In retrospect, Oracion felt Mother had done her a greater disservice when she had recommended Oracion be auctioned for dragons, than when she had sold Oracion’s night visions to a troubled prelate, for the cost of a trikerion lamp.
After all, the dragons had done Oracion no harm, and when she, a princess but only five years old, demanded Mother tell her – what offenses dragons had committed that all of them were guilty of death (just so a princess could bear a prince) – Mother could give no answer.
“If any knight slays an innocent, unproven dragon for my sake, not tried for its case” Oracion had announced, licking honey cream casually off of her fingers (for she was eating a thick slice of current bread) “be he a knight, a prince, or even be he a king – he will never have my hand.”
Oracion had gone then to see Father, still licking her fingers.
She found him in the expansive castle library on one of the tall ladders towards the back of the room, beneath the ancient ceiling vault upon which the artists had drawn angels. He was paging through a heavy volume he had pulled from a shelf, beside an open window the height of one wall. From this emitted a gentle, summer evening breeze, that caused long, gauzy silk curtains to flutter, like wispy skirts of garden nymphs.
Father often seemed to understand Oracion, when others could not.
Indeed, he had overheard portions of Oracion and her mother’s conversation, which came echoing in from the dining chamber. It was funny how within this castle there were so few secrets, yet so many, that Oracion was wont to realize.
Glancing down at Oracion, Father was now only halfway absorbed in the fine volume, which had such outstanding, gilded lettering running down the length of its spine, luminous calligraphy seemed to jump right off of the binding, in response to the flickering candlelight.
“In your mother’s culture it was an honor for princesses to have suitors duel over them,” he stated, matter of factly, still appearing to peruse the book. “And where there was not game, the men would invent.”
Oracion crossed her arms at this remark, her brow knit with great consternation at what seemed like Eros’s error, then sat down silently into a great armchair, three times too big.
“That does not impress,” she had finally responded, which was a response that was also three times too big, for such a little girl. “So why would it honor?”
Father considered for a moment, then slid the book back into the row of bound manuscripts, closing the space. He came down from the ladder and sat down next to his little girl empty handed, drawing her lovingly – into his arms.
“Do not worry, my righteous little Oracion,” he told her. “Your mother knows it will not happen that way. For I will not let her do that to you.”
Oracion had looked up at Father then, suddenly more hopeful of a future not devoid of that virtue of which marriage claimed to promote, and which Father had taught her only too well. Father knew what love was, and he also had a habit of fixing things right.
His love for Oracion was like a deep well from which she could draw many delightful draughts, to the degree to which she was thirsty, and simply trusted he had secreted them there. Satisfaction was always there waiting. And since satiation could be so endlessly drawn – with little more than an inclination of will, or the sound of one’s voice in this kingdom, why did not everyone know joy? And why then was poor Mother, so often sad?
“How then, will it happen?” Oracion asked.
Father smiled.
“Oh that. I do not know… for that is for you. But you are part Etherate, so you will not be won. You are also nobility… so you will rule with your king. You are a shape shifter, so you will marry like mind – with free choice – and finally – you have warrior blood within – of deep and ancient origin.”
“Warrier blood,” repeated Oracion. “Oh Daddy, I know. I will duel with the suitors and whomever can beat me – I will allow them my hand.”
At this Father had laughed robustly, even slapping one of his knees.
“I don’t know about that, my dearest, funny heart. Perhaps, but not like you imagine it. You are sure to meet him in the midst of battle, but you are going to have to be willing to be saved. The saving part is mutual, and non-negotiable – for true love is a gift freely given, and accepted.”
This explanation sat true with Oracion, so she had not pondered it further, or plumbed its depths. Until she met Cosmos, the angel-boy she called Christmas, in Father’s mysterious orange grove.
Now it made even more sense, as if Father had been mapping for her the lines of his face.
As for Mother, perhaps she had just been teasing, but Oracion decided never to tell her about the boy she had heard being called Cosmos. Telling Mother such things might worry her, hasten competitive suitors, or provoke a loosening of dragons.
And she had instantly loved that little boy like Christmas morning.
But that she was going to marry Cosmos – the boy she called Christmas – was something the Presence had revealed to her as well, so in Oracion’s mind it was already settled. There only remained decorating the ballroom with balsam and pine, not encouraging the other suitors, and planning the feast to which she planned on inviting all nobility, fairy-kind, shape-shifters, servants, commoners and animals alike, regardless of rank, species, table manners… or lack thereof.
But as the years passed, that magical and sleepy spring day in the orange grove faded like a sweet dream rather than a certain, tangible memory. Though she missed her beloved Christmas with an aching, ever-present longing, Oracion had begun to assume her angel boy was already in heaven and waiting for her there, like one of those perfect cherubs, whose images had graced Father’s ceiling.
The significance that the Divine Presence would allow her to meet Cosmos again, right before Oracion found herself, as an adult, shifting into the past to revisit her father’s death – was not lost on Oracion, whose mind was ever reflectant, and constantly sifted analogy and thought. Analogy and thought, to be effective, were like shadow and light, juxtaposed. Though she had perfected these mental skills in time travel lessons as a child, instantaneous contemplation and awareness were something she had never been without.
So truly, as an adult, Oracion knew that hearing Cosmos’s voice (even as he rescued her from a blended-dragon, who was really her brother) was at the same time what gave her strength to face this uncomfortable reality.
Should it have come then as any surprise, that the Artist who tempered the forest she loved so dear, with variant hue and melodious bird song, had balanced her life with such a great paradox, albeit in the unhurried, eleventh hour, like her own father, glancing down from a book?
But He had.
And it did.
It did come as a surprise.
The sound of her lover’s voice, when she had heard it that second time, as an adult.
Oracion noticed that during the most important events in life many things happen at once, and perhaps this was how they tended to take one unaware.
Even as she found herself shifting helplessly away from the now adult Cosmos, back into the past, visions started flashing rapidly before Oracion’s eyes like cut away still shots of life. The current buns with their sticky, dehydrated fruit – now a startling, disturbing ruby red – and her mother’s eyes, on the surface kind – but with hidden complexity.
This was a jarring disorientation, more dizzying than grains of sand in a sand storm, flying into her face.
The two visions crossed, in a sense also juxtaposed, and she saw her mother shifting into a dream snatcher. Mother’s eyes seemed to sink in her face until they were filled with heavy, deep pools of currant jam – which became dried, coagulated blood. Oracion suddenly became aware of her own eyes becoming filled with something opposite – wet, stinging, and raw.
The wetness of tears upon Oracion’s cheeks stung like a bitter salve, even as she passed over and saw below the hang man’s noose being erected by the priests – and the testers – in the castle square.
But she needed to cry to put back into her own mother’s eyes – life.
A loosening of emotions had been necessary and caused by this time shift, and Oracion wept even as she felt, and was becoming aware, of new – but past – surroundings. She felt the godmothers clinging ever more tightly to the folds of her skirt – Sweet Joy, hiding her eyes, burying her face, as if in this time shift she would be Chagrin once again. But it was also then that she heard the Madonna of the Glistening Wood saying “He thirsts”.
Her voice was both a startlingly lovely, beckoning song, and a gentle pleading. She had promised Oracion to stay near.
Suddenly all Oracion could think was “Father” – the immensity of him – and the depth of his love for her, what it had been, and what it was. She was back in the turret bedroom her parents had given her, now weeping for Father, whose death was about to begin.
This was how Oracion realized it, the day the kind lady turned her tears for her mother – into tears for Father – at the sound of her voice. For if she hadn’t spoken Oracion would have died of grief, and martyred herself – for a wrong cause.
Where perfectionism exists, shame is always lurking.
– Brene Brown
The laws of the past follow a distant norm. – Lessons of Time Travel for Children, Book I
Oranges are one of the few fruits that will not overripen if left on the tree. Fun fact
I believe in the magic of coffee and oranges. – Paul Hodgson
There was another fruit tree other than the pear that now grew wild. There were less of these but they grew nearer and chose to intersperse with the lady’s pear trees that had once been part of Father’s orchards, rather than mingle with the giant oak and pine that lived near the stream. Orange and pear now had to reach for water and they did so with intermingling roots. Oracion noticed that none of the fruit trees that had been planted so long ago grew on flat land. They grew into the foothills of mountains as if someone had been experimenting with elevation.
But the fruit Oracion had on her mind this evening was the orange.
She recalled when Father had first had the gardeners plant the trees which bore these delicious treats. It was before Priest had begun experimenting with darker things. Since the climate did not naturally host the tropical, Father had induced the hybrid makers to regraft a wondrous, older variety of orange tree that would constantly and simultaneously fruit oranges and flower, while remaining impervious to the elements.
