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There among the faces of the fallen, littered on the fields of ice,
Marduk locked in combat, with his bright bitter glowing foe.
And with his right hand he smote with iron,
And with his left hand he cast with fire,
Fire which burned bright, without burning,
Which touches and brings death to the unthinking
Sight, it gives, to the unheeding.
Marduk marks his own, by the meaning of his fire.
Gilgamesh Trilogy Scene 5, lines 249-256
It began with a sense of falling, and feeling dizzy, so much so that she could barely keep her eyes closed, even though, when she tried to open them, she found she could not. First there was nothing which she could remember, even as she was seeing it, because it had no shape or colour which she could grapple with. Finally after a seemingly interminable time, there were blobs that oozed across her sight, with dark reds and beiges in the center, and edges that seemed to glint darkly. But then came the sound of hammering and noises she could recognize. There came into view, as if light were being slowly increased, a scene which felt familiar, but looked wrong.
It had, she finally decided, a familiar smell: the smell of cooking. But she was not in the childhood kitchen, where her foster mother had placed clay pots into a bellows oven, along with logs split to small size, and the closed it. She remembered, even as she looked on the dreamscape, how her mother would then rapidly spin the lighting rod, and then work the bellows until one could hear the dull thud of fire being lit inside the stone box. Her mother would then say the appropriate prayers.
And that smell, plus the sound of chanting, was what made her feel as if she was in her childhood home, even as she looked at a large room of white marble, filled with people who were chattering and moving about. There were four large double doors, each made of bronze, and decorated with pounded figures engaged in combat. She saw shield and swords and great lizards. The noise seemed gay and happy, as her mother's kitchen had always bustled with business, and she looked out over a sea of white tunic clad people. Then, the doors slammed shut, and there was a loud "booming" drum which repeated three times. And then people began running every place. A moment before she had beheld this from above, but now was washed into people running up the stairs which she now realized she had been standing on. The large marble squares turned over carrying people down into the blackness, and then creating a hole in the crowd, a hole that remained as people avoided the square, now of black marble.
She finally waked to one, and stood on it, as one by one the other squares turned over, and everyone on the main floor was dragged under. Smaller and smaller islands of panic, where people rigorously jumped and stepped to avoid the black stones. Finally, only those that had stood on the steps remained. She could see the grand staircase now, each step thirty or fourty feet across, slowly narrowing and turning upwards to a first landing, which had marble squares on it, and then branching to two more staircases that went opposite directions, these no more than twenty feet across, upwards to two bronze doors - which had closed during the booming noises. On the landing itself was a giant fresco, of a massive serpentine figure, which seemed to be slowly moving and writhing. No one noticed as they panicked and rushed the doors at the top of the stairs. Most of the steps were filled with people, some resting, some injured, but all getting ready to follow the leaders upwards. It had become packed as the last of the people on the main floor had pressed their way up on to it.
Then the bottom step turned over, the people who could, jumped off, but those who were wounded or sitting were crushed, and bits of blood and flesh were thrown into the air, as if they had been smashed against a rock: which was quite out of place for the slow speed of the turning. Then the next step, and the next. Each turned over to leave behind a black step. She stood paralyzed, she could not even beckon to them.
Then the landing turned over, and the crowd divided. One half pounding on the doors, the other half grimly looking up. But no one jumped down onto the black squares or steps. Then there were 10 steps left, and there were shrieks and screams, as people pushed each other, she kept expecting someone to be pushed off a step, and show the rest that it was safe. Then 9. Then 8. Finally someone was pushed, and stumbled down on to the landing. Then 7. A few jumped down and followed. Then 6, and 5. More people came down, there were perhaps 20. But the rest continued to pound on the doors, until they were dragged under.
It was at this moment that she realized that the fresco - with its lurid red clouds in the background, on which sat spear carrying armored warriors - was moving faster and faster, and attaining a greater and greater depth. The serpentine creature bolted outwards, and snatched up the remaining people on the landing: first by coiling around them, and then by squeezing them until they were dead, and then consuming them.
The site faded into oblivion, its last moment was the smell of cooking pork as the creature breathed fire on the bodies before eating them.
She was cast back into the abyss of shapes, the bowels of a dream land, which, she felt, must lie at the roots of mountains. As the burning smell gave way to a that smell of damp rock and moss, she realized that there was no light, or rather, that there was a dim light of phosphorescences, rather like the message stick, only in purple and gold as well as green. She realized she was no longer in that dream place of shapes, but was deposited in a dark cave. She had been taken down to caves before, and knew the ones that the sea carved out well. But this was another kind. There was a blackened, half burned smell, and the stench of free sulphur. She said the prayer reflexively, and then startled, it was the first sound she had made in her dream.
