Thirsty Gnomes

Sara did not want to wake up. She wanted to stay in her dream, where she stood in a vast field of wildflowers. Around this fertile valley were snow-capped mountains like sentries protecting its delicate beauty. The gentle summer breeze that waved the long grasses came down from a wide crag in the east. Wind whispered through the valley in a secret language that only the inhabitants of the mountain caves knew.

All pain and sorrow of the world were compressed under the relentless force of the mountains' weight, like blood hardened into the fierce crimson rubies that ran as hidden veins through the lair of the gnomes.

The dream world was a wilderness. Outside the ring of mountains only a few tribes lived. Raw and bleeding in the necessity that drove them, and to which they built shrines on their flesh in agonies of scarification. They painted on the cave walls in their blood. The scars remain in all of us, imprinted in the pineal depths of our brains.

In the dream, Sara entered the mountain in the east. She was deep inside a cave, adrenaline pumping, dressed in a white gown and veil. She stood before a stone altar festooned with wildflowers. The torch-lit hall was decorated with magnificent ochre and black paintings of beasts. The air was scented with burning herbs and resins.

A bronze dagger glinted in the flames of the torches. It came flying toward her heart, held by no one. Jets of dark crimson burst from her chest, spewing down the folds of her white gown.

She screamed.

When the first dizzying pain passed, Sara bent her head down, and saw on the wooden handle of the knife, still sticking in her chest, a carved phoenix, wings outstretched as if about to fly, but engulfed in flames that caught its leap and pulled it to its death.

Sara staggered, leaving a grisly trail of blood on the rough floor of the cave. She leaned on the altar, on which stood a large copper bowl. Into it dripped her blood, and she picked up the bowl and took a drink.

As she drank, she heard the thin voice of a very old woman. It sounded like the whistling of wind through the mountain crevices. It said: "The shadow gives the way to the ancient land where the wisest ones, the gnomes, keeper of the rubies, await the young ones who venture without fear. Welcome, child."

Sara came out of her dream feeling groggy. She crawled out of bed into a chilly late October morning. She half-remembered her dream as she stumbled over the cold wood floor to the old space heater and turned it on. Then she ran over to the small doorless closet and yanked a pair of old jeans and a heavy grey sweatshirt from the folded pile of clothes in a milk crate. She checked out her face in the mirror, a morning routine of self-recognition, as if to say "hi" to herself and, by proxy, to the "other" she always sensed lurking in there. She feared this image of her face, the stranger who if found might stare back at her with a terrible revelation, speaking for her the unnamed fear she felt.

Knowing she was running late, she ran down to the kitchen, which she shared with three other students. The house was on its last leg, but the rent was cheap divided by four. The landlord hadn't yet put the heat on, but there was an oven in the kitchen whose door could be kept open if need be.

Sara put the kettle on the stove and toasted some bread.

She stuffed her backpack with books and notebooks and threw on her jacket. She turned off the space heater and went out into a blast of cold early morning air.

In the classroom it was warm. Sara pushed up her sweatshirt sleeves and settled into her wooden desk. She barely paid attention to the professor. When students began shuffling out of the classroom, she groaned softly and went to her next class to dream some more.

Sara went to lunch at Mr. Jim's Steakhouse, in the student center basement. When she entered the dimly lit cafe with its grey cinder block walls and rows of dark wood tables, she knew by the scents of chicken, grilled vegetables and soup that she wanted to be there. She got a bowl of soup and fresh bread and sat down at one of the tables at the far wall. The warm air, the distant rhythmic rattle of dishes, brought Sara back to dreamland. She ate as if her lunch were nectar of paradise. The occasional raucous laugh from a neighboring table became the caw of a soaring crow. The low murmurs from other tables sounded like wind whispering and ruffling the tops of wildflowers. She was back in the land of the first beings of the Earth, those who came even before the tribes--the venerable gnomes of the caves.

Time to go the the part-time afternoon job. She got a coffee to go and trundled out of the building.

Both secretaries were in. They nodded as she walked in, and the elder smiled warmly and got up to greet Sara. This was the lady who ran things, a tall woman whose stately looks gave the lie to her warmth. She gave Sara a compassionate pat on the shoulder. "Are you ok?"

Sara was surprised at the question. "Don't I look ok?"

Mrs. Tiffin's eyes, soft as they were, sparked with intelligence. "Of course, hon. You just seem a little tired. Well, not too much to do today. Up late studying last night?"

Janet, the younger secretary, giggled, as if to say, "yeah, right."

Sara did xeroxing and some simple computer chores. The work could be abysmally dull, but she took her time, conserving her energy, sipping her coffee and trying not to look at the clock.

She had always felt like she knew Mrs. Tiffin from somewhere. The woman with her soft voice sometimes had an air of surprising authority, as if her smooth surface behavior were a secondary personality inside which hid a mysterious other being. Did Mrs. Tiffin understand the secrets of the cave? Was her voice that of the old woman who spoke to her?

Sara laughed at her wild idea. Janet looked up from her desk, wondering what the strange work- study student was laughing about.

