Looking to the West

I burst forth from my body in a flare of wings, flapping and spinning in circles around myself for a while. It has been too long since I have come here. I whistle and sing at my fetch, which settles herself on my body, brooding over it, ready to defend me against whatever threats may encroach on my little alcove of repose. She sings back, telling me that I am a fool. I am well aware, I tell her, after all, how long did it take for me to recognize you?

We part, and I flap for altitude, grateful for the calm updrafts the Right Air gives a sanctuary to, allowing me to gain height over the world, leaving behind the flat land for the middle of the air, where the proper birds can gather. There are a great many of us today, flocking and forming parliaments and assemblies in the skies, declaiming and practicing our rhetoric.

When I returned to the the deepest illusion, what we call the Middle World, freshly awoken and split, I will admit to being disappointed. I had, in many ways, started down this path to get well away from birds, and had hoped, in the childish manner I still had in so many ways, that I would emerge as a bat, or something insectile, something truly fitting for something From Dark. And yet when I took a look at my fetch, and at myself, I saw the brilliant display of feathers, the furling and unfurling with each motion, and I realized that the Goddess, if she ever makes a mistake, had not made one here. After, I must admit, crying quietly for most of an evening.

I soar through the city of eyries that exists here between the perfect sky and the ground below, gliding, before turning and diving sharp westsouthwestward, tacking on a gust of wind coming from the south, sliding through the clouds as slickly as if I'd been oiled.

I dislike this part of the journey, this awful graveyard called the Rockwoods, sleepers unsure of just what it is they are from any moment to another snoring loudly beneath me, still others gaping up, hollow corpses which metallic ants and termites are chewing to pieces from within. It is appalling, but the other ways are worse.

To the north, there is Erigia, a land that shrieks in its roasting still, and may well do so to the end of its days, where the only things that move are horses with dead eyes. The straight way is impassable, too, for in the middle of it is Charg.

Many a spiritist took a journey to see the Syndics Ban and to quietly attempt to penetrate it, when it was fully impenetrable, and then as it began to dissolve. They were foolish. We were foolish. I was among that number, though the Ban was already melting when I tried.

Looking into the Ban... It is like this. You see the mists and the fog, you see the wall behind, and then if you look deep enough, you see it. You see the silver-footed god, you see him grabbed and stretched out, you see silver hamstrings torn out of his flesh. You see the man with the stars in his eyes, the eyes that focus on infinity, you see him take his spear and stab it deep into the god. You hear the god's scream, you smell it as his divine bowels evacuate, you taste his pain, you touch the moment when this land was shattered into pieces. And for what, you will think, your thoughts shared with that of the god, why are they doing this? What is the point, what could be worth what will follow, what is happening?

And then the palace of the north collapses, and buries them all, the conspirators and the god alike, in its ruins. And then you are turned away. And if you attempt to enter a place that is under the Ban, you are tossed aside contemptuously. Even the greatest charms, even the strongest allies, could do nothing to tear down those walls.

So I do not pass by Charg, which has in any case an evil name from an evil history.

It is not long before I can leave the stone forest and pass into living lands, ones where things gambol and play. I join in with them, finding a clearing I know well with a stone that has been marked with a noble graffito- "I, Syranthir, made camp here". Does such a stone exist in the Middle World as well? Has it been worn away by the gnawing of the World Storm? Did it ever exist, or was this simply a place of importance to Syranthir, once upon a time?

And yet it does exist in a way that many things do not, here in this elevated world of spirits, in that I have met strangers here who are well aware of the presence of this stone and of what it says, though not in the precise words I assign to it. It is because of such a meeting that I return to this place now and again.

I alight on the rock and preen myself briefly, the world suddenly quiet.around me, and then sound returns, Suonni brushing through the undergrowth, a reindeer cow with a woman's face and human hands and feet sticking out where hooves ought to be. She tosses her antlers, where a dozen or so yarn ties cling, little spirits tangled within their webs. "You must have left as soon as my messenger came to you," she says.

I brush that off. "I really had very little else to do," I say, with an air of casualness. She snorts and gestures with her head. "Shall we?"

We shall. I follow her as we run through the forests, through the darkness of the woods and then through the meadows by the riversides, all manner of creatures watching us go. There is a headlong joy in the rush of it, as we look on with amusement at the little settlements hacked out of the great wood, looking almost like camps, nothing much like cities.

And then we come to the butcherbird, who sits outside a burned field surrounded by the impaled bodies of his prey, as is the butcherbird's wont, and talks to anyone who approaches.

Usually, he chants a meaningless message, a toneless song about breaking walls and tearing through fences, and intersperses in it offers of recruitment, of plunder beyond dreams and of glory beyond arms. Today, he looks directly at me as we approach, and sings, "You don't need to be afraid. There's nothing in here that could overwhelm someone as great as you. We're still us, you know, all of us are us." The butcherbird's eyes are a lie, a thin veil of browns and greens that fade away if you know how to look, and all that's within them is an empty pit. His shadow snickers at us as he makes his offer.

