Terry Persun's Magical Realism Collection

by Persun, Terry

  He waved his hand in dismissal. “It’s hard to explain. The more I searched inside and found nothing, the more the flames overtook the forest. My hate and fear eventually spread throughout the world and connected to all things. I could see in my dream’s perspective how fires in China had been ignited by my bad intentions, my hatred, whatever— a mixture of all things.

  “My body became extremely hot. The rampant flames from a nearby tree struck out and ran up my side, lighting me with yellow fire. Remembering all my childhood training, I quickly fell to the ground and began to roll, my arms tucked closely to my chest.

  “There was a long time then, or what seemed long, when I knew I was dreaming, yet couldn’t stop rolling. I was locked between the two perspectives. As I became more and more conscious—this-world conscious—I realized that my physical body was rolling along the ground. Where was I? I didn’t know. Then the idea of the medicine wheel returned.”

  Wolf ’s voice rose to almost a scream. “Was I inside the circle? If not, I was no longer safe.” His voice lowered again. “I remember that thought specifically. So I pushed at my consciousness to wake up. Another thought: Had I rolled over my own fire and was my body actually aflame? Pushing even harder at my consciousness, I broke free of the dream.

  “My eyes flew open, like loose shutters in a wind storm, just as my body flipped over the ledge leading to the canyon below. Fear shot through me, a canon filled with adrenaline. My arms reached out instinctively; my hands grabbed the first thing I saw, a protruding rock. I didn’t even scream. There was no time for sound. It would have taken concentration away from my hands. Trying to regroup, gain a logical perspective, I scanned the area and let my toes search for crevices to grip into. Slowly then, I tried to push myself up using my legs, when a hand reached down and grabbed one of my wrists. I couldn’t look up and concentrate on holding on at the same time. My focus was close, I could only see the dirt and rock in front of me. I could only remember the rock I held onto because I had seen it the split second my face went by. My hands had reached out from some strong, inner sense I can’t begin to understand. The hand that gripped my wrist held on so tightly that I felt physically connected to my savior. I actually felt his muscles tighten when he pulled me upwards, smoothly.”

  Wolf breathed heavily, as if having the experience all over again. “I flopped onto the ground on my stomach and saw moccasinned feet near my face. Once I caught my breath, I rolled onto my back and looked up. Running Rabbit stood over me, his jaws tight and his eyes stern. I said, ‘Thank you.’ I could think of nothing more.”

  Looking into Gary’s face, Wolf spoke the truth of the experience, his truth. “Maybe I was still inside the dream, at least partly, because his hands turned to flames. Then his eyes lighted up. Then his body. Suddenly, there was this huge flash of light, and smoke.” Wolf sighed deeply. “Then nothing. I lay there afraid to sleep,. afraid to move. My instincts told me to return to the wheel. When I looked over, it was a web, no longer round, but having six points, as though made by a spider. I shook my head and stood on weak legs. The medicine wheel took back its own shape. Inside it, I kneeled over the fire symbol and prayed loudly, first acknowledging my gratitude, something I had seldom done before, and always felt was beneath me.

  “That’s what was missing in my dream, Gary. Gratitude. Had I found it, the fire would have been controllable. You never want the fire to go out. You need it; but you want to be able to control it, and gratitude helps.”

  Gary refused to acknowledge Wolf ’s direct conversation. He remained the listener only.

  When Wolf began again, it was in explanation of his feelings about fire. “You may be tired of this, my so-called revelations concerning the elements, but again I realized that all life depends on fire, the sun and its warmth. Fire cleanses and burns away. It is the path between physical and spiritual. Flames occupy both worlds. They are bridges. I was inside both dream world and this world simultaneously. Had I not learned that fact, I could not have come back to this world. One more thing: if the flames of one world engulf you, you will die in the other as well. To learn to control the fire within me, I decided to allow the fire inside the circle to go out. I would have to relight it using the sticks and stones around and inside the circle, whatever I could reach.”

