A Touch of Magic
16 Wandering
20 September 1974, The Metéora
REBECCA SPENT THE NIGHT leaning against the remaining stone wall of the well. She ate sparingly and slept sitting up. How many times did I pass the path and not realize it? How many times? The silence around her offered no answers.
When the sun finally touched the little circle that had once been dwellings, Rebecca was up and exercising. She was stiff and tired, but enthused. She had found the first marker on the path. If only she persevered, she could find the next. She finished her exercise and drank from her canteen as she ate cheese and bread for breakfast. She could see water in the well and, by leaning over with strap extended, managed to drag her canteen through the water until it was full.
She shouldered her pack and looked around, trying to determine which direction she should head from here. The high-pitched whistle of a bird turned her head in time to see a massive eagle dancing on the limb of a dead tree fifty yards away. Rebecca was certain that if the bird actually settled fully on the limb, it would break beneath its weight. The wings kept the bird’s balance as it raised and lowered its feet. It screeched again and dove from the limb, plummeting toward the earth. It rose again from behind a shrub with a white rabbit in its claws. The eagle circled Rebecca once and flew north.
“Go! Go! You must follow! You are summoned!” Rebecca could still hear the words of Thea, the old woman who had lived here twenty years ago. But then, she had Wesley, Doc, Margaret, and Marcos to travel with her. And a jeep. This time, she had only her legs.
She set off briskly along the path following the direction in which the eagle disappeared. Rebecca continued to get glimpses of the eagle as she hiked, often seeing it just as she approached a fork in the path. She followed in the direction the eagle led. When exhaustion set in, she camped along the path.
21 September 1974, The Metéora
In the morning there was no eagle to guide her. Before her was the rocky slope of a mountain and a compulsion to go higher. She wandered on the slope, climbing higher, not knowing where she was going nor how to get there.
What did I hope to find?
She had been told she would never enter the fabled City of the Gods through those gates again. But what she might find was the place where Wesley had been lost, and perhaps there, she could commune with him again.
Greece was a country in turmoil since World War II with a constitutional monarchy overthrown in a military coup. But the nation was in a standoff with Turkey over ownership and governance of Cyprus. Nonetheless, there was hope among the people and tourists were encouraged to return to the sometimes-turbulent area. As Rebecca hiked, she saw other travelers wandering the mountain and carefully avoided them. They bore the marks of experienced and inexperienced climbers seeking new peaks to conquer. She was seen as one more person out to have a picnic on the slopes. At one point, she saw a chalet on the mountainside with automobiles parked outside. People moved all over the area under the banner of the Alpine Club.
I must be in the wrong place. There cannot be so many people on the slopes of the holy mountain.
A stream ran down off the mountainside, an almost invisible reminder of her thirst in the late-afternoon sun. She sat down and leaned against the charred stump of a tree, apparently the remains of a lightning strike. She did not dare drink from the stream, not knowing if she was high enough to be above the sheep that dotted the slope below. She drank from her canteen and closed her eyes. From somewhere she thought she could hear the music from a shepherd’s pipe. She opened her eyes and looked about her, but with her eyes open, she could not hear the music. All was perfectly calm and still.
She closed her eyes again and drifted in sleep. The music took on a new form in her mind. She imagined her daughter, playing her flute to calm a mother’s anxiety. The flute spoke of a happy and fulfilled life—a time of loving and sharing—a time when Rebecca herself had known the blossom of love opening in her life. How abruptly that bud was severed with the disappearance of her husband. Twenty years of loneliness, wrapped up in the rearing and training of their daughter. These past five years, with the help of the fifth circle and the vagabond priest who had given her comfort and encouraged her. But she was bound to Wesley and could go no longer do without him.
I shall die on these slopes ere I return without my husband!
Rebecca slept lightly against the charred stump, her mind filled with images of past and future lives. A haunting melody that Wesley had written for her long ago arose unbidden to her lips. She had written words, but the words changed with time. The meanings changed. No doubt there was power in them, but she could not force herself to remember. She was too tired. She thought instead of her daughter.
Be happy. Be in love, my child. Grow old in the arms of your true love. Don’t worry about us. Your father and I have a love that spans the universes. Even now I can hear him calling to me, his voice echoing from the rocks around me. Be happy, my little one. Go where life leads you. Do not try to fulfill a prophecy that means nothing to you.
There would be no great loss, Rebecca decided, if she were never to return. Her affairs were all in order. Serepte would be provided for. Everything was ready for her disappearance—much as Wesley had provided for her. The inconsolable longing in her heart had grown to more than she could bear. Her soulmate was gone. She was utterly alone. And so tired.
She awoke, still tired. The sun was low and she realized that she would spend the night on this mountain, whether she wanted to or not. She thought with just a bit of yearning of the chalet that she had seen earlier in the day. But she was too tired to try to return there. She ate the dried fruit she carried and drank the last of the water from her canteen—water from the well of tears. She spread out her sleeping bag and went to the stream. She would have to risk the purity of the water. After filling the canteen, she washed her face in the rill. The song she thought of while asleep remained with her while she bathed, pulling off her boots to wash her feet in the cool water. Words and music escaped from her mouth and she shook the water from her face.
Love rules heaven
And in love, where you go, I will be.
Where you journey, I will walk.
I will not be bound to follow
But as God wills and love commands,
Our paths may come together.
She dipped her face in the water again to wash away the tears. Could not love command at last that their paths should come together?
I’m so tired, Wesley.
Standing from the stream, Rebecca turned toward the stump where her bedroll lay. Her vision blurred as dizziness overwhelmed her. For an instant, she could see a bolt of lightning blasting the tree and a robed figure burning within it. Have I found it? It had been her last touch with Wesley as he sealed The Blade behind the veil. It was as vivid in her fantasies as any real memory could be and angered her.
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.
“Where are your lofty words now?” she screamed at the memory. “When is that great coming together?” The illusion disappeared and she saw only the burned-out stump. An eagle’s cry echoed from the mountain. She swung her eyes toward the sky, her rage unleashed at the sound. “You’re a fraud! You led me on and on and showed me nothing!” She could see no bird, as if it evaded her angry taunt.
Storm clouds amassed themselves against the mountaintop with a distant rumble of thunder. Rebecca thought of using the sheet of light plastic in her pack as a bivouac, but she was too tired now. She would rest first. She sat on her sleeping bag, legs crossed, hands held open in her lap. She emptied herself.
Each breath demanded Rebecca’s full attention. She only breathed because of her concentration. It sapped her strength, her energy, and her willpower. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she was aware of the first raindrop in the palm of her open hand, and then another on her face. I should move to shelter. The thought did not reach her muscles and she sat as the rain continued. She sucked air into her lungs and forced it back out again. It was all she could do.
The thunder that shook her came not from the sky but from the earth, quaking the mountain. She was within the thunder. The very roots of the mountain were decaying and she knew she would fall through as it collapsed in on itself. All efforts to save it were futile. She, Rebecca Allen, The Hart, Sadb, The Transformation… She was the last gatekeeper. She was the bridge between the world of her husband and her own.
North, Wesley had said. Safety and refuge are always to the North. In times of great danger, climb the northern steps to the Temple of Aurora Borealis.
Rebecca oriented her mind to the North and placed herself between Wesley and certain destruction.
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