My goodness, just how long have you been waiting out there? Without even a jacket? Come on up, you look like you could keel over. That damn bell, I swear, I need to get it replaced. It's lucky for you that I've just poured tea, and I always keep a second set ready. No need for thanks. As I assume you're here as a customer, I just consider it good service. Come in, make yourself at home. Just put a towel on the couch before you sit down, I don't want want to get the leather wet.
No, don't start with all that. I know why you're here. Don't worry, I'm sure you'll think the wait was worth it when you hear what I have to say. It would be easy business scamming the fools who come here looking for the impossible, but I take enough pride in my role to only tell the truth, so listen carefully.
Go to the center of a cemetery during a completely cloudless day. Place your left palm over your left eye, and look up at the sun until your right eye turns black. When you look away you will see the world with two eyes. The left will be the one familiar to you. The right is the world of moving shadows.
If your first instinct is to return home, to flee from this new sight to a familiar haven, ignore it. You are not yet prepared for what you will find there. Nor should you trust the spirits which, spotting a new entrant into territory they consider their own, approach and whisper of secrets they can exchange. Remember the resolve that pushed you to this place, and hold dear to it, for it is the only thing that will keep you safe. There is no option now but to search onward. Be cautious leaving the graveyard, as your eyes will not yet have adjusted to seeing two sights of this place where the dangers go further than tripping over stones.
The most dangerous thing you can do here is linger over the names of the dead. Many with stronger egos than your own have become trapped in this way, unable to distinguish these extinguished lives from their own. You will see them as you make your way back, crawling on their knees between the gravestones, bellies slick with mud, open mouths choking out sounds like infant mewling. They are convinced that their true self is carved somewhere in the rocks. Ignore the pity that comes over you, watching these limp attempts at finding themselves, by reminding yourself that were they more cunning it would not have come to this. Only weaklings and fools fall victim to cheap tricks. They should have known they didn't have the strength.
The guardians of the cemetery will be less difficult to evade, once they realize that you are no longer separate from their realm. Their task, which has made them cruel, is to keep the dead within the proper limits. To fail this duty is to cease to exist. They will gather at the gate to await you, blotting out the sun with the shadows of their leather wings, drooling in anticipation of spirit-flesh. Bribery will not work here, nor trickery. Only your living will can save you, so stride forward without hesitation. Do not let your breath change rhythm, or your limbs tremble. They will taunt you as you walk through their midst. Ignore the brush of claws against your skin, the growls of hunger, the stench in the air of stomach-churned flesh. Seeing that you do not fear them as the dead do, they may move to let you pass into the city.
This will be a passage into a maze of death. All that is familiar will have melted away, leaving only the bleached bones of the home you once knew. You will ask yourself, has it always been like this? Have the people walking the streets always been covered in wounds that will not stop oozing blood? Have their fears and hopes always buzzed around their heads like flies, hoping to spread like a plague to any neighbor available? Have the crevices across the Earth always been there, swallowing anyone who steps wrong? How does anything innocent survive in a place such as this? Thus it will not be a journey through the land of the dead that throws you into doubt, but a glimpse into the war for common life.
It is not a war you can watch from the rear, because there is no rear. The entire city is a giant frontline, torn by innumerable belligerent powers scraping for ever-shifting patches of territory, never sure if their maneuvers have ended in victory or defeat, throwing bodies into the gaps for scraps of territory that tomorrow will belong to even newer masters. As soon as you step into the streets, you are a combatant. They all believe themselves untainted - the commuters just trying to make it to work on time, anxious last-minute grocery shoppers, groups of friends wandering aimlessly, laughing, smoking - but you can see the miasma that rolls over them, oozing out of each person to infect the air. The driver rolls over the bones of the dead. The gatherers stock up on rations so they can continue the fight. The roaming youth are nothing more than patrolling thugs, looking for a skull to crack. Each is a spirit of hate, clawing at their fellows, wishing their demise.
Just as everyone in this war is a combatant, so are they all victims. The hatred they've summoned from desperation is slowly killing them. Demons roam the streets, birthed from the fog, and they stoke the flames of war wherever they go. When they find someone lacking in will to fight, they strike, clawing, biting, whispering, until their target, unsure even why they are filled with such fear, blaming anything but the true cause of their pain, lashes out at the world like a trapped animal while their tormenters laugh. Without these incitements, it is feasible the war would one day end. Unfortunately peace cannot be achieved so simply. Even these demons have their masters. But who are the generals? They are nowhere to be seen, sequestered in their gleaming towers and estates far from danger, and it is from these places that the smoke of hatred emits most thickly, where the decisions is made again and again: More, more more, anything for the briefest taste of victory.