Father had loved his gardens.
When the weather was kind now (in the present) Oracion would make the trek just to hunt for and gather these special oranges, while her godmothers sat nearby, contenting themselves with spinning necklaces out of blossom and vine. Oranges were one of Oracion’s favorite fruits and reminded her of childhood. This evening however, Oracion was time traveling and it was only by chance she found herself headed towards the old groves, because she had chosen the longer, more circuitous route through the forest, embracing the arduous incline. She had wanted to come up upon the old castle from behind, and avoid emerging from the woods into village streets altogether.
The hunters would be on the lookout for stag and the priests were doing the testings, but since Oracion had cloaked herself in invisibility she was not certain why she intuited such a strong need to be cautious. She sought to avoid the scouts and dichobots as well, who inevitably would be out and about looking for her, despite the fact they were as unlikely to see her as they were to become suddenly aware of what they themselves had become.
Oracion did plan to show herself if necessary, but only once she had shifted safely into the past, and only when she had found Father. Though she could communicate with people in the past that she loved that had gone on in the present to other realms, she could not yet effect the past directly, nor could it effect or harm her. Nonetheless, the weight of this evening’s importance lay on Oracion’s shoulders as heavily as the fog that blanketed the trees all around her.
It was getting colder as well, which was strange for late spring.
Usually in the evening, the dark black, lacy limbs of upper tree branches stood out in sharp contrast against a setting sun, and its violet-purple sky. Now the moon, full but obscured, was the only language by which Oracion could find her way through the younger trees towards what had once been orchards. The godmothers had cloaked themselves into invisibility as well, though Oracion of course could see them, and they occasionally appeared to her as nuthatches or robins. This was intended to amuse her she was sure, but as birds they appeared to have no place toland. Upper portions of oak and pine now disappeared altogether into the heavy mist. It was as if branches had been lopped off by a crazy gardener, who rudely defrocked trees of their budding leaves.
This was extremely disorienting, and Oracion felt like the forest she knew like the back of her hand had turned malevolent against her, and was playing tricks on her mind with its own newly found wit. Or, perhaps Mother Nature could also shift, wanted to tell her something, warn her away from this route and the knowledge she intuitively sought. Nevertheless something in the present, even other than logistical strategy, was drawing Oracion toward what had once been the orange grove where she had first seen the boy, as if she sensed in the boy’s absence invaders had overtaken the land.
She had seen the boy with the knowing eyes (that reminded her in the present of the pear tree madonna’s) many years ago, when she, as a child, had induced Father to let her accompany him on journey.
Father had been meeting secretly with someone on this farther side of theforest, a mysterious stranger she now recalled in the present as a messenger, or a scout perhaps, from a distant land. Father had safely secured little Oracion into his stagecoach, then for an hour or so she slept with her head leaning against his big, broad shoulder, as Father drove the horses further and further into the woods. Simply content to be at his side, the ride had lulled Oracion to sleep. But before she drifted off Father told her, when she asked on what business the special messenger or courier came, he could not tell her for her own protection.
If she squealed, he had said, the tree monkeys would get her. They could fly and had sharp teeth. He wasn’t going to take that chance. Oracion started to suspect Father was making things up now, for purposes of their own amusement. It had been a long journey, and he liked to see her smile.
She awoke when the stagecoach came to a bumpy stop beneath a canopy of orange blossoms, and in that sweet spring day of many years past the flowers and fruits blossomed in such heavenly abundance they emitted a memorable, heady and potent, but at the same time delicate fragrance. This scent was better than any perfume the ointment makers made, even better than the lilac butter Mother had dabbed on her wrists, or the honeysuckle milk that Mother bathed in. Father often brought back sweet oranges to Oracion when he traveled alone this way, but this was the first time Oracion had been to the magical grove that produced them.
He got out of the coach then, and disappeared into a thicket of trees, but not before he had solicted from Oracion another promise.
Whatever she did, she was not to get out of the carriage and follow him, and no matter whom she might happen to see here, she must speak to no one.
Sleepily, little Oracion had agreed.
Sweet, silly, dear Father, she thought.
The day was so bright, and so warm.
Oracion couldn’t imagine then she might chance to meet anyone here, for the child found herself quite alone with the birds that thrilled harmoniously amongst fair fruit and blossom. One branch held many ripe clusters of sun-kissed oranges which peeked out at intervals between petals, and one single, very perfect orange, dappled with sunlight, dangled within her reach as if to tempt her. Oracion was hungry and overheated, and surmised if she could just take one bite of its cool, rosy flesh it would cure all remaining laments, and she could just get on with enjoyment of this beautiful day.
So, cautiously, she had stood up in the coach and leaned her small body outside of the window as far as she could reach, without falling out.
But this nearest orange was just out of reach.
And that’s when she saw him.
The boy had not been standing on the ground at all but was sitting way up high in the tree branches, looking down at her. He was quite tall and well built but definitely still young looking, surely not much older than herself. Oracion had never seen an angel before, but she had seen drawings of them on the castle ceilings, and they suddenly came into her mind much as the boy had suddenly seemed to appear above her. His face was like porcelain, and in his fine blue eyes as deep and sad as the sea he spoke a thousand stories, but didn’t seem inclined to tell any of them. At that moment he just stared at Oracion silently, the juice of an orange dripping silently off his chin, as if he was as shocked to see her there as she was to see him.
Though Oracion recognized him (hadn’t they known each other, once upon a time?) she marveled then, that if he was the gardener’s son, he could now possess wings and the fine countenance of nobility, beneath long, wavy locks of fiery, cinnamon hair.
“Christmas” she remarked, simply observing, before she could realize why she had spoken that particular word, and the magnitude of what she had done – spoken to a stranger – which was exactly what Father had forbidden.
“Why don’t you use your wings?” he responded, with a voice like a chime, or a dulcimer chord.
“My wings?” she asked, noticing that she spoke again.
“To reach an orange,” he explained. Why don’t you just use your wings?”
The boy had asked the question so sincerely and innocently it frustrated Oracion to no end. She was unable to understand why a boy with the face of an angel and wings would ask her such a question about wings, as if she possessed her own pair with which she, like him, could use to fly upward to secure the choicest fruit.
But just then what must have been his given name was called out by someone she could not see.
“Cosmos!”
This word was shouted by what seemed to be a very cruel man’s voice, and it echoed heavily throughout the woods like it bore the threat of impending brutality.
And in that instance her new found friend had disappeared, but not before he tossed Oracion the rest of the orange which he had been holding in his hand.
Christmas (as Oracion often thought of the boy ever since, not Cosmos ) vanished instantaneously, into the warm, spring air.
When Father returned to the carriage, Oracion had been savoring the sweet, refreshing fruit flesh that had been mysteriously given to her.
But thinking of the hard, cruel voice and fearing for the angel boy (but hesitating to mention to her father that she had spoken to someone) she simply asked “Was the man you met Father – was he bad?”
He looked at her not suspiciously but with surprise, as if Oracion had asked a question to which she should already know the answer. “Oracion, you know the Maker does not make bad men, but people do. And this man that I met wants to delay what is rightfully yours.”
She had turned to look up at Father when he made this cryptic remark, once again expecting him to look disapproving, but he did not. Instead Father looked solemn , his eyes as knowing, if not moreso, than the boy’s had been.
She had never seen Christmas again, and even now Oracion wondered if that day had all been a dream, especially in the contrast of this strange spring evening present, with its heavy, dream like qualities and mist so different from sun dappled oranges.
Occasionally (in the present) adult Oracion noticed that some animal or beast imitated her pace and direction in the trees adjacent, but this was not so unusual.
Animals could sense Oracion’s presence and often drew near her, as if they felt there a safety they could not otherwise easily obtain. Through the thick fog Oracion could tell that one of these gentle creatures followed her now, but if it was a stag it was large for a stag, like Noble Beast had been. For a moment Oracion felt that this beast was less real than her own memories, which, when she was not literallyrevisting them, were continuously revisiting her. Were those really majestic antlers she saw cutting up through the mist, like steely knives cutting intogray cloud, or just the sharp curve of tree limbs?
The thought of Noble Beast had brought to her in the present circumstance a bittersweet combination of excitement, hope, comfort and joy, intermingled with sorrow and feelings of loss.
And since for Oracion, emotions were as wild, strong and dangerous as she was, she made a conscious effort to harness and focus them now, so that they would not lead her astray, and instead work to her own advantage.