She stood, trying to look at the phosphorescence. The patterns seemed to draw out misshapen figures, but before she could go beyond this, she snapped to consciousness. She was not only incredibly awake, but standing. Not only standing, but talking as if she had not been asleep.
"So what does it mean?" She heard herself saying without conscious decision to say it. Before making a conscious decision, she further said: "And what does this have to do with the thaumaturgical fire?" At this point her wakingness caught up with her mouth and she added.
"And what did you do to me?"
Amalthea put up a hand palm forward and nodded.
"The brazier had opium in it, and that carried you away into a dream. I could see it on your face. It was not truly intentional, I keep the brazier stocked with it, because of my pains, and other reasons. It slows down the spirits that reach in her. There are advantages you know, to being a priestess of fire: breathing smoke and incense are two of them."
She then seated herself on an "X" legged chair made of a deeply rich dark wood, and continued. "It comes from the poppy flower, the legionnaire's flower."
March nodded, she had known that the poppy was extracted to make medicines, and that soldiers and their families grew it, but had never connected the two facts in her mind.
Amalthea pulled out a stoppered flask and handed it to March. "Here, it is a special distillation of the flower and a very strong drink which can only be made easily with heat. This was made by some brethren, without use of fire, to keep it pure and holy."
March slowly extended her hand and took the proffered flask, which was made of hammered metal. "How did they make it?"
"They focused the suns rays on fermented grain, an ale, and then captured the resulting alcohol. Then they combined this with the poppy mass, the gum that the heads give. It is a pain killer and dream maker. When you need to dream, take of it. When your comrades are in pain from wounds, give it to them."
March had no intention of doing either, but placed the flask on a hook on her rope belt. And looked, blinking occasionally, at the old lady.
"I am not going to do as you ask yet. I am not interested in this task. And I do not like the idea of being cast into nightmares, and drinking strange liquors. I came here," meaning to the university, but she realized also to this home even as she said it, "so that I could learn, and have a good and easy life, filled with seeing curious things, but beautiful ones." She did not add that she did not care for religion, or the burdens it placed on one, nor for those who carried it out. She did not like the old lady, did not like the trick, for she was sure that the opium was intentional, or at least a very convenient oversight, and the whole thing was just a way to recruit her into this.
She was about to ask for permission to leave when the old lady simply smiled a very gentle smile and said.
"You'll be back. And use the second stick to get home, you reek of the holy airs."
-
She wended her way back to her room. It was on reaching it that she had a dilemma - sleep again until the next day, at which point her carefully planned schedule would be out of alignment, or sleep through the remainder of the night and through the next day, or, simply stay awake out of terror of another dream.
Yes, she told her self, terror. She did not want another dream.
That settled matters for her - she opened the awning out onto the sky above and saw that dawn was already coming, a bright yellowish shooting star passed overhead, and then several more. And then several more after that. He room faced the east, and she should not be seeing this, shooting stars came near dusk, not dawn. It must have been a meteorite, or other large object which fragmented and fell. Normally she would have taken an odd event, and the sky is filled with them, as nothing unusual. Since she was not a great star watcher, she normally would have filed it away for future reference.
Now it held her transfixed and she watched carefully. But she found she could not stay awake. And soon she was aware, without there having been any real break, that she was not looking at the real sky, nor at the real room. Instead she could see the bright cluster of circumpolar stars, invisible from her room, and she was aware of objects, perhaps living ones, in the room, as if there were animals asleep. She looked around, and sure enough, there were snakes and reptiles asleep on the stone floor, stretching and seemingly dreaming.
And then, in a startled moment, she was awake, with the sun streaming in. She reflexively went over, opened her personal box, wrote down:
Long Count 998.11.91
But made no entry other than. "I am embarking on a dangerous course."
There was only one thing to do, and it was the thing that had always given her comfort before: she went to have her fortune told, to a sybil who plied her trade among the canvas tents in the Agora. She felt a comfort in the bazaar, of being able to buy her truth or whatever else. A few bits of coin, of which she had more than anyone suspected, would bring her comfort. She spent extravagantly only very rarely, but on this, she was willing to splurge. She pulled out her strong box, counted out the coins she would need, and a bit more in case, and closed it. Within were gold coins from the Arabic lands, silver ones denarii from the Latin Republic, and, of course, the bronze spending money. How she obtained it was one of her secrets: she cast fortunes herself. It would have shocked the university, which strictly forbade the use of decks of cards or coins for fortune telling. But it was lucrative, and she was good at it, always saying enough advice and mixing in observation and vague predictions. She knew she was, not a fake, but not in any sense using some special sight.
