3. The Seductress

From the journal of Gayla Halsgerd:

“Realizations are only the very visible tip of something still emerging.”
In telling me this, Sirrus was trying to protect me from the despair that can lay in wait for the over-eager. I had been so excited by my first few experiences with altered perceptions – and the insights that they brought me – that of course I thought that I could hold onto this wondrous miracle and wake up with it still intact, tomorrow and the next day and so on. Sirrus was warning me that, though the taste of my soul’s essence was sweet, there was still a long distance for me to travel before I could really live there.
Tools, rituals and practice can lead people a certain distance along the path to self-knowledge. But Sirrus’ way, facilitated by the Mirror, is much more visceral than anything else I’ve ever encountered. The visions I see confront me with the unflinching truth of who I really am inside: the darkness that I’ve been blind to, and also the beauty and grace that I never suspected in myself. I’ve often wished that there could be gentler paths to wisdom - that one could have the latter without the former. But look at the war-torn territories we live in: look at the wounded state of human beings. Considering all that, I think it’s a miracle that any of us ever found a path like the one that our “wee guide” (I promise you, he doesn’t mind me calling him that!) is offering.
But already I’m forgetting the task that he entrusted to me: to recount here, in my first journal entry (I’ve kept a diary for years, but this is different) how I came to meet him in the first place, and what my first lesson in front of his Mirror was.
Part of me resists leaving a record of where I came from. I want to grow through the Way, in my capacity to love and to know truth, and then convince everybody (including myself) that I’ve been this way all along.
But I also know that exposing myself means opening to the only thing that is real.
Some people (Jin comes to mind) are inhibited by the thought of other people reading their words. For me it is quite the opposite. I can be overwhelmed by the intimacy of opening up only to myself, so it is a little easier to play a game wherein I imagine that I have an audience. That’s you, dear Reader. Hereafter, I’ll be telling my story to you; and I’m going to assume that you’re real, and that you are indeed following my account – even if my own time in this world has quite expired by the time you do so.
So, what do you want to know about me first? Shall I assume that you’re a man, and describe my physical attributes? Ahh, it seems my resistance has adopted a new tactic: fatuous jokes. I’m going to take a sip of water (from the springs of Aspen Meadows – there’s nothing more refreshing), take a few breaths to steady myself, and try again.
Well, why not begin with my appearance? It’s easy, and will start you off with a somewhat accurate picture straight away. So…I measure five-feet five inches (that’s a foot more than Sirrus, who claims he’s tall for a dwarf). I will be twenty-two years old in late autumn. My hair is the color (and, I have to admit, the luster!) of yellow prairie grass. My figure is a bit rugged – I’ve spent a lot of time in the wild, all right? But I think I possess some softness, too. And my complexion is light year ‘round – unlike Eden, say, who starts looking like a Smokawa by summer’s end.
On most days I am very curious and a little adventuresome. And, Sirrus has pointed out, overly appreciative of the finer qualities of men. I suppose I will, someday soon, have to relate the reasons for this pattern of mine. But at present I still have to learn more about it for myself. I only want to mention here that my overly-big and easily misled heart has entangled me with two men whom I’m now obliged to see almost daily: Jin Hunlaftar and Eden Bander. There was a time (oh, has it been almost three years already?) when I believed myself in love with the both of them. I actually thought that I could give myself to them both, if they could’ve allowed it. I can imagine you grimacing as you read this; but all that I can say is that it made sense to my lost self at the time.
This love triangle occurred at the very time in my life when I was renewing my relationship with my father, Halmund Oster. Maybe what I ought to say is that around this time I began actually calling Halmund “father”.
I can never know if that title rightfully belonged to him, because I was conceived during an orgy.
There. I’ve never come out and said it so plainly, ever. You want me to be forthright, Sirrus? There it is.
Providing more background and detail would just be an attempt on my part to evade the discomfort I’m feeling, the pain. My mother was a lost woman who sought identity and a sense of belonging in a series of pagan rites. Halmund was a man too shy and repressed to meet a woman in some other, more conventional way. Ulna Halsgerd was with several men that night – he among them. Then she made up her mind, later, that he was the father of the child she bore and he played along with the game. Both were probably starved for love. That’s all. I find it neither romantic nor repulsive. Young people make mistakes, even when they’re making the best use they can of what life has given them.