Not so far off she had heard a strange noise, as if large walls of metal creaked and scraped, one against the other.
But when an orange tree emerged in front of her, she knew she was in the right place, for she had found the remains of orange trees near the old pear grove.
Suddenly, there was an enormous, dark shadow overhead, a flurry of wings and horrible talons pulling painfully at her hair.
A giant bird screeched its horrific cry as it passed over Oracion, a cry much louder now for the sound was in her ear this time, like metal against metal, or a glacier of ice seizing, then crashing into the sea. As Oracion put her hands over her head protectively, she wondered if this apparently blind creature could actually see her despite her cloak of invisibility, or if it just sensed her presence through scent as animals were wont to do.
The velociraptor, being unable to fly very high or far, settled awkwardly and noisily into the branches of an ancient orange tree, his tail curled in serpentine formation down and around the crook of its trunk. The weight of his body cast too heavy a load on the fruit bearer, and Oracion feared the tree (though much thicker and sturdier now than she had seen these trees in the past) would break in the bending.
Oracion stood at a distance of about fifteen feet away from him, unable to move, staring in fascination. As she watched the dinosaur-like bird pull at the oranges on the branches with huge jaws, she guessed that he was frustrated that he could not use his too huge teeth and disproportionately small, stunted wings to separate and loose the treats. Then beneath the sound of snapping twigs and frustrated screeches, Oracion suddenly heard the Madonna’s voice whisper something silently into her ear.
“She was with child when she was taken”
…like a fragment, of knowing.
It was then that Oracion noticed the creature’s eyes, blind apparently and glazed over, as if with filmy white cataracts. They reminded her of the eyes of a dichobot. Oracion couldn’t help noticing that the creature’s eyes appeared in some way inexplicable, unhealthily human, but perhaps even more troubling was that she sensed she somehow knew or recognized the beast.
As an animal much in appearance as well as behavior, the creature resembled a hybrid mix between a proud, preening peacock, and an angry, small-brained dinosaur. In her sciences Oracion had learned velociraptors did exist – and wondered if it was now possible that the priests could have returned them to the woods, much as Father had reintroduced cold climate oranges.
But his eyes, oh his eyes! – how Oracion pitied the creature for his eyes. With what had they mixed the poor creature?
“And wanted her son to carry the gene” said the lady gently, but firmer this time.
Then with horror Oracion remembered what Father had taught her one night when they were standing on the turret rooftop, under the light of a magnificent moon.
Even though lineage played a factor, he had explained to his young daughter that the ability to shape shift was rare. Shape shifting women of nobility who had turned to the dark side, wanting to assure the gene was passed to their first born sons, were going to priests who meddled with hybrid emulsions and vapors. These pregnant women consumed such potions in great draughts for the price of their soul, a trikerion lamp, or traded agreement, each morning for nine months. For some, there was biological success, but other offspring were caught in a void-shift, part human and part beast.
The creature Oracion saw before her was a Blender.
And though the Blender seemed to sense or smell Oracion’s existence at least to a certain degree, it did not seem to realize her godmothers, who now were hanging back in trepidation. For though Oracion was still invisible (and she had checked, glancing down at her feet, which still weighted the grass) the creature seemed to get more and more irate, even in proportion to the degree to which she pitied him. Oracion had slowly been getting closer even as he spat at her, shaking his head violently back and forth, leaves and debris spewing out of his mouth in every direction, in an angry shower of fury.
Then, to her right, there was a movement where the gentler, antlered, pacing animal had been. Suddenly Oracion feared that the Noble-Beast-like creature that had followed her had actually been tracking her purposely, for he emerged out of the woods not as a beast at all, but as a man.
A very huge and strong looking man.
Oracion had never seen a dichobot so tall and formidable, even greater a force than Trock had been, with steel plated shoulders spanning an expanse wider than the velociraptor’s chest.
But thisdichobot, unlike the mad, screeching dinosaur creature, could see Oracion quite clearly.
This didn’t make any sense.
No dichobot could see Oracion when she cloaked into invisibility, and though his plated visor was down, obscuring his face, he seemed to stare directly at her, one arm extended towards her in urgent supplication. He was either commanding her to stop or was indicating for her to come towards him. Could it be that one of Father’s soldiers remained, having survived the scourge? She thought about that possibility. No, that couldn’t be. Hadn’t all those that had not transformed into dichobots been executed?
But the soldier was real and saw her nonetheless, for in that moment several things happened at once.
He rushed Oracion just as flames shot from her brother’s mouth in a deadly, fiery conflagration. She noted the harsh, acidic, pungentness of burnt oranges and instantaneously disintegrated twigs in her brother, the Blender’s, ashy breath. The heat wave alone would have killed Oracion had not the large soldier-man covered her with his steel plated body. She then found herself on the ground staring up at an emblem of a lily on a chest plate, as flames radiated and reflected in the metal – red, orange, blue then white.
There was a flash of memory in her mind like the echo of a little boy’s voice.
“Why don’t you just use your wings?”
Oracion was so disoriented and shocked she felt herself suddenly shifting, beginning to jolt helplessly and violently far back into the distant past. The current scene – with its heat, trees and everything around her – disappeared, but not before she heard the angel boy’s voice, deeper and all grown up now, but still like a dulcimer chord or a chime.
“Christmas,” he said in transfixed amazement, as if that was her name now.
Then once again, they were apart. Yet in that instance Oracion realized that Father had intended them, all along, to meet.
Thus saith the Lord: A voice was heard on high of lamentation, of mourning, and weeping, of Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted for them, because they are not.
Jeremiah
People just don’t know what civilian prisoners of war are.
-Gene Green
Empathy is the antidote to shame. – Brene Brown
Do not fear the Opposites Who insist upon
The lie Slanderers feign
A brutish bunch But angels never die – Song of the Washer Woman, Verse III
We should not be asking who this child belongs to, but who belongs to this child. – Jim Gritter
After traveling into the past, Oracion felt she could now surmise why she had forgotten what happened during the night as a child, the night that she realized Mother had become an Opposite (what most people called in those days, a Dream Snatcher). Forgetting Elements must have been placed in the small hearth that graced Oracion’s bedroom, which had rarely been lit.
For the next morning, when younger Oracion had found herself so ill, and her father injured (but still holding her in his arms, weeping) the room was filled with the smoky evidence of a hearth fire. Dark, curly entrails had already covered and settled into meager furnishings like an obscuration of sheet covers strewn out of thick fog. Father’s clothing was covered with the soot of it, as if in recent attempt to smother it out, and as if he, having arriving much later than the moment he wished, stamped it out with bare feet.
At that time, Child Oracion hadn’t been concerned with the fire that had threatened her or the bedroom furnishings, for she was all concerned for Father, and for Mother, who had been taken.
“Will we get her back?” Oracion had asked.
“I do not know” Father had told her, and she read the pain in his eyes, for certainly even his honesty cost him. “I fear she is dead. So, if you ever see someone who looks like her, be wary, Oracion. Do you understand me? Be wary. So many things in your castle are not what they appear to be, and many persons in this kingdom want you dead, my precious daughter. My precious…my innocent, my much beloved daughter.”
Oracion sorrowed that he was brought to tears once again, sad that now he wept for her, but was also not concerned with the notion that she, as a princess, was the target of many malevolent forces. If Mother could already be dead, Oracion’s grief was all consuming.
Also, it was the time of the Priestly Conferences and the Cases, which coexisted with Stag Hunt. It was early spring.
Oracion had a fear of which she could not let go, that her Noble Beast, due to the unique and genetically rare antler formation upon his head, would get mistaken for a stag and murdered for profit, the priests too busy to notice, or even to care.
She remembered sneaking out to look out the window of her turret bedroom many times during this illness (she had been ordered to stay in bed) watching the hooded prelates below, who scurried busily to and fro, constructing their tents before dawn. They carried with them stacks of darkly oiled, tightly bound parchment, unscrolling them occasionally to examine undecipherable script, by the light of double trikerion lamps, held aloft on gilded swords.
The bright light from these golden sconces and from the priests multiple campfires, had cast an ominously powerful, pulsating glow, and frightening shadows upon the hunters, transforming ordinary men’s faces as they passed through the hooded prelates. The hunters appeared to young Oracion then in a form she would later recognize as dichobots. They were very much like the soldiers they were, but their eyes glazed over with the lure of their own growing, brute animal instinct.
Oracion amused herself then (as a distraction from these cumulative events) by practicing her shape shifting skills, but she had yet to advance from sandpiper, to dove, or even to sparrow.
