The Year of the Hydra

by William Broughton Burt

  The moment my toes touch down on the white marble, a bright light erupts from the center of the uppermost tier, silently shooting straight into the sky, piercing the expansive circle of low clouds to seemingly touch the shadowed moon herself at the sky’s zenith.

  Squinting, I ascend the second step and the third, increasingly awash with an inexplicable sense of arrival. Belonging, even. I don’t even know what that word means, but I know this place well, and it knows me. By the time I arrive at the first marble terrace, I recall my father’s words. How could there be any solution to the quandary of my life beyond its original blueprint? How can there be an impulse truer than the one now tugging at my bowels? That same impulse has drawn me to the far side of the world and then across half of China and finally, inexorably, to this very spot. Or is there another pull, one even older, a blueprint drafted by another hand entirely? Do two voices now sing inside my head, a fifth apart? What happens, I ask myself, when those voices retreat unto separate scales to whisper into opposing ears? What happens then, when dust is merely dust and regret just another case of regret? I only know that I’ve spent my whole life longing for something, wasting in the agony of its absence. I’ve never felt closer to that something than right now.

  And closer to losing it forever.

  Decisively I mount the nine steps to the second terrace. The instant my foot contacts its white marble, I am filled with an elation that I’ve never so much as glimpsed before. An uncanny sense of completion strikes me more deeply and personally than anything I’ve ever known. The completion that all events have been racing toward? Now I know it is my own.

  Teetering a bit, I close my eyes to consider the finer-grained details of my experience, which seems to expand further each instant, subsuming everything that I thought that I thought that I knew. There is no drop-off in the elation, only an ever-rising tide that threatens to obliterate obliteration itself.

  Who is your family, Julian?

  Opening my eyes, I try to find my bearings. Pulling myself taller, I begin to ascend the final nine steps, stopping just short of the ultimate terrace, where three hundred sixty balustrades support a circular lintel that frames an obelisk composed of concentric rings of cut stones, each ring nine-divisible until exactly nine stones embrace the Heaven’s Heart Stone—now glowing brightly from within. It is from here that the beacon of light arises. I look up to follow the beam until it touches the shadowed moon’s tender underbelly. Only a tiny sliver of white remains of that moon. We’re now arriving at full eclipse. Intention, Julian, says a voice inside my head. But whose? And if mine, which mine?

  No matter, I reply to the thought. There can be no direction now but forward. Tentatively yet decisively, I place one foot on the upper terrace. In response, the central stone spins ever faster until it dissolves into light, and the nine stones embracing it fall away, revealing a brightly lit entryway leading into the depths of the Circular Mound Altar. The voice comes from everywhere at once.

  “My son. You’re here.”

  Timothy Dobbins’s soothing voice is indistinguishable from the crystalline euphoria that continues to build within me. Fighting feebly against the ferocious tide, I turn in every direction but there is no Timothy Dobbins. From the upper terrace of the Circular Mound Altar, it is said, even the quietest whisper comes back from all directions. Dobbins must be below, speaking into a microphone.

  “Just another few steps,” coos the husky voice. “You’re almost home.”

  A tear wells in one eye. How long have I traveled? How long and how friendless? The twisted road behind me seems now to fall away like a withering umbilical, never again to be needed. Can it be possible that I’ve finally arrived somewhere? Through the teary eye, I gaze at the open portal before me, and my bodyweight shifts forward, readying itself to step.

  And now I freeze. A raw shudder overtakes me. Again I close my eyes and try to focus, try to find some strand of myself within the impenetrable blizzard of incoming sensation and—and suddenly I realize that it is incoming. Unlike the pleasure discovered at my center in Ana Manguella’s bed, that gently glowing coal in my body’s core, a self-intelligent flow of being—what I feel now presses in from some other place, seemingly from the marble beneath my feet. Straining, I try to discern the intelligence behind that blizzard, the living heart at its center that opens unto ever-broader, all-inclusive knowing. I don’t find it. At the center of this sensation is only a desperate need to control. To latch onto neural receptor sites designed for a higher purpose. At the center of this euphoria is but an ever-tightening fist. It is fear. The instant my body knows this, I feel something within me pull away and steel itself. Opening my eyes, I wipe away the trail of the tear and withdraw my foot from the upper terrace.