What’s crucial is that I wanted Halmund to love me as a daughter. No – I wanted him to adore me. I became adept at reflecting back to him exactly what he wanted to hear so that he would do just that. And, unfortunately, I began the grand misadventure of doing the same thing with every interesting man who I came across in my life’s journey.
I have to stop writing that thread, because I don’t know enough to continue in any honest way. I have to wait for the Mirror’s next revelation.
Oh…to slough off the illusion once and for all!
Until I met Sirrus, I never perceived the harm I was wreaking by bolstering men’s egos and competing with other women like they were each my wicked stepmother. Hmm…I suppose the wicked stepmother needs an introduction. Well, my mother died when I was eight. About the same age as Eden was when he lost his Ma, and by the same fell hand: fever. Daddy couldn’t afford to get her the kind of help that might’ve saved her, and I know that failure affected him profoundly. From then on he was obsessed with making something of himself in worldly terms. He was never going to be poor again. His first ambition was science, but the arena wherein he ended up really making his mark was politics. Even though he was completely temperamentally unsuited for it. He became a City Father in Ingmitn, the grandest city in the New World – with Indis influencing and driving him.
Only a man shattered by grief or possessed of no self-esteem to begin with could ever believe himself in love with a woman like her. Now, I know I’ve probably shredded some of my credibility here by admitting that I more readily trust men over women anyway. But in the case of Indis my distrust was and is thickly justified and everyone who’s ever met the woman can vouch for this. She demeaned Halmund every chance she got. And yes, she came between us; and I did everything I could to win his attention away from her. Would you have done any different? My mother was gone, and he – though I could never know whether he was even my real father – he was all I had left.
But I couldn’t bear Indis, couldn’t respect him for putting up with her. When I was sixteen, I ran away. I was all set to go to the most prestigious school in all the territories, and I fled from everything. And aside from all my external conflicts and heartaches, something was happening inside of me.
I’d owned a mouth organ, a simple wind instrument made of eight hollow bone pipes of differing lengths all bound together with rawhide. I’d been blowing little made-up melodies on them ever since I was a little girl. Well, this happened in Mei-phal; in case things have drastically changed in your time, Reader, I’ll tell you that Mei-phal is a Shi-Inte town that lies south of Ingmitn. The Shi-Inte are black-skinned, generally taller than we white folks; and they’re fond of wearing their hair in long, bunched locks. That’s your twenty-second cultural lesson. Anyway, a family there – and this was after I’d run away – they beseeched me to play my pipes for their grandfather who was passing on and feeling terrified of death. How this family was aware of my playing, or the healing effects I could sometimes work with it, I’ll never know. The old man’s wife gave me a queer appraising look and then was practically on her knees pleading. So when finally the poor man was drawing his last breath I was down there beside him blowing the most beautiful and poignant tune I’d ever been inspired to play. And there was a smile on his face that spoke of utter peace before his end.
The next time I played a healing melody it was voluntary. I soothed an anguished young girl in Vergode (that’s a Brinstead town, home of the first printing press) so that her mother would stop smacking her for crying. Afraid to confront the husky woman (she reminded me of Indis), I did this from a safe distance. And I wondered what was this new ability I’d discovered, and was I blessed or cursed for possessing it?
Two years later you would’ve found me back in Ingmitn, standing in the rain of the cemetery with my savanna-colored hair spilling from the cowl of my brown robe, mouthing a silent prayer over Halmund’s tomb. I, who had always prided myself on being a responsive ear and a shoulder for any man to cry on, was left alone to grieve. Daddy had marched with the Venir Mountain Boys to the Battle of Splinter Pass – our impossibly successful gambit to stem the advance of Churan’s armies – and there had died: valiantly, I would say, and with enough foresight to write to me of his love and his hopes for me before the Churani bullets found him. Halmund’s body doesn’t actually lie in Ingmitn, though. It was given to the trenches at the feet of the Thyrning Ridges along with so many others who had sacrificed their lives in the most desperate battle our territories have probably ever witnessed.
I had annealed many of the wounds of my past in the weeks before he’d died. Then Fate had sundered us once again, this time irrevocably.