Around five o'clock, Mrs. Tiffin took her coat from the rack by the door. The older woman turned off the lights as Sara took her jacket and picked up her backpack.

On the chilly walk home, all Sara could think about was the bliss of warmth to come. She wanted to sit on her comfortable bed and read the novel she had been assigned. She balled her hands into fists for warmth, and quickened her pace as she saw the ragged old house she lived in.

The landlord had turned the heat on. Sara put her backpack down and went into the bathroom, a half-clean room with chipped enamel tub and sink. As she sat down on the toilet, she noticed a small white moth alight on the edge of the bathtub. Sara leaned toward it a little, intrigued, but fearing to disturb, leaned back and just watched it. The moth seemed more like a holograph than a physical object. Maybe that was because of its intense delicacy. The legs and antennae were like little shadows, and Sara noticed that the edges of the moth's body, like the ends of the wings, were shadows too, and somehow alive just as the moth itself was alive.

The shadows were the "edge" of the moth, its life mingling with its not-self. It was as if the moth's delicate light being was always striving to fly up, while the shadow was constantly pulling it down. But without the shadow, Sara doubted that the moth would be visible.

Sara knew that this was a message from her dream.

There was sadness coming from the creature. The heavy shadow tugged hard at the moth like the weight of the world as the moth tried in vain to get free. Moths are annihilated in flame, and this tiny one was seeking its dissolution.

Sara was tired and the message was clear. The phoenix was about to fly but was burned to ashes instead. The phoenix would rise up from its ashes, the same way the moth couldn't escape the shadow but sought the flame.

She left the bathroom and grabbed her backpack from the hallway floor. She grabbed a soda from the fridge and went upstairs to her room.

Sara often put symbol into action; she had learned to do so when she had lived with a self-proclaimed magus for a few months before returning to college. Magick Man, she called him in hindsight, that erstwhile lover of sorts who never could quite see her, obstructed as he was by his own need to reshape her in his own image. Still, he taught her much, and they saw each other sometimes. She left him with new insight and was no longer afraid to live alone. He still enticed women with his Dr. Strange mentality, and she got a laugh whenever she saw him with his latest sixteen-year-old.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Sara took a sewing needle which she disinfected in the flame of a candle and pricked herself between the breasts. She put the drop of blood that finally emerged from the middle of her chest into a glass of water. She wanted to return to the cave.

This rite would ferment in her unconscious. She read her assigned novel for a while, and then turned on the tv to relax before sleep. The human stories never really changed. The dramas on the screen were the same, deep down, as ancient tribal struggles. The pain of life was crushed by time into veins of rubies, blood-wine. As Sara watched her tv show, she saw that every human sorrow was blood fertilizing the ancient field and being pressed into the enchanted veins of ruby, carnelian, garnet that ran through the depths of the Earth.

"So do the ancient gnomes feed off us?" she said out loud, turning off the tv.

With her slight scar adorning her youthful breast like a proud ruby, Sara crawled out the next morning and went through her routine. She admired her handiwork in the mirror. The Cave of Sorrow, the Cave of Pain, the Cave of Secret Wisdom: how she longed to get there.

"Thirsty gnomes," she muttered. "Why do they want our blood?" She imagined that clinging to her blood was a greenish-gold aura,like seedling plants in all their freshness, or the pot of fey gold at the end of the rainbow. "Well," she mused, "a leprechaun has that gold, doesn't he?" She imagined the gnomes looking like that little man with the green cap and boots, but carrying picks and shovels to dig out the jewels encrusted on the cave walls, so they could hoard and melt and ferment them in great copper pots.

The ruby was the jewel the gnomes treasured the most. This was the jewel that embodied their secret wisdom.

Sara knew she had a long day in front of her. She had to go to the library after work and start researching a term paper. Right now she had to get moving. She got out from under her warm covers and did her routine. Then she went to school. She had trouble concentrating in her classes again. There was too much cropping up in her imagination to focus well on other things.

It was at work that she figured out who Mrs. Tiffin was.

The greying woman with the comfortable way about her fixed Sara with a fierce, piercing gaze when Janet was out of the office. She let her guard down. "Sara," she said, in a vaguely familiar whistling-soft voice, "it's time you went to the state park. Why not this weekend? I'm sure you could take Friday afternoon off." The kind woman put her hand gently on Sara's shoulder and smiled. A worried look overspread her otherwise laugh-lined face.

"Sara," she said, "you look tired and you have to admit you've been distracted lately. I'm not trying to be your mother, but--"

"No, no. That's ok," Sara replied, looking at Mrs. Tiffin in a new light. The woman did not cease to amaze.

After work Sara got a bite to eat and went straight to the library. She was going to research her dreams and visions a little as well as start that term paper. But on the way she got sidetracked. Elise, one of her friends from Magick Man times, caught Sara on the stairs. She grinned. "We're going to Boynton Park on Friday. Want to come?"

She could not refuse. Sara felt that with a little help from her friends she would crack this dream.

She spent an hour or so with books on mythology and pre-Socratic philosophy, then got busy with her term paper.

