Pillars of the Moon

by French, B. J. ;

  "Brian! Brian!" came June’s voice, echoing in me ears. Realizing June was standing patiently above me, I continued mopping the floor, face pale and trying not to show my perplexity.

  "Get up dear." She said softly, "Let me finish that. You've had a difficult day and you need to rest." Lilly, still at her feet, perked up and looked in the direction of the door, as noises grew louder from the direction of the deck. Vincent entered the terrace door with a stout man in his forties, black bag in hand.

  "Hello." he stated looking down at me as he made a direct beeline for the couch. Without a sliver of uncertainty, he grabbed Peter’s face between his hands and yelled. "Wake up!"

  Rather startled at his action, I watched as Peter slowly came to and stuttered a few nonsensical words and fell back to sleep. Looking at Shawna, the doctor asked for Peter’s name.

  "Peter, I need you awake for a little while!" he shouted again as Peter groaned and slipped back into sleep. "Peter!" The doctor pulled the blanket back and slapped him lightly across the face. Peter came to with a 'what-did-you-do-that-for look on his face' and stayed awake while the doctor looked in his eyes and then his ears. The bleeding at his side had stopped for what must have been about an hour and as he took the pressure bandage off, I could see the dark purple hole just above the hip. He prodded the tender area around the wound and slowly tried to lift Peter on to his side.

  "Excuse me, miss, could you slowly role his hips while I lift his shoulders."

  Without hesitation Shawna knelt on the floor and gently rolled Peter’s hips toward the back of the couch. The doctor’s finger prodded what appeared to be a small mole towards the middle of his back. Peter writhed in pain and gave a grunt.

  "You're one lucky young man." the doctor stated. "If the bullet had hit you at a more direct angle, you might have lost a kidney or even worse. As it is, the bullet traveled under your skin and left your body through the larger hole in the front." He looked around at me and pointed to his bag. "Would you pass me that?" He ripped open a small package and began to swab the small area surrounding the entrance wound. He reached into the bag again and pulled out some gauze and adhesive to cover the wound. Rolling Peter once again, onto his back, he repeated the procedure on the front only taking more care and time. Peter gave a sigh of relief as the doctor put away his syringe after a shot of antibiotic. "You will have to go and have this seen to at the hospital as soon as possible, in case of broken blood vessels. The bleeding has obviously stopped for now and apart from the localized swelling, everything looks alright, but I can’t be certain." He looked directly at Shawna. "There will be more swelling, so you must keep your eye on it for infection."

  She nodded in agreement, a smile coming to her face in appreciation, "Thank you, Doctor."

  We all nodded in assurance and watched as the doctor collected his paraphernalia and coat, and proceeded to the door. Vincent donning his coat, once again, followed him towards the door and left with the doctor.

  "Thanks again, Doctor." Shawna piped as she helped prop Peter’s hand up in farewell.

