“I tell you, there are more worlds,
and more doors to them,
than you will think of in many years!”

― George MacDonald, Lilith, 1895

xiii. Gate-Keeper & Mentor,
Part 1, Encounter

He says, “Each time I come at last to see him,
 I am bid again to save my old home-world.
  Bid to ‘save it!’ Bid to ‘save it & be free of it!’
 Bid to ‘free it & travel on new!’ By my dear &
beloved old friend Abe the Ancient Sea Turtle,
 you see. Bid to try—& I do—& I do again—
  & again I fail—”

Returning here weakens him, blurs him,
 till this recurring imperative is all he possesses
  of his long years. Of me he recalls nothing,
 save inclined to a vague trust when we
happen to meet. Seem to happen to meet.

I casually join his travels, chance encounter
 usually in a certain clearing he comes to
  in these White Woods, him slumped low
 before his fire, him long & crooked,
 furred hat seeming to cluster in nap
round his head, the ill-assorted rags ’pon
 his torso, the ancient boots of vines & stones.
  Battered old knapsack nearby. Nothing
 more to his possession. Does he leave his
 best treasures safely far from this place?

Quite unsure what next in his travel.
 He shares with me his strangely magick’d Soup
  & tells me as every previous time what remains
 of his knowledge & certainties. “‘Save it!
Be free of it! Travel on new!’”

I listen quietly & then offer to lead him
 to a place where he may see further,
see better. To show him what he needs to see,
 that he may at last save this world,
be free of it, & travel on new.

We do not exchange names but I know
 of course that he is sometimes called Gate-Keeper,
  & other times Charlie Pigeonfoot.

Him so little changed in aspect from the
 ragged boy I long ago spied happily watching
  & worshipping, & later woefully yearning
 that old black & white DüMönt TV I arranged
 for him to find, & then suddenly took from him
when it was time for him to leave this grey world.

“Call me Mentor.”
“Are you a teacher? Shall you teach me?”
“Let me show you instead.”

* * * * * *

xiv. Gate-Keeper & Mentor,
Part 2, Strange Yellow Building

We are far now from that meager settlement
 he long ago dwelled, & has failingly tried to liberate
  many times since. More to this world than
 those captor & their Emandian prisoners know.
I lead him up merciless steep rocky climbs,
 through a valley absolute silent & dark,
  own silent passage an urgent need too,
 & finally to the ruins of a timelessly old smashed
city, a place the Ancient Violence leveled but for one.

A strange yellow building. We pause among
 the gray antique crumble to regard it.
  Tall, many floors high, yet still a squat,
 defiant thing, ugly & powerful & true.
Like standing as vengeance of the fallen rest.

“One yet dwells there.”
“How? Timeless like the stars?”
“No.” I pause. Measure how much to tell him.
 Tell.
“She was my kinsmen long ago. Now she belongs
 there. They are like one.”
“Are we to visit her? Can she help me?”
Always, nearly the same questions.
 Always, I wonder if to say more, or less,
  or damned well lie.
Always, I do not. If I can help him
 succeed this time, finish the circuit
  of his task, perhaps then, finally,
   freedom for me too.

“Our business is not with her, but with the
 roof of that building, with what I can show
  you from there. I have to show you.”

The orange door to that yellow building
 is just as sickly feeling, & not the safe way
  to enter. There is another way, a heavy heave
 of stone along the building’s side-wall,
tugged loose & pushed aside with scraped & bloody
 fingers, & revealed is a dark, webby stairwell.

Most of what haunts & guards this stairwell
 is imaginal in nature. Old creaks in the ancient
  wooden stairs. Sluggish air that seems
 to form up malevolently. The darkness
itself that nearly roars furiously at
 the sudden intrusion of light, reminder
  of it s very existence.

We climb with care & fear, & then more
 of each. A distant yowl passes near,
  kisses the creaks, bites the darkness.
 Each flight of stairs seems older, vaguer,
yet we arrive finally to the doorless way to the roof.

Unremembering his previous visits to the place,
 much less all the years he lived on this world,
  I see how Gate-Keeper is shocked anew by the clear air
  up here, its un-greyness. He breathes this air
like magick to inhale, like a fairie bread
 to his tongue. I wait, enjoying the moment,
 like always. Then I hear again, or think so,
the yowling below. We have to go. Time to show.

