The Serpent's Coil

by Christy Raedeke

Once we’re all clicked in, Uncle Li puts his thumb to a small print reader on the dash and headlights come on, illuminating the void before us. Then an engine starts humming and Uncle Li moves what looks like a gear shift.

  The capsule slides forward a few feet and then suddenly we are plunged downward, as if on a roller coaster.

  Justine and I both scream—Justine adding some choice words heard mainly in prison. It only lasts a few seconds and then we level out. Slowing down by what feels like some sort of air-braking device, we enter a tube that’s barely big enough to fit our vehicle.

  Though surprised, I’m not entirely shocked. After flying on what looked like a UFO that was built based on ancient Sanskrit texts, I’m used to weird travel. Justine, having never been on a Vimāna, not so much.

  “What is this thing?” she says, gripping the handle in front of her so hard that I can see every flexed muscle and tendon in her arm.

  “It’s a Maglev,” Uncle Li answers, pushing a series of buttons as we slide slowly into the tube like we’re entering a car wash. “Nothing new; they’ve been using them in Asia for years.”

  “Oh, this is one of those trains that rides on top of magnets.” Mom told me about this; she’d ridden one on a job in Japan.

  “Yes, exactly,” Uncle Li replies. “It’s just a bit faster than the ones used for commercial travel. Now hold on.”

  Our heads are pushed against the headrest as the car shoots into the tunnel, but once the first push is over, it’s not uncomfortable. Just fast.

  “I think the bigger questions is: where are we going?” I ask.

  Now that the car or train or whatever is on autodrive, Uncle Li looks back at us to talk.

  “You are about to go deep into the cave system, far beyond what the archaeologists have discovered, to a city mostly known as a myth. It has been referred to as Shambhala and Shangri-La. It’s the home of the Atala Mystery School, where all of the knowledge lost by civilization through the Dark Ages has been kept intact for millennia.”

  “Right here under the Dunhuang Caves?” I ask.

  “This Maglev travels more than eight hundred miles in an hour; we’re far from the caves now. Atala is in southern Mongolia—”

  “We’re going to Mongolia? ” Justine says with panic in her voice. “Right now? Clath is going to freak out if we’re not back by morning!”

  “We won’t be long now. I’ll have you back before morning.”

  “Why Mongolia?” I ask.

  “Why not Mongolia? Its terrain and weather make it one of the least desirable places to live. A good place to hide a secret, no?”

  “And it’s all underground?” I ask, for the first time sort of freaking out about being in this tiny piece of metal shooting through a tube deep beneath China.

  “It has to be,” he replies.

  After what seems like less than an hour, we start to see light coming through the tunnel and the capsule begins to slow down. It takes a few minutes to come to a complete stop because we were going so fast, but as we enter the lighted portion we see the tunnel get bigger and bigger.

  We come to a stop at a grove of maples.

  “How are there trees down here?” I ask, marveling at the rows of big, green, beautiful trees.

  “Simulated sunlight for photosynthesis. It’s very simple, actually,” Uncle Li says as he starts unbuckling himself and Mr. Papers.

  When we get out of the capsule, I’m overwhelmed by the fresh, clean air. There’s nothing to indicate that we’re in a cave—Justine and I look up, confused about how we can be underground when it looks as though it’s a bright but overcast day.

  “Cloud generators,” Uncle Li says, pointing up. “They help keep the humidity level just right and they soften the look of the artificial lights.”

  “Incredible,” Justine replies.

  Papers runs up to one of the trees, climbs it, and then hops from the branch onto my backpack as I walk under it. He’s energized in a way I’ve never seen before.

  Uncle Li stops to scratch Mr. Papers. “This is where he was born, you know. I think he remembers it fondly.”

  “Seriously? Papers was born here?” Justine asks.

  “That’s right!” I say, “I remember Tenzo saying that.”