Which was all the more reason she valued the Sibyl, who did have such things. It ccured to her, as she took the steps two by two out towards the market, that part of what she did not like, was that if there was a "gift" of sight involved, that it had not come about through her own efforts and studies, which were voluminous, but because of being in front of a bush that caught fire. It was not fair. It was not fair. It. Was. Not. Fair.
Before she was even really aware of it, she was in the middle of the market, which opened as soon as there was enough twilight, and ran until the last bit of zodiacal light had faded. It was already in full swing, and she rapidly found the familiar canvas tent, with its decorative signs hung from the poles inside. She ducked in, the flap being open, and sat down. She and the sybil - a woman no older than 50 annae - were good friends, and talked beauty and gossip as much as anything more serious. But she had the coins out, and tossed them in the bowl and issued the ceremonial invitation. She was very formal, because this was very important.
She then, and only then looked at the face of the sybil, and saw, rather than a friendly face, smiling at her coming, an angry one.
"I heard, of course, how you treated Amalthea."
It had not even occurred to March, who kicked herself mentally for using a name which she did not in reference to herself, that the sybil would not be on her side.
"What. Well, I'm sorry, I will certainly apologize to her. What did I do wrong?"
At this point the woman settled herself in, adjusted the knit tunic beneath which her heavy breasts hung, and began.
"Wrong? The sight, she offered you, the sight. For the merest glimpse of which I have worked my whole life. I've had two, maybe three moments, where I felt close to it. Do you know what it means? You, you could be gifted. What else is there? Isn't it what you've told me you wanted."
March stopped.
"But I want to earn it."
"It's always a gift, or seems that way. Why were you, alone, where you were? Because your sense drew you there. There is no coincidence, your sense drew you to be awakened."
But then the Sybil straightened. And stared out with almost unseeingly blank eyes and said:
"I accept these coins of true weight, in return for the true weight of your fate." She moved her hands smoothly over the bowl, scooped the coins out with all her fingers, softly placed them on the scales and set three weights against them. It seemed magic, but her fee was well known to her, and she knew the weights of most common coin combinations by sight. Memory back, not vision forward, made it seem as if she could do it without looking.
"First, you have had a forward dream. It bears on you like a weight, and drags your fate down. You must unburden yourself to those whom it belongs, or suffer it yourself."
Seldom had the sybil spoken in such a way with her, seldom had the cadences been as pure of the old tongue, the dialect of the theatre, been in her mouth.
"Second," at this point the prose voice broke entirely, and she went to verse, which, while not of high quality, was more than she was almost always capable of on the spur of the moment:
"I give thee the mad god's ear,
And you will ride on the spirit of fear,
And find it then an older friend,
Who makes from bright beginning a colder end."
Then a pause, and the sybil slouched forward and then convulsed upwards, and her voice rose an octave, as if some unknown force pulled on her:
"I sing of Arms, and of men in flower
of arms born from steely forges,
and Lucifer's hammer laid heavy
upon the anvil of Marduk, brightly
shining as a star, even though, scourge
upon two worlds that both will learn
a meaning for the word, Krakatoa."
At this point the Sybil straightened up, March expected a wink, a grin, a half suppressed smile, something, anything, that would say that this had been a performance. The Sybil pressed the coins back into March's hand. "Go, this evening, to Amalthea, that last was true site. I saw the volcano at the roof of the world explode, and engines belching soot and screeching fire. It is real, or could be real. You have been chosen, and heard the untold."
March sat for only a moment, and then rose from cross legged. "I thank thee thrice and three times thrice." It was the ritual formula, but March almost sobbed the last syllable. She knew that outside the flap of the tent was a new life, that here, somehow, her childhood was over, and she was entering to an adult world. Even though she was not yet an adult. A name, a calling, a dream, a purpose.
But, as yet, no understanding. She it felt bitter in her mouth, because, truthfully, she knew that the Sybil was no longer a friend, and that her life of games and cards and scrolls had forcibly come to an end. She wove her way through the Hogarthian crowd, with people already talking and bargaining and drinking as the morning session was moving under the tents as the sun climbed upwards, wrapped in her own thoughts and the meaning of this new moment.