The Rainbow Bridge and the Shadow of the Serpent: The Rainbow Bridge and the Shadow of the Serpent

by Sergio Pereira

  - Stop, you idiots! Not like that! You really don’t understand anything, do you? Filthy rats you were, rats you are and will always be.

  The terrified rats came to a halt. If they didn’t dare disobey the Fairy Queen of Easy Fame, imagine the Tyrant Fairy Queen.

  - Bring them to the altar. Let’s go. Nothing to fear, you fools. There is no more magic to protect them. That Fairy fled without waiting to see the payback.

  - My Lady, wouldn’t it be better to get this over with once and for all? This little brat is very dangerous. And she always has someone protecting her. Let my rats put an end to this now. I’m sick and tired of her.

  - Silence, you incompetent fool! There is no point having their bodies if we don’t have their souls. First we go for their spirits. Then my dragons will have something for dinner.

  - You really are exceptional. So intelligent, without equal.

  - Mere flattery! Who do you think you are deceiving? How come your rats are standing there looking? Let’s have some action.

  The Fairy Queen of Easy Fame was visibly disappointed. She hadn’t impressed the Tyrant Fairy Queen and, on top of that, had momentarily lost her rats’ servitude. This was too much for her. She lay on her side in a sulk and simply observed. Intimidating the three girls, like wolves encircling scared sheep, the rats led them to the altar.

  The Tyrant Fairy had assumed her position. Totally distracted from events, the Fairy Queen of Fame sat down at her dressing table to brush her hair.

  The Tyrant Fairy started conducting again. In the still air of that sub-kingdom a new symphony of pain and despair began to be heard. The Pianola recommenced its work.

  Stefanie’s foot was getting worse by the minute. And the two strips of moon-ray towel were not enough to protect the Girl of the Clouds from so much perversity. Her grace and girlhood were vanishing. They were being corroded.

  The gold chain and tuning fork were partially protecting Violet from the macabre fluids in that environment. Even so, she remembered an opera she had seen some time before in the small, charming Theatro São Pedro, in the Barra Funda neighbourhood of her city. It was the opera “The Turn of the Screw”, composed by the Englishman Edward Benjamin Britten, with libretto by Myfanwy Piper, based on the novella of the same name by American writer Henry James.

  She concluded that, as in the opera, if things were bad, they could always get even worse. She also concluded that malign spirits spare no one, not even children.

  While she was trying to find a way out of the situation, she remembered her last dream. It was there in her memory, very much alive. It had been symbolic, encrypted, full of scenes of prisons in music boxes and tiger’s cages. It was a dream in which she couldn’t count on anything or anyone. What should she do?

  Something compressed and squeezed her little girl’s heart – as if a tourniquet were being moved by one more turn of the screw. She looked at her two friends. The Girl of the Clouds was pale, with some parts petrified. Stefanie was almost unconscious. She couldn’t stand any more pain.

  - Hope!

  Yes, that was the dream’s message.

  “She said you would know what to do” – She remembered the faun’s last words. If the Tyrant Fairy Queen was attacking hope, it was because hope was the cure.

  - Hope! Hope! I won’t lose hope.

  Her cry echoed through all the chambers of the dark underground sub-kingdom.

  The tuning fork began to shine. Weakly at first, and then with all chromatic scales and hues emitted in intermittent fluxes of electro-magnetic radiation in the visible spectrum, which is called light by science of the Earth.

  Violet stoop up, with her arms spread out. As the tuning fork shone more brightly, she shouted louder.

  - Hope! Hope!! Hope!!!

  Timidly, the Girl of the Clouds copied her, followed by those present. Stefanie somehow found the strength to get up on one foot and join in the chorus.

  A new symphony emerged. It literally fought against the macabre symphony of the Tyrant Fairy Queen and against the music from the Pianola. The tuning fork glimmered with more strength. The Tyrant Fairy Queen got her whip and cracked it in the air. When she was about to deliver the whiplash, she had second thoughts. Attacking Violet physically, protected as she was by that magic, would be repeating the previous error. Thus, she concentrated her powers of sorcery on the symphony being performed.