* * * * * *

xv. Gate-Keeper & Mentor,
Part 3, That Lavender Trace

Walking over to the roof’s edge, motioning
 Gate-Keeper over, like some novel thing
  to notice. Deep low in my throat,
 I begin to hmmm. Continue this hid music
while we are talking, low & steady.

“Do you see far off in that direction?
 Look close! There is just a trace of lavender
  to catch if you can.”
“I . . . I do. It’s . . . it’s moving!”
“Keep hold of it, Charlie. Grasp it gently,
 as though nearly in your hands.
  Do you have it?”
“Yes. Yes! It’s . . . tugging me.”
“Let it. Let’s hold on, both of us. It’s like a rope
  for us to follow along now.”
“It’s bringing us along. To . . . it’s a boat!”
“Yes! I see it too. Let’s get in. Climb in
 with me, Charlie.”
“Where are we bound, Mentor?”
“Over this water to that far world.
 This is the way there. The braided path there.”
“It’s beautiful there! Wild, awake colors?”
“Yes. Here is its shore. Look up!”
“Those are . . . poplars! So tall!”
“Like green guardians of this world.”
“Are we welcomed here, Mentor?”
“Yes, Charlie. This is your true home-world.
 Where your clansmen can be free & happy at last.”
“Can we bring them? Now?”
“We have things to do first. Let me
 show you. Listen, Charlie.”

The low hmmm deep in my throat rises up now
 in song. Words I’ve sung to him before.
  Words to acclimate him, calm his old fears,
   raise up new excitements.

“Will you waver like them as though dreaming,
 & wonder new again how to cling the wind?
  Breathe slower now, let the colors calm
 what you are, neither high nor low, not one
but several, many, green, very green,
 the light to breathe now too, the music
  of wavering, now easy, now let, now easy, now let.

“We are past the beautiful poplars now,
 Charlie, now behold red so delicious
  our eyes feast wildly! A field, vast bright
 field, like a flaming down of dream.
Listen to it sing us, Charlie!”

A single voice of many tugs us down low into
 the song, like laughter found & shaped &
  played among our sinews & bones, we listen.

“We are not here to sleep you down,
 but dream you awake! Till the clouds
  tell you about more than mist & sky,
 til the trees you reck like peers of mystery &
knowing, till our field breathes you low & high
 & the mountains, & yonder when you’re ready,
  yonder when you’re ready . . . ”

I hold Charlie’s hand tight as we watch
 the flaming field of blooms begin to shimmy
  with simmering sky above, “hmmm now,
 Charlie, hmmm with us!” I don’t let him go
a moment, but I cease to lead, we must heron together . . .

Now traveling this stream like a mind
 skating its own reflections, the liminal place
  where is & also-is gifts other possibilities,
 now more along, now dream awake! Where
the green trees distant & those nearer us
 as a kind of one, what over hangs, what murks
  below, what we are, fresh ripples in
 the ceaseless layer of hmm . . .

Our voice singing us along the ceaseless what,
 we become the bridge between us,
  crossing this kind water we travel,
 this beauteous what—Listen! Sing!

“Would you soft from the heat,
 find nest from questions, something,
  this comfort near last to offer you,
 shaped & solid memory of what was
here, long ago, maybe again far hence—”

“Tis like a grainstack, Mentor? How to know
 such a simple marvel here?”
“Slowing now to a shadow for Travelers,
 a restive remain? Sly portent?”

Knowing the last of this come, I grip
 his hand even tighter. Hold on, Charlie

All of the rest is gone.
All surface.
No center. No edges. No depth. No sky.

Song of everywhere & always sings.

“When the sweets of the world offered
 like a welcome on, welcome back,
  a farewell to the rest.

“The world now all blooms & floats on.
 The world now all blooms & float ons.

“Dream awake! Now dream awake
 now! Dream awake now! Dream awake now!

“Tis sweet you’re offered
 Tis sweet you might be come.

“Open your eyes, Charlie Pigeonfoot!
  Open your eyes, Gate-Keeper!”

Arrived the lily pond as always.
 But there is someone here.
   A tall man, crouched near the water.
  This is new. I approach & crouch by him.
 I leave Charlie unseen nearby for a moment
still singing softly to himself.

