‘They came with the slant of the morning light…

‘The Mother and her old crones.  At least, that’s how they appeared to me, haggard and wild-haired with a glint in their doll-eyes.  Even if it was only the glint of the early streams of sun, the morning seemed evil, with its harsh brazen scepters spiking the trail ahead, behind, beside us.  And I despised these glassy-eyed women now with their courses of judgment and hands of wrath. 

            They embrocated Alex with lavender oil and hyssop before leading him into the copse of aspen behind the chamber of jade, down through a ravine of fern and heath that opened onto a deep park where a mammoth, twisted tree hung on the ground. 

            I say “hung” because its vast expanse of branches seemed to keep the tree hovering in a state of reverence, like an ancient, sacred monarch pinned only by its spiraled trunk that seemed to nourish the earth instead of taking nourishment from it like other trees.  But things were warped in my mind that morning, appearing as if a dream were driving us onward, inward, through the organs of the earth.  And the tree opened its embrace as we approached.       

            “We adhere to Thee From Whom All Blessings Flow,” the Mother said, “as evidenced by this rowan tree — the Tree of Wisdom — which stood at the dawn of earth before the dawn of man,” she continued, “and stands here yet, a symbol of Life-sustained from The One who gives us breath.”  And she spread out her arms to grasp her sisters’ arms as they surrounded Alex.  “We release him into the hands of The-Great-One-Who-Was-And-Is-And-Is-To-Come.” 

            A great wind swept through the high branches of the rowan tree, whirled in and around each of us, as if settling us in the cold cradle of a foreign hand.  A whipping coil of light flew through the wind, and I heard Alex call out, “No matter what, I will come for you!”  Then he was gone.

            Everything was gone, the garden of wind and light, the Chrysalis, the Mother and her sister-crones, the rowan tree, everything.  I was in a grove — no, it was a triad of trees: apple, oak, hazel.  And at my feet something that smacked of familiar miens, a stone half buried in a pitch of heather.  A stone bearing my name and a date I could hardly remember.

A moment passed, another and in those moments, I stood numb with gluey feet at the foot of my own grave.  For the first time since I’d come to the Faeran Valley, I was alone.  And the silence was deafening.’

_________________________________