What Dreams are Made Of_Part Fifteen: The Gift.

Parts of the substrate had been scraped with a broad blade. Patches of wet color bled through the withered earth. Regions of rough surface concealed nameless portraits raked in viscid tones. A few turned their textured heads silently. The paint itself was alive in covert plot, so that he became wary where his feet fell.

His eyes were drawn to the lake. It mimicked the ebon sky in shades of carbon black. He did not dare its depths. Mirrors might reveal lies that he’d craved only to forget.

Dull pigment stirred like dust in the backdrop of his thoughts. Voices murmured dimly and then amplified quickly into a cacophony of corpses; their rasping chorus reached over obsidian channels and across the unseen void. The landscape broke into fragments and points of color that swirled and lifted higher. A blue streak forked above the swelling waves and thunder cracked so close he could smell the ozone. Hands fell from his ears. He stumbled forward as the ground came up to greet him.

In the eye of the storm was silence like a terrible roar, and the richness of the world was drowning in its wake. Just one detail stood away from the twisting fray. He had seen nothing like it here.

Slowly he reached for the object of his design. He pulled it closer. Its polished handle and nickel ferrule wrapped securely around the sable tip. It was a talisman. At that moment, the wind died down in a sudden hush that tore the breath from him.

The storms fading reprise ceased in the timbre of her words, “Life is a tide of terror and great beauty...for which we are all responsible. We must each know who we are with certainty; a conviction to merge in myriad possibilities. Go to the mere and see who you’ve become.”

At the water’s edge the sky had turned a deep Prussian Blue. A few stars flickered in the lake. She was behind him. Though her beauty still startled him, it was the stranger who stood beside her that caught his eye. He knew the face. But, the inner image of the child so familiar did not match. The man staring back at him looked both tested and tranquil. He saw past his hurts and misgivings with intense desire and strength of will to make of life whatever he chose.

Epilogue:

The solitude embraced him for a few moments before he realized she was gone. The plot surrounding had no more hold on his heart. He looked into the lake to where she had been. A radiant circle was mirrored there, full and round.

The Moon: how he longed to be there. It was waiting like a promise in the sky; he waded away from the shore and dove into its shining center.

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What Dreams are Made Of_Part Fourteen: Sanctuary of Shadows.

Time stretched into miles and the underbrush compressed and tangled into tripwire that challenged every step. Very little of the landscape could be seen in the grim light that scarcely penetrated the passage.

At last the trail widened and formed an alcove amid the rancid wildwood. The airy night grew cold and apprehensive. Shafts of spectral light wafted through cavities in the brushstroke branches and lit the ground opposite the hollow. Instinct that should have made wings of his feet turned his limbs to stone instead. Each step was an omen. Rotted timbers strained their corrupted talons outward while the dark breach rooted within called him to its menacing embrace.

He stepped cautiously into the clearing. Whatever stars had reached this foul meadow were quickly covered by ink stained clouds. This small hint of conspiracy slashed at his courage. His mind played a verse from a forgotten poem: “A boy sat beside a boundless mere, while shadows shaped like shrouds crept close…to spew veiled venom into his waiting ear.”

He knew this place. It had been painted long ago. The gessoed ground lay grey and cracked under muddy colors that faded into the damaged dead layer. He did not need to see the fevered details and decayed disillusions. He knew this place. It had been a shelter from desolation; an escape into the world for which he’d hoped. It had become a trap with blind eyes and jaws of iron.

To be continued.

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What Dreams are Made Of_Part Thirteen: The Separation.

The forest walls grew denser the further they stepped. There were no stars visible at the thicket’s outer rim. The trees loomed like giants whose towering arms and wooden fingers were knitted in opaque patterns that blotted out the sky. Crow calls echoed overhead. Something vile was entombed in the bone black umbra.

He paused against a soaring tree incised in sepia and hardened layers of linseed. Small twigs and debris showered down from the bough above and startled him. A gentle touch brought back his courage. Once their eyes adjusted to the gloom, the grove before them appeared to form a narrow hallway in the gnarled tree trunks.

He heard muttering and muffled shouting. A chill crept along his spine and tunneled through his mind. Broken glass chimed an atonal melody abruptly cut short by a door sharply shut. Behind a shield of white noise and distortion, appalling promises were implored and lies lay in ambush to unravel his mind.

What waited there was uncertain and he was not ready. Though she had led him here, and her comfort was a cure that could not be measured, it was his decision. He held her hand tightly once more and tenderly tilted her head to memorize the lines that drew them together. Looking back only once, long enough to see her elusive smile fade into the forest, he set out to face his fear alone.  

To be continued.

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What Dreams are Made Of_Part Twelve: The Threshold.

They stopped at the head of the vale to survey the stony ground. Grey scars were drawn into the earth and mounds that resembled unmarked graves ruptured amid the rocks. There were trails that led between the low lying hills and extended for miles. Some ran in circles. Others cut complicated patterns without apparent purpose and suddenly stopped.

 Even so, not every sight was somber here. Raised in splendor, within the ruins, were memories of kindness and moments of joy; they bloomed as brightly colored flowers among briars or emerged between snow drifts like isolated miracles.

They walked for a while without a word or a glance until they reached the edge of a dense forest. Recognition froze him. All that had wrought compassion and wrung out terror in him was trapped within a chiaroscuro of bold brush work, forged into the dark woods. A question burned his lips. She looked into his eyes and saw the fear written there.

“The things that have happened in your life, both choices made by you and for you, have not made you who you are. You are who you have always been; your life experience is merely the trail marked on the journey to that discovery.” And with a gesture of her hand they crossed over the charred threshold into the yawning shadows.

To be continued.

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What Dreams are Made Of_Part Eleven: A Life Beyond.

An opening emerged near the hill. It was a window in the storm where the rain didn’t fall and the painting was still pristine. At its core a subtle silver light was breaking. Although nearly faded into the framework of his own existence, he drew himself upright and faced the unknown advent.

In the center he saw her. She burned like a star. One moment watercolor washes accented her profile, the next she was rendered in pen or delicately glazed in oil. He was lost in her eyes and took no notice at the union of their hands. He looked down upon this in wonder and saw himself remade.

 “The milieu here is yours as well as the land and the Moon that lies beyond.” She spoke in a voice like a song. He no longer felt cold. The idea of owning his fate pierced his heart through. They were nearly up the hill before he realized the rain had stopped. At the peak of the old hill they paused. Their eyes met once more and he knew what she intended.

"Here is the way to unreserved and open life without imposition or compulsion or defeat or deficiency...Trust yourself and be free."  The words had barely left her lips before they started boldly into the valley, down a pathway lit by the Moon.

To be continued.

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