And each transformation cost her, much like Father’s dutiful honesty revealed, through his eyes, a heartache of monstrous proportion. Shifting seemed to exacerbate Oracion’s illness, weakening her own heart further, and triggered it into random, flittering convulsions, which ultimately passed. But Oracion imagined, in retrospect, this is why Father warned her not to practice warrior skills. She was still too young. Disobedient Oracion none the less felt watching the prelates from the secret vantage of being a bird or by cloaking herself as a mouse, and from the added leverage of height (while remaining tucked up safely upon her own window ledge) was way too entertaining and distracting to resist.
Truly, shifting was the only power she could leverage against hooded prelates, some of whom were even bishops, while gaining a mastery over herself. It seemed like she was prisoner, not a princess, held hostage in her own castle, which was also becoming a place she barely recognized, and had no permission to gain.
Now, when Oracion in the present traveled through time to visit her Child Self Past, it cost her physically much in the same manner that learning shape shifting had cost her then. However, she was a master shape shifter who had long since matured from the days of earlier lessons, and when she time traveled from the present to the past, she was sure to take along her fairy godmothers, Velocity, Alacrity and Joy. Though fairy godmothers were at the same time children, they were companionable and reliable adult guides, especially after Chagrin had transformed herself into Joy. Oracion knew they would never leave her abandoned should she fall ill in journey, for if they were anything (child or adult) – they were ever faithful.
Yet, she wondered oft why this business of gifting “godmothers” to princesses was more like turning princesses into “mothers”, of loving (but at the same time, precocious) children. “Who is training up who?” she had often jested with them, readjusting the woodland wreaths they had merrily woven, then placed half hazard and crooked, upon their own heads. Admittedly Oracion enjoyed watching their innocent, but wild revels in the wood, and their petal-costumed dance. But for a wandering villager to unexpectedly come across Oracion’s dancing nymphs, it would have been more unsettling for them than coming across a moonlit, empty grave, in that rarely traveled, wooded byway.
The Sacred Presence knew Oracion loved and trusted in her godmothers, much in the same manner that she had loved and trusted in Father, Noble Beast, or the madonna that now appeared in the wood, who seemed to prefer and therefore reside somewhere in the thicket that at one time had been Father’s pear orchard.
There was a certain, ever untamable aspect about Oracion’s love for these few. Though there were those she loved with a restrained love, tempered with politeness, nurtured and matured with age, Oracion’s love for her own was a wild and uncontainable thing. For there was a wild and uncontainable thing to each of them. Each would give their very life for the other. And the Presence was pleased that Oracion loved in this manner and trusted the fairy godmothers (or shall we call them fairy godchildren) to protect her.
Oracion knew this was true because this was what the madonna had confirmed.
The pear tree copse (by the power of time) had shifted itself as well, into wondrous trunks and strong branches that now grew to magnificent heights, interspersed occasionally with jade green pine, as if with bold, avant -garde, artistic intent. Oracion and the godmothers would take violet and fern, weaving not wreaths but desiring to cast petals about the madonna’s feet (the godmothers’ idea) while she spoke to them, in that steady and silent, maternal voice. The kindly lady would gently submit to this, the Showering of Petals as Joy liked to call it, so gracious she was, insideand out. She was even more beautiful than Oracion’s own mother had been, and Mother had been an Etherate.
Oracion noticed that the madonna also wore upon her head a crown of more exquisite gems than Mother had ever worn, and it was interwoven with such unusual flowers (that resembled, in best human understanding, roses) that no earthly wreath could really, quite compare.
Therefore, Oracion’s companions had never bothered to boast or insult with a like gift of their own.
The lady’s fair, soft skin had a luminous quality to it that reminded Oracion of the moon. Where she stood the beams of light that cascaded, particularly from her hands, sent shimmering translucent rays upon the pears that still fruited here in abundance, as if she was a spiritual chef sugaring them with a mystical, glittering light.
It was funny how much the madonna also reminded Oracion of Gilda, the washer woman, only Gilda seen in a manner by which Mother Nature had never naturally bestowed. She remembered now she had gone to Gilda for advice as well, in those early days when she had first fled the castle compound, and sometimes Gilda would even sing to her, after her kitchen chores were done, and all the smaller children had been nursed.
But now that the time had come for Father’s Reviewing, the review of his death that is, Oracion was glad she had come to know the Madonna of the Glistening Wood. The anguish at facing this next step in her journeying was intense, and she shed so many tears before the woodland queen, so many shape shifter tears in abundance, that there was no need to cast petals, for wood violets arose instantaneously from the earth by the mysterious lady’s feet, wherever Oracion’s tears had fertilized them.
Finally Oracion begged her (for she had not yet this time heard the madonna speak) “Be with me when I go.”
It was in this moment that the lady gently moved one of her hands so gracefully that a beam of light shifted, and fell upon Oracion’s face. It startled her and dried her tears with its sudden, perfect, consoling warmth, and drew up the ecstatic fairies high, literally – high. They soared up into the air around the lady in a dance Oracion had never seen them do before, but it was as if it had been borne in their blood of fairies ever since the beginning of time, and they were just now rediscovering it.
The lady then spoke to Oracion.
“My child, you know I have always been with you, since before you sought my Son’s grace through your bedroom turret window. One day you will remember it all. Now at least you realize it is you who travel with me (for I take you with me wherever I go) not I who travel with you. But this has come to pass so that thou shouldst ask for my companionship.”
“I don’t want to see him die,” Oracion confessed.
“Nor did I,” she said. The lady paused, her face so solemnly beautiful in this moment that Oracion felt tears spring up again, unbidden, but this time they were for the lady, who was gazing upon her with such perfect love, perfect beauty and perfectly deep sorrow. Oracion suddenly understood that a creature so lovely, could only experience sadness in an equally meaningful manner . Within her solemn eyes lay an infinite profundity, like the ironic juxoposition of sky with earth. There was gravity in those eyes, though not of a fallen nature.
It was the Weight of What she Understood, as it had been the Weight of What Father Understood.
The lady continued.
“But the viewing is part of the warrior lessons he wished you to complete Oracion, for it is only through a father’s death by which all of your kind is born.” She paused another moment, a moment in which Oracion felt the lady was speaking things directly into her heart, that even the godmother’s couldn’t hear, issuing secrets that Oracion would discover there later, when she needed light for a second illumination.
Then the madonna assured her: “Even when you cannot see me, know that I am with you always, for I am inside your soul only to a lesser degree than the Very Presence, which makes up your very heart, very mind, very soul, and even this very moonlit grove in which we now stand together.”
Oracion liked the way the lady called the Presence the Very Presence. She like the feel of it to her intellect, as she had liked the feel of Noble Beast’s fur to her hands, the same way as a child she had liked naming Noble Beast, and in contrast, calling the corrupted shape shifters – Opposites. It felt… True. Who was this woman who was not her mother but her true mother, all at the same time – as if by adoption – and who knew so well the language that the Presence used, and that He was so Very?
“Oracion” she added, as if now in turn beseeching. “My Son. They murdered my Son as well, and burned me at the stake, as they continue to burn me at the stake when they burn all women who speak in my name. Now go. Your hour is at hand.”
Beware then of useless murmuring, and keep your tongue from slander; because no secret word is without result, and a lying mouth destroys the soul.
Wisdom of Solomon
Do not fear the Opposite The dark that steals the dream Man cannot reverse the flow Of river, gorge or stream
Song of the Washer Woman
When the Presence allowed it, Oracion could travel into the past.
On these nights she often found herself in the upper chamber of the castle turret, looking for Mother and something else she had lost there, a long time ago.
This room had served as Oracion’s bedchamber when she was just a little girl, in the days before Mother was taken. Oracion had begged Father to let her sleep in the attic, for the moonlight shining through the small window there was beguiling. Because Oracion was closer to the moon in a turret bedroom, it would cast enchanted lunar reflections and shadows within – all throughout the night – of which Oracion had learned many things. She learned things of which most children weren’t privy, things of which even most shape shifting children hadn’t been privy.
At least that’s how it had been in those days long ago. In modern times the moon drew closer to earth to educate all of the young, as if in compensation for the stars which had been lost, burnt out in their orbits or cast to the ground.
But in days of old, on certain summer evenings, Father would allow Oracion to accompany him through the small trap door and winding turn of stairs that led from her bedroom to the open roof top above, and she relived all of this now. He and daughter would spend long hours in contemplation studying the landscape below from the advantage of height, moonlight and crenellation.
She remembered she hadn’t asked him for much, but whenever she did, Father had never denied Oracion anything.
