Linda Robertson - Vicious Circle

I stood before my grove of ash trees, sweating and weary. The sun overhead shone down unnaturally bright and hot. The once lush foliage of my ever-springtime meditation place was now wilted and dying in the heat. I dropped to my knees at the edge of the stream, cupped my hands together, and lifted handful after handful up to my mouth. At least the water was still cold. Rivulets poured down my throat and over my skin, and I was so grateful for the small relief they gave. I drank for many minutes before I’d had enough. I splashed a handful over my face. That was when I saw Her.

The buckskin mustang stood at the opposite side of the stream, head down, drinking also. The hot sun cast a bluish sheen on Her black mane, but Her dun-colored hide looked soft and sleek. I stilled and watched as if She were a wild animal I did not want to alarm or frighten away.

She drank and drank as I had done, and I relished this nearness. I yearned to touch Her, but knew that I could not. So I studied Her and memorized Her image, even the blurry part reflected in the water. It stunned me to see that the reflection was not that of a horse, but that of a woman kneeling and drinking with both hands, as I had.

I remembered that Amenemhab had told me this was the Goddess. He had said She appeared to me in the color of mild tarnish. If that color represented tarnish, then such a taint was acceptable—She was beautiful. Her presence comforted me, for surely I was dying and She had not abandoned me.

Suddenly the stream was drinking the mustang, slurping it up in a swirl of colors.

“No!” I shouted. “No! Don’t leave me…”

The woman of the reflection rose up from the water. Her hair was black like the horse’s mane, glistening and wet. Her copper skin radiated a soft glow. I realized it was the sun, which had traveled swiftly into a setting position, shining at Her back. She wore no clothing, but Her dark hair covered Her breasts, and Her stance was such that Her body was slightly angled away from me. One leg, raised enough to allow Her foot to rest on a rock so it was slightly higher than the other, protected Her modesty.

Her chin tilted slightly down, darkening Her eyes and expression. I wanted Her to look at me, to see me and be happy, but She did not face me directly. She gazed past me, to the east. Carefully I turned, curious as to what so fixedly held Her attention.

I saw smoke. Black smoke, rising past a grove of oaks.

Movement caught my attention. The Goddess pointed toward the smoke. I looked at it again and when I turned back to Her, She was gone.

I stood and walked toward the darkening eastern sky. Time passed so quickly! I began to run. I passed the oaks and stepped into a clearing where red-cloaked figures stood in a circle around a high, tapering pole. Firewood had been piled high and wide around the base of the pole, and a black-clad figure was bound to it. The fire had nearly reached the figure.

I hurried around the circle to the front of the bound figure. I could not tell who it was; the hood of the cape was pulled down low. But the figure struggled, the heat rising and smoke billowing chokingly upward. “What is happening here?” I asked. None of the red-cloaked figures acknowledged me. This wasn’t right. “What’s happening?” I shouted.

“Help! Help me!” the dark figure called.

I turned sideways and slipped between two of the red-cloaked figures. Both turned to me then and held me back. “What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Please! Please help me!” The figure in black struggled more as the flames neared. The hood fell away, and I beheld my own face.

I backed away.

“No! No! Help me!”

The bound me began screaming as the flames caught her black robe. She struggled harder, more desperately. The chest of the cloak opened and revealed a bloody ankh on her chest. This was me, burning at the stake, a stake that I now realized was shaped like the one Vivian had created as a weapon against Menessos. That was me up there, the stained part of myself, the shadowed part of me, being destroyed.

I watched, numb, aghast at the barbaric execution. That people had once done this, brought their children and came to the town squares to watch someone be burnt alive as entertainment, horrified me.

The black robe burned in earnest now, and the other me’s hair was smoking. Her head whipped back and forth as if she could put out the flames, but she couldn’t. The exposed ankh on her chest turned to ash. The flames burned her feet directly, blackening her skin. The weakening screams of the other me became a renewed frenzy of shrieks. The stench of burning hair and flesh wafted toward me, and I gagged.

If only I could blot out the pitiful sound of her! Even as I thought it, her voice weakened, her throat becoming raw and her voice hoarse. I knew the flames were eating the air, leaving nothing but smoke for her to breathe.

I was witnessing the death of a part of me that I loathed and wanted gone. But not like this. No, not so cruelly as this.

She, the one bound there, was more than Menessos’s mark. She was the part of me that had slain a stalker. The part of me that kept a baseball bat for defense and smarted off to people who deserved it. She was the part of me that had agreed to kill Goliath. Together, we were one. I was not complete without her.

I would not let the stake take more of me than I was willing to give. I would not let it destroy all the parts of me that Menessos had attached himself to.

I am Persephone Isis Alcmedi. And I am all that my roots have made me.

I yanked down the hood of the nearest red-cloaked figure. Again, I saw myself. I punched this me in the face and kicked her feet from under her. As another me turned to stop the assault, I faked to the right and rushed past her and leapt up onto the burning timbers. The flames died. The ropes binding the dying me turned to dust in my hands. I took this other me into my arms and fled.

The red-cloaked me’s did not try to stop our retreat. I cradled my other self to my chest and returned to the stream, thinking the Goddess would be there and would know what to do.

By the time I arrived, the night was full and only the soft glow of the moon provided any light. I eased down at the edge of the water. “Where are you?” I called across the stream. “I need you!”

I looked at the horribly burned me now shivering in my arms. She was unrecognizable. So pitiful. Her hair gone, her skin a mass of blisters and blackness. She breathed shallow, wheezing breaths, and I knew I’d acted too late. I’d hesitated too long. I’d stopped and thought when I should have acted! I knew it was wrong.

“I’m so sorry.” Tears filled my eyes. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” I reached to the water and let drops from my hand moisten her lips.

The other me moved—fingers only, but she touched my arm. The swollen blisters that were her fingers dragged sickeningly across my skin. “You know now,” she whispered.

“I do. I know now. I know I need you.” And I knew what I had to do. “I won’t let you go.”

My palm rested lightly on her chest where the ankh had been. “Come,” I said. “Come back to me.” Our blood surged. Our bodies trembled.

She melted into me—slowly, weakly. I took her burns into me, unafraid, for they had always been mine. “You are mine.”

An inner glowing overtook me, but it was not like the pompous rays of the sun. This was a cooling, luminous light, the moon’s light. This light filled me from the inside out—cool, soothing, and healing, like aloe. I marveled to know that it was no accident, the names given me at birth. Both Persephone and Isis are lunar goddesses, and tonight the Moon embraced me and healed me and told me I was Her own.