On Friday at five, the ride pulled up in front of the office where Sara worked. Besides Elise there were two others in the car, and neither was Magick Man, somewhat to Sara's relief. She was not in the mood for that ego and its paranoia tonight. She had enough complications to contend with at theis time of dreams and portents.

Sara and Elise knew a place deep in the park where few casual visitors ventured. It required a bit of a hike through a craggy gap between two rock cliffs, but it was worth it, because if you went far enough, you could see the small opening of a cave that seemed like nothing much at first, but that became a spacious chamber once you squeezed inside.

Elise and Sara hiked toward the cave, leaving the ride and his date behind to play among the trees. Soon they were at the mouth, which had been clogged by a month of damp October leaves. They dug out the pungent vegetation and crawled into the moist space. They continued on their backs for a few feet, then stood up in the chamber. Virtually no light got through this far.

Elise's voice echoed a little. "Any critters?" she said.

"Dunno."

Sara thumped her foot a few times--she had been told that would scare snakes away.

They were silent as they felt the atmosphere. Was it menacing or caressing? Somewhere in between.

There was a presence. Nothing moving. Just something there.

"Let's get out of here," Elise whispered.

Elise crawled out. Sara stayed. She sat down, waiting.

Soon it came to her. It was a flying creature, wounded, that had crawled in here for safety and darkness to die. She could hear faint wing-flapping near one wall.

She moved in that direction, slowly, trying not to scare it. She thought: "I'm sorry. I won't hurt you. Can I help you?"

It was now very still. It died as she crawled toward it. Maybe its heart beat too fast in fear.

At the moment of its death, Sara thought she saw a light flash. In that second, Sara saw a figure standing over the bird. It was a tall woman, seemingly old as the cave itself. Her white hair reached to her bare feet. Framing her head like a halo was a greenigh-gold glow. She smiled kindly at Sara, but her eyes had the distance of stars.

"The bird is yours," said the crone in a soft, whistling voice like wind blowing through long grasses. "You must take it home and pluck its feathers, and put them on your altar to weigh your soul."

Sara felt a chill of fear creep up her spine. "Why? Am I dying?" This she blurted out foolishly.

The woman cawed a laugh that resounded through every crevice of the cave. "I can't tell you that. You know at the moment it happens, and then, upon the instant, you don't know."

"That's it, isn't it?" Sara was disappointed. "That's all there is to your secret. We think we have dreams, and they're all broken in your ceremonies. And those ceremonies you do--and that you let us participate in--those rule our lives, don't they? And they kill us, too. That's why we die, isn't it? Because you kill us to keep our dreams broken in a million shattered pieces." She thought of how when she first met Magic Man she wanted nothing more nor less than to unite with him, soul to soul, for eternity. But that dream had ended not only in cold indifference but in animosity, a distrust of relationships she had felt ever since, as if love were a hungry beast, threatening to take a piece of her and shred it, spitting it back to her like vomit.

The crone knelt and held out her thin hand to Sara. "No, child, it's not quite like that. We banquet off your dreams--they are what give us what form we have. We would vanish off the Earth but for your naive hopes. You are just like us, deep inside. All you need to do is cross over. You need to come to the crossroads and meet us."

"And die?"

The touch of the crone was cold as ice.

"When it's time."

Sara sat in her room opposite Elise, who was trying to pull tail feathers off the bird, which they had decided to boil for sanitary reasons. It was a nasty job, and both young women had made quick trips to the bathroom.

"So she told you death is the secret?" asked Elise.

"Not exactly. Just coming close often so you can get glimpses of the other side."

"How do you do that? I mean, besides living in the fear factory."

Sara gently stripped some tufts from the back of the delicate head. "Not sure," she replied softly.

The two women had some notion, though. They could get that crone's attention, maybe get her to talk some more.

That night, they were into all things red. They painted each other with whorls of lipstick on their arms and torsos, like the women of the Bronze Age who covered themselves with menstrual blood to scare the enemy away in wartime. Sara and Elise wanted to attract the eldest gnomes, the ones farthest removed from the goings-on of the world, the ones hoarding the secret of life-in-death the most closely. They wouldn't be able to resist this much red, figured Sara and Elise. It was their morsel, their dessert.

They drank red wine to honor the thirsty immortals, pretending it was their own lives drained into the glasses.

They pricked themselves between the breats and drank some more.

And when they were done, and the burgundy was gone, a spirit came to them. The two could see a greenish-gold light around the flame of the candle. The flame flickered.

Elise said, her wine-red lips forming the words as if a wind were blowing articulately through them, "We will never know when we will die. She secret is on the other side forever." Then, her voice lower, the words formed slowly from the wind: "Live, fools. You keep us alive with your foolishness."

Suddenly Elise's face became haggard and pale. Her hair flowed down her sides in white torrents of impossible age. Her hand reached over to Sara with the clink of a skeleton.

"Not tonight," said the crone-Elise. "We promise not tonight. Come always closer, but not tonight. Celebrate that."

And with a laugh that resounded deep in Sara's soul, Elise rose from the floor, just a little. Her bare feet hovered above the planks before they came down again. She couldn't stay alight long.