And though Mother had not resisted the idea of a tower bedroom, she balked whenever Father took Oracion to the roof. Oracion saw again her face, tinged with a delicate pink, demanding “Whose idea was this?!” It was as if Oracion was a fragile possession that would somehow plummet from the castle rooftop to the ground below, in some unforeseen accident or unexplainable turn of events, that Mother would inevitably blame on Father. Mother also suspected he was up there teaching Oracion the Art of War.
Which he was.
But he was just giving her the Early Lessons, whichconsisted of maps, animals and flowers, and in particular the types of birds. He would tell Oracion how the shifters would shape themselves into the humbler varieties – shore bird, sparrow, and turtle dove – to go unnoticed among the enemy.
“I would want to be a sparrow, or a dove” Oracion had announced, for these creatures had several times landed in her hand for some scone, and she thought them the most gentle and intelligent of all birds, especially compared to the brutish jays.
Father had smiled at her then, then would mention, casually, how shape shifters could even shape themselves into bats, and get up into a turret tower, to frighten little girls. He had teased Oracion relentlessly.
So Mother was correct in many things of which she suspected Father, but wrong in so many others, and Oracion grieved for he who had loved Mother from the beginning and therefore had to subject himself to her more worrisome imaginings.
For Mother was one of the Beautiful Ones, an Etherate, who would not become tame in any fashion or sense of the word, whose noble northern heritage would beguile any man, or make anyone love her, just as the moon had inevitably enchanted Oracion in the attic room.
She remembered Mother’s cloud of dark hair, very much like her own, and eyes as blue and twinkling as the clearest spring water, laughing and flowing through a river gorge. She smelled of honeysuckle, baking flour and sometimes a sweet smoky scent that reminded Oracion of fire from an evening hearth. She graciously swept through the castle in velvet slippers and flowing patterns of rose, gold brocade and lace. Oracion remembered now that Mother had always been conscious of the dust Oracion’s skirts collected, as Oracion ran laughing and tumbling through heath and heather, but laughed off the dust that collected on her own as if it was simply embroidery, casting a delicate hue.
And though Mother did not laugh all the time, her moods being very delicate, her laugh was one of the things Oracion missed the most. When she did laugh, her laugh had rung out like a transparent chime, up through the castle’s chambers, and sometimes when accompanied with lullaby or tale, had lured Oracion warmly to sleep in that room, in which Oracion had dreamt dreams that princesses can only dream – when they are feeling very safe and secure.
Yes, in time travel Oracion missed Mother’s laugh and those days as deeply as that turret bedroom had been high above all river gorges and blistering mountain heights.
The room itself had been sparselyfurnished.
During her night travels when adult Oracion returned there invisibly, she would find the same small bed beside a rarely lit hearth, fur rugs, rolls of parchment and scattered orange peel, a single crucifix being one of the few adornments against vast stone wall. This was because of Father’s penchant for giving things away. Oracion had shared the compulsion, and their secret charities were another thing that Oracion feared would drive a wedge between Father and his Etherate Bride, when she was just a little girl.
Father would laugh at such concerns – the adultones young Oracion had voiced to him in those days, throwing his head back in amusement at the ancientness of her tiny little soul. She was his verbal dueling and parsing protégée, too eager to trade in her words for a sword, so she could become a brave warrior like him. His dark brown eyes would study her and twinkle at her with a lucidity that surpassed even mother’s blue ones. This suggested to her he possessed secrets so deep and elusive they were like that of the moon’s, and she hoped he would share all of them with her in time, because he could refuse her not.
What Oracion didn’t realize then was how much of the light that had burned in Father’s eyes was simply the manifestation of the love he felt for her. She was truly his little ancient Soul, and he often called her this. How bittersweet this made Oracion feel now, recalling what she had taken for granted, or not even noticed, even though she had been ever vigilant, loving both of them with all of her heart, mind and strength, and all of that Soul.
“Do not trouble yourself with growing up too quickly, Oracion” Father would advise. “Just think instead of the merriment of the washer woman at the light cast by our candlesticks set upon her table on Feast of Fat Pheasant”.
Oracion would giggle at this, thinking of Fat Pheasant and hopefully, soon to be fat Gilda, the one little boy Gilda had borne who had died, and all the children whom she had since wet nursed. This could constitute the whole, entire village guard, she thought. Father would toss Oracion up upon his shoulders when she made this comment, still laughing, and Oracion would be laughing too, feeling lighter and safer there than even when they stood on the turret landing, surveying the landscape below.
But perhaps Gilda’s new fortune was why Mother had accused Father of stealing the trikerion lamps from the chapel priest in the first place, the prelate with the dark brown hooding and intelligent but brooding eyes.
It had been a moonless night, with rain coming down in torrential drifts, when Oracion first heard her parents arguing about trikerion candles. She remembered that night well because Noble Beast had not shown up like usual. Noble Beast showed up whenever it was raining or the moon was obscured by shadow or snow.
Oracion had awakened because of the pounding of rain against glass and her parent’s angry voices from the chambers below, but this didn’t disturb her as much as the absence of the creature. She had glanced about the room, half expecting to see Noble come padding silently towards her on his huge, hairy beast feet, beseeching her with sad eyes until she allowed him the pleasure of sleeping at her own.
But he hadn’t.
Oracion had not known or cared until now from whence Noble Beast came, because he was yet another one of those things she simply didn’t question, and took for granted in days of sweet cherries, moonlit lessons and the smells of sage and dripping candle wax.
Invisible Oracion moved with emotion into the past and watched as her younger self arose from the bed, not bothering to slipper her feet, seeking instead the creature she loved like a childhood pet to warm them. But he wasn’t really a dog. Noble Beast (which is just what Oracion called him) was very much like an oversized German Shepherd, yet not quite canine, because he had two antlers that emerged from his head in such a fashion that one bent over the other, then twisted down to end in a sharp point. This unique antler formation reminded Oracion of the small crucifix that graced her wall, but even more it reminded her of the cross on the banners the brave warriors carried, family crests with gold lettering hanging down from one side.
It had disturbed her, when she had dreamt of those banners broken, littering the ground, and golden calligraphy stained red.
But now child Oracion was hurrying down the stairs of drafty, stone white passages, until she reached the rooms below. There she momentarily forgot her quest to find Nobel, because Father’s voice from within Mother’s bedchamber was filled with something Oracion identified as pain. She wasn’t used to hearing Father like this, and crept even closer to the closed door, to listen without being observed.
“How can you say this, of what do you speak?” Father was asking Mother. “Why would I take the special candles passed down to me, that which has been consecrated to my Lord? Of what dark deeds do you accuse?”
“If it wasn’t you than it was Priest” Mother stated with a voice that still sounded angry, but very determined now, and colored with urgency.
“Why worry yourself, even if the old man did?” Father queried. “Do we not feed him enough? Don’t we pay him enough, to perform the rites? If the priest has taken trikerions for dark purpose, the candles won’t light, and if he has taken them for good, to bring light to others, then we cannot condemn.”
“We shouldn’t tolerate a thief in our house for any reason” Mother insisted, and Father must have come to her then, consolingly, for after a moment of silence his voice grew softer still. Oracion had to press her ear against the door to hear it.
But what Father said then frightened Oracion to the quick.
“There now, there now, you know the truth, Genessia. The only thieves that can wrongly take things of value are Dream Snatchers. And these I will never allow in my house, I promise you.”
Upon hearing this declaration from her father’s lips, a chill had gone down the spine of the young girl, a chill accompanied by the realization of an evil present, although not yet fully understood.
Though Oracion hadn’t known what these creatures were called, when she heard “Dream Snatchers” she knew of whom Father spoke. But Oracion had thought up to this point that these evil things, these dream stealing creatures, were imaginary, and not a real threat to anyone’s well-being.
And she had been calling them Opposites.
She called them Opposites because when she woke to find them silently prowling about the side of her bed, which she often did – sinewy, dark, smoky creatures – which were part smoke, part human and part beast, drooling and smacking their lips grotesquely as if to devour her, they reminded her in an opposite way of Noble Beast. She had screamed of course when they first appeared and called out for Mother, who would come to her doorway immediately. When Mother appeared the monsters would disappear quite instantaneously, leaving only a swirling, smoky residue behind, as if they’d never been there. Could it be that Dream Snatchers were so frightened by something as pure and beautiful as an Etherate, they couldn’t exist in the same space or time?
“Where did they go?” Oracion had asked.
“Where did what go?” Mother would ask.
“Opposites” Oracion would say, her voice still trembling. She didn’t really even want to say the word out loud, as if to speak it would hasten their return.
