Seeley looked up from adjusting the laces on her hiking boot just in time to see the last of her hiking party disappear around the bend in the trail. Nobody had bothered to look back and check to see if their group was still together. Hopefully, they would not notice her absence for a little while longer. Seeley needed to listen to the thing that was nagging on the edge of her mind. For this she needed silence.
The teenage chatter, bright and sharp like the dappled spots of sunlight filtering through the forest canopy overhead, faded and was gone as the shoulder of the mountain inserted itself between them. Seeley sighed in relief. How could you hear yourself think if you never shut your mouth long enough to listen, she wondered.
She threw her head back and breathed in great gulps of the clean, cool air. It had rained here sometime during the night. The rotting oak leaves underfoot lent a slightly sharp flavor to the smell of damp wood and earth. Birds flitted in the branches high overhead and somewhere beyond, high in the bright blue sky, a crow called out in a rough voice, telling its distant family that all was well. The thing that wanted her to hear it was not up in the sky or hanging about in the treetops.
Seeley studied the forest floor around her. The trail, a well beaten path, hugged the side of the mountain, rising ever so slightly as it wound its way towards the summit. Dark gray granite pillars, like ancient bones of some monstrously huge prehistoric creature, pushed their way out of the rich earth, forming ridges that shrugged off the forest and forced the trail to detour around them.
It was the stone that seemed to draw her attention. She knew the local geology. This mountain was a part of a long string of mountains that had formed when the world was still young and continents were still sailing about on the surface of the planet like ships sailing on a sea. To call them mountains was a generous overstatement, as they paled to mere hills in comparison to their younger mountain cousins. Time, in the form of wind and rain and ice, had worn them down, scrapping away everything but the last remnants of ancient stone. Great blocks of the stuff lay scattered about Seeley, tumbled down from places higher up.
She half closed her eyes and emptied her mind. If one had a vivid imagination, as Seeley had, one might think them building blocks, stones from the walls and columns of an ancient temple, thrown down by the cataclysmic heaving of an earth that would not stay tamed.
Seeley looked up the stone ridge. If one’s imagination ran away with one’s logical mind, one might see stone steps set between carved pillars instead of the random scatter of rocks laid down by the forces of physics and geology.
Without really thinking, she stepped off the trail, onto what might have been the first gray stone step of a long stairway. She nudged the wet oak leaves aside with the toe of her boot. Was it the natural fracture of stone or the work of human hand that made the weather worn rocks seem so regular and evenly square?
She stepped up onto the next stone. Perhaps not human made, these steps. The length of the stride was too long, the height of the riser too high for human comfort.
The shape of the next step etched itself clearly under the drift of leaves, and the next. She followed them like a hound following a scent and it was only when the light turned white that she looked up. A misty ground fog surrounded her, deadening the sound of the forest and obscuring all but the closest trees. Seeley smiled. She was in a magical frame of mind. The mountain had caught a wisp of cloud to please her, it seemed. If one had a vivid imagination, one might imagine great halls and vast throne rooms beyond the edges of the mist. In her head, the ancient trees became the legs of giants and the misshapen stone outcroppings became their dwarfish servants.
Seeley laughed and ran up the steps as fast as her legs could carry her. Out of the corner of her eyes the trees and stones shifted in and out of the mist, giving them a semblance of animation. She let the illusion take hold of her mind. Her heart leapt in her chest and her breath came fast through her lips as she darted past gnarled reaching fingers and mouths full of granite teeth. She snarled in defiance at their somnambulant aggression and raced up the great stair case until her sides hurt and her lungs screamed for air.
When she thought she could not run any further, the mist broke and the staircase ended. Seeley stood under a pale and ancient sun and stared at the great plateau spread out before her. If one were fanciful the flat stony plain might have seem like the floor of an ancient temple marked at its perimeter by a phalanx of evenly spaced stone pillars that in better days might have been columns.
Seeley pivoted around on one heel, frowning. Somehow she had climbed above cloud level. The plateau and its columns were the only things high enough to pierce the endless banks of white fluff that stretch off to the edges of the world. She chewed on her lip upper lip, thinking hard. Imagination was all well and good, but this place was jarringly out of sync with the logic and pattern of the hill she had been climbing. Had it not been a sunny day, down at the bottom of the steps? Had she lost track of that much time, that she had climbed the entire ten miles and 2000 feet of ridge without realizing it? She glance up quickly to check the position of the pale sun in the sky. At most, only an hour had passed since she first set foot on the stone staircase. Something was very, very wrong. She tried to calm her heart but the adrenaline now coursing through her veins came, not from imaginary fears but from a real concern. The one thing she hated more than anything else was the helplessness of being lost.
