I looked up at him then. “And do you think I couldn’t take it on?”
“No, I don’t think that at all. But you already know that. And you know that it has got to be your decision. None of us can make you. But I can try my best to persuade you,” he added, with a smile.
Then his face became serious again. “Yes, I do think you can take this on. I feel that. And this isn’t Laila, Eve. This is an entirely different situation.
“You aren’t a little girl who found herself in an unwinnable situation. You are grown now, and you have choices in front of you. You can make whichever one feels right for you. No one is going to force you into anything.”
I glanced at him rather sharply then, wondering what else he knew, but he seemed surprised by my reaction, so I relaxed.
“If you do go into this, don’t go into it thinking you are trying to save Laila, Eve. You might as well throw yourself into a torture chamber. It will feel too painful, too full of guilt and doubt, and you couldn’t bear it if we don’t succeed. This isn’t Laila – do you see that?”
I nodded vigorously. Of course I nodded. And of course, if I did this, I would be doing it for Laila, for reparation, for my own redemption. How else could it possibly be?
Raul sighed. “Oh god, I don’t want this to pull you apart, Eve.” He ran his fingers through his hair, and looked down at the soil beneath us. “You shouldn’t do this if you are doing it for those reasons. I can’t let you.”
“I think it is about time I decided my own reasons for doing things, even when that makes other people uncomfortable. I’m not saying they are the right reasons, but they are at least mine right now. If they are compelling me to action, then, god, I’m going to follow that feeling, because it is feeling. And I’ve missed feeling. I’ve been acting for so long, but this is so different. Same word, entirely different meaning. I am going to stop acting, and start to act.
“And you don’t have to ‘let’ me. That is for me to do. You just have to respect me.”
Raul gave the warmest smile, that lit me up from inside, and he subtly inclined his head in concession.
Everyone carries a shadow,
and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life,
the blacker and denser it is.
Carl Gustav Jung
Enanti: the present
Wings
A week later, Lara pulled the bandages away reverently, unwrapping me slowly. I felt different. Not just better, although the pain had completely gone from my shoulders, but different. I eased my shoulders up and down, expecting some stiffness, but there was none.
“They are here,” Lara whispered.
I turned to look at her. “Who is here?”
She smiled at me and stroked my shoulders gently. “These are here.”
I turned my head as far as I could, and caught a glimpse of something dark and shining, just under my nose. My adrenaline surged. “What is that on my back?” I asked urgently, frightened.
“Your wings, Eve. They are growing back.”
* * *
Later that day, I went into my tent to be alone. My mind was straining under the burden of the last few days, and all that had happened. I had kept my new wings hidden from view all day, uncertain what to do with them, and strangely shy about their being seen. They felt peculiar and astonishing. Every time I thought of them, I felt a thrill go through me, a hunger that I couldn’t understand. “You are starting to heal,” Lara had said to me that morning.
I had been told on and off through my life that I ‘had healed’. But how do you learn to live without those you love? People say that time heals. Not true. Time just allows you to scab over, to find new ways of being in the world, to survive. But that isn’t healing. It is stasis. Longing for them back every day, bracing yourself for the future, tortured by the past. Each day takes you further away from them, and more than half of you wants to stay where you are – that bit closer to them than you will be tomorrow.
Never hope to return to the state you were in before. Let go of that dream. It will drive you mad. That state has gone for you. Chasing after it is a fool’s hope; a butterfly, always out of reach. The only way is forward, to squeeze through those thin corridors of pain, and hope to emerge on the other side.
I am still not sure which is the greater betrayal: to move ever further away from them, carried along helplessly in the currents of time, struggling to stay but condemned to go, or to move on willingly, embrace what you have left, and let them go. I don’t even know how you do that. Both seem sacrilegious. So I drift in no-man’s land. I can’t go forwards. I can’t go back. I am stuck here, and I don’t know what here is.
I feel them, every day. I can feel their forms in the shapes they left behind when they disappeared. If only I could recreate them from those shapes, those moulds. But I know it doesn’t work like that. Still, I am left with eternal indentations in me, around me, the shapes that they were, the way their fabric was interwoven with mine. The way I had grown around their supporting threads. And now mine looks strange, fabric hanging oddly, missing more than half of its pieces, its warps and wefts, forever bent around shapes that no one else can see. That no one else can make sense of. But that is my shape. That is what I am left with. That is who I am.
* * *
I removed my jacket, and twisted around to see my wings in the mirror in the corner. I gasped. There they were, small and dark on my shoulders.
“They are beautiful,” said a voice from the shadows, and Raul stepped into the light. I gasped again; I hadn’t known anyone was in here.
“I had to see them for myself. Lara told me a few days ago what she hoped. When I saw her this morning, I asked her how it had gone for you. I had to see.” He smiled ruefully. “I am normally patient, but not today.”
He stepped closer, reaching out with his hand, and touched my wings lightly.
“They are beautiful, Eve. They are a part of you.”