“Silly child,” Mother would say “Opposites are just your imagination. You don’t see them here now with us, do you?”
No wonder Mother worried about her well-being, Oracion thought, frozen at her parent’s bedchamber door.
Mother knew the truth of what lurked in her bedroom, but perhaps hadn’t wanted to acknowledge their existence to Oracion so as not to frighten her. In seconds Oracion’s mind was spinning, grasping at what could constitute and motivate such vile creatures, and it didn’t take long for her to theorize that they were someform of shape shifter, but with a darkness inside them.
If this was true, than Oracion knew what she must do, but it would take the courage of a brave warrior, not just a princess. She had to see where the monstrous creatures went when they disappeared at Mother’s entrance, next time they invaded her room. For as long as smoky exhaust still lingered and swirled it suggested Dream Snatchers could not leave castle grounds quickly. Oracion wondered what they cloaked themselves into next, perhaps a malformed grape vine to climb down and out her window, or a deformed animal – part pig and part goat – howling in agony at a turret moon, which would be way too bright for their weak and watery eyes.
But what had they been originally? What was their natural form?
Time travel to the past can be such a frustrating thing.
For as the Oracion in the present sees the Oracion in the past, forming this plan to catch Dream Snatchers, it is as if suddenly time starts to speed up. Walls start aging with decay, their crumbling stones tumbling out, and archways fade in and out, then dissolve altogether into translucent, arched tree branches, which in turn are becoming more and more solid over her head, until Oracion can see the morning light of present filtering through.
No, she must stay in the castle and watch. She has long since earned her sword.
The sound of rushing in the ears again and she is back in the past. But as usual, Oracion has lost a segment of time, skipped right over it like a section of ink on parchment too wet and blurry to read, and now she is young and in her bed again being woken by something wet upon her arm.
Is the window open, and rain coming in?
No, it is Father, holding her in his arms, and the raindrops were not raindrops nor moistened, faded parchment but tears. The sight of her father crying moves child Oracion to much love and she calls him “Daddy” this time, instead of the usual Father. Looking up, she also notices what looks like horrible wounds about his neck, as if rows of sharp blades had been pressed into the weather-tanned skin, and at intervals pierced it.
So she lays her small, child hand upon the bruises, as if her touch could heal, and asks “Daddy, what’s wrong? What happened?”
Oracion has seen this scene too many times.
It hurts and she doesn’t want to see it again. Moreover, she knows she must go even further back into the past to find what she missed, what she’s lost, and realize what she needs to realize. (Rushing, rushing, the sound of rushing in her ears like a pressure, a frightening wind, driving rain against turret glass. Presence, be near!) and then she’s back to the deleted time frame, when it is not raining at all. Father is not there either. Oracion is in her own bedroom, and a hideous Dream Snatcher, half crouched, encircles her bed.
“Mother, come help me, quick!”
The Etherate appears almost instantly, disheveled in such radiant beauty that perhaps – if Oracion had been a bit older – she would have suspected her cries interrupted Mother and Father in lovemaking.
When the frightening beast disappears, Oracion waits only until her mother leaves her room as well.
Then she gets out of bed and peeks out from below the open archway that constitutes her bedroom door, just in time to catch a glimpse of the tale end of Mother’s cloak, crimson red, sweeping dust as it disappears down the stairs.
Back in her room, the Dream Snatcher’s residue is still visible, dusty entrails one would not wish to inhale.
So over to the window young Oracion scurries, hoping to watch as the Dream Snatcher flees. This time the moon is quite full, illuminating everything below it, the extended drawbridge and finally the figure that emerges upon it to meet Priest, who has strangely been waiting there all along.
But it is still only Mother, in her crimson red cloak, the figure that emerges from the castle. Mother’s hood is drawn up around her face like Priest’s brown one, and despite the moon and the brilliancies of color, Oracion marvels at how similar in this night the two hooded figures appear. However, when the priest removes his hood, and Mother in like fashion removes her own, there is no trouble making distinctions between them.
Mother’s face is hideous now, perhaps not even human. Her face is that of the Dream Snatcher.
She opens her jaws wide as if to devour the wiry little man with long, fierce teeth, but instead slowly leans her gaping mouth close to breathe Oracion’s dreams into the greedy priest’s ear. After receiving the vapor, he removes what he has brought hidden from beneath his garments, a trikerion lamp, and hands it to Mother, who enfolds it into her own.
Oracion is so stunned she cannot move or speak, and it is only when she sees Noble Beast come charging out through the castle gates to attack the Dream Snatcher, and watches horrifying movements of flying fur and teeth too rapid to mentally contemplate, then Noble’s neck being pinioned and tightly clenched in her own mother’s jaws, that Oracion can scream at all.
“No!”
The child’s cry alerts the beasts. They pause in one, simultaneous motion to look up at her, and in anotherinstance – are gone. Both beasts have vanished, and now Priest alone stares up at Oracion with eyes still human, but as cold and dead as the stones in her tower bedroom wall.
All that remains of Mother is the swirling, dark smoky residue at his feet.
It takes another moment for Oracion to realize that her hands are clutching the window ledge so tightly that they hurt painfully, until she realizes they are not hands at all, but the tiny feet of a small sandpiper bird. For through the intensity of her emotions she has awoken her first transformation, but has not yet achieved sparrow or dove.
In this moment Oracion is just a ground bird, trapped way up high on a ledge.
Song of the Washer Woman, Verse II
Do not fear the Opposite Who dies not out through blood Though blood is red as roses are Life forms but through its bud
Remove grace, and you have nothing whereby to be saved. Remove free will and you have nothing that could be saved. Anselm of Canterbury
As Oracion was leaving the home of her estranged sister, the home where she sensed she was no longer welcome, where she had found not hospitality but the remains of an evil priest’s poisonous flowers in a window box, there was an instantaneous change in the atmosphere.
Though there was no apparent reason for it that Oracion could intuit, no breeze or wind shifting hair about her face, or tossing dark branches of trees across a moonlit sky, the temperature had plummetted suddenly, from sixty to about thirty degrees.
Oracion instinctively wrapped her cloak more tightly about her, and pulled its hood further down over her face not so much to disguise her appearance, for it was night anyway (and when traveling, she found night was best) but because it was so cold. It was also as if to shelter herself from something yet unknown, advancing behind her.
Indeed from somewhere behind Oracion, down the cobblestone alley through which she hurried like a silent vision to some and a disturbing nightmare to others, below many shuttered windows and many bolted doors, Oracion become aware of a possible second hurrying presence, although she had heard nothing audible.
Strangely, her companions Alacrity, Velocity and Joy had not become aware or alerted by the presence of a stranger behind them approaching stealthily, or if they had, they made no show of it.
In fact this evening her godmothers had cloaked themselves as a Great Dane, a German Shepherd and a mischievous frolicking alley cat, solely for Oracion’s pleasure and amusement. The first two now flanked her side, and the latter was casually distracted by a single, dry leaf tumbling rebelliously across well-swept cobblestones like the last laughing hold out against order, high society and sophistication.
This thought, this odd leafy analogy, passed through the back of Oracion’s mind so half hazardly (just like the leaf) she made a casual, mental note to examine it later when she wasn’t being stalked by a possible executioner.
Yes, it was a very strange night indeed, so unusually silent, motionless and now cold, but the canines continued to stride in undisturbed sleek formation right next to her, their soft velvet fur as unruffled and smooth on their backs and their necks as when Oracion first buried her face in it and kissed them as dogs a few hours previous.
The suddenly incarnated “dogs” had seemed to smile at her in return, in deep reciprocated love, devotion and obedience, but now their wide canine grins and lolling tongues seemed to express only idle amusement at their sister cat’s antics.
If they were undisturbed by the stalker, could it be because the mysterious stranger was not an enemy, but a friend?
She remembered the lessons Father had taught her as a child centuries ago, about the meaning of the weather, when Oracion had bent down to carefully place precious, tiny, pearl-like seeds into holes Father had dug in rich, chocolate brown earth with his well worn, much larger, and much stronger hands. Dropping temperatures and silence could mean many things, he had told her, but two she recalled now were someone imprisoned, or someone being sacrificed.
As Oracion halted and turned around to look she let her hood fall back, boldly exposing her easily identifiable pale face and features. She would not be afraid this evening.
And there he was.
He was a lone dichobot, not advancing upon Oracion and her animals aggressively, but looking rather startled himself. In fact the robotic dichobot looked frozen, frozen in the street – and frozen in time.
