Kneeling, he laid his bundle on the sandy cavern floor.  Slowly, almost reverentially, he began to unwind the folds of blue flannel.  A glint of gold gleamed forth from beneath the soft layers of fabric as he pulled them aside.  Then, with something approaching tenderness, he drew the shining object from its humble shroud and held it up to the light.

It was a sword.  A long blue sword with a large gilded pommel and an ornate, deeply curved crossguard.  For a moment he stood regarding it with a steady eye.  He turned it over and over, studying it intently, a warm glow of excitement and hope rising in the pit of his stomach.  If Eny had been present, she would have seen a slow, satisfied smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

He knew it was no ordinary sword.  Not in the least ordinary, though he had found it in the commonest, obscurest spot imaginable—the umbrella rack behind the door of Madame Medea’s shop.  At just the right moment it had offered itself to him on that night of nights when the dark-haired woman, her green-eyes blazing, stunned him with those knife-edged words:  Do not prove as useless as your father!

No one else seemed to know the sword was there—not even Madame Medea herself.  And that was odd, for somehow Morgan had sensed in an instant that he’d made the discovery of a lifetime.  In that moment his heart had told him that this sword would alter his fortunes in ways he couldn’t foresee.  And this hunch had been confirmed almost immediately when he saw her lumbering henchman cower and flinch before the glittering blade.

From the alchemy shop he had carried it out into the storm, where it flashed in the night with a light of its own.  With a grim smile Morgan replayed the scene in his mind.  Once again in his imagination he looked upon the astonished faces of Baxter Knowles and his gang as they watched the sword carve the darkness in a wide electric blue arc.  He laughed, and the cavern walls rang softly, as he pictured the bullies turning and high-tailing it through the slanting rain.

No.  It was no ordinary sword.  If ever there was an object belonging to Eny’s Other World—as native to that world as the Stone of Destiny itself—it had to be this remarkable sword.  That’s why he’d been holding on to it all this time.  That’s why he’d kept it secret and hidden from prying eyes.  That’s why, after much deliberation, he had carried it over the rocky trails of La Punta Lira, down through the stone archway at the head of the Laguna, and up the pebbly strand to the Cave of the Hands.

Gripping the hilt with both hands, he turned to face the two boulders at the rear of the chamber.

She knows something about my father.  After everything that had happened, Morgan was more determined than ever to find the man who had vanished from his life while he was still a toddler.  And he was convinced that the green-eyed woman could show him the way.

Straining his powers of vision as if by sheer effort he could pierce the barrier of solid rock behind the two round stones, he planted his feet firmly in the sand and raised the sword above his head.  Then he closed his eyes and whispered words into the silent darkness.

“I have seen this sword do wonders,”he said.  “I know it can do wonders again.  Reveal to me now the way to Eny’s Sidhe!”

He opened his eyes.  The sword gleamed dully in the dim light.  Nothing had changed.

Remembering the Arabian Nights and the story of Ali Baba, he aimed its point directly at the space between the pair of boulders.  Then he spoke in a loud commanding voice:  “Open!”

Nothing happened.  He waited a minute more.  The back wall of the cave was as solid and gray as ever.  Not a crack or a gap to be seen.  No gateway opening onto a tunnel of light.

Morgan’s heart fell.  Seizing a lock of his own yellow hair, he pulled it hard and kicked a pebble from one side of the cave to the other.  He threw himself against the cavern wall and beat it with his fist.

And then, in that dismal moment, he suddenly recalled everything his mother had told him about the power of prayer and faith.  Brightening, he bent down on one knee, stuck the sword point into the sand, and bowed his head upon the hilt as if it were a cross.

“I believe!” he said earnestly.  “I believe this sword belongs to the Other World!  I believe I have found the key that will open the door!  Answer my prayer!  Take me there now!  Show me where I can find my dad!”

Nothing but the sound of water dripping in the silence.

Slowly Morgan got to his feet.  His heart was pounding.  His hands shook.  His eyes were dim.  Sweat dripped from his brow and he seemed to see a cloud of red haze shimmering in the air before him.

