbled. I kept going and going until I was high in the sunlit sky, and just before I started falling once more, I grabbed the sun; that big, pulsing, yellow heart of energy and took it down with me. As we fell, I squeezed the sun, absorbing its light and the world grew darker and darker. I commanded it to manifest itself, just as the world was plunged into total darkness, just as we hit the ground, just as I opened my eyes in shock to find myself lying on the ground with my arms splayed out in total darkness. The moon winked out from behind the clouds to reveal a man in the exact same position opposite me.
I stood unsteadily and dusted myself off. The man opposite me stood as well, though with much more grace. He was tall with a shock of white hair, bright blue eyes and long white beard that obscured most of his face. He carried a wooden staff in his hand, which he did not lean on. He was calm and composed, no sign of surprise or anger on his face. The only sign of discomfort seemed to be an itch in his beard, as if he was not used to it.
“Well,” he said to me with a smile spreading across his kindly face, “No one’s ever done that before. Usually at this point they just ask for a simple answer and they get it. You should try it sometime, you know.”
I was immediately put on alert. I didn’t trust him. “I thought they weren’t any simple answers. I wanted to ensure I didn’t just get that Guide, I wanted real answers.”
“You probably won’t like me any better,” he said with a mischievous twinkle in his blue eyes.
“Oh wait, let me guess,” I said sardonically. “You’re the Wizard.”
He just smiled again, rather annoyingly, I should add, and asked, “Are you sure you’re ready for the answers?”
“If I wasn’t, I couldn’t be here, could I?”
“Fair enough,” he said with that same smile.
In a flash, he whipped his staff around just as I dived out of the way. I rolled and jumped to my feet. The bark was blackened where my head had been at the tree I was standing in front of. Crouched with his staff aimed at the very spot, the Wizard looked surprised. He straightened and said calmly, “It’s good to see that the Path has improved your reflexes.”
“Indeed,” I said wanly. “Before you ask, I knew because the Path also improved my ability to know that nothing is ever what it seems.”
“Indeed,” he replied in the same tone as me. His smile was not full; it twitched at the edges of his lips. He twirled his staff as he spoke, “You have nothing to protect yourself with. What are you going to do now?”
“I can protect myself fine.”
“Really? With what? You have nothing. I have magic.”
“So do I,” I said quietly. I looked right into his eyes. A feeling the likes of which I had never felt before rose inside me. It was as if everything I had ever felt, everything I had ever been, was leading up to this moment, this feeling. My body was lighter than air and my head was clear. My heart was so full of gratitude for everything that had led me to this feeling, the heart-wrenching sorrow and the uplifting passion. Tears almost came to my eyes and I gasped. This moment, this feeling, this was just me. Maybe it always had been. It didn’t matter, none of it did. Because I felt it. I finally felt what I knew I had been all along.
“I have words,” I said, with a conviction I had never felt before. “I have stories.”
“But that’s all in your head, isn’t it?” The Wizard asked, taken aback by my sudden transformation.
“That doesn’t make it any less real.”
The Wizard laughed. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“You don’t understand,” I said, stepping forward, a wicked glint playing in my eye. “But I do. It means everything.” I paused for dramatic effect (Oh, as if you actually believed me earlier!). “Maybe I should show you.”
A bolt of lightning shot from the sky, sliced through the nearest tree and exploded straight in front of the Wizard. He stood unharmed but bewildered in the billowing smoke, which then started to swirl around him, forming a black hurricane that extended all the way to the sky. The hurricane dissipated to reveal a bundle of leaves in the shape of the Wizard extending behind him.
“How did that happen?” He asked confusedly, scattering the leaves with his staff.
“Because I said it did,” I answered, the grin still on my face, the intensity still in my eyes.
“But that’s crazy!” He exclaimed.
“It is.” The circle was around us now, but it wasn’t a circle of me anymore. The faces were shifting, the bodies changing. Different ages, genders, races, clothes, heights, weights, but all the same expressions as I had in those positions. “But do you know what happens when we come together to listen to that story, to believe in it? Something even crazier: It becomes true.”
A warm wind blew past, warming everyone to the bone, driving away their pain and sorrow, like the flame that cauterizes the wound. We turned to look at the nervous Wizard at the same time. A soft thumping began, and slowly grew louder till it filled the air. It was the entire circle dancing in sync, two steps on the left foot at the back, two steps on the right foot forward.
My voice rose above the beat, spurred on by it, enhanced by it. “When we decide to tell a story, when we decide to listen to a story, we become part of something bigger than ourselves. We become part of a community that heard that story a hundred years ago or will hear it tomorrow. The story never really changes, because the circles keep turning. No matter how much we change or advance or distance ourselves from our past, our humanity will never change, our ability to feel. Stories remind us of this and when we share in them we become truly equal, because they remind us of parts of ourselves we’ve forgotten, parts we thought we never shared with anyone. We finally remember that we’re not really alone, that that pain we’re feeling is being felt by someone, somewhere else and that they’re surviving, that we can too, that maybe we can survive together. It helps us believe that by the very telling and listening of these stories, we enable that survival together; we become less lonely because we have someone there for us, someone who understands. That horrible, horrible pain we carry around with us every moment we live of being alone, not just physically, but alone trapp
ed in our minds, unable to understand ourselves, manifests itself. Suddenly we’re able to express the most human of feelings, to finally express our deepest loves, share our darkest fears, expunge our worst sorrows. And we can rest easy with the fact that someone, anyone, even generations from now could see what exactly what we see, feel exactly what we feel, and it helps us go on. It makes us human.”
