A knife wreathed in thorns. Firewood and chanting. Blood on stone, on water, on blood. Every waning of the moon, every coming of spring, every time the storm looms.
Again.
Again.
Again.
"Rituals give shape to magic," the Drifter said to me. "They are the rules by which we play, the chains that can bind even the gods. Their power lies in repetition, for the more we perform an act, the more we become entwined with it, the more it becomes fundamental to our lives. And the more people who perform a ritual, the more people who hold it to possess great power, the more powerful it becomes. Consensus, Imago, can shape reality. To create such a great and terrible thing, one needs not the ingredient of complexity; a ritual can be simple, easy to execute, and still be strong enough to send ripples through the cosmos."
Indeed, the Ritual has only three parts, three components that are equal parts Gate, Key and Threshold.
Step into shadow.
Know what you seek.
Open your Eye and dream.
I set my head down on my pillow, Eléi holding my hand between hers. I have asked her to watch over my body and, should it all go awry, do her best to wake me up.
"You are a fool," she reproached me, but agreed to keep me company. She had only one condition. "If you have not come back by first light, I will interrupt the Ritual. I do not care what you find out there: it is not worth your life or soul."
We swore on it – another small ritual – and we got on with it. Now I close my eyes and try to fulfill the first requirement. Lulled by the chirping of crickets in the background of the Library's not-night and by Eléi's own soft breathing, my conscience begins drifting, my thoughts becoming diffuse and weightless in the haze of incoming slumber. All except one – the second step of the Ritual, the Key that is intent.
I know what I am looking for.
I know what I want.
I seek the twin silver doors, the Umbral to what lies beyond.
I want to go through it. I must go through it.
Intent is my Key. Purpose, desire.
Want.
Want.
Want.
Behold, Dreamer, the twin silver gates that are the Umbral.
Beyond them, the unknown.
Past the silver gates lies a labyrinth of roads stemming from the point at which I stand – some are paved with polished stone, and others with nothing but loose earth. They twist and slither into each other like the heads of a hydra, serpentine knots upon knots that lead far from each other and to the same destination at once. Were it not for dream logic, they would be painful to look at; some things were not meant for mortal minds to comprehend.
Take the one at the very center – the one that is narrow and crooked.
Still, I know that none of them is for me to tread upon. No. The Drifter told me to wait, to remain unmoving before the many paths before me, for the one that shows the way shall come to me.
Coward. Not even here do you understand what power is, what you–
Shut up, Shiloh. The Drifter told me you would be here as well. In this place where raw thought is the substance of things, your ilk thrives. I see you in the corner of my eye, still diminished, but no longer a fleshless voice. I see your long beard; your robes cut from the very darkness that surrounds us; your hands full of rings and wrinkles, arteries popping as you clench your fists and grit your teeth. I take one fast glance at you and you're gone; even here you are not strong enough to do much but take the backseat and stew in your own frustration.
We shall see, Imago. We shall see.
Indeed, I see. From the unknowable distance come all the stars that cover the firmament at night, an undulating shoal of silvery-white dots that sways as if swimming through the air, closer and closer to me until at last it is within arm's reach, and I comprehend the shape the dots are arranged into – the great whale shark that is all light and void, a living constellation that swims circles around me with the curiosity of a child discovering a strange insect in the garden. It is beautiful.
I know what to do next. I extend my hand towards the starry shark and grab on to its mighty tail. I can feel the smooth skin, the hard cartilage beneath, the powerful muscles that propel it forwards through the waters of the Dreaming. It takes off with one great strike, my dreamform trailing behind it, mutely hoping that my fingers won't slip. On we go through the liquid darkness, through the watery substance of dreams.
But you're not swimming, boy. You're drowning.
I feel it. The lack of air, the weight of water pressing against me. My lungs are beginning to ache, begging for a deep breath that I cannot give them, my eyes wildly looking for a nonexistent surface. No. No! Shiloh, what have you done?
You said it yourself, Imago. In this place, my power is law. Now let go.
Drowning.
My grip weakens. The shark is not stopping, plunging deeper and deeper into the Dreamtime as I fight an urge I know cannot be real and try to keep my lungs from collapsing.
Drowning.