The smooth, heavy, all concealing body armor had revealed his presence to Oracion out of shadows when it reflected the moonlight and now he stood motionless, in the middle of the street facing her, uncertain whether or not he should move forward, approach or even if Oracion were friend, foe, or perhaps illusion.
Slowly he removed his mask, and when their eyes met and she read the sadness in those ancient eyes of yet another time, it almost moved Oracion to tears. But in another dimension, it would never have come to this. In one, they would have embraced, and in another, Trock and her would have valiantly fought side by side, and been willing to die for one another.
In another yet to come, perhaps they would.
Quickly, Oracion redrew the hood back down about her face and started running away from Trock as swiftly as she could, because having seen her, he would obey his vows he made to his master to kill Oracion, or be killed.
And if he tried to kill her, how could she obey her vow to her own father to help set Trock free, without hurting him in the process, while defending herself?
As all the possible scenarios and possible outcomes of this unfortunate meeting played themselves out in Oracion’s mind, as unexpectedly and randomly as a leaf – passing over sterilized cobblestone upon some mysterious air current – Oracion felt herself reaching for her sword just to make sure it was still there. Instead, she found herself grasping the coarser hair of horse’s mane as she herself was lifted high, and swiftly carried away from all danger, on the back of a giant destrier stallion, escorted by two noble canines that now barked excitedly at its side.
Oracion, upon hearing her neighbor was sick, dared to venture into the village one evening by light of the remaining stars. She donned a simple black cloak which was roomy enough to hide herself, and her offering for the poor – which in this instance consisted of waxed candles, fruit pastries and clover wine, a bundle of hearth pumpernickel, a bundle of rye, and a pound of soft, sweet cheeses and herb butters.
Oracion had packaged the gifts in pale papers and wrapping twine, placing them carefully into a small, moss-lined basket, adding as if in after thought, a clutch of gypsy blue violets, gathered before dawn on the previous day.
As she drew nearer the house she was marveling at how her flowers (those that grew in Oracion’s hidden part of the wood) were different, and she hoped they might bring her friends a secret kind of joy and health. Indeed, flowers that grew freely seemed to benefit from a wild sturdiness not intrinsic to most.
Oracion recalled in comparison, the stunning genetically cultivated flowers she had marveled at in the priest’s chambers, so long ago when she had been imprisoned there, which were all perfect, identical and grew artfully arranged in rows – but which were somehow strange, and without heady fragrance or longevity.
They grew in even numbers as well, not odd, and they bloomed for just one day, then curled up to rot like obedient expendables.
Oracion was aroused from such botanical contemplation when the house which she sought loomed suddenly before her, modest in size and well shuttered. How ironic that a row of the priest’s day roses had perished recently in a tidy window box attached to the dwelling, and as per usual, there remained just a neat pile of thorns, for it was night.
Ascending the porch steps, Oracion thought she saw for one moment – behind the shutters, though closed – curtains fluttering slightly in a cool evening breeze, then realized the windows were not open at all to welcome her, such a night, or any heady, woodland breeze borne fragrances in anticipation of spring. And the windows not only were shuttered and curtained, but had also been sealed. There it was. She saw it plainly now; a pane of thick, sealing glass.
The cleansing had begun.
And what Oracion really had seen behind the glass – someone drawing the curtain aside to peek out from within – which would once have been welcoming (it’s our beloved friend, so come let us open the door) had turned furtive and cold.
The Dichobots had already been here, and Oracion was to be shunned.
She had drawn in such a sudden, startled breath, that she almost dropped the carefully laid basket at her own feet, as if the added weight of realization,loss and sorrow in her heart had also caused the small basket gravitational pull, and her own rare wild violets to tremble, wither and collapse. Then Oracion caught hold of herself, considering.
She would not disturb her friends in the night.
She would leave the gift basket however on their steps without gift card or note, and in that manner, and in only that manner, could the small offering still be used. This way in the morning her beloved could still take part in it, and be nourished without excuse, blame or shame, nor threat of scourging or punitive dispatch. They could not be punished for any reason at all.
For though Oracion’s guilt was imaginary, as long as it was still imagined by some or by one, she would not share it with another, especially not with those that she loved.
And although the scentless gasses emitting from the wicked priest’s genetically designed flowers were sure to have already altered her friends’ minds to some strange and curious degree, plucking and destroying memories and understandings from their brains as efficiently as dying day roses (leaving just their thorns) she prayed that in their hearts they would still know she had been present, and remember her name.
In that moment many things happened at once, because Oracion sometimes saw and heard many things, all at the same time.
Though she could not yet understand them as simultaneously as her brilliant companions could, Oracion hoped in time (when she had grown just a little bit younger) her mind would be as clear as Alacrity’s – and her thoughts as fast as Velocity’s – but that time was not now.
She was well aware of the priest’s snake, that she knew he fondly called Onion, as it hissed and slithered out of the open bedside drawer. The snake was raised up in an instant, as if suddenly balanced on the tip of tiny feet, that were somewhere hidden but now emerging at the base of a still undulating tail. In that instant Oration also observed Onion’s fangs, the tongue, and two small fetus size bulges packaged within the snake’s body – one in mortal stillness, but the other still slightly moving (Oracion realized in horror) and trying to get out.
Oracion also noticed a flash of light about the fat snake’s neck, which registered meaningfully as her own diamond bracelet, constricting the poor snake’s breathing, but preventing Onion’s expulsion of dinner. She drew back and screamed an inaudible scream – as the snake tried to strike at her face, even though Oracion did not really scream in fright. She screamed more in anger for that which the old priest was using the snake.
For since night was like day to Oracion, and although she knew what she saw during her travels was real and had real meaning, she also knew her guides and her Father would always protect her, even from snake venom. The danger was never real. Therefore her scream was more a horrified outcry against evil and the horror of everything she saw and now knew to be true, rather than one of sudden fright – or personal defense. The castle chanters were singing “decoy” anyway – to inform her there was something else she must look at (though the word sounded more like a silent chime, as their words always did in this venue) even as Oracion was also made aware her scream, however silent as she was invisible, had been heard in the chambers below.
She was made aware of this because in that same instant she heard men in heavy boots pounding ominously, as they ran up the stairs.
The fact that the wicked priest seemed to hear what was silent was more significant to her in this moment than the fact that his guards now ran up the stairs with murderous intent, and it was this fact that did mystify – and somewhat frighten her. For hearing what was silent was reserved to the shape shifters and to her Father’s people, not to those whose business was soul murder.
But nonetheless, even as Oracion struggled with her desire to help the second baby out of the snake’s body, and knew that second baby was also her (in some mysterious way), Velocity laid an invisible hand on Oracion’s own invisible hand. In the next instant she was transported to the evil priest’s closet, as if in hiding from the angry men with the monstrously loud boots.
If the old priest had stolen the secret to hear silent things, had he also obtained secrets to see secrets as well? Could he find Oracion here?
Could that be even possible?
Though the enemies had seen shape shifters in various formula and format, the shape shifters were the only ones left that Oracion knew of, to see reality for what it actually was.
To the pathetic wicked priest, when he could see her, at least as far as Oracion could tell, she would always just be the deeply disturbing garden nymph, with wild eyes, too pale skin and a cloud of black hair, the one he had cast off into the forest for being too intelligent. He probably had fantasized that the girl would be taken in by the other commoners he had banished from his kingdom, and somehow, as if through what he viewed as a lower, less than pristine class contamination, forget everything she had seen within the castle walls.
How could the old priest actually see or understand who Oracion really was, when he did not even deem her human, or understand how she could be present when his tap dripped, babies cried, or even when he had flash backs to his own mother, hundreds of years ago, screaming at him for some imagined offense?
But while in the closet Oracion sensed, if not smelled, the unmistakable odor of long decayed flesh, it was so dark that Oracion could no longer see anything either. The priest’s closet engulfed her like a sickening tomb.
She could feel around with her hands, however, and though what she felt disturbed her much, it suddenly made her see clearer than she had been ever been able to before.
Alacrity was whispering something silently into her ear that sounded like “Fuhrer” then “bioethics” even as Oracion was hearing the voices of booted men, perhaps a woman, and some other visitors (good or bad she could not tell) right on the other side of the door.
“ok, Miss Spider…” a voice began.
Oracion felt skeletons hanging from hangers, their little bony feet knocking and clicking against her back, as Oracion found a place to crouch, making her own body very little by kneeling on the floor.