  Outside that infernal atmosphere, in the outside kingdom, something very powerful was also happening. The master and king of all operas in the Kingdom of the Blue Earth, none other than Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi himself, an Italian who was born in 1813 and who died in 1901, had been summoned to conduct the spirit of Italian nationalism that later became an anthem of liberty for all peoples.

  On the shores of the outside lake, where the waterfall was forming and was in part dragged by the tunnel that took it to the sub-kingdom, a choir formed by the characters of the opera Nabucco – composed by Verdi himself during the Austrian occupation of northern Italy – stood, performing magnificently. They were singing “Va Pensiero sull'ali dorate”, also known as “The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”, from Act 3.

  Va Pensiero sull'ali dorate

  “Va', pensiero, sull'ali dorate.

  Va', ti posa sui clivi, sui coll,

  ove olezzano tepide e molli

  l'aure dolci del suolo natal!

  Del Giordano le rive saluta,

  di Sionne le torri atterrate.

  O mia Patria, sì bella e perduta!

  O membranza sì cara e fatal!

  Arpa d'or dei fatidici vati,

  perché muta dal salice pendi?

  Le memorie del petto riaccendi,

  ci favella del tempo che fu!

  O simile di Solima ai fati,

  traggi un suono di crudo lamento;

  o t'ispiri il Signore un concento

  che ne infonda al patire virtù

  che ne infonda al patire virtù

  al patire virtù!”

  Go, thoughts, on golden wings;

  “Go, settle upon the slopes and hills

  Where warm and soft and fragrant are

  The breezes of our sweet native land!

  Greet the banks of the Jordan

  The towers of Zion ...

  Oh my country so beautiful and lost!

  Or so dear yet unhappy!

  Or harp of the prophetic seers

  Why do you hang silent from the willows?

  Rekindle the memories within our hearts

  Tell us about the time that have gone by

  Or similar to the fate of Solomon

  Give a sound of lament;

  Or let the Lord inspire a concert

  That may give to endure our suffering”

  So divine was the choir that sadness and depression were expelled and dissipated. The waters were soon clear, joyful and full of health, as all waters should be. The renewed part of them ran inside the tunnel and emptied into the first lake. From there, via cracks and crannies, it arrived at the second lake.

  In both, a chemical reaction of antagonistic sentiments provoked an explosive, highly unstable mixture. The two lakes were as turbulent as stormy seas. The battle of the symphonies became more intense. One by one, the imprisoned operas and their characters were released from their petrified state. As they were freed, they joined the great choir.

  The Pianola and the Fairy Queen of the Oppressive Forces were already at a disadvantage, but far from giving up. The rats ran to the cart as soon as they realised that their mistress had seen cracks and more cracks appearing along the cave ceiling.

  The two beds and the skip attached to the last one floated and dived inside the walls of water that divided the great lake in conflict with itself. The separation of the waters threatened to collapse and the Fairy Queen of Easy Fame lost no time at all. She fled unbeknownst to the Tyrant Fairy Queen, who was concentrating her magic on the reversal of the battle.

  With everything crashing and echoing, Vio
let closed her eyes so as not to be blinded by so much light.

  “You will know what to do”.

  This was the phrase she couldn’t get out of her head.

  - Yes, I know. Now I know!

  She took the gold chain from which the tuning fork was hanging. She filled her heart with the purest faith and hope, recalling everything good. Her mother, her father, her grandparents, aunts, and the lady that worked in her house. Everyone who loved her and whom she loved were revived. Finally, she remembered Jesus.

  There was no way not to have faith. There was no way not to have hope. With her eyes closed, she struck the tuning fork against a stone. It resounded in G major, shone and heated up as if turning into a tiny sun.