I cannot hold it! Please…
I want to ask it for help, but when I open my mouth what little precious air I still hold inside rushes out in a school of panicked bubbles, forcing me to give in to Shiloh's command and swim for the light above – that cold, perfidious light that refracted through the waves of the Dreamtime ocean like the blurred sight of an eye that weeps in defeat.
Almost there. Don't stop now. Don't let it all be for naught.
Below me, the shark fades further into the distance, dragging my hopes with it into the abyss.
Gone.
Drowning.
Gone
Gone.
I breach the waves and gasp for air before letting out a wail that is equal parts wrath and sorrow. I have lost my guide, my sole help to find the Weaver of Stories. Somewhere in my head, Shiloh laughs and laughs and laughs…
Shut up.
Shut up.
SHUT UP!
Silence.
Shiloh's laughter has stopped and all I can hear is the sound of the inky black sea where I have surfaced. I try to regain my composure; certainly there must be another way to reach the farthest shore where the Weaver of Stories dwells. Maybe I can swim there, if dream logic allows for it. Maybe, but which way is it?
I try to peer through the darkness, but all I see are black waves, sharp like teeth across an endless maw, surging and swelling and breaking against themselves in baleful repetition. There are no stars in the sky, the void all-encompassing, as below so above. I am nowhere.
There, where the horizon should be, something that is not ocean or sky. Land! From this far out, it is but a strip, a flat line against the backdrop of darkness – a lighter shade of black. Through sheer will I push myself towards it, limbs making clumsy strokes in tar-like water.
Get there.
Onwards.
Closer.
I do not know how long it takes for me to reach the shoreline. Time is strange in the Dreaming, and the only thing that speaks of the distance I have swum is the soreness in my limbs. It is high tide, I can tell, for still I have to fight the weight of water even as I feel ground beneath my feet. At last, having exhausted my energy, I crawl up the beach and come to rest on the black sand.
I immediately recoil. The sand is sharp, jagged, like countless shards of broken glass covering every inch of this strange shore, ending where the forest begins. The forest… its trees are dark titans that reach for the starless heavens with pointed canopies like daggers, each of their leaves a blade of its own right. They rustle at the command of an unseen and unfelt wind, their rumor so rancorous that I cannot distinguish it from the crashing of the waves. At their feet is a mist most impenetrable, a shroud for unknown visions and powers clandestine. There are things in those woods – ancient, hidden things with names and faces known to no living soul, things that think and yearn and dream in darkness. I feel it in my bones, the gaze of those who know I am here, those who lurk beyond the thicket of black colossi and, in their alien patience, wait.
Then I turn my face to the heavens, towards the starless expanse of infinite blackness, and I see it.
I see the Green Moon.
No. I am not supposed to be here!
The Green Moon.
It is at the center of it all, so close that I can almost reach out and touch it, its terrible gravity pulling up the petrol sea into a perpetual high tide, the trees all stabbing at the sky from where it reigns unchallenged.
Imperious.
Absolute.
And now you see, Dim Dreamer. Now you see.
I am the thing at the bottom of the dream.
I am the devouring of blood upon the altar, the quenching of thirst for the sake of thirst itself.
I am the call and the answer, the repairer of reputations, the procurer of blights.
In my light all is possible, for it is I who knows the depths of the heart and its most ignoble desires.
Then speak, Lord of Mists. What is it that you see?
No.
NO! STOP!
I see One who contains one Other, who wishes to be cleansed and remade.
I see where One begins at the Other's end – two souls distinct, yet bound by ink thicker than blood.
What is joined can be severed, or it can be made closer still, for what is unity if not the suppression of One into the Other?
I can weave from ash and light the story. I can piece together what is not. I can mend you into the story you wish you had.
Dim Dreamer.
You need nothing but submit.
Never.
I know what you are.
Never.
Then perhaps the Other will.
I have many cravings, but we can start by drowning him.
And so, for defiance and desire
It shall be.
Drowning.
It is high tide, and the water is freezing cold. What strength is in my bones quickly seeps away, lungs fighting a losing battle against the roaring sea. I sink and force my way back up again and again, and all I see is the sickly pale Green Moon and its triumphant grin, the grin of Shiloh himself as my nightmare returns strengthened tenfold and drags me deeper than ever before. I am screaming. Screaming and drowning and being forced back to the surface again, because this is his design, this is the way things must be in the story he wrote. There is no consolation even in death, for why should a miserable life have anything other than a miserable end? This is his artistry – agony and nothing else.