  The silhouette of the two figures slowly disappeared into the haze of misty light and into the blackness beyond the edge of the deck. The tense atmosphere in the room relaxed as we realized that all would be well, at least for now. Peter began to slump in exhaustion and Shawna eased his head down onto the cushion again. She slid her legs beneath his feet and tucked them up onto her lap to elevate and cover them with the blanket for warmth once again. June, who had stayed in the background all along, brought a warm drink of tea for Peter to sip on. He gratefully took a gulp and slumped back into the cushions and oblivion. Shawna re-wrapped the blanket tightly around him as best she could and eased herself down behind his legs again. I could see she was almost as exhausted as he. They both drifted off into sleep as the previous three hours of mayhem had come to an end. June still standing, teapot in hand, looked over to me and lifted a cup as if to ask whether I was ready. Collapsing back in the large cloth-weave armchair, I smiled and nodded yes. She brought me the tea and touched my hand as if she was aware of the turmoil that had occurred since the early hours of day. Lilly, sitting at my feet, gave a yelp and scurried along after her as she disappeared out of the family room and into the inner reaches of their home. Finally, being able to relax, I took a sip and looked about the room. The dull lighting and the fire behind the flagstone hearth, imparted an antique, reddish hue to the artifacts and paintings that lined the walls. The tiled floor and the Mexican style print of the couches made me feel as if I were in a different world. For a split second, my mind took me back to sitting around the fire on the mesa in my dream, and the weather lined faces of the participants. The feeling of compulsion and emergency came back to me as the periphery shadows on the walls came alive with figures dancing in silhouettes round about me. A black vase with a white zigzag motif, atop the stone mantel caught my eye, along with a few brightly colored figurines. I eased myself out of the chair and wandered over to inspect the collection. As I gently rolled each piece in the light to view the intricacies of the artwork, the green plastic bag, and the mysterious box that lay within, came to mind. Looking toward the couch to see the two lying quietly side-by-side, I retraced my steps around the tiled mosaic coffee table back to the chair I had been sitting in. Seated on the arm, I wondered whether I had the rite to delve into the personal belongings of these two individuals I barely knew. After a few moments of indecision, I came to the conclusion that yes, since it, the green bag, had almost cost me my life, I was entitled to see the contents. Unscrupulously, I crept across the tiled floor by the back door to the rear of the room, bag in hand, to a large drafting table with a stool tucked beneath. A swing-arm light off to one side was the appropriate tool for enabling relatively inconspicuous lighting for close scrutiny. Placing the bag on the floor, I reached inside and eased the box from its hiding place. With apprehension, I placed the square box, approximately a foot square, on the table and turned on the light. Looking back to see if my actions had triggered any response from the couch, I continued with the unscrupulous act.

  'This is the box that Peter had been carrying when he ran into me at the university museum two days ago.’ Standing back at arms-length, I looked and wondered at the implications. 'Could this be the stolen artifact?' There was only one sure way to find out; open the crate. With the anticipation of a three-year-old child at Christmas, I reached out to unfetter the box when, to my disappointment, I heard the faint thudding sound of footsteps on the back deck. Within a moment, Vincent was shaking the wetness from his clothes at the door and wiping his face with one of the towels June had brought. He looked at the two resting peacefully on the couch and then to me in the back corner under the illumination of the extended drafting light.

  "What you doing?" he asked in a playful tone seeing the small wooden crate on the table.

  I raised my index finger to my pursed lips to direct him to quietness and motioned him over to the edge of the table.

  "I think this is the box that was stolen from the university museum Friday."

  Vincent's eyebrow lifted to one side and he gave an elevated "Oh! What makes you think that?"

  "You have heard of the robbery at the Neustadt Exhibit, right?" I asked.

  "I haven't read anything in the paper yet, unless it's been kept quiet."

  "I believe this is it. 'The Pillars of the Moon'."

  Vincent rubbed his chin, looked at the box and then over to Peter. His face became pale as if he had seen a ghost. "If this is so, we could all be in serious trouble."

  "What do you mean?" I asked a little startled. "It's no big deal, we can give it back."

  "Not likely!" came a voice from the direction of the couch. Shawna slowly lifted herself from behind Peter and made her way over to the illuminated corner to face us. "Peter and I have to deliver that to one of the Makah elders, across the Strait tomorrow. He will take it on from there."

  "Take it to where?" asked Vincent curiously, hi
s eyes piercing.

  Shawna returned the same unnerving look that I had experienced before from her when we had first met. She said nothing.

  "I'm afraid this is a bit like Pandora's box, " Vincent sighed, turning back to me and grabbing my wrist as I reached out to touch it.

  Shawna made a move to grab the box from the table.

  "Wait a minute, Shawna. Nobody should do anything right now, especially us, until we decide what the best action to be taken is."

  "Excuse me!" she returned emphatically. "This is none of your concern, and as soon as Peter is a little stronger, we are on our way."

  “Shawna, as soon as you and this little crate came into my house, it became my concern. You have put me and my family at risk."

  "Sorry, Vincent, this is my fault." I interjected drawing his attention toward me. "We should have gone somewhere else, but at the time I could think of nowhere else to go. We were being followed by the people who shot Peter, and had no way of getting away from them apart from driving like madmen down the back roads of Brentwood. Luckily, the motorcyclist from this morning is back in the alley, or at least he was, and their car is totaled in the forest along the bay road."

