Mark Teppo - Lightbreaker

I wasn't going to make the other side. It was coming too fast. This conscious realization sent the Chorus into a paroxysm of utter desperation. I stumbled, my legs suddenly numb as they tried to usurp control.

Where are you going to go? I looked back. The darkness behind me was total nothingness. Terra autem erat inanis et vacua. In a few seconds I would be enveloped by the wave as it swept over me and the rest of the bridge. I could see its leading edge riding the surface of the river below.

Riding the surface . I suddenly remembered the lake from my dream, how the surface of the water defiantly split two worlds. Above was not as below-a state contrary to the alchemical axiom.

What do you See? What do you know? What do you believe?

Questions without answers. Questions of faith. Let none henceforth seek needless cause to approve the faith they owe.

I angled for the pedestrian walkway that ran along the edge of the bridge. The railing separating the walkway from the road was only waist-high and I cleared it easily. The river-side railing was a bit higher and I went over it without any thought to form. I cleared it as fast as I could.

White-noise screaming filled my head as the Chorus felt the edge of darkness touch my falling body. They sparked and frayed as the curtain of soul-death swept over me.

I plunged headfirst into the cold water. Behind me, absolute night-bereft of stars, of light-covered the river. But it didn't reach beneath the surface. I dove deep until my strength failed. My strength, but not my faith. Then I closed my eyes, and let the hurt that must be sustained fill me.

John, I'm sorry. It wasn't your fortune you read.

I'm sorry I wasn't stronger.

The river, old lover, cold mother, took me away, her liquid hands trying to soothe my pain.

I dreamt of bees, honey bees circling enormous flowers. The stalks were thick with strange veins, and I could see the rhythmic pulse of these ropy conduits. The heads of the flowers were voluptuous circles of curling white petals with tender pink centers. Pulsating cores of limpid light that blinked a seductive pattern, a Morse signal read by the bees.

I lay on my back, cradled in a bower of thick grass, and I watched a fat bee with yellow sigils inscribed on its thorax fly past. Its face was pink instead of black, a tiny human mask fitted over its insectoid visage. Nicols' face, smooth like a plastic mold, like a cheap mask that captured shape but not personality. The human-faced bee buzzed in tempo with the flickering heart of a nearby flower, and as it approached, the white petals curled, encouraging it closer.

The Nicols bee kissed the pink center and the flower convulsed, its petals whipping inward. A pink creature broke through the dome of the flower's face, and its long pink proboscis struck the bee in the center of its plasticine forehead. Pink tendrils connected the ibis-hound with the flower and, as the tiny soul-sucker drew out the essence of the bee, these tendrils strained and pulsed with the vacuuming rhythm of the ibis-hound.

I fled the dream, fled the field of soul-devouring flowers, but the bee's buzzing panic followed me. The sound increased in volume as I fled through flickering spaces of stereographic visions. The sound became Nicols' death scream, a wordless cry of human frailty. It was the sound of abandonment, of fearful darkness, of failure. It resonated in my head, growing louder, even as I ran further and further from the field of hungry flowers. The echo of his voice grew stronger, becoming not one voice but the sound of a thousand throats shrieking, of flesh sizzling, of knives ringing off metal. Of a city's light dying.

I woke to the sensation of her wet kiss fading from my lips.

The sky overhead was gray and dead, like flesh that had been submerged too long in stagnant water. My back was cold and wet; the tips of my fingers numb. The scream was still in my head, a cry struggling to find voice in my throat.

My lips were warm, though; her breath was caught in my mouth. A hot taste on my tongue, bitter with a leached sourness. Tears.

Devorah.

She held a sharp edge against my neck. Bloody tears dripped from her eyes and her green irises were overwhelmed with swirling patterns of black and gold. "Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue thy lingering," Devorah said. "Or with one stroke of this dart strange horrors seize thee, and pangs unfelt before." She knelt beside my body, knees pressed against my rib cage, My right arm was flung out straight past her body. Her right hand held the blade against my throat and her left held my head back. Easier to cut my throat. "For proof look up, and read thy lot in yon celestial sign; where thou art weighed, and shown how light, how weak, if thou resist."

I swallowed, feeling the thin edge against my windpipe. The Chorus cowered in the deepness of my core, their rank broken by the wave of soul-death that had touched them. The screaming echo of the city reverberated in their silver strands. "What do you seek from me, Oracle?" My voice bubbled through a film of river water still in my esophagus.

"Be not diffident of Wisdom," she said. Her mouth worked hard on the words. The prescient vision I had brought upon her still burned her blood. "She deserts thee not, if thou dismiss not her, when most thou needest her nigh."

Wisdom. The bounty realized by the soul as it climbed toward its release from the flesh, as it reached for enlightenment. Devorah had been guided by her burning sight to save me from the river, but only to hold my life in her hands. After what I had done to her, was I worthy of being saved? What price was her innocence?

"Ask," I croaked. I could smell the river nearby, the damp of dead water, and, distantly, a scent of burned wood. Not fire, but soot, as if the flames had long gone out. I wanted to turn my head and look at the city, but I knew if I looked away from Devorah's face, she'd cut my throat.

"See, with what heat these dogs of hell advance to waste and havoc yonder world," she said. "Which I so fair and good created; and had still kept in that state, had not the folly of Man let in these wasteful furies." Each drop that welled from the corners of her eyes was an unconscious reaction to her Vision, to the sorrow I had brought upon her. Each drop was a little more of her life leaking away, forced out of her body by the passion of her Sight. Each drop was my responsibility. Who was I to force such sacrifice upon her? "Who art to lead thy offspring, and supposest that bodies bright and greater should not serve the less not bright?"

The rule of the mighty was not to serve their own desires, but to assist in the enlightenment of the rest. Plato's philosopher kings. Alfred the Great who drove the Danes out of England and spent the twilight of his rule attempting to educate his subjects. Solomon, devoting his wisdom so that his people could understand peace.

I remembered Nicols' crown card: the Hanged Man. The suspended magus who waits to have his vision realized, who waits to fulfill himself. The Fisher King who cannot save his kingdom until his wound is recognized.