* * * * * *

xvi. Roddy Returns,
Part 1, The Cave of the Beast

The reality of the Tangled Gate we’d found,
 all those years searching, rendered those
  same years a lesser thing.
The Island was real. The Tangled Gate was real.
 The rest was not even dream, nay solid
  even by tis own forms & ways.
The rest smoke, barely something, quickly unbecoming.

As we six Brothers wandered the Island,
 our wits & weapons useless as smoke,
  I tried to remember back there.
Anything else than this feeling of being laid out
 in a dark, dangerous place, uncertain
  the floor below, what walls or roofs about,
 how many spectres paused watching nearby?

Am I clothed? Am I injured? Is this death?

Clothes were the mind’s memories, how the heart
 adorned with blue woes, green strengths,
  pink treats. If I was still walking,
however like a staggering tool, Odom before me,
 Francisco behind, the others further up ahead,
  I was not injured, perhaps not dead either.

But memories? My own clothes? What did I have
 of these? I groped & grasped about my mind,
  swatting the dim about me like a shroud
 of wasps, terrified, furious.

Books. I could not see titles, could not feel
 leather or vellum, but I could wrench my mind
  close enough for words.
“Transcribe the divine word.” “For those lost.”
  “Aftermath.”

A hot burn to my face. Reddish hair, blue eyes,
 swaying. The White Woods swirl around me,
  & I fall. My Brothers stop, call to each other.
Gather round me slumped against a tree.
 I try to cohere to them but distract by
  a letter in my hand. Envelope the color of burnt toast.

“Iris,” I say softly aloud. One of my Brothers
 jerks away from his tending crouch toward me.
  Another sips me water, feeds me on
a small handful of fruits & nuts. I stagger
 to stand, nod us to keep going.

More fragments now, leaving me, ever falling
 away. Red whiskers. A leather bucket.
  A quilt, its feathers & stones. I spasm.
The living world about me nears again,
 & I see their beautiful faces, each struggling
  like me, each trying to remember:
What are we doing here? What am I?

Tis Creatures get us to the Gate, finally.
 I think the White Bunny most sure of these.
  She hops alongside us, herding us on,
till far off the Gate looms, miles high even
 at this reck. She leaves us as we pass
  through it. Never glances me once.

We gather at the Fountain to drink, &
 its water restores us some. What ahead
  seems ever more real as what behind
not even smoke drifting away. This is the last
 of what we shall do, what we shall be.
  Again single file, I urge my way to the front,
feel I know the way. Asoyadonna behind me close,
 a hmmm meager but true in her.

The Cave of the Beast arrives of a sudden to us,
 like by its own choosing. The King, mirthless &
  braveless, now enters first its void of darkness.
We follow quickly. Arriving to the end together.
 Six shaggy heads on the block.

Now come a place without time. Frozen waterfalls
 unlike one I may have known. Powerful yet
  blurry to the eye. Then Asoyadonna’s hmmm
grasps at each of us, tugs, & we all join in.
 The icy pictures come into view.

This is ago. First of all. The hmmm is
 everywhere, always, every tree, every breath,
  every cloud, every green blade.

Not forms singing, but the forms songs make.

Words fumble clumsily in me, like what is left
 of me wants to finish. “Stranger strengths
  bide this world, & we are like lovely notes
among their long, long tunes.”

A hand squeezes mine. I’d forgotten in these
 One Woods about hands, or others.
  Speaks a voice: “Iris.”
And the world we maybe still occupy
 somehow decides to shake free of us at last—

* * * * * *

xvii. Roddy Returns,
Part 2, That Lavender Trace

The world becomes like all ocean waves
 a’tossin’ me hither to yon, my eyes surely shut
  for panic, & maybe too a weariness
in the struggle to know anything sure,
 anything at all, till there is a soft color
  softly in my face, a breaching my woozy terror
& shut eyes. Tis a trace of lavender leads my eyes
 to open again, & me to look.

No One Woods. No frozen waterfalls. No Cave
 of the Beast. No Tangled Gate. Too, no Brothers?
  I am splayed out along an interior of somewhere.
A long corridor, lit without lamps, running seeming
 endless far. That lavender trace is now far
  from me too, & receding still. Without why,
I clumsy make quick to follow.