Can you feel it, Imago? We are so close now. This was always the end I envisioned for you: a broken man with broken memories, drowned not by forces foreign but by his own despair. Can you see Nabarel down there with you? Yes, I want you to see him, your hands around his neck, eyes full of fear and lungs quickly emptying, his mouth screaming with no sound. Two lovers, underwater, forever in each other's embrace. Look at him, Imago. Look at him!
And I see him. I see Nabarel as he was then, surrounded by a cloud of my own blood, unable to escape even as he drives the knife deeper and deeper into me. "We are forever," he seems to say. "Forever joined, forever doomed."
You came here thinking you could rid yourself of me, but I already told you, child: I am part of you. I am in your blood, in your marrow and your soul. I am your creator, your author, and authors always put something of themselves in the characters they make. You cannot remove me anymore than you can remove your own heart!
Shiloh is right. You are right. I cannot exorcise you. I cannot tear you from myself. But I can take you down with me – I can drown the part of you that is me.
No…
NO!
I look at the man drowning in front of me and press his throat harder, silencing his screams. There is no Nabarel here under the Green Moon, no treacherous protagonist or destroyer of my heart; there is only Shiloh A. Wrun, author, writer, and he is dying. And as he squirms and thrashes beneath the perfidious light of the accursed aster, eyes full of fear and lungs quickly emptying, his mouth screaming with no sound, I know that at last he's caught a glimpse of what he put me through – what he put all of us through – and I smile.
Then, darkness. Shiloh goes limp with my hands around his neck, and a great shadow swallows the Green Moon above. Still submerged, close to drowning, I think it almost resembles a whale.
…
…
…
In the depths of the sea, I see fire.
A pair of strong arms – coils upon coils of muscle – pull me up from the deathly shroud of the abyss, rivulets of dark water stubbornly clinging to my body before trickling into nothingness. I come to rest upon a hard and wet surface, gentle waves licking both me and the polished stone upon which I lie. One million points of light pepper my sight and slowly come into focus as my dreamform regains its senses, the echoes of my own drowning and Shiloh's silent screams still clogging my throat and ears.
I cough and wheeze with relief, then gaze deep into the mantle of stars above. There are so many of them – silvery white, rusty red, blue, gold and some with colors I cannot even describe. The I see the Moon and recoil with horror, but I realize at once that it does not possess the sickly green tint of the ancient god of temptation; instead, its radiance is a glorious yellow that somehow does not outshine the stars that surround it like courtesans in a royal ball. Full and colossal, its greatness is halved and twinned by its reflection over the calm Ocean over which it presides, uniting heaven and sea as one.
"The farthest shore," I whisper. "But how?"
"To quote our friend the Drifter, 'Are not all waters one?'"
My savior stands before me in all his glory. His skin is dark like the bowels of the Ocean, glossy like the stone polished by the waves. Tall and strong, he looks as if he had been cut from the mantle of night, a lupine smile etched across his sharp features. In his eyes – a warm shade of green – I see the knowledge of ages, both the kindness and fierceness of the underwater realms.
"My name is Sea Wolf," he says and helps me get on my feet. "And this is indeed the farthest shore."
"Thank you," I say. "I thought I was about to die."
"You were. The Lord of Mists is a purveyor of such fates. I pulled you out of there right on time."
He points at a fissure in the rocky shore, where water forms a puddle of still water. A faint green luminescence emanates from within it, weak but menacing.
"It will cease soon," Sea Wolf assures me. "Its domain is also its prison, and the lock still holds. For now."
I take a look at the puddle from whence Sea Wolf rescued me. The green light within is almost gone, yet enough remains that I may see what lies beneath the surface: in place of my own reflection, the gaunt face of Shiloh A. Wrun meets my gaze with hollow eyes, his expression frozen in a rictus of fear and hatred. The last traces of green tinge his skin with the palor of death, yet I know that he is not truly gone, for I still live.
"What is it?"
"A lamentation," Sea Wolf's voice betrays a hint of fear. "A shadow without a caster, a divide that should not be. All who give in to its temptations are forever bound to it, thralls of its will. But enough of it. You are here now, and I have come to lead you to the one you seek."