“What is happening Raul? I mean, that’s the obvious question, isn’t it, but also I mean so much more. Like, they are there, but they are tiny; I can’t use them. Why are they there?”
“They are there because they are a part of you. A growing part of you. They were always a part of you. You were born with wings, Eve. Life cut them off from you. Over time you stopped remembering they had been there. They wouldn’t be growing back without you being a part of it.”
“But what is happening to me?” I asked him, urgently.
“You are simply coming back to life, back to yourself. Nothing strange is happening, Eve. This is how it should be.”
“But I can feel so much, hear things I shouldn’t be able to. It’s as if the whole world is calling out to me.”
Raul smiled at that: “It is. It always was, but you chose to turn the volume down. Now you can feel things in their true form again. It is a special gift, Eve; you shouldn’t fear it.”
“But it feels overwhelming. It feels as if there is too much going on for me to keep up with, keep aware of. If I can’t make sense of it all, then what sort of gift is that?”
“It is one that you will learn to handle, learn to tune into. Your instincts are right; you just need to trust them. All this stuff that you are pulling in, even if you don’t feel you can make sense of it, you will be forming an instinctive response to it inside. Trust that, Eve. That is the gift.”
“What do I do with it all in the meantime? How can I switch it off when I need to?” I asked.
“You’ll find that you will learn to control it better, be able to amp it up when you need to. But even on quiet, you won’t miss a thing; the volume will just be easier for you. And when it is all crashing through you, you’ll know what to do with all that.”
Raul paused, and then looked at me directly. The lantern light caught his furs, like paint roughly brushed over a surface, catching just the t
ips. “You have a place in you that can absorb everything. It is your well, like an inner pool or sea. You’ve always pulled everything into that place for many years, without even realising it. If you hadn’t, you would not have survived. You’ve pulled it all in, good and bad, absorbed it all and held it. It is down there, below the surface of that inner sea, and you can go there and visit it whenever you need. Until then, it holds it all for you, and allows you to function.”
He paused, and then: “And your wings will get big enough to use, if you let them. You need to rest, eat well, and just let them grow.
Good night, Eve.” And he turned and left.
Enanti: the present
Trying to fly
A few miles’ hike towards the east, the trees of the immense forest petered out, making way for grasses which led down to dramatic cliffs. This was the eastern edge of Enanti, where the land plunged downwards into the sea.
I stared out from the cliff tops, over the sea. It roiled and sucked below me. Such intense dynamism close up, and yet such aching calm at the flat horizon. I needed both right now. I needed the complexity of right here. Here, where two worlds, two elements meet. I felt so much, and I needed to be where I could give voice to those feelings.
I slipped my hand into the little pouch I had tied to my belt, and closed my eyes as my fingers slipped around the piece of sea glass. I rubbed it with my thumb, and then lifted it out. I held it in my hand as I looked at the cliff line stretching away from me on both sides. The sea waves kept up their assault. I let my mind drift. Here, the sea is gradually abrading and corroding the land, wearing it down. Cutting it and carving it. It throws weaponry that it has stolen from the land, and uses it to take more. It shapes the land, scouring it raw, but creates things of such beauty. Destructive yet creative. Damaging but healing. The carved out legacies of erosion – arches, caves, stacks – have an eerie beauty in their transitory form. They can still be beautiful, still hold a magnetic power, while being worn away, bit by bit, changed eternally in a huge cycle, ultimately returning to dress the beach in powder sand.
The clash of two worlds is a powerful place. One, perpetually doomed to be worn down by the other, yet retaining its own ability, too, to build itself anew. And the watery embrace that erodes it, clasps the land from around the entire globe. Little pieces of rock, broken off and swallowed by the sea, become limitless travellers. Once broken off from home, they journey out into the infinite, and take on new forms, find new homes. Perhaps only when we are broken off from everything, are we truly free. They are free.
And then there is the sky. Where two such seemingly limitless entities meet – sea and sky – there is a special sense of the infinite. Definites seem to dissolve away. Things seem more possible: special things could happen. There is the feeling of a portal here, to all the secrets of the universe, to all the people we have loved, to all the enormity of loss. Here it feels relevant, not out of step. I stand in the wind and it understands me.
I had a visceral sense of touching the truth – the essence of life. Being separated by just a breath. I reached out with my fingers into the wind and gently touched the veil between here and other, feeling the fabric brush across my fingertips, yielding and soft.
From here, we could step off this cliff and take off in flight, know something beyond this world, this life. Break free, break these limits, ‘shaking off this mortal coil’ in a very different sense.
I watched as a seagull flew over my head, to the edge of the cliff. I felt a rush of pleasure. I watched as the gull took the shift of worlds in his stride, an effortless transition as the cliffs fell away, and he soared onwards, over the sea. If anything, the shift from land to sea actually boosted his flight – the uplift taking him higher as he left the safety of the land. I wanted to step off too; make that transition; live higher.