I now think someone else nearby too. The sounds
 of my now-hard-charging boots oft-chorused
  another’s, but us receding from each other fast.
Is he chasing his own trace? One of my Brothers?
 What did any of this mean?

It is a Starcraft, I learn, from the small windows,
 each singly at a far distance from each other.
  The lavender trace, my lone & loyal companion,
leads me along, & I learn too that this Starcraft
 travels time forward & backward, by where one is
  in it, by where one moves next.

The stars teach me their long story, same patch
 of them through each window, ancient young
  or far far old by one or another window’s reck.
Yet I find neither beginning nor end of this story,
 & never that other person nor any other
  to break my solitude. Twas that lavender trace
together we traveled.

I do not age or weaken. The lampless lights
 will sometimes dim me to sleep where I am.
  Do I eat? Need water? Tis like my body
knows no thirst nor hunger because time does not
 stay passed here, more simple feel myself ebb
  a whisker at a time as I ever follow
the lavender trace endless along.

Is it slow mercy at last brings me to
 that open door, myself too long a pet?
  Now I am in a green Great Filld,
& that Starcraft gone, not even smoke.
 I know those White Woods nearby, but
  I know little else. Feel abandoned by my prison
by Starcraft & trace. Feel no longer OK that I know nothing.

* * * * * *

xviii. Roddy Returns,
Part 3, Lily Pond

Who or what might my sudden arrival
 stir to wake here? Sniff the morning’s chill air?
  Feel its cold tremble? Taste its subtle drift?
   Dreaming known or strange colors whence they’d come?

Tis my call to need. Need of them to come.

Questions crowd my blurry mind as though asked
 by the man I no longer am, the one before
  that Starcraft. That lavender trace.
   Ask & again:

Did we save the world?
Or is this some other?

Breathe, relax, Roddy. Once, twice, breathe, relax.

Tis clean air here, & a sound, like a distant memory
 in my ears, a hmmm that wraps round me
  like a shawl, like a strange smiling friend.

I now sit knees drawn up, on this deep green grass
 so near those White Woods, my head drooping
  into my hands. Now too hmmm softly,
ever softly, lure lightly into a dream perhaps
 to sing me why, why, if we saved the world,
  why am I now alone?

So lured, I sense many curious near & nearer yet
 to me, raising me up & leading me along,
  neither fully waking nor dreaming now,
walking slowly into these White Woods, each step now
 a bit of delicious, feeling what tense in me
  so long float away, fill myself fill up new,
& very old, with everything here, till a mossy bed invites
 & I accept.

What is near to me here does not yet arrive.
 I am vague in this comfort, this beauty.
  Cannot quite behold what, or who, tenders me.
I reach up to those stars, to the patch
 I so long traveled with from their burst
  to their shine to their dim, & back again
by the chance travel in that Starcraft.

I think my turn to ask for help.
I think my turn to bear my heart plain.
I think my turn to open my hand with questions.
I think my turn to hope my story yet braids again
 with others I’ve loved & now lost.

My turn to say, “I knew so much more long ago.
 By my travels with the lavender trace, she long
  led me arriving here. I now am alone.

“I am helpless. My story is numb.
I am helpless. Can you help me?”

I hear a new sound, nearing, swift travel.
As it comes closer, I reck it is a song!
The song of many braided together.
Tis a “Laaaaaa!” being sung, over & over,
 infinite varieties, voices twisting in & out & through.
There is one I hear that leaps my heart up high!
Tis someone I loved. Tis someone I followed.
Someoen I trasure to know again.
This music lingers me my many hours of the night,
 a song somehow of heroes & hope. I sleep closer,
  ever closer, to knowing me & the world again.

Morning light raises me easily, I smile & toss
 kisses with my fingers to my hidden hosts.
  No certainty, no destination, I walk. I walk & walk.

Sometimes I catch the hmmm, & follow, & lose.
 Sometimes there is a merry cackle, high & low.
  Still I feel here & not-here, nearly arrived.

Then I hark water near, & hurry a bit,
 thirst again its usual need about me, & I come upon
  a bridge across a bright stream.
A simple wooden bridge, with old rope rails—

Tis like I am tossed again, as back in that Cave
 of frozen waterfalls, but this time flung in
  my mind & heart. I remember
like a cold water’s sudden waking. Sit hard
 on the ground. Twice lost, now found.

