From the journal of Patrick O’Delan:
Sirrus has advised us to record our experiences as we follow his path to spiritual discernment. So, I have decided to comply – and I shall begin with my account of the bizarre incidents surrounding my first encounter with our dwarfen mentor.
I recall the night covering the prairie in faint ivory: the half-moon’s light on the snow. Only the tips of the hardiest shrubs could pierce the white crust. Not for the first time, I wondered what madness it was that spurred me on at that ungodly hour. ‘Too late to return now before sundown,’ I’d thought; but that had been hours ago, and the problem was that I’d not turned around yet, not even begun to consider the trek home. And I was running, like a man in flight.
A darkening of the ground warned me before I stumbled upon the body crumpled there, huddled and still. His body, though I had no clue as to the import at the time. I would’ve thought Sirrus a child if not for his white beard and tufts of snowy hair. Certainly he was (and is) no bigger than a child.
I noted the trail he’d made; footprints led north and out of sight. He’d been out wandering alone and then simply collapsed? I felt for breath, then for pulse. There was still life in the dwarf.
I felt like no hero – but I did, strangely enough, feel clearer than I had at any time since embarking on this mad venture. Surely I was adequate to this small task? Besides, I reasoned, it would distract me from my sufferings at home. Flight would not enable me to elude the visages of the dead, but here…ah! Here was life that I could save. Fortunately, the little man was no heavier than a knapsack full of rations. There was but one thing for it: to follow the trail and hope that this stranger had a home or shelter nearby. Warmth, dry clothes, and then food and drink were all imperative.
Some time later, I came upon a small house shrouded by snow-laden firs. Its logs merged with the shadows. It looked, altogether, like a dwelling not intended to be found. Now that I know Sirrus, I understand.
But I was anxious to aid the old man or be rid of the burden of him (I wasn’t sure which – and oh! Don’t I still struggle with this!) I pounded on the door’s knocker. Then I jumped at hearing his voice, hale as the light of dawn. It came from the dead weight in my arms; and I understood, to my consternation, the confounded dwarf’s ruse.
“No use making a disturbance,” he said. “My own home this is, and I can’t rightly answer whilst I’m on the same side of the door as you!”
*
Dawn nudged me awake to gape at my surroundings, not remembering. There was a vague echo of outrage in my mind and I couldn’t clarify its source. (Sirrus would later tell me that he’d needed to “test my heart” with that dying man’s ploy of his). The air smelled of damp earth and I sensed that the chambers here were much more spacious than a typical cabin and also that I was probably in a basement room. Stone pillars the width of my waist held the low ceiling, and a spiral staircase rose nearby. Movement caught my eye; then the rotund, bearded figure emerged overhead, bearing a lantern, and recollection leapt up in me with all its attendant confusion.
This strange dwarf hung his lantern on a peg on a nearby pillar. Its light met hard and smooth stone everywhere except upon the thick rug of white fur that had cushioned my slumber. I blinked at the wee man’s garish clothing: yellow breeches, bright red vest with black buttons the size of his fists. He didn’t hail from these parts of Brinstead, certainly. It took me a moment to focus on what he was saying (and now I must conjure it to memory, as best I can):
“Sorry I had to test you in such a - well, morbid - manner, but time is pressing and the Draymes number so few. By time I mean my own; I’m getting on in years, you see, even for a dwarf. And the Draymes, well, nowadays they number only myself. So, given such scanty resources we require crude measures and unseemly haste. Name’s Sirrus, by the way: Sirrus, last of the Draymes and keeper of the Mirror.”
Certainly, I was questioning my host’s sanity and (by extension) my own safety. Dwarf? Draymes? All I knew was that Marguerite (Ah! I feel the pang, even now, as I write of her) was probably worried sick, and I’d have to find some way to convince her that I hadn’t spent the previous night with some tavern wench.
