Month: October 2018

As far as we were concerned, all hell had just broken loose.  The walls, the ground, the ceiling shook and fissured, tumbled and tore loose, as great pillars of rock and calcite cracked and twisted, and the ceiling lurched above us, causing stone knives to rain down and stab at the floor behind us.

Water spewed down from jagged breaks in the rock, spraying us with cold and wet, threatening to douse our torches and swallow us in darkness.  We ran…as fast and as quickly as our weary legs could carry us.  Bounding off of granite walls, dodging the rocks that fell before us, threatening to obstruct our path.  While being pelted by tiny bits of stone and silt and sand swirling into our nostrils threatening to choke us of the very labored breaths we still had, we stumbled, crawled and scrambled through the dark musty caves twisting and bending in the deepening darkness ahead of us.

I heard shouts within the cacophony that I could not make out as being either human or animal, as those ahead of me careened off of the narrowing walls.  A large stone slab had fallen from an upper shelf of rock, slamming downward with a thunderous impact, lodging across the top of the two great stones between which we were passing. Its ponderous oblong shape forming a top lintel, much like one of the monolithic stone formations of Stonehenge, just outside of Wiltshire, England, and west of Amesbury.  The slab chipped and pelted us with small sharp fragments off its face, but did not fracture and pound us with more significant breakage.  If we survived this pelting, we would be lucky to only have received abrasions, small cuts, and bruises, rather than contusions, fractures, and gashes.

Water jets sprayed down behind us, forming a hissing curtain of wet rage chasing us into the darker throat of the caverns, driving us with a fury we could not dare look back on.  Great claps of thunder coughed billows of smoke and debris, as parts of the ceiling fell, rocks pinging off stone plunking into pools deep and some shallow, giving forth noises that pounded our eardrums with a persistent ringing that drowned out all other sounds beyond us.  In a half turn, under the fluttering light of our torches, we saw that the way behind us had been sealed off by tons of fallen stone and gravel, ensuring us that this would be our certain grave and fate if we found no other way within the darkness ahead of us.  Billows of dust, silt, and roiling smoke extended outward in plumes, like spectral arms reaching out from within an open, but rapidly filling, grave, pursuing us at our heels threatening to extinguish our firebrands, choke us with grit and ejecta and bury us where we fell.

We pressed through another narrow passage and our torchlight waned to curling embers upon each pole, barely enough to see through the blackness, but once on the other side of the narrow way, the room opened up, and the flames once again awakened to bright, flaring and spattering light, causing our long shadows to jump and dance along the walls and reflect in golden tremors upon a submerged floor in roughly two to three feet of shallow water.

Witnessing the rebirth of the nearly extinguished flames, Begglar spoke forth a verse from the Ancient Text, which echoed ominously within the great cavern, and, signified by the sound, that the room was even larger than we’d supposed it to be.

“5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” [John 1:5 NLT]

“Amen,” Nell added to her husband’s quotation as she and Christie held their torches higher so that we could take stock of ourselves.

We were a mess.

White powder covered us from head to foot, caked and streaked in places by the spritzing.  We were scratched and bruised but no worse for the wear.  But more importantly, all accounted for.…except for Maeven.

It had seemed so terrible to abandon the place where we had lost her, like a betrayal.  But I knew despite my conflicted feelings we had done what we were supposed to do.  The direction had come to me within my inner spirit, and its voice was clearly not that of my own.

Despite what Nell and Begglar had assured us, I felt sadness and remorse that we had not been able to be certain of where she went or where we had lost her if indeed she was lost to us.  Grief delayed is no less severe than grief realized, and I knew that both Christie and James shared my feeling of loss.  Somehow, we had done what needed to be done, in spite of our frantic instinct to try to search the Ghost Pool more thoroughly before we abandoned it.  But if we had done so, we all would be dead.

A curved passage bent ahead, as if the great pool and chamber that contained it was kidney-shaped, and there was something odd about the edge of the bend.  We could see its outline, without the benefit of the torchlight.  Somewhere, further in there was light above.  And if there was light, there just might be another way out.

***

Outside, the massive wave surged towards the shore, the group of seven brave souls clinging to the large log with all of their might.  The water ahead of the wave receded from the embankment, peeling back its wet lips into the front curl of the rising mound of water, revealing rocks and boulders once submerged below, now laden with wet green moss and interspersed with flopping fish caught in the breaks and crevices and pools below.   Green mossy skeletons of unfortunate land creatures, most likely victims of the Moon Sprites, lay strewn upon the lake bed now revealed as the wet skin of the basin and river shrank backward before the coming violent surge.

Almost within seconds of the recession, the brow of the wave lunged forward, its crest of water smoothing into a slope downward, as the water returned with a rush.  As the lead edge of the water slammed into the embankment, streams of water jetted upward into the trees and forest beyond tearing limbs and shoving mightily upon the undersides of the lower boughs.  Branches crackled under the onslaught of water and pressure, but the great trunks of the forest guardians stood strong against the barrage.  The water splashed up the embankment into the deepening forest beyond, sweeping pine needles upward with other forest detritus, until the force of the wave was expended, and the resulting streams fell backward into the lake borders below.
The log had magnificently borne the remaining company upward, over the rocks lining the shore, and as the water fell backward, the large limb lodged between two large fir trees and its forked limb caught between a bough and the trunk, nearly cracking the branch, but stopping short of it.
Matthew and Dominic had done their best to keep Miray from losing her grip on the log during the violent depositing, but their strength had been expended, and it was all they could do to keep their own grip upon the tree.

Miraculously, there were no injuries to any of the group, and as the water surrendered back to gravity’s call, the group slid off of the log onto the muddy grass that had once been a lush green embankment along the shore.

***

Maeven’s heart rate and pulse pounded as she began to feel a panic seize her body.  How long had she been down?  Where was Nory?  Was the nightmare real?  It must be.  Oh, God, she began to weep, realization pressing her downward, it must be.  Voices buzzed about her, she could not focus on them.  Why couldn’t she speak?  What had they done to her?  Where was this medical facility?  How did she get here?  Nory?  She’d last seen him flung from the vehicle, disappearing into the cold darkness.  He’d plugged his laptop into the lighter socket of the SUV and had been working.  WiFi was terrible between the peaks of the mountain ranges, but they’d picked up a faint cell signal passing through the last town that was named Cuchara, the Spanish word for Spoon, and they hoped to cut across to Trinidad and reach Interstate 25 and then on down into Sante Fe, New Mexico before it got too late.

She remembered attempting to crawl out of the vehicle, but something furry and smelly blocked her path and some sort of a bird.  Black feathers.  It didn’t make sense.  The cabin of the crushed SUV reeked of blood, and rotting flesh, and vomit.  Remembering brought the terrible smells suddenly back, burning her nostrils with the putrescent assault and she almost passed out from the memory.  Her throat was raw and burned.  She was intubated.  A breathing mask covered her mouth, but a trach tube was fed through an incision in her throat.  Uh, it was too much to take in.  Her hand was bound but the other one…she felt downward toward her abdomen.  Oh, dear God, no, No, No, NO!  Her eyes burned as tears spilled out over her cheeks, pooling and distorting the room and ceiling under their watery weight as a deep and profound sadness and pain plunged her down beneath them.  My babies…oh God, not my babies too.

Her abdomen tapered to a small belly, emaciated with time, and lack of exercise.  She was frail and weak.  She had lost time, memories, and sense of place as remorse, dread and guilt slammed terrible weights down upon her.  Her eyes squeezed tightly shut, trying to block out this terrible reality.  She felt pressure as hands reached out to grab her within the darkness and pull her deeper down into blackness and despair.

She felt suddenly cold as the dark enfolded around her, and she had an awareness of a trace memory that involved ice.  A lake full of ice.  And terrible, mesmerizing monsters with burning eyes…

***

“The sedative is taking effect,” Sereta observed as Maeven’s body finally surrendered to the drug they’d injected into her IV line.  Judy, the head night nurse, had returned to the room, with the authorization from Maeven’s physician, Dr. Corsi, to provide a sedative if needed, to avoid her going into distress.

“I wonder if it was the right thing to do,” Dora offered quietly, “She’s been down so long.”

“Five years, poor thing,” Sereta agreed, “Lost her husband in the car wreck AND the twin babies she was carrying.”

The three of them observed their charge’s heart rate even out to a steadier rhythm, and her pulse and respiration began to normalize as the medicine coursed through her veins settling physical her into the numbing fog of sedation.  But for her metaphysical state, that was a quite different story.

“She’s got enough to deal with when she wakes,” Judy remarked, “Best let her sleep, for now, a bit more.”

“Chart says she’s Jewish,” Dora whispered, “Should we call a local Rabbi to be here in the morning when she wakes?  She’s gonna need someone here when she’s told.  Does she have anyone we could call?  Family?”

“Not local,” Sereta shook her head slightly, “She’s got a half-sister in New York.  Family disowned her when she married.”

“Isn’t her married name Stein?  Isn’t that a Jewish surname?”

“Now that’s none of our business, ladies,” Judy took charge of the conversation, “We’ve got enough to do tonight with the other patients, so scoot.  Leave her be.  Chaplain Gibbs’ll be by in the morning.  Same as he always does.  Praying for her.  Reading an encouraging verse or two over her to give her calm.  He always visits the coma patients, even when their own family and friends eventually tire of it.  Some say it doesn’t matter much, but he thinks they hear it somehow and if you watch their monitors they seem to be at ease when he comes.”

***

The eight survivors of the harrowing ride across the lake clinging to a dead tree could barely believe the sight before them.  The cliffside crescent of the Trathorn Falls had seemed to collapse and implode, creating a much deeper descent off of the rock face into the basin lake below, and water barreled downward from the precipice with a pounding fury.  Great vaporous mists filled the air as the driven wet, roared into the lake below with a deafening and constant exhalation.  The concavity beneath the thundering cascade had collapsed under the weight of the water above, backfilling under the accumulation of pressure beneath the ice caps, cavitating and bearing down on the crest of the canyon lip until the ledge and chin jutting outward above the passage to the caves suddenly could no longer bear such pressure.  An assemblage of broken rock and scree from the cliff face, cause the pounding water to send monstrous white plumes of mist up into the air, forming a beard of moisture around the base.

If Mr. O’Brian, Christie, Maeven and James and Mr. and Mrs. Begglar were anywhere near the edge of the falls when the collapse occurred, there was very little chance that they had survived under such incredible destruction.

They would be on their own now.

Lost in a world they knew very little about.  Most of their party had been kidnapped and taken by the Protectorate Guards.  No doubt the horses were already appropriated by their captors.  They were afoot in the wilds, for the most part, stripped of their weapons which had fallen beneath the waves and lay at the bottom of the lake, with no help, supplies or guidance in sight.  Dominic was the only native of this land present who might still help them, but he too was witnessing the devastation with a mask of fear and shock, and no doubt was struggling with whether to believe what his eyes told him or hold out some faint and remote hope that somehow, deep inside the caverns, his parents might still be alive.

***

Deep within the heart of the caves beneath the collapsed-face of the Trathorn Falls, within an interior cavern of standing water, smooth and still as if formed of polished glass, we hesitated to move forward along the interior ledge to round the bend where the edge of the walls lightened.  It seemed almost a sacrilege to disturb the calm serenity of the smooth pools, and we were not yet certain whether it was, in fact, safe for us to enter these waters, nor how deep the seemingly shallow bottom was, nor how stable or solid it might be if we tried wading into it.  Some cave pools had been known to be deceptively shallow but were in fact filled with several feet in depth of a kind of sucking cave mud that would pull and eventually drown the unwary and foolishly intrepid soul foolish enough to enter it, without first ascertaining its true bottom.  Yet we had no choice.  Behind us was such devastation that we could never hope to dig their way out.  Before us, lay the edge of light breaking through from above somewhere up ahead, but a narrow sloping ledge that did not extend all the way to the lightened bend in the tunnel would prove treacherous to get around the pool without entering it at the last, before climbing up on the far end.  One might attempt to swim across without touching the bottom, but there was no guarantee that the smooth water was deep enough all the way across to avoid touching the bottom entirely.  We could attempt to use The Pearl once again to flash freeze this pool but were not certain exactly how its mysterious properties worked.  Without Maeven’s confidence and experience, I was extremely hesitant to risk losing it in the deceptive cave pool mud without some other assurances but Begglar and Nell could give me none.  They had been just as surprised as I and the others were when the Pearl had done its wonders.  Nothing in their experiences had prepared them for what they witnessed from it.

***

When Maeven came to herself, she realized she was once again in someplace where she shouldn’t be.  Something was very wrong.  She lay across something hard and musty with a slight give, but somehow old and barely recognizable in the gray half-light.  She could just make out some sort of instrument panel, hidden in shadow under the dark brow of a dashboard, and an old-style, white-grip steering wheel.  She was in some old abandoned car, lying across its front bench seat, it vinyl cover crackled with age and perhaps sun and neglect.  Old tuffs of cotton poked through the cracked seat, and hard spring wires once encased deeply within the cotton batting now were hard and pressed up uncomfortably against her hips and body like a griddle.  Old worn leather panels had faded over time, and parts of it had rotted or been chewed by goodness knows what.  All she knew was she should not be there.  The car, for one, was not stable.  It was canted and lay front downward, such that her knees and hands extended kept her from falling forward into the rotted-out floorboard.  The windows were dusky, with a fine layer of accumulated dust covering its splintered glass, but she could barely make out some sort of bluish stone walls, under the sole beam of some ray of light that came from somewhere above and behind her.  She tried to adjust her slanted position and pull herself upward for a better view, but the old car itself moved, creaked and groaned with her slightest motion or shifting of weight.  She thought for a moment that she might be in their old SUV, but nothing looked right.  This car was much older, and from what she could tell of the windshield posts and side-view mirrors almost occluded with dust, the car was a baby blue color.  She’d never been in a vehicle like this.  It’s make was long before her time.  Some foreign make or manufacturer.  Since the car had bench seats she could not see between the seat or into the back seat.  It had no headrests.  Another sign that it was a very old make and model.  Was she in a junkyard?  If so, how did she get in a junkyard.  She remembered a hospital bed, some nurses, orderlies, a lot of wetness, and blood.  Some painful memories on the edge of her mind were present but unclarified.  A sense of loss.  Painful and dreadful loss, but nothing more than that deep saddening feeling.  She didn’t belong here.  The outside looked to be made of stone.  Bluish stone.  Since she could not see beyond the car’s interior, she couldn’t be certain but…we she in a…large cave?

There was a slight noise behind her.  Somehow distant but not too distant.  Was something in the backseat?

Ummh!  She froze.  Had she heard right or was her mind playing tricks on her?