Not everything. But bright beams now cross
 the dark, dangerous place that is my mind.
  A compass I brought out to these White Woods,
   with eggs & vegetables from my old world.
Fyodor the grocer my sometime companion here?

The huts! My huts! The first one I discovered,
 when new & brash & terrified here. The next hut
  with two armchairs on its porch, where the White Bunny
would sniff & assess me. The narrow one where I tried
 to pray off my life’s cruelties, failed. Mailbox house.
  Iris. Still so much missing.

I cross the bridge & find an easy climb down
 to the water. Drink like it would magick new
  my mind, wash out the shadows.
Just beautiful, kindly water. Stand & hurry on,
 as though an urgent where.

The hmmm catches me, & invites me, & I join in
 best my croak can. And names now burst
  open my dark, dangerous place.

Odom. Dreamwalker. Asoyadonna. Francisco.
My King.

Roddy. I am Roddy. More my name now
 than an old word-rag I clutched whyless close.

I hmmm for more guidance, dear wish
 to find my old shacks. But feel lost to them still.
  Wonder now the Creatures too but seem not—

Then I arrive, hours upon hours of walking,
 hmmming, tis a dark purple-crimson dusk
  I arrive, to find my lilies floating as sure
   as ever on their waters.

Oh, happiness. I crouch low to them,
 close as I can come, study their many colors.
  Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet.
   Lavender too? Just a wee winking bit.

A voice in my head, now remembered, now recovered.
Leonardo, the red-whiskered man.

“The White Woods will never leave you, Roddy.
 They have been with you always.
There are things, brave & dangerous things,
 you must do soon, & for them as well as all men.
But they are with you, wherever you go,
 & believe in you.”

More words but now they fade.

But then a new voice, voices really,
 braided like that song blessed my night’s sleep.
  New words. Listen!

“We will start to meet again,
 on the Beach of Many Worlds,
far below the Wide Wide Sea,
 where Abe the Ancient Sea Turtle
rests & awaits us. Find your way!
 Find your way, Roddy, to this Beach!”

I listen for more but now eyes open again &
 here my beloved pond of lilies, themselves
  never quite quiet.

And, not far from me, what appears like a man.
Crouched low, like myself, perhaps to lessen
 the threat of his appearance.

He is a tall man, even crouched low.
A striped knit cap slouched low on his head.
Black on white. Or white on black.
White spiked teeth. Long as fangs.
Long grey overcoat. Brown pants.
Tall white boots.

I study him this close as though my safety depends.

Yet no hackles raise in me. Tis a strange-seeming man
 but no danger. None. When he rises,
  never studying me too close, I rise too.
When he walks back toward the White Woods,
 I make to follow.

He is approaching someone, seeming another man.
 Garbed like a pauper, but what matters more
  is his face. His familiar face.

I knew him once, long ago, as Gate-Keeper.

* * * * * *

xix. Thrift Shop

We three sit a’fire, not sharing a world
 amongst us. Yet now to help each other.
  Now wish, urge to help each other.
   Which to begin?

Hardly a day’s tramp from that lily pond,
 mostly in silence, Mentor leading us,
  we follow like speed all matters.

These White Woods well know each of us,
 respond to our career, accelerate with us,
  toward this clearing we rest tonight,
   toward where we will arrive on the morrow.

* * * * * *

“I knew you once,” Roddy says to Gate-Keeper,
 eyes flickering through the light between them.
  “That empty old building, by the train tracks
   I squatted there awhile. You had some kind
of rubbled heap in the far corner.”

Gate-Keeper starts. “Tis so. My office where
 I edit my film.” Silent a moment.
  Then brightens. “Want to see?”
   Looks at Mentor, who nods like this idea
was expected. “We’re bound for my Thrift Shop.”

* * * * * *

The way isn’t easy, our fire extinguished,
 we hardly await first light. No way but
  the merciless steep rocky climb,
   then through the valley absolute silent dark.
Our own silent passage an urgent need too.

Come a’dusk, an impossibly ancient ruin
 of a city, not so dusted by the long decays
  of time as by long ago brutalities that
   willed none survive. Behold now a strange
yellow building, many floors high, yet still
 a squat, defiant thing among the fallen
  ancient crumble of Mentor’s city.