  Not knowing what else to say, I looked back to the crate and rubbed my hand along the binding.

  "If this is what you say it is," Vincent continued, his eyes darting back and forth between the two of us, "and we are not careful, all of us could be dead by morning."

  Shawna and I stood quiet and looked at the crate sitting innocently on the table.

  "For the last fifty years that I know of," Vincent said quietly, "there have been murders, physical threats and attempts to steal this thing. In the light of what has happened to Peter tonight, you should know this to be true."

  Without moving, Shawna stood and stared at Vincent.

  "The first time I had even heard of the 'Pillars of the Moon'," he began, "was before the war when some members of the Third Reich traveled throughout this area trying to locate 'the bowl' at their leader’s request. He had an insatiable appetite for artifacts and talismans that took his people all over the world in their pursuit. Many marvelous stone carvings from numerous archeological sites, the Peruvian mountains, Central America, Egypt, Samaria, had all found their way to Berlin and his supposed World Cultural Center. He was ruthless in acquiring some of these pieces for his collections; we need not get into the details, but they usually got what they were looking for, at any cost.

  I got the feeling that Vincent had experienced some of the Reich's' determination and without saying more, he pulled the drafting stool over and cocked one thigh upon the seat. "Throughout ancient American history, there have been many tales and fascinating stories about gods and distant travelers, but there is one tale of an article that has dominated the folklore of this continent as much as the search for the Holy Grail had Europe for two thousand years. The Spanish adventurers sought after it under the name 'La Taza de Madre', 'The Cup of the Mother'. Ponce de Leon searched far and wide and found nothing, apart from more illusions. Other explores, Portuguese, English, French all sought after the illusive and fanciful ' Fountain of Youth'.

  "Really!" I blurted. "But what does the 'Fountain of Youth' have to do with this?"

  "Well, there is little fact and a little speculation." he continued cautiously, getting more comfortable on the stool. "When the explorers and conquistadors of Spain embarked upon their religious conquests of the Americas, they continually came across folklore tales of eternal life and a story of a miraculous fountain that gave rebirth to those who bathed in its waters. These all have a familiar ring in the biblical phrases of 'the rivers of living waters' and 'one must be born again', to the point of some concern for the church. There is also the related tale of a bearded fair-skinned man, a Christ-like figure, who lived in the mountains around Lake Titicaca, named Viracocha, who taught the natives of healing, and agriculture, and was later venerated as a god." Vincent smiled with one eyebrow raised. "This was also of some concern to the church. Sound familiar?"

  "Yeah, a Christ-like being." I answered.

  "The mother church in Spain was continually being slapped in the face with stories similar to their own Christian faith that, in their minds, reeked of heresy and shrunk their business monopoly in Christ. This," he said looking down to the floor, "began one of the most calculated and gruesome acts of conquest and religious cleansing that the world has ever seen." He took a breath and slowly scanned the crate.

  "As far as we can determine, the story of the 'Pillars' that surrounds the bowl, is actually a combination of two stories: the one, a creation concept of the universe, which is found in the story of the moon, named Ixchel, goddess of weaving and childbirth. The story goes something like this:

  'In the afternoon of a bright sunny day, Ixchel, characterized by the moon, weaving a tapestry with her aged father, was stolen by the sun. The irate old man, in anger, fired on sun with his blowgun, and Ixchel, the moon, which shone lightly during the day, was accidentally hit and fell into the sea, shattered. In an attempt to save her and right the terrible wrong that had been perpetrated, the old man ordered millions of tiny fish to join together to form a net and collect all the broken pieces of light and lift her up to her lover, the sun. Their attempt was in vain, and defeated they left moon in the sky at night illuminating bright, to continually chase her lover the sun, shining during the day. On a clear night as you look to moon, over the water, you can still see the millions of little fish reaching to lift Ixchel to the sky in the form of a pillar shimmering on the surface'."