The sound was muffled, compartmentalized.  Partitioned away from her.

Ummh!  Uh-uh-eeuhh!  A knocking noise, sounding like something was struggling and crying…no mewling.  Crying or sobbing into a rag or somehow something muffled the voice.

Bam-Bam-Bam!  EEee!  Uh-uh-uh! Crunch! Ah-ah-aaah!

Something or someone was behind her, but not close enough to be in the backseat.

She heard muffled sobbing again.  The sound of despair that she knew and recognized all too well.

Someone else was close, but pinned or trapped or bound…or…in some confined space…

Maeven’s eyes went wide as suddenly she knew…whomever it was making those pitiable noises of struggle and despair was doing so from within the trunk of this very car.

She lurched upward, grabbing the back of the bench seat to pull herself up into a sitting position.

And then the vehicle began to lurch and rock and roll and bounce downward, throwing Maeven forward into the dash, knocking her forehead against the dusted and shattered windshield, spiderwebbed with jagged and gummed glass.  She was, indeed, atop a junk heap, and there was deep turquoise blue water below.  The beam of light from above and behind her made it look like a lake of antifreeze coolant, for the water was an unnatural shade of blue.

***

As I edged along the lip of the ledge, my feet slipped but my grip on the jagged crevice in the cave wall kept me from plunging headlong into the pool.  It was indeed full of silt and mud.  James had tested the water depth with the handle end of his halberd, and its tip easily penetrated the false bottom stirring the water into a murky dull brown in the yellow firelight as James fed the shaft, hand over hand down until he had to hang onto the barbed cap at the top of the pole weapon, but still could not feel the bottom with the blade almost into the water.  His weapon was at least six feet in length, and we knew that had we tried to wade or swim through that pool, it would have been a death trap.

I had volunteered to attempt the narrow ledge around the deep pool to see if the way forward was even passable.  If the cave terminated shortly thereafter, or if the shaft of light was at an impossible angle or too high up to reach, this way would do us no good anyway and we were better off going the other way around the kidney-shaped pool to see if there was another tunnel that we could explore beyond this cavern.

As I rounded the bend on the tiny sloping ledge, teetering, but clawing my way along the wall, reaching into every crevice I could find, I had almost made the bend when I slipped, my foot scuffing the edge and splashing into the water, creating wide concentric ripples across its smooth and deceptively serene surface.  The skin on my hands and fingers were raw, and slightly bled from gripping the black and bluish stone, but I held on, catching myself with the other foot, my heart racing and breath heaving, as I drew back from the water, rising up again to lean against the rough wall.

The light had grown brighter, and there was indeed a shaft of early morning sunlight, dust motes dancing in the golden beam, streaming down from an almond-shaped aperture high above the cave floor.  I looked upward, discouraged and disappointed, but then with a sigh, I looked to my left and beyond it.  A new pool of water extended beyond and around the bend and was separated by an assemblage of rocks and a brief land bridge dividing the silt-filled brown dust pool reflecting the arch and lighted ceiling above it, and a rock-strewn pool of some of the bluest water I had ever seen.  The dark blackened rock along the cave walls seemed to also have a bluish tint to it like it had veins of copper along with black granite and basalt.  But to the far end of the cave was a mountain of junk extending forty-feet upward below a cool silver-blue ray of sunlight.  The junk seemed to be an assemblage of rocks and shapes and objects that seemed out of place and suddenly my breath caught in my throat.  They were out of place…and out of time…and should not be here…

This was bad.  Very bad.  Dangerous.

My heart stopped, and my breath audibly wheezed out of me in shock.

This pile of detritus in the far corner of the cave, leading upward to the light above was Surface World junk.

There were old rusted drums half-submerged in the water, tangles, and masses of coiled and jumbled cabling, broken appliances, twisted and battered metal cabinetry, and teetering on the edge about fifteen feet above the water was an old blue rusted car.

The Mid-World was once called the land of Nod.  In the ancient tongue, the word ‘Nod‘ merely meant ‘Wandering’.  So, in essence, this place and these lands were essentially the ‘Land of Wanderers’.  The portals or doorways to this land were not always closed to mortal man in the waking state.  They were held open pathways of light that bridged the entire vastness of the created universe, which tangentially touched the earth at eclipse points, where the morning and evening path of the Sun’s light kissed the horizon of the earth in those briefest of seconds before the circle of the planetary plane, seemed to lose or gain the solar light of Sol, our Surface World Sun.  It was only in recent times when those Surface Worlders who have, by a measure of faith, come to traverse these portals and experience the Mid-World lands within their dreams.

At one time, in Earth’s ancient history the One came down into a beautiful garden of His particular delight and creation to meet with and fellowship with two of his creations, a male and a female, who were given something no other life form in the entire universe was given.  A binary imprint of Himself.  A triune being, having three distinct yet harmonious components with which to enjoy, perceive and celebrate their existence and find the particular favor of the One who created them to be something nothing else in all His creation could be.  Sons and daughters.  They were given physicality in a corporeal body that could sense the material world, with sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell and grow in stature, strength and muscle skill.  They were given their personhood in the form of a soul which allowed them to know differences, delight in discovery, and find a uniqueness in themselves that assured them that no other being was exactly as they were, so they occupied a place within the universe that only they fit into.  The soul also allowed them both to appreciate sameness and differences in other beings such as they were, but in their uniqueness, they were given a particular purpose and reason for their specific existence.  That personhood was like in some ways to others which allowed them to commune and agree, but in areas where they were different, these differences allowed each of them to learn something new and gain meaningful knowledge from those interactions.  And finally, these beings were given a spirit which beckoned and stirred them to look beyond what they saw, felt, heard and perceived about the world and see behind it another layer of mystery, and an awe of something so vast that the other two components of their being could not qualify or classify.  Their vested spirit gave them the capacity to commune with their Father/Creator, and it called them to seek and yearn for more than even the body or soul could perceive.  To have the possibility to know something beyond the limits of their awareness of themselves and gain an awareness of Him who cannot be contained by any limitation.  A grand Giver of Discovery and Wonder, beyond all that could ever be imagined.  It also gave these beings the capacity to be overwhelmed and celebrate in the delight of knowing and being loved by the One who gifted them with their individual personhood.

Light, throughout the cosmos, behaves according to an imprint of order given by its Designer.  Everything created by His Word and Hand, in the shaping of all, retains something of the laws and order into which it came into being.  No evil is inherent in anything created, because it came from the Hands and Mouth that speaks only truth and perfection.  Therefore, when chaos was introduced into the world, all created things behaving according to design, resist and will not live in harmony with disorder.  It is said, in the Surface World, that nature abhors a vacuum.  And this is true.  A void or vacuum represents an imbalance in the order of all and creation seeks to correct that imbalance, by serving justice at all costs.

Chaos that can be perceived in a seeming resistance to order, is actually a struggle between two principles that have an observable physical component.  The rules of order are what holds everything together and they are precisely balanced, but it is disorder that shifts that balance into what seems to be contention or conflict.  Death permeates existence to such staggering effect, that it is hard for created beings to imagine or perceive that there was ever a time in history where it did not exist or seem to prevail.

***

When we realized Maeven was missing, Christie, James and I feared the worst.  That she’d slipped out of James’s arms, was drifting downward and if she had not been dead already that she most certainly was now, and we’d find her drown body somewhere at the bottom of the pool.  In the seconds of that realization, we’d prepared to dive in and look for her, but we both were shocked when Nell and Begglar prevented us from doing so.

“She’s not there, lad,” Begglar reached out a hand to steady James.

“Aye, lassie, don’t you be fretting.  This is good news,” Nell said putting a comforting arm around Christie.

“Good news?!” I asked, incredulous, “How can this be good news!?  Where is she!?”

Nell looked at me with an arched eyebrow, and a wry grin on her face, “What’s happened to her is what happens to all of you Surface Worlders.  After all these years, she has finally awakened.”

***

As dawn pushed the darkness back into evening’s envelope and mailed the deferment through the horizon, the sky celebrated the golden coming of the sun.  At the hem of the frozen skirt of the falls, the three erstwhile sentries watched as the three young men converged on the area where they’d left the fallen log that Maeven had referred to as a branch.  Beyond them, they could see the edge of the lake but could not see the shore itself or their waiting company because they were cloaked under the shadow of the tall forest.  Yet there was movement.  A small figure was coming toward them across the ice at a run.  Something was wrong.  Very wrong.

***

“Where did you guys last leave it?” Will asked as he, Dominic, Mason, and Matthew jogged carefully across the ice sheet, ice grit crackling and shushing under their footfalls.

“We used it to take down the bull,” Mason offered, still a bit unsure of Will after the cold stare he’d received from him when he returned his spear.  He’d introduced himself, giving the young man another chance and the benefit of the doubt, but Will had only snatched the spear away from him and ignored Mason’s proffered hand of friendship.

Will had never been pleasant to be around.  As far as Mason was concerned he always seemed to have a certain air of contempt for others within the company, never really trying to get along except with one of the other guys about his age who also seemed to be up to no good.  Matthew was generally liked by the group, a good-natured and willing guy, eager to help and always volunteering to chip in.  With Matthew, what you saw is what you got.  He was not given to pretense or some hidden agenda, and in his company, you felt at ease.  Dominic was an easy-going fellow as well, good-humored, but had a sort of sadness behind it and a world-weariness that defied his youth.  He seemed more deliberate and considered in his actions, and while he was welcoming enough to the Surface Worlders of the group, he had a sort of guarded caution with them as well.  He knew they were not accustomed to what might be ahead and would be perhaps frightened if they knew all that he knew about the lands and the beings that populated it.  He also had a sort of oldness about him because of the terrible things his young eyes had had to witness growing up in the Mid-World in occupied territories, with his family living under suspicion for so long.  Dominic knew secrets he was not allowed to tell or share, and as such he was in some ways a private person.  Affable, yet reserved until a degree of trust was earned and experience over time permitted him to place confidence enough to extend friendship.  Like his father, he seemed more like a person hosting a group of city-dwelling visitors with natural good manners of rural country folk.

They spotted the log up ahead off to the left, barely visible along the surface of the ice because its surface had been dusted with windblown frost and snow.  A slushy irregularly-shaped pool of broken ice lay treacherously before it.  A waiting trap for the unsuspecting approaching the log from the front.  The ice had broken as the body of the bull Moon Sprite had been torn from its frozen pocketed prison, cutting a sidelong furrow to the hole making the broken pool more ovoid in shape.  The broken ice settled back in place, however, creating the appearance of a false surface, with a powering of dust seeming to smooth out the disjointed jagged pieces of floating ice and slush.

“Circle wide, boys,” Matthew cautioned, “The edge is deceptive, and that water is icy cold.”

“I can vouch for that,” Mason quipped.  His legs only now beginning to feel less of the numbing effect from having partially fallen in.

Will, Dominic, and Matthew circled wide trying to come in at the log from its backside.  Mason lingered in the front, suspicious of where exactly the stronger ice ended and the faux surface portended death by hypothermia or drowning.  The ice was just as dangerous as anything they fought upon its surface.  Its depths would swallow them in an instant.

The boys approached the log cautiously, testing the stability and integrity of the surface, with each creeping step, balancing their weight on their back leg and then slowly shifting forward.  Dominic reached the curved limb that rose like an extended skeleton bone upward from the central trunk, its tanned, bark stripped surface polished smooth by the abrading stones as it had been carried downriver through the deepening river and eventually over the precipitous falls to eventual fall and drift towards the bank of the falls basin where they had found it.  Now that tanned wood had a grey look, with ice collecting along its limbs and sparkling in the light of the dawning sunrise to their east.  The others reached the log and placed their hands on the limb extended plaintively upward, as if the tree was reaching for them as well.  Together they tugged at the limb but found that the base of the trunk was partially frozen to the lake surface and a portion of its twisted root extended into the broken pool.  With not much leverage, the boys knew they would have to manhandle and rock the limb and log loose of the pool’s edge, but that would increase the danger of one or more of them falling in.  If their pulls and tugs fractured the edge of the ice too much they might find themselves in even greater danger it the ice leading up to the back of the log did not hold.

Matthew looked over at Mason, still hesitating on the other side of the broken pool.

“Dude, you wanna give us a hand with this?”

“If I do, who will rescue your icy butts if you guys fall in,” he grinned, “I’m doing fine over here.  I have confidence you guys can get it loose.”

Dominic looked and Matthew and Will and shrugged with a grin, “Lad’s got a point.  If the ice gives way, we’ll be needing someone atop it, to lend us a hand.”

Will remained unconvinced and muttered, “Coward,” but Matt and Dominic let it slide without comment.

Dominic and Matt put their lead foot up against the base of the log and placed both hands on top of each other, wrapping their cold chilled finger around the narrowing limb.

“On three,” Matt directed, but Will stood back a little, hesitant to join them, looking at the snow dusting the trunk of the log and the curve of the root extending into the black scar into the water beneath them.

“One, two,” and on the unspoken ‘three’ both Matt and Dominic threw their weight backward, extending their arms tugging mightily on the branch while pressing against the log’s base with their lead foot.  With a crack and crunch, the log lurched and then twisted, its frosted root clawing and then wrenching free of the broken pool, fling stinging water spray outward, spritzing Mason on the other side of the pool.  The drops of water stung his face like icy bees, and Mason gasped and stepped backward, almost falling on his tail end.

Will guffawed and then laughed aloud, making no apology at taking savage pleasure in Mason’s sudden discomfort and shock.  Both Dominic and Matthew landed hard on the ice below them, as the end of the log slid away from the pool’s edge and the extended branch turned downward, lift the other extended limb from the lake surface.

Matt and Dominic cast resentful looks at Will and shared a quick conspiratorial look at each other.

“Methinks this lad needs a shellacking,” Dominic muttered quietly to Matthew, “What thinks you?”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Matthew rejoined, “If I didn’t think it might do him in, I’d say he was ripe for a quick swim in this pond.”

“Aye,” Dominic agreed readily, “More’s the pity tis not summer.  We’d give him an attitude rinsing indeed, wouldn’t we?”

“In a heartbeat,” Matt rejoined as he and Dominic rose up from under the limb and climbed to their feet.

Just then a warbling sound of soft cries came from behind them.  They turned, to see a girl running toward them, soft unintelligible cries coming from her as she ran towards them as fast as her small legs would carry her.

“It’s Miray!” Mason said as the girl came close enough for them to identify her.

“Miray!  Over here!” Matt shouted.

The girl had spotted them and was crying with a blend of relief and sheer panic.  The others came around the pool and joined Mason and moved toward the running figure.  Within moments she reached them and fell breathlessly into Mason’s arms as they kneeled down to her level, trying to calm her fright and reassure her.