He speaks quietly. “She who yet dwells within
 was long ago my kinsman. Now she belongs there,
  like they are one. Her cries my only news of her.”

“Why you & she alone left here?” Roddy asks.

Pause. “Like yours, there were six of us. We lost
 four in those long ago battles of the Great Violence.”

“Fallen?”

“No. Consumed. We were the youngest & the smallest.
 They told us to run, survive. We became separated.
  Her to that yellow building. Me to my
   Thrift Shop. The other side.”

Tis round seeming endless sides we travel
 the yellow building. And a kind of yellow sickness
  tugs at us, twists darkly with that distant
   yowl Mentor does not explain further.
Only more hurries our steps. Something pains the air here.
 Still.

* * * * * *

His Thrift Shop juts out from the yellow building,
 near full in its shadow, like camouflage.
  Dirty long windows either side of the grey
   front door. Locked, bolted, deep-rusted closed.

Mentor shows us how entry. Pauses, then runs hard
 at the left-hand window, leaps at it,
  leaning hard forward, arms raised wide.
   The top of the window falls in just enough
for his weight to carry him on through, tumble
 him over before the window moans heavily
  back into place, as though never moved.

Gate-Keeper takes one failed, cussing try,
 then too tumbles over & in. Though a tall broad man,
  the tumbling trick eludes Roddy again & again.
   Till he thinks of his long unseen cackling little Imp friend,
& the White Bunny, & the many other beautiful
 Creatures, quick hmmms to dodge him mind.
  Tumbles in, comes to a crashing rest
   on an ancient mattress the other two,
smiling, have vacated for him.

All dust here. Everything timelessly old. Crooked
 aisles of faceless crumbled goods yet crushed
  up to the ceiling. Mentor leads us a
   strange circuitous route. Roddy guesses,
& Gate-Keeper remembers, that only one route
 leads somewhere. “The rest arrive you back
  to that front door, every loving time.”
   Mentor as rarely smiles, nigh to cackling.
“I’ve been lost here countless times,” says Gate-Keeper,
 laughing too, abashed. “It’s this way.”

* * * * * *

The car crash happens, over & over & over,
 nearly always in reverse, till it becomes
  less me filming it, & more it happening
   to me. The car crashes, over & over & over,
till I’m ground dull of it, bored, &
 it was when I finally let it happen, no more
  resistance, that something changed.

Mentor sudden pulls Gate-Keeper from
 that movie screen, his nose mashed flat
  against it. Pulls, & pulls, harder.
   “Others to see.” Roddy’s drifting on to the next.

* * * * * *

Now no longer in the weird, sometimes glowing
 white back room of the Thrift Shop, we stand
  together before a canvas affixed to a
   White Birch. A dark canvas with strange,
far depths. “There were six of us,” he mutters,
 over & over. His paint strokes are rapid, deft,
  reaching deeper into the canvass,
   as though able to render its interior
dimensions, simply, with paint?

Like Francisco with his White Birch canvas?
Yet, still, tis not simply deepest night’s blackness
 but a . . . Cave? One I knew?

The Cave of the Beast? Where long ago last
 I saw my Brothers? How are we there now?
  Does this impossible canvas breach time
   as well as space? Are we in there still?

I pass out on the stone floor of the Cave,
 cold, done.

* * * * * *

Awake to a distant, & distantly familiar,
 sound. Water? Falls? Open my eyes &
  feel my old quilt long & sure upon me.
   Its chunks of fabric, like a language
whose story or song I could never deduce.
 Orange yarn, maples leaves, small pine cones,
  pages soaked from old books, & dried,
   & soaked again, till a pulp, a grain, fibers.

I am still an endless moment, whatever this is.
 Cackle one of my own. Fold her up again.
  Stand barefoot, staggering, see my soft leathery
   hat on the floor. Gift from those falls that long ago morning.
Don’t stop, whatever this lovely thing is.

Now hurry toward that sound. Not awake,
 nor dreaming, maybe both, like then?
  Dreamwalking, as my brother did so easy?

“It’s like floating with your feet on the ground, Rod?”
“How?”
“Just stop stopping yourself, my Brother.”