My discomfiture made me gruff. “Where do you get the arrogance, old man,” I grumbled, pushing myself to my feet, “to put me to a test? Played on my sympathies and made me look the fool is what you did.”
Then Sirrus asked me who it was that made me look the fool whilst I’d been running blindly in the dead of night. At least this way a bed and warm hearth had found me, he offered. I acknowledged his comment with a sour smile. I said (very condescendingly, I will admit) that the important thing was that he was well. And seeing’s how he was, I would be off.
“Before you go,” Sirrus said – and I remember now how he feigned nonchalance – “I mean, assuming that you’ll have naught to eat, how’s about a wash in the basin? I’ve a fine blade if you’re wanting a shave.”
“My face,” I pronounced, “is plenty fine for the walk home.”
Here my host bowed solemnly and said a curious thing. “I think you’ll find that your face is a good deal different from what you remember.” He pointed to a tall standing mirror (the Mirror!) against the far wall, which was held to its bowed wooden supports by a thick revolving peg.
“Come have a look see.”
I cannot now recall what made his suggestion so compelling, nor why it filled me with trepidation even as I obeyed. The mirror shimmered like a small pool of water hung upright. Then I was before it, transfixed by a face that I thought could not be myself and yet could be no one else. Sirrus would later explain that I’d caught a glimpse of what is real in me beneath all the illusions and conditioning of the world – my true face. Lifetimes seemed to parade before me, resplendent with every detail save for a sign or a friendly voice to say, “this is real”, or, “this is not real”.
And Sirrus was speaking. “Why the scowl? Is it not a relief to know that you are more wondrous and unfathomable than ever you thought?
“I apologize for this bit of trickery. Sometimes it’s my last recourse, and I couldn’t help but think that it would be tragic, should this knowledge die with me.”
There seemed to be no word for what I was feeling, but “fear” was as close as I could come. Intimations of danger roiled in my stomach. I fought them down. I’d seen my reflection in the mirror often enough, surely! Inside my mind, I protested: ‘I am as God and the Goddess made me, and I have no cause for shame.’
Sirrus rambled on. “There’s a word escapes me now. Ahh – netherworld. Your people have tales of a purgatory that awaits the unfaithful after death. But isn’t purgatory really the life you’ve always known?”
The cursed dwarf (so I considered him then) was circling me.
”Respect for Truth makes the whole world of lies an ill fit. A man thinks he knows where he’s going; he needs to believe it, and convince all others. What will become of him if certainty if thrown into doubt?”
I seemed to know spring’s thaw in my limbs. My mind caught fire like the cry of creation. ‘Twas as if a piece of the sun had been captured and shaped in my likeness, then made its home in the Mirror.
“Man does not like to question the story that he is living,” Sirrus said.
Then the vision was over.
It seems to me that the most pertinent matter next occurred some six months later. I remember one day in particular, when clouds hung over the dusty blonde heather and the muddy tracks through my wheat fields. My farmhouse looked ruddy under the ashen sky. Drizzle seemed to be wrung from the air. I see myself leaning against that gray fence, watching drops collect in the muddy puddles, and knowing in my heart that the oppression I felt didn’t stem from the weather alone.
To Angels and Devils my mind ever drew when I thought of Sirrus, whom I’d not seen in all that time; and seeing now how one glimpse into the old man’s mirror had altered the trajectory of my life, I wondered whether his absence was a boon or a curse. Until that day, I’d never known my own distaste for the dusty town of Bucton, for all those quaint conversations with the townsfolk and the monotony of the prairie. Suddenly it seemed as if the wide world didn’t contain prairies big enough for the kind of flight my heart intended.
It was at this moment, as I stood nursing such morose thoughts, that Marguerite (I’m certain I shall mention her again – she was my betrothed at this time) surprised me by slipping a steamy cup of mint tea under my nose. It’s funny how the mind can recapture such details of moments that are charged with much joy or pain in the remembrance. I grasped the cup, but after a moment was obliged to avoid her eyes. I knew of no response to the compassion I saw there, and it aches my heart now to recall her words.