All at once he lunged forward, straight at the place where the boulders stood at the foot of the sloping wall.  With a cry he flung up the sword.  With another he brought it crashing down upon the nearest of the two rocks.  Up flew the blue sparks.  Backwards rebounded the ringing blade, stinging the palms of his hands like fire.  So furious was the assault that he was hurled to the floor by the recoiling force of the blow.  For a moment he lay there, still as death, listening to the silvery reverberations echoing off the walls and fading away into the deeper recesses of the grotto.

Then he rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in the crook of his arm.

September.

To anybody of an even slightly imaginative or otherworldly bent, perhaps the least enchanting, least picturesque time of the year in Santa Piedra.

September in Santa Piedra is intensely normal.  Everything is out in the open.  The light is clear.  The air is free of swirling mists.  The sun shines bravely from morning till night, its yellow beams splintering off the great Rock and sparkling over the wave-tips of the Inlet.  The shops along Front Street stand neatly in a row, brightly colored, sharply outlined, undeniably real in the afternoon glare.  The sky is blue, the beach is white, the cliffside caves lie open to the probing fingers of the sunlight.  Gone are the shadows and secrets that lurked beneath the fogs of spring and summer.

Morgan felt all of this keenly as he came slogging through the shallow surf at the foot of La Punta Lira, a long blue bundle tucked tightly under his right arm.  Somehow he knew—he could smell it in the air and taste it on his tongue—that the magic of May and June had departed with the mists.  He had no idea how to get it back, and he wasn’t sure he could make his plan work without it.  But he was convinced he had to try.

Pausing in the ankle-deep water, he shoved a strand of straw-colored hair out of his eyes and squinted up at the black hole gaping down at him from the base of the cliff.  He could feel his heart thumping beneath his ribs.  He could taste the salt of his own sweat mingling with the salt of the damp sea air.  Rubbing his nose with a briny knuckle, he glanced back through the slanting sunlight at the amber glow lying upon the town on the far side of the bay.  Then, tightening his grip on the blue bundle, he marched up over the strand, his red tennis shoes squelching with sea water as he went.

She knows something about my father, he said to himself as the pebbles crunched noisily beneath his feet.  ‘He was taken.’  And she knows where.

Morgan, of course, had never been of a particularly otherworldly turn of mind.  For him, September had always been a season of discontent chiefly because school was in session again.  School still played a big part in the shaping of his mood.  But in another way things were different this year.  This year he was looking at his situation from an altered point of view.  It’s hard not to be otherworldly when you’ve had a glimpse of another world.

Trudging up to the mouth of the cave, he stooped down and peered inside.  Yes.  This was the place.  La Cueva de los Manos, the Cave of the Hands—his best friend Eny’s secret retreat, her private “laughing place,” her home away from home.  He knew it by the ancient painting on the inner wall, the work of artists who had plied their trade four thousand years before his time:  a cloud of ruddy hand-prints pressed upon the dark gray stone in rust-red ochre—hundreds of human hands reaching towards the cavern ceiling with long, thin fingers like tongues of living flame.

Eny had actually been to that other world.  By her own account, she had entered it through an opening at the back side of this very cave.  Descending through tendrils and coils of light—or so the story went—she had found her way into a marvelous land under the ground where she had lived with dwarves, encountered giants, sojourned among fairy folk, and fled from a dark enchantress.

As for Morgan, he believed it.  Practical and worldly as he was, he could no longer doubt that what she said was true.  He had, after all, seen the giants himself.  Quite apart from his own plans and purposes, he had been caught up in a whirlwind of enchantments and paranormal adventures.  He, too, had played a role in the unfolding of uncanny events.  And so, for him, blind unbelief was not an option.

Standing there at the mouth the cave, he cast his mind back over the things he had witnessed in the time of the summer mists.  Angels on the stairway and flying ships in the air.  The catastrophic battle for Lia Fail, the fabled Stone of Destiny.  The fall of the tower of St. Halistan’s church.  The seizure and abduction of the Stone.  Morgan knew that the strange woman who called herself Madame Medea had taken it.  He knew that she had fled with it into the depths of that other world, a place Eny called the Sidhe.  It was to find a way into that world and to hunt down that inscrutable woman that he had come to this hole in the cliff at the edge of the western sea.  This, he believed, was his destiny.  And he was determined to fulfill it.