“What’s wrong?” Will asked.

“They’ve…,” she breathed heavily, trying to catch her wind, “They’ve gone.  Were taken.  All of our supplies.  The wagons the horses.  They just came out of the woods.”

“Who,” Matt asked, “Where have they gone?”

“Pr-Protectorate guards,” she stammered, “Caught up with us.  Tracked us with those horrible dogs.  Cheryl was bitten.”

Her eyes were still wild with fear and panic.  “I didn’t know what else to do,” she pleaded for their understanding, “I just ran.  They came up on us so sudden.  They were gonna let the dogs kill her.  We begged them to stop.  To call off their dogs and we would do whatever they wanted, but they just laughed and kicked him away, and threatened to trample him with their black horses.  I just ran.  I didn’t know what to do.”

Mason held her close while she trembled and patted her, trying to calm her, but knowing it would do little good.

Dominic put a steadying hand on her shoulder and pulled a strand of unkempt hair from her eyes.

He cupped her chin and cheek gently and spoke in low calming tones, “Miray, you did the right thing, lassie.  You came to us and we’ll be needing to tell the others.  We’ll find them, dear.  There are others who can help us, but we need to let O’Brian and my Da know.  Take courage, dearie.  You did the right thing.”

***

The three sentries saw the four young men and the girl come together and form a distant group huddling around her, and they were drawn toward them, curious to see what may have happened.  When they had gone several paces out from the edge of the falls, they suddenly heard a loud crackling noise behind them, and each pivoted searching for the source of the noise that now sounded like a low rumble.  Pieces of ice tumbled down from the high cliff above the falls, and struck the ice formations, pivot and careened and bounded off of jutting stones and the bare rock facing striking the frozen false ground below, with percussive explosions.  A thundering rumble following the fissuring of a large slab of ice as it too ponderously fell to the foot of the falls, bursting through the frozen base, splintering the crust with a loud bang, water displaced from beneath bursting forth from the gaping hole, sloshing in waves out into the trench below the base.  A tide of slush and ice pursued them as they backed away from the frozen teeth of rock and ice, as the silent falls seemed to awaken with a yawn of froth and the sky overhead split in two, sending a cascade of water and powder and ice shards raining downward.  Before they knew it, the three were running, looking over their shoulder, wondering what would become of their party inside the awaking mouth and what might become of them if they did not get far enough away when the great sheets and pillars and towers of ice glistening up the cliffside, finally toppled down to the base with thousands of tons of weight and water pressure.

The young women hesitated even in the midst of this rumbling warning, as the pieces of the frozen water towers splintered, burst and twisted downward.

“What are you waiting for, we’re going to get killed delaying like this?!” a man to the left of her shouted reaching out to grab her arm and pull her, if need be, away from the danger.

“I’m looking for the Pearl!” she shouted, “Where is it?!”

“It is too late for that now, c’mon!”

He caught her arm and pulled her reluctantly away from the falling face of the falls, now bursting with explosions of white, wet spray and broken ice and rock.  Walls and great plates of ice seemed to fall and fracture, exploding downward as they tumbled to the skirt of the falls and great washes and waves of water fountained and spilled and ruptured outward, pushing the ice sheets upward from below till it seemed like a wall of water was rising from the falls base and moving outward towards them as they ran further away from the base for safety, hoping that the lake itself would not shatter and leave them to drown or swim if they could still manage it ahead of the tsunami building behind them.

“Run!  Run!  Don’t look back!  Run for your life!” they shouted at the four young men towing the large log behind them, the young girl leading the way.

A fracturing, cracking and rumbling thunder roared behind them as they came within fifty feet of the small band who had frozen in shock at the rising wall of water now pursuing the three who had been left to guard the base of the falls.

The ice surface of the lake seemed to curl and mount up behind them as the three reached the boys and the ice below them splintered and crackled, sending fissures like lightning strikes through the frozen surface around and past them extending and racing with blinding speed toward the shore.  Within seconds of reaching the boys and the girl, each of the new party, took hold of the large log as the icy ground beneath their feet transformed into liquid cold almost as fast as it had frozen when the giant Pearl first rolled onto its surface.  Beyond the rising mountain of water, the Trathorn falls came to frothy life as shards and plates of ice fell from the sky above the cliff, tumbling and blending in with the tons of water that followed it down in great cascading showers.  The river above had back flowed and gathered under the ice sheet for as long as it could before the weight of the water below the ice had grown too great to be bound by the ice that dammed it.

The rising tide slid under the log and branches that the clinging company had fastened themselves to, and thrust it upward rising higher and higher towards the rolling hill’s crest.  Miray had straddled the trunk and clung fiercely to the outstretched arm of the forking limb, and Dominic and another of the two men help steady her while they themselves clung for their lives to the great tree.  Matthew, Mason and the young woman were further back, but firmly grasped the tree and trunk lifting them now to the sky upon a mound of water, their clothes soaked and sodden, but the desperate struggle to survive claiming their attention over the discomforting chill lingering in the water below them.  The tree had served them.  So far it had preserved them against a sure water burial as it continued to ascend and bear them up on a large crest racing towards the edges of the lakeshore.  If Maeven had not insisted on them returning for the fallen log and tree limbs, they would all have perished.  For them, Providence had moved to protect and preserve them, should they survive the coming impact with the shore ahead.  They could not be certain, but it appeared they were heading either towards the rocks of a brief stretch of grassy embankment, but it was impossible to tell which would be their fate for the log was slowly spinning as it topped the crest of the great wave and then began to fall downward in a rush within twenty feet of the shoreline.  As the cresting log turned, the fiercely clinging group noticed the roiling cloud bank standing at the top of the cliff’s edge, just above the lip of Trathorn Falls.  The cloud looked like the white and grey edge of a great cyclone, its base flinging debris thousands of feet into the air, its middle a bulging white potbelly of pressurized vapor, wind, and barometric chaos, threatening to spill further outward over the canyon cliffs and downward into the descending valley.  Specks of debris, too far to clearly make out were thrown up and down with violence, turning end over end in the sky, as large white jagged pieces of something unidentifiable rained down from the tower top of the storm head like large pieces of snow and ice, great teeth appearing to flash inward and outward from the edge of the storm chewing up both the land and the sky.

***

When the walls began to rumble, we knew we were in trouble.  When the Pearl showed up within the caverns and rolled across the top of the black pool behind us, flash freezing its surface, we were certain of it.

Words spoken to me by the mysterious visitor Mason and I had encountered before we left this cave and brought Maeven into it, suddenly jumped into my memory with a clarity that I knew was given to me from outside of my own heart:

“Remember this, though it may seem strange to you now.  Within these caverns, there are mysteries hidden and mysteries revealed.  Take care that you are not deceived. The way in is not the way out.”

The Pearl rolled up onto the embankment, leaving patches of frost and ice in its wake and stopped short of the edge of the pool in which we stood.  I knelt quickly and scooped it up sliding it back into the rough leather purse into which I had carried it this far.  The rumbling increased, with great explosive concussions sending tremors through the stone walls, causing the stalactites hanging precariously like suspended daggers above to shake and sway.  James backed out of the pool, dripping onto the shore as the others turned to me.

I gave them all one directive and gestured to the darkened aperture at the back of the large grotto in which we stood where our mysterious visitor before us had disappeared.

“We’ve got to get further in.  Run.  Now.  As fast as you possibly can.”

She didn’t see the dead elk lying in the narrow two-lane road until it was too late.

She’d rounded the curve on Colorado Highway 12 under the shadow of Boyd Mountain, West Spanish Peak’s snowy top jutting upward to the east above the tree line.  Everything happened within seconds that seemed to stretch out into eternities in slow motion.  A flurry and storm of black feathers, the thud, pop and crackle of an impact, screeching metal, the sound of tin thudding against roof slats in a strong wind, a vision of her childhood home in Kansas as nor’easters pelleted the glass with hailstones, a half-filled thermos cup of coffee floating end over end through the air, brown hot liquid stinging her arms, flashes of light as the illumined screen of a silver-white laptop tumbled end over end, flashing a white ghost of the Apple Logo winking like some photonegative sinister pupil under a silvered brow, as the screen flexed and splintered glass erupted and spidered outward from its LED portal.  An arm, tanned and well-toned, strong and yet gentle flailed at the air through a haze of long dark ribbons of hair, as bright stars sparkled and burst into the cabin in a nova of light.  Digital numbers in amber, red and pale blue light glared like an accountant’s nightmare from a dash instrument panel as blades of dark limbs slashed through the fractured windshield with a high-pitched note that seemed to linger like the sustain piano pedal had been held on its strike of a far-left ivory key.  A loud boom signified a sudden drop in tire pressure as the rubber on the left front radial folded under the chassis and the edge of the metal wheel rim converted itself into a roadway plow.  The world rolled and tumbled, the ceiling caved, hot amber liquid mixed with a spattering of warm dark wetness.  Hard flat lines of some sort of strapping, dug into her pelvis, and a hard, cruel unrelenting tightness cinched around her abdomen with such force she coughed blood.  Boom, screech, thud, blended into an awful cacophony of terror.  The world spun, fur and blood, hooves and claws, black feathers raked her face and arms.  Thousands of tiny star cubes danced and careened before her eyes, abrading the air like the hailstones back on their Kansas farm.

Nory?  She called out but wasn’t sure if she spoke his name out loud or just thought she did.  The crash and smash of the vehicle echoed in her ears, as the black Mercedes SUV ground away its polished and waxed paint-job, fenders open to the sky like the small wings of a flightless bird, as pavement, gravel, and stones ground away at the exterior of the vehicle in sliding rumble, spinning and slinging a mountainous tan, black, and white fur body wrenched and twisted within the frame of the bent window posts, abrading away its skin, baring blood, bone, and muscle, flooding the interior of the vehicle with stench and rot, causing her to wrench away, catching only the dark silhouette of “Nory” as he was flung limply, upside down, tumbling and then swiftly ejected through the starry fractured windshield into the night.  And then suddenly and mercifully all went black.

***

Maeven awoke in the bed from the nightmare, choking and flailing, wrapped in some sort of tubing and in a strange room with pitted tiled ceilings and an overhead spigot of metal with a spinner jutted from the ceiling beside an unlit recessed light panel.  It was dark in the room, quiet except for an incessant beeping noise to the right of her as something that looked like a tall skinny robot with two gelled bladders for ears stood over her, humming with its heart monitor…she realized where she was.  A muffled shushing noise came from something behind her and to her left that she could not see, yet somehow it’s dry steady coughing filled her throat with dry cool air.  She clamped down on a plastic breathing tube and fought the nagging urge to vomit.  She felt a cool dry cotton fabric in her fists, and the top of her knuckles stung with the clenching and unclenching of her fists.  Salty tears stung the corners of her eyes and ran down the corners of her face and into her ears.  She hated that.  Could not stand water getting into her ears.  Her breathing came in short gasps as the ventilator attempted to keep up with the pounding of her heart rate.  Her temples throbbed, and she felt unpleasantly wet.  Crimson embarrassment flushed her sweating brow as she thought in horror, “Oh no, I hope I didn’t wet the…”

A door in the room pushed open, and sudden light flared from the boxed recessed panel overhead.  Maeven attempted to shield her eyes from the stabbing glare but found that her wrists were bound with a short tether.

“Oh, my God!” A female voice shrilled off to her right, just beyond the angle of the track curtain.

“Serita, get in here.  Room 203.  Stat!  I need some orderlies and new linens.  The patient is bleeding out.  Notify Dr. Corsi.  Quickly!”

Maeven winced and squinted.  Feeling disoriented to be suddenly in a sterile white hospital room, blank lid-less TV monitor bolted on a pivoting arm from the corner, the ubiquitous faux wood-grain wardrobe cabinet, and single uncomfortable guest chair, with broad dove grey material matching the window drawn curtains.  The nurse, a woman in her early to mid-twenties, appeared over her, her brow furrowed, but heroically attempted to smooth the worry lines out into a comforting smile.

“Welcome back, sleepyhead,” she brushed Maeven’s brow with soft cool fingers, slightly pushing an aberrant dark curl away from her field of vision.  “We’ll get you cleaned up in a jiffy.”

She turned her head and her worry lines returned as she shouted over her shoulder, “Sereta!  Dangit!”

Eyes turned again back down to Maeven as she continues to stroke her forehead and temples.

The pneumatic piston on the hospital room door wheezed as another two persons entered the tiny room, pushing a gurney.  Maeven struggled to look downward, but the breathing tube made it painful to do so.

“We’re gonna get you patched up, girl. Don’t you worry.”

Two male orderlies, a black man, and a Caucasian man looking to be in their late twenties to early thirties came up to the bedside and the nurse pivoted out of their way.  Maeven rolled her eyes, her embarrassment spiking, and her heart monitors signifying it with an increase in her pulse as the orderlies peeled back her cover blanket.

Blood soaked and saturated the sheets, soaking her thighs and hips and buttocks.

“Untimely, time of the month?” one of the orderlies smirked, to which the nurse barked a curt but firm “Shut up, you idiot!” in reply.

The black orderly gave his compatriot a hard glare and growled, “That mouth of yours is gonna feel pretty bad, if you don’t shut it, right now.”

“Where is she bleeding?  This is a lot of blood,” the voice of another female woman asked, as the two orderlies put on their latex gloves, preparing to remove the bloodied sheets and thin cotton and plastic absorbent pad under her buttocks.

“We don’t know yet,” the first nurse, most likely the night charge nurse, answered quickly, “Guys, she’s gonna need some privacy.  Take those sheets to the laundry.  Sereta and I will roll her onto the gurney and get her checked out.  Wheel that trauma cabinet over here.  Sereta, gloves, please.  I need the blue nitrile ones.  Tell the desk to see if they can reach Dr. Corsi, tell him his patient is awake.”

The two men peeled the sheet carefully back and away, doing there level best not to spill blood on the mattress and floor, catching the wet sheet with a further unwrapped cotton and plastic bed liner.  Which they unceremoniously dumped into a hazardous dirty linens hamper with a foot pedal that lifted off its plastic cover.  The half-cover thin gown barely covered Maeven’s pelvis and upper thighs, but was soaked along the edges and would have to be removed as well.  Sereta shooed the orderlies back and grabbed the privacy curtain drawing it around the bedside just shy of the open linens hamper.

“We’ll buzz you when we’re ready, guys.  Now do as Judy told you.”

The two orderlies left the room, and Maeven’s eyes roved the ceiling, finding Judy-the-charge-nurse’s face, doing her best to express her gratitude for the last vestige of privacy.  Sereta appeared over her as well, as she tried to mouth a ‘thank you’ but the tubing prevented it.  Sereta smiled sweetly at her, “Hush, dear.  We’ll take care of you,” and she looked over at the side monitor screen checking her patient’s vital readings.