  Wolf paused for a long while then. His next dream was a pleasant one, soft and loving. He didn’t need to tell Gary, but remembered in detail how he had stood in the center of the circle with his arms outstretched. Turning slowly, his hands had entered, then left each quadrant, feeling the pull of each element. As Wolf ’s left hand entered air, his right entered Earth. He recalled the lightness of air and the corresponding weight of Earth as balance. Then his left entered fire and his right, water—a similar balance occurred all the way around, the entire 360 degrees of the wheel.

  The dream that had begun so peacefully changed as Wolf realized that his right and left hands stood for the two worlds he occupied, the physical and spiritual, respectively. The dream had increased in intensity as he turned around and around. Four times he had turned. The second round, his hands had physically taken on each element, turning into stone, cloud, rain, flame. The third round, he could smell each element, and on the forth, he tasted each. Then like some great choir, music rose up around him, as though the world itself had begun to sing. How could he tell anyone, he thought, how the sound of angels singing had faded into the sound of his own chant—Hee yea hey yee hee, hee yea hey yee hee, hee yea hey yee hee—over and over until he awoke.

  That morning, before making a fire for his tea, Wolf stood in the center of the circle and repeated the events of the dream as best he could. He imagined his hands changing as they had in the dream. Some images came stronger than others, showing him his own weaknesses.

  When Wolf began to talk again, he spoke softly toward the recorder. “I collected items to make the fire by hand. I first tried to create a spark using some of the stones I had found around the circle, but nothing worked. Then I resorted to piling kindling and rubbing a thin, dry twig between my palms. Eventually I got a wisp of smoke, and then flames. I blew on the flames and they spread. Fire. I rejoiced by leaping and dancing, even though I felt extremely weak. I fell down once, but got right back up to dance again.

  I prepared the teacup and placed it in the fire. I had missed sunrise while working to get the fire going. But, with my tea in hand, I could sit back and enjoy the morning and the resounding sense of peace within me. As you’ve probably noticed,” he said to Gary, “I had finished each quadrant’s requirements. Nonetheless, I knew deep inside that it was not yet time to leave the power of the circle.

  “I had used up the last of my water that morning and figured I’d pray for more. After my tea, I slept a short while; I was exhausted and weak. When I awoke, my body felt hot and my mouth was dry. I rolled onto my stomach. The sweat on my face and chest picked up dirt, which I tried to brush off once I sat up. Heat waves danced along the ground, rippling the terrain in front of me, and wavering at the tops of the trees, making them look as though they moved in a breeze. But the air was still.

  “I tried to spit. Saliva was slow coming to my mouth. I felt thirsty. It was after noon and I was hungry, but without water there was no tea to make me feel full. Exercise had always helped to remove hunger initially, so I began to run around the inside perimeter of the circle. When I got dizzy or tired of going in one direction, I turned and ran in the other. I imagined myself as a wolf and, once again, went down on all fours. My head spun and my arms ached.

  “The hunger did not go away and my thirst increased. The dryness in the air made me cough. I tripped and fell onto my face, scratching it. I remember seeing blood on my hand when I rubbed the dirt away.

  “I lay there breathing heavily, rasping, then rolled into the water quadrant. Like a mirage, water appeared around me, but when I lifted my cupped hands, there was nothing but dirt. Raising my face and arms to the sky, I prayed, expecting clouds to appear and rain to come
down as it had before, if only for a moment. But instead, my face beaded with sweat and my breathing became more difficult.

  “Wishing to cry, but unable to, I gave up. I could do nothing more. That’s when I felt the pull on my back, as though something from inside me was lifted out.

  “I’m sorry,” Wolf said. “I’m really sorry to tell you, because I know how this whole thing must sound, but it was my ego-self. Once it left, I noticed how much better I felt; not whole or revived, but better. Like when someone is looking at you from across the room, I felt its stare. When I tried to rise up, it pushed me down, face first, into the dirt. I rolled onto my back and looked up, expecting to see something that looked like me, only evil or frightening in some way, but that wasn’t what I saw.”