But you are a strong one. You have a mission. The battlefield is another obstacle, and once you are past the violence of the city, you will put it away from your mind. The next step towards finding what you seek will be the train, which will take you away from the city and into the freedom of the wilds. But even this space between has its secrets. It is a land of crossing, of equal parts hope and resignation. Look into the faces of your fellow passengers, and you will see dreams, or nightmares, come to life in their eyes. In another life you would look past these people, uninterested in stories not your own. Now you will tremble watching them. How hard it will be not to approach that old man in the corner, lost in a tattered book, and tell him not to worry, that his grandson will find help when he needs it. When you look at the schoolchildren across from you, eager for the trip ahead, you may weep from the paths you see before them, the twisting lines of pain and rage and joy. As the train goes on, the passengers will depart one by one, taking their lives with them, unaware of the treasures they have left with you, until the last stop is reached and you are alone. Here you can take your leave, to enter the wilderness.
Here, too, there is war, but of a different kind. There is no power or triumph to be gained through victory here, only another few moments of survival, and the only fuel is need - to eat, to mate, to sleep peacefully for another night. You will appreciate this war, and feel a kinship with the creatures who fight merely to become strong, who adopt any niche to survive. They, not knowing you, will watch silently, carefully, from beyond your sight. Their trust is earned with respect. Though you will not see them, they are all around, passing whispers amongst the trees of this new arrival, which you may mistake for the rustling wind. When night falls, and you are still lost, and must find a place to rest your head, listen to the noises of the woods as you fall asleep. It is on that boundary between waking and dream that you may first glance their meaning.
Each day you will wander, and each night you will lose a piece of you that longs for the old world. The wood-dwellers will not let you starve. Take their offerings with grace, give proper thanks, and bring no harm to the forest as you walk. In this way you will gain their trust. When you first see a mouse crawling through the leaves, peeking its snout up to watch you pass, you will know that you have done right. Listening more closely to the sounds of the woods, you will realize you are now able to distinguish meaning in the whispers, that the dwellers no longer speak to each other but to you. They will tell you the history of this world, how it once belonged only to them, and has since been trampled, extinguished, until they are no longer free in their own homes, do not even rule their own kingdom. They will ask you to remember them when you leave, to beg the world to spare its blade. Eventually, they will guide you down the path to what you seek.
The world here seems more bright, more illuminated. The sky above is clear, blue, deep. I walk through the meadows, across the rolling hills, somehow knowing exactly the direction I need to go to reach my destination. I find it by a large, clear pond. The one I seek is sitting on a rock, inspecting a flower in his hands, and though he does not look I can tell that he feels me next to him. I am like the wind to him: present, perhaps pleasing, but not something worth taking notice of unless it forces your attention. So I speak his name.
He looks and asks why I have come. I tell him my desire. He shakes his head. That I cannot do. When I protest, he looks away, into the distance, and silences me by lifting his hand to point at the far off sky. The clouds there have turned grey, and flash with lightning. It looks as if they are marching towards us.
Do you know what that is?
A storm, I say.
It is power. It can bring life to the plains, and it can rip apart the world, doing each as it pleases. But it must pass, like all things.
With a flick of his wrist, the world changes. The earth becomes barren and cracked, complete flatness extending in all directions without even a shrub to break it up. Instead of a pond, we are sitting next to a pit filled with bleached animal bones.
I am master of this too, he says, and looks at me, as if he expects me to understand. When I don't, he sighs. He gets up, and before he walks away says his final words. Did you think you were the only one who has reached this place? The only one to offer me a trade? Then he is gone, already in the distance, a departing shadow I will never see again if he disappears.
It doesn't matter how much I beg. He keeps walking. I run after him, but no matter how hard I push myself I can't catch up, he is only getting further and further away, until I collapse to the ground, panting and heaving. When I look up, he is gone. The sun beats down on me, and sweat drips into my eyes. I look around me, and see only the scattered skeleton of a long dead lizard. The blank eye in the skull seems to be watching me, staring back into my own, matching darkness with darkness.
I have never felt more alone.