  It was no longer possible to hold onto it. She let it go. It floated almost to the ceiling, shining ever brighter. Its coloration changed, too. Its light was now the same as our Sun. One by one, the stalactites came loose from the cave ceiling, falling and adding to the chaos already there. When they hit the ground or a stalagmite, they broke into pieces. One of them hit a dragon on the head, knocking it out. Another hit the pianola, but it survived.

  Crazy and haughty, the Fairy Queen of Oppressive Music was laughing like a lunatic but she was not shaken. She was conducting her symphony, which was still causing much pain and depression. A new vortex of heavy fluids was forming in the upper lake and waging war against the good sentiments carried by the renewed, joyful waters, flowing through the tunnel that connected the waterfall to that sad subterranean world.

  The more pure water that entered, the stronger the shock between them was. Waves and more waves flooded everywhere, giving clear signs that everything could collapse suddenly.

  Performing the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, from the opera Nabucco, the choir continued in its destruction of the malign magic that had contaminated those pure waters of the Kingdom of the Seven Moons.

  In the great chamber, the principal room, the last imprisoned opera had recomposed and joined the choir.

  - Hope! Hope! Hope!

  On their own initiative, two dragons flew towards the tuning fork in order to grab it. They were burnt and vapourised before they had even gone five metres.

  The tuning fork vibrated in G major and its energy was directed towards the extreme opposite of the cave, where a great wall of rocks more solid than granite totally dominated the scene.

  An unimaginable crash deafened everyone for some moments. The rocks melted in milliseconds as if they were nothing. Sulphurous vapours were exhaled, but they didn’t have time to further contaminate the atmosphere.

  As the rocks were melting, a sloping tunnel with a diameter of more or less ten metres appeared and dragged the recently-created lava outside the chamber with it. Soon a gallery of some hundred and twenty metres in extension was forming and connecting that sub-kingdom to the outside world. Immediately, a magic current of air formed so that the tunnel was cooled and functioned like a giant exhaust. It was not dark, because parts of its walls were not free of lava. Thus, it was passable, as long as one passed with care. The end looked like a window to the sky, because its mouth opened on the slope opposite the mountain range where Violet and Stefanie had reached the river and the waterfall.

  The abyss must have been seven hundred metres deep. A forest as exuberant as the Atlantic forest dominated the range. A profusion of glory trees was in flower. Almost nothing of the forest was affected by the lava thrown at it, because a powerful magic was vapourising it as soon as it came out of the newly-created tunnel.

  - Let’s get out – shouted Violet just once. The scene was beautiful! Characters and more characters ran to the tunnels. The dragons didn’t know what to do and, therefore did nothing to stop what was happening. But another ray emitted by the tuning fork and aimed at the Pianola could be seen, to the despair of the Tyrant Fairy Queen. Although its armour, protector of dark magic, was practically indestructible, it was no match for the ray and was incinerated. The perverse life of an instrument that, of its own will, only served evil, was coming to an end.

  The Tyrant Fairy Queen had not yet capitulated, but she was busy conducting and at the same time protecting herself and her pet dragons. She didn’t notice that Stefanie, supported on the shoulders of Violet and the Girl of the Clouds, was crossing the lake bridge. They just escaped disappearing into the lake when the bridge was hit by a great stalactite and collapsed.

  The three friends soon entered the tunnel. It was a hundred and twenty metres, but it seemed to them that the path to freedom was almost endless. They had covered the first forty metres when a roar reached them.

  One of the dragons with a pig’s head crossed with a boar’s had followed them to the entrance.

  - Oh, my God!

  - Let’s go. We can’t give up.

  - Oh, my God!

  The three of them ran as fast as they could. They covered more than forty metres. Two thirds of the tunnel were already behind them. The dragon smiled and opened its mouth wide. It took off in flight. It wasn’t possible for it to fly at full speed, but even so it was much faster than they were.

  - Let’s go!

  - Quickly!.

  Violet was determined she was not going to lose. There were just eight metres left to the way out. Running and supporting Stefanie, she looked back. The dragon’s claws were thirty metres from them and were approaching faster than they could run those eight meters.