  Wolf ran his hands through his hair. “You might not want to hear this, but when it returned it was almost intangible, semi-transparent. Not ghost-like, but not material either. And unrecognizable. I knew it was me, but it didn’t exactly materialize that way.

  “This time it came after me with its hands outstretched. I lifted my legs for protection and kicked it out to my side where it fell, making a sound, tossing dust into the air. So it was material. It had substance. But it was also weak,” he said. “I had starved it with the help of the tea-fast. I jumped up and so did it. We swung fists at each other, sometimes connecting, then wrestled on the ground. I was stronger, if I can use the pronoun ‘I’ at all. Yet, my head swam. My eyes lost sight of it from time to time; then it would appear again to my right or left. The battle became more violent. It scratched me, kicked, even bit my shoulder once. It leaped onto my back.

  “Remembering old martial arts movies, I reached over my head, took it by the shoulders, bent forward, and pitched it over and onto the ground. By this time, we were outside the circle and close to the ledge. My ego rolled over twice, much more than it should have from my weak throw. At the ledge it pushed off and jumped into the nothingness without a sound. There had been no sound from either of our mouths during the whole fight. Afterwards, I wondered if it had only been an illusion.

  “Rather than look out over the ledge, I quickly returned to the power circle and fell onto my back. Looking right and left, I found that I was in the arms of Mother Earth. Having failed to receive water from the water quadrant, I began to pray to the Earth. I closed my eyes and recalled Leela as she handed me the stone. I reached into my pocket and retrieved it, placed it onto my tongue and closed my eyes. You never know where aid will come from,” Wolf admitted. “My thirst was quenched by the same element that had parched it.

  Regaining some of my strength, I decided to pray for food. You know when a prayer is real, when it comes from every part of you, and I easily recognized when that moment arrived. Trying to sustain that sort of intensity is difficult enough without the exhaustion I was feeling. I was fading in and out of what I now call ‘true prayer,’ when I heard the screech of a hawk. It circled to my right, then darted from the sky. The moment before it landed, I saw its target. A rattle snake had crawled into the open to sun itself. I was shocked at how violent the fight was between them, but knew that the hawk would win. In a moment, the bird’s wings beat heavily and it lifted to the sky with the grace of a leaf swirling on the wind. The snake writhed in the bird’s great talons. As the hawk flew overhead, it dropped the snake into the circle.

  “In my bare feet, I stomped on the snake, just behind its head, then delicately grabbed it. Not knowing whether it was completely dead or not, fear pulsed through me like my own blood. I had to eat to gain back some strength, and this was a gift from the air.” Wolf waited for a moment, then reiterated: “I had received water from the dry Earth and food from thin air.” He stared at Gary.

  “I was amazed. Picking up the snake, I closed my eyes, stretched it out straight and bit firmly behind its head, tearing with my teeth as my head made a quick jerk. Like a child playing hot-potato, I threw the head away. My fist still clenched the snake’s body. I rolled the stone in my mouth, which began to water from the thought of food. I blessed the hawk and the snake, thanking the latter for its life. I watched the snake writhe and squirm for a long time, waiting for it to stop, to play out the remainder of its life.

  “As early evening came, I made a fire, cooked the snake, and settled down to eat, which I did very slowly, savoring each bite, thanking the air, the bird, and the snake over and over again. With food in me, I could feel strength returning. I could feel my mind clearing. As it did so, I also began to question all that had happened.”

  CHAPTER 8

  WOLF SCRATCHED HIS HEAD and considered whether he should go on or not. Was the rest that important? Yet, Gary wanted to hear everything. Perhaps some significant detail would come through.

  “I awoke at daybreak from a dreamless sleep. My strength had returned some, but hunger gripped my stomach tightly. I put the stone back into my mouth, then shivered from the cool air. I spent a few minutes standing in the center of the circle with my arms stretched out from my sides like a cross. Revolving slowly, I performed my ‘spinning’ prayer. Although I expected a less intense session because I had eaten some food, I was pleasantly surprised. Once I let go of my sense of literal concentration and moved into a place of pure sensations, everything came more easily and more varied than before. For instance, although my right hand felt as though it were on fire and burning, my left, in the same quadrant, felt like the sun. I mean sun ‘energy’, all-giving, bright, warm. The fragrance of flowers filled the circle when my left hand hit the Earth quadrant, and yet my right hand in the same quadrant felt as heavy and dense as a rock. That’s how it went that morning. My prayers were real, they came from the right place.

