EHYEH-ASHER-EHYEH (I AM THAT I AM): An Elena Duran/Corazon Negro
Vi Moreau (vmoreau@directvinternet.com)
Tue, 24 Sep 2002 07:19:34 -0400
Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh (I am that I am) 24/34
Julio Cesar divad72@prodigy.net.mx
Vi Moreau vmoreau@directvinternet.com
Inside the Dream.
His soul inside the Dream, Corazon Negro was not in time. It didn't surprise
him to discover that his long black hair was badly tangled. Even a casual
inspection told him that this was not a normal place for him to stay, but
something considerably less dense, yet as primitive of life on earth. But
again, he was thousands of years before his time.
He was in the creation, the place that knew nothing of where God came from,
or why, or how. No one knew this. However, this was the whole purpose of the
Dream's realm. Maybe God thought that through watching the universe evolve,
He was going to find out. What God had set in motion, was a giant Dream, a
giant experiment, to see if the end resulted in producing beings like
Himself, the Father, the Mother, the Essence.
Maybe God had worked backwards from the blueprint of Himself. He had created
a physical universe whose laws would result in the evolution of creatures
that resembled Him. They would be made of Matter. Maybe God did originally
find out what it would have been like had He been Matter. Maybe God had
looked for a clue as to how He got where He was. Maybe in watching man
evolve, He had hoped to understand His own evolution, if such a thing in
fact had occurred. God's imagination had created Matter, foresaw it, longed
for it. Maybe the longing had been the most important aspect of His mind. If
God himself did originate in Matter... then the Dream was an experiment to
see when Matter can evolve into God again. But if God had not originated
Matter, if He had proceeded and it was something He had imagined and desired
and longed for, the effects upon Him were basically the same. In the end,
God wanted Matter. He wasn't satisfied without it. Or He wouldn't have made
it. It had been no accident.
The design of the Dream and the universe were immense, but the whole process
of evolution was His calculated experiment, and they, Immortals, had been
created long after it began. How had it been before Matter began? No one but
God knew. One thing was true: when Matter had been created, so had time.
Immortals existed to witness and be drawn into time. Matter and time had
changed everything totally. They had obliterated not only the pure state
that preceded them, they had upstaged it; they had overshadowed it. Matter
and time had eclipsed the time before time.
God had created Matter and energy, in an interchangeable state, and now
Corazon Negro suspected that the key to God laid within the word energy. In
the end, God was energy, and in making the universe, in making the Dream, He
had caused some of that energy to be changed into Matter, to create a
circular interchange independent of Himself.
At that moment, Corazon Negro witnessed millions of explosions, sudden
transformations. It was the beginning of the human world. Corazon Negro was
aware of a rather cool breeze suddenly, and glanced over his shoulder. He
witnessed complex processes; some spark of life animated these events; they
had a crude form of purpose, and it was as if Corazon Negro could see that
spark of life and recognize it as the Quickening!
The world around him was full of commotion from a new kind of magic; and as
the Dreamer watched the apes started to walk upright. They lumbered upon
the earth, clubs in hands, brutal, savage, tearing the flesh of enemies with
their teeth, beating, biting, stabbing to death all that resisted them.
But then something changed. Corazon Negro saw the caring for the weak by the
strong, the helping and the nourishing of the crippled by the whole, and
finally the burial rituals with flowers. Flowers were laid from one end to
the other of the body softly deposited in the earth. The meaning was clear:
man had commenced to exist. The female of the human species had begun to
look more distinctly different from the male. The female grew pretty and
seductive; the hair left her face, and her limbs grew graceful; her manner
transcended the necessities of survival; and she became beautiful, as
flowers were beautiful. Out of the coupling of the hairy apes had risen a
female tender-skinned and radiant of face. Mates mated with the loveliest of
the females, and those who were most lithe, and smooth to touch, and tender
of voice. And from those matings came males themselves who were as beautiful
as the females. There came humans of different complexions; there came red,
yellow, black hair and locks of brown and starling white; there came eyes of
infinite variety-gray, brown, green, blue. Gone was the man's brooding brow
and hairy face, apish gait, and he, too, shone with the beauty of an angel
just as did his female mate.
