...so well as by reflection, I, your glass,
will modestly discover to yourself,
that of yourself which you yet know not of."
I hesitated at the archway, and the Lady of the Garden stood before me. She had pale skin, and was tall, almost alien in height. Her eyes were faintly curved, with a delicate ashen fold, and her hair was the black of Chaos. Her lips were a beautiful mint colour. Her kimono was also black, with green designs I could not make out, and to stare at them made me feel...strange.
"Go forth," she said. Her voice was like my mother's, but not quite. Sister of my grandmother, perhaps? The thought skipped across my mind like a rock skittering across the surface of a pool. "Go forth, at your own peril." The first was invitation, but this sentence was a warning.
I took the step. It was peril to go forth, but peril too to remain at the periphery.
The black robe floated past us in the water. She guided me with the green streamers that were what she wore, crisscrossing in lines against her white body, more otter in the water than dolphin. Her green eyes expressed solemnity, but she was laughing at me. We flew more than swam in the skin-temperature waters.
"You are seeking your doom," she sang.
"Only to destroy it," I said, with a sudden passion.
"It will be an interesting battle. The victor and the victim," she seemed to want to observe it, but for now she hovered, at gates crafted of iron and shell, showing lightning from the sky crafted into a trident splitting two cities, one above and one below. I watched as the gates opened for her, the green of her streamers rippling under the light from the surface.
We went through the gate, but then I was in another place. This woman wore red and black, and her hair was red, and blue lightning crackled across her fingertips and knuckles as if a pet of sorts. She gathered it up in one hand, and waved me in with the other. Another hand stuck out of her black and red robes and gestured for a drink of black wine.
I took the ruby goblet and drank deep.
"You are searching for the wrong thing," she warned. Her voice was like Aisling's.
"Perhaps I am looking in the wrong places," I countered.
"Alas, you will find it."
"I will make it mine," I challenged.
She smiled, and took the empty glass with one of her right arms, and then my hand with the other, leading me into the fire. I walked into it, and it got brighter, the sparks turning into snow, and I walked up the hill in the darkness, to where the third waited.
She was dressed in white, with blue trimmings. She was as tall as the two others, and in her hand lay a crystal. In the crystal was the image of a young woman I did not recognize, soft and dreaming. The woman in the crystal woke, hand raised to her hair, as if startled. The vision faded, and I spoke aloud, "Does she see your dreams?"
"All of them. Her sister's children, and the children's children, and unto the fourth generation."
"Is there a horn that glitters on her head?" I was being sarcastic.
"The same one that could shine on your own," she said. I could not tell if she was sincere. She spoke again. "Beyond the ridge you will find what lies inside."
"Is it what I seek?"
She smiled enigmatically, but I walked over the pass, and the sun rose with me, keeping pace with my footsteps.
In the cavern stood a man, with red hair and a wicked red beard. He laughed, and the fear rose within me. I knew him, but it was not this man that I knew. He sat down on an obsidian throne.
"I am what lies inside," he said.
"You are what lies," I corrected.
"Ah, but you are here to take my place." With that sentence is all that would be challenged, the cycle of father to son, to devil inside. He sounded like Bleys.
"Whose doom is whose?" I wondered aloud, before awaking.
Posted by Meera at August 31, 2004 01:38 PM