“You leave for town before sunup and the planting has been done since early afternoon. Why do you tarry out here in the rain, then? Sometimes I think you go out of your way to complicate your labors.”
Frustration over my misspent years – I had been obsessing over this, remember – made me harsher than I intended. “It’s how I’ve always pushed to prove myself, and I could never have done with it. Didn’t you realize that?”
She was not used to hearing me speak thus. I was not used to hearing it from my own lips. But my tirade – wakened by that glimpse into the Mirror, and the huge discrepancy between the being that I’d witnessed there and the fact of what my existence really was – was taking flight. My life, of a sudden, felt like it belonged to another man; or, worse still, could it be that I, Patrick, was naught but a figment of another man’s dream?
“I’ve stood on this plot of ground for thirty years,” I went on. “Even though I’ve always longed most for the sea.” I showed her my hands, callused from long hours gripping the scythe, axe and shovel. “These are the hands of a painter, or were supposed to have been!”
Marguerite was whispering now, her voice shaded with hurt. “You’ve said nothing to me before now about wishing your feet on a ship’s deck, nor told me of any desire of yours to paint. But, there is no place in all the world where we would not have to toil.”
“You think I want to run from work and responsibility?” I railed at her. “I only ask, why shouldn’t any man or woman live to do the work that they love? Is it the Gods’ intent that our survival must be purchased with misery?”
Here she shot me a haughty glare. “It is not for you to question the will of the Gods!”
But her ire was soon spent.
“Are you so unhappy with me, then?”
Hearing this, I felt engulfed by all the grief of my recent experience, the knowledge that there was, indeed, a comforting world that I’d lost; and I had yet to find a vision to fill the empty spaces inside, the cracks wherein now lived the threat of cold loneliness.
“Are you not happy?” she persisted.
I found my tongue at last. “Always I’ve sought to prove myself to everyone else.” I swept my hand to encompass the reaped field. “I was young when we met, and your father wondered what manner of man I was. What kind of provider could I be? So I endeavored to show him. I took over this farm, which was the dream of my father’s father. It’s a worthwhile life for many men, but I cannot explain why I realize only now that it is not the life for me.”
I was terrified of every word. Heat surged through my limbs and opened my pores to the sweat of dread. But I couldn’t stop. I could no more withhold the flood of my feelings than I could dam up a river with my outstretched arms.
“And now, to hear you ask, ‘Am I not happy with you?’ How can I answer, when I am a lost man and happiness is not yours to give me? You are a wonderful woman, Marguerite – bright of mind and sweet in your open heart. But you are not for me, nor I for you.”
*
Pain lived in the house we shared – that evening, and in the days that followed. Marguerite pleaded with me. She reminded me of all the times that I’d spoken completely contrary to the way I did now. I couldn’t refute her; I could only feel my own hurt each time bursting anew. After all, I had protested my love for her, many times; and though I knew it for illusion now, I’d believed the words every time I’d said them. Could I fault my loyal partner for also having believed?
From the wreckage of my life – estranged from my betrothed, disillusioned with my work and the fruits of it, sickened with wanderlust – I foresaw a kind of madness that I’d never before imagined. A man might run with beasts and savor the taste of blood yet not suffer for it if he is not in conflict with his desires. But, to live in perpetual war with oneself… would that not be akin to the hell preached by the catechism? To spurn all the known and familiar watering holes because one is afflicted by an altogether different kind of thirst?
Under the Mirror’s influence, all that had once been commonplace had taken on unpredictable dimension. Existence was not as safe (but nor is it as lackluster and stale, I know now) as I’d hitherto assumed.
One evening I found myself cursing aloud to the shadows: “Sirrus! He’s done this to me, and now he must answer for it!”
The following morning demanded action. I ached for salvation and knew not who to pray to. I wanted to lash my fists but knew not who my enemies were. My cot in the shed was hard and cold. I hoped that Marguerite was still asleep upstairs, finding surcease for her battered heart. Then I made my decision.