A long wail, followed by weeping came toward Corazon Negro. He listened;
rising from the earth he heard the voices of those invisible spirits. Their
crying reached toward the heavens as the light of God shone on eternal,
without change upon all.
Then human cries distracted him. Human weeps mingled with the cries of the
invisible. One young man lay dying, twisting in his last pain on the bed
they'd made for him of grass and flowers. But the wailing of the invisible
ones hovered over this dying victim. The lamentations of the human beings
rose more terrible than anything Corazon Negro could endure.
Corazon Negro gazed beyond the tiny camp, and saw in the air the spirit
gathering and crying. With his soul eyes he saw these spirits once more. He
saw them clustering and dispersing, wandering, rolling in and falling back,
each retaining the vague shape in essence of a human being. Feeble, fuddled,
lost, unsure of themselves, they swam in the atmosphere, opening their arms
to the man who lay on the bier about to die.
Hush. Stillness. A spirit rose from the dying man. The spark of life flared
and did not go out, but became an invisible spirit with all the rest. The
spirit of the man rose in the shape of the man and joined those spirits who
had come to take it away.
Corazon Negro let out a deep sigh and stood paralyzed. He waited.
The air was thick with these spirits, for once having seen them, once having
detected their faint outline and their ceaseless voices, he could never
again not see them, and like a wreath they surrounded the earth. They were
the spirits of the human dead. Souls. Souls had evolved from Matter.
Again Corazon Negro waited in silence. Souls had come out of the human
beings. They were whole and living, and hovered about the material bodies of
the humans. But they could not see the Dream. They just could see but those
who had buried them, those who had loved them in life, and were they
progeny, and those who sprinkled the red ochre over their bodies before
lying them carefully, to face the east, in graves filled with ornaments that
had been their own.
More important, those humans who believed in them, those who worshipped the
ancestors, felt their presence.
Corazon Negro was too absorbed to think anything else. Yet all he could
sense and consider was the whirlwind, and the souls who had surrounded him
in the whirlwind as though the air from earth to heaven was filled with
human souls. Souls drifting forever and ever. Where do they go in such
darkness? What do they seek? What can they know about the Dream? Corazon
Negro was as curious about the dead as he was about the living-these wreath
souls he could see and hear-gathered about the world. It seemed to him that
the realm of these weeping souls was the realm of pure Dream.
His vision changed. Men and women lived now in large groups, very unlike the
other primates, they built shelters for themselves, they painted their
bodies with various colors, women often lived separate from men, and they
believed in something invisible.
Humans believed now in the souls of their ancestors, but humans worshiped
other entities as well. They imagined a God who had made the wild beasts and
in his honor they made blood sacrifice on altars, thinking this aspect of
almighty God to be a personality of very distinct limits and rather easy to
please or displease.
Corazon Negro drew near to these altars and he heard the specific prayer for
the God of the wild animals; then he began to see the care and deliberation
of the sacrifice-the slaying of a ram or a deer. Humans that not only had
come to look like angels, but they had guessed at the truth!
They had come upon it instinctively! There was a God. They knew. This
instinctive knowledge seemed to spring from the same essence, as did their
surviving spiritual souls. Self-consciousness, and the awareness of one's
own death-this had created a sense of distinct individuality in humans, and
this individuality feared death; feared annihilation. And that it was this
very same tenacity-the tenacity of this individuality-that made a human soul
stay alive after it left the body, imitating the shape of a body, holding
itself together, clinging to life, as it were, perpetuating itself, by
shaping itself according to the only world it had known.
Man had invented or discovered God. Some tribes worshipped more than one
such deity who was perceived to have created the world. Humans knew of the
souls of the dead surviving; and they did reach out to these souls and make
offerings to them. They brought offerings to their graves. They cried out to
these dead souls. They begged for their help in the hunt, and in the
birthing of a child, in all things.
Corazon Negro realized these souls were strengthened in their survival by
the attentions of those living on earth, by the love being sent to them by
humans, by the thoughts of them in human minds. Some souls knew they were
dead, and sought to respond to the prayers of their children, and actively
attempted to advice, speaking with all the power they could muster in a
spiritual voice. They struggled to appear to their children. Sometimes they
broke through for fleeting seconds, gathering to themselves swirling
particles of matter by the sheer force of their invisible essence. Other
times they made themselves visible in dreams, when the soul of the sleeping
human was opened to other souls. They told their children of the bitterness
and darkness of death, and that they must be brave and strong in life. They
gave their children advice.