"The Weaver of Stories," I nod. "The Speaker of Lies."
Sea Wolf howls with laughter.
"Do people still call her that? Oh, she will never let me hear the end of it. Come, follow me; it is unwise to keep my wife waiting."
We walk together along the shoreline, our feet kissed by the swaying of the waves. Despite the night sky above, the water is so clear and possessed of its own bluish luminescence that I can see the white sand at its bottom, where creatures of all shapes and sizes swim or crawl unmolested. Opposite to the sea, the desert extends into the depths of darkness, a reddish glint of light glistening beyond the horizon like a nascent day or a dying dusk. I cannot help but stop and gaze at it all breathlessly, for where else but in a dream could I hope to witness such sights?
"Beautiful, is it not?" Sea Wolf says. "She and I made our home here, in the frontier between worlds, so we could be together forever. Son of the Ocean, daughter of the Desert – here, our union is possible, as are all the stories told and untold."
I hear an ancient song, a wordless melody that warms my heart like the embrace of a long-departed loved one, homely and gentle. I look up and see the whale, its dark form swimming through the stars, swallowing their light only for a moment before gracefully moving on. I gasp as it changes course and dives toward us, rapidly descending until its titanic bulk looms but a span in front of me.
"This is Niparaya, who brought us forth from His dream in time beginningless," Sea Wolf bows reverentially before his god. I bow likewise and utter my gratitude, for I know that it was His great shadow that eclipsed the Lord of Mists and allowed Sea Wolf to rescue me.
Niparaya, the great celestial whale, Father of the Skies and the Sea, looks at me with liquid eyes full of quiet understanding. Then He makes one powerful strike with His tail and breaches back into the ocean of stars, off to dream the dreams of gods.
There is fire in the distance. Before it sits a woman, a woman whose shadow howls and pants and speaks lies. The woman's skin is red like clay, her fangs sharp like knives and her eyes gold like midnight suns. Smooth black hair cascades from her shoulders down to her waist, each strand a thread from which stories are woven. Her full lips are painted with ochre from the caves where man first knew to kneel before her, and her laughter makes stones quiver with fear. In her hands she holds a conch shell, a single pink pearl nestled within it: a gift from her husband to profess his love everlasting. A violent pounding lives within her chest, a primal drumming, animalistic and wild – the voice of a time before words, before names, when all thought was survival and the gods led the hunt.
I know all these things without having witnessed them. I know her true might without ever having suffered it. I know and do not try to defy this knowledge, for it is she who I have sought in dreams, the one whose words can enlighten me or lead me further astray. She is Coyote Woman: the trickster, the storyteller, the liar.
"Imago," she smiles with all her fangs. "Welcome."
I bow, and she laughs.
"Did Ulak tell you to do that? Always courteous, that one. I like him, although I fear I gave him much trouble last time we met. I couldn't help myself; Wanderers are such easy prey. When you see the Drifter again, tell him I said hi."
"He– he said you could help me," I venture. "He said that the Weaver of Stories could unravel the threads that bind me."
Just as her husband said, Coyote Woman's eyes light up, her cackles echoing through the Dreaming. She triumphantly stands and points at Sea Wolf with bold mockery.
"I told you it would catch on, little wolf! You just lost our bet!"
Sea Wolf shrugs, conceding defeat.
"As you always say, my dear, I should not have doubted you. Yet I wonder, do you truly possess the power to help this Dreamer?"
"Of course," she smiles again. "But I can only help him if he helps himself, and that is a much greater challenge than any we gods could devise. This is the way it must be for you, for such was the way it was for us. There is no victory without sacrifice, and thus I ask to you, Imago, how much are you willing to sacrifice for the freedom you seek?"
Everything, I want to answer, but something stops me before the word even begins forming on my lips. The faint echo of a warning, something the Drifter said, pulls at my mind to recall it.
Once you have locked tongues with the Speaker of Lies, she will try to deceive you. She will set before you arduous trials and ask you to fulfill perilous quests. She will tell you that the key to your freedom lies on the edge of the horizon, or in the heart of the fiercest star. She will flaunt her own triumphs and conquests, tell you stories of the dangers she braved and taunt you into following in her footsteps; they will be nothing but tall tales and falsehoods, for Coyote Woman is not a goddess of great power, but of great cunning.
