*
VI
For twelve moons in that highest fortress the Knights of Bidgood had smoked the Holy Herb copiously, while Sir Moodye preserved his chastity and partook of none. He had spent his days in his room poring over the Meta-Testament, having read it nearly cover to cover. These past days his eyes had devoured the hymn Yesterday, the missive Dear Prudence, and The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill. Meticulously he made his way through the texts, trying to extract all understanding from the labyrinth of poetry. Yet when the thirteenth moon rose there came a knock upon the Whale Knight’s door. Beneath the dark robes that entered his stonework room was an towering elderly man with tattoos in place of hair.
Introducing himself as one of the clergy, he said, “You wish to learn his ways, so now you speak to Ormus. He was once a great mage yet now he lives as a trainer of neophytes. You have questions for him, I know, and you doubt in yourself. Ormus senses a strange dichotomy in you. He is able to read your heraldry, and know you to be the Knight of the Whale… yet aside from that, he senses that you are not the Knight of the Whale.” Down looked the liar-knight, shamed, opened his mouth to explain, but the mage did not pause for breath. “Ormus cares little who you are,” he said, “yet it is vital that you know who you are. Hearken unto Ormus and he shall in turn grant you wisdom. And he shall teach you to turn from him, to seek the wisdom in yourself.”
Thus did Ormus take Sir Moodye’s hand, instructing him in the gnosis of the Herb, and how to grind the leaf and put flame to it. Before long, both men had begun the time-honored process of taking the spirit of the herbs into their lungs. When they had finished some rounds of inhalation, the young knight was made to lie upon his bed and seal his eyes while the mage spoke softly over him. Very slowly and calmly Ormus intoned a guide to visualization, describing in great detail scenes from beneath the fathomless ocean, where true whales dwelt. Down and down into their abyssal homeland Sir Moodye, within his mind, sank.
* * *
His consciousness floated at the surface between worlds, as lonely as a man who sets his father’s body upon a pyre, until the distant priestly voice drew him deeper down into the shifting glass of the ocean’s depths. Fish flet about; squids and eels swam. They were the mystery-faces of a nightmare pantheon beyond the surface tension of the lands of death. His consciousness thought that it had died long ago, and time… time became a nameless entity. Through the currents of the underworld his lonely consciousness sank, nearly dissolving in the tides that cradle the world, yet tenaciously caught by some far-off chanting that slid through the water. And a song grew inside him then — and that song was me inside of him — and his small consciousness answered that song with his own melody, crying out with all the eloquence of an underwater oboe. Visions came unbidden through the darkness carried by the medium of song: visions of planets rotating, cells dividing, and the revelation of the endless pattern that binds all Cycles together. His consciousness swoll to great size and created a body for him borne beneath the distant broken sunlight, large as an island and supportive of life. Colonies of well-meaning barnacles rooted themselves to his flesh and depended on him as all things are bound to one another. He felt the whisper of crustaceans across his secret skin and knew that they hummed in harmony. There was darkness below, and the Whale descended seeking some ineffable noise: a speech, or a song, or something, or many things intertwined. Through a cloud of blue-silver tuna he hovered, ever deeper, and the memory of sunlight became a gallery of mirrors upon their scales. Below the school and through all the living oceans of the world he swam until the darkness of the depths devoured every prying beam of sun. The elusive song led the Whale through hidden coral beds and places where the very noxious life shone with inner resolve. A congregation of shrimp lit their way by virtue alone through the wrecks of nether cities done away by greed, and somewhere perhaps were the sunken secrets of Cymru. Stalking eels watched the questing shrimp as bio-luminescent passions glew on their backs in the black.
When the world whispered like this, the faintest cloying of song cried more mournful to the Whale than any man-made instrument. Within the tone was a yearning kindred lost, some siblings shorn apart perhaps by nothing more than distance. Beneath the ocean where secrets sleep, mistrust rippled as thick as the veiny beds of coral. And upon those crags upon the bottom of the sea, the Whale did see a swimming form that remound him of friends left behind… and of the lies he had told in order to wear false robes. It was the Manta-Ray he saw there, soaring searchingly over the current-tossed dunes and in and out of remnants of drowned epochs. Deformed by flimsy lies were these sunken temples, and the humility of the forgiving ocean plagued the Whale’s heart. He had no choice but follow his friend the Manta-Ray through the ruins of forgotten religions. Through darkness the dissimilar animals swam as kindred, and as slow as leagues the love-wound song rounded their hearts as might a wreath. Though still through rolling hills of swaying kelp and coral they glid, a light began to shine as if some wasted shrine in the depth bore an ageless jewel. Is this it? thought the buried mind of the Whale. Is this the mysterious Wreath for which we all have been searching? Is our Reincarnation at hand? Closer to that singing glow, the Whale followed the Manta-Ray until they had both swept into the valley from whence it beckoned.
White columns that had been picked bone-clean lay tumbled like a library of ghosts in the oceanic temple, over-grown with wishing-weeds and eels. Beneath the stones that eternally bathed in living water, the light the duo followed was like fingertips bleeding golden streams into an eternity of ink. The barnacles across the Whale’s behemoth belly began to hum soft harmonies with the illuminating sound. The Manta-Ray’s soaring brought the duo down to the buildings of an ancient submerged city surveyed by corals that did spiral through the once-great testaments of man. There was much to be found at the watery edge of mystery, and the Whale was not deterred from drifting dreamily towards the enigmatic source of song they sought. What powers lie sleeping at this nexus of worlds? Never would I have guessed that the Wreath lay in the final corner of this dream-sea. Now, glow your depths to me, for I shall place you upon my brow. Closer swam the insignificant titan in a horizonless universe as the barnacles sang with tabernacle light, causing the visible spectrum to blossom. He lowered himself beneath the eroded marble hood of this sunken temple to gaze with asteroid eyes at the source of all harmony. He longed to place the glowing laurels on his cetaceanous brow; was desperate for the complete understanding he sought and so dearly yearned for. Though he wasn’t yet ready for such enlightenment, with a Whale’s perspective he discovered how easily the hearts of men might be drawn frivolously upon invisible currents of fate and so found in those secret oceans the sacred mystical power to forgive himself.