“they found her…has a business now…probably should have stayed away”
The bodies must have been stacked together and compacted quite tightly in this closet, pressed together to get in as many hanging skeletons as possible. Surely they could not have been all of this one priest’s kill Oracion thought, as her small movements disengaged a sprinkling of loose toes from several dry, ancient feet, but this clink, clink, clink of the bones, apparently, the outsiders could not hear at all. The men continued their chatter, as if they were women gossiping about the next door neighbor, not soldiers with guns in front of a closet containing ancient bones.
“very sincerely misguided. It’s like getting a tongue lashing from a snake…all of her comments are crazy…starving children can’t talk…standing up”
But at Oracion’s own feet, another type of body lay… lifeless, but still warm.
A little girl, around seven or eight.
Oracion felt the small, still, familiar hands of the child, and her familiar, round cherubic face, the cloud of tangled hair as soft as she could imagine the silk threads of the blouse of a madonna, and impossible ever to comb… while the most brutal pain of all and heavy understanding suddenly settled on Oracion’s heart.
Would she die an eighteenth death at this moment, in an evil priest’s closet, just so she would understand, with dangling skeletons above her, and her third beloved fairy godmother, dead at her feet?
“I don’t know what to tell ya…her father called the judge. The North Door ceremony, over expenses, music… accomplished. I realize depression – but the only possibility is a mixed seed”
Oracion wept bitterly, holding the poor, lifeless body of Chagrin in her arms.
“the only thing to do…threats, sticks, making stars…hey, what are we waiting for…you know in theory his father’s outbursts pre determine dream obsessions, an isolated bath…maybe the tin man did what he did because she wouldn’t even get a book – a false prophet, to deceive the elect…”
“Father, be with me!” Oracion shouted, no longer able to bear this moment, but fearing the next – her rightful anger and love for Chagrin suddenly igniting into a desperate urgency, and so of course, Oracion’s surroundings changed once again, instantaneously.
She was back in her forest home with Alacrity and Velocity, and Oracion was running through the leaves and sticks and underbrush to find where she had put her most innocent Chagrin down to sleep earlier in the evening, on a blanket of warm winter edelweiss.
There was another moment of excruciating grief and understanding in The Seeing.
For all daughters who see, also grieve. And all mothers who see, also grieve.
It was seeing the child motionless, the child that was at the same time Oracion’s child, and at the same time her fairy godmother, as still as that first motionless baby within the snake’s body, that ripped another bloody sword into the center of Oracion’s heart. For she had to look to see if she could ascertain the gentle rising up and down of the child’s chest, to see if there was any life left, but Oracion knew the moment of death had just arrived, when she had arrived on the scene.
For in that same instance, the moment Chagrin’s chest ceased all movement, the child was already shifting into her new form, and breathing life’s breath once again.
Chagrin was an even younger child now, her hair a prettier and paler shade than the paleness of that winter moon, and her eyes brighter than the sparkling diamonds in a once treasured wristlet band. For what these eyes had seen while asleep and would always see now, was what Oracion could sometimes see as well, or at least intuit – the Constant Presence, the Father Made Known, Who lived where He Would – to be with them always.
“I never left your side” she finally heard His Voice say in a voice that rang out though silent, like a loud crashing waterfall, in answer to the helpless cry she had shouted out to Him in the priest’s bedroom closet.
Chagrin’s laughter rang out as well and echoed merrily, like a sweet musical note ringing loud and clear and finally free throughout the forest. And as the child sat up and reached her arms out to Oracion, Oracion beheld in them the gift of a small bouquet of edelweiss, clutched in a hand.
But Oracion knew she was no longer Chagrin anymore.
“Mother,” Chagrin called her, for the first time ever.
Oracion had been warned not to go near the new castle that was already old, that stood in danger of crumbling at the end of the wood. It was there the wicked priest had taken the sun a long time ago, on a night so dark it lasted the length of three nights, and if not for the light of the moon, her kind would have died of grief.
Happy to be released, Oracion had made her new home in wood and flower, to trod upon moss and fragrant violet, ponder the graceful movement of heliotrope, and listen to chimes in the wind.
The three fairy godmothers that Father had given her were with her still.
Athough Oracion appreciated their companionship, she had to take care of them like little children, because all fairy godmothers will be, in some ways, little children. Subsequently, they often got tired and clung about Oracion’s neck heavily during the day, or pulled at her hair. Chagrin was the oldest, and was often found wandering off into the dangerous parts of the wood where the fog was deep, and had to be fetched before the child fell into the moat, or worse – got mistaken for Oracion.
If anyone found Oracion, the old priest would have her murdered instantaneously. If any of his servants dared to speak to her first, they would be executed as well. And she felt it would have been her fault, although she didn’t think it was.
But she missed her friends.
The thought of burning at the stake didn’t frighten Oracion, but stoning did. For her kind would be found guilty of knowing whatever sins the old priest had committed, and she would have been stoned for each one of his sins, as well as each one of her gifts, and each one of her fairy godmothers, the priest pocketing these things like plucked pansies into his robe.
And the moat into which she feared Chagrin would fall, was not like regular moats that Oracion had read about in story books when she was little (many lifetimes ago) or the one that had surrounded her own home in the Other World, but one that ran deceptively through pine and leaf throughout the forest floor like a giant, tangled snake set out to catch its prey.
Now that Oracion was even younger, she was very wary of this slippery inlet’s particular danger, and the fog that rose up from it in cloudy mists. It was the type of poisonous fog that had blinded some.
But the nights in the forest were beautiful because the fog never reached the sky, or obscured the moon. And although the stars were falling now at regular intervals, the nights were getting brighter than ever before.
Some said these bright nights were day, and of course they had always been, to Oracion.
For it was in the night that Oracion could shape shift like the other children into invisibility and fly.
Sometimes, after securing Chagrin, she would gather Alacrity and Velocity to her, and together they would slip into mysterious places forbidden, all walls dissolving in an instant at the touch of her hand. She saw books lining shelves that contained the hidden things, and passage ways that were really there, but hidden from plain sight, invisible to earth. Once she found a bracelet of baguettes of exquisite clarity the old priest had stolen from her when she was just little. Then, as if he found it useless, he had tucked it into his bedside table drawer.
Yes, it was as if the priest just stole out of jealousy, yet when obtaining what he wanted, could not understand the things he had stolen, in spite of their brilliance. Or perhaps, jealous of the shape shifters (who could turn matter into other forms good) he had stolen the power to turn, but could not turn them good.
She hoped it was not that. For for the first she had pity, but not for the latter.
And sometimes, during the night, Oracion found her real Father here and there in the woods like Aslan the Narnian beast, from a tale told in other demensions, and he drew her to him with more tenderness than ever expressed this side of heaven.
It was those nights Oracion liked the best.
But on one night, when the moon’s fullness made the castle more ominous and dark by comparison, Oracion found herself suddenly standing within its transparent walls in a place she did not wish to be, to view something she did not wish to see. For Oracion was standing beside the dresser drawer that contained the stolen diamond baguettes she had once worn around her own tiny wrist, laughing, once upon that time.
Only the priest’s drawer had been pulled roughly open and the bracelet was missing – or changed. And, as if in desperate attempt so her kind would never find or want to look for such a priceless bracelet again, a monstrous black snake slithered out, raising its ugly head at Oracion to strike.
I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out:
“It tastes sweet doesn’t it?”
“You have caught me”, grief answered,
“And you’ve ruined my business
How can I sell sorrow, when you know its blessing?” -RUMI
He looked at her with undisguised and unapologetic contempt, but not before she caught sight of another expression that played briefly across his features; an expression not very unlike those that are known to depict fear.
This first, fleeting expression was one of being startled, that which a child’s face might possess when caught with a hand in the cookie jar, or the expression of a robber pulled over with stolen goods in the trunk of a car, or a sodomizing priest – facing a child ignorant of society’s standard of politeness and therefore not afraid to scream.
Yes, in that moment the troubled man looked verystartled,as if she were some clever nymph that had emerged out of the woods with the purposeful intent to cast her spells upon him, or shed what was referred to in days of old – as Oracion’s Fire.
This was just before the priest’s expression hardened into one of cold, impenetrable hatred.
It was in the preceding startled expression that the cleric revealed he knew not where to run and hide from such a deluge, and feared should he actually have to come in contact with the tears of the blessed – his skin would become instantaneously charred.
Did the mysterious nymph not know (in her innocence) he had no choice but to attack her then, for if her burning tears did not literally kill him, they would imprint upon him forever the evidence of his own guilt?
No, she had not known, but in retrospect, when thinking about that startled expression he bore her, Oracion knew that was when the wicked priest first devised his plan. It was a plan to bear false witness against her, dispatch her… and started calculating the attempted murder of her soul.
Unraveled and the Birth of Joy 