She stepped slowly backwards, feeling for the edge of the first step with her toes while she listened with all her senses to the silence of the plateau. The place pushed at her, making the bones in her face ache, its emptiness ringing like a bell in her ears. Lightning spiked across the edges of her vision as the pressure of this place’s yearning stabbed at her brain.
Don’t go. Was her imagination talking to her, now?
Seeley stopped and closed her eyes against the glare of sunlight. You have come this far, why turn around now, her imagination muttered softly. She opened one eye and squinted at the empty plaza. The giants and Dwarves are awake now. Best stay and let them settle again, the internal counselor continued.
Seeley snorted. That was just plain silly. A sensible person would retrace her steps and rejoin her hiking partners. She opened her eyes and took a step forward. And then another. The pain in her head eased off a bit. She had always prided herself on being sensible. Her imagination smiled at her encouragingly. Sensible people did not wander about in places that defied logic, she reminded herself.
Sensible people are not a lot of fun, the voice inside her head sniffed contemptuously.
Seeley smiled.
“That’s true,” she said. The sound of her voice slid across the plaza, curling around things unseen, whispering back to her in silent echoes, telling her mind what her eyes refused to see. Intrigued by the new sensation, she tried to repeat it.
“Hello?” she called, watching the sound take shape against invisible pillars that might have had faces if your imagination were running wild. Seeley stepped carefully around the nearest thing that was not there, circling it, hoping it had a back since it did not seem to have a front.
“Who are you? Show me your true shape,” she commanded. The hard edges of her voice turned the air solid in front of her for a moment. For just a moment it seemed that a sharp toothed creature grinned at her. She caught the hint of dorsal spines and leathery wings before it disappeared again.
Seeley scowled. It was playing games with her mind. She folded her arms across her chest and tapped a steel tipped toe.
“Play nice or I shall leave and never come back,” she said sternly.
The air solidified and a young boy of about ten years of age appeared in the spot where she had seen the demon. He stuck his tongue out at her.
“You were never any fun. I was glad when you left,” he said petulantly.
“Do I know you?” Seeley asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. A sensible person never argued with persons of a certain young age and gender, as they tended towards impossible and illogical suppositions.
“A sister should not ever forget a brother,” he chided her. “I have not changed at all but you certainly have. Have you lived too long as human, then?”
“Sister, am I?” Seeley asked, amused. “Where is Mom and Dad, then, little bro?”
The boy studied her from under a puzzled brow for a moment. Then he lifted his hand and swept it gracefully through the air, muttering something in a language she did not recognize. A wave of energy passed though her. A little door popped open in her mind and something dark and crusted with time came tumbling out.
Seeley closed her eyes as a ball of memories crashed through her consciousness and sent everything she knew to be true flying about like bowling pins hit hard and true.
After a bit, when she had the who and the why of herself all sorted and back in place, she opened her eyes and glared at him.
“That was not kind. You always were the biggest pain in the ass, Vali” she said, shaking her head in disgust.
The boy grinned at her. “Likewise, Rinda. Ever so much likewise. Why have you returned to disturb our endless slumbers? Do you feel guilty for abandoning us to our ignoble oblivion? Or have you come hunting us, intent on waking the cult, hoping to worship once more at our father’s feet?”
“I worship at no man’s feet, imp. But I think you are mistaken. Did you not call me? How else did I come here?”
“I did not call you,” Vali said, shaking his head in denial.
“Perhaps it was one of the others,” Seeley, who was Rinda in another life, said, looking passed his shoulder to the places where other things stood just on the edge of knowing.
“Not likely,” Vali snorted in contempt. “There is not one of them left who can call even a bit of the old power. Most days, they can barely remember their own names.”
Seeley looked down at the boy, concerned by the heartbreak that lay behind those words.
“And yet you stay,” she said softly. “Why is it that you have not faded as they have? What keeps you here, stuck between godhood and oblivion?”