She knows something about my father, he muttered again as he ducked inside the cave and stood on the threshold, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light.  When he could see clearly, he cast his gaze from one side of the chamber to the other, carefully scanning the cavern walls.  No opening was discernible.

Hoisting up his bundle, he stepped to the face of the rock and pressed his fingertips against the fingers of the painted hands.  The moment he touched them he felt a tingle like an electric charge run up his spine.  The hair stood up on the back of his neck.  Now we’re getting somewhere! he thought.  

Without breaking the connection between his skin and the cool, damp surface of the rock, he followed the wall back into the furthest corner of the cavern.  At length he came to a place where the dripping ceiling sloped down to meet the floor in a hollow space behind two squat boulders.  A spark of recognition flashed through his brain.

Yes, he thought, recounting the details of Eny’s narrative for the hundredth time.  This has to be the spot where she found the tunnel of light.  It fits the description exactly!  But whatever Eny’s experience may have been on that spring day so long ago, he could discover no trace of any such passage now.

Slumping against the wall, he passed a weary hand over his forehead.  If only Eny were here now!  She could explain the next step.  He was sure she would be able to show him the way.  But Eny, too, was gone.  Gone with the enchantment.  Gone with Lia Fail.  Gone with the ever-elusive mystery of summer’s shrouding fogs.

Well, then.  He’d just have to try another tack.  He certainly wasn’t going to give up now.  This dead-end was not going to stop him—not if he had anything to say about it.  Experience had taught him better.  That’s why, keenly mindful of the many times his hopes and dreams had fallen flat, he’d come armed with a backup strategy.  He had one more trick up his sleeve, a plan he’d been revolving in his mind all summer long.  He’d thought about it long and hard, but it had taken him until now to drum up the courage to put it to the test.

(To be continued…)

Day 30

Thirty white lines scrawled on the black and dripping wall.  Thirty days and counting.  So long, by my reckoning (and without these scratches I would long ago have lost all track of time) have I languished in this watery tomb.

 Thirty times through the orbed splendor of the rolling astrum has the sun, unseen by me, pursued his endless journey, a perpetual fixity in perpetual motion.  Even now, I suppose, he must be shining in the glad Somewhere beyond both Underworld and Overworld, riding high above the impenetrable heap of rock over my head. 

It must be so.  But what does it matter?  I mark the passage of time by the renewal of my bread and water alone.  Neither cloud nor sky, moon nor star can pierce the dimness of my dungeon.  Thirty days have I lain hidden from the light of the outside world.      

I knew it would go hard with me when I refused her demands.  I had no idea how hard.  I never imagined how far she would go to wring the secret from me.  Perhaps things would have gone differently if I’d taken a different tack.  Perhaps. 

Even now the memory of that last night looms before me.  I see myself standing at the window.  I watch the white hand of mist overspread the moony sky.  I remember how it shaded from gray to black as it blotted out the stars and burst into my study.

When next I knew anything at all, I was lying in this pit, calling upon my wife and child.  They did not answer.  For days my only comfort lay in summoning up the image of their faces.  Now I can no longer bring it to mind.                 

As I write, there is a scrabbling behind the damp wall-stones in the corner.  Something vile scuttles across the grimy, stinking floor.  The tin plate rattles at my side.  The Something makes off with the last of my daily ration—a moldy biscuit and a rancid bacon rind.  I shrug my shoulders and curse the darkness.  What more can I do?  My tears were all cried out long ago.        

Maria Prophetissa!  That’s what she called herself in the beginning.  I told her how my investigations into the meanings of words had led me into a quest for all knowledge.  She said I could achieve nothing until I grasped the inner essences and properties of things.  She assured me that once I had gained such knowledge—which she alone could give—I would be a true artist, a full-fledged mage.  I believed her. 

