EA#14:
Read From the Beginning or the start of Trial Two or Three
The Mountain in the Clouds, Part Seventeen
“
I was in my room. I was sleeping. I was dreaming.
It was relaxing. It was a relief. It was pleasant.
At first there was only that sense of ease and bliss. There was a void where my mind turned off. I am sure I must have been smiling if anyone could have seen my face. It was the most joyous I had felt all that day.
“Ah,” I breathed to myself. I don’t know how, but I felt acutely aware of all of this. I don’t remember ever before or since being so aware of the act of my own sleeping.
It felt as though I were floating in air. Or swimming in a liquid world. A world without cares or trials.
And it was in that moment that everything changed.
I remember hearing the words of the woman’s voice: “Are you ready for your next trial?”
And in my state of ease I stupidly agreed, “Yes.”
My bliss dropped from me. Not all at once, mind you. But I became attuned to the fact that I was now standing on solid ground and feeling the heaviness of my body.
I looked down and I was wearing some of my old clothes, an outfit from many years ago. I felt odd and spread my fingers and hands before me as I gazed upon my form. Below my feet the grass danced softly in the breeze.
Then I witnessed the world around me and it was so familiar. Yes, it was my old home town! It was Ham. I could see it down the hill, past the outlying villas and farms that were near where I stood. I was in one of my favorite places to go for an afternoon with my kids.
That’s when I heard them. Their joyous little voices giggling and cooing as they ran after each other in circles all around me.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
“Ara!” I called to my older girl, who was five. “Odi!” to my two-year old boy.
“Daddy!” shouted Ara back. And Odi’s name for me sounded more like “Deda.”
They ran up to me then and threw their small arms around my legs. Their embrace was so warm and loving, and I could not contain my joy at seeing them. Tears began running down my face as I reached out to them and held them so tightly, like I would never let them go.
“My girl, my boy—it is so good to see you,” I told them.
“Silly Daddy,” Ara said. “We are always here.” Then she looked up at me with concern. “Why are you sad, Daddy?”
My kids let go and I knelt down to their level. To my surprise Ara reached out to wipe a tear from my eye.
“I just love you both so much,” I answered her.
“Deda, love you,” Odi said and hugged me again. Then he skipped away with a supreme sound of joy. Ara followed with a massive smile and a hearty laugh, chasing her brother this way and that.
It was almost too much to be there in that place with them. It was like not a day had passed since I had been forced to leave them. They had not aged at all. That should have been a clue to me, but I was too overjoyed to see them. I just revelled in the moment.
And then a cruel twist wrenched me out of it. The sky darkened and my kids looked back from a distance, faces long. Ara called in a voice that sounded more distant than it ought to: “Why did you leave?” And Odi echoed: “Where are you, Deda? I can’t see you anymore.”
The vision before me—my kids, the grassy field—all swirled away in blacks and blues and purples. I felt an overwhelming sadness come over me. I reached out to try to grasp the moment, but it fled.
“No.” I called to the void. “Please, not my children! Don’t take them from me again. Gods, why?”
And as I crumpled into a heap, the spiraling vortex subsided. It took me a moment to recollect myself before I opened my eyes again.
When I did, I found myself in another place. It was not as pleasant, but it was also known to me.
My old house. As always, a shambles, a mess, unkempt. Heaps of clothes and toys strewn about, so many things left undone. I’d tried to maintain order, but had grown weary of the sole task of it and had eventually given into the chaos. My then wife had given little help—though she was home all day—and offered only scorn and rank criticism when I fell short of my “after-work” duties.
The air was uninviting, a thickness, heaviness, cloudiness that was almost palpable. I hadn’t realized it as clearly back then—but now from my new perspective, it was so…
Of course, I’d had happy times in there—with my kids, my hobbies and, yes, even my ex, back in the beginning.
But things had changed, I had changed, life had changed.
And one day someone I met—unexpected and new—had changed everything for me forever. When I felt this real kinship and pure love from another, true affection and unending connection—the desire to be and talk and play at life with someone new—I could not walk back into my marriage every day and not feel I was a fraud.