These souls seemed to know the belief and attention from their sons and
daughters strengthened them. They requested offerings and prayers, they
reminded the children of their duty. These souls were to some extent the
least confused, except for one thing. They thought they had seen all there
was to be seen. They have not seen a hint of the Dream.
Some of these souls didn't know they were dead. They knew only they were
lost and blind, miserable, and they cried all the time. They were so weak
they didn't felt the presence of other souls. Other souls were clearly
deluded. They thought they were still alive. They chased after their
children, trying vainly to get the oblivious son or daughter to listen.
Others simply drifted, seeing and hearing the sounds of other living beings
but remote as if in a stupor. Some souls vanished away. The vanishing soul
would last a few seconds after its separation from the human body, retaining
its shape, and then begin to fade. The essence gradually dispersed, went
into the whirlwinds, returning perhaps to the energy and essence of God.
That was their agony. The hunger for life beyond death.
However, there were some souls who understood things in a different way.
They knew they weren't Gods. They knew they were dead humans. They knew they
didn't really have the right to change the destiny of those who prayed to
them; they knew that the libations were in essence symbolic. These souls
understood the meaning of the symbolic concept. They knew. They were dead
and they perceived themselves to be lost. They would have reentered the
flesh if they could have. For there in the flesh was all the light and
warmth and comfort that they had ever known and could still see. Sometimes
these souls did managed to reenter flesh.
Corazon Negro watched these souls deliberately descend and take possession
of a stupefied mortal, take over his limbs and brain and live in him until
the man gained the strength to throw off the soul. There were those living
humans already who had become oracles. They would smoke of drink some potion
to render their own minds passive, so that a dead soul might speak with
their voice.
Because these powerful spirits knew only what earth could teach them, they
might urge human beings on to terrible mistakes. Corazon Negro saw them
order men into battle; he saw them order executions. He saw them demand
blood sacrifice of human beings. The new Dreamer saw the creation of
religion out of man.
At that instant, Corazon Negro's soul understood the very essence of
Lilitu's plan. She desired to be a new Goddess, to put the world thousands
of years back under her false hope, her corrupted religion in order to rule
everlasting.
"Are you going to let her win this time?" the voice of Quetzalcohuatl asked
him.
"I won't," Corazon Negro answered. "I won't." Then he moved forward.
========
At the barn.
Finally Elena gasped her way back to life and lay on the floor, whimpering
in pain, while her body finished healing. Duncan knelt beside her and spoke
into her face. "The Voice," he said. "Can you hear?" he asked her, pointing
to her ears.
Elena shook her head, felt inside her ears. Connor could see her figure
things out right away, just as Duncan had. They were both bright and quick.
Good. Now to put his plan into action. Keeping one eye on the window, he
used easy hand signals to outline his instructions. It was a simple plan: he
and Elena, who knew this grove so well, would go out the secret entrance,
come up into the trees among their enemies and shoot the mortals-and kill,
but not yet decapitate, the woman who was using the Voice. That last part
would be Elena's job, she would concentrate on that. Connor would fight the
others. If there were other Immortals, they'd just have to deal with them.
Meanwhile, Duncan would stay behind protecting Corazon Negro.
"Elena should stay with Corazon Negro," Duncan objected.
Connor shook his head. Duncan, gallant as always, was trying to protect the
womenfolk, and this was a woman Duncan still loved. Connor knew Duncan never
let go of someone he loved. But the time for sentiment was long gone. Elena
knew the area best; plus, if their enemies got past him and Elena, Connor
believed that Duncan would better be able to protect the Dreamer. Keeping
the Aztec alive was their only priority-their own lives were expendable. He
couldn't explain this to people who couldn't hear, so he merely said, "Trust
me."
Duncan nodded, and Elena went to the center of the large room, to where
Corazon Negro stood. She kissed him on the lips. "Que Dios te guarde, mi
vida-May God save you, my live, " Connor heard her whisper to her lover.
Then Connor and Elena went into the tunnel.
========
Inside the Dream.
Lilitu's psyche felt it. She knew something had occurred inside the Dream.