A moment of intense grief flashed across the boys face before he snarled at her and leapt into the air. He grew wings and a tail and with a great downbeat of his leathery membranes, he began flying around her head, just out of arms reach, making rude gestures with his hands.
“I am most content having free reign over the Hall of Winds without Father or Mother’s interference,” he hissed. “I can play whatever game I please while they stay locked in their perpetual game of love and hate. I get to be whomever I please. I am the Lord of Chaos. I am the God of Destruction. Do not try to stop me. I will not let you spoil all my fun.”
Seeley eyed him sadly, a sick feeling of suspicion forming in the pit of her stomach.
“What have you been doing, Vali? Have you been playing with the humans?” she asked, not really wanting to hear the truth but afraid not to know.
“So what if I have? You are one to talk!” he shouted, fury making his skin flush scarlet. ”Walking around, pretending to be an animal like them. Only that doesn’t work anymore than me breaking their toys works and messing with their minds. They still won’t do it.”
“Do what?” Seeley asked, her sadness for him like a weight around her heart, now.
“Believe in you. Worship you. Build temples in your honor. Those days are long gone Rinda. We are…” Vali’s face crumpled.. He fell to earth and transformed back into the boy. The boy body curled up on the stone flagging and pressed its face against its knees. “Oh, Rinda,” he whispered in anguish, “we are so alone. No one wants to play with us anymore. We are abandoned and forgotten. If I were not so mad at the injustice, I would have faded long ago, turning myself to stone as the elders have.”
Seeley knelt down and wrapped her arms around him. He leaned his head against her chest.
“Rinda, I missed you so,” Vali said softly. “I am so tired of hating. Come with me to the High Mountain. Let us harden our hearts and dig our toes down into the roots of the world. I want the winds of time to scour away my mind and replace it with Nothingness. The universe bleeds from the weight of our pain. Let us grant it mercy and move on.”
Seeley pressed her cheek to his head. It was temping, this offer. Ever so tempting. She let a single tear seep out from under her lashes and trickle down her cheek.
Rinda, who was Seeley in the middle reaches of the world, lifted her head and wiped away the tears.
“Come with me, Vali,” she offered. “Do not let them win. If they have twisted the world so much that we cannot exist in it, then we must re-imagine it as we wish it to be. Let the old ways crumble into dust. We can build on their ruins. Help me re-make the world into a place where beings such as we two can be happy.”
“You are the Maker. Not me. I am a Warrior god without a battle,” he said, but his head lifted and there was hope in his eyes.
“Let me be honest. I cannot do this thing without you,” she said, letting down the barriers around her heart. “I am very good at imagining but the idea of a long term sustained Making exhausts me. Doubt destroys my resolve. What is the point, if there is no one to share it with? If there were just one other, then perhaps we could truly succeed. What do you say? Come help me.”
Vali sighed and rose to his feet, and taking her hands, pulled her up with him. He looked around the great plaza as if saying goodbye. Then he looked into her eyes.
“On one condition,” he said.
“Name it,” she agreed without hesitation.
“I’ll ride your ass and help you re-make the world. But you have to make it big enough to hold a Warrior god.”
Seeley grinned.
“Absolutely,” she said, with all her heart.
***
Seeley jogged up the last bit of trail before the summit and breathed a sigh of relief. Her hiking party sat in varying poses of relaxation all about the well groomed overlook. Only a few of them looked up as she approached them, telling her that she had not been absent long enough to alarm them. Jogging the last half mile had been overkill. Now, her thigh muscles trembled in exhaustion. Seeley watched her friends fondly as she stood for a moment to catch her breath.
Her best friend Marla looked up from opening her day pack and smiled. Seeley hurried over to her on wobbly legs and collapse on the stone bench next to her.
“What did I miss?” Seeley asked, shedding her own pack.
“Where did you get off to?” Marla asked. “One moment you were there, and then you were gone.”
Seeley pulled out a plastic bag and waggled it between them. It was full of rose hips, mint leaves, Juneberries and morel mushrooms. “Dessert!” Seeley crowed.
Marla dropped her bag of pretzels back into her pack and reached for the mountain’s bounty.
“I knew it. You are the best, Seeley. I am so glad you decided to come with us.”
“Me too,” Seeley said, a secret smile playing about her lips as she looked out over the sea of oak trees stretching off to the horizon under a hot golden sun. “Me too.”