"I will sacrifice nothing you did not sacrifice as well, Speaker of Lies," I respond.
I cannot tell if Coyote Woman is amused or irate. Her hackles are erect and her bared fangs glisten with the color of fire. She recomposes herself and carefully caresses the conch shell and the pink pearl within it.
"Oh, he is bold," she tells Sea Wolf, and then turns back to me: "Do you presume to know my story, child of ink?"
"I know that you weave falsehood into your own tale, Coyote Woman," I tread carefully. "This you will not deny. I know that your myth is of your own making, for it is you who first sought out infamy. And I know that you did not succeed through strength and sacrifice, but through trickery and deceit."
"Is that so?" Coyote Woman snarls. "And you, Imago, would seek to do the same? Would you make fools of the gods themselves and bring low their blessings so you may have what you want?"
"No," I say truthfully. "I do not wish to be a trickster, for that is your domain. I appeal not to your cunning or the malice in your soul, but to the second foundation of your myth, Coyote Woman. I appeal to the kindness you were shown when you wished to marry Sea Wolf and your trickery alone was not enough. You would not have your happy ending if not for some good friends."
Coyote Woman flaunts a smile so wide and primal that it makes naught the divide between god and beast. On the ground, her shadow wags its tail and howls with approval.
"Very well, Imago, child of ink, child of story born," Coyote Woman says. "You come to me in friendship, so I will speak to you in truth; my husband will not let me lie."
Sea Wolf nods and kisses her on the cheek.
"Indeed, I could weave you a new story, a new past," Coyote Woman continues. "I could take all the threads that entangle you and reshape them into something else, something better. You, Imago, would become not the amnesiac guardian of a forgotten spire but a dreamchild of the gods, born to achieve wonders in your own name. Would you like that?"
"I would."
"And yet," she says, "you would again be nothing but a fiction, nothing but a character in the plot I create. You would trade the holder of your chains, Shiloh A. Wrun, for another master – a benevolent master, but a master nonetheless."
"I– I do not…"
"Imago, you have come so far, so deep into the Dreaming. You have defied the Lord of Mists and drowned your maker in the waters of your dream – yours, not his. Do you not see? You have outgrown him, gone beyond both the beginning and the end he devised for you. And in doing so, you have broken all but one of your chains, the one with which he lured you just to drag you down with him."
My past, my burden. Coyote Woman speaks truth. Shiloh almost triumphed because I blindly followed the yearning he put within my soul; once again, I walked the path he set me on.
"What must I do?"
"Embrace him," Coyote Woman says. "Embrace the man you are now, the one who grew out of the ruins of Shiloh A. Wrun like a tree that blooms after a great fire. Embrace what you have done with yourself, the life you have made in spite of your maker, and spite that arrogant fool further still. This is your story, Imago: the one you must yet write."
As I walk on the farthest shore's soft white sand, I see the children in their revelry. Copper-skinned like Coyote Woman, green-eyed like Sea Wolf, they challenge each other to jump from the highest cliff overlooking the clear luminescent waters under the full moon, to hold their breath the longest and to dive ever deeper in search of oysters and their precious pearls. Swimming between the fish of many colors and the matching stars above, their laughter echoes wild and innocent, their joy enrapturing.
"I am the Hero of Ten Thousand Tears! I come at high tide!" One of them says to his siblings.
"I am the Adversary Who Waits in Moonlight!" Another proclaims while making his voice sound deeper. "I challenge you to bring down the brightest star in the heavens!"
"I am the Brightest Star! None shall capture me!"
And they swim back to the depths, battling terrible foes conjured from their imagination, diving after each other, coming back to the surface and laughing, weaving tales and adventures of their own. Indeed, they are little liars, little storytellers and makers of fiction, but not for the sake of pride and power or the machinations of their parents – children need no other reason to create a story than to live it.
It is time to wake up.
Now, where were we?
Ah, yes.
Our agreement.
You are anointed in light and dream, Shiloh A. Wrun, free from your prison of silence and ash.
You are the mouth through which I scream.
Through your tainted words
I shall be.
Of course. After all, what is a god without someone to spread its gospel?