Am I finally doing it again? The dark canvas
 is helping somehow, as I rush along, bound
  for my beloved old falls.

“Where you would iterate, like the Imps,” Odom smiles.
“Yes. One. None. Many.” We both cackle like
 nights of old, when her kind discovered near
  whichever clearing we Brothers camped a’night.
The cackles now travel with me.

Approaching the falls, Dreamwalking through
 the cloudy sheets shrouding them, I hear
  a voice, sweet & low . . . tis . . . Asoyadonna’s?
   I stop with what I am, what I do, still,
& listen with all of me.

“Laaa!” sung with a cackling flourish!
 Again, this magickal song, of Heroes & Hope.
  Her voice . . . many others too? My Brothers?

Even . . . my King’s? Sudden I shriek,
 & pull back, hard, violently, from falls,
  from Cave, from canvas, from it all.
Till I am splayed & somehow damaged
 deep within, with nearly returned memories.

* * * * * *

xx. Meta

Twas atwist of events, & Gate-Keeper never sure of
 which order, or yet too mixed to know.
Twas come luring again that strange traveling
 music, Laaa! Many voices. Many, merry
voices. And so he followed, forgetting & remembering,
 by many turns, his search for Mentor & Roddy.
These White Woods wildly a-flutter with this
 story & game & braided ecstasy of a song.

Or was his tall ragged fool self yet with these fine
 companions, close by? In the complex back room
of Mentor’s Thrift Shop? Too big, too deep,
 to many spaces to count by usual waking’s turn?
Each space its screen to watch, or several,
 scenes from his film-not-film, RemoteLand.
Like that car crash or, through it, the one
 on the Island’s beach, with the dead girl.

But yes, no, neither these, more nor less,
 than him & Roddy come crashed, staggering, onto
the crumbly porch of a strange little hut, White Woods
 about them more crafty & intelligent than
most men he’d ever known. Collapses big Roddy
 into one of the porch’s pair of old green armchairs.
And only leather bucker of water between them,
 one which a sniff & a taste tells it be fresh.

Gets a wooden ladle’s drink in both of them.
 They breathe together quietly awhile. White Woods
protective around them, by the secret talk
 & touch of root to stem, trunk to leaf to berry.

“We didn’t know where you were. Looked for
 the longest time.”
Roddy grunts, slow to return to human tongue.

“I found you not far from here, passed
 out cold.”
Gate-Keeper sips another ladle of fresh water,
but Roddy shakes off his offer.

* * * * * *

“Mentor told me more your Brothers’ quest
 for the Tangled Gate. I suppose I’ve always
known of you best as a story it could be said
 is, er, adjacent to the one I long chased in my film.”
Not-film, the unspoken end of my sentence.

Roddy now rouses more, seems more pleasurably
 aware these familiar whereabouts, though
also now aggrieving upon my words. “You know
 I’m a man, not a story.”

I nod, abashed. Urge him one more ladle
 of the good water to drink. Surer now this
is one of his beloved huts of old. And these White Woods
 a soft magick to whatever had lain him prone.
“It was by chance my film chased to an Island
 of the Tangled Gate, to tell of your King’s time there.
I knew, much more vaguely, that he had traveled with,
 & broken by, a band of Brother Knights.”

Roddy jerks forward. “You . . . filmed . . . him?”

“No, his story. But not actually him. The world
 I’d traveled to had an Island, & a Gate,
but no men dwelled there. And there I told the story.”

“Why?”
“I was looking for how to free my home-world.”

“From who?”
“From their captivity.”

“At whose hands?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I don’t understand.”

I sigh. “It involves the story of a dead girl.”

* * *

Was he then quoting that scene in RemoteLand
 from memory, or were we watching it
on that Thrift Shop back room screen,
 or while walking along these brilliant
White Woods, story unfolding again on
 his tripod camera, our faces touching close?

* * *

Strawberry blonde hair. Green eyes.
 Traveling north a long way after you
believed you’d died. Traveling a long time
 to reach the Sea. Swam, from the Mainland,
to the beach of the Island of my set.
 We found you, nude in the surf,
waking, & filmed you, one to the next, to the next.