Maybe it was silly, in a way, for me to even visit the cemetery, given that he wasn’t there. But the people of Ingmitn had honored him by setting aside that plod of ground and giving it a headstone with his name. Actually, that was mostly his widow’s doing. Indis couldn’t have people thinking that her late husband was implicated in the springing of convicts (maybe I’ll write more about that later; for now, I’ll just mention that many of the powers that be never wanted us to fight for our homeland in the first place. And some who chose to resist anyway found themselves on the wrong side of the law). Ahh, I’m taking a moment to let my asperity simmer. There. Anyway, I respect what the Ingmitans did. I think it’s something Halmund might’ve appreciated.
He’d never picked up a gun until he rode with the Venir Mountain Boys. But he managed to kill a dozen musket men, and saved twice that number of Brinstead’s own. In fact, he’d been shot down whilst dragging a wounded lad from the field. He was a brave man, I am so proud of him – and now I have to stop because my eyes are burning!
So, after the Churani had finally been beaten back (if you haven’t heard of the sinking of the Land Bridge, this isn’t the place for me to get into it – but it’s a tale worth hearing!), I settled into the same house where my father had lived before: the small brick building on Gran Hill with its burgundy door. The place had always been sparse and functional, but after Indis claimed whatever she fancied I was left with little more than a table to eat at, a cot to sleep on, and a roof over my head.
But I didn’t care. I wasn’t there to fulfill myself; I existed to hurt and endure. Grief had become such an intrinsic part of my paradigm that I didn’t know how to plunge back into the flow of life. I worked as a serving wench six nights a week at a tavern and eatery called The Green Door. The woman who had pulled wounded militiamen back from the threshold of death and opened their eyes to the spirit world was stuck serving drinks in a smoky watering hole. But it was a job – it was some semblance of the “normal life” I’d never had and thought I wanted. And the toil helped me to forget, or at least to distract my mind.
I was planning on going to the University. Maybe I could study to be a physician. I wanted some control over my life. I was tired of feeling like a whirlwind blowing this way and that. I wanted to learn a real trade. What was I going to do with my “gift”, go to some outland Smokawa village and sing people back to health in return for some meat and a fringe skirt? I was born and raised a Brinsteader. I needed to find some way to survive in my own homeland, and on its terms. Or so I thought.
All these plans and schemes came crashing down when I found out that Indis was plotting to marry me off.
Why would she even care to do that? You don’t know her very well – which is fortunate – if you have to ask. It’s not like she wanted to see me happy with a man, or anything like that. But most of the people in the city associated her with me because she was married to my father. Oh, imagine how that reflected upon her! There I was, mourning overlong and living in poverty working a job with no future.
So, there was a man in Ingmitn who’d taken a fancy to me, man with “means”. You can’t see me enunciating that word like it’s bird droppings. Jarason Tilmes – the Tilmes Company works in gold mining. They have a horrible operation where they go to an area where a vein has been struck, hauling over huge water tanks which they use to hose down the hillsides. They spray down layers and layers of mud and sift it. Panners obviously can’t compete with that. Once they’re done there’s a pile of silt like a dead river bottom where once there’d been a beautiful hill.
I’d waited on Jarason several times. He used to frequent The Green Doors once or twice a month. Then it became once a week, then every other day. I assure you, I wasn’t blind to what was happening. I had no interest, and I told him so.
Then, Indis caught wind of the way that I’d rejected Jarason’s advances. She suggested that I reconsider…and reminded me that I had friends who were fugitives, that I had a spotty past that I probably wouldn’t want Ingmitans to be privy to. Indis had almost landed my friend Ejol in prison and then acted like she’d done me such a gracious favor, getting me a pardon.
I can recall it clearly, the day I realized that I could no longer breathe in the false world that I inhabited. I’d just rummaged through my closet to find my single-piece calfskin dress. This had been a gift from Daddy, given mere days before he’d died. I dressed, and ran my hands over the garment. It felt as soft as the skin of a living animal. I’d wanted to remind myself that I was capable of looking feminine and desirable. But then…a man in my life already desired me, and I’d spurned him. So what was my longing, really, and from where did it stem? I couldn’t answer. I stood for a while in front of my little Durban stove. I took out the ash pan (it’s removable – this was my favorite feature) and carried it out to my little herb garden. I enjoyed fertilizing my ground with ash; the ritual reminded me that every death bore the seeds for birth. On this particular morning I made two piles: one for my mother and one for my father. Then I smoothed the ash with my hands around the stems of the mint, sage, thyme, and tobacco plants I’d been growing. I whispered a brief prayer to my lost family, and wished Eden had been there so that I could loose the torrent of thoughts coursing through my mind. I knew that he’d listen and understand, as one orphan to another.