“BP’s 95 over 61, not good but better than it was a few minutes ago when the alarms went off.”

They carefully lifted her gown peering underneath, for a minute or so and then looked back at her.

“Was she moved up in the bed at all?”

“No.  Absolutely not.  No one’s been in here since I came on my shift at seven.”

Judy-the-charge-nurse slid her gloved hand behind Maeven’s shoulder and lifted her slightly upward, unfastening the top snap of the hospital gown, freeing her shoulder from a sleeve, and then freeing the other.  Sereta and Judy carefully peeled away the gown and wrapped it in another cotton plastic pad, and tossed it into the hamper and closed the lid.

With cotton gauze and moist antiseptic towelettes, they cleared away the blood and used disposable sponges and warm water to gently bathe the top of her body.

“This does not appear to be her monthly visitor.  But I cannot tell where this is coming from.”

“Ready to roll her over?”

“I think we should,”

And they turned to Maeven, who felt like a guppy in a fishbowl between two cats, as they talked over her.

“Sweetie, we’re gonna have to turn you over on your side to see where you’re wounded, okay?”

Maeven tried to answer, forgetting the intubation, but only managed to squeak.

Nurse Judy extended the flexible tubing over the top back head of the bed, allow them enough slack to make the reposition feasible.  Sereta came around on the other side and untied her wrist from the bed railing and unwrapped another bed liner napkin and unfolded it, tucking the edge of it under the blood-saturated one.  She helped Maeven pull her arm across her body and grasp the railing on the right side of the bed.  Together she and Nurse Judy pivoted and shifted Maeven into a side turn and steadying her, looked down the back of her, searching for the source of the wound flow.  Pink welts striated the back of her right thigh, which they wiped at with sterilized gauze and moist towelettes, clearing the blood away, but strangely locating no wound capable of producing as much blood as had been present.  Together they thoroughly cleaned the back of her thighs and buttocks area and lower back where the blood had pooled into the bed napkin.  They cleared her, with cool sterile liquid, that slightly stung and dried quickly, but smelled of astringent.  A light lotion and powder were applied which felt good and emollient, to the soreness in her back.

“BP’s climbing.  110 over 70.  This makes absolutely no sense.  I cannot find a wound on her.  There is redness when her pressure points have pressed into the mattress, but that is normal for a person in a coma as long as she’s been down.  Bedsore prevention maintenance, though.  Wouldn’t want these to get any worse.”

The pneumatic huff of the hospital room sounded again and another nurse beeped from the bedside intercom speaker.

“Judy, Dr. Corsi, asked about his patient.  Said if she’s doing well and her vitals are good, he’d be by to see her first thing in the morning.”

“BP seems to be heading back to normal, but her pulse is getting stronger but…  Is he still on the line, Colleen?”

“Yes, on line 4,” the reply came back.

“Better let me talk to him.  I’ll be right there.”

“Got it.”

A young nurse approached the bedside from around the curtain.

“Can I help?”

She wore a pink patterned top, what hospital staff traditionally referred to as a candy striper, and Judy nodded.

“Perfect timing, Dora.  Yes, help Serena get miss Maeven her into a new gown and change these linens, and I’ll send the boys back in to take her down to the examination lab.  Doc may want a CT run and a hemostat analysis.  He’s on four and I’ll let him know what we’ve got.  Glove up, dearie.  It’s gonna be another long night.”

With that she stepped around the bedside, pushing the IV pole and Medi-Stat monitor out of the way so that they could get the gurney aligned with the bed.  Dora donned some disposable latex gloves and moved to the bedside, smiling down at Maeven.

“How we doin’, sweetheart?  You hangin’ in there?”

Maeven nodded as best as she could, drawing in a deep breath, yet struggling with the tube and face mask covering her nose and chin.

Both Dora and Sereta glanced again at the monitor and watched the numbers and pinging heart rate monitor signifying its systolic and diastolic climb and fall.  Her pulse was beginning to even out to a steady lub-dub, lub-dub rhythm as she relaxed as Maeven tried to calm her breathing.  Her throat was parched, she could use some cool ice water.  Ice.

Her eyes, widened with the memory and her pulse and breathing suddenly quickened and shot up.  She remembered where she had been before…

***

Deep in the cave beneath the falls, we all stared in wonder at the images that had spun outward from James’s body as he and Maeven entered the central Ghost Pool.  Hanokh had told Mason and me that these were Calling Waters, and I had not understood what he’d meant by that at the time, but I was beginning to.

I knew then that James must be projecting an experience he had, from a terrible ordeal in the Surface World.  How much of this was experience and how much was fiction, I could not tell, having known James for only such a short time.  My guess was that it was real enough to him, and I should take it at face value.  We often give ourselves to the illusion that we have things under control, only to realize and be confronted with realities that are clearly beyond it.  It is in these times when we feel the most helpless that we finally are made to recognize the Hand of Providence moving in and behind the scenes of our lives working all things to our betterment and our good.  Even things we do without conscious effort as a matter of routine responsibility.  He moves, we learn and we listen.  All things, tragedy, triumph, loss, and gain, can be molded and shaped by our Father’s Hand to bring forth good into our lives.  A greater good.  Not sought after in the strength and by the will of man, but of one tied to the Heavenly Will, and according to His working out our own salvation from among the bared teeth of this life, cursed by our progenitors, but redeemed by a Savior committed to help us realize that we do not walk through those valleys and under that darkness alone.

Having been so stirred and moved by the experience of witnessing James’s story, we all at first failed to realize that something else had happened while our minds and focus were within the bounds of the story.

Maeven was no longer in the water of the pool with James being held within his arms.  She was gone.  Vanished.  Missing.

***

Outside of the frozen mouth of the falls, standing guard along the broken columns of ice and the crushed spikes driven through the ice berm of snow where the base of the falls had flash-frozen, the young woman who had stood up for me when it seemed the others might lose confidence in my calling to lead the party, watched with the two men who had joined the procession across the lake to convey Maeven to base of the Trathorn Falls.  They had taken sentry posts to ensure no more of the vermin Moon Sprite brood showed up to corner us in the caves.  Three gaping holes had been broken through the ice curtain and the bodies of the dead Moon Sprites and their young had flowed through these breaks, drawn by some unimaginable pull back into the pits from which they had emerged.  Like tendrils of smoke, these unseen powers had lingered and eventually dissipated into the cool wind, leaving only a sort of unidentifiable but sweet fragrance in the air next to the cliff base.  It smelled like some sort of incense one might associate with heated essential oils or fragrant candles, but it was not cloying or overbearing, but evocative of a serene and clean environment one might associate with a spa setting, under a warm towel.  As it was breathed in it seemed to clear the mind, and soothe the spirit.

A rarely referenced verse from the Ancient Text rose to my mind as we had parted from these three upon carrying Maeven into the caves, and perhaps it is worth adding into this chronicle of our quest at this point, since James’s story was so fresh and happening concurrently, to these three who experienced our company coming together to serve and save a life of one of our own.

“15 Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. 16 To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this?” [2 Corinthians 2:15-16 NLT]

We, they and the others who had gone back across the lake to fetch the large log, per Maeven’s wish, were putting our lives at risk to love and assist her in a desperate attempt to save her life, by a means, we did not understand.  Another verse arises to my mind akin to this and reads thus:

“13 “No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.” [John 15:13 CSB]

We had no certain idea of what the fragrant smoke might signify in the Mid-World lands, but if these verses were any indication of the supreme authority behind our joined and shared cause, that fragrance might just signify that our quest received a blessing from above all that is or ever was.

 

Standing at the frozen base of the Trathorn Falls, we all gathered around the sled bearing Maeven.  She was so pale that I feared it was already too late for her, yet her mouth moved to form words that lacked sound.  She breathed so shallowly, that there was barely enough breath behind her moving lips to give tone or timber to what she struggled to say, but I leaned down close, taking her hand, trying to reassure her that we had brought her where she desired to go.  The cold and ice bruised her lips into a gray-blue, yet I rubbed her hands trying to get the circulation flowing again as much as I could.  Her eyes flickered unfocused and then focused on me for the briefest of seconds, and though it must have cost her a great deal of pain, she fumbled with my fingers and hissed what little words she could, “Did,” she swallowed with difficulty, “they bring the branch?”

“Maeven, we don’t need the log, we are near the falls and will go into the caves and the pools.  The Pearl is still on the ice and it is frozen solid.”

With a hard swallow, she winced and said, “Bring the branch.”  Her eyes pleading with mine.

I looked up at Dominic and Matthew and Mason, and now Will who had recovered enough to climb off of the sled, but stood aloof from us and very quiet.

“Guys, we’d better do as she says,” I looked to each of them.  “How fast can you guys go get it and bring it to the falls?”

Matthew hung his fingers in his belt and roused by my words, over the worry and concern he felt for Maeven, he said, “We’ve got this.  Just make her better.”

Mason nodded in agreement and Dominic and Will turned to go with them, trotting away across the ice towards the distant place where they’d last left it.

“James and Begglar, we’d better haul her up.  The ice sheets are broken and the way is treacherous, be careful not to slip or drop the sled.  Nell and Christie, please help steady Maeven on the sled, one on each side so she doesn’t roll off.  She is tied somewhat but we cannot be too careful.  I’ll grab the front and you two grab the runners on each side.

We hoisted Maeven and carefully made our way over the strewn colonnades of it, the lip of the cavern is just four to five feet in.  The lake flash froze so there is a thick spongy carpet of wet green moss along the floor until the rock takes over.  The pools are about fifteen to twenty feet in, but there is one, in particular, we need to get to.  Watch that you do not step into one of the black pools.  We were warned about them.  Hurry now, but be careful doing so.”

We lifted Maeven and the sled over the scraped ice where the Moon Sprite bodies had been dragged and rammed into the columns of ice.  The mouth of the falls looked like a sinister white-bearded Santa Claus with broken and jagged teeth and just a few black gaping gaps in its clenched, sneering jaws.  Clearly, this Santa was more suited to giving out only shovel loads of coal rather than the latest toys and gadgets.

Once inside, beneath the daggered ceiling of icicles and frosted knuckles that had not collapsed when Mason and I were contending with the pursuing Moon Sprite children, James, Begglar and I set the sled down for a quick breather.  The ice berm we had climbed over had cracked, and the large pieces tumbled and clinked, but miraculously we had not lost our footing.  Christie quickly checked Maeven’s wound binding in the bluish half-light as much as she was able, and strove to warm her hands and other leg by rubbing them, but Maeven’s skin was feeling cooler and cooler to the touch.

“What’s next?” Christie pivoted on her heels as she knelt by Maeven, tears of desperation forming in her eyes as she looked up at me, “I’m losing her.  Please hurry!”

We picked up the sled serving as a litter again and trudged forward, towards the tunnel bend where we’d encountered our reclusive host when Mason and I first entered.

The topaz color of the water had darkened, and the wash of light rings on the ceiling of the cave merged, expanded, collapsed and folded into themselves with an eerie sort of light, as the outside world beyond the cave began to brighten with the glowing edge of the dawn.

Nell walked up to the water’s edge, staring into the swirling mix of darkling colors beginning to take shape, form, and definition while continuing to undulate and swirl.

“It is beginning,” she said, without explanation as she stared into the watery depth as something far deeper below began to bubble and froth and wisps of black oily tendrils cast a metallic sheen across the surface of the water.

James and Begglar started to lay their end of Maeven’s litter down next to this pool that occupied Nell’s fascination, but I spoke up.

“No!  Not this one.  The one we want is further inside, along the edge of the falls.  This one is full of death.  I inclined my head to a far rounded corner of the pool that had been partially hidden in shadow.  The robed skeletal remains of a person hung halfway in and halfway out of the water, its hands withered but still clawing at the gravel at the edge of the pool where it once sought refuge and retreat.  It’s threadbare and ragged clothes moldered and mildewed in a corner beyond its reach, not covered by dust and some viscous ooze, with a few white-capped mushrooms grew out of the folds in the clothes, somehow surviving and thriving after its former occupant’s demise.

“Eew gross!” Christie exclaimed upon seeing the body and the decomposing clothes, “What happened to that guy?”

“I think we just fought and killed a few of what happened,” I conjectured, as we continued on past the edge of the blackening pool.

The front-falls-end of the pool was too narrow and covered by frost to safely carry Maeven through to the other pool beyond, so we were obliged to carry her deeper into the cavern, where the former priestly occupants had maintained a sort of makeshift apartment within the caves.  The ground had been scored and tiled with rough paver stones made of slate and limestone rock not typically present within this type of granite grotto.  Other shallow water pools ran deeper into the cavern under the lowering cave ceiling, and in the torchlight, we could see the shallow bottom of stone and cave silt.  Those waters were still and seemed not to be contaminated by the oil slick and black striations of the deeper pool.  These were more of a wading variety and probably supplied by seepage from the river falls above.

Many other passages and stone corridors branched off the main shelf hollow beneath the frozen falls, but the glow of the dawn’s edge managed to extend into the cave through the broken and jagged holes in the ice curtain left by the pummeling of the dead Moon Sprites as they were mysteriously consigned back into the mysterious pools from which they arose.

Begglar carried the back end of the sled and James, the taller, carried the front end maintaining the incline of the wound over Maeven’s heart.  We waded into the water of the declivity, careful not to let Maeven roll with the bearing as we trudged through the deeper beige mud and silt along the bottom.  Christie and Nell bore the torches Mason and I had lit while exploring the cave before and the orange and yellow flames sparkled and danced up the water, and flickered with stretching and spinning shadows along the ceiling sparkling in the quartz and calcite dripping from the myriad needles of stalactites overhead.  A chandelier of mid-sized and tiny daggers.  Columns formed from the older stalactites that had joined their twin stalagmites building like rising mushrooms from the floor rock-strewn floor below.

We ascended dripping and wet, the beige mud sliding from our calves and feet as we topped the land bridge shore on the other side.  Tiny insect-like creatures skittered away scuttling into the darkness, their carapaces pale and greyish white with a yellow cast from our firelight.  These may have been a sort of crayfish, but their scattering made positive identification too difficult to discern.  Dust gathered and caked our feet as we climbed upon a raised stone rib of rock pitted with small pits of mud.  Nell led the way ahead and we could see the central pool just ahead, its water catching the wavering rays of our firelight.  Beyond and deeper into the cave shelf, along the channel, we could hear the roar of falling water, and a grayish amber light illumined the distant pool revealing a great deal of plunging water pouring down into the underground basin from a shaft opening above it.  The central pool and our desired location barely rippled but seemed to have some luminesce coming from below with a greenish-blue tint.  Formation of some twisting images reflected upon its surface, much like that of the first pool we had encountered, and Nell had remarked upon.  A faint sort of mist rose from the water’s surface and it was difficult to tell whether the shimmering images were reflections if this hanging mist and vapor or of something more mysterious still.

