Behind the Ivory Veil
27 Behind the Veil
Tuesday, 23 August 1955, The Mountain
REBECCA RECOGNIZED all the players as she emerged from the fog. She screamed for Wesley as he dove into the river but her words were ripped away by the wind. Rebecca ran hard for the tree with Marcos slipping on the rocks behind her as the rain increased. They vaulted the near-side stream onto what was now an island in the midst of which the old olive stood unmoving. At the river bank, they could see nothing but rushing water; then, far downstream, Pol’s head and hand emerged. Rebecca ran down the embankment after Pol. Without removing her boots or clothes, she was in water up to her knees when Marcos grabbed her from behind and dragged her back to shore.
“You can’t do it, Rebecca. He’s past the fork and we’re cut off!”
“They’ll be lost!”
“Look.” Rebecca followed Marcos’s hand and saw Doc and Margaret moving downstream after Pol on the far side of the river.
“I can’t do nothing! Where is Wesley?” she screamed at Marcos. They ran back along the river hoping to see the adult men clinging to a rock. There was nothing.
“Pray!” Marcos yelled as he fell to his knees, nearly dragging Rebecca with him.
“Yes, Pray,” whispered the frightened woman, shedding his hand and turning to the old tree. Somehow this was the embodiment of all their problems, a sentinel that watched over the victims of the gods. It made perfect sense in Rebecca’s addled mind. The tree represented the mystery that had captured them all with its eagle still soaring above in the pelting rain. Her hand was in her pocket, pulling forth the star stone and Athamé as she scooped up her staff and faced the tree.
She held the stone between herself and the tree and held the tip of the tiny dagger to the stone. Ignoring proper warding of her circle, she simply concentrated on seeing the tree through the black void of the stone she called Key. Soon she could see it and poured herself through the stone at the tree. It began to glow and take shape. The shape that emerged was a person in a long robe, human in form but not identifiable as male or female. Rebecca’s stomach knotted up as she took in the shape of the specter—a dark reaper—the jailer—the gatekeeper of a circle without end. It had imprisoned her before—no, not her; her daughter. It threatened to claim Wesley and Pol, sucking them into its darkness.
“No! I forbid them to die. Go you down to their grave instead!” she commanded. With all the force she could manage, she swung her staff out toward the tree. “Burn, damn it!”
Pol saw people on the shore but the water was around him even when he struggled to the surface for air. He reached a hand above the tide toward them. Papa! He would be saved. Rocks in the riverbed loomed up before him and he struck against several as he rushed farther and farther, clutching at each passing rock for safety. His hand grasped at nothing, finding only pebbles in the water, worn smooth by the current.
There were stories—people swept up in streams in Greece that surfaced in Italy. One was rumored to come up in Sicily. He plunged beneath the surface into a dark place. There was no surface to find. He could not tell which direction it should be. In the darkness, he sank into the depths of the earth. My mortality caught up with me and I fell. I knew my time would be short in this land of bliss where my love and I played together.
Pol’s limited experience of the world played before him at once, transporting him from heights to depths without end. He died a hundred times. He was reborn a thousand. I will disappear from the face of the earth. His mind reprimanded him. Nothing ever disappears. It just moves to a different place. It changes forms.
Perhaps he would emerge in a new form, a different place. He would have a new life in a new world. He would have a new name; no longer would he be… What was that name he’d had? He no longer remembered his birthright or the family that lived… somewhere. He had been so many things and so many people. If only he could collect them all together. What a person he would be. He would become megalos kai kalos—a great and good man. Or simply a fool, broken down to miniscule parts and divided among the generations that followed—recombined and separated—ground to dust and scattered across the generations.
No wonder there were no longer great men and women. They were past. They lived on, but in mere bits of their ancient glory, parceled out among all living beings. And of all those generations and ages that lived before him, who was he? Only a foolish child who believed in fairytales and ancient stories of magic. What magic could he bring to the world now? He would disappear and rise again in another age as another person, divided again and less than before.
Oh, Papa! I understand! I understand and I cannot believe!
Wesley struggled with the current after Pol, but the weight that clung to his arm in a death grip dragged him down. The water brightened and Wesley could see Pol disappear through the bottom of the riverbed. He drove harder and with one good kick met the gravel and sand of the riverbed. His neck snapped back with the force of the impact and the air was jolted from his lungs. Water filled his nose, his mouth, and his lungs.
Then all went black.
Tuesday, 23 August 1955, City of the Gods
When he awoke, Wesley recognized the fallen and crumpled pillars—the ruins of the City of the Gods. Perhaps he, himself, had brought destruction on the City when he released the goddess from her prison. He struggled to stand up, but a weight clung to his leg. Ryan McGuire had refused to release him, even in death. Or perhaps it was not death as a gasp and lungful of air animated the body in front of him. Wesley frantically looked for a weapon with which to defend himself but there was only a broken fragment of a great pillar.
Ryan McGuire’s eyes burned with hatred when they locked on Wesley. They seemed lit from the inside.
“You!” he gasped. “What have you done? You have lost the First Face of the Cobhan Carles, the Athamé. I will kill you. I will hunt down every living soul you have known and destroy them. I will…” Wesley cut off the stream of invective by clubbing Ryan in the head with the rock. Kicking himself free of the demon-possessed man, Wesley stood to assess his position. A few hundred yards up the rubble strewn former avenue was the rostrum on which he had spent so much time. It called to him with its seductive music and he could see the dancing lights above it, even in the neutral light of the sunless sky. Hyperion’s chariot had been driven off to light some other world.
