5. A Mother’s Sacrifice
From the journal of Brieran Hunlaftar:
Pathways down to the heart of the Earth
The Adversary spilling lies
The wide, clear pool; the second birth
And fogs to confound even the most wise
I don’t know what possessed me to write this particular verse this morning, but I’m interpreting it now as a harbinger of what lies ahead for all of us. Some people, like my eldest son Marek, believe without a doubt that we have found our salvation in Sirrus the dwarf: Sirrus the prophet, Sirrus the guide of souls. But I fear that we will yet be sorely tested before we achieve the repose of Grace.
Perhaps some of us will not pass the test at all, will never know what lies in wait on the other side. Who can say which of us (if any) will prevail, in the end, against all the Adversary’s lures, as we strive to steer our prows towards the light?
And do you - you witness from some future age unknown to me - wish to ask who or what the Adversary is?
An adversary is someone or something that works against us, strives to thwart us. But this Adversary – though it be (as Sirrus has described it) a demon beyond redemption – won’t necessarily oppose us at all. It may be a friend and ally; that is, if we’re already at odds with our own souls and our Creator, it will encourage and support us along that path. I am only now learning to identify the voice of the Adversary in myself, with the help of the Mirror. I need to learn more before I attempt to describe its foul and wicked nature any further.
It reminds me of how intense torchlight will cast very distinct shadows. The more I open myself to the light and love of the Beyond, the more clearly I discern the outlines of the demon within.
Sirrus warned me that this would happen. In fact, he hoped that it would happen to me first so that – assuming I manage to transcend this darkness – I can help to guide the others through the rapids when their time comes. But my first glimpse into the Mirror – which I’m finally prepared to relate after much self-distraction – actually had nothing to do with the dark forces at all. Except insofar as it revealed to me the need and attachment that I carry, and through which the Adversary has been able to manipulate me.
Now I’m faltering again. It is difficult to let down the walls around my heart and be transparent to loved ones. How much more difficult is it, then, to confide in strangers whom I will probably never meet? I spoke to Sirrus about my fear the other evening. He said, “Tell them about your travails, the loneliness and loss; how you so often starve for hope. You think such sentiments are unwelcome here? What greater boon is offered by this gathering [by this he meant our community here in Aspen Meadows] than for each to know that he or she does not suffer alone?”
Many ages have come and then passed away – on this world and on countless others – without such an experience as ours ever reaching its time of ripening within the human experience. We have been fortunate, blessed; and if we are slaughtered down to the last tomorrow, at least we have felt it. We have known the Divine love, and understand that all the foolhardy and hurtful ways that we lived in ignorance of it were never the summation of our lives.
I’m sure by now you will have gleaned, from other accounts, that the decimation of the Twice-Born (as we’ve begun to call ourselves) is not such a remote possibility. This moment in history is roiling with possibilities that even the wisest cannot see the outcome of. A flower in the path of a hurricane, we seem to me: too fragile for life, perhaps; and yet paradoxically owing our strength to that very fragility. If all of us must die, then we have at least found something worth dying for.
“You might not miss the life you kiss good-bye to today, or you might grieve for it sorely,” Sirrus told me before my first encounter, in the same tone he might’ve adopted to describe the contents of the pot he’d been stirring at the time. “You could soak up this revelation in the deep well of your soul and lose the thread back to Earth, or you might well rail at me in defense of your pride, as is your wont.”
Of course, upon hearing this I felt heat hammer in my blood; and I immediately conceived of three or four choice retorts to give this wee man for his nerve. It occurs to me now that I’d heard dismissal in his voice; and this had been the true source of my ire, because I’d desperately wanted to prove myself a woman worthy of a spiritual master’s faith.
It felt like my lips scarcely parted as I addressed him. “Every morning of these last twenty years or more, sir, I have kept company with the Hidden Folk whilst I tended my moon garden. I discern their messages in the trails of the breeze across the grass. I have guided five young ones in the Guardian’s Way, three of them my own children. Unveil your Mirror. I will peer into it now, with no more delay, and then you can study how I ‘rail’ against a vision of truth.”
At this, Sirrus lifted his head and grinned. He aimed a wooden ladle, which was dripping pasty tomato, straight at me like it was a fencing sword.
“You may have the spirit for it – aye, my lady!” he said. Then he squinted, as if descrying a shift in the weather across my face. “But I hope you do not believe that by impressing me you will be able to survive this encounter.”
I swallowed hard. “My husband warned me that you like to describe the experience that the Mirror opens us up to as akin to burning, or flaying, or unraveling. Like it’s a kind of death.”
“Aye – not like, but truly so! Oloron’s light is too strong and pure for the illusions of the mind to endure. And the Adversary cannot exist within it, or abide its touch.”
“So what is not real in me – what this Adversary has tainted – that will…die?”
Again he smiled, revealing tiny teeth that looked like they’d been sharpened with a file. “And what remains alive in you – that which is and always was real – may seem so foreign to your reckoning as to feel like madness.”
“You do not sound so…” I meant to finish with “reassuring”, but he interrupted me with a warning finger.
“If I sought to reassure you now, you might consider it a betrayal down the road. I want by my side no man or woman who believes that the life they’ve lived is worth defending. And the Mirror does not deal gently with such.”
Be that as it may, the Mirror did not “deal gently” with me. I entered Sirrus’ wigwam feeling rebellious - and left feeling utterly humbled. His Mirror sits in the very center of the packed dirt floor, set some six inches above the ground inside a wooden frame that allows it to revolve forwards and backwards. The portion of it that is glass is, itself, half the height of a full-grown man. Sirrus keeps a tall brazier constantly filled with pulsing hot coals, so the Mirror is always illuminated except for when the dwarf is asleep.
Staring into the smooth and strangely opaque surface, I beheld (after a moment) a kind of waking dream of myself in a canoe. My three sons were in another; and I assumed, when this vision began, that we were all embarking upon the same journey. I was paddling a little ways behind, and keeping a good eye on them. Typical mother!
Then we came to a fork in the river and the waters were rushing much faster. My sons steered their craft to the left. Somehow, even as I was watching (from inside the wigwam) I could feel how the current wanted to sweep my canoe to the right. But the me-in-the-vision fought the current, desperately trying to follow the others. You can probably guess the outcome. My canoe slammed into the rocky eddy that split the river, and it was dashed to pieces. The last thing I saw, before all images in the Mirror dispersed into a milky white, was myself clinging to the rock, half-submerged in the swift waters and wailing for my sons.
First comes the knowledge of estrangement. Profound pain, regret, fear…whatever feelings are connected with losing one’s soul and then using the world – in whatever ways – to fill that hole. Here’s a paradox for us all: our loves in this world are real, and yet everything we’ve loved has been but a pale substitute for the primary relationship we lost, which is the relationship between our soul and our soul’s Creator.
This is the point that Sirrus really wants to impress upon me; he wants me to understand it, particularly, with regards to my emotional attachments to my three sons. “Why were you worried for them, when you were the one hanging on for dear life?” he challenged me, when the vision was over.
What intuition or uncanny second sight the man possesses, to confront me with the very challenge that I find most daunting and difficult!
At this particular moment, I feel such resistance to this truth that it is almost rage. What gives him the right…where does he find the audacity? My children are my hope for the future. Motherhood is and always will be my most sacred function!
But I do not say these things, though the voices are ever-present in my head. I don’t rebel: I hold my tongue and keep peace, because I have looked into the Mirror and I understood the message it offered me even before Sirrus spoke.