For the very first time in the eternity of her soul, her night, something
new had happened.
In her own mind there had been only two things in the beginning: her own
soul and the Dream. The Dream had been that perpetual thing, that something
as her soul, the vessel where the other world manifested itself. The place
of shadows, of silence, of calm and storms.
For thirteen millennia Lilitu had tried to conquer the Dream. Now her holy
task was almost complete. Inside the mysterious world of Immortals, her Game
was at the top of everything, ripping apart her former brother's souls with
voluptuous fears, nightly beasts, against their will. Hers was a Game where
the loser fell into an infinite abyss.
Through millennia, Lilitu's soul had been a container of exquisite
Quickenings, of everlasting powers, and now she existed inside a circle of
awakening to feed and slumber to dream. Soon enough the Dream would become a
place made in her image, and she would watch such a place from her eyes of
hellish fires.
But something new had occurred. Something unexpected. Corazon Negro. It had
not been good enough that Lilitu had killed the first Dreamer, the Nahuatl
priest known as Quetzalcohuatl. No, he had left an heir, a pupil, and a
disciple. For the first time in Lilitu's existence, that part of her that
dwelled inside the Dream felt pain. A great pain, howling regardless of her
efforts. Even more astonishing, Lilitu's soul understood something: she was
afraid.
Right now the new Dreamer was coming toward her. The infidel dared to enter
into the Dream, weaponless, hunting her. Infinite rage clouded her gaze. Of
course she would kill the Dreamer-there was no doubt about that-but first,
she decided to destroy him slowly, torturously, to make him pay for putting
fear in her Goddess' soul.
Come here, Dreamer, Lilitu's essence thought, hearing the steps of Corazon
Negro's soul still far away. Come and enter night.
The emotion that turned her gaze into a reddish glare left her, and cold
speculation took control. Could she die? Could she lose everything at the
last moment? Lilitu's soul started to tremble. She was not afraid of the
Dreamer; she was afraid of losing this fight.
The answer lay deep inside her pain. She would not lose. When Corazon Negro
arrived, she would cast him away, deep inside her hellish gaze, where his
soul would be lost, forever.
Fear was her partner, her best ally. The Dreamer was about to meet dread as
never before in his miserable life.
========
At the barn...
When Elena and Connor came out the other end they quickly hid in the trees,
peeking out to asses their situation. They were, as Connor hoped, behind
their opponents, and he could see two men in the trees-on this side of the
barn. Undoubtedly there were others, and he would find them. Connor felt at
ease in this wild grove, and he hoped the Hunters were all urbanites. But
nowhere could he see a woman, unless she was dressed in men's clothing. He
pointed the two men out one by one to Elena, but she'd already seen them.
"I don't see the Immortal woman. The one with the Voice," she whispered.
"Find her and kill her," he enunciated. Then, taking a deep breath, he left
his hiding place.
Connor leapt straight at the Hunters. Two saw him coming and dove out of the
way rolling and jumping to their feet, leaving Connor with only an armful of
air as he grasped for a crushing blow at the space the Hunters had vacated.
The other two Hunters ran, but Connor was agile and quick. He bounded ahead
of them, cutting them off. Connor's katana flashed through the air like a
long-starved viper. It lashed the Hunters cutting both bodies at the same
time, pinning both heads to their side.
Just then, Connor turned and his blade cut the air once more-but something
wet struck his face. Burning, searing pain in his eyes. Darkness. Pain
spreading deeper. He clawed at his face, at his eyes, not caring that his
fingers were also burning. Blind, Connor attacked from one side to another,
stabbing with is katana everything in his path. The ground crumbled beneath
him, making footing that much trickier. Still his eyes burned. Acid, or
something like it.
Connor dug his fingernails into his own face and ripped away some of the
surface flesh around his eyes. That helped only a little. He tried to force
open his eyes, squinting and blinking. At that moment, his eyes started to
heal.
Connor lashed out with a sledgehammer blow and caught another Hunter solidly
between the shoulders, propelling him into the air. The man landed hard on
the ground several yards away and didn't get up.
Despite his burning eyes and the blurred vision, Connor smiled as the fourth
Hunter attacked him. Quickly, the head of the zealot rolled on the ground...