We worked our way further back onto a narrow shoreline of about six feet in dept before the rock formations rose and slanted upward to the ceiling like roots attached to the massive boles of a stand of mangrove trees.  Begglar and James carefully eased the sled pallet down along the dusty shoreline and Christie and I set about untying Maeven from the cords and rough netting that typically secured the packed cargo upon the sled.  Christie had loosed the tourniquet and stowed Maeven’s personal pack to the side of her.  She unwrapped the water bladder she had used to seal the wound, and James knelt on hands and knees preparing to lift Maeven into the water.

“I am so worried that she might bleed out,” Christie said, looking from the paleness of Maeven’s skin and up to me.

“Not everything that happens here works as it does in the Surface World,” Nell whispered softly, “Some things operate by laws governing this land alone and everything in it.  Maeven, herself had a difficult time grasping some of them as well, her being from the Surface World, as you are.  Giving up some ways of thinking come hard for most people, but some things need to be unlearned before new knowledge can be gained.  Just trust in the One, dear.  He loves Maeven too.”

Christie looked from me to Nell and then back to me again, nodding, a tear coursing down her cheek with the strain of releasing Maeven into this strange sort of care we had of putting her into a dark cave pool.  Something that would prove fatal to anyone attempting it in the Surface World.  It was why those attempting and succeeding in suicide were all too often found in dead in their own bloody bathwater.  Water draws from a wound the lifeblood and keeps it from being able to coagulate and clot and close up the severed vessels.  Blood loss causes the victims to slowly fall asleep unaware of their final moments of life as they exsanguinate.

Suddenly the water’s surface, once smooth, serene and calm as glass, began to ripple as if something gently touched its surface somewhere out into the center of the pool some twelve feet out from the edge of the shore.  Something was stirring and brushing the surface of the water, like an invisible wind that we neither felt nor saw, save in the concentric rings that rippled towards the shore.

James came up from his knees, resting his weight upon the front balls of his feet, his hand supporting Maeven’s back as he gathered her into his arms.  Christie and I gently lifted her pelvis and bent knees upward, following James as he stood up with her, bearing most of the weight of her small but compact frame, and we shifted her legs over his other arm so as not to put pressure on the gash wound, now dripping with more of her lifeblood.

With pained and fearful expressions we looked from one to the other and back at Maeven.  Her lips were nearly grey, and her mouth was slightly parted…and she wasn’t breathing.

Oh dear God!  She wasn’t breathing.

Panicked Christie and I realized in the same moment that we may already have gone past the point of resuscitation.

“Nell?!  Maeven, she’s…oh God!  Dear God no!” Christie began to weep copiously and James bore an expression of pained shock, tears also coursing down his cheeks and into his short beard, as he wept for Maeven helpless to do anything more for her.

I felt like a knife pierced my heart, as I fumbled for Maeven’s hand feeling only a clammy coldness to her skin.

“No.  She can’t…No, Maeven, you can’t be…” I choked on my own tears overcome with a dawning ache, that I resisted, anger clouding my vision, as a wail built inside me that made me want to scream out.  I trembled as I touched her parted lips, searching for some faint sign of warm breath.  Anything to deny this tragedy.

I felt Begglar’s arm behind me, and Nell gathered Christie in her arms and held her steady as she wept, her body wracked with muscle spasms and sobs.

“Hon, it is not over yet,” she whispered into Christie’s hair, “Just you wait and see.”  She nodded to her husband and I felt Begglar calmly but firmly guide James and me towards the water.

“Ease her down carefully now, son.  You don’t want to go and be dropping her now.”

Startled, James looked into Begglar’s eyes and saw his steady and warm gaze looking back up at him.  With a deep breath, James seemed to gather a slight ember of hope from Begglar’s eyes and his tear-stained face lifted up from Maeven’s gaunt face to mine and then back to Begglar’s and gave a slight doubtful nod of understanding.

Begglar and I moved to either side of James, our hands on Maeven, caressing her as if she were a sleeping child.  However, when James stepped down into the water, suddenly ribbons of light pulsed away from his feet forming patterns in the water, as James continued to progress inward and slowly let Maeven’s body down into the water.

Nell stiffed suddenly, and her eyes lifted from Christie’s hair to the shimmering images forming in the water below, circulating out from James and Maeven as they floated gently in the lapping Ghost Pool.  Our minds all seemed to clarify from the pain and Christie slowly lifted her head, feeling the change in stance from Nell, turning slowly to see what was happening behind her, still gathering in her sobs, as the light began to effuse the cavern chamber and arise like glowing smoke from the surface of the water.  It had been some time now since we’d had this collective feeling come upon us, but now it surged forth again, and from my vantage point I could tell Nell had at once identified where the source of the imagery was coming from.  With my perception peaked as it now was, and my nerves raw, I could at last see and discern its source as well.  A story emerged within the sights and sounds of the water, but from a perspective, I did not recognize as being separate from me.  I felt within it a strong parental dread as I did, in a similar way, with how I felt about the prospect of losing Maeven.  The story unraveling upon the waves was coming from James…and it revealed itself as follows:

The Sleeping Baby – Story #8

I stared in seething, helpless hatred, my pulse pounding, taking in short, shuddering breaths that rasped and wheezed through my tightly-clenched teeth.  My body trembled in barely controlled rage as I stared into the crib and saw the quietly sleeping infant oblivious to its imminent danger.

I didn’t dare speak, tried to quiet my tremulous breathing as I carefully approached the crib, not daring to wake the blissfully unaware child.  Something terrible and violent was about to happen, but I didn’t know how to begin….

[Two hours earlier…]

The night had turned cold and misty as hidden Death moved silently and fluidly through the jungle.  It coasted around thick, green bamboo, hardwood cypress, teak, kyun and palm boles.  Over rotting leaves, moss and jungle detritus.  Between thick ferns.  Far beneath the wet multi-layered canopy.  An unseen hunter, deadly in its calculation and skill.

The normally warm and moist night air was now cold and gradually numbing.  Unpleasant and stiffening to the muscles.

A mist had settled over the ground, barely covering the jungle undergrowth of ferns, elephant ears and flowering tropical flora.  The once vibrant colors now shone muted through a grey translucent haze of wet silver.  The air near the ground was slightly warmer than the moist air lying supine above across the couched foliage.

Dark, emerald eyes scanned the terrain, tasting, sensing, listening, feeling, perceiving and calculating its next move in the night hunt.  It paused.  Waiting in the filtered moonlight.

It knew that the pale green, moss-stained structure, just fifty yards ahead, though externally adorned with cold stone also had a heart of huddling warmth within.  Ever so quietly, it made its way closer and closer to the festooning short garden of freshly turned, dew-moistened earth and row after row of now closed, brightly-colored cups bent in slumber awaiting the coming of the rising sun.  Jeweled ice, silvered by the waning moon, dripped quietly from the downward turned petals and leafy fronds slithering into the thick, dark soil.  Careful not to leave incriminating prints in the soft ground around the structure, the killer distributed its weight evenly along the paver stones, as it circled the perimeter, searching and seeking for the most opportune, quiet and unobserved way in.

It had seen the fat pink infant playing upon the soft green grass, during the day.  A manicured patch of lawn, bordered by pieces of wood, carefully and meticulously hand weeded by the woman charged with amusing and humoring the child during the day.  The small one smelled of warm milk, and some other sweet, floral and fruity fragrance.  It made odd warbling noises, as it reached and discovered, crushed and dug into the fecund earth.  The killer had watched the baby day after day, smelling it, tasting it from afar.  And then, once again, not so far.  Later, only a few feet, and eventually as close as mere inches away, beneath the rhododendron bush.  A time or two it had merely missed taking it away into the forest by a few seconds of hesitation.  An adult had lifted the child out of its reach, unaware of its deadly proximity.  This was a mistake the killer would not make again.

The smell of sweet milk upon the baby’s breath and body was intoxicating.  Hunger pangs caused the killer to unknowingly quicken its pace, and scan even more desperately for the entrance opportunity.  Its warm pink naked flesh would feel good against its cold and shivering body.  It realized its growing speed and tried to calm itself and temper its throbbing heart, slowing its breathing through flared and dilated nostrils, quieting its whistling breath by closing and clamping its lips tightly together.

If it moved to fast or created too much noise, it would be forced to contend with and kill the rest of the family right away.  In time, it thought, If I am careful, I shall be the one to choose the order of my silent kills.

Yet the thought of the warm, sweet, fat baby, continued to work on the mind and tease the desperate dark needs of the hunter, causing irritation.  Irritation that flowed into growing annoyance, streaming into ever deepening pools of desire and insatiable need.  Despite how much it knew it needed stealth, its obsession with its need for the baby grew and over took its caution.  In its haste, it was leaving a careless trail of evidence of its passage.

It imagined the first juice-filled bite into the pink flesh, the sweet nectar flowing over its tongue, filling its mouth with ambrosia as its teeth sliced through skin and soft, undeveloped muscle.  It shuddered uncontrollably at the thought.  But first, it had to get warm.  It was hungry, yet its muscles spasmed under this unseasonable chill.  The infant’s body was warm, filled as it was with heated blood, plumb and rounded with the swell of it.  Often the baby was wrapped in a thick soft coverlet of down-like material.  Similar to the breast feathers of a young bird.

Many, many birds had been surprised by him in the dark heart of the night.  Awakening with sleepy eye’s expecting the return of their mother with some soft writhing morsel in her beak to further fatten them up.  Only to find that they were indeed now the “choice morsels” served conveniently arranged in a rounded bowl, like canapes to the hungry predator.  “May I?”, asks the uninvited guest.  “Oh, yes! Certainly.”, graciously replies the oblivious but accommodating waiter.  A reversal, taught by the harsh realities of the natural wild.  Lessons learned but rarely if ever passed along beyond their fateful night.  Only interruptions of the inopportunely returning mother, ever caused the lessons of those nights to become instructive beyond those final experiences of their siblings, as they witnessed their terrifying disappearance one by one.  The order of the kill was supremely important, but it would ultimately be determined most by opportunity and proximity.  The smell of the infant was distinct and lingered in the killer’s memory.  Upon entering the structure, it would locate the baby first by that intoxicating smell.  Night tended to slow all movements, and cause the adults to surrender themselves to the quiet darkness and await the coming of the morning.  Because of this, it was quite possible, probable even, that it could take the baby into the night, without ever alerting the occupants of the house.  A most desirable and perfect solution, indeed.

At last, the killer spotted it.  A place of entrance.  Unnoticed and very convenient.  Teeth marks outlined the portal, signifying that the killer could begin this phase of the hunt with a series of warm, furry appetizers.  The hunter approached the entrance, crossed the threshold and descended, not once bothering or thinking to knock politely before making its way inside.  Death tended to be a very rude guest.  Tonight’s raid would be no different.  Experience had taught it, however, that this night’s first pre-meal reception must begin with rudely awakening and dealing first with the parent and then proceeding to eliminate their young witnesses.

[Fifteen minutes later…]

A slight trickle of blood drew a red threaded bead down over and behind the killer’s left emerald eye.  It further traced an arcing smear pattern in its wake as the killer proceeding upward through the floor boards and across the white tile, moving silently through the dark house.  The parent had been fierce in her protection and indignation at being so rudely awakened by him.  With long incisors, she had hissed and cut its forehead, and savagely pierced its beaded flesh, cutting and stabbing deeply into him.  The pain had been surprising, but it had been fully and swiftly recompensed.  Five bulges rounded its elongated belly as its chilled muscles constricted and further crushed its appetizers along their inevitable digestive way.

Its body was warming due to metabolizing of its the fresh meal, but the overall chill persisted.  The white, large square tile, produced its own coldness, as the killer moved silently over it, winding left and right, sensing its surroundings, orienting itself to this unfamiliar environment, seeking and planning its escape routes should it be discovered too soon.

The size of the child would be a problem.  Taking it back into the jungle would be difficult enough, but it could not be done and carried out of the house through the same route it had gained entrance.  Another larger exit path must be found.  The killer had no idea if the noises from its raucous pre-meal reception had roused the sleepers within the house.  If so, the exit options would serve to accommodate him only.  The baby be cursed.  Survival was preeminent.  There would be other opportunities to taste the baby.  Invariably, the hyper-vigilance of the parents would wane.  It would only be a matter of time.  Distractions and time had served the killer well.  They were the sharpened tools of the killer’s trade.  Holding and keeping an edge far keener than any stropped knife could ever be.  Swallowing and constricting it would take hours and turn time into its enemy.  Besides, digestion of a larger meal would bring on a lethargy and make its movements sluggish and slow.  Also deadly if the adults were awakened too soon.  The bulge of the child would also limit the killers exit opportunities, and he was not in the mood for entering a store without procuring something for itself.  Too much time and planning had gone into this.  Though it was used to waiting, it was not keen on waiting indefinitely.  And then it smelled that familiar scent.  Sweet ambrosia.  Slightly soured milk and cream, and something else besides.  A clean powdery fragrance, tangy, and tart.  And another earthy smell below that layer.  Pungent, but rich with a stench that the killer interpreted differently.

A burrow like smell, like its first nest as a hatchling, buried beneath rotted leaves and jungle earth, warming them as these organic materials decomposed.  Scents of its very first home.  The lower den, upon which it competed for space and preeminence with its forty three writhing siblings.

Its hatch-bearer and sire abandoned them to thrive and learn how to subdue and kill on their own.  How to compete with other predators and how even to predate upon its competitors whenever necessary.

Others of its general shape and build were conveniently consumable.  They did not form as many lumps within the digestive track that had to be constricted and crushed.  Sure they struggled and writhed a bit when going down, but were often long dead before the final swallow.  Impudent creatures.  Hardly worthy of sharing their likeness.  They ruled the night and napped, basked and slept by day.  Few would deny that they were an apex predator in the region, greatly feared.  All the land offer its bounty and tribute to them and designated them with an appellation of royalty.

[An hour and forty-five minutes later…]

I couldn’t move, could dare close my eyes and wish the nightmare away.  There before me was the epitome of every parent’s worst nightmare.  My child, my sleeping innocent one, cradled and encircled in the cold limbs of an apex predator.