I felt exhilaration, pure joy and a promise of freedom. I felt as if I could just step off this cliff top into a bigger life, a greater consciousness, a new way of being. It all felt so tantalisingly close. There is something here, at this junction of worlds – land, sea and sky – that is waiting to be discovered, pulling me back here until I find it.
I suddenly realised that part of me already lived in this precious space, inhabited the infinite, and was simply waiting for the rest of me to join it. Otherwise I would never have recognised it; would not have heard the call. There was a sense of coming home – if I could find the way.
At the very edge of the world, we find the limits change. We find ourselves. We get a sense of the eternal. We find we are just at the start of something, not the end. I could feel the whole world calling out to me.
***
Sensing someone approaching me from behind, I turned, as Raul walked up next to me. I could feel his anticipation.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
He smiled, “One day, you will stop asking that question.” He paused for a long while, and then, gently: “This place is special to you, isn’t it? It speaks to you.”
“Yes,” I replied, simply, unsure of how much he already knew, but knowing that somehow he didn’t need an explanation.
“And it is here that you will try to fly.”
“I’m not ready!” I burst out, shocked.
“You are, Eve, you were born able to fly; you’ve just forgotten. And I know you’ve dreamed of stepping off right here – stepping off into another element. And you can.
“And you must be able to fly soon. We need you up in the air. It just can’t work without that.”
I didn’t know what to say. My mind was racing, and I could feel the panic pumping through my body. I wasn’t ready. My wings were not big enough, and they couldn’t possibly support me. I was able to move them now, and have some control over them, but I was far off having the confidence to control them up in the air. The most I had done was beat them, extend them, feel a little lift from the ground. I didn’t know what to say to Raul. I knew he was right about the battle that was coming. I knew they needed me to be up in the air but I hadn’t known it was coming so soon. I didn’t want to let him down, but I couldn’t fly yet.
“You can,” he said simply, “and it is not to do with letting me down. It is never to do with letting me down, Eve. This is about you, and yourself. It is not about me. As long as you are true to yourself, you couldn’t let me down. Even if that means doing something that harmed me, you wouldn’t be letting me down.”
“I would never harm you!” I was shocked that he had said it; thought it, even.
He took my hand, and enclosed it in his.
“You would never intend to harm me; I know that. But there may come a time when for you to do the right thing means that I must be expendable. And you must do the right thing then, Eve. And do it well.”
I didn’t like hearing this, so I turned away and continued to the edge of the cliff. Raul came to stand with me, and we looked out over the sea together.
“I can’t do it,” I whispered.
“You may not do it this time, but you can,” came his reply. I could hear the resolve in him. He fully believed I could. “You need to trust the wind, Eve. The wind will take you under your wings, and you will fly. If you don’t trust the wind, it won’t work. Eventually you’ll learn to trust yourself. And if you can’t, you won’t fall far. You are completely safe; I will catch you.”
“OK. I’ll try.” I think we both knew my tentative response wasn’t the attitude I was hoping for on my first flight, but I was full of doubt as I walked up to the edge.
I closed my eyes, and breathed in the salty tang. It sharpened my mind, and when I opened my eyes again, I felt there was a chance.
“When you are ready, Eve, you need to open your wings, and step off.”
I unfurled my wings, their presence still felt strange, but I also experienced the shard of exhilaration and hunger I felt every time I moved them. I had not yet lea
rned to stow them away completely out of sight when I wasn’t using them. I opened them out, and turned my head to see them extend. I was still mesmerised by the sight of them, the feel of them. I felt like a toddler staring transfixed at her own hands, unable to comprehend that she could control these wriggling appendages. I beat them up and down slowly, once, twice, stirring the air. The light caught on their feathers, and I saw the flashes of indigo, teal, turquoise, cobalt. My colours, the colours of the sea and sky. I wanted Raul to be proud of me.
I clutched his arm as I stood there at the edge of the earth.
“Eve,” he said softly.
“What?” I asked, face tight.
He caught my gaze and drew it down to the sight of my hand on his arm. My fingers were clenched, clawing into him in such a way that my knuckles had turned almost blue.
“You’re holding on so tight that you are cutting off your blood supply,” he said softly, looking straight at me now.
I turned to face outwards. Releasing his arm carefully, I flexed my fingers back to life. I let myself feel the wind rushing up the cliff face, and under my extending wings, giving me lift. The wind that knew me so well. I hesitated, and then stepped off into the sky.
With my wings fully extended, I glided out over the sea, dipping a little. I tried to correct the dip, but it made things worse. I felt the wind start to lift me under my shoulders, but it felt strange, and I panicked. The sensation under my wings was so foreign to me that I jerked away from it. I pulled them in sharply, which sent me tumbling downwards. The sea rushed up towards me at terrifying speed. I screamed as I plummeted down. Then my trajectory abruptly shifted as I was hauled upwards. Raul’s arms were around me, and I clung to him as he landed us on the beach below.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, as I sat heavily on the sand. “You tried, and you will keep on trying.”
“But I couldn’t do it; I wasn’t ready.”
The Shifting Pools Page 11