  “Julian?” says Dobbins’s voice.

  “Send my brothers and sisters out,” I hear myself say. “I’m shutting this thing down.”

  “You know you can’t do that,” the voice replies almost kindly. “All you can do is shut yourself out.”

  “I’m armed,” I reply, lifting Xu’s prosthesis. “Or legged, as the case may be.”

  A moment later, the white marble stones at the Altar’s center begin to converge, covering the stairway. “I tried, Julian,” whispers Dobbins’s voice.

  As I watch, the re-materialized Heaven’s Heart Stone grinds to a halt. For a long moment, all is silent. Drawing a deep breath, I tighten my grip around Xu’s wooden ankle and step onto the upper terrace, the rush of pleasure now gone. Instead is a strong foreboding. Something has shifted, probably not for the better.

  Cautiously I advance toward the glowing Heaven’s Heart Stone, stepping around a double-edged sword and a white-hot firebrand. Beneath my feet, eighty-one perfectly cut stones give way to seventy-two, then sixty-three, then fifty-four. I pause before the ring of forty-five stones. Something has definitely shifted. Now I notice something. The light above the terrace is changing, breaking apart as though through an unseen prism. At the same time, something begins to swell. The ever-building pressure almost pushes me back.

  As I watch dumbfounded, the vertical beam of light breaks into nine razor-sharp spears that now spawn competing geometric planes. Appearing in the air above the Heaven’s Heart Stone is a towering, burnished gold tetrahedron, its four points as sharp as daggers. A moment later, I’m looking at a sparkling emerald cube. Which as quickly pops into an octahedron in a fiery blue—and now a rotating purple icosahedron. The multi-dimensional space above the Altar is crystallizing and re-crystallizing into ever greater complexity until the icosahedron becomes a full-on dodecahedron bristling with identical pentagonal facets of a blazing red-orange.

  I step back, shielding my face, as the red-orange light waxes ever brighter. Squinting, I watch the sharp edges of the dodecahedron morph once more, the crisp facets gradually becoming undecipherable limbs and horrid appendages. Before me, looming above me, menacing me with the stares of multiple cold eyes—is the mother of all Hydrae.

  Poised before me, its four clawed feet gripping the white marble, is a huge, scaly grey-green creature with a writhing serpentine tail. Erupting from its shoulders is a cluster of long, oily necks bearing feathered heads, each with a pointed snout and a massive jaw. The stench is overpowering.

  As I gawk, the nearest of the nine heads gathers itself as though to strike. I jump back an instant before my body would have been snapped in half. Before I can catch my balance, another of the heads lunges, and I dodge nimbly to one side. As quickly, the creature spins, its long tail sweeping at my legs, and I go airborne.

  Airborne.

  I find myself spinning through the air like a gymnast, sailing above the charging Hydra and swinging my club to deliver a blow to the rearmost head as I pass. Landing behind the creature, I wheel, my weapon at the ready. Only now do I realize that Xu’s prosthesis is now a massive club, its gnarled handle perfectly shaped to my hand. I catch a momentary glimpse of my body, which is beautifully muscled and draped in a flaming red toga. Befor
e I can register surprise, the Hydra spins again and three heads rear simultaneously, every nostril flaring. The creature’s body swells as it inhales to give me a triple dose of excellent poison breath.

  Just as the three heads spew their noxious blasts, I again go airborne, my club whistling to punish the first of the heads. With my other hand, I pull Ana’s sleeve tighter around my face—but a fourth Hydran head now stretches its long, scaly neck to snap me out of the air. Just before its jaws close around me, I feel something like an explosion, and I am sent spinning to the white marble, where I crash hard, my ears ringing.

  “Behind you!” cries Xu’s voice.

  I roll to one side, narrowly escaping the lunge of a second Hydra, appearing from nowhere. As it recoils for a second strike, I realize that the air is filled with Hydrae, each menacing me from a separate dimension. Two Hydran heads lunge simultaneously, and I turn sideways, launching myself between their respective dimensions, and their jaws snap at nothing. I find myself landing on my feet in yet another dimension, gazing around as though through a massive crystal, each facet domiciling another multi-headed creature with aggressive-compulsive disorder. Meanwhile, seven other Hydrae, each as fierce as the other, wheel and search frantically for me.