What could I do.  Every thought halted my actions with blurred and savage outcomes.  If I made a noise I would awaken the baby, and the cobra would bite it to subdue its terror.  If I roused the cobra and tried to remove it with a stick, the cobra would fight to defend itself and harm the baby.  It seemed to be presently unaware of my discovery, for its head was hidden from view, buried underneath the warm blanket next to the sleeping baby, no doubt cuddled up to its exposed tummy and entwined within its plump legs.  A mere stretch or thoughtless kick, might stir the viper.  All I could do was stand there in shock and horror, as the hideous, two-meter-long serpent nestled next to my sleeping daughter.  My eyes poured with silent tears.  My fists clenched and unclenched at my side.  My mind tormented me with the futility and helplessness of the predicament.  Terror pulsed behind my eyes, throbbing in my temples as I struggled to slow my rapid shallow breaths.  Helpless, all I knew to do was pray.  I could not call for help from anyone else within the house, so I silently cried out in my spirit to the One in the heavens above.  Mewling in desperation, I found myself whispering over and over, “Please.  Please.  My little girl.  Not my little girl.  Please spare my little girl.”  I struggled not to vocalize because my voice would inevitably rise in octave and volume, pushed as it was by the force of my terror of losing her.  Though blurred in vision, my eyes saw the scene tableau through bifocals, desperate for the safety of the child and seething hatred for the predator sharing her tiny bed.  If I could have killed that creature with my glare alone, it would have been burnt to charred and smoking embers.

I searched for some way of interposing my body between the serpent and my child in hopes of blocking the envenomed defensive strikes and allowing it to bite me rather than her, while I snatched her away to safety, but could not see how that might be possible.  My baby was too close to it.  Horrifically, she stroked its long dark brown body in her sleep, smiling contentedly, lost in another reality of pleasant dreams.  I stifled a cry by biting into a knuckle as I saw the serpent shift within the blanket, responding to her innocent strokes.

I had to find out where the creature’s head was.  To be able to do anything at all I would have to know.  I had to find a way to keep its attention occupied and focused away from my daughter.  And then I saw.

My heart stopped…then skipped a beat.  A King Cobra.

It glared at me with strangely luminous green eyes.  I had never seen one quite like it, cold hard coal black-eyed ones yes, but never with eyes like this one, luminous and strangely sentient.  It hissed loudly when it saw me, opening its hollow, yellow throat in menace.  Daring me to snatch or reach for its prey.

I trembled when it looked from me and back down at my sleeping infant, threateningly flaring its characteristic black hood.  Its eyes shifted to me again, following my every movement.  Daring me to attempt one step closer.

I had heard of a variety of cobra that spit venom into the eyes of anyone that threatened it, but I did not think this was one of those, but I couldn’t be sure.  If there was a way to get between its lethal bite and my child the creature was free to spit away at me.  One way or another, this vile thing would be dead before the sun rose, I vowed to that.

But the thought of losing my girl as well… Way too much.  I gasped at each second by second possibility, as the viper looked with hatred from me and with burning desire at my child.

It dipped and undulated its head, extending its neck higher and higher.  Intimidating me further.  Its swaying head brushed the hanging baby mobile above it, causing the small stuffed colored stars to sway and turn the dangling carousel into one additional note of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’.  I held my breath not certain how the snake would react.  The snake’s eyes shifted to the source of the noise, studying the dangling and swaying stars, debating.  The snake stabbed me with an accusatory stare and then looked down again at my slightly stirring infant.

“Oh, dear God,” I heard myself pray, feeling like I was standing outside of my own body witnessing this terror from a different vantage point.

I could see a dark line and smear on the blanket, and a smudge on the small padded mattress that I could not register at first, but then my mind slammed me with shock.  Was that blood?  Had the snake already bitten my tiny baby?  Was it merely waiting for her to die in her sleep while it sidled up to her curling around her as her body temperature fell to that of room temperature?

I covered my mouth to stifle a scream of rage.  No!  This could not be happening!  Was my delayed action, merely taking away the final moments she might have to possibly be treated with an anti-venom?

In rage, I almost rushed forward, but felt my feet planted, rooted to the floor.

And then my prayers were answered.  I did not know that was what was happening.  I almost passed out from the terror of it, almost caused both of us to be bitten, but I was unable to move.

A voice, unexplainable, yet powerful, spoke into my spirit and commanded me:

“Be Still and Know…”

The viper’s head suddenly constricted, its muscles in its long neck pulsing and flexing.  The serpent seemed to forget about the child as its body swayed unsteadily from left to right, between the dangling mobile stars.  I suddenly noticed something about the snake that in my terror I hadn’t noticed before.  Its body bulged in places.  Mostly in one particular place, though there were the hint of some smaller places as well, already resolving back into its girth.  This cobra had already had a meal prior to entering this room where my daughter slept.  A faint hope sparked within me, like a tiny pin pricks worth of light.  Given time and attention that tiny light will illumine the entire room.

The rat poison.

The bulge in the serpent’s body suddenly moved, though I could not tell whether the motion originated from within or due to some sort of gagging reflect of the creature itself.

The snake suddenly shuttered and writhed, seeming to become disoriented.  Its body flexed and twisted and I was sure any moment the baby would awaken.  Its stomach muscles around the bulge began to rhythmically flex and expand, as if its consumed meal was suddenly coming back to life and fighting to get out of its belly.  With a gasp, I saw the cobra flare open its mouth, revealing and hyperextending its jaw to unsheathed two large black fangs that looked like spikes extending from its mouth.  It was going to bite my child!

I started to lunge forward, arms extended, as I watched it descend with a speed I did not know was possible.  Unable to speak, I saw it come down, its nasty dripping spike fully and completely unsheathed from its gums, and watched as they sung deep into its own body and the bulged that was causing its distress.

My extended arm swept the vertical plastic stem of the baby mobile, causing the wind-up music box to play a more extended bar and scale of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’.  The stem snapped under the force of my desperate reach, and the carousel arms and ribbons entangled the cobra’s neck as it continued to strike at the pain in its own body.

I swept the snake upward in one motion flinging both it and the baby mobile across the room, adrenaline pumping through my veins, my heart beating like a jack hammer in my chest.  Both snake and mobile crashed to the floor at the far side of the nursery, toppling the baby changing station we’d have shipped to us from the states.

I reached down and carefully but swiftly gathered my daughter in my arms and shouted to wake the house.  Moments later that seemed like hours, my wife and two household guests rushed into the nursery and saw me cradling the baby.  Eyes fixed and searching the floor as the light illumined overhead.

My vision had adapted to the dark and for the moment I was temporarily blinded and panicked.

“Be very careful!” I warned, “Don’t come in here.  There’s a snake in the house.”

My wife began to scream and struggle to take the baby from me, but I could not let go.

“Tell me,” she begged, still struggling to get me to release our child,”Did it bite our baby?!  Tell me she’s okay!!”

“There’s blood in the crib,” I stammered, still trying to focus on where the snake had gone, “I don’t know for sure.”

“Oh, my God!  Oh, my God!” she cried, a wailing misery that I could not bear.

One of our guests ran for the phone to call the hospital.  The other emerged further into the room from behind me bearing a large coconut splitting machete.

“Where did you last see it?” he asked, approaching the over turned changing station.

“Don’t go near that!” I warned, “I think it’s underneath there!”

My wife was weeping still trying to take the baby from me, saying over and over again, “My baby!  My baby!  Please give me my baby!  Oh, God protect my baby!”

Suddenly, I heard the most beautiful sound I have every heard in my life and to this day doubt I will ever heard such a sweet sound as heard in that moment.  My sweet baby, had awakened, startled by the commotion and was silent at first, but now she began to cry in bewilderment.

Carefully, I surrendered my precious girl into my wife’s arms as she covered her in the blanket from the crib, still partially smudged with blood.  My wife and the lady guest who had called the hospital, took my little girl from the room to go check her out and follow the instructions they were being given in Burmese to English over the phone.  I could hear them checking the baby for cuts and bruises.  Anything that might indicate immediate danger.  I heard my wife calming the baby as our female guest checked her, ensuring there were no signs of her being bitten.  When I heard my wife finally exclaim, “Thank God!, Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” I knew at last that my little girl was going to be okay.  But I had my own pressing business at hand.

I remembered my vow, and asked my guest to hand me the machete.

“What kind of snake is it?” he asked, as he handed me the blade.

“It was dark, but it looks to be a King Cobra.”

He had been creeping forward, cautiously approaching the over turned baby station cabinet but now he paused.

“Cobra?!”

“Afraid so,” I returned.

“And you’re going to go at it with just a machete?”

“It’s not getting out of this house alive, Saba!”

“Yes, yes, but a cobra…chances are neither are you.”

“Not funny.  Help me find it.  I think it’s under here.”

“It can be bad luck to kill a cobra.  Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I’m not living with a cobra slithering around in this house.  Don’t be stupid.”

“Okay,” he turned and started to leave the room.

“Where are you going?  I need you to help me find this.”

“If that is a king cobra, as you say, I’m going to get a much longer stick.  Yes?”

“Be quick about it, then.”

“Right away!”

In a moment he came back into the room with a thick bamboo pole.

“Okay, can you see if you can leverage underneath the baby station, and tilt it up, so we can see if it crawled underneath there?”

My friend did as instructed and used the small daybed close to the overturned station as a fulcrum, sliding the end of the pole between the slatted bars of the prone table.

When he pulled down on the top the station cabinet lifted and pivot, but I could see no sign of the snake from my vantage point.

“I’ll have to get closer.”

“Better you than me,” my friend grinned sheepishly.

I cautiously approached, but still could not see the snake anywhere.

I wondered how long we had been distracted while trying to calm the baby and get her safely out of the room.  Had the snake gotten past us?  Surely not!  Oh, dear God, I hoped not!

I slowly backed away, scanning the floor looking for any other place it might have slithered off to.

“What did you see?”

“No snake under there.”

My friend said something in Burmese that I wasn’t sure I wanted translated.

He lowered the pole and twisted it loose from between the slats.

Both our hearts were racing.  Veins standing out on our sun burnished arms, as blood surged through us to support our fight or flight physiological sympathetic response.

“Saba, do you think it could’ve got out of this room?”

“You’re going to give this old man a heart attack thinking like that.  I think we might be getting a hotel tonight, brother Michael.”

“Funny.”

Suddenly I saw something pale slightly sticking out from under the edge of the daybed.

“Wait,” I raised my hand and then dipped it downward pointing to about three foot from the edge of his sandaled feet.

Another word in Burmese escaped unbidden from his lips as he leapt and addition four feet from where he was standing.

A slightly curling and slowly sliding tail, pale yellow underside up, extended just beyond the edge of the daybed’s pink dust ruffle skirt.

“If you don’t need me anymore, I’ll be going back to my room to change my shorts and pack.”

“Car service doesn’t run this far outside of the city, this late at night.  Sorry.  Cobra’s can lay up to sixty eggs at a time, so I wouldn’t advise trying to walk it.”

“In that case, I’m staying here.”

“Glad you could make up your mind so quickly,” I quipped.

“It’s a gift, I have,” he said and we both shared in a nervous chuckle.

“Want to help me scoot the bed away from the wall?”

“Nope,” he grinned, “but I’ll do it for you anyway.”

We extended the cane pole behind the edge of the daybed, and pushed it away from the wall.  The serpent lay on its back, its muscles spasming with the poisonous bites it had inflicted on itself.  Cautiously I approached it, trying to ready myself in case it whipped itself around and lunged upward.

Saba, my friend peered down at the snake from a safe distance away.

“That is a big snake,” he said, stating the obvious.

From what I could tell the cobra was almost two meters long.  How it had gotten into the house I could not figure out.  We had sealed the foundation, and the exterior was rock and mortar.  The drains were fine mesh grating, that should not permit anything of that size from entering in.

“It looks like it is already dying,” he added observing the slowing of its writhing movements, now almost completely stilled.

To be certain I climbed upon the daybed and brought the machete down upon it, hacking away until I had severed its wicked head from its body.  Its mouth opened and its fangs extended with each blow of my blade, spilling venom and blood out onto the floor.

I was still working out how the snake might have gotten in when I again remembered the rat poison.

A rat had chewed through one of the wooden door frames, though I did not realize that it had already dug a den further in.  I had set out the rat poison on the outside of the house, because I did not want my little girl getting to it, and I had pushed it up into the hole where the evidence of chewing had occurred.

My wife had been reminding me to deal with the rats, but I had been putting it off for too long.  She told me that the rats would bring disease and harm to our baby, and that statement motivated me not to procrastinate any further.  I had purchased the poison pellets in town before bringing our guest up from the airport.  A small investment of time and money, a minor inconvenience really, just a cautionary planted seed in the service of my family, but one that had born fruit in such a short amount of time.

The lumps in its belly, indicated that it had dealt with part of our rat problem, but most likely it had also eaten a dying rat who had ingested the rat poison I had put out the day before.  If the snake had eaten the rat shortly before entering our house, probably through the very hole that the rats had chewed through the door frame, it might not have gotten sick right away.  Since it was a big snake it must’ve taken time for the poison to take effect.  I suggested this possibility to Saba as we cleaned up the floor and removed the snake carcass out of the house and into the dump pile beyond the garden for the scavenger birds.  It was too late to burn the garbage there so we returned to the house, carefully staying on the path and shining the lantern lights around us in a wide swath of light.

Saba had watched and studied the snakes head carefully, noting its angry and dangerous expression, and was all too happy to throw it away in the dust bin and be rid of it.  He pondered my theory a moment, but shook his head.  “Cobra venom and certain poisons are made up of proteins, that a snake, especially one that eats other snakes can ingest and digest without causing it harm.  Like our pancreas produces a deadly concoction of toxic enzymes the inner lining of the pancreatic walls are resistant to that toxicity, and so as long as these toxins are contained within toxic resistant organs like the pancreas, we are okay.  If they leak into our blood stream, however, that is a very different story.  The snake’s digestive track is for the most part very toxin resistant, so the chances are slim that the digesting rat’s own poisoning is the true culprit is possible but perhaps not as likely as you might think.”

“What then?”

“I noticed it had a wound on its head.  Probably the cause of the blood in the crib, since there are no marks on the baby.”

“I hacked away pretty hard at it.  Perhaps I caused that wound.”

“Nope.  The snake was on its back when you used the machete. Your cuts would come from underneath.  This wound was behind its head.  Most likely from the female rat when it was attacked in its own den.”

“Are you saying the rat I poisoned is partly responsible for saving my daughter’s life?”

“Partly, perhaps, but it did ingest the poison you set out for it, and it was most likely transferring that poison back into the head of the snake when it was defending itself.”

“So, my poisoning the rat also helped kill the snake?”

“That and your prayers, no doubt.”

