by Ken Parejko
I walked boldly up to a woman who seemed familiar. “Welcome,” she said, smiling like an old friend. I saw my mother, and Plinia, Agrippina, Drusilla. She was each and every woman I’d known; and I was grateful to her for that.
“I am parched of thirst,” I said, “and I die.”
She lifted a chalice and held it to me. “Here, drink this water from the lake of Mnemosyne that you may remember who you are.”
I drank and quenched my unquenchable thirst. The water was the sweetest I'd ever tasted: the blood of life, the offering to my own godhead, scooped from a secret spring rising deep in my self.
“I am the son of the Earth,” I said, “and of the starry Sky.”
“Yes,” she said. “And now it is for you to know that which til now you had not known. From mortal, you become a god. Like a kid, you rush to the milk.”
I handed her the chalice. She gestured to a path along the stream. “Go to the right,” she offered, “towards the sacred plains and woods of Persephone.”
So I started in that direction and fell into a small group of men and women making their way down the path which led to a little lake, smaller by far than Larius, yet somehow it seemed it was Larius. As I followed the path to its edge I looked across the lake’s calm surface and scanned its rocky shore. Then I saw a young boy, quietly sitting where the path met the lake, slowly stirring the water with a stick. The boy smiled to me.
I smiled back. I was surprised then to recognize him. It was Caecilius as a child, who I'd played with on the shores of Larius. Then the face changed again, and it was my own face as a youth, in the happy days of childhood. There seemed so much joy in the boy's face, as though he’d been waiting all these long, hard years for me to come along. As I watched the boy’s face grew younger and younger, and became an infant’s face, dear Aulus, the innocent face of the unspeakable one, whose smile reassured me as it had in my dreams and years before on the shores of Larius. It is all right. Everything will be all right.
I walked over to him. He stood and gave me his hand. Our eyes met.
We smiled and held hands and turned to walk together slowly but confidently into the cool, clear water, which lapped quietly about our legs. The water felt exquisite, its touch a pleasure a thousand times more potent than the pleasure of a warm bath. With every step it quenched my thirst and satisfied a deep, unknown longing I'd carried with me all my life. We walked slowly into the deepening waters. The low mountains around the lake gave off the rich smell of shrubbery in bloom. Swallows swooped down in a graceful dance to catch flies rising from the water's surface. I had seen it so often. It was perfect. I had come home.
We walked on into the lake. I was up to my waist now, and could see in the water schools of small fish curiously scooting around us. The water was absolutely clear, like pure thickened air. Yet I noticed that I could not see my legs, which though they carried me step by step further into the water seemed to have dissolved. The boy was the first to go under and disappear. For an instant I felt alone.
Having at last remembered who I was, I could now forget. My final few steps were unhurried and brave, worthy of an equite. My stomach all my life an extra weight, then my chest and shoulders, and finally my chin and head entered the water and my thirst was gone, forever, and I was gone, and what remained was the lake, the swirling swallows, the gracefully schooling fish, the rich aroma of the hillside, all waiting quietly, patiently, for the others to come along, one by one, all in one. Waiting for you and I, for all of us, if we re-member ourselves and who we are, in the sacred verses of our lives.
Epilogue
Excavations completed in the late 1800's in the barracks of the Pompeiian gladiators, just behind the theater, found the skeletons of seventeen men who had died in Vesuvius' eruption. Some were still shackled to the walls, others had died in their beds. They were surrounded by the armor --helmets, greaves, shields and swords -- with which they had hoped to defend their lives. It is thought some were not gladiators, but actors from the nearby theater who’d taken refuge there from the volcano’s fury.
Among them was also found the skeleton of a woman. Her emerald necklace, and gold armbands and rings indicated she was a woman of wealth and status. Who she was and why she was in the gladiators’ barracks remains a mystery.