Was it true love? Perhaps. The one and only person I could love? Who can say… I have come to learn that what is true in life can be hard to say. Each one’s truth seems their own…
But it was real love, deep love. This person came out of the great wonder of reality, without my looking for her. And once she was there, I could not deny it. And I could no longer pretend.
One thing I do know is that love is pure and blessed. Love embraces and forgives, accepts mistakes, need not punish. It doesn’t condemn, make guilty. It doesn’t tear you down in order to keep you in your place, only to lift you back up with false praises in order to maintain its sick, toxic grasp. I’d had to leave that poisonous relationship or slowly die inside. I’d had to follow my heart out of those dark woods of forsaking my happiness for that of others.
And this place I stood in, this old house I’d lived in, was at once old to me and new. I saw it anew. And I saw this: a mire of bad energy, a vault of toxicity.
And then I saw the cause of it.
My ex wife was there, cooking something in the kitchen. This to her was an obligation, of sorts, but also gave her the opportunity to shout me down and enact her vengeance if I didn’t rush to the table. She never cared for my projects, my interests. And there they were…
I passed the kitchen door and went to my old desk. I fiddled through papers, old maps, secrets of history that I’d been chasing. Teachings from times long past and from faraway lands. I’d gathered everything I could on topics of interest: mythology, lore, the structure of society and the spiritual nature of mankind and other races.
“Dinner’s ready,” called my ex.
I looked up for a moment, but lost in my thoughts I sat at my desk, searching for something I felt I had lost.
She came through the doorway then. “Hey. I said food’s ready.”
My eyes glanced at her, but some sense that she wasn’t really there and I kept…“Always late to eat. I slave in the kitchen, and you let your food get cold.”
I put my papers down and looked at her more closely. Her face was pudged out, hands on her hips. If she were full of tea, she’d be whistling and squealing.
I tried something new. “I have barely sat for two minutes. The food can’t possibly be cold yet. And I know for certain that you did not slave in there. So pipe down.”
Well if she were already boiling a moment ago, the pressure was let loose then. But somehow her rage was not vented through words or normal human interactions. She became like a caricature of her emotion, flailing her arms and yelling in a guttural, unutterable tongue that made no sense. I felt small, or she grew bigger. The room narrowed and darkened, flickers of fires licked the edges of the shadows.
This was a dramatization, no doubt, but it clarified something to me in this strange way:
In that place I had called home for so long, I could see how I had never felt comfortable, never quite safe, never fully myself. When I entered that place it felt on some level that a part of me was being stifled and cut off. Like a light was being put out, a love squelched beneath a heavy weight.
For many years I had not recognized this, understood my position, come to bear with my own feelings. I’d had sensations of displeasure, but I had not seen them for what they were. And over time, the woman I had told myself I had fallen in love with, whom I had called the love of my life, whom I had married before all her family and mine… I saw her for the desperate attempt at companionship that I had claimed in my fear of loneliness.
But I knew now, I had given her too much power. It had allowed her to control me. And I had allowed it for too long. I had been the willing participant of an abusive jailer, become too small and frail to fight back or even see myself in my plight.
“Until death parted us, the good and the bad.”
Even if the bad were at my expense?
And then the dreamstate became a nightmare realm and the house a twisting, dark forest. My ex, a monster now, chased me. I ran, but I felt like my feet could not get me away.
All I could think of was why I left. What I ran to. And I could think only of her. Maniea. My love.
The nightmare vanished. I found myself again alone, standing now in a nothingness like smoke. It was peculiar, uncomfortable. But at least it wasn’t so wretched.
Then a new scene appeared. A much happier time and place. It was one of my favorite parts of the gardens of Ham. Our favorite—Maniea and me.
“My sweet love,” I called to her, running to where she sat on a bench, hands on her hap. I sat by her, grabbed one of her hands. Her silken, bronze skin, deep, adoring eyes and exuberant smile filled me with bliss. Like it always had before.
“Troy. You’re here.” she said with a hint of sadness.
“What’s wrong, my dear? Is everything ok?” I gazed deeply, trying to penetrate her thoughts.
“They know about us,” she began. “The pawn boy saw us kissing and ran off shouting. It will only be a matter of time…”
“Then we get out of town!” I exclaimed. “Now, before it’s too late. We can grab what we need at the market and head west. Or south. Hell, we can swim across the Elgan Sea to T’hordale for all I care. All I want is to be with you, my love.”