  Actually, seven plus one.

  Sensing the attack before it comes, I jump to one side just as a massive serpentine tail slams down on the spot where I was standing. I turn to encounter Hydra number nine, which doesn’t give me time to recover but spins, its nasty tail whipping around to strike again. Inexplicably, I know exactly what to do.

  I begin to sing.

  The war song erupts from my solar plexus like a missile, its trajectory every possible direction, its aim utterly true. The song hurling itself from my deepest center is both the ultimate weapon and every weapon’s negation, for it distorts time and space, rendering every trajectory a failed hypothesis. Hydra number nine now exhales a fresh blast of poison, but it arrives at every conceivable nowhere. At the same instant, three other Hydrae attack from their respective dimensions, but their vectors become entangled. I am removed from all access, dancing in every possible position at once, and none of them, for mine is the song that writes the code of the moment.

  I dance and the shadow lurches grotesquely.

  I sing and the moon begins to reel.

  Suddenly Tree’s voice is layered over mine. I catch a glimpse of her standing leaning against the innermost gate, arms raised to the heavens.

  “Rock ooo-aaaahhhh-AAAAH-ffff Ages-ssssss-SSSS-sss…”

  I dart in and out of Tree’s unfurling melody, harmonizing in an unknown scale. Eighty-one Hydran heads rear in rage, confusion, and astonishment. As I zip past them, my lips plant a kiss on the top of each hairless head at the same instant, and they wheel furiously, searching for what is not there.

  Maybe that was a little much. Hubris, actually. But the math is so easy, reality so readily rewritten, sucked into eddies and swirls and impossible-to-follow vortexes. One dimension or nine, it’s the same playhouse. I dart once more amid the multiple Hydrae, dropping my song into an easy Aeolian scale, allowing the creatures to catch sight of me. The monstrous heads lunge simultaneously, jaws opening, and as suddenly my war song shifts, the melody unexpectedly banking off Tree’s, and when the Hydran heads try to follow, they become entangled, forming knots as they struggle against each other.

  That, too, was probably a little unnecessary. But nice.

  “Clefff-FFF-FFFF-ffttt for meee-EEEE-eeeee…”

  I let my song fall back into sync with Tree’s unfurling hymn, and the various entangled Hydran heads struggle, pulling tighter the knots that progressively strangle them. In desperation, those heads now attack each other, their foul blood flying in every direction.

  Suddenly I’m aware of something behind me. Instantly I shift scales and octaves, but that same something shifts with me, seemingly locked onto my every thought. I reverse directions and head back into the music just unleashed, making counter-harmonies in reverse time, creating sub-currents within which I now plummet, leaving no trace.

  It’s all coming back to me now.

  But somehow this maneuver, too, has been anticipated. That same something on my tail is now before me, its maw opening.

  I recognize that maw, that face.

  Incredulous, I react almost too late, sending forth a burst of pure silence and darting into the Debussian void just before being gulped down by—

  Julian Mancer.

  “Let me hiiiii-iii-IIII-ide myself in theeee…”

  There is a part of you, I was recently told, that will fight to survive, against you if necessary.

  Again the awful ogre is on my tail, reading my thoughts almost before I can think them, uncannily telepathic, diabolically intelligent, intrinsically evil—and every bit his father’s son. I must face the fact that some element within my own mind, perhaps even its greater measure, now wars against me. And rather well.

  Before I can respond to this unhappy realization, I see that I am not merely hounded but have been turned, like a fleeing fox by whippets, back into the midst of the multi-dimensional array of Hydrae. Every vile reptilian head not presently occupied with tearing at the others now catches sight of me, and I turn sideways, my song quavering as I veer among them. Again Julian Mancer has anticipated my maneuver. I feel his hot, stale breath close behind me. In this space, said Ana Manguella, every flaw in one’s intention is magnified. Could there be some tiny defect in my intention?

  Nah.