I strode into the twenty-fourth empty space in the circle, and it was complete. They melded together into me and my soul multiplied. I was the little boy flipping through the leaves of a book reading the stories of his favourite animals. I was the old grandmother, passing along the wisdom that her grandmother had taught her. I was the girl enamoured by the fantastic worlds of the boy on the mound. I was the boy on the mound, spinning wilder and wilder tales to impress the girl listening to me. I was the woman trying to be a man. I was the man trying to be a woman. I was the healer who decided he could never be healed. I was the girl who was extraordinarily beautiful to everyone but herself. I was the boy with the knife on his wrist, believing that no one would ever love him. I was the girl crying alone in her room, wishing that there was more time to live. I had too much love and no one to love. I was giving up on love and I was learning to love. No one heard my story and my story was undeserving of so much.
I was only one story in the book of humanity, and I was all of them.
“The first storyteller,” I continued, my voice shaky but stronger than it ever was. It was full of a power and understanding I thought I could never possess. “Was the first dreamer. They had an idea; they had a vision of what the future could be, and moulded it to fit that. Without that story they built in their head, they never would have endeavoured for anything more. And through their creations, they are telling their stories every day, their dreams a reality forever.” I paused for breath. “And I think that’s pretty damn magical.”
The Forest was silent.
The Wizard, who had been watching with an air of wonder, now moved his hands, and I did not try to dodge. But he did not attack; instead he brought them together and then brought them together again and again. He was applauding, a wide smile and...pride on his face. He came forward and hugged me. It was my turn to be bewildered.
He let go of me and said, “You’ve done so, so well. It’s so gratifying to see.”
“Wha...what?” was all I could manage.
“I’m assuming that most of your questions have been answered by now?” He asked, that twinkle returning to his eye.
It took me a second to comprehend what he was saying, and then I nodded.
He pointed the staff at a nearby tree. Nothing happened. I examined the barks of surrounding trees closer and noticed that several of the trunks were blackened.
“Everything works as it is meant to,” he said, smiling.
“How did you know I would?”
“Because you had faith in you. And so did I.”
I nodded, trying to process.
“Assuming you have no other immediate questions, I can now give you this.” He handed me a quill, ink and a thick sheaf of paper that he picked up from behind a tree. He winked conspiratorially at me. “I have my tricks, too. Now, take this. Write if you desire, and I shall make sure that it is read.”
I took in my hand reverently, admiring it all. I thanked him.
“Once you are done, your final choice will be before you. I have a feeling I know which one you’ll make.”
I nodded again and spotted something on his chest that I had not noticed before. It was a silver pendant held on a silver chain. There was another silver chain whose pendant was hidden. But the pendant I could see was the symbol that I had seen on the young banyan tree.
“One question,” I gasped as he turned. He waited expectantly. “Who are you, really?”
He laughed. “That question has been debated for centuries. The answers have been fought over, challenged, forgotten, discovered again, and fought over some more. To you, either I am a mystical being who set up this Path in a way that you could succeed; or I am the spirit of the Path itself, challenging you in ways that allow you to discover the answers you always had within. In all likelihood, I’m both. I may, as you say, also be a kind of story. But that doesn’t make me any less real. The answer to that question doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is you.”
Before he walked off, he hesitated for a moment, and turned back to me. “And also, I actually prefer ‘Shaman’ to ‘Wizard’.”
It was strange that just as he said that I noticed his eyes were a different colour than when I first saw him. With a wink and a final smile, he turned and walked off into the Forest.
“I’m sure you do,” I muttered to nobody.
I settled myself on the ground with the paper. I dipped the quill in the ink and my hand flew across the paper, unbidden, writing alphabets that I had barely practiced and words that I knew the meaning of without ever having heard them before. I wrote and wrote until finally all the pages were filled and I was done. I decided on The First Storyteller. On the cover I wrote The Path and the Forest in circle and then added an extra “and” after “Forest” just to show that I was so, so clever. I kissed the book and laid it gingerly on the ground; with the hope that even one traveller would read it, connect with it and make it new. I stood up, a feeling of contentment washing over me. I would probably be bored with it before long.
I noticed a new opening in the clearing. I walked towards it, passing a snake that was eating its own tail. I paused at a tree where I noticed letters carved in. I took my knife and below the last set of initials, C.W., I added my own. It does not matter what they were. Would a traveller by any other name’s journey be less important?
I left the clearing and a joyous laugh escaped my lips. A gently sloping hill led down to a beach. On that beach, lay a boat, which looked to be in good condition. On the other side was lush, green field. On the horizon of a calm, beautiful sea, dawn was breaking. It was the most beautiful dawn I had ever seen, because it was both day and night, light and dark joining together in a never-ending cycle. I made my way down the slope as a bird, glowing red, rose out of the sea and flew into the sky.
I basked in the glow of this most beautiful dawn, and it did not matter what happened next, what I chose, because, finally, it was my dawn.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
The First Storyteller Page 14