DREAMSCAPE
EPISODE #2
I watched as Wiley sauntered away into the gloom. He was there one moment, next he was gone, just disappeared. I kept staring, willing him to come back. I didn’t want to be alone here anymore. I turned inward wondering, “Is this a dream? What did I just see? I thought I was awake.” I slapped myself in the face. I heard the crack of my palm on my cheek but I felt nothing. A shivering fear rushed from the soles of my feet to the top of my head, raising the small hairs on my skin to attention. It seemed as if the hissing of the rain increased in volume.
“I have to get out of here!” I told myself for there was no one else with me. Or so I thought.
I turned away from the view of the rain and knelt to collect my ‘stuff’ and repack it in my backpack. The flickering of the fire caught my eye and I turned to look at it. The flames had changed. From the cheery, dancing yellow-orange-reds that threw a welcome heat, my fire had transformed into an icy blue, heatless flame that repelled me and solidified my desire to leave. I stood and turned to go. And immediately stopped. A man was standing at the mouth of the cave. A terrifying visage of a man.
He was rather short, but wide in body. His hair was long and black, tied with leather strings so that it didn’t hang in his face. It glistened and glittered in the icy blue light from the fire. The man was dressed in leather leggings, breechcloth and moccasins. They were stained from use, but geometric designs, that had been painted or dyed on the leather, showed on them. His shoulders were covered with a cape or cloak made from rabbits skins that had been sewn together lengthwise so that the darker and lighter fur ran in stripes vertically. The bare skin of his arms and chest was a dark bronze. Yellow, orange, and black stripes were painted on his cheeks running from his nose to his ears. His teeth were large and white as Chiclets and clenched tight in a grimace of anger.
The man was armed with an eight foot long spear, tipped with a leaf shaped blade made from black obsidian. He thrust it at my chest. I was frozen, helpless, waiting for the point to pierce my skin, my ribcage, my rapidly beating heart. The blade hung there, an infinitely small space between it and me. The black volcanic glass flashed points of light as if it had a light source inside that deadly form. The hands holding the spear shaft twisted it so that a burst of light flashed from every facet of the exquisite weapon. My hands slowly rose like I was being held up by a western movie bandit.
Sound burst from the snarling lips, orders of some kind, I guessed. If it was language, it was nothing that I knew of. It sounded like gibberish to me. The moment that thought laid its track on my consciousness, a voice covered that track, saying, “Oh ye foolish white slug! What gives thee the right? The right to think that thine is the only way, thou would-be master of the world.” The disdain dripped from the lips of whoever uttered those words. I looked around for another person who might have spoken. I couldn’t see anyone else.
When I moved my head, the man shouted another line of words that I didn’t understand. I stopped moving. “I’m harmless, you don’t want to hurt me. Put the spear down. I promise…” the words had barely left my mouth when the savage man’s eyes widened, then squeezed into a frown. He thrust the spear, that fraction of space that I have mentioned, and some distance after that. How far, I can’t say, for I fainted. Dead away, the moment that the sharp point touched my skin.
I awoke later, how much later, well, who knows. When I came to, I was in a tangled heap near the fire, the savage man squatting across the heatless fire from me. He stared at me with no apparent expression. I groaned, as I untangled my stiff limbs. When all was in order, I rolled to a sitting position. I looked back at the man. His black eyes glittered with the same light that had flashed from the spearpoint. I bent forward, trying to stand. A huge pain raced through my chest, starting from the point that the wicked spear had pierced my skin. I groaned. This brought another burst of the unknown language. I stopped moving. The savage man gestured at me, pointing first to me, then to his own chest and then back to me. I looked down. My shirt was laid open and my bare chest was exposed. There was an angry red scar, from the base of my throat to the bottom of my breast bone. My eyes flew upward to accuse the savage of some dark deed, my lips opened to shout the allegation, “What the…”. The savage held up his hand in the universal sign for ‘STOP’. I did. The voice in my head spoke again, “Hold, foolish white man, you are not damaged. Ye may think that ye are, but ye be wrong.”
“I’m seriously scarred, and permanently, it looks like to me. How can you say that you haven’t damaged me? Wait…how long was I unconscious?” I spoke back to the voice. I noticed that the savage seemed to be listening to the same words that I was, because he nodded in agreement at the right places in the discussion and shook his head side to side when I replied. “How can that be?” I asked myself.
The voice replied, “Here all things be possible.”
I watched the savage nod in agreement again. He genuflected, or so I guessed, not exactly like a Catholic, but close, real close. As this thought ran through my brain, the voice answered, “That is his way of saying the same thing, and it is also a sign of respect. Those two concepts are the same here.”
The savage gave me an, ‘I told you so!’ look. The voice continued, “In the future, Coimirceoir will speak to thee in the sign language of his people and ye will understand it in thine own native tongue. He is the guardian of this place. Coimirceoir means guardian in the language of his fathers. He is now guardian of thee as well.”
At this the savage grimaced in my direction. I grimaced back and rubbed my chest.
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