And then the water was a vapor, was a rainbow, was a shadow, and through gaining form became meaningless once again. The myself-beyond-Sir-Moodye put back on his Sir Moodye mask and faced the world he knew, as guiding Ormus brought him back from the oceans of his imagining.
“I… have it,” said the Whale Knight dreamily. “The Wreath of Reincarnation, just as King Bidgood claimed I would.”
“Awake fair knight, you are still a-dream. Waken, alas, you have nothing.”
“Only a dream?” Sir Moodye sat up in his bed and looked around the stonework cell granted to him by the priests of the Green Gate. He smelled the incense of the herb. He looked at his fingers, front and back, then he felt around his head where laurels were not. “I was so certain I had found it…”
“You have explored no true lands, recovered no true artefacts. This dream was an exploration of your own heart, and in its depths did you discover this gift. This is the first step of many, and after a rest perhaps Ormus shall proceed with you in the ways of magic. For now, let there only be sleep.” So it was that the kindly old priest left Sir Moodye to slip into a hazy burnt-out slumber that cleansed his mind from the pangs of thought.
* * *
Seventeen more moons died with surprising haste, and the thirtieth moon now rose invisible over the Green Gate — the new-moon of the ritual had arriven. Having rounded his cycle of learning, Sir Moodye in his now voluminous black beard donned the pitch robe grown accustomed to neophytes, and when the great organ bellowed from the heart of the mountain he shuffled into the hall cloaked in his cowl: a soul among souls. The many uniform cloaks flowed like a river of night down the corridors into a circular room of stone deep inside the fortress. All assembled themselves in a double-rowed circle around a the center pit where stood the High Priest and his Mistress, the most clairvoyant of all remaining witches. Her true name was understood by few for she was the keeper of secrets long buried, but to all and sundry she was known as the Weird One. She stood tall and pale and ageless in her seer’s shroud, with the frame of a serpent and celestial eyes plucked from the very night.
When all had gathered inside and become silent, a trio of hooded gas alchemists crept about bringing torches to the center pit. The pungent Silver Spring’s aroma drifted to Sir Moodye as flames crackled to life, and he understood that within the pit lay a grand harvest of the Holy Herb. When the bonfire billowed to the High Priest’s liking, one gas alchemist heaved a heavy scepter into an ornate gong, and so signaled the initiation of the ritual.
There was silence at first, thick heavy silence and aroma as all inhaled deeply of the encompassing vapor. Sir Moodye let himself drift away with the smoke and mingle about into all the room, letting his cares and confusions slip away. In that eternal moment, he cared only for the drum of his heart and the pulse of his breath, and the souls of all the world. Then, beyond Sir Moodye’s sight, there came a woman’s voice — the Weird One speaking shrouded words:
Oho Mana Haka We!
Talbuga, We, Talbuga-Ga!
Talbuga, Talbuga, Talbuga-Ga!
Talbuga, Talbuga, Talbuga-Ga We!
This echoed again and again in the rough chanting of the gas alchemists as they kindled heartbeats in a deep drum, summoning the rhythm of life to the hypnotized coven. Over the coarse chanting, the Weird One began her song ghostlike and strange: the song of the tundra or the haunted bed of the shining ocean, or of dreams lost upon waking. As she sang she also danced, and the eyes of the High Priest were entranced. He stared at the writhing body of the Weird One through cascades of holy smoke and song, and he fell through disillusionment with this Cycle and into the unity of its beyond.
And the High Priest’s consciousness expanded to fill the room, engulfing his clergy including Sir Moodye among them, and all present shared his vision. Time and space were naked: that hypnogogic state allowed the High Priest to shear away the illusory flesh from their island’s eternal life-force. The consciousness of the Whale seeing his island from a hawk’s-eye view for the first time — a satellite’s-eye view and an astronaut’s-eye view — was struck by a ringing multitude of coincidences in a single instant. The coastlines of the Merry Land, the whole Island of Britain against the black sea, he saw, was a perfect depiction of his own self. The priest’s and witch’s scryings revealed a great juncture of power hidden all along behind the drossy meat, and Sir Moodye saw it too at the location of his heart’s deepest desires — a great spiraling pulsar of brilliance that, once exposed, called out to him. He sunk involuntarily as if he had felt this all before, though never he had. When the beacon in his heart had been found and recognized, the coven gasped an ecstatic “O!” as they all were pulled into a single rapturous moment. Directions to that earth-borne star became etched in Sir Moodye’s mind, and the coven basked in the pleasure of knowledge until the charcoal fires in their minds were snuffed by the bite of dawn.
After hours of the night had passed, the oneironauts woke from their trance like a murder of stiff-legged crows blinking the little bits of remaining dream away from their eyes. With exhausted minds and bodies the contented coven set off for their individual beds as one, their revelries a memory for fate to recollect and examine after the alluring promises of sleep. A chill morrow began to break upon these fierce zeniths, yet the inhabitants of the lonely bastion were protected by the insulation of her heavy walls, and the High Priest and the Weird One passed into dreamless slumber together beside the dying holy fire.