  Vincent smiled and looked at Shawna. "The other, equally as obscure, comes from the story of a fabled antediluvian world that saved the chosen people, the ancestors of the Hopi, from destruction. A firestorm had raged on the surface of the earth, initiated to cleanse the earth from its unfaithful inhabitants, who had fallen away from the ways of the Creator. These ‘chosen ones’ lived for many generations beneath the surface of the earth without tasting death. They were able to see in their underground domain with the help of silicate sand with luminous properties, not considered too far-fetched since the discovery of light producing, cave-dwelling bacterium. It later resurfaced in another tale, a gift from a prince to his bride-to-be on their wedding day, at a temple site in what is now Guatemala. She jilted him and took the bowl; he pursued her for her heart, and the bowl."

  "You're losing me here. What does Hopi mythology have to do with the Fountain of Youth or the Pillars? Is there any connection with all this?"

  "Well, some people think so. They think this little bowl holds the key. The Tewa Indians of the Pueblo district have an antediluvian tale also, but theirs states that the people beneath the waters of Sandy Place Lake, to the north, did not experience death and emerged through a hole in the ground. The Kwakiutl of upper Vancouver Island have a similar tale. The Hopi tale alone, mentions, while in the antediluvian world, crystals found amongst the particles of sand in the caves helped illuminate the darkness during their long stay"

  Surprised by his story, I stood motionless trying to grasp all he had mentioned.

  "Brian, this is not something I have made up by myself," he chuckled realizing the quandary he had put me in. "Many scholars have labored hard and searched long for the answers to the riddles this bowl has birthed. And it is far from over." He put his hands on his thighs and gave them a rub.

  "Quite a history, this little, jade box in the likeness of the Mayan." I said notably. "That is, if this is indeed what it is.”?

  "To be more exact, Olmec, and from approximately one thousand B.C." Vincent stated emphatically. "And it is not so much the bowl but what is alleged to be inside that has caused the intrigue."

  "Shawna." Vincent turned directly toward her. "May we open the crate? If it is what you say it is, then we will have to act very quickly. If we do not, it could end up in the hands of one of the unfriendly groups of people who have tried to acquire this bowl, indirectly, for a thousand years." />
  "I take it you do not mean the Third Reich?" I asked humorlessly.

  "No Mr. Alexander." He said dryly looking to Shawna. "Have you ever heard of the ‘Cult of the Jaguar’, and the ‘Feathered Serpent’?"

  I felt a bead of sweat form on my forehead and my tongue grow thick and dry. The vision of the young girl mutilated and flayed came to mind and I replied, "Yes."

  My knees slowly gave way and I caught myself on the edge of the table. I couldn't help feeling overpowered with both confusion and apprehension. 'Why me?’ Where did the vision come from? Why is it here in my mind? When will it come again? When will it go away, so many questions?

  Vincent and Shawna could see my uneasiness and persuaded me back to the armchair. Shawna reached to the cup on the table and handed me some leftover tea. The room spun slightly as I sat sipping, trying to relax and gather my thoughts.

  The subdued lighting, the crackling of the fire, the sound of the wind and rain outside echoing in my ears, all helped to fuel the confusion I felt. I was a strong-minded person, and up till then had been able to handle any amount of stress, but even the strongest have their limits. Vincent's clear, blue eyes stared at me, searching for the moment to interject.

  "You've experienced something, haven't you Brian," Vincent asked soberly?

  Shawna stood beside him, unnervingly still and silent. There was nothing compassionate in her eyes, just a cool darkness. I felt she was trying to read me as much as Vincent, but not for the same reasons. I had not realized the contempt she felt for me at the museum. It could have been a racial thing. Lord knows, we as the nation of whites did nothing to nurture the trust and faith our relations with the aboriginals deserved. Her need for answers was not the same as Vincent's, but as I gathered my thoughts to try to explain the events of the last few days, I began to know Shawna was as much a part of this as Peter.

  Taking another sip of tea, to steady my nerves I began to formulate the words I needed to express what I had experienced.