I pondered that a moment.  A perfectly horrible series of circumstances, ordered and played out in what seemed to be a chaotic sequence of events leading to a night of terror had pivoted into a miraculous deliverance for my endangered child.  The Hand of Providence was clearly at work on my behalf, our behalf even when we failed to recognize it as such.

The tale had gripped us so much that we were barely aware of our surroundings and the circumstance that led us here when the story released us all back into awareness, but somehow with the following miraculous assurance burning within our minds.

Grief knows no bounds that Providence has not foreseen and already made provision for.  Somehow, despite everything we feared, Maeven might just survive to fight another day.

The encounter was surreal.  This was the second time I had seen this man, and I had only now begun to recover from the shock of meeting him the first time.  Begglar and I both met him before.  He was something of a legend in the Mid-World and something of a recluse.  One of its earliest inhabitants.  He was a strikingly powerful man, but one of the most mysterious things about him was that he was over six thousand years old and his body showed no signs of his advanced age.  It is not every day you actually meet someone from the pages of Surface World history, much less named specifically within the scrolls of the Ancient Text.

Mason and I were stunned to see him sitting there along the edge of the mysterious pool, and we could not help but put our hands to our weapons when he stood to his full height.  His massive strength of form and presence made us fearful and very cautious.  His arms were thickly muscled, and despite the draping of his attire, we could see his stature bore no apparent effects of a poor diet, or sedentary lifestyle settling that naturally occurs with our Surface World bodies as they age.  His girth was expansive but well-toned, his skin burnished brown not from the effects of a scalding sun, but from the melanin level of his natural Middle-Eastern and Mesopotamian race and origin.  An origin we all share but in our very distant past.  His mind was razor-sharp and he recognized me from our previous meeting within the Surface World, mentally cataloging every nuance and detail of that prior meeting with what was akin to eidetic memory, yet somehow beyond that.
“It is good to see you again, Brian,” he said, approaching us from along the stone shore of the deep pool, “Though you are much changed from our last meeting.  What have you been eating?”

My face reddened with some slight degree of embarrassment and astonishment, and Mason studied my reaction and looked from both of us in dumbfounded shock.

“This young one looks to have been well-fed as well.  Perhaps the road ahead of you will improve you both.”

I, at last, found my voice and nodded in deference to him, lowering my hand from the hilt of my sword, ensuring it was securely sheathed, so as not to provoke this ancient and powerful man who could effortlessly crush my body and bones.

“It is a great honor to see you again too, sir.  You are well-met.”

The man stood before us, legs apart and firmly planted like two massive trees rooted into the rock and granite of the cavern floor, his massive hands and arms resting loose and easy at his sides below broad shoulders, stacked with slabs of muscle.  Despite his seven-foot frame, he was not gaunt or elongated, like professional basketball players of such height are in the Surface World.  This was a primogeniture.  An apex male, not ravaged by disease or time, or the evidentiary effects of death’s curse upon mankind, though it was still present somewhere within his powerful body.  His almond-colored eyes shown with a keenness and wisdom that was uncanny and I daresay rarely ever witnessed among men in the Surface World.  His skin gave off a sort of low-level radiance like a coppery light, that had burned steadily for many millennia, and I wondered if this was the lingering effects of the Shekinah glory spoken of within the Ancient Text from those who had physically been within the presence of the One.
I turned to Mason, smiling noticing the awe in which he too regarded this man, and said, “Mason, meet your greatest grandfather.  The seventh son in the line of Seth from Adam, the first man of all creation.”

Mason’s eyes widened, and he almost swooned at the shock within my words.

“Sir, I would like you to meet Mason.  A fellow-traveler from the Surface World and a very stout and brave young man as I have come to know recently.”

Mason bowed his head, not knowing how best to respond standing before such a presence, his bow finally sliding down to his side the shaft and tip of his arrow slackening in the bow spring, as he absent-mindedly allowed it to swing and then clatter to the floor.
The man’s hand unfolded ponderously and he extended it outward to Mason, its surface ridged and callused, yet warm and strong.  Mason hesitantly put his hand forward, though it looked so tiny and frail before such as massive palm.  Mason was mesmerized by the man and his gaze mirrored to trepidation and uncertainty and awe he felt, wondering it his hand would even survive the handshake offered him.

Seeing his hesitancy, the man remarked, “I am told that this is the customary greeting from our homeworld, though it arose long after I left it.  Is this still the case?”

Realizing he had delayed, and worried that the delay might be interpreted as rudeness, Mason stepped forward, and bravely placed his hand into the palm of the man, though his thumb would barely fit around the other man’s thumb for a full clasp, he somehow knew he could trust the wise and kind eyes studying him that, though personal danger might be present in doing so, thankfully it was not directed at him.

The massive hand closed around his paw-like an adult’s hand closing around that of an infant, with a gentle squeeze, but nothing more painful than that.  A quiet gentle reserve of power kept in check.

“Upon the Surface World, I was called Hanokh by my father Yered.  I had a son of my own, yet at a very early age.  I was so young then.  Three-score and five revolutions of the Great Light.  My son had hair the color of red fire similar to yours.  You remind me of him in some ways.  I miss him dearly.  I was given a special promise for him when he was born.  I can tell there is something about you, young man.  I believe you were born under a great promise as well.”

Something unspoken and private was exchanged between the two men, that seemed to have a profound effect upon Mason’s countenance, and he blushed unconsciously, much the way that I had done.

“You would do well to live to find out what that promise is, Mason.”

As Hanokh released Mason’s hand, Mason felt a warmth pervade his body, pushing away the coldness that had seeped into his limbs from the ice and wind outside and the still dampness that had soaked his legs when we had partially fallen through the ice into the lake water.  He rubbed his fingers together, feeling a tingling sensation, similar to what he’d felt from touching the Pearl.

“Thank you, sir,” Mason replied, euphoric in this once in a lifetime experience to meet someone whose reputation went beyond that of hero, celebrity or superstar.  This man had the reputation of having walked with and in the presence of the One for over three hundred years.  The wisdom of this man must be of unplumbed depth, a bottomless well of insight and intelligence.

Hanokh turned to me and extended his hand, but clapped me on the shoulder as was his custom, and nodded his greeting.

“You are well-met, indeed,” and he inclined his head toward the direction from which we had come.

“What brings you and young Mason here at this time?”

“We have a friend who was injured by a Manticore.  She is losing her lifeblood.  I had hoped one of the Ghost Pools might provide a cure.”

Hanokh breathed deeply, his thick brow furrowing slightly, “No amount of water from this pool or a rain puddle along the ground will heal her.  That power comes from the One alone.  Does she hold faith to the One?”

“She does,” I answered emphatically.

“Then it is by faith alone that she will be made whole.  The waters here are useless for healing, as some of those others serving as priests here discovered.  Swimming naked, indeed!  Utter nonsense.  I believe that foolishness provoked the creatures to come forth.  You may have seen them?”

“Yes,” I confirmed, “We fought and took the lives of five of them, along with their vile brood.  There may be a few young ones remaining outside, but we cannot tell.  We brought down a ceiling of ice upon them, and killed those attempting to reach us when we fled into these caves below the Trathorn Falls.”

Hanokh regarded me with a slight smile playing along the edge of his mouth.

“Then you have done well, my son.  These creatures do not belong in either world.  It is not right that they should corrupt the Mid-World with their presence.  Their blood is unnatural and will cause blight, infection, and decay.  Where has it fallen?  The ground and waters will require cleansing.”

“So that’s what it was doing?” Mason said.

Hanokh looked to me for clarification.

“I was given a very large pearl that moves mysteriously and has, so far, taken the blood upon itself.”

“A pearl,” Hanokh looked away thoughtfully, “Yes. That makes sense.  And how did you come by this pearl?”

“That is what does not make much sense to me.  It was a Pearl that came from within the tongue of a great beast called a Dust Dragon.  The creature pursued us and I was forced to confront it before it destroyed the foundations of the old city of Azragoth.”

“So the third serpent has arrived in the Mid-World at last, has he?  This was foretold.  And this pearl was contained within the mouth of the beast, was it?”

“Yes.  I was empowered by The Word and its quickening to cut it out of the jaws of the beast.  I still do not understand how I survived the battle.”

“This pearl is much more than you may think it is.  This is an image and forecasting of the One who is Truth.”

“Yes.  I have wondered about it.  Why it would be within the mouth and tongue of a Dust Dragon.”

“Have you?” he arched an eyebrow, “I would think the reasons should be clear.”

I waited, wanting to hear his perspective on it, yet knowing that time was still running short for Maeven.

“We have spoken of this before when you served under another.  Has the memory of mankind so degraded that you have forgotten?  I was told the oral traditions would one day cease and that the words should be preserved in a language of symbols.  Death truly has stolen much from the minds and memory of mankind.  Be that as it may, for this young man’s benefit, I shall state it again.”

Here he turned to Mason, “Young man, your name portends great things in store for you.  Listen well, so that you may remind others when age tries to steal their memory of it:

There were three eternal stones that The One fashioned from Himself.  The Praesporos Stone, The Cordis Stone, and The Fidelis Stone.  These are the keystones for which your generations were called to bear in the Mid-World quests.   Each one of the stones is assigned a supernatural enemy to contain them.  Three great serpents from Eden: one of air, one of water and one of dust.  They are equipped to pursue the chosen from fleeing by flight, by sea or by land.  They are charged to prevent the called forth from discovering them and unlocking the kingdom gate of Excavatia.”

“So this pearl,” I queried, “may very well be The Fidelis Stone?”

“As each stone is paired with an enemy, and your enemy took the form of the last remaining serpent what would you say?”

Stunned, I had to steady myself against the cavern wall to keep from falling.

“But the beast, by pursuing me, brought it to me.”

“Such is the prerogative of The Almighty.  He uses what seems foolish to confound the wise, and by it, He reveals His deeper workings.  Even the schemes of the enemy ultimately work against him.  The One sees all things and knows the end from the beginning, and demonstrates that to all who walk with Him and open their hearts.”

“But you are a prophet.  The first, in fact.  He told you of things to come.”

“Prophets are only given the form of things to come.  The details are revealed by experiencing them as they unfold.  Just because prophets are told the form, does not mean we are not required to trust Him with the details of the unfolding.  You have heard it said that ‘the just shall live by faith.’  There is a day coming when all will be revealed, but until that time, we are given a measure of time to learn how to trust Him, even when death pursues us.  Those creatures we contend with here are incarnations of devils committed to the condemnation of humankind.  They wound and discourage our sisters and brethren with partial truths embellished into falsehoods.  You have seen this happen with the ones they call Trolls.  That ability is connected to these creatures and these very waters.  I have traced the cause back to this place.”

“This place?”

“Certain pools.  The Xarmnians have stockpiled barrels of the dark waters from one of these pools.  They were purchased from a former priest who was given charge over them.  It is from these unnatural waters that they derived their mysterious elixir.  I also believe that the seepage from these pools is poisoning the rivers of the Trathorn and all other rivers that are fed from its waters.  Many villages in the valleys below rely on the Trathorn for their drinking water.  It feeds the underground wells and waters their stock and fields.  They are becoming more receptive to the Xarmnian offers of protection and provision.  Many have turned away from trusting in The One, because of fear.”

It was quite a bit to take in.

“Have the Azragothians been told this?”

“They will be.  And soon.  Fear is an enemy.  There are still those within Azragoth that are bound by it.  Those who are influenced by outside forces.”

“So why do the people of the Mid-World need us?” Mason asked, “What can we do?  We can barely save ourselves.  None of us are trained fighters.”

“But that is not what is called for, young Mason.  The Ancient Text reveals what is to come.  All of creation, occupying both the Surface and the Mid-World lies in waiting for God’s children to come to the full knowledge of who they really are.  For their identities to be revealed, not just to the worlds at large, but to themselves as well.  Only then will they awaken to the Truth and The Kingdom.”

19 For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. 20 Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, 21 the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  [Romans 8:19-22 NLT]

“We are a race that has fallen.  All are condemned by our choices and actions against the One and our curse is passed from generation to generation so that all mankind lives to resist the loving call of the One.  We are so greatly loved, Brian and Mason.  You cannot imagine how great is the love of the One.  We are His delight.  He longs to fellowship with us and bring us into His presence and show us the many wonders of the worlds He has created for us.  Yet we choose to remain at a distance and live lives that cause us to be further and further away from Him.  His Holy Presence burns with a refining fire that we cannot survive if we are covered by the stain of our rebellion.  That stain is highly flammable and must be kept at a distance from His White Holy Fire.  Had it not been for the Blood Covering, none of us would ever be able to come into His Physical Presence again.  We cannot imagine what lengths the Deceiver has gone to steal us away from that Fellowship.  We cannot imagine how deeply the Father grieves that He was unable to hold and embrace His children and that one day, the Deceiver even might cause His children to forget that their Loving Father ever existed.  What was even worse still is those who know and have a sense that the One waits for and yearns for them, yet they choose to live as if He never existed or has cruelly abandoned them.  The Pearl in the Dragon’s throat is the one tenet of truth that it employs to weaken us beyond hearing all other truths that follow it.  It is the one truth that because we have personally turned from our Father, we stand condemned by our actions and choices.  This is the truth.  But the Blood of the One changes all of that and satisfies all penalties, past, present, and future, for the one soul that chooses Him and allow that payment to serve upon their account and cover them with an invisible Shekinah glory that allows them to stand in the days of evil under the onslaught of the wicked ones, emerging from any world.  For those covered by faith, they must believe that the Truth that condemned them also worked and moved heaven and earth to redeem them.  All living things, in Heaven and on Earth, seen and unseen, require Truth to have life.  That is why the deceivers must have at least one element of truth to become what they are.  Without an element of truth, no creature under heaven can exist, so there remains the one point in which they were touched by the Hand of the One.  That one point of truth lies within every living being in all of creation.  It is immutable, constant and present, and that truth will never die.”

As I said, I am in awe of this man.  His knowledge and depth never cease to amaze me and stir within me a desire to know more and more.  Time seems to become so unimportant in his presence, but I know that it is not just from him that this craving and thirst comes from.  It arises from the Presence of Whom he has been in contact with.  The One every redeemed soul longs for yet may not consciously understand that this is where it comes from.  A place where each one of us wake up to find that we have been on a long and arduous journey, full of heartache, difficulty, sickness, and pain, yet we finally top a horizon from the dark valley of our existence and see the lights of a place we have been seeking since we first drew breath.  A place that we know and recognize.  A place that has had a calling upon us and stirred a yearning within us.  A place where we are wanted, expected and belong.  A place called home.  A place that has a Father scanning the horizon for us every moment of every day.  A place where our entire being, body, soul, and spirit is clothed fed and nurtured and embraced and celebrated.  The place where we find our Presence within The Presence.  A place that I have come to refer to by a name not used by others yet is meaningful to me.  Excavatia, the place of Full Fellowship.