I ignore him and we walk away. Suonni grunts thoughtfully and I ask her, "What did he offer you?"

"It's what he does offer me," she says, chewing. "Where before, you heard his warsong and nothing specific, I hear his voice piping about how I could lead my people down to the mighty river and drink from its waters without fear, go to the great salt sea without anyone ever gawping at me as one of the Reindeer People, trample fools and tyrants beneath my hooves." She yawns. "Childish things. He has never really had to tempt anyone before, and I don't suspect he'll ever get any better at it." She rolls her eyes at me. "But of course, he's figured out where you're from, now. So you get to hear his fitted message, just for you."

We pick up the pace again, dashing down the riverbank, until at last we come upon a swamp, which we skirt to the north. Within the confines of the swamp, it is just possible to see a blazing fire in a cage of glassy metal, a massive nest just beyond. Suonni tells me that within the cage there are sorcerers who are often unable to tell the difference between a spirit-walker and an ordinary spirit walking, and so we have never gone deep into the swamp.

Finally, we are at the border. We have come here many times before. We will, I hope, come here many times again. To one side, there is a sweep of plain, flat lands with scattered groves, the grass growing thick. To the other, there is a vast maze, or a city, or a scattered set of toys for giants. Simple solid shapes are strewn across the ground in patterns that carry a faint hint of sensibility, some of them burned-out ruins, others luminous and warm-seeming. And yet from them sprout waving shapes, long and slender like lakeweed, short and broad like mushrooms, like bushes or like trees or like wildflowers or like nothing I can give an easy name to. They shift and blend with every moment, rainbows shimmering across them, disappearing and reappearing whenever they pass out of your sight. Within, one can sometimes see people, all caught in a dreamy sleep.

It is almost entrancing, and Suonni agrees with me that it is beautiful. I remain unsure as to why we have come here in particular, why she sent one of her spirits to call me into this world, but we talk for a moment, of little inanities that I think cannot really make sense to each other, anecdotes from the daily lives of two very different worlds, for all that we are native to the same middle one... And yet I can hear the overtones, of jokes, of exasperation, of obstacles overcome through tenacity or cleverness or cooperation, and I hope that my overtones are as audible.

It is not long, regardless of the actual segments of time that have passed in reality, before others gather with us. A bear, fur so black it's blue. Another reindeer. A man with a mastodon's trunk. A woman in a lizard's skin, carrying a large bunch of grain. We all sit together, and they discuss, and I try to follow but slip into a dream. There is an argument, and then curses directed at someone, and a question of whether that someone could be summoned back, and then, finally, I am pulled to wakefulness when the lizard-woman says, "We cannot make the first move."

Suonni says, "Do you really believe we will have to?" There is general grunting and a little laughter from the bear.

"Have you managed to speak with the elk yet?" The lizard-woman smiles as she says this.

"I can't even make it to the deer," Suonni says, but it feels oddly false, as if she's leaving something out. "Besides, the elk's secrets are better left for some other foe. When a river floods, do you run for more water?" I stir slightly.

The meeting, such as it is, comes to an end shortly thereafter, but without any conclusion. I lay against Suonni's flank. "So, you will fight the people who are dreaming, then?"

"If we must," Suonni says.

"Must you?" I ask.

Suonni yawns. "If they have any sense at all, then we will have no need to fight. But they do not, and so we will most likely have to. And lose. Or, rather, we will fight and be unable to win, even if we cannot lose. Everyone is well aware of this."

"Why the dreamers and not, say, the butcherbird?"

Suonni is silent. Finally, she says, "We may end up aiding the butcherbird, as repulsive as he is, for he hates the dreamers more than any of us. And we may be damned for doing so."

"My question still stands." I climb up onto her back and lean against the back of her head.

"You've seen the butcherbird's eyes. He's hollow, and the dreamers are real. He's something the dreamers brought to life, whether by mistake or by intent, and so he can only really be a pale reflection of what the dreamers mean to do." Suonni shudders slightly, "And so we face that ugly choice." She stands up. "I am sorry for disturbing you with this, but you must witness this."

She sets off, starting to run, legs beating with a fury. "For if we fail, we may all die, and it may be your people who must face the dreamers next, and so you must know them, know the people of this land at least a little, so that something might be salvaged from whatever wasteland is made of this."

I nod, then say, "I understand, if only a little."

Her voice is happy as she says, "I am glad."

We separate when we return to the Syranthir stone, returning to the course of destiny, only briefly able to escape from our bondages. And yet, someday we shall be free, able to live without chains or ropes.

The practice of spiritism, especially the shamanic journey and trance, is something that unfortunately most practitioners never write anything down about. This document is thus somewhat near to my heart, for reasons totally unrelated to the bits of information it provides.