Wesley nodded as he joined his voice to the tuneless chorus beckoning him. He grabbed the collar of Ryan’s shirt and dragged him along the avenue, over broken pillars and dislodged paving stones. Wesley kept the rock fragment in his hand in case he needed to subdue the man again.
At last he reached the dais and rolled the unconscious man onto it. The ivory veil was a time-proven impenetrable prison. He saw the colors dancing in the center that showed where the opening in the veil had been torn. Ryan groaned and Wesley wrestled the man to his feet, locking him in a painful armlock and marching him to the center where the colors whirled.
“What is this?” Ryan demanded. “What are you doing to me?”
“You wanted to know what was behind the ivory veil,” Wesley growled. “This is your opportunity to find out. This is the entrance. Go. Go and never return.” He pushed Ryan into the colors and they swirled about him. Then, as if sucked down a drain, the colors, complete with their prisoner, disappeared down the star-shaped aperture.
“Seal it,” whispered voices from all around. “Seal it so he cannot escape.” Whether it was a command to him or about him, Wesley did not know. An ache began behind his eyes and centered in his forehead. He remembered now how he had freed the goddess, crashing into the center of the dais and freeing the keystone embedded in his forehead. The stone was gone, held now in his wife’s hands. But his head held the imprint. He knew the passage and sang it with fury as he spun around the rostrum on which he and Pol had spent so much time. Faster and faster. Dizziness overwhelmed him and he wavered, stumbled, and fell. The star-shaped imprint between his eyes meshed with the tiny hole in the rostrum and locked it shut.
Tuesday, 23 August 1955, The Mountain
Rebecca held steady, all her focus on the robed figure standing in place of the tree. The figure raised a hand toward her staff and the other toward the sky. Twin bolts of lightning hit his hands, one from the sky and one from the tip of Rebecca’s staff. The instant clap of thunder knocked her companions to the ground, even as far away as Doc and Margaret were, but Rebecca held steady, eyes locked on the figure. It wavered and faded. All that was left was the old tree, split in half and blazing in flames.
A voice surrounded them.
“It is finished. Your hubris has sealed the gateway. That which is within is within. That which is without is without.”
Rebecca dropped her staff to the ground and lowered the star stone. All she could see was the burning tree, but the voice continued as if it grew inside her ear.
“You wished for freedom, child, but the price of a rite of passage is to leave a part of yourself behind. It has been done. This gate is forever sealed. But prophecy must yet be fulfilled. You will open the gate when you understand your gift and first exercise it, not in need or obligation, but in love. When the goddess has learned this truth, the captive may be freed.”
Rebecca reeled at the words. She sank to her knees as the vision of Wesley dancing on the rostrum filled her eyes. As the lightning split the tree and sealed the gates, Wesley fell—captive in the City of the Gods.
“Damn you!” Rebecca cried. “Damn your divine trickery! I forswear my powers and lay them to rest. You’ll not use me again. Damn you!”
Tuesday, 23 August 1955, Behind the Ivory Veil
I’ve been here before.
Wesley looked around at the featureless gray plain. No sensation. No texture. Naked. Simply gray. Gray to the sight, gray to the touch, gray to the smell. Gray.
No. It was a dream. This must also be a dream.
Music stirred him. He turned and saw the powerful and beautiful woman of his former dream.
“You’re here. Then I will wake up in Rebecca’s arms.”
“So, you have returned,” she answered. “I hoped you would. You must never leave me again.”
“That’s a lot for a dream to demand. Everything I love is in the real world.” He was not as shy as he had been on their first encounter. He was more than a little upset.
“You will find all things here and when you cannot accept what you have found, you will find nothing.”
“Nothing? Am I dead?”
“Life and death have no meaning here. What you desire, you can draw forth from yourself. You will collect many secrets and know many things. But when your knowledge fails you, you will have only your faith to sustain you. That is when you will find freedom.”
“Nothing. Alone. Rebecca… I cannot bear it.”
“You are not alone. I am with you.”
“You are not going to leave me? I’m poor company.”
The woman reached toward him again. He felt her hand on his hand, his shoulder. He watched as their arms melted into each other. He felt her thigh against his thigh and watched her move into his body.
“How can I forsake myself?” she asked when they were almost completely united. “And how can you? When you wish me to be separate, I will be separate. When you have reached completeness, we will no longer be separate. I will be always and forever at one with you. You will be whole and we shall travel together to the Temple of Light.”
She pulled away again and stood beside him, her hand now resting gently on his own.
“Who are you?” he croaked.
“I am your soul. Come. All creation is waiting to spring from us.”
Wesley stood and she put her arm around him to support him. Together, they began to walk.
August 1955, The Sea
Mesh ensnared the boy and he broke the surface of the water. Creaking boards were under him with the smell of fish out of water. Perhaps the smell was his own. Perhaps in this life he would die a fish, trapped in a net. Hands were on his body as voices he did not understand babbled urgently around him. Lips were on his lips and he felt the fast hard rush of a man’s breath into his lungs and he remembered no more.
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