  Even so, with a supreme effort, they reached the end of the tunnel seconds before the winged reptile. At that moment, Violet pushed Stefanie and the Girl of the Clouds to one side. Taken by surprise, the two rolled on the ground. Violet picked up a stone and turned round to face the dragon, distracting it while she thought of some solution.

  The dragon was smiling cynically. Because of the narrow space, it couldn’t manoeuvre easily, but the imminent proximity of the exit allowed it to fly faster. Its claws were less than two metres from Violet’s face when she threw the stone – in vain – and flung herself to the ground, falling on her back. She was not seriously injury only because she had jumped backwards, protecting her neck and head with both hands. Her fingers were hurt while, by less than two centimeters, her face had escaped being torn to shreds by the dragon’s claws.

  She got up and saw the huge animal lose altitude over the valley and initiate a return manoeuvre for the attack. Stefanie and the Girl of the clouds, breathless, on their knees, looked scared.

  As soon as Violet recovered, something else happened. The Girl of the Clouds was becoming totally illuminated. She smiled with an infinite tenderness and simply said:

  - Thank you. You really did know what to do. Thank you for the hope! I want to continue helping, but I can no longer do that. I’ll never forget you.

  This said, she entered the skies as a star. She was taken where the other freed operas and characters had to be taken for the time being.

  It was not necessary for a word to be exchanged between Violet and Stefanie for them to understand what was happening and they were happy for it. However, danger was approaching again. They were on a slope in the middle of a mountain.

  Violet assessed the situation. There was a trail. But how could they escape with Stefanie almost unable to walk or bear the pain? The dragon was getting close. Stones wouldn’t drive it off. She hugged Stefanie and prepared for the end.

  - Trammmmmmmmmm!

  That was the noise of a giant butterfly colliding with a dragon. It had dived from an altitude of fifteen thousand meters and must have been going at more than four hundred kilometers an hour. The dragon’s spine split and it fell down into the valley below.

  The butterfly manoeuvred, decelerated and performed a wonderful loop, landing on the slope. Another one arrived just afterwards.

  - Do you want a lift? I’m sure you’ll need one.

  The other butterfly, even bigger than the first, had a passenger on its back, and landed beside the first one.

  - Don’t you recognise old friends when you see them? Just becau
se you’ve grown and lost a child’s view of the world?

  Stefanie looked surprised, understanding nothing.

  Violet’s eyes were popping.

  - So, my girl. Are you just going to stand there? The Tyrant Fairy Queen will be here soon.

  - Pedrão? Pedrão! Pedrão! Joaquina! Joaquina! Joaquina!

  The tunnel collapsed and closed forever. Inside the sub-kingdom, the tuning fork accomplished its mission. Very happy, it burned and sublimed until it was consumed. The Fairy Queen of Oppressive Forces and the rest of her dragons escaped via the lake, which was consumed in seconds. Thus the sub-kingdom of Imprisoned Operas, which many until this day call the Kingdom of Forgotten Operas, came to an end. A kingdom that would never be removed from memory so that it would never again be revived.

  CHAPTER XVI

  WINGS OF FREEDOM

  Violet ran to hug Pedrão.

  - Wow! Is it really you? You’re enormous.

  - I’ve had other lives in other spaces and time lapses. And now in this body, I’m almost an adult.

  - But with the same face? How can that be?

  - I don’t understand that, either. But does it make any difference?

  - My friend!!!

  Pedrão was now a powerful butterfly, with a wingspan of almost 20 metres. As strong as a rock, as flexible as the wind and as graceful as only butterflies can be.

  As soon as Joaquina got off the other giant butterfly that was carrying her, Violet ran to her. She had saved her tightest hug for her best friend in the Kingdom of the Seven Moons.

  She didn’t utter a word. She gave the neck of the humanized musical note, who had also grown and become an adult, a really tight squeeze. She cried with emotion in silence and her crying, pure as it was, moved everyone. Although emotionally touched, Pedrão refused to cry.

  - Let’ get going! The air’s full of danger.