  “Here’s something else, my ego had returned. Thank God, because it’s the ego that allows us to hold onto our identity. It just shouldn’t control your entire life, as mine once did. But it houses our physical history, and certain parts of our understanding of how the world works.

  “After I prayed, I gathered my things and put my cross trainers back on. They felt odd. Looking from the edge of the power circle into the center, I realized how attached to the small space I had become. Like leaving home, I felt sad just knowing that I would never come back. When I stepped outside the circle it was as though everything was changed. The world was different and so was I. Something had happened to me that I still don’t completely understand. I had become patient like ant and loyal, to my true self, like dog. I stood outside the circle for a moment looking for signs of which direction to go.

  The six-pointed star is what I expected, but that is not what I saw. Although you might think that I should have entered the woods in the direction I had exited, that is not what I was told to do. In scanning the tree line, one branch from a tall Douglas fir struck far out, like an arm pointing southeast. So, that is where I went. I entered the woods at an angle, trying to keep my bearings by watching the sun. I figured I’d rest at noon, not because it was midday, but because I couldn’t keep on course as easily while the sun was overhead and not at a definite angle in the sky.

  “I needed food and water. While I walked through the strange woods, I alternately prayed for each. Just before I stopped to rest, I heard the gurgle of running water to my right. A small run, a tributary working its way to a creek, rolled through the woods over a stone and dirt bed. I scooped out the water using my cup and drank. Then, after clearing a space and encircling it with stones, I built a small fire. I made the last of my tea knowing that it would curb my hunger.”

  In the process of entering that time through his tale, Wolf became calm. “A soft breeze snaked through the trees and ran along the fallen leaves. Its whisper was soothing and natural, as were the smells. Inside the canopy of trees, the day’s weather was mild, although in the open it was much hotter. I rested quietly and comfortably. My shoulders were not tense and I did not worry. In fact, as I remember it there were absolutely no concerns occupying my mind at all. Taking in the sensations of the forest held me in check. So muc
h pleasurable was going on that there was no room for anything else.

  “In about an hour, I decided to continue on. The shadows in the woods delineated a slight angle imparted by the sun’s new position in the sky. I probably could have followed the run I’d sat beside, but that is not what I was meant to do. Regardless of that, the creek itself eventually showed up, about twelve feet wide where I came upon it, and filled with suckers—big ones. Thanking the spirits for what I’d found, I walked right into the water with a large rock in my hand.”

  Wolf smiled broadly. “I was going to eat,” he said. “I found so many fish swimming close together that I didn’t need the rock. I prayed to them, asking for their nourishment, and, believe it or not, several swam to the surface. I grabbed one with both hands and threw it onto shore. Swiping a second sucker and throwing it next to the first, I waded back out of the water and took the fish to a place where I could clean them. The stony beach near the creek offered plenty of sharp, flat stones serviceable for scaling, gutting and filleting the two fish. I built another fire and cooked my meal. By the time I had finished those chores, the sun had receded and shadows had deepened. A glint of sunlight sparkled off a damp stone, appearing like a six-pointed star, and I knew the next day I would follow the creek wherever that took me.

  “Reviewing my day, just before going to sleep that night, made me feel more a part of my own life, as though suddenly my life was worth considering on a deeper level. Even so, the old anxieties were all around me, waiting to re-enter my body. Ethereal and frightening, they hovered near, watching as I enjoyed my new-found peace. The instant that I accepted them, they’d snatch that peace from me.

  “The woods darkened. The lower light created a feeling unlike the open space of the circle. The only sky visible in any large expanse was a strip that opened up along the creek. Thick Douglas fir held close the air of day for a long while, but eventually that air dissipated and a cool dampness settled in just before morning.