Remembering my reasons for being here, I mentally shook myself and looked to Hanokh, seeking guidance.

“So, is there any point in bringing Maeven here to these pools?”

Hanokh smiled and chuckled, “I did not say that, my friend.  I only said that trusting in the waters alone would have no effect, but it was by faith that she will be made whole.”

“So, we can bring her here?”

“Most certainly!” he grinned, “But you must clean up the mess made first.  Remove the cursed beings from this world and consign them back into the void from which they came.”

“And how exactly do I do that?”

Hanokh stared at me a moment as if I had lost my mind and spoke a language of gibberish.

“I am so amazed at how little you remember or know of the authority in which you have been given by the One?  Have you not been trained on The Beckoning?  I see you bear an Honor Sword there at your hip.  Have you not been told that those things you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven?  Where do you think that heavenly realm is, if not here among the Mid-Worlds where supernatural presences walk in the betweenness before the realms of the Great Throne Room of the heavens?”

“What should I do?”

“These waters, you call Ghost Pools are Calling Waters.  They summon images from the Other World, our origin world, but they also are erstwhile portals of a sort and occasionally allow something or someone to pass through them.  You will need to stand in faith and confidence, take authority through your Spirit and agree with the One on what must be done.  Bind yourself in obedience to His directing, bind your Honor Sword in sworn covenant and touch the waters of these pools and call these vile creatures back into the Abyss from which they arose.  Though you may believe you and your company has killed these creatures I assure you, that you have not.  You have only slain their forms.  If they remain they will find other forms to inhabit within the Mid-World.  You must consign them back to the deep.”

“Will you help us?” Mason asked.

Hanokh regarded him with a warm smile, “I am helping you, my son.  This is something your called one must do.  It falls to him as the one called by the One to lead this assignment.  My time with you here is almost done.  I feel compelled to go seek another with the messages I have been given by the One.  I am one who was called to be sent.  One day, perhaps very soon I will return to the Surface World, and I will, at last, be given leave to accomplish that for which I have been shepherded here in reserve.  I will then go to the land of my fathers and be reunited with my brothers and sisters who have long since passed on unto the halls of the Great Throne.  My spirit is much like these pools here.  I am stirred to speak and act and tell a great many things that will bring trouble upon these lands and upon the land of my ancestors.  My soul and heart are prepared for what has been ordained for me.  I lack nothing, yet I know what it is like to yearn for a family that has perished.  The Father’s heart and mine commune and like a child yearns for their parent, so my soul longs to embrace my wife and son once more, kept within the bosom of the One.  They await me, and I await them.  I must leave you now, to do that which must be done here.  Follow the inner voice of the One.  You are loved.  It will never lead you astray, though everything else will.  When all other voices shout for you, find the stillness and quiet place within your heart.  Listen intently and intentionally, and He will speak to you, though you may enter the darkest places, from within you will always find enough light to walk in His Path.  Learn to hear His Voice above all others.  Go even if the way ahead looks impossible if He tells you to go.  In this, you will find your way.”

Mason was visibly shaken, “You’re going to leave us, then?”

“I must, young Mason,” Hanokh responded, “But that is not to say that our paths might not cross again.  It is only that I must go ahead of you a ways to accomplish the mission for which my life was promised as well.  Take courage, young Mason.  You never walk alone.”

And then he once again turned to me, “I feel your friend will be healed by the faith in which she holds, but you will need to ease her into the central pool ahead, not one of the ones in which the creatures will return.  Mark well which ones receive the bodies of these beasts and do not enter then once those creatures pass through.  Once your friend has recovered, there is a further pool deeper in that you are meant to see, just beyond that dark narrow passage there.  I believe what you will find may come as quite a shock, but it further shows how short the time is becoming between the end of my sojourn in these Mid-Worlds and my return back to the Surface World once again.  Heed well all you observe there, then proceed onward to find the next connection of story you seek.  My time has drawn near, and I must take my leave of you.  Hold to the words of the Ancient Text.  They are the one blessing that my gift to the Surface World holds throughout memory and time.  Your generations have forgotten much, but the Ancient Text will lead you back to the One.”

“Wait,” Mason pleaded, “Please don’t go.  We are not sure of what we’re doing here or of where we are going?  How will we know what we should do to follow the One?”

Hanokh placed a steadying hand on Mason’s shoulder and looked him directly in the eye, “Mason.  Do you know what your name means?”

Mason shook his head, “I’ve never really thought about it.  It’s just a name I am known by.”

Hanokh smiled and shook his head in amazement, “No.  It is not just a name.  It is a calling.  It means a solid builder with stones.  You are a foundation layer.  A staunch companion and as valuable as any other on this quest.  There is a passage in the Ancient Text that faithfully records the voice of the One speaking about foundations.  It reads thus:

“24 “Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock; 25 and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. 26 And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; 27 and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it.”” [Matthew 7:24-27 RSV]

This verse could very well be your life verse, young Mason.  You are called to be a wise builder.  To establish yourself and others upon the rock and build walls that will stand and protect others against the storms ahead.  You are a reliable and trustworthy person, solid and immutable.  All confidence given you is well placed for you are loyal and constant.  Your name means something as does the life you live under it.  Never forget that.”

A tear formed in Mason’s eye, and it coursed down his cheek, as he stood bravely under the direct gaze of Hanokh, receiving praise for his person and his potential and value.

“Back in my days upon the Surface World, names were given in ceremony and with much thought as to what meaning they held during the times into which they were born.  A father who wanted to bless his child thought long and well upon what their child would be called, whether as a blessing or as a curse.  My name too has a meaning.  It is the word for delivering valuable information to someone, not merely as a message, but more fully as a transfer of both knowledge and skill.  My name means ‘to teach’ or ‘teaching’.  I am Hanokh.  The teacher.  But you have something very special inside of you that far exceeds all knowledge and skill that I could share with you.  You have invested within your being the part of the One who was my teacher.  The Ancient Text tells us:

“27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.” [1 John 2:27 NASB]

Trust the voice of the One who called you to this quest and will teach you in all things as you need them.  Learn as I learned.  Find fellowship with the One and you will always have everything you need for the task and trial through which you must walk.  Follow and support your guide.  Brian will need your solid support.  He has been given the vision of what must follow.  As he relies on the One, you can be sure that this will bring you all to a good place and help you accomplish all that you were called to do.”

With that Hanokh turned and looked at me one last time, “Brian.  Your name requires you to allow strength to come to these moments of need and of testing.  Live your name.  Stay strong and focused.  Remember this, though it may seem strange to you now.  Within these caverns, there are mysteries hidden and mysteries revealed.  Take care that you are not deceived.  The way in is not the way out.  Until we meet again my friends in this life or the next, I bid you all blessings of the One.”

And then he strode off into the darkness beyond the initial cave pool through an aperture in the cave wall that he barely fit through and then faded into the darkness beyond.

Mason and I were both stunned and remained silent a moment, looking about us and examining the cave and the mysterious topaz water glowing with some phosphorescence below.  In the distance, we could hear the continual bubbling sound as water fell to water churning the rippling surface into an echoing hollowed song of melancholy.  The voices of the water reverberated through the chambers and palaces of stone, coming from one direction only, while a quiet stillness seemed two whisper low unintelligible notes into the other three passages beyond the curtains of ice.

Mason looked at me and wiped his eye with his sleeve.

“It almost doesn’t seem real, does it?”

I nodded, “That is how it always feels in that man’s presence.  Like something bigger has transpired than I could even perceive.”

“Was that really him?” he asked.

“It was.  I cannot say how I know that, but sometimes you just feel when things are true.”

Mason nodded, “I never really thought about him as a character.  He is not a topic we ever covered in Sunday school.  What did he mean by the gift he gave to mankind?  What was he talking about?”

I gazed at him and smiled, “Don’t you know?”

Mason looked at me further intrigued, “Know what?”

“Consider where the earliest records came from and consider how old he must be in terms of Surface World years.”

“From him?”

I nodded. “If you have not read the passage in the Ancient Text passage ascribed to the brother of the incarnated One you should do so again.  That man is referenced in the text as only of the first recorded person to give a prophetic vision concern the time and age in which we now live in the Surface World.  His words were recorded for all posterity’s sake so that they would endure throughout the millennia to come.”

Mason thought about that for a moment and then asked a most logical question.

“Why is that particularly standing out?  The words of many prophets are recorded in the Ancient Text.”

I grinned, and clasped his arm in friendship and fellowship, as I revealed to him a mystery I had had to come to myself.

“Because at the time he gave the prophecy, there was no known written language, yet the prophecy is given as a specific quote.”

“A quote?!” Mason exclaimed, realizing with a shock what they seemed to imply, “Do you mean to say…”

“That he wrote it down,” I answered, nodding again, “The earliest known written language from the Akkadians and Sumerians was from cuneiform clay tablets believed to have been written in the 9^th millennium B.C.  Whatever written language Hanokh wrote his teachings would have been recorded long before then.  We believe Hanokh, or Enoch as he is called in our language, is the father of all written language.  That he developed the proto-alphabet to record what happened in his time for times forward.  Death entered the human species exactly as the One said it did, on the day both Adam and Havah, whom we know as Eve, ate of the forbidden fruit.  On that day, they became mortal and they and our species began our inevitable journey to death.  As a perfect man and woman, both had the capacity for wisdom and knowledge beyond anything we can imagine.  Their minds were constantly quickened and bright with the glory of time spent with the One.  It was only later that disease and fatigue and failure of the mind began to take hold and overtake those among the living and cause them to die.  Back in Hanokh’s day, and in the days of his father and his father’s father, a great apostasy was taking place.  In fact, the name of Yered, Hanokh’s father had a meaning too.  It meant to descend or come down from a height.  We have speculated that this was the time in which fallen creatures came from the heavens and tried to corrupt the seed of man and prevent the seed of woman bearing forth the prophecy of the One to come.  It is quite possible, that Enoch is the father of all written language and the reason why we have books and stories today.  He recorded and captured the first stories, and taught others to capture and record them, using the proto-alphabet he developed.  Did you notice how he kept referring to the ideas we forget and how the changes in us now dull our memory to important things we should know?”

Mason steadied himself, suddenly feeling his knees weaken to the point where he needed bolstering and to place his hands on something solid, firm and immovable.

“So Hanokh is essentially the human father of all stories.”

I nodded.

“He is the reason we are here, and on this quest to recover the lost stories.”

“To the best of my understanding, yes.” I concurred.

“So, the Ancient Text we have was brought about in part due to him.”

“He was an instrument of it, yes.”

Mason now needed to lean against the wall and look up at the lights of the water casting its phosphorescent glowing rings and loops dancing above us on the cavern ceiling.  It was an almost dizzy effect, coupled with the shock of this revelation.  Of having just been in the presence of the one person whose obedience and faithfulness led to preserving the truths of the Ancient Text in writing for all generations to come afterward.  Mason looked from the ceiling to the cave passage into which Hanokh had disappeared and then back to me.

“How does he know about the Ancient Text that was written after he left?”

“He committed it all to memory.  Remember that he walked in fellowship with The One who is timeless.  He was given the privilege of reading what was fully written on The Marker Stone when he came to the Mid-World.  And he copied that text and preserved it here for others to follow.”

“They’ll never believe this if we tell them,” he asked, “Will they?”

I shrugged, “I do not know what they will believe.  Perhaps we need to wait until the time is right for it.  As Hanokh said, he may meet us on the road ahead.  It is kind of hard to describe the presence of the man unless one is standing before him.  He doesn’t present himself as more than he is, and one might never get the full story from him if he has to cast himself in the role as its hero.  I am amazed at the humility of the man and his lack of pretense.  He lives with none of the artifices of modern mankind.”

Mason nodded emphatically, “Yeah, it as if it never occurs to him to say anything more than is necessary and the absolute truth.”

“Remember his prophesy shows he detests and condemns all artifice.  The Ancient Text passage written by the One’s earthly brother reads as follows:

“12 When these people eat with you in your fellowship meals commemorating the Lord’s love, they are like dangerous reefs that can shipwreck you. They are like shameless shepherds who care only for themselves. They are like clouds blowing over the land without giving any rain. They are like trees in autumn that are doubly dead, for they bear no fruit and have been pulled up by the roots. 13 They are like wild waves of the sea, churning up the foam of their shameful deeds. They are like wandering stars, doomed forever to blackest darkness. 14 Enoch, who lived in the seventh generation after Adam, prophesied about these people. He said, “Listen! The Lord is coming with countless thousands of his holy ones 15 to execute judgment on the people of the world. He will convict every person of all the ungodly things they have done and for all the insults that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” 16 These people are grumblers and complainers, living only to satisfy their desires. They brag loudly about themselves, and they flatter others to get what they want.” [Jude 1:12-16 NLT]”

“I doubt if he had remained with us, the two others among our company who are hiding who they are, would be able to deceive him.  That banshee would have been exposed almost immediately.  He does not suffer fools.  Nell believes there is a reason not to expose the two in our company who are from these lands and not the Surface World, and I have a strong inclination to agree.  They will be allowed to remain with us, but I am telling you this in confidence, because, as Hanokh said, I believe you to be someone in whom we can rely on.  Hanokh is an excellent judge of character, so you can always trust what he says about you, even if you may doubt it yourself.  He knows things and discerns much.  I doubt any person’s true character could be hidden from him because he continues to walk in fellowship with the One.”

Mason sighed and then laughed and then seemed to gather the strength that he needed.

“So, are we doing this?”

I grinned and put my hand to the hilt of my Honor Sword.  Together we walked to the edge of the shimmering blue Ghost Pool and I withdrew the blade and unwrapped the Bloodline and Mason helped me bind it about my wrist and arm.

“Let’s do this together.  I need your help and support.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Place your hands over my hands as we dip the blade into the water.  Repeat after me but mean and feel the words.  We must be in agreement together to allow this to happen.”

“Is there a verse for that?”

“Yes, there is.  It is found in the gospel of Matthew and reads thus:

“19 “I also tell you this: If two of you agree here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you. 20 For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”” [Matthew 18:19-20 NLT]”

“Remember that Hanokh told us these waters have no power of themselves, but to actuate faith and allow the Authority of the One to come into this moment, I believe we will see something miraculous happen.”

Mason stood next to me as we dangled the Honor Sword’s tip above the water of the Ghost Pool, placing his hands over my hands as we held to the cross-guard of the sword.  We slowly dipped it into the water…and the Honor Sword and our wrists began to glow with blue light.