  As we near the end of the maple grove, the path winds through a tunnel just a few feet taller than us. The ground is lit with a softly glowing track of lights, which we follow through a few curves. Just when I’m starting to get disoriented, we round a corner and the tunnel gives way to a massive opening. We are faced with what has to be a movie set: a beautiful underground village built on several terraced levels around a tall waterfall.

  Justine and I both stop and stare, and Mr. Papers starts going crazy, running in circles and laughing.

  “Welcome to Atala,” Uncle Li says.

  SIXTEEN

  When I was little I used to get a big hollow sugar egg every Easter from our next-door neighbor. It was the size of a really big potato and made of pressed sugar. At one end there was a hole so you could look into the egg, where a tiny scene had been placed. Atala reminds me of looking through a sugar egg at a perfect little Chinese village.

  The waterfall anchors one end, and the river it feeds meanders through the village, pooling at some points to make reflecting ponds next to gold, red, and turquoise pagodas that glow warmly with lights. Willow trees grow on the banks of the river between expanses of grass where groups of ducks sit, bills tucked under their wings, asleep for the night.

  The side of the cave where the waterfall flows has been terraced to accommodate beautiful pagoda-style buildings that are linked by stairs carved right into the stone. Ferns and moss sprout from cracks in the stone wall.

  On the other side of the cave, a few football fields’ distance from the waterfall, the rock walls taper down and the water from the river flows into a hole. The thought of accidentally falling into the river and being carried down that hole makes my whole body shiver. Who knows how far beneath the ground we are right now, or how much farther down that hole would take us?

  Justine and I are stunned, looking around as if we’ve just landed on Jupiter.

  “I want to live here,” Justine whispers.

  Uncle Li smiles. “No one lives here for more than a few months at a time. Too much yin; not good for the chi,” he says, patting his heart.

  He leads us over a carved bridge that crosses the river. At the other side, a small robed figure is sitting on a bench. As we approach, she stands and smiles. It’s Nima. We’ve not seen her since we met The Council members at Muchuchumil Imports in San Francisco. Justine and I run over and hug her.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask. “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything is fine,” she says happily. “I’m here to see you two.”

  “How did you know we’d be here?” Justine asks. I’m starting to take this kind of thing for granted.

  “Access to knowledge is easy,” Nima says. “Getting here is hard.” She takes our hands and walks us along the river to an open-sided pagoda, painted orange and turquoise with gold trim. There are lamps lit inside, and mats on the floor surround a short table.

  Nima motions for us to sit. “Tea?” she asks as she pours four cups. From beneath the table she pulls out a tray of delicate almond cookies.

  I accidentally splash hot tea on my lap when Mr. Papers makes a squawk I’ve never heard before. Looking over to where the noise is coming from, I see two other monkeys that are almost identical to Mr. Papers. They’re all holding hands and bouncing in a circle.

  “There are three Mr. Papers!” Justine says.

  I’m dumbfounded. “What the—”

  “These are his people,” Uncle Li says and Papers throws him a look. “Forgive me; I mean his monkeys.”

  The three of them scurry off before I can get up and meet his two friends.

  “They’ll be fine,” Nima says, “That’s Erasmo and Tohil—they believe they run Atala.”

  “How many are
there?” I ask.

  Looking at Uncle Li, Nima says, “What, maybe twenty?”

  Uncle Li nods and adds, “We can go see the Monkey Center later—”

  “Aw!” Justine and I both say at once. “Can’t we see it now?” I beg.

  They both laugh. “All right, come along.”

  Nima leads us along the river and we pass several buildings with small groups of people inside. “These are the teaching centers,” Nima says. “Currently we are focusing on passing on the Hopi and Tibetan wisdom. Every two months the focus changes and new members of The Council rotate in.”

  We arrive at the wall where the waterfall is and climb a small staircase that winds up past clusters of ferns and small pagodas jutting from the wall. About halfway up, we enter one of the pagodas, which turns out to be a façade to a tunnel that leads deep into the rock. Lights above come on as we walk, like they do in library stacks at night.