“What are you?”
“I am the dead girl you found in the surf.”
“What are you?”
“I share your bed when it pleases you.”
“What are you?”
“I am seducing the King to invade the Mainland.”
“What are you?”
“I am no longer seducing the King because we have drunk the waters of the Fountain.”
“What are you?”
“He will tell me the truths of this Island.”

Strawberry blonde hair. Green eyes.
 I filmed you because I could not film her.
I loved you because I could not have her.
 You were Queen. You were Princess. You were Demon.
We told this story but it did not free
 my home-world, & quite simply spilled
you back to the Sea.

* * *

“Your film is a record of your memories?”
 Roddy asks, letting his curiosity creep up a bit.

“It’s hard to say for sure. I don’t think
 memory is always literal. It can be imaginal.
It can be emotional. It can be what
 you rather you were, or what other things were.”

“But is that memory, or is it something else?” Roddy asks.

Gate-Keeper laughs. “I’m not sure myself.
 I didn’t start out filming, but I found my friend,
along the way. Some of it is memory,
 but I think some is something else.”

Roddy nods.

* * *

“Who was the dead girl?
Long pause. “I dreamed of her, long ago.
 She was in a bookshop. Strawberry blonde hair.
Green eyes. Skirt shot as a soft whisper.
 Pallor of someone long, long gone,
  long, long ago.”

Longer pause. “Sat in an old rose-colored armchair,
 slowly turning the pages of an ancient,
frail volume of pictures. They were images of my
 home-world, Roddy. Not where my kin-folks
had crashed. My real one. The tall poplars.
 Bright poppy fields. Great grain stacks.
A lily pond with no shore.”

Roddy starts. “Like mine in these White Woods?
 Where we met by your Mentor?”

“Alike, & not alike.”
“And your dream?”

“I knew she would be my lead actress.”
“And how would you film her? In the Dreaming?

“I knew she  was no mere dreaming figure.
 She was quite real.”
“But dead?”
“Just in the wrong world. I lured her, beyond it, to mine.”
“I don’t understand.”

* * *

“I’d watched the story of the Tangled Gate
 long before I knew what it really was.
The moving pictures I saw as a boy were
 silent. I only knew they were from afar.

“They told stories of a magickal Island.
There was a Castle. There was a Tower.
There were Dancing Grounds. There was the Tangled Gate.

“There was great power in what I saw.
There was goodness. There was freedom.

“And thus I sought the Island, as I learned
 you &  your Brother Knights did, but not to
save the world. Rather to free my own.
 Could the power in this story free my home-world?
If I told it well enough?

“The dead girl came, & others too, &
 I filmed the story again. Not my first try,
but my best. She was my Queen, my Princess,
 my Demon. Strawberry blonde hair.
Green eyes. Because I could not film
 the other. Because I could not have her.”

* * *

However atwist they be, Gate-Keeper shows
 Roddy what he filmed about the Tangled Gate.
The famous story of the Princess returning
 to the Island of her youth. Beloved
daughter of the King. Yet somehow also
 from the Sea.

Her meeting the Architect in his great Tower,
 & learning from him about the Tangled Gate.
Her dreams of traveling through a hole
 in her bad chamber wall, to the caves & tunnels
beneath the Tangled Gate.

The Creatures she befriends.
The Beast too.,
How she saves the world by choosing to stay.

* * *

Enraptured, Roddy watches, or listens to,
 or follows, this story, until he finally stops.
He slumps back, heavily, from it all.

“That is my King.”
“I know.”
“We were Brothers.”
Gate-Keeper nods, but not a word.

“We broke, over what we found in
 the Cave of the Beast. Over how we
lost our other Brothers. We became . . . foes.”

His head now between his knees,
 his body stiff & brittle with anguish.
Is he remembering all of it now?

“I fought against him. I drove him,
 & what few followers he had left,
off the Mainland. Back to exile
 on that Island of the Tangled Gate.” Silence.

“He was exiled there for a very long time,
 until he mounted another assault on the Mainland.”
Silence.

Gate-Keeper now risks a word. “And what
 happened then, Roddy?”

Roddy shakes his head, slumped, & again
 silent for a long time.
Then, of a moment, he takes a quick breath,
 nods, stands.
Offers his hands to help up Gate-Keeper.

No longer atwist, they walk on.

* * *

Continue on Many Musics, Twelfth Series

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