“That’s sweet,” she lamented. “You know I would do anything to make this work. But I cannot leave like that. I have family. My daughter…”
“Is old enough to be well on her own,” I tried.
“What of your kids?” she begged of me. “You cannot leave them, they are so young. They will miss you dearly.”
“That is a great burden, yes,” I sighed heavily. “I wish more than anything I could take them with me. But they have their mother, and more family here to help them. They will be fine. They will understand. When they are older, we will find each other and they will know why I had to leave. What good will I be as father to my kids if I am dead? We cannot stay here, Maniea. The town will have our heads for our crime, you know that. The law is what is it.”
“I know,” she dropped her head. “But that is why we must stay. We have committed our crime and the law must have its way. It is the world we live in…”
“You must not say that,” I scolded her. “The law be damned. We are in love! Can’t the world see that and just accept it? Why this barbaric punishment?”
“Please,” she grabbed my hands tightly with hers. “I cannot run away. Be brave for me, my love. We must stay.”
“If we stay, then we are surely doomed.”
I remember walking off in desperate frustration after I said that.
I relived it now in my dream and it was just as painful to experience again as the first time.
Gods, why are you showing me this, making me feel this again? This is excruciating! Wasn’t living through it once enough for a lifetime?
As I rounded the rows of hedges in the garden and passed through an opening, the scene changed once more.
This was a dark scene and one I surely dread not behold again. It was the moment that we were caught, later that same day as the sun set over a forlorn horizon.
“Maniea. My love!” I tried calling out, but several large hands held me fast by my arms and shoulders and I could not break them.
“Love?” mocked a terrifying voice. “You said you loved me. What a joke. You don’t know what love is.”
My ex wife spat on me and jeered before me with her friends and family just behind her. All of their faces looked so ugly and hateful and the terrible words they used that day have haunted me ever since.
Maniea was being carried away from me by a couple magistrates wearing their navy blue uniforms.
The head magistrate stood on the porch of the pawn shop and held up a large parchment before his face. He read aloud for the crowd of people to hear:
“On this, the nineteenth day of Delnan, before the witnesses of the families of this matrimony between husband, Troy Destin, and his wife, Eleanor, and all those present, I hereby declaim the offender, namely Troy, a perjurer and adulterer in the highest degree. His paramour, the once-lady, Maniea, now unsuitable to wed, is his known accomplice in this wicked crime. By the power vested in me and in my office, I sentence the offenders to permanent banishment from the city of Ham. And furthermore shall their names, faces and stories be expunged from all records and their estates shall be reapportioned in accordance with the law. If either offender shall ever be seen in this city again, they risk punishment by death. It is so.”
To drive home the declaration the head magistrate lifted his right foot and slammed his boot hard, twice, upon the wood planks below his feet.
“Hah,” shouted Eleanor. “That’s all? Banishment? So they can run off into the world with their disgusting affair? That isn’t the typical sentence for this reprehensible crime.”
“She’s right. She’s right.” cried many of the crowd. “Hang her! Hang the bitch. Burn the body.”
Others called, “Cut off his balls. Make him a eunuch.” Many laughed at this.
“Silence,” demanded the head magistrate. “I know what the law dictates, but it is the purview of my current direction with the office of the magistrate to abide by a certain sense of civility that befits the new world in which we live today. These laws are outdated and barbaric and are being changed accordingly. While the crime still stands, it is my desire to redefine their punishments.” The magistrate paused as if to consider, listening to the booing and shouting of the crowd. “But it is as you say that their crime may continue in their banishment. To that end, he alone shall be removed from the city whilst the former lady shall be kept evermore in custody of the magistrate’s office. None shall see her but the rats and roaches.”
The crowd seemed pleased enough by this change in sentence, especially Eleanor who grinned from ear to ear.
The whole episode replayed as a nightmare.
Gods. Help me out of here. Do not show me any more of this dreadful time and place!
And it was as I pleaded. The terrible show was over. A blackness enveloped me then. A painful nothingness surrounded me. I was left in my grief, my despair, my deepest depression.
“
Thanks so much for reading.
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Blessings to you,
Matthew