  “How do you guys get electricity in here?” I ask.

  “We make it,” Uncle Li says. “Absolutely clean zero-point energy. We have a small plant about a mile from here.”

  “What’s zero-point energy?” Justine asks.

  “It means it doesn’t use up energy to make energy. We just harness the fluctuations in dark matter. It’s abundant and clean.”

  “Why don’t we use it everywhere?” I ask.

  “Because the Fraternitas controls the energy supply. If there’s no scarcity, there’s no profitability.”

  I start to hear the chatter of monkeys, which is a sound that would make anyone happy. The tunnel ends in a large, clean, well-lit room with lots of trees and tiny hammocks and a large flat rock in the center. It’s like a monkey lounge.

  One side has a wall of large cubbies, which are obviously the monkey rooms. It reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of hotels in Japan where you rent a little capsule for the night. Several are sitting in their cubbies, but Mr. Papers and a group of other monkeys are all sitting on the large flat rock, chatting away.

  “Seriously, have you ever seen anything this cute?” Justine asks.

  “Never,” I reply, watching Mr. Papers talk animatedly to his friends. What sounds like random chatter to us must mean something to the other monkeys, because they seem enraptured by what he is saying.

  “So they don’t do origami with each other?” I ask.

  “No, they still communicate with each other in their own language, but because physically they cannot talk as we can, they use origami to communicate with humans.”

  “Can all monkeys do this?” Justine asks, gesturing to their conversation.

  “Not yet. This is a rare pygmy lineage of Capuchins originally from South America. The first Mayan Elders brought them along when they arrived. Over the years these guys and their ancestors have been modified using electromagnetic frequencies based on those coming from the Galactic Center. Basically, The Council wanted to see exactly what kind of changes DNA would go through as cosmic forces change.”

  “Looks like it worked!” Justine says.

  He nods. “Indeed, they found their predictions were correct; these electromagnetic frequencies start to switch on parts of DNA that are not currently used. In the case of the Capuchin monkeys exposed, it raised their consciousness to a new, almost human level.”

  “What other stuff can they do?” I ask.

  “They’ve been taught to read several hieroglyphic languages—symbolic picture languages seem much easier than letter-based languages.”

  “That is totally amazing,” Justine says.

  “And because they’re helper monkeys,” Uncle Li continues, “they’re taught several ancient methods of defense, including touch paralysis and a very dangerous form of acupuncture.”

  “Cool!” Justine says, elbowing me in excitement. “Ninja skills!”

  “Can we see it?” I ask.

  Nima and Uncle Li shake their heads. “Another time, perhaps,” Nima says, gesturing to the tunnel with her hand. “We’re going to have to go back to the River Pagoda; there is much to tell you before you must depart.”

  I could’ve stayed in the monkey room for days. Weeks. Months.

  Just as we’re leaving, two monkeys come to either side of Justine and me and jump up on our shoulders to present us with some origami. Justine gets a butterfly and I get the symbol of a snake eating its own tail—the image I’d seen in the water outside Breidablik before any of this even started.

  SEVENTEEN

  Are you two ready to enter the inner sanctum of knowledge?” Nima asks as we settle back into the River Pagoda.

  We nod, completely unsure of what is going to happen next. If aliens walked in right now I’m not sure I’d be surprised.

  “This place, Atala, is where all pure knowledge is kept, from lineage to lineage,” Uncle Li begins. “Every member of The Council represents an area of indigenous people, and safely passes that knowledge on from generation to generation.”

  “Why is it so secret? So hidden?” Justine asks.

  “Because if the Fraternitas had its way, they would kill us all. They have systematically wiped out huge groups of indigenous people either through religious wars, supported genocide, or military action. We’re not playing here—this is serious.”

  “Kill you?” Justine says. “You may have to back up a little for me because I’m not as far along in all of this as Caity, but why would they kill you? What’s so dangerous about tribal people?”