Besides the vermin, hunger is my only companion.  It gnaws my belly even as the rats gnaw my food.  I am shattered like a broken reed.  I am pressed down and poured out like water.  The deeps surround me.  My head is wrapped in sorrows.  It is she who has reduced me to this state.   

Maria Prophetissa.  Of course it was a lie.  By the time I realized it, I had gone too far.  And yet, here in the darkness, I begin to see that I have not lost quite everything.  In this black hole I have been granted at least one small glimmer of light.  I know now that the promises I swallowed were hollow and vain.  And that in itself is something.  That in itself is a morsel of bitter but incontestable truth.   

Here in this prison, where the sun never shines, I have come at last to know her as she is.  I have found her out.  I have discovered her true name. 

It is not Maria Prophetissa.  Neither is it Medea. 

It is Anand.  It is Raven.  It is the Daughter of Ernmas.

It is Morrigu.    

Faint scorings on a dank, dark wall.

Desperate lines scribbled in a makeshift diary.

The interminable drip, drip, drip of the passage of the indistinguishable days.

Who is it lies there in the corner of this squalid, stinking cell?

Only time will tell  — time and the unfolding tale of The Sword of Paracelsus.

The story begins tonight …

“I did not climb up into the Godhead, neither can so mean a man as I am do it; but the Godhead climbed up in me, and revealed such to me out of His love, which otherwise I would have had to leave it quite alone in my half-dead fleshly birth.”

(Jacob Boehme, Aurora, VIII, 7)

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Four years prior to the birth of John Bunyan, a shoemaker named Jacob Boehme died in the village of Goerlitz, Germany.  Throughout his adult life Boehme had supported his wife and children by laboring at a rough and dingy workbench.  But he was more than a cobbler; for as Alexander Whyte observes, “While working with his hands, Jacob Boehme’s whole life was spent in the deepest and the most original thought; in piercing visions of God and of nature; in prayer, in praise, and in love to God and man.”

Under the spell of Paracelsus, Boehme had in his youth taken a keen interest in alchemy.  But in his maturer years, disillusioned with what he came to regard as the groundless claims of the science of transformation, he began increasingly to attach a spiritual and eternal significance to its conceptual framework.  In the process his outlook altered radically; yet when speaking of this profound inward change, he naturally reverted to the language he knew best – the argot of the old spagyric art.

There was a difference, however.  For now when he referred to the Philosopher’s Stone, Boehme no longer envisioned a magical catalyst possessing the power to turn one substance into another.  Instead, he understood the Stone as an image of the New Birth.  And so it happened that Jacob Boehme, shoemaker and alchemist, abandoned his efforts to transform lead into gold and exchanged them for a quest to be transformed in the inner man.

In the story of The Sword of Paracelsus, Morgan’s father, John Izaak, finds himself compelled to follow a similar quest.  This part of the tale is, admittedly, wrapped in shadow.  Yet as it unfolds, one thing becomes sufficiently clear:  it is largely under the influence of Jacob Boehme that Izaak has set out upon his journey – inspired, we may imagine, by passages like the following:

“The eternal fire is magical, and a spirit, and dies not.  It is the same fire as a dying, yet there is no dying, but an entrance into another source, that is, out of a painful desire into a love-desire …”

(The Signature of All Things)

“For man’s happiness consists in this, that he has in him a true desire after God; for out of the desire springs the love.  And the love tinctures the death and darkness, that it is again capable of the divine sunshine.”

(Ibid.)

“He that will not seek thereby a new man born in God, and apply himself diligently thereto, let him not meddle with my writings.  I have not written anything for such a seeker, and also he shall not be able to apprehend our meaning fundamentally though he strives never so much about it, unless he enters into the resignation in Christ.  For the way is childlike, plain and easy.”

(Ibid.)

“Awaken in me the fire of Your great love.  Ignite it, O Lord, so that my soul and mind may see these evil beasts and kill them by means of proper, true repentance and Your power.”

(The Way to Christ)

“If love dwelt not in trouble, it could have nothing to love.”

(The Supersensual Life)

This is the true alchemy as Jacob Boehme — and John Izaak — understood it.