“I came into this world for greater things than this!” I announced suddenly to the open air.
And there it was. I knew I could ignore my gift and my calling no longer. The problem was, I was afraid. I bare myself too much to the people I play for and heal. I don’t have Brieran’s strong boundaries. I can’t preserve a sense of myself in the midst of such intense intimacy. And the hurt I’d caused both Jin and Eden in the past had taught me to distrust my heart.
I couldn’t do it alone – I needed guidance again. In my mixture of distress and resolve, I decided to seek out the only people who’d ever encouraged and nurtured my abilities: the Hunlaftar family – particularly, Jin’s mother Brieran.
I left everything behind – I’m no stranger to running away and starting over, remember? I hiked alone the hundred miles or so between Ingmitn and Aspen Meadows. Despite a lot of painful experiences we’d weathered in the past, my reunion with the Hunlaftars was a joyous one. But there was a surprise waiting for me, also, in their comforting home: Sirrus, the dwarf, and his Mirror.
So let me jump now to my first vision, before I lose heart. I could go on about my happiness in the home of Enofor and Brieran, my surprise (and delight, beneath the awkwardness) in finding Jin and Eden there…but all these details would be, at this moment, only distractions. Because my real initiation into the sacred work we have begun here in Aspen Meadows was not pleasant at all. The memory of it disturbs me still.
Sirrus had warned me: “Control does not exist within the Mirror, and that can be frightening. Watching, you move out of your mind which thinks that it knows something, and into direct encounter with the Mystery.”
I remember how the Mirror’s sheer surface seemed to ripple momentarily, and then the mist condensed into a scene. I was peering at a naked man, seeing him from his backside. He looked stolid and soft together - vulnerable. He was standing on a cliff’s edge, overlooking a town that was burning beneath the night’s stars. I heard his voice somehow. “Their madness will not reach us here.” I knew that I was blushing; I felt that I should avert my eyes and let him dress. As my gaze moved, I caught sight of Jin there. I marked the desire in his eyes, knew that he wanted me, and then suddenly everything was all right in the world. I wanted to forget about the other man on the promontory, because he frightened me. “Let’s see if there’s a house left standing for the two of us,” Jin said with a wink. I ached to allow him in me, to forget. I saw us bounding down the hill…
“Enough!” I screamed, and I leapt away from the Mirror. The images dispersed at once. I felt the heat in my flushed face, and I reared on Sirrus.
“I would not make such a choice!”
“Would not?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. “But you did, just now. The man there: he has been known by many names, and through countless forms, throughout human existence. I call him Oloron. And I say unto you: if you feel unworthy to be with Oloron, who knows your heart, then your only hope for any sense of worth must come from binding yourself to a man who only wants you for what you can give him.”
And just like that, he snuffed out the fire of my tirade. I could only murmur, “I broke things off with Jin years ago, when I knew we weren’t right.”
“And as the story goes, you immediately clove to another stranger,” Sirrus retorted.
Then he poked me between my breasts with a finger! I gaped at his audacity. But he wasn’t done.
“If you look to hide that way, there will be many more to come. Because you know how to make men feel seen, Gayla – recognized, and valued. You’ve perfected this. You have them believing you’re the missing piece in their lives, and you do this without even intending it. Meanwhile, Oloron who is naked and vulnerable stands alone. There is no allure for you in chasing him. Indeed, you could do nothing then but be that authentic and unprotected yourself. Is that not so?”
It was so, and I knew it. Still, my pride shouted that this impetuous dwarf had a lot of gall to come out and say it like that. But the real reason that my pride reared its head then was because I was in pain. I had never, ever recognized myself as a seductress before that moment.
“So what would you have me do about it, wise one?” I snapped.
“Go to the strange man,” Sirrus said, just as if I’d asked the question in all humility. “You cannot seduce him. You can only stand there naked, as he is: stand, and be recognized and valued for who you are as a woman, not for what you can do for men.”