  “Cultures that still live close to the earth, that still pass along stories from generations before, all have one thing in common: they share a large cosmovision, meaning they all believe that we here on Earth are profoundly affected by what’s going on in the sky,” Nima says. “Quite simply, they know this is a time of transformation.”

  “Now the Shadow Government knows this too,” Uncle Li adds. “Almost all actions they take are guided by astrological counsel; they just don’t want the masses to know this. When you keep the people ignorant, they are easier to manipulate.”

  “So the Fraternitas intentionally keeps this information about precession and cosmic forces a mystery?” I ask.

  “The Fraternitas wants to keep it a secret, yes, but ironically the story of precession has such a profound effect on human behavior that it has become part of the framework of our lives. In fact, it’s talked about by billions of people all over the world every day. It’s just in code.”

  “What code?” Justine asks. “If so many people are speaking in code, how come it hasn’t been broken?”

  “They do not know they are speaking in code.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “How can you talk in code and not know you’re talking in code?” Justine asks.

  We are clueless, sitting there like two kids on the first day of kindergarten looking at the teacher for answers.

  Nima says, “You learned in school that mythology is usually based in some reality, usually about the movement of the stars—am I correct?”

  “Right, like a way to pass on information about what’s happening so people can remember it,” I say, happy to finally be following her.

  “Exactly. Now, in descending times, when we’ve just spent thousands of years becoming denser and denser and more materialistic and warlike, we lose this information about how we are changed by the energy around us. So, thousands of years ago people started putting this information in myth so we’d remember it somehow.”

  “So what’s the myth?” I ask. “What’s the code?”

  “Well, it’s different in each culture,” Nima begins, “but it starts with the announcement of a virgin birth, then three wise men follow an Eastern star to find God’s son born in late December. This person might start teaching at the age of twelve and be baptized at around twenty-eight or thirty. At thirty-three or so, he might die on a cross, only to rise up three days later. Then the resurrection is celebrated during the spring.”

  “Wait, you’re talking about Jesus?” Justine asks. Her parents are big-time C
atholics so I’m thinking she might not take this so well.

  “The story I was referring to is from a 3,400-year-old inscription on the walls of the Temple of Luxor in Egypt, and in Egyptian writings.”

  “I’m confused,” I say. “That’s the same story—”

  “There are more,” Nima says. “Dionysus of Greece, whose mother was human and father was a god, was celebrated at the winter solstice in the end of December. Dionysus was a traveling teacher who performed miracles like turning water into wine. After his death, he was resurrected.”

  Uncle Li adds, “Then there is Attis of Phrygia and Krishna of India. Persia, Armenia, and Rome had Mithra. All these myths have some combination of divine birth around the end of December, bright lights signaling the coming of the child, him teaching and performing miracles as a young man, and having twelve followers, and dying in a violent manner, and finally being resurrected and ascending to the heavens.”

  “Oh my God!” Justine says. “I mean if there is one … ”

  “I’m not telling you there is no God! I’m not even telling you there have not been Avatars, or enlightened beings like Jesus, born to remind us what we are capable of: Compassion. Peace. Love. Miracles. It’s just that the components of these story-myths were meant to encode all of the information we need about precession, and then they were hung like a cloak on enlightened beings.”

  “So I get that they’re all telling the same basic story, but I don’t see the precession code,” I ask. “Like where’s the astronomy in the story?”

  Uncle Li smiles. “Here’s where it gets very interesting. On December twenty-fourth, Sirius—one of the brightest stars in our night sky—aligns with the three brightest stars in Orion’s Belt, which have been referred to as the Three Kings. These Three Kings and Sirius all line up and point to the place of sunrise on December twenty-fifth. Of course, the Three Kings also line up to point to Sirius when it rises during the summer solstice, signaling the births of solar deities Osiris and Horus the Elder. So, the Three Kings ‘follow’ the star in the East, in order to locate the birth of the son—or sun, to be more accurate.”