  Again I reverse directions in time, but Julian Mancer has anticipated me. I have to spin out of control to avoid annihilation, the colorless and pitiless mask of my own face snatching the club out of my hand and splintering it.

  Desperate, I dive into an alternate tempo, darting among the beats, noting as I go that the long, bloody stumps that once were Hydran heads—are now re-sprouting, two heads for each one lost. It’s a situation.

  “Let the waaaah-AAAAH-aaa-ter and the bloo-ood…”

  Remembering that I am darting through metaphorical space, I pull in my arms like a figure skater and, spinning ever faster, I plummet into Tree’s lyrical landscape, finding myself in the depths of an immense ocean. It’s cold here, and dark. No hint of sunlight. I gaze in every direction, recognizing neither up nor down. At least I’m able to breathe. Gradually, my eyes adjust, and I sense a vague glow emanating from one direction. Decisively I turn and head toward that glow, my body whipping effortlessly through the dark currents like that of a dolphin.

  Good thing Tree isn’t singing “Okie from Muskogee.”

  As the light before me grows gradually brighter, I begin to make out the beginnings of icy blues and shimmering aqua greens. The colors seem familiar, almost welcoming, and I increase my speed. I seem to have exited the pitched battle on the Circular Mound Altar along a tangent of no-time. If I’m right, time on the Altar will not move forward until my return. Here within the embrace of Tree’s image of healing waters, I may have found a much-needed refuge, an opportunity to renew my strength. The waters feel ever warmer as I approach the shimmering blue-green light. I increase my speed once more, sensing something quite compelling now in the iridescent colors. I sense a vague, nagging worry, as well. Something just beyond recall.

  As I gradually enter the soothing, sparkling warmth, the green and blue become almost blinding, and I strain to make out their source. Feeling increasingly groggy in the sun-warmed waters, I almost fail to notice that the blue-green iridescence is closing behind me, sealing me into a dazzling embrace. What was that lyric Tree was singing? There was nothing about color but only water. And blood. Here is water aplenty, but no blood to speak of, except for—

  My own.

  Suddenly, my eyes detect a wave of movement in the blue-green sheen closing ever tighter around me—and I take hold of that certain nagging something beyond my recall. A rhyme, actually. Four beats, stress on the second. Beware the sheen of the blue and the green.

  At the last possib
le moment, I burst into explosive song, churning the surrounding waters and throwing off the simultaneous attack of thousands of needle-toothed carnivorous fish, their oily blue-green scales reflecting the overhead sun. I bolt from their midst but not before catching a fleeting flash of the numberless frenzied faces. Colorless. Pitiless. Uncannily telepathic. Julian.

  Putting on speed, I zip dolphin-like toward the cold, dark waters below, hoping that the teeming predators at my heels are not bottom-feeders. Then again, I know who I’m dealing with here. The manifold Julian Mancer gives spirited chase, and I realize that he is following a blood scent. Along my right side is the burn of salt in an open wound, and my hands go there, probing. Not too deep yet a problem. I realize that the next line Tree’s lips are poised to deliver is: From thy wounded side which flowed. I wonder if it’s too late to request “Okie from Muskogee.”

  “Did you think you could get rid of me so easily, my General?”

  The voice is almost familiar. Turning, I discover at my side the mocking smile of a young man, quite naked, his blond hair streaming behind him as he swims along my port side. Quite close behind us, the waters churn with the pursuit of countless needle-like teeth.

  “I couldn’t stand by and see you destroy yourself again, my General,” I am told telepathically. “Are you seriously wounded?”

  “Have we met?” I reply.

  “We have.”

  “Is it you who’s been trailing me? With an old score to even?”

  The young man gives his blonde head a shake. “With an old debt to repay, my General. I owe you everything.”

  “It was you who played the part of Truman?”

  “No time to talk, my General.” The young man nods toward the school of man-eaters nipping at our heels. “I don’t think you can out-swim these guys.”

  “Bicycling seems out of the question,” I reply.

  “Chapter Thirteen.”

  “Come again?”

  “As you’ve known all along,” says the young man, “the solution lies in Chapter Thirteen. See you at the Circular Mound Altar.”