This time, the way north passed quicker than it had upon that wayward night. When finally I met Sirrus’ eyes in his doorway, I didn’t know whether to strike the wee man or hurl myself down in supplication at his feet. He appraised me with a glance and said that it was good that I had come, that I looked ripe for fire.
“Explain!” I panted.
“I can explain nothing without your commitment!” he snapped. “Neither of us can hope to understand your destiny until you decide to step in and live it.”
When I heard this, I did find myself at his feet, weeping. Sirrus’ words seemed to fall on me from a great height.
“Down below the pretense and hollow sincerity of reason, the heart is a wilderness. You’ve stepped into the wild wood, my friend, and without guidance you may fritter your life seeing the falsehood and never knowing truth. But I would not have opened the doors to your labyrinth if I had any intention of forsaking you now.”
Then he took my hand and led me inside, to the basement stairs. He was still speaking.
“Truth and lie exist side by side in all stories – or perhaps they exist in the ears that hear them. Here, then, are two stories that relate to this moment.” He was leading me down the darkened steps. “One says that Patrick O’Delan lived out his life a farmer, respected by his community and loyal to marriage and township and tradition. The secret dreams of the heart belonged to another world, not his. The other story insists that this same man stepped into a whirling storm of possibility, wild and unpredictable as a dust devil. But to his fellow men he was as good as dead – what’s more, his death was a tragedy. After all, hadn’t he always been a dutiful man who’d worked hard for his debt to society?”
I nodded; only half understanding, and my eyes now rested on the Mirror that stood shimmering before the two of us. “So stark become the boundaries of my life,” I breathed.
Somehow I knew that Sirrus understood. I came to learn that, in his decades of serving with the Draymes, he’d seen many men broken like I was. He knew where to apply pressure and how much force to employ.
“Desire for Truth sometimes outweighs a creature’s instinct for comfort,” he said. “Usually it is because such a one suffers, knowingly or not.”
Then realization struck me, laid bare the lie that lived beneath the blame that had brought me back to him. Before meeting Sirrus I’d not been happy; I’d merely been oblivious to my suffering. Ignorance had not spared me, but only postponed this moment. Nor was the fear new; it had only lain quiescent all those years that I’d let it hold me back.
“Sirrus,” I muttered through my tears, “I can hardly explain myself when I’ve forgotten the uses of words and don’t recognize the voice that speaks them. I fear” – the admission cost me another bout of weeping – “ fear that I have gone incurably mad. I remember now, thinking how I would come here and force you to release me. But for what purpose? I hardly know the life I’ve woken up to all these days and years. My intended wife is a stranger to me. Other folk, they see a face here that I know is not that of the real man…”
“Your masks must all take fire,” Sirrus told me. “You’ll not know the true nature of the life you’d forsake until you’ve tasted its ashes.”
Outside, the wind whistled as if blown through a thin reed. Inside, all was still; almost too quiet for life, it seemed.
“I speak of a kind of death that leads to real life, my friend, and the way of it is through the Mirror.”
Then Sirrus smiled. “But the Draymes did not give of their lives only to teach mankind terror. There is much sweetness to be savored here. Come now - are we destined to forever remain a mystery to ourselves?”
Relief – and acceptance - flooded me at last. I did not belong in the everyday sunlit world. I had always been different. Tomorrow that recognition might scourge my insides with pain and loss; but the present moment demanded decision and there was no time for me to grieve.
I felt his small hand on mine, and our first steps towards the Mirror. On the other side of its glass lay the life that I was created to live, and on this side would remain all else that I might ever have become. Then I knew a light emanating from the Mirror that seemed to recognize and cherish every particle of my being.
But I had intended only to describe, here, my first encounters with Sirrus. This is not the place for me to unveil (insofar as I understand it) the real source and purpose of that Light.